Killing Time

For a long moment, Rarity stared at the spot next to her front door where the centuries-old alicorn Princess of Friendship Twilight Sparkle had stood just moments before.

Or had she? Was this all a dream? A hallucination? She turned and looked at her kitchen table, where two half-drunk cups of tea sat.

She didn’t think so.

In fact she was quite confident the strange events of the past few hours had actually happened. She trusted her senses, and if nothing else she was completely unsurprised by the revelation that the quirky unicorn she’d helped save the world a few months ago eventually ascended to alicornhood and princesshood. She’d had a feeling since that first adventure together that Twilight Sparkle was destined for great things.

Rarity was pleased by this confirmation of her good judgment.

She gathered their teacups and moved them to the sink, carefully washing, rinsing, and drying each of them, before putting them away in their designated cabinet.

It would have been interesting to be friends with this new—well, old—Twilight. Rarity wondered if she would change her mind. She hoped she would.

Rarity turned around to go upstairs to her workroom and start designing Twilight’s coronation dress, but leapt backwards as a crack rent the still air of her foyer and Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship, fully grown alicorn, appeared before her.

“Are you serious about this?” demanded Twilight.

“Oh my stars!” gasped Rarity, falling back against her kitchen counter. “Twilight, you startled me!”

“What? Oh.” Twilight drew back. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, dear, it’s fine,” Rarity said, standing upright and shaking her head. “I did wonder if you might reconsider, I just didn’t expect it would be so soon.”

“It’s been six months.”

Rarity blinked.

“I did say this would be profoundly weird for you,” Twilight pointed out.

“Indeed,” Rarity managed. “Well, what’s six months against six centuries, I suppose? Happy belated birthday, by the way.”

“Thank you.”

“It took you six months to decide it was safe?”

“It took me six months to decide I was lonely enough to not care,” Twilight admitted after a moment.

Rarity’s heart twinged. The poor thing. A strange thought to have about an immortal alicorn goddess, she supposed.

“I’m still worried about that, though,” Twilight went on. “As much as I might want it not to be, this would be a two-way street. We can’t have a friendship without exchanging information. I’m inevitably going to leak data about future events to you. Stars, you’re going to end up learning things about me before you otherwise would through the natural course of your friendship with me. With past me. Er, present me. Young me. It’s going to influence our relationship—in my past and your future.”

“But you’ve made up your mind? You’re willing to risk that? You and I will attempt this friendship across time?”

A moment of pregnant silence passed before Twilight said, in a small voice, “Yes.”

Rarity smiled. “Then we haven’t anything to worry about.”

Twilight looked at her, plainly confused. “What do you mean?”

“Twilight, dear, if you’ve made up your mind that we’re going to attempt this, then there are only two paths forward: either we try and the friendship doesn’t work out, for whatever reason, or it does work out and we become fast friends—as I expect will be the case. But either case has already occurred in your past, and you are the product of your past. You standing here in this moment proves that everything works out fine, whether you and I become friends or not.”

Twilight squinted. “I’m still not sure that’s how time works.”

Rarity laughed and reached for the cabinet. “Well, let’s find out together. Tea?”

On her next visit, Twilight gave Rarity a journal, protected with thorough enchantments making it impervious to damage or decay, along with a matching protective box, similarly enchanted. When Rarity was free for a visit, she would write the date and time in the journal, and Twilight would appear at that date and time.

“I suppose it’s also enchanted to transmit to a matching journal in your time? When I write in mine, the text appears in yours?”

“Oh, nothing that complex. I could have entangled them, sure, but it was simpler and more straightforward to get information from the past to the future the old-fashioned way. I don’t have a copy of this journal—I have this journal. It’s six hundred and fifteen years old, and contains the dates and times between now and the end of your lifetime where you wanted to see me.”

“What? How did you get it? If you’ve had it all this time, you must have known all along this was going to happen—why all the angst about whether we became friends or not?”

Twilight shook her head. “I haven’t had it all this time. I came up with the idea yesterday, my yesterday, and decided where it would be safe for you to bury it in its protective box… later… so that it will survive into my present time. Then I went there and started digging and it was waiting for me. I went to my local stationery shop and found a matching journal, and had a matching box made, and enchanted them both and brought them here.”

“So you already know how many times you visit me.”

“I do.”

“But I presume you will not share that information with me.”

“I won’t, no.”

