They had been asked to gather in the Thunderstream Airship Station, beneath Zephyr Heights, in its grand Departure Hall, before the elegant stained-glass doors leading out to the landing platform.
Asked, that was the word. She disliked the word summoned, saying it just wasn't her way.
They stood together, the three of them: a pegasus Princess, a unicorn artisan, and an earth-pony research student. They looked at each other uncertainly, even though they had been friends as long as they could remember. Because they were also her friends. And she had been increasingly distant of late.
Before them, the doors swung open.
And she strode in.
Tall, confident, wearing her gilded crown, peytral, and armored shoes, her flowing mane and tail wafting in the call of ethereal forces she alone sensed, the Princess of Equestria walked up to them, alone and without guard or escort. And bowed to them.
"Thank all you for coming. I would have visited each of you individually, rather than make you travel here. But time is short. And this is a thing which must be done together."
Her horn blazed, and her magic brought forth a blue leather carryall with her double-star cutie mark embossed on it. From it she brought forth the Friendship Gem, symbol of her rule and of all she stood for: three separate crystals bound into a single setting: a winged circle of emerald, a spearhead horn of blue sapphire, and a lens-like core of clear diamond.
She held it briefly in her magic, staring at it sadly. It had already faded, its magic drained away. It was little more than decorative artwork now. Without further word, she placed it on the ground before her, before her friends. With a firm press of an armored forehoof she broke the Gem's setting, splitting it into its three constituent pieces. Which she then presented, one to each of them, as they stared at her in open-mouthed shock.
"I need to give these back to you," she said. "Because it's going to be up to you now. To remember and pass down what you've learned, to the generations that follow. To continue on, where I no longer can. To keep alive the spark of Friendship in hopes that one day, maybe, it will find those in whom it can burn brightly once more."
She bowed to them again, then turned and strode away.
"Wait!" the earth-pony called. "How will we know who to give these to? Or when?"
She paused, looking back, and smiled.
You will know, she said. Her voice was already insubstantial, like the wind itself. She was fading away, even as they watched. When magic returns, you will light the way...
Her smile faded somewhat.
... but you yourselves will not see it.
And then she was gone. The three of them looked at each other, at the gemstones held in their hooves. They had already begun to forget why they had gathered there. But they nodded to each other. They were still friends, and they would do what they had to do.
They trotted out onto the platform, looked up at the sky. It looked perfectly normal now: clear and blue and dotted with a few clouds, with a warm sun shining overhead. Nothing unusual or strange about it, not in the least.
That was what made it so terrifying.
Many, many moons later...
Sunny Starscout sighed, staring up at the ruins of her home. The lighthouse tower had been sheared off, and lay in a shattered ruin on the downslope of the promontory. The front doorframe of the house was warped, the door immobile. And just looking through the fractured ground-floor windows, Sunny could see shattered stone and plaster and dust everywhere inside. Just like on the lawn outside.
It was going to take a lot of work putting this place back together.
But at least she had friends to help. Hitch and the other ponies had headed up the coast to Maretime Bay's city center, to gather other ponies and supplies to help her. Leaving Sunny alone, at her request, with her thoughts.
Plus her new wings and horn.
Sunny flapped the glimmering, ethereal wings experimentally. She peered up at the gleaming, insubstantial horn on her forehead.
This is going to take some getting used to, she thought.
It was scary, but also kind of exciting. Like it always was, any time Sunny set out to learn anything new. First you knew nothing at all, and had no idea where to start and it was all just completely overwhelming. Then you learned just enough to have a sense of what was what, and also how little you still knew. Just enough to be dangerous, Dad would say, with that whimsical smile of his. And then you slowly, steadily became an expert, to the point where you had to check yourself, to look hard for the places where you still didn't know everything yet.
At least I have that, she told herself. I know how to deal with the unknown. I can face this. Thanks, Dad...
