Endgame

by Cynewulf

Rating: everyone
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Other, Original Character, Twilight Sparkle
Length: 5692

Twilight Sparkle attempts the impossible. But that's alright. She's already done this many times.

Finished. It's nearly finished, now.

After the world, there are two ponies. One who sits and watches. One who comes and goes. They cannot leave each other, but they cannot stay in one place together. One works towards some last great mystery, and the other explores the darkness outside. But they never leave.

Twilight Sparkle is going to do the impossible. Again. And she knows that she will be successful, because she has already done it.

Loosely inspired by Endgame, by Samuel Beckett

Published 2016-10-14 05:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2016-10-14 05:20:01 UTC

Are we not beginning to mean something?

23%

Dark rooms have many merits. To those unaffected by the suggestive qualities of darkness, they can be a very calming atmosphere. Even to those who find themselves balancing along the rim of the world whenever the lights leave, it can be soothing to find some warm corner untouched by the brazen sun.

A merit of dark rooms: they had a way of focusing things down to the basics. Light. Sound. Voices. The thrum of a unicorn’s magic. The tiny clacking of hooves on tile. No smells. Sterile.

“Do you worry sometimes, about what we’re doing?”

“No.”

“I do.”

“You would.”

The faint hum of instruments. The clack of keys.

“It’s just that sometimes I wonder if it’s right.”

“Don’t you have things to do?”

“Not really. You know that I don’t. It’s over.”

“So it is.”

A thrum of magic, and a rustling of papers as a new light appears. One unicorn scans the readouts with her eyes, and the other stays watching the monitors with her heart.

“You needed me,” says the one who reads.

“I do not.”

“You did. You wanted me.”

“Well, you’re here now. Does it matter?”

“I think so. Can I get you something?”

The pony who watched shook her head, and used just the tiniest bit of her magic to move errant strands of her mane away from her eyes. She winced, and in the washed out light even her visitor could see.

“Does it still hurt?”

“No.”

“You should,” began the visitor, who was not really a visitor, “you should really let me help you with stuff like that. Let me get you something. Coffee? A blanket? I can bring the one from your old bed.”

“No.”

“I’ll bring it.”

“If it pleases you, do it.”

39%

Again, hours—days—weeks—years later. Again, the one who sits still sits. The one who walks still walks. She comes in from the back as she has many times before. She closes the door that links the Dark Room to the Corridor, and indirectly, to the Kitchen and to the Stairs.

“Say that we were to be totally successful. That every boundary holds firm and every circuit is secure—”

“Which it is.”

“—Of course, which it is, but… okay, so bear with me a second, okay? What then? Isn’t this a bit… recursive? Masturbatory, even?”

“No need to be crude.”

A soft sigh that dies in the Dark Room. They both watch the monitors for awhile and listen to the great machines beneath.them, in the rooms below. Working. Straining. They, together now, feel the grinding of the Gears. They weren’t real Gears. In a way. In a way, they were very real.

“You should answer the question. Or think about it or… or something..”

The pony watching the monitors with all her heart said nothing.

43%

Sometimes, when she was young, her mother told stories.

Or, rather, Stories. The word was always a large capitalized word in her mind, underlined, bolded. They were important.

Sometimes she thought they were the whole world.

The Station was the world with a small w. The Stories were the World with a great large one. Her voice would say words, and surely that was all that happened, and surely that was not all that happened, for the words weren’t simply words at all. She didn’t know what so many of them meant. But her heart knew. It gave them shapes and colors and life. Trees--what is a tree--but she knew it was something, and in her mind it was something, it was like the white-lit hallways shaped into a thing for strange creatures to climb upon, and she imagined that leaves were like the blankets she pilfered from the dormitory across the hall to wrap herself in when she wanted to hide, because she was a child and all foals love the sensation of security that comes with hiding. She imagined them wafting in the wind, which was like the air that came from the vents but stronger and cleaner. And grass would be like… grass would be like… like the Brown Top and the Timothy stored away in magical containers that her mother let her nibble on sometimes when she was hungry, but it would be everywhere and greener and soft and she could run on it.