“Hmph. And I shall bury this at the appointed place for you to find in the far future.”

“Evidently, yes, since I’ve already recovered it in the future.”

“I shall bury it later,” Rarity said. “Before I die.”

Twilight paused. “Yes.”

“And you know when that will happen, but likewise will not share that with me.”

Twilight gave Rarity a level look. “Do you really want to know the exact date of your death now?”

“...No. No, I suppose not. You’ll just have to give me fair warning, hmm?”

“I spent the day at the library,” Rarity said.

“Do tell,” Twilight said.

It was another visit. They were in Rarity’s sitting room, with Rarity on her favorite divan and Twilight lounging on a large floor cushion. Between them on a low-slung table rested a wooden game board with a square grid of lines, onto which Rarity and Twilight took turns placing black and white stones as they chatted.

Twilight remembered how, centuries ago, Rarity had surprised her by already knowing how to play Go when Twilight had pulled out her board. Virtually no one else in Ponyville did. Her enigmatic smile at the time made more sense now.

“You got it into your head that we should exchange book recommendations,” Rarity said as she set another black stone on the board. “I think you were missing your unicorn friends back in Canterlot, and wanted someone to talk about books with.”

“I didn’t have any friends, unicorn or otherwise, back in Canterlot to talk about books with,” Twilight reminded her, clicking her own stone into place.

“Oh,” Rarity frowned, “that’s right, I’d forgotten. I’m already so used to being friends with you—well, past you—that it’s hard to picture you holed up in some castle tower all alone.”

“Not completely alone. I did have Spike.”

“Goodness, how is my little Spikey-wikey? I assume not so little anymore.”

“Very much not. He was fine the last time I saw him, though it’s been a while. He entered his first major hibernation phase at around his five hundredth year, and he was roughly the size of Applejack’s barn.”

Rarity blinked and looked over the board at Twilight, her next stone hovering in her magic. “You mean to say he’s been hibernating for over a century?”

Twilight took a moment to survey the board. “He has. I check in on him every few decades. I miss him, of course, but it is what it is.”

Rarity clicked her stone down thoughtfully. “I expect that doesn’t help with the loneliness.”

“It really doesn’t.” Twilight played her next piece and laughed somewhat helplessly. “I can’t imagine what he’ll say when he discovers how I’ve chosen to cope with it.”

They played in silence for a few turns.

“Yes, well. At any rate, I visited you in your library today, and I believe I surprised you.”

“Oh?”

“Quite. We were on our way to the fiction section to look for a thriller I thought you might enjoy—I do love a good political thriller, and you being from Canterlot and spending so much time around the royal court, you know—but on the way I happened to catch sight of a book I recognized and you were so taken aback you stopped dead in your tracks.”

Twilight grinned. “I think I remember the book you mean.”

“Right Angle’s Galloping Guide to Geometry. You said you didn’t expect a fashion designer such as myself to care about mathematics.”

“You explained that you’d once had a very involved design that you needed to get exactly right, so you spent a month teaching yourself advanced geometry and topology so you could figure out the best way to shape and join your materials.”

“I’m still quite proud of that piece. And I’ve used the techniques I developed in many since! That month was quite the worthwhile investment, if I do say so myself.”

“That was the first time I really understood how dedicated and passionate you could be about something important to you. It was very…” Twilight bit her lip and placed a stone. “Impressive. I gained a lot of respect for you that day. Today. Saw you in a new light.”

“Of course you did, darling. And now how’s this for earning a bit of respect?” Rarity laid a final black stone with a triumphant flourish of her horn. “Checkmate!”

Twilight stared down the board, then stared up at Rarity. “Okay, first of all, this isn’t chess. Second of all…” She narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure you’ve never played Go before?”

“Oh? Did I say I’ve never played before? Perhaps I neglected to mention the kirin exchange student we hosted for a year in my youth…”

Twilight was silent for a moment, processing this. “You did mention that. Six hundred years ago.” She began clearing the board and mumbled, “I thought you made it up to cover learning how to play from me, now.”

Rarity batted her eyelashes. “It’s nice to know I still have some surprises up my sleeve.”

Slowly, carefully, they settled into a routine.

If Rarity found herself with a spare half hour or afternoon or weekend, she would go to her bedroom, remove the enchanted box from its hiding place in the bottom drawer of her dresser, remove the enchanted journal from the enchanted box, and write the current date and time on the next blank line.

