Sisters

After the passage of centuries, she’d resigned herself to never again feeling her sister’s embrace, and settled into a sort of numbness that she hoped couldn’t last forever, even as she feared it might.

Each new student of hers was a new hope; each was carefully groomed and taught and maybe they’d be the one to find a way to bring her sister back, but they didn’t.

Sunset Shimmer could have been the greatest, but like so many before her, she went bad and got banished.

It only took a hundred times, give or take, before something became a ritual at the palace, but it took far longer before hope finally died in her heart.

It took the banishing of Sunset Shimmer. Even if her outward mien didn't show it, inside she knew another hope had died.

Nearly a thousand years of failure, and she was ready to give up. She had one last student, one last pony to pin her hopes on, and when that inevitably failed, it was time to conceive a different plan.

*****

The letter was a surprise.

My dearest teacher, my continuing studies of pony magic have led me to discover that we are on the brink of disaster!

She frowned. Her faithful student might not think so, but she welcomed a change. It would give the Guard a chance to do something; it would give her a chance to do more than eat cake, sit on her throne to settle petty problems, and be a change from her burning through the Guard night after night, one pony after another.

The mythical Mare in the moon is in fact Nightmare Moon, and she’s about to return to Equestria and bring with her eternal night! Something must be done to make sure this terrible prophecy does not come true.

The words on the page blurred, and she read it again.

And again.

Focusing on one key phrase: About to return.

For all her faults, Twilight was clever enough to stop the return of her sister, and that must not be allowed to happen.

She scrawled out a response, something that would get her student out of the way, and after sending it headed down to the archives to verify that there was indeed a prophesy of hope.

*****

It wasn’t fair to her student, but she wanted what she wanted, and she was still princess.

*****

Things turned out just fine in the end.

And she had to admit, breaking the spell that turned her sister evil had been more than she could have hoped for.