All is Bright with the World
Standing out on the balcony of a castle that wasn’t her home, under the light of an unrecognizably plain moon, Sunset Shimmer looked upon a town she didn’t know.
She’d been there often, by this point. She hadn’t ever visited during her old life, though the town could be seen in the distance from some of Canterlot's higher points. Ponyville. A quaint little farming community in the shadow of the capital that, in the years Sunset had been gone, had risen to a recognition nearly equal to that of the greatest of Equestrian cities.
Yet staring out at the snow-capped thatched-roof cottages with their inelaborate Hearth’s Warming lighting, and the empty streets and walkways between them as the residents turned in for the night, one might be forgiven for assuming little had happened in all that time. True, the buildings looked somewhat on the newer side, presumably a result of all the destruction the town had undergone in its time hosting the Bearers of Harmony, but that fundamental small-town character was there regardless, impervious to any villainous assault.
Sunset didn’t know what to make of that. Sunset was not a small-town pony. From one Canterlot to another, one body to the other, she enjoyed the bustle of the city. Cities were good for anonymity, privacy, being hidden in plain sight; when you’re one of too many residents to count, you don’t get noticed quite so often. To live in a small town was to invite people to want to know you.
There were few things Sunset wanted less than to be known in Equestria again. And thus, even as her trips through the portal steadily increased in frequency and duration, she kept Ponyville mentally at the same distance it had been all those years ago in her old castle home.
The altogether different crystalline castle she was currently residing in, laying just outside the town center, made that easy, in a sense. The fact it existed at all, the fact that she had this vantage point, was proof that in spite of Ponyville’s best efforts, it had changed. And in true small-town fashion, Ponyville had little interest in acknowledging the change. Thus, in her brief voyages into the village proper, all Sunset had to do to avoid small talk was mention where she was staying; with the townsfolk assuming she was some visiting diplomat awaiting a meeting with the Princess, she’d generally be left alone.
By no means did Sunset hate Ponyville. There was much to like about it. But she had little interest in becoming part of Ponyville at the moment.
She sighed as she heard the soft hooffalls of somepony walking out onto the balcony. There was no point bothering to guess who that somepony was.
“Hey, Twilight.”
There was no audible reply, but Sunset could hear the pace pick up behind her, and after just a few moments, she felt a nuzzle on her left flank.
Then that familiar, warm voice piped into her ears. “I can’t believe you’re out here without any clothes. Did you not see the snow?”
Not bothering to look over, Sunset could sense the cheeky smile, mixed with earnest concern, that she knew was on Twilight Sparkle’s face. She shrugged. “It’s not that cold. And if you spent most of your time in a world where you had to always wear clothes, you’d appreciate the difference in modesty standards a lot more.”
“I’ll be sure not to tell Rarity you said that,” Twilight replied. “She’s–”
“–the same in all universes, you’ve told me.” Sunset finally looked over, just in time to see the violet-fuzzed face roll its eyes at her.
“It never hurts to–”
“–repeat yourself”, she finished, simultaneously with Twilight.
Sunset smirked, and Twilight pouted. The Princess lowered her head and swung it into Sunset’s side.
“Ouch,” Sunset said dryly, without flinching. She stepped forward, then arced around and back towards Twilight from the other side.
There was soft snow on the balcony, a somewhat heavy layer — enough that Sunset wasn’t sliding on a frozen surface. To a degree, a small one, she could sense it as she walked. But the sensation was far more muted than she’d grown accustomed to. She hadn’t been to Equestria in winter before, not since she’d first fled so long ago, and in that time she’d become used to the chilly sensation of stepping into deep snow with bare feet, to having appendages that could touch in a way that her keratin hooves couldn’t. Everything about the ground as a pony felt… not wrong, but different, now.
She would never not appreciate that she could be a unicorn again, at least, whenever she wanted. And in theory, other long-lost beloved attributes of her body should have made up for it, particularly her amber fur coat that muted the chilled atmosphere around her. But sometimes that desire for feeling in her feet was so persistent that she’d have been willing to trade her horn to have her toes back.
Thankfully, any distaste she had for the ends of her limbs faded into background noise as she reached Twilight, leaning her head down and nuzzling it into Twilight’s left flank behind the wing, reciprocating the original greeting. After a moment, she similarly mimicked the gesture of more forcefully bumping her head into Twilight’s side.
Twilight giggled, and the wondrous noise lasted for some time. “Cute, Sunset.”
“Learned it from the cutest.”
That turned the giggle into a guffaw. “Stooooopppp…”
“Just saying. And I notice you’re not wearing anything either. What would Rarity say about that?”
Twilight defensively flared her wings, brushing the left one against Sunset in the process. “I was just coming out to get you!”
And with that, folding her extra appendages back up, she trotted around to Sunset’s right, the two of them now standing side-by-side, looking back up towards the castle. A wreath hung above the archway that led back inside, and lights were strung up all around the structure. Though faint against the night sky, Sunset could even make out a gigantic bow tied around the irregularly-shaped star spire that formed the top of the castle, as though the entire building were a gift waiting to be unwrapped.