By the time she had put the journal away and returned downstairs, Twilight was waiting for her.

They would share a cup of tea, or Twilight would disguise herself so they could go for a walk, or even a longer jaunt out of town, as Rarity’s schedule allowed.

Over time Rarity developed little flourishes: writing not just the date and time but how long she expected the visit could last, perhaps a smiley face or a frowny one to indicate her mood so Twilight could be forewarned, a brief note on plans she might have for the visit so Twilight would know what to expect.

Sometimes, say when she was having a bad time and needed her older friend’s counsel, she had to resist the urge to write “urgent!” There was no need. She and the Twilight of the future were decoupled in time, and days, weeks, months, even years might pass for Twilight between their visits, but she always appeared precisely at the time Rarity wrote down.

“I cannot believe I ever considered you my friend,” Rarity said bitterly.

Twilight shrugged and held up the dress. “What can I say? I hadn’t been around you long enough to learn anything about fashion yet.” She eyed it critically. “Not your best work, is it?”

Rarity’s body remained motionless, draped in her sheer pink robe and shod in her fuzzy pink slippers, but her head rotated smoothly, dangerously, until her eyes locked onto Twilight’s. “Are you being serious right now?”

“I know, I know, you were just following your customer’s directions. It’s not your fault it’s so awful.” Twilight lifted the hem and let it go, watching it fall naturally into a most unflattering angle.

Somewhat mollified, Rarity returned to her dress form and the half-assembled workpiece on it.

“But really, who doesn’t know there are three stars on Orion’s Belt?”

“Get,” Rarity said. “OUT,” she roared, flinging a fuzzy pink slipper as hard as she could through the space Twilight had just been occupying.

She stood and seethed for a moment, then stomped out of her workshop. She stomped into every room upstairs and downstairs. She stomped outside.

No Twilight.

She stomped back into her boutique and up the stairs and to the dresser in her room and flung open the bottom drawer.

Below the previous line, she wrote the same date but a time ten minutes later and added, in angry block lettering, GET BACK HERE THIS INSTANT. She slapped the invulnerable journal back into its invulnerable box and hurled the invulnerable box back into its decidedly vulnerable drawer and as she slammed the drawer shut Princess Twilight Sparkle walked into the room.

Rarity glared at her. She was grinning.

“You, er, dropped this,” Twilight said, holding up a fuzzy pink slipper as the bedroom door swung shut behind her.

Rarity’s glaring continued unabated. She snatched the slipper with her magic and reshod her hoof with it.

“You seem to have broken your dresser,” Twilight said.

Rarity ignored the way the crooked drawer was hanging out of the shattered body of the dresser, and her glare sharpened to a knifepoint.

“Let me fix that for you,” Twilight said. “I think it’s the least I can do.”

“It is absolutely the very least you can do, yes,” Rarity said as gentle magic rewove the splintered timber and reseated the drawer on its guides and restored the wood’s polished finish.

“That wasn’t very kind of me,” Twilight said.

“Forcing me to make you a hideous dress six hundred years ago, or rubbing my snout in it just now?”

“Yes,” Twilight said.

“Quite right.”

“Friends can be difficult sometimes,” Twilight said. “And any friendship can have rough patches. But in my experience, with true friends, the benefits vastly outweigh the frustrations.”

Rarity grunted.

Twilight continued, “This was also a valuable learning experience for an up-and-coming fashionista, I think. The customer isn’t always right, even in matters of taste, and it’s okay for you, as a subject matter expert in this space, to push back. They aren’t just coming to you for your seamstress skills—impeccable as they are—but for your design expertise, which is vast, and growing every day.”

Rarity sniffed. “Yes. I suppose they are.”

“And it can be difficult to mix friends and work. It can require both sides to offer the other a little more grace than might otherwise be usual.”

Rarity snorted. “What in Equestria makes you think that you and the rest of our friends deserve any grace? My potential career is in tatters and I’ve been completely humiliated in front of the entire town. How am I supposed to go on from this?”

Twilight smiled. “I think all I’ll say is that we’re on our way over right now to try to demonstrate our remorse and make things right.”

“Tch. Of course you are. You’re all lovely ponies and I’m honored to be friends with each of you. But don’t think I shall let you off easy.”

“Of course not. And if we don’t grovel sufficiently, well, there’s always exile.”