She got up and trotted over to the fence near the cliff edge. She hooked her forehooves over it and stared up at the still-darkening sky, with its shimmering auroral lights. That was going to take some getting used to as well. The return of magic had given everything a subtle glow, a fringe of extra thereness, which Sunny could now sense. It had to be what Izzy called ponies' "sparkle": the magic reaching out, along its own dimensions or wavelengths or whatever, connecting ponies to the land and the sky and to each other.
That was a lot to take in. Even for the pony responsible for it all.
"This is what I wanted," she told herself firmly. "To bring ponies together. To bring magic back. To have friends, good friends, who were pegasi and unicorns. And soooo... at some point," she added in amusement, "I'm just going to have to stop thinking 'Omigosh, what have I done here', and start dealing with it. Because I want this to work. I'm gonna make it work!"
I'M SURE YOU WILL.
Sunny looked up, surprised. Out of the auroral glow overhead, there was a swirling, shimmering flow of glittering light. It flowed downwards from the sky, swirled down and down, finally settling to the ground beside her. Amazed, and a little nervous, Sunny turned to face it.
It became substantial, resolving into a pony-like shape. A pony with wings, and a horn, just like Sunny's. But this pony also had a crown and a golden armored chestplate and shoes. And the mark on the crown, and on the pony's flank... it was the same as the mark on Sunny's battered blue carryall. The same as the mark she'd seen on the upper pane of the stained-glass doors in the old departure hall in Zephyr Heights -- a doubled star.
Sunny stared in awe at the face smiling down at her. It was familiar. She'd said goodnight to it, every night. To this pony and her five friends, the old wooden toys sitting on the shelf beside her bed.
"Twilight Sparkle?" Sunny gasped, her mouth hanging open.
Twilight smiled. "A pony who remembers me. I'm flattered." And then she paused, as if recalling something. "You know, it feels a little weird, being on the other end of that remark?" Smiling, she sat down on the soft lawn before the ruined lighthouse. Sunny hurriedly did the same, facing her. At the same time, she reached into her blue carryall for her journal, the one with Twilight's star on its cover.
"Oh. My. Gosh," Sunny said eagerly. "I have like, a gazillion questions. Why are you here? Is it part of the magic coming back? Where have you been all this time? Why did magic go away? What drove ponies apart, like this. What happened back then?"
To her surprise, Twilight looked grimly ashamed.
"I'm afraid that I did."
"You?" Sunny stared. "How?"
"I'm the Princess of Friendship," the lavender alicorn said. "Or I was, back then. And I like to think I was a very good one. I felt it was my duty to spread the magic of Friendship far and wide, to ponies and to other creatures as well. And with tons of patience and effort, I finally managed it. Ponies were at peace. There was no more needless fighting or even much bickering. We could devote our resources fully to learning and improving our skills, and to making life better for everypony. We traded ideas and inventions, almost more than food and gems, both amongst ourselves and with the other nations. It was, in a word... nice." She shrugged gently.
"But...?" Sunny asked uneasily.
"I forgot," Twilight answered, "that when ponies know nothing but peace and plenty, they start to take it for granted. They left all the hard work of friendship and the study of magic to me, the Princess of Friendship, and just got on with day-to-day living. Which isn't wrong in itself, except it meant that they no longer understood the true source of friendship."
"Ponies themselves." Sunny nodded. "Like we found out. But, you mentioned other creatures? Other nations? I've been wondering about that. I mean, the stories I've read about you and your friends, they mention all kinds of mythical creatures: dragons, griffons, manticores, bugbears, changelings, even crystal ponies. But there aren't any other lands, any other creatures. Just the three cities, where the three kinds of ponies live: Maretime Bay, Bridlewood, and Zephyr Heights."
Twilight nodded. "Equestria was a land of magic. As the magic faded, most of it slipped away and disappeared, leaving just a bare remnant behind. Your three cities are all that is left of the pony lands. And in another generation or two, who knows? Even this much might have slipped away as well. Your entire world might have simply disappeared. And you'd never even have noticed it."
Sunny goggled. "All because we forgot about magic? But how could that happen?" Sunny gestured to her own wings and horn, seemingly formed of magic itself. "How could we forget about something as wonderful as this?"
