Author's Note
This is a reprint of a story that first appeared as the second chapter of an anthology on Fanfiction.Net, where, to judge by reader response, it evidently sank like a stone. The thought occurred to me that perhaps it would do better as a stand-alone - but I didn't want to irritate my subscribers by posting it again until I had some evidence of that, so I decided to try it out on the good people here. I hope you enjoy.
Incidentally, you may spot some little divergences from canon scattered throughout this story, over and above the Starlight-taking-over-Equestria premise. Some of these are deliberate attempts to hew more closely to the spirit of the show than its own writers did; others are probably just mistakes. If you think you've spotted one of the latter cases - or if you believe I made the wrong call in one of the former - please do speak up.
Disclaimer: It may be My Little Pony, but it's not mine, all the same.
Better Lo'ed Ye Canna Be
"Bonnie Charlie's noo awa'…"
i.
Rainbow Dash stood alone on a stray cirrus cloud above the shore, and gazed out sorrowfully across the Saddlantic Ocean. Somewhere beyond that horizon, she knew, lay the hippocampi's sacred Isle of Mist – and somewhere on the Isle of Mist, crippled and weakened but still undaunted, Twilight Sparkle bided her time till fortune favored her return.
How vividly Rainbow remembered that day, some months before, when she had seen her friend for the last time. The rest of the Element Bearers, herself very much included, had engaged Starlight Glimmer's forces on the hills above Mahogany Bay – not with any hope of subduing them, but in a mere desperate attempt to hold them back long enough for Twilight to take to the sea. Apparently Starlight's government-of-laws-not-of-ponies crusade had been a complete flop with the hippocampi, though Rainbow Dash still wasn't clear why; several ponies had explained it to her, but it was one of those elaborate political things that always made her eyes glaze over at supersonic speeds. Anyway, it meant that Starlight's power had been (and indeed still was) effectively confined to the mainland; any ship ponied by her supporters would be scuttled on sight, and Prince Farsight's Wave Archers would take care of any ocean-crossing pegasi with equal signs on their flanks. So Twilight was sure to be safe, if only she could put seawater between herself and her nemesis's army.
And so she had. As Rainbow Dash had knocked three former Academy mates out of the sky with one buck, she had heard Twilight's voice calling farewell, and, looking up, had caught a glimpse – only a glimpse, before the clouds swallowed it up that had overhung the sea that day – of her friend and liege secure in her tiny coracle, with Mist Shadow and Silverdew's flukes churning the water to foam as they drew her away. If they both lived to be as old as Celestia, and had enough adventures together to fill the Encyclopedia Przewalskia, Rainbow still knew that she would always remember Twilight as she had seen her in that instant: her body set toward the rising sun, her mane and tail whipping boldly in the wind, and her wings spread out as far as her ill-set right metatarsus would allow – but her face turned back toward her friends, and in her eyes no note of pride or scorn, but only the anxious gravity of one who could never cease to care.
This is not forever, her glance had said. I will come back again. I promise.
"Sure, I know that," said Rainbow now to the empty winter sky. "You wouldn't just forget about everypony you left behind; the hearts of all Equestria mean too much to you. Of course you'll come back."
But her irrepressible frankness with herself, and her awareness of how much stronger Starlight's position grew with every sunrise, made her add, in a plaintive whisper:
"…Won't you?"
ii.
It was the wettest night that Ponyville had known in years; the spring rain came down in pounding torrents, and every tiniest crack in the roof of Rarity's cabin seemed to open itself twice as wide just to let the leaks in. For her own part, Rarity was so used to indignity by now that it barely stirred her, but Char seemed to be having a harder time of it – which was natural, of course, for such a creature of fire as she was. With every moist plop, her eyes would dart about like a trapped rabbit's; she drummed her claws tensely on the side of her cot, and faint, edgy plumes of smoke began to spiral upward from her nostrils.
"You sure can pick 'em, Miss Rare," she muttered bitterly.
