As quietly as Twilight had spoken the two words, they still seemed to echo from the cave walls around her.
The tree sat motionless.
"That's right!" She took a step toward it. "I'm talking to you! And don't try to pretend that you're crystalline or deciduous or anything like that! The evidence shows quite clearly that you pay attention not only to what's happening in your general vicinity but to what's happening throughout Equestria and beyond!" She stomped a hoof, a few nearby pebbles clattering. "So pay attention to this! Because you're supposed to be the Tree of Harmony, and this is one pony who's not feeling particularly harmonious right now!"
She waited for the echoes to die away, but nothing on the tree so much as glittered.
"And you want to know why?" she went on regardless. "Go ahead! Ask me why!"
In the silence, her face started feeling warm. "Well, I'll tell you anyway! Stupid tree..."
Unfurling her wings, she flapped the rest of the way to the first of the tree's gnarled roots and lit her horn to better spot any reaction. "Because I once again just waved two of my best friends good-bye as they headed out on another of your stupid friendship missions! And the Princess of Friendship? The pony who's dedicated her life to spreading goodwill and camaraderie across Equestria? Where is she while that's going on?" Twilight stomped again. "She's down in a stupid cave yelling at a stupid tree!"
It took longer for the echoes to fade this time, but the tree continued standing silent and still.
Except— Something raspy began tickling her ears. She pricked them, but then had to let them fold, her face getting even warmer. It was just the sound of her own panting. "And that's exactly it, isn't it?" she couldn't keep from whispering, a prickly realization jabbing at her. "It's just me. The others have all gone off time and time again to show ponies and non-ponies alike the magic of friendship, but me?" Her head drooped. "I've gone, what, twice? I'm not...not good enough at it, am I?"
Speaking it out loud made her teeth clench, and she snapped her head back up to glare at the tree. "So fine! I'm not good enough! But how am I supposed to get better if you don't let me practice?"
Nothing on the tree twinkled or flashed; nothing rustled or swished.
And nothing was going to come from all this. Twilight's stomach tightened. She'd stormed out here without a plan, without any note cards, without making a list or a diagram or giving a single thought to what she was going to say or do when she got here. And just like the other times she'd let herself go crashing around this way, what had it led to?
Uselessness! Standing in a dark, damp cave and yelling at a tree! And not just any tree, either: a magical tree who had given her a pretty nifty castle...
Almost, she turned around, but that wouldn't solve anything. And sure, maybe yelling at a tree wouldn't solve anything either. But at least this way, she could tell herself that she'd tried.
"Look," she said after taking a deep breath and blowing it out. "What I do isn't like raising the sun or the moon. It isn't always the same thing every day. Friendships form in so many different ways, and the things that draw ponies together are as varied as ponies are themselves. So if I'm just sitting at home all the time, how am I going to learn what I need to know to do my job?"
A thought made her smile. "It's the exact opposite of when I was living in Canterlot, isn't it? I mean, growing up, I was convinced that everything I needed to know was right there, already gathered together for me. All I had to do was dig deep enough into the Royal Library, and knowledge would seep up around me like water from a well." Her smile faded a bit. "That's the whole reason I was so grouchy when Celestia sent me away to Ponyville. I was absolutely convinced that the outside world was the enemy of true learning and that all this stuff"—she waved a hoof—"would just get in the way of me achieving my goals. And instead?"
Memories of her friends laughing together, sharing a picnic, running alongside her either toward a monster or away from one: it all closed her throat and misted her eyes. Blinking and swallowing, she focused back on the tree. "Instead, it let me take the first steps toward becoming the pony I'm supposed to be. And I...I just want to go on doing that, go on learning how I can best fulfill my—"
Colors and shapes burst over the tree, a shivery whisper filling the air. Her cutie mark at the top of the trunk and the marks of her friends out along the limbs lit up in a prismatic display that danced across the stone walls, the whole place crackling and making her mane stand on end. Dazzled, her mind took a moment to see the pattern: the light and energy flowed from her mark out to the others, hers staying steady in the center while theirs at the ends dipped and spun in the non-existent breeze.
She blinked. "So...you're saying I'm the source? I sit in the middle, and they spread out from me?"
Her mark on the trunk kept steadily glowing, its power moving out along the paths to fill her friends' marks on the rustling branches.
It took her several heartbeats to find her voice. "But I'm a pony, not a tree! I can't...can't just sit in my castle and send other ponies out to—"
Her words ran dry again, the other two marks further down the trunk of the tree beginning to brighten: Celestia's sunburst and Luna's crescent moon.
"No! That's...that's totally different!" Twilight spread her forelegs and took a wider stance on the rock. "Weren't you listening? They're the night and the day! I mean, you can literally set your watch to them! They're...they're the fulcrum upon which our society pivots, the foundation and firmament of all that it means to be a pony! A big part of their jobs requires them to be fixed spots while the world turns around them!"
The lights and colors now were pumping in little rivulets up the trunk from Celestia and Luna to her, and then from her to her friends.
"No!" She gave another stomp. "That's not the sort of princess I am, not the sort of princess I choose to be! Friendship isn't—!"
A puff of actual wind popped into Twilight's face; startled, she took a step back, and the lights in the branches, the glowing colors of the others' cutie marks, started sputtering and fading until one by one, they went dark among the tree's crystal leaves. Her breath catching in her throat, Twilight could only stare as the glow of her own mark seemed to flare, and more branches sprang forth from the tree, each branch cradling a cutie mark that Twilight didn't think she'd ever seen before: a trio of unshelled peanuts, a pair of crossed palm fronds, a spiral galaxy, a scattering of sea shells.
More and more of them rustled into existence, the old ones vanishing and new ones sprouting, the tree's canopy huge and getting huger, filling the cavern, filling the Everfree, filling the whole world and sky beyond and above—
And then with a flash that made her wince, they were gone, the tree silent and still, only the deep purple glow of her own mark remaining.
Twilight closed her eyes. "They'll fade, yes," she whispered. "And I'll go on being here." Reaching out, she found the tree's smooth, hard trunk, the surface warm and not at all crystalline to the touch. "I can't go where they have to go, but the friendship they give me, I...I'll learn from it and pass it on to every pony and non-pony I meet no matter where I am."
Another deep breath in and out steadied her; she gave the tree a pat, stepped back, and cocked her head. "But if, you know, you wanted to send me to Griffonstone or someplace, that'd be all right, too."
The root beside her flexed with a sound like a trombone belching, and Twilight could almost hear the words stupid pony in it.
Wiping her eyes with a laugh, she turned. "I'll send you a postcard." And she started for the cave entrance.