"Because, like friendship," Twilight said, "magic is hard. It takes patience and diligent work, even for some of the smallest effects. And after a while, ponies stopped seeing it as a pleasure, and felt it was more of a burden. They felt it was too difficult to be worth the time. And there were plenty of other distractions," she added wryly. "I may have had something to do with that as well. As ponies' learning and technological skills improved, their need for everyday magic fell by the wayside. Why bother with a luminance spell, when you can just flick a switch? And why bother actually going to see and talk to somepony in person, when you can just send them a text?"
"A what?"
Twilight eyed her. "Ask your friend Pipp. She's a natural." She sighed. "And over time ponies became too 'busy', too preoccupied, to maintain the open-mindedness and optimism and creativity that are so essential for magic... and for friendship. Over time, it all just quietly slipped away. When you don't know what it's like having a real friend, it's so much easier to be swayed by an influencer, or a demagogue -- or even just an aggressive bully running a tea-shop."
Sunny blinked in surprise. "You saw that?"
"Mm hmm. Nice dance moves, by the way."
"Thanks!" Sunny smiled. "But, when magic started disappearing, what did you do?"
"At first I didn't even notice it myself." Twilight looked sour. "It happened gradually enough that by the time I knew something was wrong, it was almost too late to act. And in my hurry to do so, I got it wrong. I thought if I could just bring the magic of the three tribes together and give it a tangible, visible focus, I could make it something to be proud of again, something ponies would want to learn about again... together."
Her horn glowed, and she waved a forehoof. In the air before them, three shapes appeared: a winged emerald, a spearhead sapphire, and a diamond lens. With another wave, they came together.
"The Friendship Gem," Twilight said, with wry pride, "a combination of crystals infused with the essence of the magic of all three tribes. Its gleam eternally symbolized the unification of pony magic and friendship. I brought it with me everywhere. Made sure ponies knew what it represented."
"And?"
Twilight rolled her eyes. "And... it became one more venerated symbol, much as I myself had become by that point. I was the Princess of Friendship, after all... but what did that have to do with the everyday concerns of ponies, trying to make a living in an increasingly complex, busy, and divided world?"
Twilight shook her head.
"In the end, I was almost too late. The pony tribes were already fractured, isolated from one another. The other lands and realms were already vanishing away, the magic fading. So I did the only thing I could do. I broke the Gem back into its constituent parts, returned them to my closest friends at the time, one pony from each of the three tribes. And I charged them with passing on what they knew of magic and friendship -- and with it, the gemstones, each of them carrying on the tradition amongst each of their tribes."
"The three pony cities..." Sunny nodded. "No offense, but from what my friends and I saw, it doesn't look like they did that great a job."
Twilight shook her head sadly. "They tried. The pegasus princess passed on the gemstone, but not the learning and scholarship behind it, so it ended up little more than a decoration for the royal crown. The unicorn artisan fell on hard times, and lost the gem in a bar bet. The scholar did somewhat better. He passed on his knowledge of history, and even the diamond gem, so that it ultimately came down to you -- though not the understanding of what it was, what it represented."
"Dad?" Sunny gaped. "He knew that gem was in my nightlight, all along? He gave it to me when I was just a little filly! Why didn't he tell me what it was?"
Twilight looked ashamed. "Because I told each of my friends not to. To pass on the gem to the most likely pony they knew without saying what it was, unless and until it became necessary to continue the tradition."
"Why?"
Twilight paused, trying to decide how to put it. "There's an old saying," she said at last. "A family's greatest treasure never enters through the front door. Can you tell me why?"
Startled, Sunny thought about it. "Because... if it's that great a treasure... then it was there all along?" Her eyes lit up. "Oh wait! Because something that important never comes from the outside -- because it can't!"
Twilight looked miffed. "I'm almost offended by how fast you got that. It took me days to figure it out when Princess Celestia hoofed it to me." Rolling her eyes, Twilight went on. "Yes, the thing about Friendship, true friendship, is that it can never be imposed from without. It has to come from within. From a real need for friends, the need to be with them and help them, and also to feel safe among them. It's not something you can teach. It's only something you can show, and encourage, by being a friend. By creating that safe space for a pony, within which true friendship can grow."
