Loneliness Under a Bright Sun
Twilight ruffled her fur under a poplar tree, tired from a hard day's work, more excited that she'd finally get the opportunity to enjoy a bit of time to herself.
Strands of sun filtered through the leaves and speckled her fur with a golden glow.
She'd had a short day today, but the previous five days combined she'd worked sixty hours. Twelve hours a day. At least three hours longer than usual per day. That didn't matter anymore though, seeing as she no longer had to think about her work for the moment.
A river babbled over rocks nearby. Steady frustums of water flooding over the lumpy riverbed.
Twilight thought about what would become of her, after all things were said and done. But she didn't like to think too much about that.
Birds tweeted their love songs to each other. The occasional filthy caw breaking the harmony into stanzas.
All Twilight had to do now, was relax. That was all she needed to do.
The grass in front of her hooves reflected the shimmering sunlight into her eyes, blinding her. Droplets of dew from a rain long gone lingering and sparkling, trying to get her attention before they evaporated.
Twilight couldn't relax. She just couldn't.
An animal rooted through the forest, looking for food. It's breath came out in heaves, straining to move under the pressure of its exhaustion. Whines emanated from it's chest as it tried to ignore the pains of hunger assaulting its stomach.
The more she thought about the ponies that depended on her, the more she felt she didn't deserve this time to herself. So many wrongs needed fixing, and only certain ponies could fix them.
Timberwolves howled in the distance, the bleat of a frightened sheep leaked out of the forest as it ran away in fright.
The living things in Equestria were her responsibility. What could her feelings mean in the face of so much suffering?
The sun remained in the sky, shining brightly as ever, but boring into the Earth below it.
Twilight's future staggered her. She would have to keep living for the ponies all the days of her extended life. No true rest, as problems stacked up on her quicker than she could solve them. Her life would be that of a martyr, thankless and useless in the face of so much change and escalated suffering.
The droplets in the grass dried out, and Twilight lifted a hoof to see that the stands under her hoof had been squashed into the ground.
How many ponies would she hurt in a single moment of fault? With so much power, she could not comprehend the consequences. Only certain doom seemed to become of the many ways she might slip up, and fail the ponies of Equestria.
The wind picked up and howled around her, chilly wind from the south digging into her fur.
The fur on her neck stood on end as she tried to pry herself out of the murky depths of her future. No matter how she looked at it, she became more trapped.
The day had been cloudless, but more and more the blue sky felt like a trap. A testament to the fact that she'd remain in Equestria, expectations of a nation following her for the rest of her life.
And the more she thought about it, had she really amended her friendship with Moon Dancer? Or did she just put her friend in a difficult position? Did her 'friend' hold the fires of resentment close to her heart, even after her public acceptance of Twilight?
The more she thought about it, the more she realized with a sinking feeling that it might've happened again. She might've gotten so caught up in fixing things after the fact that maybe Moon Dancer hadn't needed help in the first place. That she'd been pandering to a pony that had already given up on her. Tried too hard to keep her close only to push her eternally farther away. Personal feelings masked under a facade of acceptance, only to get the neurotic pony known as Twilight away from her.
Moon Dancer hadn't so much as called since the last time they'd met more than a few years ago.
Twilight shivered as she thought about the fact that she'd forgotten about Moon Dancer for those two years. Hadn't realized she'd lost contact because she'd been so busy with her 'super-important' princess work.
A branch snapped off the tree she sat under, and Twilight jerked her head upward.
It fell to the ground harmlessly.
“No, no, no.” Twilight mumbled to herself as she kneaded the ground in front of her. How many more friendships would get crowded out in her future? She was only a pony. Princess work didn't give her the time to keep in touch.
She scooted closer to the trunk of the tree, pressing her back against the bark. All she really had to care about was what she could do. No use burning herself out. Ponies had to rest, even if that meant they'd be temporarily less efficient, so that they'd stay sharp in the long run.
Perhaps she'd make a list of her friends, or consult Pinkie Pie's birthday information sheets.
Another thought intruded on her.
Would she even survive?
