It’s silly, really. I shouldn’t be so worked up over this. It was only a kiss — and barely even that. Our lips hardly even touched; just a slight and sudden press of her skin on mine, a soft sigh of our breath mixing. And then it was done. She pulled away, all flushed and pink, and apologised. And before I could even gather my thoughts enough to reassure her, she was gone. Jumping through the portal in the base of the statue without even a word of explanation.
I could have gone after her. I almost did. But the idea of going back through that mirror, of emerging in the palace in Canterlot, right back where I started all those years ago — I couldn’t do it. The castle was my home, once. The princess was almost a mother to me.
And even though the person vanishing through the portal was the strangest, most confusing, most enchanting girl I’d ever met, I couldn’t follow her. I wasn’t ready to go home yet. I’m…I’m still not.
So I just stood there, waiting. Watching the portal’s shimmering lights twist over and around one another. Ten minutes passed, then half an hour. I was still lingering, undecided. By that point I guessed that she was probably nowhere near the mirror any more. She was probably already on the train to Ponyville. Twilight knew she was coming; she must have been there to meet her.
I could go after her — but what if Celestia was there? What if I had to look up at her, into those cold pink eyes, and finally face up to what I had done? The way I had betrayed everything she taught me, everything she stood for.
It was unthinkable.
An hour passed, and then another, and finally the portal sputtered shut. As it shrank down to a purple pinprick, I finally moved, reaching for it just as it finally winked out. I had hesitated too long.
Wallflower was gone.
And…it shouldn’t have upset me. Really, it shouldn’t. I was the one who suggested that she go. Just as Equestria was the place where I struggled, suffered, and eventually lashed out at everypony around me, Canterlot High was the place where Wallflower had been at her worst. She was forgotten, until she made sure that she wasn’t. Then everybody knew exactly who she was, and the murmurs and the stares made sure she was aware of it every second of every day.
The greenhouse and the hydroponics lab were her refuge, and the gardening club her allies, but outside of those safe zones I was almost the only person who would talk to her. It was a lonely life, the killing blow after years of loneliness, and I saw what it did to her. She had hoped for redemption, but earning forgiveness is easier said than done.
I did my best to spend time with her, but Twilight and the girls took up so many of my free periods, and I was so busy with finals — I guess what little I had to offer her wasn’t enough. The silence and the solitude crushed her spirit, and she was a little quieter, a little sadder, each time I saw her.
So…I suggested that she should get away for a while. It worked for me, so why not for her? Princess Twilight even offered her a spot at her School of Friendship. The perfect place to go and meet new people — uh, ponies — and learn from teachers who have the same sort of history that she and I do. Starlight Glimmer, wasn’t it? Twilight never stops going on about her.
It was such an attractive offer that I might have been tempted myself, if not for my friends. And…well, I don’t have the best history with having a princess as my teacher. And either way, the prospect of missing twelfth grade with my friends was unthinkable.
But Wallflower had no such compunctions, and she jumped at the opportunity for a fresh start. I helped her set up a story about an exchange programme in Europe for her parents, and then she was ready. The portal opened, and she was there, bag packed.
And then she went and kissed me.
And I just…let her go.
I thought about it for days afterwards. I tried to rationalise it. A friendly kiss goodbye, maybe. A spur of the moment no-consequences thing, knowing that there was nothing left to lose. Maybe she just had a temporary bout of insanity, and that was how it showed itself. I had no idea. Still don’t. The fact of the matter is that Wallflower Blush kissed me and then ran away, knowing that she wouldn’t see me again for three years. At least.
After I stewed on it for a few weeks, the girls staged a bit of an intervention.
“You must stop moping, darling,” Rarity said rather bluntly. “Wallflower is gone, and there’s an end to it. You’re missing out on our senior year!”
Twilight, bless her, tried to soften the blow. She’s kind like that…both of her different selves are. “And maybe she’ll write to you, eventually, and explain?”
They all looked at me, concern on all of their faces, so I did the only thing I could do. I smiled, and nodded, and put away the outward signs of my disquiet. I laughed again, and joked around with them, and focused on my schoolwork and on my friends.
It was only at night that I came back to it, over and over, thinking about that moment, the expression in Wallflower’s brown eyes. Fear, excitement, embarrassment, all rolled into one. But not a word of explanation, just the sight of her turning and running away.
And me, frozen, left behind.
It wasn’t a big deal. I know it wasn’t. So why am I still obsessing over it, weeks and months and years down the line? Why does that moment still haunt me?