The words stung, but Rarity could hardly blame Char for feeling so. She remembered the first time they had met, when Char had become her secretary by default, as being the only willing applicant Celestia could find; the little pink dragon had made it abundantly clear that she wasn't any crazier about moving to Ponyville than any of her colleagues had been, and that it was only Rarity's Element-Bearer glamor and the prospect of a cushy fashion gig that had reconciled her to the notion. And now here they were, living in a ramshackle tumbledown at the edge of the Everfree Forest, scrounging for crabgrass and pebbles to keep body and soul together, while some upstart jade with an equal sign on her flank turned the Carousel Boutique into a clearinghouse for cut-rate fabrics woven from transfigured pond slime.
Rarity's horn glowed hot with ire as she thought of it, and of the beast in pony shape who was responsible. And to think that Starlight had had the nerve – the utter, unbridled nerve – to offer her protection against Sharp Stuff's machinations, asking nothing in return except the betrayal of Equestria, of friendship, and of her own inmost self.
"The fact is, Rarity," she had said, in the sort of oleaginously ingratiating tone that only she could summon, "I hate to see a good pony throw her life away, just because a certain individual happened to call on her on the day of the Summer Sun Celebration. I don't think accidents like that shouldn't keep anypony from attaining her full potential as an equine being."
There were a great many things that Rarity would have liked to say to this, but she had limited herself to, "Oh, I don't think it was just that day, Starlight. Even if Twilight and I had never met, I'm sure I'd still have valued my cutie mark too much to surrender it to you."
Starlight had clicked her tongue. "Now, Rarity," she had said, "honestly, look at the facts. If there's one group in Equestria that's seen the value of equal opportunity and social mobility, it's exactly the one for whom you're practically the poster filly. Over half of Equestria's small tradesponies have already been equalized, and more of them put in requests for the treatment every day; are you sure that you wouldn't have done the same, if you hadn't let the Young Pretendress charm you into neglecting your real interests?"
Rarity, at that, had been silent for a long moment, letting all of Starlight's implications sink in; then she had tossed her head, and replied as befitted a Bearer of Generosity. "Aren't you forgetting something, Starlight?" she had said. "If I'm the – ahem – 'poster filly' for all the ponies in Equestria who make and sell things, it's because of the special gift and passion that I've had since foalhood for that very thing. My cutie mark is the seat of that gift in my flesh; why should I give it up in order to be successful in business? It would be like trying to get stronger magic by cutting off my horn.
"Oh, I know," she had continued, as Starlight had opened her mouth to reply. "You'll say that without my cutie mark I wouldn't be tied down to one special talent, and I could switch from costuming to soap-making or cucumber-growing if I chose. But I don't choose, Starlight Glimmer," she had said firmly. "I don't think much of any pony who would. When you've been given a gift, you don't turn your nose up at it and go off and snatch somepony else's. Or, at least," she had added meaningfully, "I don't."
The shot had gone home; Starlight's leathery, bat-like wings (the relic of a semi-successful attempt to replicate Twilight's alicorn powers) had twitched spasmodically, and her face had darkened with anger. "Well," she had said, her voice quivering with the strain of remaining casual, "if you're going to take that attitude, Rarity, I suppose there's nothing left to say. You seem to have chosen the kind of life you want, so I'll make sure you get every chance to live it."
And so she had. Within 24 hours, her pet Chancery had saddled all businesses run by unequalized ponies with a monthly "specialization fee" of 100 bits – and then, when Rarity had tried to beat that by transferring official title of the Boutique to Char, along had come the "True Nobility Decree" penalizing service dragons who remained loyal to "opponents of the Egalitarian principle". It had become clear to Rarity, then, that Starlight didn't intend to let anything get in the way of her grudge, and that her own choice lay between preemptively surrendering her life's work and all her natural pleasures, or letting more and more innocent ponies suffer from her attempts to retain them. Which, when she thought of it that way, was hardly a choice at all.
So she had gathered up all the fabrics and gems that she couldn't bear to let fall into Sharp Stuff's hooves, sent Opalescence to live with Fluttershy, and walked away from the Boutique without so much as a backward glance – and Char, in surly but whole-hearted obedience to her Code, had gone with her. And so… well, here they were.