In her stories, in the World, there were ponies like her with horns that did magic all the time. Not just lifting things but real magic, great complicated spells that did all sorts of wonderful things. And there others that flew, with things called wings which she thought of as being like the dormitory blankets and feathers, but she knew about those from the pillows and her mother’s last quill.

And she would sit in her nest of blankets and she would live there.

55%

Somewhere else now—Outside of the Dark Room, down the Corridor, bright with white light that flickers sometimes but usually doesn’t, past the bedrooms where lie the empty beds row on row, two on each side, only one with bodies now, or warm bodies, only one where ponies sleep in the way they meant that word usually when still ponies said words.

Past the Kitchen. Turn. Up the Stairs.

Clack. Clack. Hooves against the tile that is so very old. White tile, once, but grayed with time and dirt and repetition. At the top of the Stairs is the Wheel, and when she uses her magic to turn the Wheel, the door which it is attached to can be pushed up and out, and then…

And then, the last Unicorn on earth can walk about, if she wants to. Which, from time to time, she does.

What’s there to see? Little. Nothing, if we’re forgoing the charity of understatement. Absolutely nothing. Rock. Glass. Light? No. No light. No sun, and no moon. Or, rather, there is something up there but it certainly can’t be much a moon anymore, that’s for sure. Whatever it is, broken up and uneven, doesn’t matter. She can’t see it anyhow, can she?

59%

The Dark Room always feels darker, even though it does not change.

“Do you remember grass?”

Real grass, she did not say. The kind that grows, she did not say.

A pause.

“Of course I do.”

“I don’t.”

The last Unicorn on Earth trots from the door to the pony sitting and stands beside her. It is what she does. It is really the only left to do that can perhaps mean anything anymore. The last Unicorn understands, at most, perhaps half of what she sees.

Imagine, for a moment, that you understand that the angles of any given triangle, or any given four sided shape, can and must equal something. Imagine that you are absolutely certain—if you must, try to overcome the reality of certainty being at best an illusory thing—and then imagine that somepony explained to you that no, in fact the angles of a triangle equalled different things, depending on what day it was, or how humid it was, or what color they were.

That is what the last Unicorn on Earth experiences when she tries to read what there is left to read.

There are no more books. She misses books. There are no stories left, even though she had thought they would always be there. Unless, of course, she counts the story that she lives in, the story about Her and the Princess, and about the bright monitors and the lonely hallway and the mediocre bed and the vast darkness outside and the occasional words shared between them and then nothing.

“Why don’t you?”

She blinked. The Mare who sat--the Princess--had not turned, but she so rarely asked questions these days. She was so rarely interested.

“It’s been too long,” said the one who wanted to wander.

“Not that long, surely.”

“Years.”

“Ah. What is outside, anyway?”

Wanderer laughed. “Zero.”

“Ah.”

“You never asked before.”

The Princess moved. Maybe she moved. Surely she did, or perhaps she didn’t, but there was the sound of something moving and the Wanderer wanted her to move badly and these sorts of things can create entire worlds if one lets them.

“I’m sure that I have. Many times.”

The Wanderer shrugs. “I don’t think you have.”

She would have said I’m sure you haven’t but the truth was that certainty was harder and harder, beyond the basic materiality of the Bunker and the monitors and the lights. She did not always consider the outside to be something certain. Not because it was unreal but because it was nothing, and it was hard to positively identify Nothing.

“Well,” she said at length, “what about it do you remember?”

The Princess was quiet. She was, generally, quiet. Still. Responsive only in the most technical sense.

“I remember it was soft.”

65%

Her mother’s name was Candescent, but foals do not call their mothers by name often, and so she only existed as an image connected to the word mom and perhaps that was right.

