Dear Princess Celestia,
First of all, I hope this letter finds you well! You must get so much mail on a daily basis, and I can only imagine how exhausting it would be to read it all, let alone reply to any of it. So thank you for taking the time to read mine. I’ll try to keep this brief so I don’t make your day any longer than it needs to be.
I understand you’re in the process of scouting locations for this year’s Summer Sun Celebration, and I would greatly appreciate it if you would consider our little village. I realize that it’s customary to send a delegate in person to represent the town, but the problem is that we’re still such a small community that we don’t really have anypony to reliably send. I only founded the village this past year, and we don’t even have an official name yet! I could come myself, but the village can’t really operate without me around. I hope you’ll still take us into consideration all the same.
Now, I know what you must be thinking: “Why in Equestria would I let such a new, small, podunk village host the Summer Sun Celebration, let alone the thousandth one?” And while that is a reasonable stance to take, I wouldn’t waste your time asking if I didn’t believe we could bring something truly unique to the conversation.
You see, all my life I’ve been searching for a place where everypony lives in true harmony. Many of the cities and towns of Equestria are lovely, don’t get me wrong, but all of their societies support the same antiquated principle of maintaining a status quo. Wherever you go, ponies are separated into groups based on any number of traits. Wealth, special talents, heritage. The haves and the have-nots, if you will.
Most ponies are willing to accept this as the natural state of things, but I disagree. I think there is a fundamental inequality in pony culture that prevents everypony from living fair, just, harmonious lives. My goal in founding this village is to erase that inequality. I want to create a place where everypony does their fair share and nopony is left out. A society free from the shackles of unfair division and discrimination.
And so far, we’re exceeding everypony’s expectations! Our community may be small, but we are strongly united. Our own tight-knit family, and it’s growing all the time. I think it’s a perfect representation of the ideals that all Equestrians should be trying to uphold, and by allowing us to host one of the defining events of the millennium, you would be making a statement that a lot of ponies need to hear. It could be the start of a cultural revolution the likes of which nopony has ever seen.
Okay, maybe that’s a bit melodramatic, but I truly believe we’re doing a good thing in our village. Your support would go a long way in helping us make a real change, which has always been my goal. My dream. I hope you can see the benefit this would have.
I’ll understand if you’re not quite sold on the idea. After all, right now we’re still just a nowhere town in northern Equestria, and it’s hard to really explain the scope of our mission on paper like this. You really have to see it in action to understand. If you would do us the honor, we would be thrilled to have you visit and experience our way of life for yourself before making a decision. I could personally give you a tour, and I guarantee you won’t be disappointed. Why, once you see how happy we all are, you might just choose to stay and live with us!
I’m kidding, of course.
Thank you for taking the time to read my proposal. I speak for our entire village when I say that we are eagerly looking forward to your response. Have a pleasant evening!
Warmest regards,
Starlight Glimmer
Princess Celestia gave a soft smile as she finished reading. Of all the mail she had gotten recently, this was certainly the most interesting. Had the celebration not needed to be in Ponyville this year, she may well have considered the offer. It might still be prudent to visit the town regardless, if only to ensure that the zealotry evident in the message wasn't becoming too radical.
Then again, if anything untoward was happening in this village, they certainly wouldn’t want to draw her attention. I’m sure it’s fine.
A bit somberly, she set the letter aside and began penning her reply. Hopefully Starlight Glimmer wouldn’t be too disappointed.
Maud hadn’t intended on passing through the Everfree Forest, but something had called her there. Specifically, the nearby escarpment gave off a strong scent of dumortierite quartz with only trace amounts of alkali feldspar. Not unusual for a granite formation, strictly speaking, but certainly on the high end of normal.
It also happened to be the most direct route between the badlands and Ponyville, which meant she would get to see Pinkie Pie that much sooner.
Mostly it was the escarpment, though.
Night had fallen by the time she arrived, so her research would have to wait, but that was fine. She didn’t expect the rocks would go anywhere overnight. Rocks couldn’t really move much on their own, except for sailing stones and tectonic plates, of course. For an escarpment of this size, it would take thousands of years of erosion before it moved a significant amount. Maud didn’t plan on staying that long, so she was pretty sure it would still be there in the morning.
She felt a poem coming on. Maybe she would write one before bed. She could call it “Geology is Slow Most of the Time.” Good enough for a working title, anyway.
The dilapidated ruins nearby made the most sense for a place to set up camp, even if she avoided sleeping in pony-made buildings when she could help it. Natural caverns were far more comforting, and her Maud Sense indicated one a short hike away. She didn’t mind the extra walking, but Boulder was already pretty tired, so she decided to investigate the ruins for his sake.