“Getting into the Hearth’s Warming spirit?”
“Huh?” Twilight asked; Sunset’s eyes met hers, then guided them up toward where she’d been looking. “Oh, yeah. I try to keep it mostly the same every year. Makes it feel a little more… like home, I guess.”
Twilight’s wording caught Sunset’s attention. “It doesn’t feel like home normally?”
“I don’t know if it ever really has.”
That was definitely an odd remark for Twilight, at least in the immediate moment. She did recall that Twilight had acquired the castle in between their first two encounters, so it was true that she hadn’t been living there for an especially long time – but still, years had passed since then.
Apparently, Twilight noticed the silence from Sunset, as she continued. “When I first came to Ponyville, well, it was my first taste of genuine independence. Not living with my parents, not living at the Gifted School, and not within a forelimb’s reach of Celestia. Just Spike and I, living in this little room in the old library here. I hadn’t exactly been looking forward to it, but… somehow, it just became this special place. Cozy, quiet, warm, in the middle of the town, that kept me close by everypony while still having my own little space full of books and… I’m not sure what the best way to explain it is, precisely, but it was just somewhere that felt like me.”
Sunset was quiet as Twilight began to slowly trot away from her, eyes still pointed upward.
“And then it was just… well, gone,” Twilight continued. “And then this place appeared out of the ground, and Celestia told me it was mine and inside everything was set up for my friends and I… I won’t lie, at first it was really amazing. But it took a while to sink in that now I live here. In this big space designed for meetings and gatherings and summits and dinners and I just have to live here. And it just feels so empty all the time, especially when Spike and I don’t even share a room anymore. Some days, we barely see each other.” Twilight’s head drooped, and she turned back to face Sunset. “I know I shouldn’t be complaining about a free place to live, but it’s hard to make it feel like me much at all. Not the way Golden Oaks was.”
Twilight looked up toward Sunset, and it was quiet, for a moment. Around them, small snowflakes began to drift downward and dot their coats, but neither reacted to their presence.
After some contemplation, a question popped into Sunset’s head. “Is that why this place doesn’t have a name?”
Twilight nodded, her head lifting slightly. “Not one from me. Spike called it the Castle of Friendship once. I get why, but it just sounds ironic to me. It doesn’t feel friendly, it just feels big and distant. I’ve got my room, but none of the rooms here really feel that different. Golden Oaks was a sanctuary. This… isn’t.”
There was another interlude of quiet before Sunset began to trot forward, not minding the snow this time as she focused entirely on the mare in front of her. Upon reaching her, Sunset knelt down, feeling the chilling sensation begin to spread through her legs, but not minding it.
Looking perplexed, Twilight slowly imitated the action, clearly curious what Sunset was doing, but uncertain how to ask it.
Sunset didn’t answer the unasked question directly, as she had one of her own to ask first. “This isn’t really just about the castle, is it?”
Twilight winced. “I… well…”
“Princess.”
The wince became a grimace. Sunset knew well how Twilight felt about the way the word had become permanently affixed to her name in Sunset’s world – a necessity, when it turned out there was indeed a local Twilight Sparkle to whom the transient pony version needed to be distinguished. It’d been a source of private grumbling that Sunset had initially brushed off as tongue-in-cheek humility, only to be rather astonished at just how much Twilight seemed to retreat from her title even in Equestria. That she tried, as hard as she could, to be an ordinary pony in day-to-day life, just another respectable member of Ponyville’s townsfolk that simply had some offbeat employment choices. In retrospect, it probably shouldn’t have been as surprising as it felt, and yet it was.
Even having undergone some of the harshest lessons in ego management that a pony could experience, Sunset had found the idea of underplaying a genuinely earned status striking, at the very least.
Until she’d discovered something surprising about herself.
“You’re right,” Twilight said. She exhaled, breath visible in the night air. “The reminder doesn’t help. All the questions I have to think about, all those little stupid thoughts about what it all means, all the responsibilities, all the, well, everything just feels so much more inescapable, here. When I was still at Golden Oaks, I could be Twilight Sparkle, even after ascension and everything else. Now I’m the Princess of Friendship, always. The ponies who knew me before might not think much of it, but everypony else does.”
Twilight rested her snout on the snow, eyes glancing up in Sunset’s direction.
“And it’s exhausting, sometimes. I mean, you know I appreciate it. I always have, it’s amazing, I never really understood that it was even possible until it happened but I knew it was something special… but I’m not built like Princess Celestia. Or Luna, or even Cadance. It probably sounds pathetic, but when I try to say things like this to my friends, they just focus on encouraging me, telling me I’ll be great and I’ll figure it out and I’ve got this and they’ve got my back and I… appreciate that, too. It’s sincere, and sometimes it even helps.”