Rarity sighed, and poked her head out the window to cool her horn in the rain; as the storm poured down upon her, bedraggled locks of her mane fell across her eyes, and she blinked back a self-pitying tear. It was hard, sometimes, to keep one's heart beautiful – hard to remain true to the vision of one's fellow ponies as priceless treasures, for whom no external sacrifice could be too great. It was hard to be a proper friend.
"But it's worth it, all the same," she said aloud, with decision. "There's no value in a well-tended mane and coat if the soul underneath is odious. If the only way I can stay stylish is by compromising the first principles of honor and devotion… well, they say the disheveled look is all the rage in Canterlot this season."
Then, abruptly, her voice caught in her throat, and she let out a soft moan – for she was still Rarity, after all, and could only muster so much bravery at once. "Oh, Twilight," she whispered to her absent friend, "you will come back soon, won't you?"
iii.
The summer sun beat down harshly on Sweet Apple Acres, and Applejack's heaving sides glistened with sweat as she made her afternoon circuit of the orchard. Her legs felt ready to give out under her, but she forced herself to keep going; if half her family's land was razed and reseeded with goldenweed, it wasn't going to be because she'd let it down.
She recalled the day, back at the beginning of April, when Big Macintosh had made his unspeakable proposal – though she carefully avoided recalling the expression on his face, since it wouldn't do anypony any good for her to start hating her brother. She remembered how she had felt during her own brief equalization, that first time that they and Starlight had tangled; if she'd been returned unrestored to Sweet Apple Acres, she would probably have found some excuse to get rid of it herself, rather than have to spend her life upon a landscape the exact shape of the hole in her heart. So she wasn't going to pass judgment on another pony's similarly hobbled spirit – not even if it was driving her to walk the whole length and breadth of the farm three times a day, hauling thirty gallons of water and fifteen different kinds of pest repellent behind her, in a quixotic effort to protect the trees that she, at least, still loved.
Coming to one particularly scraggly tree, she paused in her trudge and sighed heavily. "Come on, Greenblatt," she pleaded. "Can't you produce at least one little bud for Momma Applejack? I promised Big Macintosh a thousand-royal season; that's five royals' worth of apples per tree." (She made a point of not saying "bits" anymore; that word just left a bad taste in her mouth, nowadays.) "There's no way we can get there if every tree doesn't do his part. I know that ground squirrel did a number on your roots last summer, but you've got to still have a few good apples left in you. You've just got to, Blatty," she repeated, her weary voice thickening with emotion. "Don't you hear me believing so hard in you? Come on, let's see some nice pink in those boughs."
She tapped the tree-trunk encouragingly with her forehoof – to which Greenblatt's response was to drop another leaf, which fell to the ground in a leisurely spiral, as if it were savoring its beholder's frustration. Applejack hung her head and moaned, wondering ever so faintly whether it was really worth it to have a special gift if it was just going to do this sort of thing to her.
"It is hard, isn't it, Applejack? We give everything we have to those we care for, and yet, sometimes, they just don't manage to blossom."
At first, Applejack thought this was her own mind speaking; then she realized that her mind could never sound so ethereally regal, and glanced up in vague surprise at the snow-white alicorn who was suddenly beside her. "Oh," she murmured. "Howdy, Princess. Sorry I didn't hear you come up; I reckon I'm pretty near tuckered out, trying to make sure the fellows all produce this year."
Princess Celestia smiled with wry sympathy. "A bit behind, are you?"
"Not especially," said Applejack. "It's just that Granny and Big Macintosh are planning to sell out to Daisy Chain if the harvest isn't sensational; they don't see any sense in having our own land unless we can make more money off it than we would working for her. You know how ponies get after they've taken Starlight's mark."
As soon as she said it, she remembered that Celestia's own sister had lost her cutie mark during Starlight's coup – that that had, in fact, been the main bargaining chip by which Starlight had driven Celestia to accept her present position as a pensioner of the Chancery. By all accounts, Luna hadn't yielded to the Egalitarian mindset the way that Applejack's own kinfolk had – scuttlebutt was rather that she'd sunk into a sort of expectant torpor, not trusting herself to do much of anything until Twilight returned and restored her to herself again – but, either way, Applejack could see how this might be a sensitive subject for the Princess. To change it, she inquired, "So what brings you 'round these parts, Your Highness? If you're looking for word of Twilight, I'm afraid I haven't…"
"Oh, no, no," said Celestia, her tone somehow suggesting that she had entire confidence in her protégée, and no need to hear one word from her until Twilight was pleased to make herself known. "Nothing like that. Actually, I just came to return a small treasure that I think belongs here."