The bulk of the building seemed to be made of basalt and slate with marble and gneiss used for accents and detail work. Gneiss had fallen out of favour as a construction material a long time ago due to the frequency of toxic minerals in its composition. Modern buildings tended towards travertine instead, which meant this place had to be a few centuries old at least.
By far the most interesting feature she found was the shrine. The limestone base was as commonplace as mica in pegmatite, but the arms of the shrine held five metamorphic rocks carved into spheres. The sculpture didn’t depict anything in particular, so she had to assume the shrine was for the rocks themselves.
At a glance, Maud couldn’t tell why anypony would enshrine them like this. Sure, metamorphic stones were less common than their igneous and sedimentary cousins, but to dedicate a whole chamber to them seemed excessive. She could understand if they were suevite specimens or another impactite, given ponies’ cultural obsession with the worship of heavenly bodies, but all of the spheres appeared to be garden-variety, mudstone-rich schist.
Still, if somepony had dedicated this much effort to displaying them, they must have had some meaning.
“Wait here, Boulder,” Maud said, setting him down with her saddlebags. She scaled the shrine and picked one of the spheres at random, sniffing it carefully.
The rock gave off the inimitable odour of both divalent magnesium and trivalent aluminium, indicating an abundance of pyrope laced throughout. Mildly surprising at best; the majority of Equestrian schists were garnetiferous, after all. The only anomaly with this one was how much of the mineral was present.
There was something else, too, but she couldn’t pinpoint it. It almost smelled like ozone, which only ever occurred in rocks as a byproduct of certain chemical reactions and would never be contained inside a stone naturally. Curious, but not enough to get her to open it up.
Testing the other spheres revealed much of the same: heightened amounts of various garnet species with a secondary smell each time. The only differences were the smells themselves: apples, flowers, perfume, and…
A smile crossed her muzzle as she sniffed the last one. Smells like cupcakes.
She plucked the sphere from its pedestal and clambered back down the structure. She didn’t plan on taking it with her—these clearly belonged to somepony already, and Maud preferred finding her own rocks anyway—but having a little extra company while she slept would be nice, especially company that felt so familiar.
She returned to where Boulder had been waiting and patted him gently. “Good boy,” she said, then fished his nightcap out of her saddlebags. She brought both Boulder and the sphere near the base of the shrine, where she laid out her bedroll and nestled in for the night.
She still had a long hike to reach Ponyville, so it would probably be best if she skipped the escarpment and left first thing in the morning. She didn’t want to keep Pinkie Pie waiting.
Maud lay awake for a few more minutes, deep in thought. She eventually pulled the sphere closer, snuggling it as she fell into a cozy slumber.
Even though she was almost too exhausted to think, Cadance smiled. It probably had something to do with lying in a gorgeous, windswept field not too far from her hometown, a place she had so rarely seen since becoming a princess. Having her two best foalhood friends next to her didn’t hurt either, nor did being able to rest her head on the coziest, most handsome pillow in the world, also known as Shining Armor.
Everypony except Cadance had fallen asleep within the past hour, but she didn’t mind. Just having all of them together was better than anything she could have dreamed.
And in a few minutes, when the sun finally rose, her perfect little picture would be complete. Every sunrise felt like Auntie Celestia smiling down and wishing her good morning. To have her be a part of this moment, even from half a world away, would be the cherry on top of her sappy sundae.
It had been nearly a full year since Cadance had begun her sabbatical, and she had never once regretted it. Sure, she had a laundry list of things she missed from Equestria, but she had an equally long list of stressors and issues that had made her leave in the first place: her identity crises, constantly being compared—and mostly deemed inferior—to Celestia, the nightmares, the bleak years spent getting over her first love…
Best not to think about all that.
She wrapped her wing tighter around Shiny. At least there was one thing she didn’t have to miss anymore.
He had shown up earlier that week to surprise her, and he couldn’t have come at a better time. With the Summer Sun Celebration coming up, she had been feeling more homesick than ever. And while a small part of her wondered whether it was smart for the captain of the Royal Guard to be absent for such a monumental occasion—it was the thousandth year, after all—every other part of her melted at the chance to see him and smell him and hug him and kiss him and just love him. The letters had been nice, but they could never compare to the real thing.
She snuggled deeper into his mane, resting her sleepy eyes on the horizon. She began to wonder if she’d misjudged when the sunrise would be, since there still weren’t any traces of light, but it didn’t matter. Whenever Auntie decided to raise the sun, Cadance would finally close her eyes and preserve this memory forever. Nothing could spoil this moment.
“Any minute now…”
