Dear Princess Celestia,

Chapters

Princess Twilight Sparkle
Friendship Report
Friendship Problem
Change
Love
Delivery
Your Most Faithful Student,

Princess Twilight Sparkle

It should feel strange to still use your title after the coronation, now that you are retired, but you are still a princess to me. I know it hasn't been very long, but how is retirement in Silver Shoals? I know I gave you a lot of grief when you first announced your intention to step down. But after filling in your horse shoes for this time I understand. Nopony is is more deserving of a rest than you.

Things in Canterlot are going smoothly. You did well in preparing me for the task. The advisory cabinet have been carrying on business as usual without missing a beat. I was worried before about the castle, but the rebuilding effort before the coronation was a boon for the public works sector. ~~I'm actually putting in zoning for~~

Look at me going on about work. I'm sure you've had enough princess work for a hundred lifetimes. I guess I was writing more to assure you that everything here has been fine since you left, and there is no reason to worry. Just enjoy your time off. As I said, you've earned it.

That isn't to say you weren't needed here. Your absence is still... sorely felt. You are missed by your subjects. Or are they my subjects now? Our subjects? You are missed. They miss you. We miss you.

I miss you.

I promise I will make time to come visit you. Soon.

~~- Your Most Faithful Student,~~

I suppose I should get used to my proper title.

Her Royal Highness,
Princess Twilight Sparkle

Friendship Report

Dear Princess Celestia,

It has been a long time since I sent one of these friendship reports.

I remember when you would tell me that even though you were a teacher, you never stopped being a student. You never stopped learning. And I understand just how true that really is. Even as the princess of Friendship, and even while I was the head-mare at my School of Friendship, I continued to learn valuable lessons about friendship.

Today I had a student from your School for Gifted Unicorns come to me with a friendship problem. Or rather, I asked to see her. She reminded me so much of myself. She was so focused on her studies and hadn't any mind to try to make friends. But you would have been so proud of me. After telling her my own story about friendship, I set her on the right road straight away. She's making all sorts of new friends in Ponyville right now.

You helped me learn so much about friendship. And for that I am so, so grateful. For sending me to Ponyville, for helping me meet my friends. For this life. My life is so much better for the experiences that I've had, and for the ponies in it. And that has only grown more true over the years.

That was the friendship lesson that I learned. That it wasn't about how many friends you have that makes friendship magical, or the types of friendships. But rather it's the fact the friendships are like any other long-term endeavor, like an orchard, as Applejack would say. Friendship, like an orchard, takes work and commitment. Sure, you could just have one or two trees that you might get a few apples from with a minimal amount of work. But to cultivate many apples takes time and effort.

Just as with the magic of friendship. The greatest magic of friendship doesn't lay in a potion or a spell. It's the fact that the magic of friendship grows. And that lesson isn't one that can be found in a textbook or taught in a classroom. It can only truly be learned with time and experience. Much like wisdom.

HRH
Princess Twilight Sparkle

Friendship Problem

Dear Princess Celestia,

When I was younger, I used to believe that you had all the answers. That you were somehow an all-knowing being. It took a lot for me to lose that impression of you. For a long time, a part of me deep down still believed that you still knew everything, but you had your reasons for withholding the answers, as a part of a lesson for me to learn or something. But I realized that you didn't know everything eventually.

So I write to you now with a friendship problem, not seeking an answer, but rather a sympathetic ear. Because even as the Princess of Friendship, I do not have all the answers to every friendship problem. And my little ponies find that just as hard to believe as I did.

Two of my students were the best of friends with each other. The two mares were as inseparable as sisters. And then along came a stallion that-

Actually, the details aren't important. But there was all the usual friendship problems balled up together. Misunderstanding, a breakdown in communication, and a fight leading to hurtful words being said, and grudges being held against each other. I've tried to council them, and it all just seems so petty looking at it from the outside in. But to both of them, it was a world-ending conflict. And I doesn't matter what I try to tell them, neither of them want to reconcile.

I want to be optimistic and say that time will heal all wounds. But unfortunately I know that some feuds can last a lifetime. I remember Applejack telling me about the one between her grandmother and her maternal grandfather. They eventually reconciled before the end. But Rainbow Dash still regrets that she never managed to patch things up with Lightning Dust before her fatal stunt incident.

I guess I'm still trying to deal with the idea that not everything can be fixed. And even as tall as I am now, that thought makes me feel so small. In my brain, I know it's not my failure. But in my heart, it feels like it. How did you ever get past that feeling?