Maybe it’s because Wallflower never mentioned it in her letters. Just as Twilight predicted, I received the first one just a month or so after Wallflower left, care of Princess Twilight’s friendship journal. It was bright, chipper, and utterly friendly, stuffed to the brim of her first impressions of Ponyville, the new school, and quadruped life. Not one word of what had happened.
What could I do? I didn’t want to mess up her progress by asking about it. I didn’t want to make her as confused and wretched as I was. So I wrote back and told her about the school play. Passed on news of her parents and her brother. Wrapped my uncertainty in lies until it was no longer visible at all.
And slowly, life returned to normal. School distracted me, and college applications, and trips to the lake with the girls. It was just an ordinary summer, and Wallflower faded to the back of my mind. Only in the quiet time, right before I fell asleep, would my mind turn to her. I’d try to picture what she would be doing right now; what she’d look like as a pony. How she’d wear her mane, her tail. And I’d think of that kiss.
Time passed, as time does. Fluttershy got into vet school, Pinkie signed up for an events planning course at community college. Rarity planned on heading off to the city to join some fashion magazine, and Rainbow and Twilight were headed to college on a track and chemistry scholarships respectively. Applejack was going to apprentice at an agricultural academy. The end of school hadn’t come yet, but everyone could feel it just around the corner. We were going to be scattered across the country. Everyone was moving on.
After a long and fraught applications process, I finally got into Ivy U. I worked so hard for it — all those extracurriculars and college credit classes that took me away from my friends right when I wanted to be with them the most — but when I finally pulled up at that crumbing brick campus, I felt…a little empty. I was so used to being part of a crowd, part of a set. One of seven.
Oh, we called each other, of course. We tried so hard to keep up with one another’s lives. But time zones and sororities take their toll, and eventually our weekly video-chat was just me, looking at my own miserable image on the screen.
Despite the new people I met every day, despite my new professors and the brilliant minds around me…I was lonely. My friends were gone. I mean, I knew — I know they still love me, but…it’s not the same. Adult life is so…different.
The only constant — the only thing that was never cancelled, come rain or shine — was Wallflower’s monthly letter via the friendship journal. She told me about her studies, and I told her about mine. She told me when she made her first real friend; a yak named Yuron. She even told me when she met somepony; a mare. That one hurt. After that I finally went out and dated a few girls myself; had an abortive relationship with a gorgeous girl named Moondancer that had a rather explosive ending. But never anyone that really stuck.
I studied, I worked, I tried to make my own way in the world. And time ticked on. It wasn’t until this year that I began to really think about it. Only ten months left until the portal reopens. Five. Two months left now. I wasn’t — I’m not expecting anything. It’s been years, for goodness sake. I’d be crazy to think something was going to happen.
But I’d be lying if I said I haven’t imagined it, late at night when I’m trying to fall asleep. What it will be like to see her again. Of how she tasted, in that brief half-second where her lips touched mine. The way she used to smile at me.
Maybe it’s just nostalgia. Maybe it’s just that I miss my friends; miss Canterlot High and the life we had there. Maybe it’s curiosity, plain and simple — but no matter the reason, the day before the appointed date finds me on the train headed back to the town where I met her. To the statue where the portal will open.
And the next morning, I’m there three hours before the portal is due to start up. I’ve bought tea, blankets — even a spare bag of clothes in case she’s gotten too comfortable in Equestrian fashion and comes out a little underdressed. The thought of seeing her like that is enough to make me pink to my eartips, but it makes me smile, too. I look up at the statue of the rearing horse and my smile widens. I can’t wait to see her.
It feels like I wait an eternity, and maybe I do, but finally that little mote of purple appears on the statue base and I catch my breath as it widens. I had been so afraid that the magic would fail and she might not return.
The light swirls brighter, yawning wider before me, and then there is a bright shape emerging, and all of a sudden a familiar green shape stumbles and falls through the doorway onto her knees.
“Woah!”
Instantly I am there, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders, my heart thudding as my hands brush against her. She is clothed, but it’s a wintery spring day and I know she’ll be glad of the warmth.
“It’s so much less stable than four legs, right?” I say, trying to strike a casual note before my voice cracks and betrays me.
Her fingers planted deep in the grass, she pulls in a breath and looks up at me. “I — Sunset?”
My eyes full of tears, I nod. “Hey, Wallflower. L-long time no see, right?”
Slowly, she raises her hand to my own, and her big brown eyes are so beautiful that it makes me want to cry. She smiles back at me, and my eyes go to her lips, so soft and so tremulous, and then I can’t hold it back any longer.
