Shine Like the Sun
A My Little Pony fanfic by LysanderasD
Hitch Trailblazer’s favorite pony was his father.
This was a common foalhood thing; many ponies admired their parents, in part because they lacked the frame of reference to find other ponies to admire. As they grew older, some found other ponies to admire. Some dug into the past to admire ancient heroes from more mythical times. But as the ponies around him began to find new targets of admiration, Hitch’s tastes remained the same.
His father had told him once that the Trailblazers had lived in and around Maretime Bay for generations; they’d been there before its official founding, and had been among the first ponies there after the migration from Baltimare further north along the coast. They were called Trailblazers for a reason, after all; his father said that there was a legacy of exploration and adventure in their lineage that traced a path all the way back to the Alicorn Age.
But Maretime Bay had grown up around them, and the Trailblazers, it was said, finally found a reason to put down roots, which was to instead pick up sails and turn into sailors instead. Hitch wasn’t sure how that had turned out. He didn’t know much about sailing, and neither did his father, even though Maretime Bay was the busiest port on this side of the continent. Somewhere along the line, things had changed, and Hitch had ended up with a sheriff’s badge. But the lineage remained—that the Trailblazers were brave, the first to leap into danger; thrillseekers whose courage was born in another age.
For all the good it did anypony.
These days, Maretime Bay survived on what Hitch’s father called “earth pony solidarity.” The tribes had been slowly separating for generations, he’d said; it was only rarely you saw pegasus or unicorn travelers come out to the Bay, especially with the way magic had faded. There were trade deals, of course; earth ponies had always been and would always be Equestria’s primary source of food, even if that meant buying rather than growing. But travel had diminished, and communities had grown tighter (by which, Hitch knew, they really meant more insular), and Hitch wouldn’t call it a bad thing necessarily.
Nopony was suffering. Maretime Bay was happy. And that meant that, generally speaking, there was no crime to speak of, except perhaps defacement of public property by bored teenagers. While he wouldn’t go so far to call it a utopia, things could certainly have been worse. No crime meant that the local sheriff’s office had developed something of a reputation for complacency.
Not so for his father—not so for the Trailblazers. His father remained in fantastic shape without making a show of it; he had his patrol route and stuck to it; and though some of the city’s more anarchic teens would call him rude names for dragging them back home at night by their tails, he’d done more to keep Maretime Bay safe than anypony else had in Hitch’s memory. And so while some might call him a busypony, this was why he remained Hitch’s favorite pony.
Most of the ponies his age didn’t care for his father, and, when it turned out that Hitch Trailblazer was looking to follow in his father’s hoofsteps, what friends he might have had suddenly began looking the other way. No one wanted to befriend the goody four-hooves. Just about the only pony in the Bay he could call a friend was Sunny Starscout, but she was a bit of a shut-in and spent most of her time studying about the Alicorn Age—an obsession Hitch just couldn’t get attached to.
He liked the here and now. Some ponies lived in the past, and that was fine for them, but Hitch was a simple pony, and he liked what he knew. The coastal city of Maretime Bay was his home and it was all he’d ever known, and frankly he was fine with that. When he could, he spent his days walking its streets and studying its docks and getting to know its ponies. And ponies knew him.
Well, they knew the Hitch he showed them, at least. The Hitch that was always the first on the scene whenever whatever small disturbance of the day reared its head; the Hitch that broke up fights, that got cats out of trees. Once he’d even rescued a filly out of a burning building. That was the Hitch that Maretime Bay saw—the one that lived up to the family name. A few years back, for his birthday, his father had gotten him a silver stylized sheriff’s badge patterned after his cutie mark. And now, well, he had the real thing.
But as much as Hitch loved his father and his family, and as much as he knew being a Trailblazer meant something, that wasn’t why he did those things. The past had its place, but ponies getting into a scuffle on the street, or a filly trying and failing to coax her kitten down from the tree, well—those things were in the here and now, which made them Hitch’s problem. And that was the long and short of it; there was no greater cause. Hitch saw a problem, and did everything in his power to solve it.
Once upon a time, he’d tried to downplay it. He didn’t want to think of himself as a hero. He certainly wasn’t doing anything worthy of the title. But soon enough everypony in town knew him as one, and at that point he’d had no choice but to follow along in the flow. So he’d pose for photos, put on a cocky smile, and all the while, hate himself for it. He had a reputation, after all.