“Hmm. Yes, there’s some merit there. Exile, if needs must. You will simply have to visit me wherever I end up.”

The bell on the boutique’s front door jingled—goodness, did I forget to close up shop? not that anyone would be calling on my services today anyway—and hoofsteps made their way up the stairs. Several sets.

“I think that’s my cue,” Twilight said. “You’ll have to let me know how it all works out.”

“Oh, as if you don’t already know. Now begone! Shoo!”

Twilight smirked and vanished as somepony knocked on her door. “Rarity? You okay in there?” Pinkie’s voice called out. “You haven’t come out for days!”

Rarity shook herself out, put on her most dramatic voice, and began pacing around her room. This called for a serious performance.

“I’m never coming out! I can’t show my face in Ponyville ever again! I used to be somepony. I used to be respected! I made dresses—beautiful, beautiful dresses…”

One day found them strolling through the Whitetail Woods, Twilight back in her disguise, both of them chatting about this or that.

Another found them catching the train to Canterlot for the weekend to take in a show Rarity had always wanted to see and Twilight had never gotten around to.

The next found them staying in, a half-hour catch-up over tea at Rarity’s kitchen table.

Rarity gossiped about their friends, events and drama that Twilight remembered, or had forgotten about, or even had never known about in the first place.

Twilight vented about her royal duties in the future, the ins and outs of palace intrigue and nobles bickering and treaty negotiations. Rarity offered advice and suggestions, and marveled at how nothing seemed to change in that regard.

Time—days and months and years for Rarity, years and decades and centuries for Twilight—rolled on.

“I’ve realized something… odd,” Rarity said.

They were playing Go again. Twilight tried harder now that she knew Rarity wasn’t a novice, especially since Rarity had won the last half-dozen games this year. Not that Rarity was counting.

“Mmm?” Twilight said, staring at the board, deep in thought planning her next sequence of moves.

“I believe I have a crush on you,” Rarity said.

Twilight nodded absentmindedly and placed a stone.

“Not you as such, I should clarify,” Rarity said, placing her own stone. “My you. The you of my time. Young you.”

“Uh-huh,” Twilight said, frowning at the board.

“It really sort of crept up on me, but we were having lunch together today and I looked over at her—you—her, and she was laughing over her alfalfa sandwich at a story I’d just finished, and I realized I was feeling something… more than friendship, you know?”

“Mm-hmm,” Twilight said, finally playing another stone.

Rarity dropped hers onto the board with barely a thought. “The thing of it is, I can’t decide if it’s a feeling I should act upon or not.” She watched Twilight’s eyes flick from stone to stone. “I would have thought… if there was anything to this… that you might have mentioned it, sanctity of the timeline or not. Perhaps it’s a passing crush that either I never pursued or I did pursue and the result was so forgettable that it’s completely slipped your mind, centuries later.”

Twilight set a stone on an intersection, looking relieved, but Rarity immediately played one in return and Twilight slumped, frowning again.

“Or perhaps I do pursue it, and we fall in love, and it’s such a profound experience for you that you can’t bear to speak of it to me, lest you inadvertently muddle the timeline and separate us forever.”

Resolve flooded Twilight’s face, and with a satisfied “ha!” she placed a stone. Grinning, she looked up at Rarity. “Sorry, what was that?”

“Never mind, dear. Just thinking out loud.”

Rarity burst into the boutique, her face flushed with triumph, and skidded to a halt at the sight of Princess Twilight Sparkle sitting in her living room.

“You!” she said.

“Not like you to be late to one of our visits,” Twilight said, an enigmatic smile floating across her face. “Looked all over the boutique for you. Very strange.”

“Hah! Yes! Well! I pre-scheduled the visit earlier today and then a prior engagement ran longer than I expected!” Rarity flipped her mane over her shoulder. “But then, you already knew that, didn’t you?”

Twilight put her eyebrows up. “Why, whatever do you mean, Rarity?” She leaned closer. “Do you have something to share, some bit of news?”

Rarity closed the distance and fell upon her alicorn friend, pummeling every inch of her that she could reach with her hooves. “How—could—you—not—tell me!” she cried, punctuating each word with a strike.

Twilight giggled and ignored the assault, which only led Rarity to redouble her efforts, and finally Twilight was forced to ignite her horn and lift Rarity away, leaving her flailing wildly—and harmlessly—in midair.

