After Sunset

The funeral of Sunset Shimmer is a surprisingly well-organised affair whose attendance turnout would definitely have surprised her.

“...and so we commend to the earth, the body of Sunset Shimmer.” Father Soaring Hope speaks in a deep stentorian boom that carries across the snow-muffled cemetery of the Ponyville Commons Church of Grace. “Those who remain, and who knew her best, grieve, for she was a star as bright as the sun.”

It’s strange.

I know that it’s cold out here. It’s freezing, actually. But the cold barely touches my skin. It's almost warm compared to the cold that’s settled around my heart.

“Although she passed in despair, we must take heart that she is beyond such pain now.” Soaring Hope continues his closing eulogy, and I have to fight to keep in a bitter scoff.

‘Beyond such pain’?

For all we know she’s still in the grip of that horrifying thing in the dark being tortured for eternity for rescuing us. Or maybe it just made her into one of those things. A Killer. A real one. One that doesn’t remember anything about who they are or what they used to be. Just a demon that torments people over and over until they waste away.

If she’s lucky, maybe she just ceased to exist.

“Our hearts break for Sunset Shimmer,” Hope says quietly, and I can hear the genuine grief in his voice. Hope is a really nice guy. Big, but a huge softie. “But let us be comforted by the fact that she rests in peace in the arms of our Father… let us pray.”

I can’t help but stare at the coffin. It’s closed but it isn’t empty. Twilight created a… a kind of fake body using her magic, so that Sunset could be buried without any questions. She called it a 'simulacrum'. I get why she did it too, but knowing that there's something I'm that coffin that looks like Sunset Shimmer, but like a fool, is just…

Obscene.

An elbow to my ribs knocks me out of my head.

“Rainbow!” Applejack hisses angrily, then jerks her head towards the bowing priest.

I grimace and bow my head as everyone around me does the same, but I don't pray. I wouldn't even know who to pray to, other than the thing that took her.

Maybe if I prayed hard enough to that thing, it would take me again.

Yeah.

With my lips set in a grim line, I pray.