Scent of Roses: Now I Understand
Author's Note
This is a letter that was originally written to be part of Scent of Roses, but didn't make the cut during revision. There's actually a lot of unreleased material for that particular story (there's basically an entire second half that was planned but split off and not used), and most of it probably won't end up being finished.
This particular piece was supposed to be the closing chapter of the story. It wasn't included because I decided to end Scent of Roses on a higher note instead. The aim of the story works much better without a heavy downer of a closing, so I didn't want this to be read as part of Scent of Roses. I still don't. The story ends where it does for a good reason.
However, I put a lot of time and thought into this letter and I've always liked how it came out. Rereading it recently, I finally decided that, while not by any means a sequel proper, it's strong enough to stand on its own as a sort of quasi-canonical mini-followup.
If you've read Scent of Roses, then I think you'll enjoy this bit of further exploration of what Twilight learned up there, in the north. If not, the implications in mentioned events should be still strong enough to let you get caught up in the feels and hopefully get something out of it.
Dear Princess Celestia
Scent of Roses: Now I Understand
Dear Princess Celestia,
When you first directed me to make friends here in Ponyville, I didn't know what was in store for me. I couldn't have possibly imagined all that I would find by doing so. Having good friends is the most wonderful gift there is, and I am eternally thankful to you that you had the wisdom to make me seek it out.
I think the greatest discovery so far is that part of being a true friend is willingly experiencing what your friends experience alongside them. I know now that by having friends whose experiences you share, it widens your own perspective, and your own understanding, and helps you to see more clearly through the eyes of all other ponies... Maybe even all other living things. It helps me to realize that other ponies are just like me. I've come to realize through this that all of them feel, that all of them have hopes and dreams, that they all feel joy and pain, just like I do. We are all the same. We are all real. Long days of studying and relative isolation when I was young tended to make things unreal, reducing everything to just so many words on paper. I was disconnected. I've long since realized that. Intellectualizing knowledge is never completely the same as experiencing firsthand and learning to feel deep in your heart.
It's been a long, slow process, but I feel now that I've found the last, deepest, and most elusive but most truly important pieces. I finally think I understand the full depth of the lesson you sent me here to learn.
Sometimes sharing in a friends life like this means that you get to share in their joy and their triumphs.
But I have also learned that sometimes it means feeling their pain.
While the Northern War of the Griffin Kingdom was still going on, one of my friends - one of the Elements of Harmony, in fact, Loyalty - chose to serve in the Equestrian Army, and she fought while I stayed in Ponyville. From the shelter of my library home I read about the war in the newspapers, and followed it, like most ponies did. But, as I said, reading about something is not experiencing it. I never understood her experience fighting on the front lines in even a pale shadow of a way. I never will fully understand it, either, I can't pretend that. But in recent events that have occurred, I have learned to understand some of the losses she suffered and the sacrifices she made in order to do what she felt was her part in winning that war and trying to protect Equestria and everyone she loved.
I'll be blunt - this war killed friends of hers, Princess. It took away parts of her life that she can never have back. It wounded her in ways that I can't imagine.
When we read about the numbers of the dead in records, or in reports, or a newspaper, it's so easy for them to only be numbers. For a long time, I'm so deeply ashamed to admit, that's all I think they were to me. That's all they were to too many ponies, back at home, away from ever seeing the reality of a battlefield. For the three years this war lasted, and even for most of the five years since its end, I was unable to fully connect those numbers to real ponies and real griffins who suffered and died. But now I truly feel it with my heart instead of just knowing it with my head, because my friend showed me, by bravely allowing me to re-explore and re-encounter her losses alongside her... Every single one of those numbers was a real life. Every single one of those numbers was a friend lost, leaving behind a rend in the hearts of others. I don't know where she finds the strength to endure it and carry on the way she does.
This letter is hard to write because I've seen the gravestones, the memorials. I've been crying for a long time, thinking about what I understand in my heart at last about the truth of the finality they represent.
It is difficult because I know that I've lost my objectivity by accepting this level of connection to it through my friend. Because of that, I hesitated, wondering if I should write this letter at all, but I finally decided that perhaps the way I feel is only all the more reason to write it. I feel something inside in a different way than I've ever felt it before. I'm ashamed to tell you, Princess... It's hate. It's a hate stronger than I've ever felt, and it's a helpless, angry, painful kind of hate. I have come to hate this war. I hate what it did to my friend, I hate how many ponies and griffins it killed, I hate the way it tore apart lives. I had to write this, I realized, because I can't understand how something that makes me feel so terrible could possibly be right. How can it be right that so many were slaughtered? How can it be right that even now, years later, the consequences still hang over us and the fallout is still killing tragically? How can it be right that my friend suffered so greatly and some parts of her pain will never be completely healed? She doesn't deserve this. None of them, pony or griffin, ever deserved this.
It frightens me, a little bit. I don't want to hate, but now that I understand what it truly did, I can't help it.
It hurts.
It hurts in my heart in a way I can't describe. I don't want to have to feel this way anymore. I never want anypony else to have to feel this way. What good can winning a war ever do for us if we lose so many of the best pieces of ourselves... our hearts, our souls, our friends... to do it? We'll become like the changelings we've fought in the past - riddled with holes, missing parts, wounds that nothing can fill back in. I see it in my friend and my heart breaks for her. Her suffering is mine and it leaves me in agony.
Why did you do this to her? To me?
I'm sorry. I know that it's not my place to write letters like this. But I can't stop myself any longer. Please forgive me. I know that leaders face hard choices. I know that you felt there was no other way, or you wouldn't have resorted to war. But... Having seen the incomprehensible price she's had to pay... Learning to feel for myself what that means... I beg you, Princess, never to let this happen again. I don't know how I could withstand it, knowing this now. I feel like it would finish shattering my heart for good, for the last time, and I would die.
Please...
Never again...
Sorrowfully,
Twilight Sparkle