“I cannot believe you!” Rarity orbited slowly around the room. “Do you have any idea how stressful this has been for me? The anxiety? You could have prevented that!”

“You know I won’t tell you things like this,” Twilight said. “You know I can’t.”

“You certainly could!” Rarity felt the fight going out of herself somewhat, and Twilight seemed to recognize it, for she found herself gently floating back down to the floor.

“I couldn’t,” Twilight said softly. “If I’d told you this, then we could never have known for sure if it was only happening because I told you it was supposed to happen. You had to choose. You had to make the leap.”

“Hmph! I still think you made this needlessly difficult for me.”

“This has been difficult for me too, you know! Stars, it’s been hard to not leak this one. Very… very hard.” She stretched and made a relieved noise. “One less big secret to keep on my end, though. That’s quite the load off.”

Rarity narrowed her eyes. “Yes. I suppose I can see that. I suppose—” She paused as a memory came back to her. “That’s why…” she said.

Twilight blinked. “What’s why?”

“Your first visit. Your first trip here. You visited all the others… and saved me for last… and when you… laid eyes on me…”

Rarity watched the much older version of her brand-new marefriend blush and break eye contact.

“Twilight Sparkle,” she said with a sly grin. “Are you still in love with me?”

The Princess of Friendship, staunch defender of Equestria and nearing a millennium old, stammered awkwardly.

“Twilight,” Rarity said, her grin fading. “Truly? Even now? There’s been no one else?”

She shrugged helplessly. “What can I say? They broke the mold when they made you.”

“Well, yes, quite so, but even still… I’m… I’m flattered, I suppose. Goodness. A love for the ages, are we?”

“I thought so,” Twilight said quietly.

“No pressure, then.” Just a hint of anxiety colored her voice.

Twilight’s eyes found hers and she spoke seriously. “There is no pressure. It isn’t a destiny you need to live up to, it’s a foregone conclusion. Just do whatever feels natural to you in the moment, and everything will work out fine.”

Rarity nodded slowly. “Everything will work out fine.”

Rarity hummed as she bustled about her kitchen. She had decided to surprise Princess Twilight with a home-cooked meal, and to save herself from fiddling with the journal in the middle of plating her famous mushroom spaghetti with marinara and garlic bread, she’d prefilled it before she started cooking. Twilight should be here just about—

There was an echoing pop in the foyer. Twilight had been getting better at her time-travel spell, so her re-entry was getting more efficient, but that sounded louder than Rarity expected these days. She turned and almost dropped her ladle.

Princess Twilight Sparkle was standing in her foyer, staring at… Princess Twilight Sparkle.

“What are you doing here?” said Princesses Twilight Sparkle.

“Oh, I remember this time,” said the one on the left.

“What are you talking about?” said the one on the right.

“I’ve been wondering when this would happen.”

“We forgot to mark off one of the visits in the journal, didn’t we.”

“Must have. I thought the date looked familiar…”

In unison, they looked each other up and down. In unison, they nodded. In unison, they lifted a hoof, reaching for the other…

Rarity cleared her throat. “Excuse me.”

In unison, Princesses Twilight Sparkle paused and turned to look at her.

“You’re certain that it’s safe to touch one another? The universe won’t, I don’t know, self-annihilate when identical atoms come into contact with themselves?”

Princesses Twilight Sparkle returned their focus to each other, then each other’s hoof. “Probably not,” they said.

“Still, perhaps just in case it would be better to not?” They looked reluctant and Rarity rolled her eyes. “At least do it on your own time. Preferably far in the future. Away from my boutique.”

Begrudgingly, the princesses dropped their hooves.

“Now, will one of you be returning home, or shall I set an extra place? I believe I have enough for a third serving…”

“Best not,” said the one on the right.

“I knew you were going to say that,” said the one on the left.

“Yes, obviously. Are you going to go, then? You’re the one who shouldn’t be here.”

“Hey, I’m not the one who forgot to check off this visit, you did!”

“Which also means you did.”

“Yes but you forgot more recently.”

“Oh, get out of here.”

The Princess Twilight Sparkle on the left grinned, waved, and disappeared.

“That was something,” Rarity said.

“I bet she thought she was so clever, trying to double dip on a home-cooked meal,” Twilight said. “That smells very good.”

Rarity beamed. “I should hope so! It is, of course, delicious. Come, come, sit.”