But there were advantages to living in a coastal town, like being able to relax and watch the sunrise from the pier. It was too early for there to be any traffic and the only noise to speak of came from the water breaking against the pier.
He was also surrounded by seagulls. Aside from the occasional bark, they too were quiet. Some sat on the railing. One or two had perched on his head. He wasn’t exactly pleased, but this sort of thing had been happening to him a lot lately and he’d begun to adjust. Unlike the ponies in Maretime Bay, the seagulls didn’t seem to much care whether he was a hero or not, so even if they were a weight on his head, they took a weight off his shoulders, and he was grateful for that.
But even he had to be about his day eventually. So he took a deep breath and pushed off the railing. The gulls scattered, but only a little, some out into the water, some onto the sides of the pier. He swung his head around a bit, giving them all a bit of a smile. Most of them blinked back at him, expressions blank, but as he trotted down the pier and back into the city, he could have sworn a couple of them wished him well.
Celestia sat and watched.
This has grown to be one of her preferred pastimes. She had, even more than most, ended up with not much but time on her hooves, and thus had, by necessity, developed the talent of watching and learning. A thousand years of ruling alone had taught her a certain kind of patience, had granted her the ability to stay steady, still, slow, as the Sun passed by overhead. She’d learned to think of herself as a sort of sundial, tracking time, while all around her ponies moved and joked and laughed, and she sat still on her alabaster throne and counted the hours.
Around her, beneath her, stars twinkled, a path from Elsewhere to Elsewhere, nowhere in particular. The astral plane was always as big as it needed to be and went where (and when) it needed to go. And it had seen more traffic lately than it had in a long—well, long time wouldn’t be the right phrase. But it was accurate enough, if you were willing to be subjective about it.
She had not always been this way. She’d been young, once—a long time ago, out of anyone’s memory but hers and Luna’s, especially now. And of the two sisters, she had always been the more rambunctious, the more curious, the more energetic. She was the one who discovered most of the castle’s secret passages, in those early, halcyon days, even though Luna had eventually taken credit for such things.
But then, of course, she’d sat on the throne. And she had stayed there, more or less, for a thousand years and change—and in the process, she herself had changed.
It had started with Luna, of course. In many ways, the whole history of Equestria started with Luna. The time before that brief and terrible conflict was treated mostly as myth and fable, even up to the days of Twilight’s reign. Now it had faded further, out of the mind of so many who lived only for the present, paying no mind to the before. The year the Mare in the Moon appeared, there had been a shift in the calendar, a new year zero—and a shift in so much more.
Deep down, Celestia hated herself for banishing Luna. She had been forgiven, of course. And in her heart of hearts she knew that the whole situation had been—well, a combination of factors, too complex to lay at any single pony’s hooves. Nevertheless, the weight of the deed weighed heavily on Celestia’s shoulders, and always would. She was the one who had used the Elements. Regardless of the cause, she was the effect. And that change had… scared her. Change had scared her.
So the Celestia that sat alone on the alabaster throne after the Mare in the Moon appeared was—different from the Celestia that had sat there before, on a seat made for two that was too large for her alone. Before she had been… energetic. Fun-loving. Perhaps, yes, a little vain, a little short-sighted, a little too blinded by her own popularity to notice the lengthening shadow draping over her sister. And after the… well, after the deed had been done, she had found herself shifting, slowing, becoming more methodical, quieter. It was not a change that happened in a generation. But over a millennium…
She chided herself for getting into that argument with Flurry Heart, brief though it had been. What a fool she’d been, spending so long lying to herself. And yet…
Celestia told herself it had been necessary. And perhaps it had been, at the time. Equestria was wounded, reeling. It needed stability. She needed stability. So she had adjusted her posture on the throne, becoming the point of the sundial, and watched the shadows shift as the expression of the mask she wore slowly became part of her face.
But that was the past. Equestria was changing. No, she corrected. Equestria had changed, and not necessarily for the better. Ground to a halt by the iron chains of apathy and fear, so afraid of what might be that each tribe had dug its head into the sand somewhere and decided to stay. This was not the future she wanted. She knew this was not the future Twilight had wanted, either, when she’d stepped down, stepped out, gone Elsewhere, to wait and to watch and to—
Act.
