Everything is fine. Your friends are okay.
The Diary
The morning, like every morning, was bright and cheerful; a cruel mockery of the true state of things, and an empty shadow of what had once been. The same tepid ritual to the same conclusion as every day bore out, as Princess Twilight made her singular way through her castle to the library. She passed by books of every size, colour, subject, and era, focusing all of her remaining intent on the one book that really mattered. The only one that really held any significance to her anymore.
She turned the pages over, searching for the date, and then dropped her tired eyes to the words scrawled beneath the neat little number.
You shall die today. This evening, go to the dragon cave near the Badlands, and the dragon shall devour you.
Twilight’s dull eyes remained fixed on the words for a long moment. And then they began to water, as a smile cracked slowly over her heavy face. Her near-unused voice escaped her lips for the first time in a long while, coughing out a wet laugh, as she remembered how this had all begun, long ago.
Princess Celestia was dying. Nopony knew why, or even how it was possible. The only two ponies who might have been able to say refused to. Luna became elusive during this troubled time, and Celestia spent what she said were her last days with her former student, for a not unimportant reason.
“Twilight,” said her teacher. Both ponies had taken to the private Canterlot gardens for their tête-à-têtes, and now lay spread upon an elegant blanket on the cool spring grass. Twilight found it hard to look at her teacher, at her shrunken and pinched features. “When I am gone, there must always be princesses in Equestria. My sister, and Princess Cadance notwithstanding, you must be privy to my last, and greatest secret.”
Twilight looked up, trying not to let her feelings show too much on her face. “I?” she asked.
Celestia nodded slowly, her wasted neck moving gingerly as the still flowing mane of pastel rainbow blew breezily around it. “It is the key to ruling effectively in Equestria. A means by which a princess might secure the future if wielded wisely. Of the remaining princesses, I regard you as the most worthy of this burden.”
Twilight had sat, unsure of what to say. “I’m... honoured, princess,” she managed eventually. “But, might not Princess Luna be better suited to such power?”
“Perhaps,” Celestia rasped. She coughed wetly for a moment, and then carried on. “Perhaps I show too little faith in my sister. But she has always been more tempestuous than I, and certainly more than you. I feel confident that you will use this power responsibly, and I shall give it to you at the end. All shall become clear.”
The fateful day finally arrived, when Princess Celestia, greyed and worn with the sudden age that had come over her so mysteriously, lay curled peacefully on her great bed in her personal chambers. Her mane lay impotent and colourless against the sheets, greyed to a dull mountbatten pink. All came, and all said their goodbyes. One by one they departed, all too pained to see their princess in such a forlorn state. At last, when Luna had finally been convinced to leave her silent vigil for a brief time, Twilight alone remained in the room with her teacher.
“Open the top drawer,” Princess Celestia whispered, smiling at her student.
Twilight did as she was bid, and using her magic, opened the top drawer of the chest beside the great bed. There was only one thing inside: A simple, grey, diary.
“This, my faithful student, is the key to your future rule,” Celestia coughed. “A means by which you will be able to stay ahead, and plan accordingly.”
“Your diary?” Twilight asked, very much confused.
Celestia managed a small smile, and even a dry chuckle. “It has been my diary for a long time. And now it shall be yours.”
Briefly, the old princess explained that the diary had come to her at the beginning of her reign, when Equestria first united from the old tribes. Within its pages would always appear the entry for that day, visible only to her. As the day went by, the words would fade, and Celestia would write down the events that had occurred for her past self to read. In this way, she remained informed of the events of each day before they happened.
Twilight’s well-ordered mind connected this with prior events quickly, and came to understand her teachers’ seeming omniscience, and how she was able to prepare for or know that events would play out the way that they did. How she was always so confident in the future. She was flabbergasted by the revelation, a thousand questions in her mind distilling down into one.
“Why haven’t you told anypony about this before?”
Celestia eyed her student wearily for a long moment, before inflating her lungs in a long, low hiss. “One must be strong willed and wise to use this book. I entrust it to you, and you alone.”
Twilight looked down at the diary, feeling as though it were a weighty thing pressing down upon her shoulders. Her teacher’s expectations all of a sudden seemed a misplaced fantasy, a shade put upon her. She’d tried messing with time before and it had ended predictably. She looked up, another question burning within her.
“But should I use such a power? Is it wise to meddle with time?”
Celestia did not answer her. Lying curled on her bed, her head rested on the soft pillows surrounding her, and moved no more.
Thus began the reign of Princess Twilight. Ruling jointly from her castle in Ponyville, she held her bygone teacher’s last advice to heart, and dutifully inspected the pages of her new diary every morning. Each time, the diary gave specific details of important events, and bore the distinct attention to even the seemingly mundane that set Twilight apart from other academics. Even through her teacher’s death, Twilight felt pride and honour in being entrusted with such a responsibility.
As with her teacher, the diary informed Twilight of particular dangers in the near future, and although she was careful to seem as though she were unaware, she never allowed the events to surprise her, and successfully prevented harm coming to her kingdom for many years. Twilight came to delight in reading the diary every morning, and revelled in knowing all that would occur before anypony else, for it made her feel like a true princess.
