The moon shone overhead into the calm, cool night, illuminating the plants that waved softly in the faint breeze. Insects hummed and buzzed, skipping over the otherwise smooth surface of the nearby pond. It was a quiet and beautiful night, with a deep velvet sky sprinkled with stars.
The soft pads of hooves on the grass interrupted the sounds of nature that kept total silence at bay. The pony sat down in a small clearing, her tall form casting a long shadow over the ground before her. Not too far ahead loomed a dense forest, where darkness seemed to be solid. The pony did not look towards it, however; her gaze was pointed towards the earth, though not particularly focused on anything.
The princess came here quite often, though mostly at night. Whenever she visited in daytime, the town, so dear to her, always made such an event of her presence, and what she sought from this spot was peace to be with her thoughts and memories. She came so much, believing at first that familiarity would help soften the terrible ache she consistently felt. She had dropped that foolish sentiment many centuries ago. Her feelings were no less painful, but she had learned to deal with them, and therefore made them somewhat easier to acknowledge.
She sat before six mounds in the earth, each marked with an elaborate headstone. One of them was much more recent than the others, barely a century old. Dragons may have much longer lifespans than ponies, but they did not live forever. Unlike her.
Her eyes watered slightly as she looked at these mounds. She had offered them a much more regal burial in Canterlot, but every single one of them had declined, wishing, as she knew they would, to be laid to rest in their beloved hometown. They truly did mean so much more to her than she could ever have imagined, even all these years later, while so many other friends have come and gone. These friends could never be replaced.
“Evening, Twilight.” A gentle voice suddenly spoke out from behind her. The princess raised her head with a sniff, not yet turning around. She knew that voice; its owner was one of the very few close friends who had been there from the beginning and would be around for as long as she.
Twilight turned to see the shadowy serpentine figure standing there, watching her. “Hello, Discord,” she replied softly, before facing the graves once more. There was a moment’s pause, then the draconequus walked forward and took a seat besides the sole ruler of Equestria, his eyes fixed on the six mounds as well. Beyond these, there lay the rest of the Ponyville cemetery, filled with nothing but familiar names and unforgettable moments for the two immortals.
The pair sat in silence for a while, each lost in their own memories. They shared endless nights like this, revisiting these places that marked the most magical friends either of them had ever had. Occasionally there would be more of a gathering; Celestia and Luna were known to drop in from Silver Shoals and share their company, and every now and then Cadence and Flurry Heart would come by from the north. But for the most part they remained alone, isolated from the rest of the world by their unique experiences of time.
“It really doesn’t get easier, does it?” Twilight whispered after some time, her eyes fixed on where Spike lay. “Being around forever.”
Discord was quiet for a moment, then he sighed softly. “Before I met you, it was wonderfully easy,” he replied. “I had existed for hundreds of years on my own. I relished it, the knowledge of my eternal life. I had nothing and nopony to miss.” He stared at one of the headstones, upon which the cutie mark of three butterflies was engraved.
“But it’s quite different once there is someone you care about. Someone whom you love who you know will not be with you for the rest of time. And once that happens, my dear, when they have gone, the weight of time finally settles itself on your shoulders. And it doesn't get easier.”
Twilight noticed him absentmindedly fiddling with the ring on his eagle claw, the ring which he had never taken off since the day that sweet Pegasus slipped it on during the ceremony.
Twilight had never fallen in love. She did not seek it either, for she had felt so complete with her friends by her side while serving the ponies of Equestria. Once they had gone, Twilight had barely been capable of recovering from them, and after that it was much harder to imagine having a romantic partner knowing that, someday, they would leave her life in just the same way, and if she had children, she knew they would follow the same path.
“It’s been another millennium,” she said, her gaze now unfocused. “A thousand years since they passed.” The princess looked sideways at the Lord of Chaos. “How did you survive all that time in stone? How did Celestia make it through all that time, when Luna . . . ” Her question trailed off unfinished; Twilight could not bear to think of all the years she had spent missing her friends, instead filled with the absolute pain and guilt her former mentor must have surely felt.
Discord closed his eyes briefly; Twilight had known him long enough to where she could recognize this as his way of holding back his painful memories from coming to the forefront of his mind and revealing themselves on his face. Ordinarily he would cover up the moment of hesitation with a joke, but on nights like these he was uncharacteristically sober. Finally, he spoke.
“I couldn’t give you a definite answer even if I wanted to. Mostly I lived on my rage and hatred towards the princesses, my desire for revenge, my wild daydreams of what havoc I could wreak across the land - for as a statue you do not sleep.” He opened his eyes, which now had a darker shine to them. “Much of the time I had to retreat into the back of my head and simply pretend I wasn’t there in that stone, while other times I had to battle my own mind to keep my sanity. But my heart was empty; I felt no love or compassion. I yearned for only freedom and chaos.”
Discord finally turned to face Twilight; his features wore one of those rare expressions that revealed his true age and wisdom. “Time is so much worse when it is burdened with loss. Especially when it is the loss of something that had filled what used to be emptiness.
“We’re very similar there, Princess; we both started our lives as independent beings, believing friendship to be a distraction and our own power quite unparalleled. Then friends found their ways into our hearts, and we could no longer imagine a life without them.” His gaze returned to the six mounds before them. “Now we don’t have to imagine that life; we’ve returned to it. But it’s different this time around, because our hearts are open and we embrace the compassion and kindness of others, even while knowing they will not be around forever.”
Twilight’s eyes returned to the resting places of her dearest friends. They had changed her entire life, and they had faced so much together; saving Equestria with the magic of friendship, after all, was not something done with casual acquaintances, but the ponies whose hearts were more deeply connected than those in any other land.
“Nopony can ever give us what they have, though,” she breathed out in a hoarse voice.
“Well of course they can’t,” Discord murmured. “What they gave us isn’t something you can get from just anybody. And that’s why their absence is so much more profound; the pain of that will never leave us.”
Twilight took a deep, steadying breath, attempting to retain her composure. Some nights she managed it well; others were much more of a challenge. “But it’s not really about the pain leaving, is it? After all, without that pain, we would forget how much they meant to us.”
“Exactly.” Discord’s voice was so soft that the word was barely distinguishable from the cool night breeze rustling the nearby trees. “You don’t get rid of the pain, and you don’t let it consume you; you accept it and allow it to help you move on from the past without leaving the memories of your friends behind. The agony of them going comes with the joy of being their friend.”
Twilight nodded vigorously, fighting to keep her tears in. She already knew this, she had learned it so long ago, but hearing it out loud did not make the truth any less harsh.
“It’s about balance,” she whispered. “Of harmony and chaos, of good times and bad . . . of joy and sadness . . . ”
Her voice broke, as did her strength. The tears flooded down her face in a silent cascade. The princess kept her face downward, but the draconequus was not fooled. He reached out and wrapped his leathery bat wing around Twilight, pulling her closer. This gesture freed the sobs that had been trapped in her heaving chest; she buried her face into Discord’s neck and cried. Discord closed his eyes as he listened to her; he had not shed tears of his own in centuries, but he felt her misery mirror his own.
The two sat like this for a long time. They had very little others with whom they could confide these feelings to; for who else could understand beings like them? They alone felt the pain of the departure of these six souls whose bodies were buried before them, more acutely than any other creature. But it’s been a thousand years; it seemed so impossible to carry on back then, but here they were, hurt but not broken, still capable of having a good and gentle heart. They had made it this far; they would get through anything else they had to suffer.
Slowly, Twilight’s soft feathery wing unfolded to complete the embrace with the Spirit of Chaos as, high above them, the moon, an eternal and ever-silent witness to tragedy, glowed softly upon them.