She lowered her wings, and Applejack's eyes widened at the sight of the tiny figure atop her back. "Well, fritter my fetlocks," she whispered. "Apple Bloom, sugar! What… how… where've you been all this time? We've been worried sick about you!"
Her little sister said nothing, but only scowled sulkily and hugged tighter at her hind pasterns, as if to protect the flashing kingfisher's feather that was (Applejack noted with relief) still emblazoned on her flank. It fell to Celestia to explain, "I was bringing the moon down this morning, and I happened to glance down at the 6:35 from Dequoit as it passed underneath me. Imagine my surprise when I saw this young lady lying asleep on the rear flatcar, with a stick lying next to her that had a red-polka-dot hoofkerchief tied onto one end. Apparently she'd run away from home because your grandmother had been talking about having her equalized as part of her back-to-school preparations; her plan was to ride the rails up to Whinnypeg, and then hike the rest of the way to the Crystal Empire and beg asylum from Princess Cadence."
Applejack just stared, too dazed to reply; she knew that Apple Bloom had always been a caution, but this was something special even for her. Not so much the running away, which her sister had half suspected when she'd vanished a few days before; it was the idea that she'd made it all the way to Canterlot that left Applejack breathless.
"Well," said Celestia, lifting Apple Bloom with her horn and lowering her onto the ground, "much as we may admire her spirit, of course we can't really have that sort of thing going on – and, I'm bound to say, I'm quite proud of Apple Bloom for the grown-up way she accepted that. But she did make me promise that I would talk to Granny Smith before I left and try to change her mind – so, if you'll excuse me…?"
As she trotted off toward the house, Applejack abruptly recovered her bearings, and rushed forward and pressed Apple Bloom into a fervid bear hug. "Oh, Apple Bloom, you naughty, naughty little filly," she murmured, in a tone far more tenderly affectionate than the words themselves might have seemed to warrant. "Don't you ever scare us like that again, you hear?"
Apple Bloom leaned her head against her sister's wither, and sighed heavily. "I wasn't trying to scare you, Applejack," she said. "But I had to do something, didn't I? I'm not big enough yet to resist Granny like you have; if she says I have to get equalized, then I do have to – and I can't, A.J., I just can't! Cutie marks are my life; like Twilight said, I'm a sic… saiga… saxfur… you know, a cutie-mark expert."
"Psychosphragologist," said Applejack.
"Right, that. So how can I give up mine just to fit in with the other ponies? If Equestria doesn't want cutie marks anymore, what place does it have left for me?"
Applejack nodded. "You're in a pickle, all right, sugar-cube," she said, and sighed. "But, then, I reckon we all are. Even Granny and Big Macintosh – they say they're as happy as June-bugs about being equalized, but I don't believe it. Granny just thinks she has to be a good Equestrian and support whoever's running the place, and Big Macintosh just doesn't want to go against Granny."
Apple Bloom whimpered faintly. "I wish Twilight would come back," she said. "I don't care if chancellors are traditional for our tribe. I want our princess again."
Applejack, who fully concurred in that sentiment, stroked her mane tenderly. "Don't you worry about that, sugar," she said. "She's probably on her way back right now – or else she's in some library on the Isle of Mist, figuring out everything she needs to do to take care of Starlight for good and all."
"I hope so," Apple Bloom murmured.
Something in her tone made Applejack frown. "Just 'hope so'?"
Apple Bloom hesitated. "Well… I guess I think so too, mostly," she said. "But it's been so long, I can't help worrying sometimes… what if she's forgotten about us, or she's stopped caring? What if she's decided she likes being the hippocampi's special princess, and doesn't need us silly dobbins anymore?"