Sunny looked over her shoulder at the ruined lighthouse. "Dad sure did that. There wasn't a day living here that I didn't feel safe and loved. And now look at it."
"I am sorry about that," Twilight agreed.
"It's okay," Sunny said. "My friends are going to help me rebuild it. And now that we have magic again, it should be a lot easier, right?"
"Now that you all have magic." Twilight nodded. "Thanks to you and your friends. I'm glad you have them, by the way. Glad you all found each other. And I couldn't be happier, Sunny. You turned things around. I was pretty certain, even at the end, that one day I'd be sitting here, having this conversation with somepony. I just didn't know who it would be. And I'm so pleased that it was you: a bright, scholarly pony with loads of optimism. You remind me a lot of me, actually -- when I was closer to your age."
Sunny stared up at her. At her wings and her horn. "We're not... related somehow, are we?"
Twilight smiled, and reached a forehoof to stroke Sunny's mane. "Only in the way that a beloved story deserves to be retold, every now and again." Then she looked uncomfortable. "Just don't talk to me about 'A Hearth's Warming Tale'. Once ponies found out how much I liked it, I had to issue an edict having new productions of it banned. I mean, they were having hoof-fights over who deserved the award for Best Catering. Ughhh!"
Sunny laughed. She might be talking to a Princess, the Princess of Friendship herself, yet it felt completely comfortable, much like talking to a very old friend -- somepony that she knew and understood very well.
"So... what should we do now?" Sunny asked. "And what should I do with these?" She gestured to her own ethereal horn and wings.
Twilight shook her head. "That's not for me to say any more. Even if parts of the old world return, this is your world now. What you do with it is up to you -- and your friends."
Smiling, she stood up. Sunny quickly did likewise, looking wistful.
"Are you leaving again, so soon?"
"Don't worry," Twilight said. "I'm never very far away."
"But... why did you come back at all? Just to answer my questions?"
"In part," Twilight said. "But also, because it has been said that I will never outlive my friends. So I do need to keep making new ones. It's good to know you, Sunny."
"But... how will we find you again? Will you at least be around, in case we need advice?"
Twilight smirked, and gestured with a forehoof, at the journal still clutched in Sunny's hoof.
"What do you think?"
Sunny glanced down at the journal, at the golden double-star on its leather cover. Then she looked up again...
... at empty air. Looking up at the aurora-streaked night sky, Sunny thought she saw a whirling of brilliant sparks fading back into the overall glow, but she couldn't be sure.
And then a voice called out to her, up the path leading down towards the road.
"Sunny!"
It was Izzy, the purple unicorn, dancing along at the head of a crowd of ponies, some of whom were tugging wagons loaded with boards and paint and other supplies.
Izzy raced up and hugged Sunny tightly. The unicorn's bright blue mane was all but fizzing with excitement. "Did you have a good long think while we were away? What did you think about? Was it about us? Did you miss us? If so, you don't have to miss us any more, because we're all right here again!"
And so they were: Sheriff Hitch, the pegasus Princess sisters Zipp and Pipp. And also, it seemed, most of Maretime Bay. The townsponies stared in awe at Sunny -- mostly at the horn and wings, seemingly formed from magic itself.
"Seems like," Hitch said coolly, "having heard about what happened, in bits and pieces from each of us, everypony wanted to come up here and get the whole story, from the pony's mouth so to speak."
Amazed, Sunny stared around at the wide-eyed crowd, waiting breathlessly for her to speak.
Then, remembering what Twilight had told her, she made a point of motioning for her four friends to gather close around her.
"Well," she said to the crowd with a wide grin, "let us all tell you all about it..."
The End
My Little Pony: A New Generation, its characters and indicia are the property of Hasbro.
No infringement is intended. This story is a work of fan fiction, written by fans for fans of the series.