There had been three ponies in the world once, and that had been a lot by the wandering mare’s accounting. She could hardly picture many more beds being filled in the dormitories, but there must be dozens of them. That was enough ponies for the whole world! Dozens!

She wondered, as a filly, how one would keep track of so many names.

She was rarely called by her name. The Princess called her “child”, but with warmth sometimes, and her mother who was the most beautiful thing that existed called her “little flower” or “dear” or “sweetheart” and those were all her name as much as the name she was born into, and she thought of herself more as these than the one her mother had decided upon as she came mewling into the world.

The Princess sat still, even then, but she talked more in those days. It is easier to talk to inquisitive fillies than to grown mares.

70%

Leaving the Bunker, though possible, did not mean anything. It was an absolutely futile exercise. That did not deter her.

She climbed the stairs and undid the great vault door and stepped out.

Blackness. Implaccable, endless, deep, if such things as Nothing can be deep. Standing in front of the entrance, you could see the bright inner light illiuminate just a bit of the world around. You could see the jagged edges, if you strained your eyes. But otherwise, there was really nothing to see. There was nothing else that could be described.

She had meant that outside was “zero” in a very literal way.

Undeterred, it seemed, she walked out from the doorway. She always walked in straight lines. It was simpler, easier, for one. She told herself she did this because she had to keep the light pouring out of the doorway in sight range or else she would never find her way back. Which was true. But it wasn’t her real motivation and she knew it, and she thought to herself--I’m lying--every time that she justified her behavior.

She said this to herself whenever she tried to justify anything anymore, to be honest.

And honesty was all she had now. Well. That and thoughts. If you could call them thoughts.

Dark rooms have merits, but the open Zero Nothing had some advantages over them, despite it being oppressively itself. For one, it was easier to think in the ways that made her happy. Brief, fleeting happiness, but there was something to it, wasn't’ there, or else she wouldn’t enjoy it at all.

She saw things. Walking along, she saw them slowly coalesce out of the void. Colors first, always colors first, and then shapes from the suggestion of line in the gradiating hues and then the illusion of depth and definition and at last movement and before long she was somewhere Else entirely. And sometimes, when the things she saw were bright enough, or there enough, or what have you, sometimes she would remember what they sounded like, those pretty things, and she would mimic the noises. This pony sounded like this, and such a sound was what the wheels of a cart on cobble sounded like, clack clack clack, and just like that, she was talking again as she strolled down the street, just merrily on her way.

It was living in Stories.

Just like that.

And then came the Turn. Eventually, some ways off, the land started to slope. Or at least, she thought it did. She did not go much further. Perhaps it was an illusion. It most certainly was to some extent an illusion, a trick played on sightless eyes by the nothing. It wanted there to be some variation, some difference, so that not everything was a flat uniform plain forever. The mind, if she followed this line of reasoning, which she usually did, needed there to be difference of some sort or else it would invent some way to make sense of maddening geometries.

But at the Turn, she always stopped. And, yes, she turned. But not immediately. Not right away.

She stood and stared. Sometimes she continued her dreaming. But this time the pictures of happy ponies and carts and grass, if she was remembering grass right, and trees and sunshine and clouds and pegasi, it all vanished and she was alone again.

There was no great revelation, standing as she did in the darkest hour of the Earth. There was, perhaps, nothing else to reveal. It was finished, or almost finished.

A heap. A little heap. Day upon day, hour upon hour, act upon act, step upon step, not even a great heap of grains but a tiny heap. An impossible heap.

Impossible because a thing was itself or it was not itself, it could not be both itself and not itself. It could not be a heap and a thing entire. Or, it could, but it was incomprehensible that it should, and so also it was not possible that her days could both have been and still be when she walked and--

And on the horizon? What horizon?

And eventually, she turned and trotted back towards the door and she was quiet.

86%

Thaumic Station Clover was the first and last of its kind.

Announced as the first step in an a great endeavor to cure the world’s great Final Problem, the construction of the station had been a very public affair. Ponies had flocked to the site to see the final hope of ponykind beneath the earth.

