How to Talk With Mortals

by Reaper-Of-Harmony

Rating: everyone
Tags: Twilight Sparkle, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 997

10,000 years have passed, and everyone who has ever mattered to Twilight has passed on.

Ten thousand years.

Ten thousand years, and I've forgotten their faces. It's like they never existed at all.

Ten thousand years, and I've forgotten how many days have passed when the other seats in my royal chamber have been vacant. I've forgotten how long our "trophy wall" has been empty. I've forgotten the last time I polished the six golden Keys of Harmony.

Ten thousand years, and I've forgotten how to talk with mortals.

Published 2014-10-18 00:40:06 UTC
Last updated 2014-10-19 16:37:45 UTC

How To Talk With Mortals

My name is Twilight Sparkle. I'm Equestria's current and only ruler.

I've been reigning now for just over ten thousand, nine hundred, and sixty-two years.

It's been a long run.

My memory may have been great back in my prime, but now the very fringe is beginning to disappear. I can't remember the fine details of what happened ten thousand, nine hundred, and sixty-two years ago, when I was first coronated.

I remember I had friends once. Two pegasi, two earth ponies, and a unicorn like my old self. I remember I used to live in a tree. I remember that we had plenty of adventures together, from shooing away a dragon to rescuing one of us who was captured by Diamond Dogs.

I can't remember their faces. What did they look like? All that remains in my head is six faint blobs of color, vaguely shaped like ponies walking.

One of them was blue, I think.

Another, the brightest color of pink you could ever imagine.

A third, a brilliant white.

But they were mortal just like everypony else, and so they died. I remember I was at each and every one of their funerals, surrounded by bony, withering, broken old ponies who I barely recognized.

I was as smooth as the day they first stepped out unto this cruel, cruel earth. Growing taller, even. Soon I would stand up the the Princess's height. I had already surpassed Luna's.

I didn't realize it at first, but the Princesses weren't immortal either. They had the benefit of an extremely long life. But they were still mortal.

I remember that Celestia's face had began to wrinkle when she let me raise the sun by myself.

Seasons change, and like the trees in autumn, so were Celestia and Luna stripped bare. I wrote a speech for them when they died, but the World Congress meeting was at the same time, and I couldn't give it. The paper is still on my desk, tattered and yellowed with age.

All this, and I was barely two hundred years old.

Every time I'd blink, the world would change. I've forgotten how many mortals I've spoken to in my hall, consoled, advised, lectured, insulted, and finally expelled. Their problems were all the same. A lost farm here. A kidnapping there. An ancient evil every once in a while. Always such trivial affairs.

In the end I told my steward to lock the doors to my palace and prevent anypony from coming inside. Their concerns meant nothing to me, and I could resolve them with a flick of my hoof.

I took the black hammer and closed down Celestia's magic academy. A nod of the head, and the Crystal Empire was annexed and its four hundredth president executed. A blink of an eye, and the World Congress was firmly under my hoof.

A thousand years passed in a single day. I rose the sun at dawn and lit the moon at dusk, rhythmically, systematically, robotically. Nothing ever changed enough to please me.

Discord visited me several times before the second millennia came. His beard had grown longer, and his fur was matted and curly. The tuft of white growing on his forehead had expanded down his back and onto his tail. He looked more serpentine than dragon-like, admittedly.

He told me stories of his past, about the fun we'd had together. But even he wasn't immortal. Before he left me on the eve of my second thousand years, he asked me if I would go to his funeral. I said we'd see.

He never came back, and I only grew older and older. A few months (or was it years?) after his departure, I received a letter inviting me to write an eulogy about the draconequus.

I sat down at my desk, and began to write.

When I actually sent my reply, it was returned to me immediately after. The address didn't exist, and the person I'd been writing to had been dead for years.

At first, I didn't believe it. I gave the letter back to the mailpony, so he could try again. But it was a different mailpony, with a different uniform, who took my letter. Almost immediately, a third mailpony, wearing a dramatically different uniform, handed it back to me while riding a hovering metal contraption.

I tried not to blink, but whenever I did, I would lose myself. Sometimes I could hardly remember what had happened a few minutes before. Only years were like minutes, days like seconds, seconds like a millionth of the time it takes for my eyes to blink.

The world changed with every glance I took. I watched Ponyville stretch towards the sky, growing like the phoenix sunflower in my reading room. Rising up, spreading its petals, only to be knocked down, reduced to ash, and built again. Every day I saw a new skyscraper, a little taller than the others. Every day, I saw a larger crowd gather outside my palace, flickering with color like the aurora-covered sky. Every day I saw a longer trail of dark smoke stretch higher into the sky, reaching for the heavens with its amorphous hoof.

Time itself began to have no meaning to me. Memories were simply another thought. To be erased once unneeded. The sun and moon danced with each other in the sky. Night and day switched like whirling dervishes, almost holding each other's hoof as they waltzed.

My name is Twilight Sparkle. I'm Equestria's current and only ruler.

I've been reigning now for just over ten thousand, nine hundred, and sixty-three years.

I haven't spoken with a mortal for just over ten thousand, nine hundred, and sixty-four years.

I haven't had a friend for double that long.

I'm immortal. There, I said it.

I can't ever die.

The only friend I'll never make is with Death himself.

...

So I'll ask you, fair pony. How do you talk with mortals?