She shook her head. Celestia had rejected that part of herself. Had told herself that Equestria had forsaken the alicorn throne, needed to make its own choices. And she still felt that way. But that wasn’t to say it didn’t still need a nudge, now and then. And Luna knew all about nudges. Technically, it was Twilight who had gotten that ball rolling—but rolling it was, and even if Celestia was late to the game, she intended to play her part.
And so she had found Hitch. And he was, she thought, something of a strange choice. Quite possibly not her first choice. But her methods were meticulous, her criteria exact—and at the end of the day, she had enough empathy left in her tired heart to know a kindred soul when she saw one. A pony wearing a mask, living up to a legacy—something she knew only too well.
She’d seen something like this in Fluttershy. Her ear flicked as she made that conscious realization for the first time. The flaw of Kindness—the desire to please, to self-sacrifice, to consider oneself last and least. A flaw of Generosity, too. But based on the way the seagulls had congregated around him, that was not the only aspect of Kindness this pony had—what, gained? Inherited, perhaps? Who knew which ways the bloodlines had wandered? Or if it was even a matter of bloodlines at all? She could not rightly remember if Fluttershy had ever had any foals.
Harmony found a way. She should know. She’d said as much a number of times beyond counting. Enough that Cadance had adopted the phrase, even.
Quite suddenly, Celestia felt an urge she had not felt in too long. She stood, shook herself off, and turned sideways to look along the starlit path. Her wings flexed a bit and her voice caught in her throat, and then she said:
“Twilight? … Can we talk?”
The sun was rising in earnest now. Maretime Bay was waking up, ponies filling the streets on their ways to work and school. And Hitch Trailblazer flowed through the crowd with ease.
All his moping wasn’t to imply that he wasn’t a pony pony. He was. He loved talking to ponies. Just about everyone in town knew who he was and he was fine with that. His father had been the same when he’d been sheriff, and he’d inherited that reputation along with the badge, and this part, at least, wasn’t all bad. It felt, at least, like he had a lot of friends.
Starscope, over there, nursing a coffee after another late night studying the stars over the ocean. Candela, one of the local electricians, already on her way to a job. Applecore, from just out of town, hauling in some merchandise for the supermarket. Familiar faces, all. Loved faces, all. But even so, he had to perk himself up a bit to wave, putting on a smile he didn’t quite feel.
So many ponies going so many places. And here he was, walking the same paths he’d walked since he was a foal, that his father had walked before him. In a way, it felt like the world was moving on without him. What even was a sheriff, really? In a town with no crime to speak of? More than once, especially lately, he’d contemplated—let’s see, maybe, starting a pet store? He didn’t think he had it in him to be a vet. But the animals seemed to love him all the same. Maybe a birdkeeper?
“Whoa, hey. Equestria to Hitch. You there?”
He stopped when somepony waved a hoof in his face, blinking and coming back to himself. He shook his head and recognized Sunny Starscout, wearing her skates and helmet and looking up at him with a sly smile.
Sunny. Now there was somepony he might actually call a friend—even if they hadn’t hung out as much since they were foals. “Sunny, hey. Sorry, I—”
“Usually you’re the one watching out for unruly traffic, Hitch.” She giggled and carefully punched him in the shoulder. Her hoof rolled off, but she managed to keep her balance. “How much trouble would I get in if the sheriff caught me running over the sheriff?”
He smiled apologetically. “Sorry,” he said again. “Guess even I get caught in a daydream sometimes. It’d probably be a pretty hefty fine, though,” he added, putting a serious expression on.
“Aw.” Sunny’s pout was more obviously fake than his own expression felt. “No leniency for foalhood friends?”
“Maybe a little,” he said, after a pause to make it look like he’d had to think about it. “But since you didn’t run me over, I guess I can just let you off with a warning.” He jerked his head. “Go on. I know you usually like to be out by the lighthouse by now. Don’t slow down on my account.”
Sunny shook her head. “Nah, it’s fine, I can go slow for a bit. I actually started early today. As long as you don’t mind company on your sunrise patrol?”
Hitch raised an eyebrow, giving her a curious look. She was wearing that teal-colored satchel again. She’d gotten it recently from—somewhere. Maybe from one of Argyle’s trips outside town. The six-pointed starburst on the flap was almost catchier than the color of the bag itself, and it had made it easy to spot Sunny from just about any distance. He really had been distracted to not notice the colorful blur.
