Set in a time after "Call of the Cutie" and before "Magical Mystery Cure", this story results in a departure from the Friendship is Magic timeline and leads into an Alternate Universe.

Twilight finds an orphaned foal in the Everfree Forest and adopts it as her own, but Celestia establishes that this bright young life is not long for this world. She is faced with the dilemma of what to tell her student, but even she cannot know the serious implications of her decision.