She lifted her head and looked Sunset in the eyes.
“But sometimes I don’t want to be encouraged. Sometimes I just need to say that there’s just so little that makes sense anymore and I don’t know what I’m doing the way I used to, and I need someone to get that.”
Twilight rose up to her hooves, breaking eye contact and trotting off slightly toward the side of the balcony, looking away from the town. Sunset followed, bringing herself alongside once more.
It was funny, in a sense. Sunset knew Twilight’s problem was almost the polar opposite of hers; craving the Ponyville life where Sunset dreaded it, feeling like she’d been dragged out of the world that Sunset continued to waffle on whether to dive back in. And yet somehow it felt the same; that sense of being estranged, of being lost on how to earnestly interact with the place she should feel the most at home in.
That knowledge that back to normal is forever out of the cards.
She inched closer, and when Twilight didn’t scooch away, she brought her body fully into contact, sides pressed tightly together.
“I get it,” Sunset said.
“I know you do,” Twilight replied.
“And you know that whatever happens, whichever world I’m in, I’ll be there to listen.”
“I do.”
They brought their heads together, watching quietly as the snow continued to fall around them. Letting everything sink in, the way the flakes seeped into their fur as they stood.
Eventually, Sunset stuck her tongue out to catch some of the flecks of white. Twilight laughed, and, as she had for much of the evening, followed Sunset’s lead. And Sunset laughed in turn, and for a few solid minutes, they did nothing else but smile and giggle as they engaged in their wordless, scoreless contest to collect as much of the sky’s bounty as possible, with the implicit rule that they couldn’t move away from each other. (Neither objected to the unspoken provision.)
As the chill finally got to them and they mutually withdrew from the competition, Twilight stepped to the side and spoke up. “You’re staying here tonight, right?”
Sunset smiled. “Obviously. Can’t leave you all alone in this big empty reminder of all the queries of your existence after all that, can I?”
Twilight returned the cheeky comment with a playful flank nudge. “You absolutely cannot.”
“Fiiiiiine…” Sunset mock-whined. She then motioned toward the entrance back into the castle. “Should we get inside before we freeze, then?”
“Definitely,” Twilight said, leaning forward and planting a small kiss on the side of Sunset’s snout.
Blushing, Sunset began to walk back toward the archway, single-file with Twilight behind. Just before making it to the entrance, though, she heard a scuffing noise. Turning around, she saw that Twilight had stopped.
“Something wrong?” Sunset asked.
“Oh!” Twilight stammered. “Uh, no, but, I was just wondering, um, can you… can you show me what it looks like? In the snow?”
“Huh?” Sunset blinked, only for it to then click. “Oh. I guess so.”
Steadying herself, Sunset stretched out her forelimbs, closed her eyes, and concentrated. Slowly, she could feel the heat build on her sides and her forehead, the intensity building, until, suddenly, it blew outward and stabilized.
She could hear Twilight’s gasp. “Wow…”
Sunset opened her eyes, and was greeted by the orange light that emanated just above them. Swinging her neck from one side to the other, she could see the ethereal, spectral, bright-yellow wings that had formed, one on each side of her.
The Daydream Alicorn, the form Sunset never thought she’d bear more than once, and certainly never in Equestria. Nothing about her change at the Friendship Games had felt like true ascension, to her, and the idea of it having an impact in a world she’d been cut off from seemed unlikely. But it seemed the fates had decided otherwise, and granted her another confusing tether across dimensions in the process.
It had taken several visits to Equestria before Sunset even realized she could summon those shining, brilliant features. But it only took a few short seconds before she’d realized what it meant that she could.
She’d been grateful to have had only one witness to her first manifestation, the same one who was watching her now.
“Sunset, it’s magnificent. Like a living Fire of Friendship.”
Facing her directly, Sunset gave a soft smile. “Thanks.”
“And it’s so perfect for Hearth’s Warming, too. Really, I just, I wish I could share this with–”
“What was that you were saying, Twilight? About not wanting to always be seen as a Princess?”
Twilight blushed. “Sorry. You know I won’t say anything. Not until you’re ready.” She huffed. “Still, though, at least you can hide it.”
“And at least your wings and horn aren’t so bright they’ll attract moths.”
“Fair. It’s just that this is the stuff of legend. There’s an entry in Predictions and Prophecies about how in the far future, an earth pony will– oh, that’s not the point. It’s just so exciting… but I get it, Sunset. Really, I get it.”
“I know you do.”
Twilight galloped the short distance over to Sunset and wrapped her in a hug, folding her wings around her. Sunset did likewise, the heat beginning to flow out into Twilight until the spectral appendages faded away, the bright light emanating from her horn winking out in the process.
And as they broke apart, Sunset leaned in and returned Twilight’s kiss from earlier. “Let’s go inside.”
There was only the slightest pause before Twilight quietly affirmed the suggestion. “Okay.”
And with that, the two princesses stepped back inside the castle.