Applejack smiled involuntarily at this use of the hippocampi's old-fashioned name for earth ponies, but her voice was grave as she replied. "That's not the way Twilight Sparkle works, sugar-cube," she said. "You don't get to be Princess of Friendship by giving up on the ponies who need you. Twilight trusted us at Mahogany Bay, and now it's our turn to trust her; if we go around thinking maybe she's lost her nerve, we won't be any good to her when she comes back bucking." She tousled her sister's mane, and added, "What will do some good, though, is making sure the farm she remembers is still here. So how about giving me a hoof with that?"
As Apple Bloom obligingly trotted over to her sister's cart and laboriously mounted an enormous (relative to her) pesticide sprayer on her back, Applejack stole a surreptitious glance eastward. "You ain't going to make a liar out of me, right, Twilight?" she murmured. "You will come back, won't you?"
iv.
Fluttershy placed the bowl of cat food gently on the ground, and alighted behind it with an encouraging smile. "Here you go, Opal," she said. "Your favorite griffin-bred pork and sweet potato, with a raw egg mixed in to keep your fur nice and glossy. Bon appetit!"
Opalescence strutted languidly toward the bowl and took a single sniff. A miffed expression came over her face, and she hissed and turned her back haughtily – to Fluttershy's entire bafflement, until she glanced down at the bowl again and realized what was missing. "Oh!" she said. "I'm so sorry, Opal, I forgot all about the garnish. I'll be right back."
As she fetched a parsley cutter and fluttered out to the garden, she shook her head affectionately. Opalescence really was a terrible prima donna – but, for all that, she couldn't understand how Rarity had ever brought herself to part with her. Of course she was flattered that Rarity had thought her cottage the only adequate refuge for her beloved pet – but then why hadn't she stayed there herself? Fluttershy had offered readily enough, but Rarity had turned her down flat. ("Char has allergies," she had said vaguely, but something in the wrinkling of her muzzle as she spoke had made Fluttershy suspect that that wasn't the whole story. Admittedly, some of her woodland guests did tend to mistake the whole cottage for the little ponies' room…)
Anyway, she wished Rarity would have stayed. Good fortune lost some of its luster when one couldn't share it with one's friends, and Fluttershy's fortune had been so good lately – in relative terms, at least – as to quite bewilder her. Starlight was known to have a grudge against all six Element Bearers, and it showed in most of their fates in the aftermath of her coup: Twilight in exile, Rarity destitute, Rainbow Dash a cloud-hopping outlaw, and Pinkie Pie… but no, she wouldn't think about Pinkie Pie. Even Applejack had only been preserved from disaster because her grandmother had chosen to support Starlight – and, knowing how much anguish that fact had brought her friend, Fluttershy wasn't sure she had been so very preserved, after all.
And yet, here she was herself, still flaunting her cutie mark and tending her animals as securely and unmolestedly as if there were no such pony as Starlight Glimmer in existence. She wasn't complaining – far from it – but she didn't understand it at all. (She thought Discord might have, when she'd mentioned it to him at one of their recent tea parties; anyway, he'd grinned in that knowing way he had when things were working out as he thought right and proper. But he hadn't volunteered any explanation.)
With a little shrug, she dismissed the question and turned her attention to the parsley bed. As she set about cutting Opal's breakfast garnish, though, a chill breeze blew through the garden, ruffling her feathers and sending a little shiver down her back, and she felt a new pang of distress at the thought of its already being autumn. Soon, it would be a full year since Mahogany Bay – since that awful day when all those equalized ponies had forced her to actually hurt them so that Twilight could get away, and then one of them had surprised Pinkie and… but she wouldn't think about Pinkie Pie.
To dispel such dour reflections, she raised her head and whistled invitingly toward the tree limbs overhanging her cottage. An answering whistle sounded from among the orange leaves, and a little brown woodlark emerged from the foliage and fluttered down to perch beside her on a sunflower.
Fluttershy smiled. "I thought you'd be there, Candleford," she said. "Taking a break from the worries at home?"
Candleford replied with a string of high-pitched, affricate chirps, and Fluttershy nodded sympathetically. "Oh, I know," she said. "And it must be especially hard this time of year, with November just around the corner. You're probably spending all your extra time getting ready to migrate, aren't you?"