Did you ever get past it?

HRH
Princess Twilight Sparkle

Change

Dear Princess Celestia,

I'm not sure if you know, but I lost somepony very dear to me recently. Over the years I've watched the bags under my friends' eyes grow larger. The wrinkles in their faces grow deeper. All the while, the mare I see in the mirror hasn't aged a day. I realize that this loss is the first of many.

I know I should have asked, and I guess I always suspected it. But I guess this is the price of these wings. Immortality is both a gift and a curse. So many ponies wish that they could live forever, but so few of them grasp what that would mean. I doubt that they really can grasp what it means. I am only just now coming to understand it myself.

How did you do it? While your sister was gone, after a hundred years, everypony you had ever known had passed on and everypony who was still alive hadn't been born yet. And yet you were made to linger on, with nothing persistent in the world with you except the land and sky. And even that changed.

A series of storms have changed the peninsula of Horseshoe Bay into an archipelago. There are young ponies alive today that hadn't been born when that land was still intact. And in a few more decades' time, there will be none left alive who remember. Except we few immortals. Stewards of the memories of the world.

All things change. Ponies come and go.

I miss them. I miss them so much.

How did you do it? How did you go on? I'd like to know. I could really use your help right now.

HRH
Princess Twilight Sparkle

Love

Dear Celestia,

I thought about you a lot today. It has been a long time since this was your throne room, but sometimes it's still hard to believe you're not here. Even after all these years, a small, nagging part of me is still in denial. Like this is all just some absurd dream that I am going to wake up from. I'll wake up and everything will be how it used to be. You'd still be here, in Canterlot, and I'd still be in Ponyville, with my old friends. I'd still not have wings and everything would just be how it used to be. I have a confession to make. Every night when I go to bed, I pray that when I wake up it will be in my old bed in the Ponyville Library.

Every morning, when I wake up in my giant bed in Canterlot Castle, I just feel so angry. I never asked for any of this. I never asked for this responsibility, for this power. I was just a filly when I grew these wings. A filly with a crown and a title. I miss the way things used to be. I miss my old home. I miss my friends. And now sometimes when I think about it I get so upset I see red. I get so mad when I think about how this was your plan for me, to damn me to this life, and then leave me. I wish I knew that was what you were giving me along with your crown.

I would give it all up, all of it, for just one more day of my life before I became an alicorn. To have my friends back, my home back, and to have you back here. Even if it meant being mortal again. I would give it all up. In a heartbeat. I grieve so much these days. I grieve for the loss of my parents and my brother. I grieve for the loss of my friends. I grieve for the loss of my old life, as gone as surely as everypony I ever knew from then. With the exception of the last of us, alicorns. And dragons.

Spike has taken it better than I have over the years. Perhaps that is part of dragon nature. The cold distance they used to keep, the hostile indifference. It was a defense, I think, against the tides of time. To care only for themselves and not form long term attachments. Because in the end, time claims them all. Perhaps it was better to have never loved at all than to have loved and lost. Even Spike had accepted it when his lifetime crush left. I thought he would have been devastated. But it turned out he was the one comforting me when it happened. He was always stronger than anypony ever gave him credit for. He is a good friend. At least that has never changed.

I still miss them all so much. I miss the way things used to be. I miss my old life. And I miss you. The one other constant. I tried talking to your sister and Cadance, but it's not the same. I love Cadance as my sister-in-law. But it broke my heart when she remarried. Flurry doesn't like to talk about it either. But I know she'll never call him 'Dad'. She mourned just as I did, but I don't think she has the same feeling of regret that I do. An immortal royal life is all she has ever known. She had accepted very early on that her acquaintances would all be passing. She isn't haunted by the nostalgia of an old life like I am. This pervasive sadness that clings to me all day and night like a cold morning dew. This weight of regret.

I love you, Celestia.

Of everything, my biggest regret was not telling you sooner. I regret not coming to accept this feeling sooner. I mourn for the time we lost. Time always seemed like something that you and I had in abundance. But with each friend and family member that I lost, all I could feel was the regret of the things I never got to do with them, things I would never get to do with them again. And worst of all, the things left unsaid.

It has been a long time since that kiss you gave me. A long time since I turned away from your offer to be your lover. It was fear that gripped me. I was afraid that I held you in too lofty of a position to be able to be your partner. But now I can only regret having waited so long to tell you. But no longer. I'm not afraid anymore.

I love you.