As with every other morning, Twilight awoke to find her diary on the stand next to her bed, and lifted it to her with a yawn to read the day’s activities. She found nothing of particular interest except for confirmation of the planned accord with the griffon kingdom, and was happy to see that her diplomacy would win-out at last. But then she came to the last line, and felt her brow crease with uncertainty.
The town of Buckstone will come under a sudden hardship. You will help them in their time of need.
That seemed oddly vague for something she would write. Nevertheless, she followed the diary’s instructions, and met with the representatives of the gryphons to rebuild their ancient diplomatic bonds. All went well, or so it seemed, until the proceedings were interrupted by one of Twilight’s advisers, flanked by two royal guards. Twilight was confused at the concerned looks on the three ponies’ faces; if anything untoward had happened, her diary would surely have told her so.
“Excuse the interruption, your highness,” the adviser whispered, glancing sideways at the puzzled looking gryphon representatives. “But we’ve just received word that the town of Buckstone has been attacked.”
Twilight felt herself going pale. “Attacked? By whom?”
“We do not yet know who is responsible,” the advisor said apologetically.
Her diary had said nothing about an attack. What was going on?
She put aside the news for the time being, and completed the negotiations on schedule. Only then did she make her way to Buckstone with relief aid, and discover the truth of the diary’s odd none-specificity.
At first it seemed as though the gryphon kingdom had staged the attack. Harrowing tales by terrorised homeowners and visitors told of gryphon soldiers attacking from nowhere without provocation, driving the citizens from their homes and burning a large portion of the town.
Furious at this betrayal, Twilight ordered that the gryphon delegates be arrested, and made to answer for this crime. Before the messenger could leave, however, the guilty gryphons were brought before her, and confessed to being a rebel faction opposed to the gryphon kingdom’s continued alliance with Equestria.
Twilight regarded her diary with care that night. Setting pen to paper, she thought of relaying events as they had actually played out, but then hesitated. The more she thought about it, the more the vagueness made sense to her. If she had been fully aware of what was going to happen that day, she would have been distracted by the inevitable attack, and not completed diplomatic relations with the gryphons. Thereby, the rebel gryphons’ objective would have been complete, and no treaty created. With this thought in mind, she wrote down exactly what she’d seen that morning.
The entries returned to normal after this, until one day, when to her vast surprise, the entry comprised of only one sentence that chilled her to the bone.
Today, your friends will all die by drowning.
Terrified, Twilight sped around Ponyville, trying desperately to find all of her friends and bring them to the castle. The last to be found was Fluttershy, who in pursuit of her animal care, was tending to an injured beaver by the river. Without so much as a greeting, Twilight teleported herself and Fluttershy away from the river, reappearing moments later in the castle, where her friends were all standing with questions on their lips.
Twilight tried to explain as best she could without revealing the diary, but found that there was no way she could justify her foreknowledge without doing so. Succinctly, she explained what the diary was and how it worked, much to the awe of her friends, each of them having their own opinion on the matter.
“A diary that tells you what’s going to happen?” Rainbow Dash exclaimed. “That’s awesome! No wonder you’ve been more egghead than usual.”
“Ah don’t know, y’all,” Applejack said, looking pensive. “If it’s true, then we all drown today. T’ain’t no stoppin’ it.”
“I don’t think that can be the way it works,” Rarity offered. “Twilight this evening simply puts down what she thinks will benefit her past self best to pass the day in the best possible way.”
“Does it say anything about eating cake?” Pinkie inquired seriously.
“But,” Fluttershy put in tentatively. “Wasn’t I the only one who went down to the river today? How could any of the rest of you drown?”
“It could be anything,” Twilight said, chewing on her hoof. “Bathtubs, flood, rivers, puddles. It could be anything.”
“Tch!” Rainbow scoffed. “Well, we just stay in here and stick together,” she said, seating herself upon her throne. “Simple as that. I still have half the new Daring Do to get through anyway. I’m going to need your copy though.”
And indeed, this did seem to work. Despite all of her constant checking, aerial reconnaissance, and moisture detection spells, no such mass drowning occurred, and Twilight’s friends returned home as the princess herself sat down to add in the evening entry.
Once again, Twilight found herself trying to rationalise the writing in the diary. It was perfectly possible, she thought, that if she didn’t write the warning about her friends drowning, it might well have happened. Possibly the vigilance inspired by the entry prevented such a catastrophe from happening, and so her future self had written the entry for that purpose. She supposed it was for the best that she do the same.
But Twilight’s confidence in the book was shaken, and she began to regard every entry with growing mistrust.
As time passed, entries appeared in the books once more telling of ominous events, ones that she often found herself unable to prevent.
The weather factories of Cloudsdale underwent a catastrophic meltdown when a volatile cascade of rainbows accidentally collided with the snowflake crafting plant, destroying a portion of the city and resulting in many casualties. Despite her foreknowledge, Twilight was unable to prevent the disaster due to it happening before she could read the diary.
A number of years later, she was told that she would personally rework the plans to the next Equestria Games stadium, citing a flaw in the base construction. This led to a large portion of the stadium collapsing, and the next day the diary relating to her that it had been her own repair job that was the cause.