What is it? They asked. What does it do? Or how does it do it? They inquired, trying to look beyond the boundaries of the worksite.

It will reverse everything. That was the Princess’ official answer. It will set everything right again.

That satisfied some. Eventually, those who could be satisfied were so more or less because there was no better answer forthcoming.

The Princess, you must understand, was laconic. She spoke only the words she needed to speak, and few beside--at least, in public. They, whoever they were, said that in private she was an intrepid conversationalist to those who could keep track of highly theoretical subjects. She explained at length to the learned the inner workings and secrets of the universe, but with each revelation a few more of those hoary heads hung in defeat until she had outpaced them all.

So they said.

But the average pony on the street never saw that part of her. Mostly they saw the measured grace of the world’s final and only monarch in memory.

Clover took five years to build. A dozen ponies died deep beneath the earth, digging and shoring up and waiting, ever waiting, for the daily shaking of the earth. Sometimes, the shaking was just the normal shaking. Sometimes it was the Something Else, the Thing that the Princess made in the natural cavern around which Clover was built.

The vaulted Workings were only ever seen by her. No archmage, no engineer, no single solitary living being but the Princess ever saw what miracles, dark or light, she worked there. But they felt the tremors and sometimes they dreamed strange dreams and woke to work again and again.

And above them, the stars continued to wink out one by one. The crops continued to wilt, then live again, then wilt. The days grew dark and the mountains cracked. The world trembled before the end, and then…

And then they finished.

Too little. Too late.

90%

The Walking Mare brought the Princess coffee. There was very little coffee left. In the world, yes, but in her mind she thought in the station because the station was the world and the Zero outside was nothing.

“How is it coming?” she asked. “You know. With the monitors and the magic.”

“It’s about half and half,” the Princess said. Still not looking away, still not looking at the mug. The only other pony left used her magic to lift it to the watcher’s lips, and with practiced care helped her drink.

“Half? Science and magic, or monitors and darkness?”

“Yes.”

“I went outside.”

A snort. She drank again. “I know. I do know when you leave.”

“I thought you didn’t.”

“Of course I keep up with what you do. I can hear, you know.”

“Well, yes.” Another sip. “Do you like the blanket?”

“Yes.” A pause. “Thank you.”

“May I ask when you will be finished?”

“Soon.” No heat. She was never frustrated about it. As if she had infinite time.

The mare who walked knew that infinite time and no time started to mean the same thing at some point. “What was my great-grandmother like?”

Silence. A sip. “Why do you ask?”

“It passes the time.”

“Fair. I don’t mind.” A pause. “To start with, because I value precision, you would need several more ‘great’s in that question. She was brilliant, if unorthodox. Eager. She turned her life around.” Again, a blank of silence. The world’s last caretaker helped her take another sip as she nudged the mug with her nose. “She had a motorcycle.”

“A what?”

“It would take a long time to explain.” A short laugh. “Time. It was a vehicle. She lived on the other side of a mirror for many years and things were different there.”

“I can’t tell if you’re serious or not.”

“Oh, deadly serious. Deadly. Deadly. She liked jackets. Music. Her spellwork was sloppy but not from lack of skill. She got excited, you see. Very… hm. Very excited. Did you put sugar in this?”

“We didn’t have much.”

“Ah. The sweetness is there, but weak. I just noticed. She was my friend, lastly and foremost. She was beautiful.”

“That’s what… I can’t remember his name. He said it. About her being beautiful. I remember wanting to know more than that.”

The Princess hummed. If she remembered the name, she did not say.

“It will be finished soon,” she said at length. “Are there any chairs left? Or cushions, that would work.”

“No.”

“Ah. Well. You’re welcome to stand. But it shall take some time.”

95%

There were supposed to be three stations. Clover, Hammafor, and Belle. The sights of the other two were distant and uniform now. Or close and uniform.