“No,” he said finally. “I don’t mind. I don’t know why you’d want to come with me, but—that’s fine.”
He started trotting again, staying close to the edge of the sidewalk. Sunny skated alongside him, humming some tune that danced on the edge of familiarity. A song for kids, about little ponies.
And for a little while, that was it, until Hitch spoke up again.
Twilight was there.
“Princess Celestia?”
Bless her, Celestia thought. She would never, ever drop that habit, no matter how long she lived.
She took a deep breath. Here, in the astral plane, Twilight was small again, the size she’d been when she’d first ascended. The way she always saw herself, even though by all rights she should have been able to look Celestia in the eye at her full height. But some things do not change, and some habits do not die, and though Celestia was loath to lean too heavily on the past, this, at least, was something she appreciated.
Twilight’s smile was so sincere, so hopeful. Even now, after all this time, she was so eager to please—no, that wasn’t right. She wasn’t Celestia’s lapdog, and thinking of her that way wasn’t fair. She was capable of helping Celestia, capable of standing on equal hoofing, and was more than willing to do so. In the face of that kind of optimism, Celestia actually found herself shrinking back, wilting slightly.
“Are you… alright?” Twilight asked.
Celestia’s gaze wandered sideways. Beside them, floating just off the starlit path, the image of Hitch and Sunny side by side, smiling, calm. Equals. Friends.
“I fear,” Celestia said, slowly, “that I haven’t been fair to you, Twilight.”
She took another deep breath.
“So…” Hitch said, drawing the word out at the same languid pace he was walking at. “What’s up, anyway? You don’t normally want to walk with me.”
“I don’t normally get the chance to walk with you,” Sunny corrected. “Usually you’re running off somewhere, or helping some old mare across the street, or fetching Morning Glory’s kitten out of the tree for the third time this week.”
He chuckled, though it still felt awkward. “Yeah, I… don’t think her cat likes her. But you’re right, it has been kind of hectic lately.”
“And it’s kind of calm right now, so I wanted to catch up with you and see how things were. That’s all.”
Another pause. Hitch eyed the six-pointed starburst again.
“What’s the deal with the bag, anyway?”
And this seemed to be what Sunny was waiting for. She opened her mouth.
“I’m not sure I understand?” Twilight offered gently.
“When we came here,” Celestia said. “I remember we… made an agreement. To watch but not to interfere. I said that because we’d all stepped down from our thrones, Equestria was free to rule itself. I know Luna and Flurry Heart resented that. Flurry and I recently had an… altercation about it, though we have since come to terms.”
Twilight’s expression had returned to being quietly hopeful. Celestia lightly cleared her throat.
“And that decision, that agreement, has led us here.” Alongside the image of Hitch and Sunny, other mobile pictures, like video screens, began to float up alongside. Pegasi hiding in mountaintops. Earth ponies looking suspiciously over their shoulders at sunset. Unicorns sleeping in the dirt. “Equestria is… fading. Not conquered. Not victimized. But atrophying all the same. Because I swore an oath to stand back and watch—a fool’s oath. One I should never have spoken. One I should not have held you to.”
Celestia flexed her wings a bit. The other images scattered. “And Harmony has… already chastised me, in its way. With that book you wrote. You and your friends.”
Twilight smiled.
“It’s Princess Twilight’s cutie mark! The Element of Magic!”
Sunny was already digging into the bag, or at least lifting the flap. She held the bag out to him, and he reached inside to pull out… a book?
“My dad brought this back from one of his trips,” Sunny said. “It’s the Journal of Friendship. Like… the actual journal. Or at least, like, a firsthoof copy. It’s been passed around and edited a bit—there’s a map of Zephyr Heights in there, somewhere, even. But a lot of it is intact.”
Hitch’s smile turned a little fragile. “I’m not sure… I’ve ever heard of it.” He looked over it. Well-loved, well-read, laden with bookmarks. It looked like something out of another age. Out of a fairy tale. Hitch had never really been one for fairy tales. “It looks, uh, pretty old.”
“It is, but…” Sunny’s expression turned sheepish. “Well, it’s interesting. I know it’s not totally your thing, so I won’t force you to read it or anything. But it’s… well, it’s kind of changed my worldview a little bit.”