All of these problems she might have been able to cope with, if it hadn’t been for an entry that at first seemed relatively innocuous.
Today, Applejack hurt her leg whilst farming.
Not seeing anything particularly alarming in this, Twilight set the information aside, intending to warn Applejack not to strain herself too much whilst farming. It was with horror, therefore, that she arrived at the farm to find Applejack inside with terrible injuries.
“Timberwolves got her,” Granny Smith murmured, her brow heavy with worry and anger. “Seems they’ve be’n stalkin’ ‘er for a few days now. We’re just lucky she’s still breathin’. They ain’t nothing a pony can do to deter ‘em when they got the mark. They getcha eventually.”
Twilight sat tearfully at Applejack’s bedside, trying hard to meet Applejack’s green eyes. As Granny Smith creaked out of the room to make some more medicine, Applejack turned her head to look blearily at Twilight.
“Did... you know?” she whispered.
Twilight held in a sob. “No,” she choked. “All it said... all it said was that you hurt your leg.”
Applejack seemed to contemplate that for a while, and then gave a wry smile, although it seemed to cost her.
“That’s fine,” she said eventually, repressing a cough. “Ah did hurt mah leg. I reckon ‘es best ah didn’t know. No sense goin’ about mah day worryin’ about things ah can’t change.”
But Twilight couldn’t bring herself to see things the way Applejack did. The more and more she dwelt upon the book, the more it seemed as though it was in some way responsible for what was happening. That she, Twilight, was responsible. It was after all her own words being relayed to her every morning.
Day by day, she feared what else the diary might reveal to her that she was incapable of preventing. Dwelling long on the problem, she began to seclude herself from daily life, and cut herself off from other ponies. Even Spike began giving her a wide berth, as her obsessive need to prevent disaster made her abrupt and irritable.
Everything is fine. Your friends are okay.
The diary never varied. Every day, without fail, it said, and she wrote.
Everything is fine. Your friends are okay.
And for a time, it was enough. Twilight didn’t leave her castle, remaining shut up in the library reading. Her friends tried to reason with her, tried to get her to venture beyond the castle, rather than being a prisoner to the future, but all tried in vain. Twilight could not be roused from her paranoia over the book, and made her friends promise never to reveal the reason to anypony.
Immortality took its icy toll on Twilight as the diary pulled her into isolation. It seemed to her, after a long while, that she didn’t really live anymore. It took a long time to sink in that her friends, who used to visit her so very regularly, no longer did so. Had they given up on her?
“Your friends?” Spike said, looking stricken. His great, horned head dipped, his enormous green eyes narrowing with pain. “Twilight. Fluttershy died three years ago. And Rainbow Dash a year before that.”
He said nothing else, but Twilight didn’t need him to. His meaning was plain in the silence.
Everything is fine. Your friends are okay.
Everything is fine. Your friends are okay.
Everything is fine. Your friends are okay.
Everything is fine. Your friends are okay.
Everything is fine. Your friends are okay.
“Everything is fine,” Twilight said. “My friends are okay.”
And then came the day. The last day. She opened the diary, and cried with happiness.
You shall die today. This evening, go to the dragon cave near the Badlands, and the dragon shall devour you.
With a spring in her step, she jaunted through the castle to wash and eat.
“Hello, Spike,” she said as she exited the castle, passing by the enormous slumbering purple mound.
Spike opened his eyes, blinking rapidly. “Twilight? Where are you going?”
Twilight smiled at him, but made no reply. It amused her in a way she couldn’t quite explain to see his, and other ponies expressions as she walked out of her castle. Hailing a stall pony, she bought some apples, barely registering the look of shock and wonder on the face of the yellow-bodied pony and her son behind the piles of apples.
She was pleasantly surprised to find that the apple tasted... well, she hadn’t really noticed taste in a while. It was a pleasant sensation now that she came to remember it. So was the wind, she recalled, as she soared through the air, although she thought that she remembered being more graceful on her wings in days gone by. Not that it really mattered now.
One of the curious effects of her self-imposed seclusion had always been that time tended to blend together into one enormous period of existence, when neither the sun nor moon could penetrate the bowels of the castle, and immortality extended the experience into a long, grey moment stretching into the ether of the universe. Being back out in the sunlight, it occurred to Twilight just how quickly time moved out in the rest of the world, how active the lives of other ponies must be, and how short as a consequence.
She envied every one of them, but paid it no mind.
Indeed, as she reached the cave, stood in its entrance, and felt the rumbling of the enormous, irritable beast from within, only one thought really went through her head as she gazed calmly into the open maw descending to receive her.
“Who wrote that last entry?”
Author's Note
Happy belated Halloween. Meant to have this out on Halloween, but this and that, this and that.
The concept of this story is one I heard long ago when I was a kid, about the time that the Halloween Tree movie ran on TV, and is without question one of my favourite thought-provoking halloween ideas. A diary that tells the future, and leads inexplicably to the owner's mysterious demise.
Not terribly original, I grant, but hopefully I've given it enough spit and polish to make it enjoyable.