Another symptom of a dying universe was the way things began to contract. Miles became measurable in minutes.

The great crush. But no one said it. They lived it or they ceased to live through it, either way. The Princess went down into the Station and did not return.

And then the sun died. The moon cracked as the last stars fell screaming through the skies. And the ponies below looked up, and sometimes the caretaker, the wanderer thought about what they made of it all. Were they afraid?

Maybe they thought it was beautiful.

98%

“What does it all do?”

“It fixes everything.”

“But how?”

“Do you actually want to know, or do you want me to tell you something that you will believe or accept?”The Princess snapped, and then sighed, and when her last subject did not answer, she spoke again. “That was uncalled for.” More silence. “Are you still there?”

“Yes.”

“Am I unkind to you?”

“I think you are, sometimes.”

“Too unkind?”

“No.”

“Ah.” The monitor flashed, and two pairs of eyes focused in for a heartbeat, and then another. And then another. Until the Princess shifted slightly in her well-worn, frayed seat. “Not yet. Not quite. I am sorry. For what it is worth to you, I am sorry. I have… forgotten. Is it enough to leave?”

“There is nowhere to go.”

“You’re right, of course. There is nowhere to go.” She shifted again. “But if there was.”

“But if there was. But there isn’t, so it doesn’t matter.”

99%

She was sleeping.

In her dreams, she saw mostly nothing. Just as she did outside. Or she saw the glare of the monitors. Or she saw the Princess.

Sometimes, in her dreams, she was called by her actual name, but usually she was just called by an image that was herself as she saw her form in the cracked mirror of the dormitory bathroom. It was the one to the right of the sink that still worked, in front of the toilet that still flushed. In the mare’s room. The colt’s room mostly worked.

But she was sleeping.

Until, all at once, she was not.

There was a tremor which threw her, ragged blankets and scavenged pillows and all, to the cold ground. Confused, panicked, she thrashed her way free and lay flat against the floor, hooves over head, imagining the ceiling crashing down, or some rotting piece of paneling falling free and shearing off her horn.

But that didn’t happen. The tremors died away. She just… lay there. Waiting. It had been so long since she had felt one. The last had been when she was just a filly, when there were more than two ponies. There were three, then. Years and years. She had no way of knowing how many years.

It was unfair. It was wrong. It was over, didn’t they know that! It never occurred to her to ask who they were. They were Everything. Just the whole of existence pulled together by pure blind fury into a single gaggle of personages she could hate. How dare they. How dare they continue to taunt and play when it was already over with! Why wouldn’t it leave her alone? Why couldn’t she just keep going and not worry about running out of coffee or the lights going off or the door not opening anymore or the monitors exploding or the Princess not answering or being lost in the Outside or or or

She heard something that she had never heard before.

She heard hoofsteps that were not her own and that were not her mother’s.

The pony who trembled on the cold floor felt many things. She was terrified. She was curious. She was…

Hopeful. Which was strange. Uncomfortable.

“Blossom?”

The voice was impossible. It was impossible because it was the Princess’ voice and that would mean she had left her seat and her room. And her monitors.

“Blossom? Are you alright?”

“Here!” Apple Blossom, the wandering caretaker, croaked. She did not move her forelimbs from covering her head. “I’m in here! I’m alright.”

“Thank the stars. Come out. The lights are still working, at least.”

She crawled, and then stood up, and then walked into the white light.

The Princess was frail. Thin, and fraying, like the last book that the Stories had come from sometimes. Her eyes were still full of light, but they were the only thing. The crack in her horn was more pronounced than before, now that she could see it in full.

Blossom had never seen the Princess in the light before.

“That’s what color your coat is,” she blurted.

The Princess blinked at her.

“Sorry. I… you left your room.”

The Princess cracked a sideways smile. “I did. Two for two, child.”

“I… well, I…”

“Walk with me? It’s time now. It’s all but finished. We need to go below.”

“I’m not allowed to go there.” Her voice was so small.