I cup her face in my hands, as I’ve been aching to do, and then I lean in. She turns her face up towards me, her eyes big and fearful, and for a moment we both hesitate. And then, together, we lean in, and we find warmth, a warmth powerful enough to wash the nerves and the uncertainty of that cold morning clean away. With a gasp, she kneels up to meet me, and then our breath and our tongues are dancing together. All I can feel is her; all I can see is her. Her hands are on my hips, pulling me to her, and then in my hair, twining us close together, and I’m wrapping my arms around her — I’ll never let her go — like two drowning sailors we are clinging to one another, and she is all the air I’ll ever need.
When we finally break apart, gasping for breath, I am beaming. I look into her eyes, searching for the happiness there to match my own, but to my horror I find only panic.
“W-what’s wrong?” I stammer. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”
“I’m not coming back, Sunset,” she says, and her eyes are full of tears. “I — I’ve made a life here. I didn’t know how to tell my family. I didn’t know how to tell you.”
My mouth falls slightly open, and I shake my head. No — this isn’t right. I’ve waited so long for her, without even fully knowing what I was waiting for. She can’t leave me again. Not yet.
Seeing the confusion on my face, she starts to explain, the words tumbling over each other in her haste. “I’m a gardener, you know? Ponies from miles around come to me for advice with their plants. They all know me; everypony knows me. My cutie mark — it’s a tulip, and I grow such beautiful tulips. Please, Sunset,” she’s begging me to understand, tears spilling freely down her cheeks. “I can’t come back. I can’t leave my friends. My garden. My home.”
“I — I—” Before I can finish the word I stop short. What was I going to say? Something about my friends, my home. But…my home is on the other side of the country, now. My friends have lives of their own. I have a life, but I have spent the past three years of it dreaming about a girl in another world.
It’s impulsive, it’s crazy, I know it is, but before I know what I’m doing I’m getting to my feet, pulling her with me. “I understand,” I say, because I do. I know what it is to find joy in a new world. To find love there.
“Y-you do? Really?” Her eyes light up, and I raise my thumb to wipe the moisture from her cheeks.
“I’ll…I’ll come with you.” I hear my own voice saying the words, and I almost can’t believe it myself. Can I really go back there? Face the ponies I wronged and the crimes I committed?
Am I…finally ready to go home?
“I can’t believe it!” Wallflower is crying again, but this time the tears are tears of joy, and the sight of her happiness is enough to banish my own doubt. If anyone can give me the courage to stand before the throne and ask for forgiveness — if anyone is worth that — it’s her.
It’s always been her.
She’s already looking back at the portal, afraid it’s going to close with us on the wrong side. “What about your friends? W-won’t you miss them?” Her voice is thick with worry, clearly frightened that my answer will be yes. But she cares enough to ask it anyway.
“They’ll understand.” My tone is confident. I know that they will. Rainbow Dash commutes seven hours at the start and end of every weekend, skipping who knows how many training sessions just so she can snatch a day or so with Applejack. Rarity started her career over from scratch so that she could be in the same city as Twilight. Fluttershy dropped everything when her parents called to tell her that their elderly bunny was fading. She skipped her midterms to come home in time. Even Pinkie Pie has tempered her own ambition of being the best party planner in the state so that she can open a joint business with her boyfriend Cheese. If anyone can understand doing stupid things for love, it’s my friends. “I’ll explain everything to them. A-and next time the portal opens, they can come visit us. Maybe see your tulip garden.”
Her face lights up, and her expression is so full of hope that I feel like I could sing. With shaking fingers I pull out my phone and I send a text to Twilight. Telling her where my spare key is, and that the friendship journal is under my bed, in a box with Princess Twilight’s cutie mark on. And one last line: Tell the others that I’ll see you all soon.
I tuck the phone back into my bag, on the picnic rug with the abandoned blankets and thermos. Then I get to my feet, and reach for her soft lime-green hand. Her fingers interlace with my own, and side by side we face the vortex of swirling lights. She looks across at me, and offers me another tremulous smile.
“Are you sure?”
I don’t even need to think about it. “Of course I am.”
I want to see it all. The life she’s built for herself. The garden, the customers. The tulips, even her table-smashing friend Yuron. I want to see her life, and find my own place in it.
I want to go home. Suddenly, I want it more than anything.
The lights flare brighter and brighter, and the world twists and warps around me. My only anchor is the hand I hold in mine, and the girl who kissed me so long ago. My fingers tighten on hers, and I feel her squeeze back even as my vision fades to white. With Wallflower at my side, my banishment is finally over. I’m finally…home.