Hitch had heard about this. There had been calls, ever since the Solidarity act got passed. Only earth ponies in or out of the city. There was a certain amount of… fear, yes. Regarding the other tribes. Fear Sunny had never really expressed. Fear Hitch didn’t really believe in either. But, well—ponies will be ponies, and some found a free thinker like Sunny to be a liability. So far he’d been able to defuse some of the more vocal naysayers, but…
Apparently some of what he was thinking was showing on his face. Sunny held the bag up again. “Here, you can—put it away. I’d do it myself, but, you know, skates.” She was blushing as he slid the book back into the bag, and soon enough it was just the six-pointed star again.
“Some would say it hasn’t changed you for the better,” Hitch said slowly.
“Is that what you believe?” Sunny asked.
Hitch paused, and then, after a moment, gave his answer.
“Your book,” Celestia said, “found its way, through Harmony’s will, into the hooves of hopeful Sunny Starscout, setting in motion a chain of events that nopony could stop. Luna planted a dream in the mind of the genius Izzy Moonbow; Cadance granted a suggestion to the influential Pipp Petals; Flurry brought inspiration to the courageous Zipp Storm. And these scions are brave and true and if all goes to plan they will restore to Equestria the power of Harmony once again…”
She trailed off. “And so, though I am only lately come into the particulars of this play, I would still play a small part, if you would have me.”
“Of course, Celestia,” Twilight said gently. “I’m… afraid I don’t totally follow what’s going on myself. Luna has been keeping things under wraps.”
“She has always been one for her secrets.” Celestia gave a smile of her own, sitting back a bit. “But let us shed some light on this mystery.”
She held out a hoof. The image of Hitch and Sunny shimmered, then split into two, one for each pony. In between, the images of a violet unicorn, and then a pink and a white pegasus, wavered into being. “No Elements of Harmony. Not for these… scions of Equestria, who nevertheless embody everything we hold dear.”
She pointed. “Sunny Starscout, whose hope and belief shines like the morning star at twilight. Izzy Moonbow, whose creativity shimmers like moonlight. Pipp Petals, who is so full of love she would burst unless she shared it with the world. Zipp Storm, who dares to challenge the impossible. Champions, all, even if they are all little ponies. So were you and your friends, once. So were Luna and I, once upon a time.”
Twilight looked up at the image of Hitch curiously. “And this one?”
“Hitch Trailblazer,” Celestia said. “Kind and noble—and for all of this, a lonely soul. Someone who must be strong, and brave. And he is these things. But also someone who can be gentle and quiet. He is in need of a lesson I have only lately learned myself. That he does not need to choose to be anything—except himself. That underneath the mask he wears, he is still himself. And since you have been so kind as to gather such a fine array of teachers…”
Twilight let out a curious hum, bringing a hoof to her chin. “Well… Don’t sell yourself short, Princess. Or him, for that matter. I think Hitch might have a thing or two to teach them—eventually.” Then she turned, and gave Celestia the widest smile she’d seen on her former student since her coronation day.
“I think…” she said, and Celestia could almost feel the astral plane shuddering, shivering, expectant, “...that everything is going to be okay.”
Hitch saw Sunny back to her house, then made his way back toward the pier. By now, most of the early morning fisherponies had already taken their boats out, but there was always a fair amount of hoof traffic at the pier and sometimes he had to pull double duty as a lifeguard when ponies got too adventurous.
There was… something in the air. Hitch had never put much stock into believing in magic, but he dared to say that the world itself seemed to be holding its breath for something. He furrowed his brow, looking up and around, but… no, everything was normal.
But the six-pointed starburst hung in his mind’s eye. Magic, huh. Well, if magic was real, maybe he wouldn’t have to keep playing at being the hero. But that was ridiculous. Nothing ever happened in Maretime Bay. Nothing.
And that was for the best... right?
Somewhere near the city gates, a unicorn approaches.
In the mountain capital, far away, two pegasus sisters look up and watch the sky, waiting.
And Sunny Starscout opens her book again. It has a very distinctive front page.
It goes something like this.
Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria...
Author's Note
Thank you to those who have followed this little series from the beginning.
I am fully prepared for all of what I’ve written to be trounced when the movie airs, but I don’t regret writing this series, and I hope those of you who’ve made it this far have enjoyed it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it.
