Twilight saw the day coming long before it happened. So, of course, like she did with everything, she prepared.

She remembered, as a filly, pouting when Princess Celestia gently but firmly forbade her from entering the restricted sections of the royal library. The spells there, she’d told her, were complicated, and dangerous, and not in the fun way, like a puzzle to solve. They were the sorts of spells that even Celestia herself would only ever study, never cast, and nopony else was to lay eyes upon them.

The library, however, was no longer Celestia’s domain.

The spells were barely usable, mostly theory, and they were all only part of the equation--there were ways to make muscles clench and limbs move in some approximation of life, ways to force air into the lungs where there should be none, even spells to extend the beat of a heart--but if anypony had ever dared combine them into anything resembling true resurrection, they had never written it down.

Twilight, though, was a prodigy. Creating things that ought not be were a Tuesday’s work for her. If anyone could do the impossible, she could.

It took months. Tests upon tests that Fluttershy would never have allowed if she was around (most of the specimens were dead upon collection, at least) and time that she could have been spending with her, and guilt that tore her up inside as Rarity would ask her in a quavering yet still elegant voice to please, darling, come to bed, but it would all be worth it to make those months up in the end.

She was there to hold her the night it happened, and as she held Rarity close to her chest and felt her heartbeat slow and slow and stop--

Twilight gathered her magic, all of it, power she hadn’t used since Equestria had needed her as its stalwart defender, and pushed…

…until it beat again.

It had been one of her better works, Twilight thought. She considered recording her spell, for filling a gap in ponykind’s knowledge was always a worthy endeavor, but the amount of disparate threads involved meant it could only ever be cast by a unicorn with an enormous internal energy pool, and that sort were few and far between.

Even if the knowledge would be kept private, when Rarity took in a shuddering breath, her eyes fluttering open, streaks of violet once again balancing out the white in her mane (Twilight had woven in part of an age spell--not powerful enough to revert her back to the way she’d looked when they’d first met, but a way to shave off twenty years or so), Twilight knew every sleepless night had been worth it.

Obviously, right away she'd told Spike--she hadn’t wanted to say anything before she knew the spell would work, so as not to get his--or her own--hopes up, but she saw the joy on his face as he went to embrace Rarity, awkward with his larger size--

and froze when he did so, confusion and fear in his eyes.

Rarity hadn’t noticed, but after she bid Spike a cheerful farewell, Twilight took him aside.

“Look, ponies run cooler than dragons, obviously. But when I’d hugged her…she wasn’t just cool, Twilight. She was…cold. I’d never felt somepony so cold.”

A knot of dread formed in Twilight’s stomach, but she swallowed it down. So there were some kinks in the spell, maybe. Experimental magic was never perfect the first time.

She almost believed it, until what happened next.

With Rarity not confined to bed as much, she’d started working again. “The trends nowadays change so fast that an old mare like me can scarcely turn my head before the crowd has turned its gaze onwards, but I like to think my brand does speak for itself, these days,” she’d confessed to Twilight some time ago.

It was calming to Twilight to watch her, sitting nearby and reading while her wife sketched or attached gemstones. So she was there, of course, when it happened.

Rarity was hovering a needle over a garment, when her horn winked out, as if she’d shut the spell off herself. Her eyebrows furrowed in confusion, and she tried to pick it up again…

and again…

and again…

“Twilight,” she finally said softly, “I can’t do it.”

The knot of dread unfurled.

“Can’t do what?”

She indicated the needle. “I know I was levitating this only seconds before, and I know what a simple spell it is, but all of a sudden--I can’t remember how I did it. It’s as if there’s a hole where my knowledge used to be.”

She shivered.

“Dearest,” she said, “I’m so very cold.”

Once again, Twilight held Rarity close. “There has to be something I can do,” she said, desperately. “Maybe it was too much to ask, to preserve the physical form--I could extract your spirit, place it somewhere else, I could--”

“Please, darling. You’ve done all you can. It’s so very dark, and I am ready to rest.”

Twilight gave a great shuddering sob. “I’m not ready, though, Rarity. Please, it’s not fair, they’re all gone, Spike will need to hibernate soon, and why--why can I do everything else if I can’t do this?!?”

Rarity smiled kindly. “Truly, dearest, I wish I could stay, but…”

Her eyes fixed on a point past Twilight, in the corner of the room. “...I believe I’ve overstayed my welcome already. Besides, keeping you all to myself, while all our friends have gone…well…it would be rather selfish, wouldn’t it?”

Twilight exhaled, holding her closer. “Just…just ten more minutes, then. Please.”

Rarity nuzzled into the crook of Twilight’s neck, cold as marble. “How could I ever refuse?”

So Twilight tried to memorize every place she fit, listened to the lilt of her voice as she softly said to the corner of the room, “Hello, darlings, I’ll be along in a moment,” ran her hooves through her mane one last time…

and her heartbeat slowed and slowed and

Author's Note

raritwi is my favorite mane six x mane six ship but i'm told that does not prevent one from doing terrible things to them. hitting 1000 words exactly was tougher than i thought!! but maybe i'll write a comedy entry too so my only contribution isn't so depressing lmao. story and chapter title taken of course from one of my all time favorite poems, which may be too...hopeful? for this story, but of course we are in twilight's perspective and rarity may feel differently.