They sat and Rarity slid two steaming bowls of pasta onto the table. “It looks very good too,” Twilight said.

“But of course. Presentation is key.”

They ate in companionable silence for a few minutes, Twilight making appreciative noises with every bite.

“It’s a shame,” Rarity said.

“Hmm?” Twilight mumbled.

“Why, if she’d stayed,” Rarity winked and took a sip of her wine, “just imagine what I could get up to with two of you.”

Twilight choked on her spaghetti.

“Goodbye, dear!” Rarity called, waving to her wife. “Have a safe trip!”

Twilight Sparkle waved back as she flew away. Rarity wondered how long it would take her to get used to having wings. It had been years now but she still walked almost everywhere, out of habit. She probably would have today if she hadn’t been running late.

Rarity shut the door and immediately went upstairs and scribbled an entry in the journal. When she came back down, Twilight was setting up the Go board in her sitting room.

“Fancy running into you here,” Rarity said as she dropped onto her chaise longue.

“Indeed,” Twilight said as she organized the black and white stones into clean rows before each of them. “How’s your day going?”

“Fine, fine. Just bade you farewell on another of your diplomatic missions. My big important princess.”

Twilight snorted and selected her first stone. “I hated going on those. Well, not hated. Obviously I missed my friends, and my wife,” she said with a furtive glance across the board that Rarity politely chose to ignore, “and I didn’t like being away from home so much, but I did enjoy the work itself most of the time. It felt like it really… mattered, you know?”

“Of course it did,” Rarity said as she played her first stone. “It felt that way because it did really matter. It was important!”

“You know,” Twilight said, snapping her next stone down, “I can’t remember if I ever said this at the time, but I really appreciated how supportive you were about me having to go off all the time and leave you here alone.”

“It was nothing, dear.” Rarity played her next stone, and then Twilight hers, and they went back and forth several times while Rarity watched Twilight with a little grin.

Halfway to placing her next stone on the board, Twilight sat bolt upright, her eyes snapping to Rarity and her jaw dropping open.

“There it is,” Rarity said.

“You were never alone!” Twilight almost shouted, half accusing, half astounded. “Were you? Every time I left on one of those sunforsaken missions, you just trotted upstairs and invited me over and I showed right up!”

“Twilight, really,” Rarity said, leaning over to pat her cheek, “how else was I supposed to pass the time? Making dresses? Please. Why spend that time alone when I could spend it with my very good friend, Twilight Sparkle?”

She leaned back in her seat and contented herself with watching Twilight sputter quietly to herself for a moment before flashing her most winning smile.

“Ahem. Your turn, I believe.”

Twilight stood at the door to the boutique, her hoof on the handle. “You’re sure you’re feeling all right?” As an alicorn princess, Twilight Sparkle did not grow ill and, possibly, did not age.

Rarity was not an alicorn princess.

“I will be fine, darling,” Rarity lied. “As an old friend of ours used to say, this is not my first rodeo. You go off to your diplomatic function and I shall hold down the fort here at home.”

Relief and reluctance warred on Twilight’s face. “You’ve taken your medication?”

“And done my morning exercises. You mustn’t worry so,” Rarity said. Because you’re not supposed to stay here this weekend. She put on her most charming smile. “You have important work to do, and I will be just fine.”

Twilight bit her lip. “You’re sure?”

Rarity nodded solemnly. “I am sure.”

Twilight turned to face the door as though she was finally about to leave, then spun back and cantered over to sweep Rarity up into a hug. “Okay. If you say so. I love you, Rarity.”

Rarity giggled and hugged her back. “I love you too, my beloved Twilight.”

With utmost care, Twilight set her back down, then bent to give her one last kiss goodbye. Rarity let her eyes drift shut and savored it for a moment, before pushing her wife away. “Go! You’re going to be late for your train.”

“The thing about being a princess on the way to an important diplomatic function is,” Twilight said with a lopsided grin, “the train waits for me.” She sighed. “But the conference won’t. I’ll be back tomorrow. Try not to have too much fun without me this weekend?”

“I shall do my level best,” Rarity assured her. “And don’t forget I’ve invited Cadance to visit on Monday so you have that to look forward to as well. Now go on!”

Twilight pouted, and Rarity had to chuckle at the image of an alicorn princess pouting at being ordered around by a mere mortal like her, and nodded. “Okay. And yes, that will be nice.”