That is what this letter is. A love letter.

Love,
Twilight

Delivery

Princess Twilight Sparkle rolled up the scroll and sealed it with the wax emblem. "Spike?" she called out. The large drake entered her study. "I have a letter that needs to be sent right away."

Spike looked at the ornate letter C embossed on the scroll seal and frowned.

"Twilight, you don't need to keep sending friendship reports," he said.

"I know. This is different," she said, levitating it over to him.

"Twilight, you need to stop doing this," he said with growing concern.

"Please?" Twilight begged him. "It's important. Please send it right away."

"You know my dragon fire doesn't work like that anymore," he said.

"Can you please deliver it?" she asked.

"You could just send it by post to Silver Shoals."

"I need you to make sure that- that it gets to her!"

Spike could see that Twilight was on the verge of tears. Her eyes were already red. She had been crying again recently. He looked down at the scroll in his hand. It was dotted with watermarks from her teardrops while she had written it. On any other day, he would have accused her crying as emotional blackmail. But he couldn't bear to see her cry again over this.

"Okay. Okay Twilight. But this has to be the last time!" he said. She nodded. He turned to leave, stepping out onto the balcony and spreading his wings. He knew damn well this would not be the last time. It was a long flight to Silver Shoals, but he knew the way well.

The staff and residents of Silver Shoals were familiar with the dragon courier. He had been there far more often than he would have liked. The manager stepped out of her office onto the patio to greet him once again.

"The usual?" she asked, seeing the familiar scroll in his palm. He nodded. "Would you like some company?" He nodded. She walked alongside him to his delivery destination. "How is she doing?" she asked. She didn't even have to say who. He knew what she meant.

"She's having another bad day I think," he said. "I thought she was doing better for a while but..."

"She has lost a lot of ponies in her life. You both have," she said, walking beside him on the stone walkway.

The memories of his friends flittered through his mind in a flash, and then they were gone just as quickly. Even the pony he thought that he loved more than any other. The expression on his face never changed. He had become used to it. Almost numb to it. Everypony he had met since then, their mortality was always at the forefront of his mind. It kept him distanced from getting attached.

"I thought that it would have gotten easier for her by now," he said.

"I work in a retirement village," she said. "I've seen more than my share of ponies pass. It does get easier, but it's never easy." The stone walkway turned into a gravel path as they neared their destination.

"Do you think that's why they retired?" he asked. "To not have to watch so many ponies... pass?"

"Maybe," she said. "But I really can't say. They never talked about any of that stuff." She stopped walking. He looked back at her. She waved him on. "This is you," she said and then turned around to leave. Spike sighed and pressed on, walking to the end of the gravel path to where Celestia was.

"Hey," Spike greeted without formality. "I've got another letter for you. From Twilight, of course. I keep telling her she doesn't need to keep sending you these, but she, uh, she really misses you. We all do..." He held out the scroll. He looked at where Luna was, beside her. "Both of you." He scratched the back of his neck, unsure of what else to say. After making the trip so many times, there wasn't much else to say. He wiped his eyes. "Anyway, I'll just leave this here with you." Before he flew away, he tossed the scroll into the eternal flame, just below the engraving in the stone memorial.

In loving memory of Princess Celestia and Princess Luna

Your Most Faithful Student,

Dear Princess Celestia,

I know that you've told me so many times before to just call you Celestia, even before I became a princess. You reminded me that to me, you weren't a princess. You were my teacher, and friend, and in many ways, like a second mother to me. But I always called you Princess Celestia. That was just who you were to me. That was just who you always were to me. And it is who you always will be to me.

After I became a princess myself, I insisted on using your title, still, even as we were meant to be equals. Leaders from other nations, though equals, still use each others' titles. And as you always taught me, practice as one plays. Especially with you.

It just felt wrong not to say 'Princess', for you. You were always the picture of regality. Even after those long nights in your study when you'd had too much Canterlot wine, and you were particularly candid with me about sensitive matters. You were still the vision of perfection in my eyes. Even after that no-so-chaste kiss that you gave me that we had both decided to forget about. But I could never forget something like that.

After some serious reflection, I feel that I don't have many regrets in my life. But among them was my inability to love you in that way. I knew I would never be able to love you as an equal, or rather, treat you any less than better-than-me. And we both knew that wasn't what you wanted. And I don't think that my feelings will change in that regard after the coronation. So please, don't let that be the motivation for your retirement.

Your Most Faithful Student,
Twilight Sparkle