Her thoughts fell back to Tirek, Discord, and Nightmare Moon like they had so many times before. Crises of existence. Near death experiences. The knowledge of what could've been if she hadn't been prepared, or if her friends hadn't been there to save her. One day, she wouldn't get so lucky.
It might start as a simple diplomacy effort. Gone awry under the utterance of a single forbidden word, buried for so long under social taboo. One mistake that could translate into the kidnapping of the Princess of Friendship.
There had been times where no amount of preparation could have saved her.
She'd fallen asleep that night. Captured by the changeling princess without even getting the chance to scream. Only to wake up and find that Starlight Glimmer had made things miraculously work out.
How many times had Starlight Glimmer risked her life that night? Or that changeling?
She couldn't let the enemy sneak up on her like that, and she had taken countermeasures. But it was always something new. Something she'd never hoped to account for. Enough to make it hard for her to go to sleep at night. Enough to send her pacing up and down the stairs, counting each step ten times. Then send her back again to check the lock on her doorknob, just to make sure that she had, in-fact, locked her door.
Some nights she would stare at the doorknob for half an hour, never quite able to muster the confidence that she had locked it. That perhaps the locking mechanism had changed between yesterday and today. That perhaps the spell she'd cast to detect intruders touching her doorknob was defective. She'd stare at the doorknob and wonder if she could really trust her five senses. Wondered if there was something fundamentally wrong with her so that she'd keep making mistakes at critical times in her life.
She'd try to open the doorknob to make sure it was locked, and then feel the insatiable desire to unlock and lock the door again, because twisting the doorknob might've made the lock loose. And then, after repeating the process over and over and over she'd feel comforted and turn away from the door.
Only to turn back again because in all that lock turning she may have gotten her lock and un-lock steps mixed up.
It would keep going like that until she didn't care anymore. What the hell if it was locked or unlocked. Let some villain kidnap me! As long as she didn't have to keep worrying, didn't have to obsess over her doorknob over and over again.
And then finally, she'd be able to go to sleep.
But this did not comfort Twilight as she sat under the tree in a field on a sunny day. Back pressed against the coarse bark of the tree as it left pressure indentations on her skin. Intricate patterns creased by the dying flakes of wood.
She rested her face in her hooves, body tense, and whimpered.
This was a part of her that she'd never be able to express to her friends. The constant need to check, double check, triple check things because she could never quite get rid of that feeling that maybe one of her base assumptions about the world might be wrong.
How things so simple, like the locking mechanism on a doorknob, could bother her because it remained hidden from view, behind the polished brass metal casing.
Her friends would never understand what it meant to have constant fundamental doubts like that. Their worlds more emotionally complicated and yet more simple. Divided by fundamental laws of pony behavior and points of reference.
Just as Twilight could never truly understand how it felt to stand in their shoes, they wouldn't ever be able to truly comfort her.
There were other ponies like Twilight working in the palace, but they too remained emotionally unattached. Already resigned to the fact that ponies didn't care. Stuck in their routines of learned helplessness.
Sitting under the tree, however, Twilight no longer felt so alone.
It felt good to work with those ponies that were so much like her, as much as the conversation between them remained stilted, awkward versions of feigned happiness. She'd never gotten to know them personally since it was hard with coworkers, but she couldn't help but feel the spark of something.
Far from friendship, but the kind of thing you'd feel if you howled at the moon like a timberwolf, only to hear others howling at that same moon. Separated by distance and emotion, but bound by something deeper and more powerful. The very thing that makes your heart thump so wildly on the restless nights you lay in your bed and try to desperately go to sleep.
Twilight smiled a bit, corners of her mouth peeking out from beneath her hooves.
Ponies like her were hopeless.
Nothing would ever change that.
But it felt good to feel these feelings as blood pumped heavily through her veins in a rhythmic tempo. As loneliness seeped into her soul, pushed the blood through her body faster and faster. Passion grew within her chest, threatened to burst out.
Her eyes were bright.
Twilight felt unstoppable.
Author's Note
Enjoy your day dear reader