“You are with me. It’s alright.” A pause. “It’s alright. I’ll be with you every step of the way. Now come along. If you wish. I would…” Some emotion passed over her face like a wave, and then it was gone. “I would appreciate the company.”

Blossom nodded, and the Princess strode by her. She followed.

The went to the kitchen, but did not enter. They took the opposite way from the door to the Zero. They went to the Closed Door. The one she had never touched.

The Princess placed her hoof to it, and it glowed and then it dissolved.

Blossom jumped back. “What? What happened?”

“Hm? Magic, child. It’s just magic. You’re a unicorn, aren’t you?”

“But… but…”

The Princess turned for a moment, cocking her head to the side. “What is it?”

“Is it… is it real magic? Was that a real spell?”

“Yes?”

“I… I’ve never…” Blossom swallowed. “I… I always wanted to know what it would look like.”

“But you’re a unicorn.”

“Yes. I only know how to lift things.”

“You… Ah. Ah.” The Princess breathed in, shut her eyes, and let a slow hiss out over clenched teeth. “Think… think nothing of it. Come along.”

Beyond the door was another hallway, bathed in red light. And at the end of it a stair, and down the stairs more red light, curling down into the bottom of things, and then a door.

It all seemed like another Story. But it was not like her mother’s stories.

At the door, the Princess looked at a strange device and grumbled. “I need you to push the buttons. My hoof is too big and my magic… ah. Could you?”

“Uh… yes!”

“Combination is 10110.”

She entered it carefully, almost reverently. This was truly a Story now. It was like the one… the one with her pegasus pony, who flew, and searched for treasures. She liked some of those tales, but the ones with the underground temples--and what was a temple--she had found dull. She lived underground. What was new or exciting about it?

The door slid open, revealing…. Well. Nothing, actually. But it was not like the Zero, the Outside. That was absolutely nothing. This was just darkness. She could feel something along her coat, like the tiny shock of electricity she’d received when digging through old maintenance shafts once. But it was everywhere.

The Princess walked boldly into the darkness, and then there was light.

It was filled with things which defied Blossom’s understanding. Great engines that glowed sickly green, runes carved into them, corresponding to signs upon the walls. It was…

If she had had the words, she might have described it as constellations. Lights everywhere, moving in tandem. Archipelagos of great machinery amid dancing lamps of magic. She might have said--my god, it’s full of stars!--but she did not. She had never seen a star. She had never seen the constellations flaring hot among the void.

So as she stepped into the Vault.

They walked without words between the great engines that glowed and growled and sometimes sang. Blossom asked no questions. Not because she was without curiosity so much as that she lacked the words to ask. The questions, or something like them, rested at the tip of her tongue waiting for the words to convey their spirit, and were disappointed.

Beneath her awe was frustration.

Blossom’s life had been solitary, even when her mother and the Princess had been alive. Most of the world, most of the station, had no other pony there. One felt alone in all of the hallways and storage closets and maintenance shafts. She had not minded. She knew no magic but lifting and pushing and pressing, and that was alright. To know about magic had been satisfying. She knew nothing of the workings of the Princess’ projects. She did not need to, because she saw the monitor and that was enough.

But everything above was no longer enough.

Before, the world had seemed solid and complete. There were routines and limits and she could see all there was worth seeing on her own power in a matter of hours. The world was a room, or a few rooms, all interconnected so that they were one space. The outside didn’t count. It was nothing. It was like going to sleep.

The Vault was not in her World. It was not outside. It was somewhere, some thing else, not like the Stories had been, not like sleeping had been, but… but…

For the first time, she felt small.

The Princess checked the engines and traced the lines of magic that connected them all with her hoof, humming all the while. At last, she turned.

“What is this?” Blossom asked.

“This is a womb,” the Princess said. “If you want to be poetic about it.”

“What?”

“This is how I will fix the world. All that remains is the last step.”

“Which is… I… Fix the world?” Blossom shook her head. “I don’t understand. How?”