Candleford cocked his head. "Teevo-cheevo-cheevio-chee?" he inquired.
"Well… yes, of course," said Fluttershy, a bit confused. "Why should it be any different this year than other years? Autumn is autumn, isn't it?"
"Weedio-weedio," Candleford retorted. "Shwee-shwee-judjio-whit-whit-whit."
Fluttershy's eyes went wide. "Do you really think so?" she whispered.
"Whee-ou."
"But… if that were true, shouldn't something have gone wrong already? The Winter Wrap-Up wasn't much rougher than usual, and the day-to-day weather's been fine – a little dry, maybe, but nothing disastrous."
Candleford made an impatient sound. "Chio-chio-wee-oot," he chirped. "Tweechee-weechee-wudjee-oot-chiu."
"Oh," said Fluttershy softly. "Yes. I suppose… yes, that's true."
A cold horror settled in her stomach as the idea sank in. She had always known, of course, that she had received a great responsibility when she had been born a pony – that the mystic connection her race had with their world's elements obliged them to serve and govern it in a spirit of love and harmony, lest all things dissolve back into chaos. It was almost the first thing one learned as a foal: take up the Pony's Burden, ye dare not stoop to less. And she knew, in a vague way, that each pony's individual magic was bound up with his cutie mark – which was, presumably, why Starlight was so eager to collect so many. But it hadn't occurred to her to put the two things together – to suspect that, if enough ponies lost their cutie marks, it wouldn't be long before Equestria lost its seasons.
Now that it had, though, she had to admit that it made a horrid kind of sense. It was quite true, as Candleford had noted, that the pegasi were going over to Starlight at a much slower rate than the other two mainland tribes – partly because Rainbow Dash was flying around clandestinely undermining her among them, and partly just because the pegasi were always a little remote from what was taking place on the ground. (And it helped that Starlight was neither a member of their tribe nor deliberately exploiting their own half-remembered democratic traditions.) So naturally the daily weather wouldn't have been so much affected yet; the rainmakers might be stretched a little thin – which was consistent with the dry summer they'd had – but nothing too serious. And that would also account for the success of the Winter Wrap-Up – which had, in any event, taken place before Starlight's campaign to equalize Equestria had really gotten underway.
But autumn was another story. The Running of the Leaves wasn't a pegasus preserve, or even a unicorn one; those tribes participated, of course, but the heart of it had always been the earth ponies – exactly the tribe that Starlight had most fiercely targeted. With them so diminished, the trees of Equestria would be lucky to drop even half their leaves, and they certainly wouldn't be able to go dormant – which would leave Cloudsdale with the choice of letting the forests wilt from lack of sun or wholly canceling winter.
And with that thought came an even worse one. For all the moral blindness that Starlight's greed imposed upon her, she was too clever about practical things not to have realized this consequence of her scheme; if she hadn't done anything to forestall it, it must be because she wanted it to happen. Maybe it was part of her whole plan: equalize enough ponies to make the seasons impossible, then persuade Equestria that seasons were just another kind of inequality, and that every day needed to be just like every other. Then, when those ponies who could still delight in beauty found themselves starving for it in their new monotone world, she or her supporters would come and whisper to them, "It's only your cutie marks that make all these things seem ugly; if you'd only be sensible and stop clinging to them, you could be perfectly happy in our new, enlightened Equestria." And who would be strong enough to argue? It would be the final blow, bringing down the last barrier to Starlight's dream of total cutie monopoly – and what she would do then, when all the magic of ponykind was in her hooves, Fluttershy didn't dare guess.
She waved a hoof miserably. "You should go now, Candleford," she murmured. "I don't think I'll be very good company for a while."
Candleford obligingly spread his wings, and hopped off his helianthine perch. As he flew away, he chirped a poignant plaint to the last, forlorn hope of Equestria's creatures, which echoed in Fluttershy's heart long after it had ceased to sound in her ears.
"Yes, Twilight," she said miserably. "Won't you?"
A shadow passed over her flank, and she heard a rustle as of wings behind and above her. "Won't I what?" said a voice.
