With a clink and a clatter, Twilight Sparkle finally managed to pry the stubborn pink gem out of its niche. It fell somewhere beneath her field of vision. She didn’t care where. She adjusted her chisel and began reshaping the clear crystal bezel. The shape she wanted was different from what she had, a little smaller, so she had to grow some crystal first into the empty space and then chip it away. She strained her eyes to take in the subtle lattices she had grown. One slip of her chisel and she would have to start all over again.
Her chisel didn’t slip, and eventually she had the shape she wanted: a starburst with eight points. She slotted in the amethyst she had brought with her. It fit perfectly. Twilight smiled a small, satisfied smile. A few thousand zhuzhes of wet sandpaper, and the transition between the natural and grafted crystal would be seamless.
As Twilight worked, moving to finer and finer grits, she mused on how peaceful the task she’d set herself had been. Nopony, nodragon, not even a draconequus had interrupted her. She hadn’t even put up a shield to keep them out. It just so happened that they all stayed away, as if the change she was making was meant to be. Finally, she blew away the last of the crystal dust and flapped back to admire her work.
Her former student, who had come so far in such a short time, who had made her own destiny with so little guidance and so much misguidance, now had the throne she deserved. It made a much better graduation present than a mirror framed in photographs. Twilight closed her eyes to imagine the look on Starlight’s face when she saw it.
She didn’t have to imagine long. The doors to the court of the Cutie Map, around which the thrones loomed, burst open, and the mare of the hour herself stepped through. “Starlight!” Twilight squeaked. “I didn’t expect to see you up this early!”
Starlight usually slept in, and it showed. Her eyes were still puffy with tiredness and squinting at the low angle of the morning sun. She looked at Twilight’s grin, at her pointing hoof, and the crystal throne at which the hoof was pointing. She rubbed her eyes. “Twilight… ” she said dubiously, “what am I looking at?”
“Everypony who’s been called by the map has had a throne,” said Twilight, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You didn’t, so I made you one!”
“But that’s yours.” Starlight levitated the chipped pink starburst from under the map table up to Twilight’s face.
Twilight batted the thing away. “Then I can do what I want with it, can’t I? I could grow you a new one, but the room’s clearly set up for six big chairs. I don’t know what Rarity would do if I added a seventh!”
“Twilight, I think messing with it might have serious repercussions. Discord woke me up because he felt what you were doing.”
Twilight landed on the map table. “Starlight,” she said, with a humoring chuckle. “If anything was seriously wrong, you’d have been woken by the map, not Discord.” She looked around. “Where is he, anyway?”
“He said you didn’t need anypony busting your chops right now.”
“What in Equestria could he have meant by that? Anyway! It’s a gift, so it comes with a card.” An envelope sealed with Starlight’s purple starburst mark floated over to her, wreathed in Twilight’s strawberry magic. As Starlight snatched it out of the air and began to read, Twilight floated similar envelopes over all her friends’ chairs. They were all set to land perfectly when Starlight broke her concentration.
“You’re leaving?” she screeched. The envelopes plunged out of the air and landed at haphazard angles. Twilight let them lie. She turned to face her former student, her smile beatific now.
“Starlight, a pony very dear to you once told me ‘anything you can do, I can do better.’ I didn’t believe her at first. For a long time I was sure there wasn’t anypony who could do what I do, for my friends, for Equestria. Yesterday, with the princesses, you proved that I was wrong. For one thing, their continued problems meant that nothing I'd done for them since Princess Luna's return was good enough. More importantly, I would never have done what you did, and I would have allowed Equestria to suffer another Nightmare Moon, or worse! Without the Elements of Harmony, I couldn’t have stopped her. But you prevented that possibility. Anything I can do, you can do better. So it’s time for me to go.”
“What about your friends?” Starlight spluttered.
“They have lives outside of me, you know. Careers, goals, other friends, family. And besides, you know better than anypony; no matter how far apart we are, we’ll always be connected.”
“What about me? I can’t handle what you do! You saw how overwhelmed I was in Canterlot!”
“And I’m not?” Twilight snapped. “I was on my last nerve with worry, and it wasn’t even my responsibility! This isn’t good for me, and I can’t do it anymore!” She was breathing hard now. She raised a hoof to her chest and slowly extended it as she exhaled.
“Besides. This isn’t the first time I’ve left a world in the hands of a friend. She rose to the challenge better than I ever did, and I’m sure you’ll do the same.”
Starlight shook her head. “I can stop you.” She shot a beam of turquoise magic at the throne. Twilight recognized the Fail-Safe spell, meant to restore things to their original states. Twilight deflected it with a beam of her own.
“Probably. You’ve gotten very good at tracing my teleportation. But if you’re haring after me, who’ll keep Trixie company? Or Maud around Ponyville? Or care for Spike? You know better than to abandon them.”
“Hypocrite.”
“Bup bup! I’m not abandoning anypony. Anything I can do, you can do better, remember?”
Starlight hung her head. “Will I see you again?”
“Maybe. I’m sure Chrysalis will kidnap me again to get to you, once I’ve left the castle. It’ll be nice to catch up. Just don’t leave me in her clutches too long.”
“I won’t. I promise.” The two shared a brief hug, and then with the pop and pink flash of her teleportation, Twilight Sparkle was gone.
Author's Note
I'm not a writer, and it shows, both in the number of fics I've published to this site (one, counting this one), and in the quality of this one. Somehow, though, messageboard posts were inadequate to getting this off my chest.