The Princess smirked. “You’ll see. Follow me.”

The Princess led her to a mirror, set in the middle of the room. All around it, an etched circle of runes glowing. The mirror itself was ordinary, or so it seemed.

“This is it?”

“In a way.”

“How does this fix things?”

“It’s finished.” The Princess seemed almost to forget her then. “It’s finished now, it’s finished. Finally. This time it took longer… it always takes a little longer with each repetition through the cycle. I was starting to worry.”

“Is this… is this magic, then? Strange symbols and mirrors?”

“Magic? No this is… Well.” The Princess turned, looked at her as if noticing her all over again for the first time, and then shrugged. “Yes, it’s magic. I’m going back.”

“Back?”

“I’m going back to the beginning again. So I can continue my work.”

“Your… but this was your work, wasn’t it? Watching the monitors, waiting for… something?”

The Princess shook her head. “No, child. My monitors have nothing to do with this.” She paused. “The Final Problem. Entropy. Things fall apart. Did your mother tell you anything about it?”

“No.”

The PRincess sighed. “Things stop working over time. That will do. They run down, like a candle that burns unattended, until there’s nothing left to burn. This is simplistic but it will do.”

“This fixes that?”

“Of course not.” The Princess stepped aside and gestured to the mirror. “But my time has come. This is the first time I have brought you here, I think. I might as well explain. Every time, I work towards solving the final problem, combatting the inevitability of the end, and then my recall finally kicks in, and then I go home. I begin again. This has all been buying time.”

“The… the first time? You’ve done this many times? But you’ve never left your chair.”

“I’ve left it many time, but not in this timeline.”

“I don’t…” Blossom shook her head. “I don’t understand. Are you going somewhere?”

The Princess was about to say something, but then Blossom continued.

“But if you go, what will I do?”

And there was another pause. The Princess turned, looked back, looked away. Tried to say something, it seemed, but failed.

“Child,” said she at last, “do you know what I was Princess of?”

“The world.”

A chuckle. “No. Not at first, nothing so grand. I was Princess of Friendship. I wonder if you know what it means. I had many friends. I have had thousands, I think.”

Blossom blinked. “But… but how do you remember so many names?”

“You learn to,” the Princess said. “You try. Every time, it is a little different. Every time I get closer to an answer, but…” She bored holes in Blossom with her eyes. “You really don’t know a thing about magic, do you?”

“N-no.”

“Would you like to?”

Blossom startled. “More than anything! Magic like in the Stories.”

“Come here.”

She did. The Princess had her bow her head, and they touched horns briefly. Blossom felt weary instantly. Exhausted. She staggered, but the Princess caught her.

“I always forget how big you are,” Blossom grumbled.

The Princess smiled, truly smiled. “It comes with time. I’m going to do something risky. I think it might help things. But you need to do me a favor. Can you?”

“What… what do you want?”

“One day, you’re going to meet a pony named Twilight Sparkle. And when you do, you need to touch your horn to hers and tell her that you have a message for her. And for you, but don’t worry. You won’t have to explain. You’ll know. I’ve made sure of it. You’ll remember.”

“I don’t…” she yawned. “ I don’t understand.”

“It’s alright. You will. I’ll carry you. I think… I think you’ll like it. We’ll go together. When I meet you again, it will be different.”

“Okay.”

100%

With a sigh of frustration, a young mare named Twilight looked over the edge of the chariot towards a small village named, of all things, Ponyville.

There was a brief sense of vertigo, as if she had fallen from a great height, but it faded. It was probably nothing. Just looking over the side.

That was alright. She had time, at least. Enough to figure out how to convince her teacher that something had to be done about Nightmare Moon when Celestia visited for the festival. And she would find a way. Because she was right.

But the Princess’ words kept ringing in her ears.

But you simply must stop reading those dusty old books!

And… well. Maybe…

Well. She could ponder what her mentor meant later. For now, she had a job to do.