"Come back again," said Fluttershy. "We can't go on much longer here; if you don't come and challenge Starlight soon, all of Equestria's going to be…"
Then her voice trailed off, and she slowly turned around and raised her eyes upward. "Twilight?" she whispered.
"Hello, Fluttershy," said Twilight with a smile. "It's good to see you again."
❦
Fluttershy stared in disbelief. It wasn't possible, surely; things this wonderful didn't happen in real life… and yet, there her friend was, alive and whole (though as unsteady in the air as ever), her eyes radiant with affection and solicitude, and the terror of friendship's enemies in the glory of her nostrils.
"Twilight," she breathed. "It is you."
Twilight shifted uncertainly in the air. "Should it be somepony else?"
"It is you!" Fluttershy repeated, and sprang into the air to embrace her friend. "Oh, Twilight! Why did you make us wait so long?" She blushed, and shook her head. "No, no, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to criticize. It's just that things have been so awful here, and we all needed you so badly, and…"
Twilight raised a hoof. "It's okay, Fluttershy," she said. "I understand."
"So what have you been doing all this time?" said Fluttershy, genuinely curious. "I suppose it had something to do with finding Starlight's weak spot, but how was it that you did that? –And what happened to your horn?" she added, noticing for the first time that Twilight's magical member was wrapped in a queer blue-white flame, which flickered up and down the ivory spiral with a sort of eldritch gaiety that seemed to kindle and dispel fear at the same moment.
"Oh, that." Twilight cast a cross-eyed glance up at her burning protuberance, and smiled wryly. "Well, it's kind of a long story. Wait until we've got the others together, and then we'll tell all of you about it at once, okay?"
"Oh, of course, that's fine," said Fluttershy. "So long as it's not…" Then she paused. "'We'?"
"Oui, oui!" came another familiar voice, and a carnation-colored figure hopped out from behind the cottage. "We! Whee!"
At this sight, Fluttershy's brain effectively shut down; she momentarily forgot how to flap her wings, and had to cling to Twilight's neck to keep from plummeting into the birdbath. "P-P-P-Pinkie?" she gasped. "But… but you… I saw… at the Bay…"
"Oh, pish-posh, Fluttershy," said Pinkie Pie easily. "You didn't think that having an Egalitarian rebel drop fifteen tons of rocks on me was going to keep me from helping my friends, did you? Pish-posh, I say!"
Twilight chuckled. "Because it's the right word, or just because it's pish-posh?"
"What's the difference?" said Pinkie. "If saying pish-posh is wrong, then I don't want to be right!" And she gave her nose a little upward turn that made her look uncannily like a pink, curly-maned Rarity.
Twilight rolled her eyes indulgently; then she turned back to her other friend, and a look of alarm crossed her face. "Fluttershy, are you all right?" she said. "You're crying!"
Fluttershy sniffed. "I know," she said. "I'm sorry, it's just… I'm so glad you're back. You, Twilight… and Pinkie… and everyone I've been afraid we've lost…" She sniffed again, and dabbed at her eye with her hoof. "I'm just glad, that's all."
Twilight's face cleared, and she smiled. "Me, too," she said.
"Me three," said Pinkie. "Silverdew's reports from the coastal cities all summer were the most un-fun things I've ever heard. After we depose Starlight, I'll need to throw a party that lasts all year, just to wipe out all those frowns."
"I'm sure everypony will enjoy that," said Twilight, and then raised herself in the air and turned toward the northeast. "But we'd better earn our jubilee before we start planning it. Let's see… it's been a long time, but I think Sweet Apple Acres is this way, isn't it?"
Fluttershy confirmed it, and three-sixths of Equestria's most legendary friendship set out to gather its other half. As they went, a little brown woodlark came and alighted on the roof of the cottage (within which Opal, having grown sufficiently hungry, had broken down and was eating her breakfast without the parsley); he watched with a sparkling eye as the three mares' tails swished down the hill, and then let out an exultant warble that echoed through the entire glen. Even to those who lacked Fluttershy's cutie-mark talent, its meaning was clear: Be of good cheer, Equestria. Your princess has returned.
Then, his duty done, he flew off to see about his family's migration plans.