I really rather suspect it won’t be.

They both walked to the door, and Twilight opened it, and bent to kiss Rarity one more time on the cheek, then turned and strode outside and launched herself smoothly into the air, heading for the train station.

She looked back over her shoulder and waved, and Rarity waved back, and kept waving until her Twilight had disappeared from sight, and then she stepped back and shut the door before leaning against it and breaking into tears.

To think, that had been their last goodbye. She would never see her Twilight again. The young one was on a train, leaving her, and the old one was even further away, off in the distant future. The young one would return tomorrow afternoon and find her wife’s body in bed, quiet and still. The old one would still be haunted by it.

She’d done what she could, there—Cadance would already be on her way, not knowing Rarity had arranged the visit so as to ensure Twilight had some small measure of extra support in the first days of processing her grief—but otherwise, that was that.

Rarity gathered herself, dried her tears, and headed upstairs.

It took quite a lot of alcohol to affect an alicorn, but Rarity had experience in these matters, and on one of the elder Twilight’s recent visits, she had plied the ancient alicorn with spirits in a volume carefully calibrated to make her most suggestible.

Delicately, ever so delicately, she had extracted a few vital items of foreknowledge that she was tired of insisting she was ready to know.

Most importantly, the date and manner of her death: tomorrow, and old age. She had always thought that “old age” was just what the coroner wrote when they couldn’t be bothered to do a proper examination on a senior pony who’d given up the ghost, but as the time drew nearer she’d reconsidered.

She was, objectively speaking, healthy for a unicorn mare of her advanced age, yet she couldn’t help but acknowledge a weakness growing in her bones, sneaking up on her, sapping her spirit. Perhaps she really was just too old.

Twilight had always refused to share the details of Rarity’s death with her out of fear she would spiral and hyperfocus on it, but on the contrary: receiving confirmation that she was in fact dying and wasn’t imagining things had been a huge load off her mind. She felt free and content, and grateful to know exactly how much time she had left. She used it to quietly get her affairs in order, write letters to ponies important to her she couldn’t visit in person, and spend as much time as possible with Twilight. Both of them.

In the course of convincing an inebriated Twilight of the future to talk about her death, Rarity had also found out a few ancillary details: she died alone at home in their bed, and Twilight still had not managed to forgive herself for missing it.

That regret, overflowing in Twilight’s heart, had dashed any hope Rarity had that the Twilight of the future would use her time travel spell to come… see her off, as it were. She would not still be so upset with herself thousands of years hence otherwise. Rarity truly was going to die alone, and she had made her peace with it.

And then, a week ago, when she’d been inviting the Twilight of the future to what she supposed might be their last visit, she’d turned the page—the last page in the journal; conveniently enough it had contained just enough room for every visit in her lifetime—and discovered something new, written on the inside of the back cover in violet ink:

A date, a depth, and directions.

Today’s date.

Rarity opened the bottom dresser drawer, extracted the enchanted journal in its enchanted box from its hiding place, and slid it into her waiting saddlebags, which she had packed last night while Twilight had been distracted preparing for her keynote speech at this weekend’s event.

Cinching them to her body, she made her way back downstairs and out the door, and set off in the direction of the Everfree Forest.

Perhaps an hour later, a bit after noon, she came upon an empty clearing and inspected it carefully. She had copied the directions from the back of the journal to a spare leaf of paper for easy reference, and she was confident she had followed them correctly. Besides, if she hadn’t, Twilight would never have found the journal in the future and none of this would have happened anyway.

The directions ended at a boulder on the other side of the clearing, jutting out from the ground at an oblique angle. She picked her way across the open ground to it, then lit her horn and carefully began excavating the soil below the leeward side of the boulder.

Ten feet, the journal had said.

She was sweating more than she would have liked by the time she reached that depth, and took a break to drink from a canteen she pulled from her saddlebags, and to rest amongst the mounds of dirt she’d created. If only Applejack could see her getting her hooves dirty now!

Finally, she felt up to standing again, and drew the enchanted box out. She stood at the edge of the hole she’d created and flipped the box open, and took one last look at the journal she’d been writing in and thinking about for almost eighty years.

Giving in to a sudden urge, she bent and pressed her lips to the front cover, then shut and sealed the box and floated it down to the bottom of the hole. With a sigh, she began transferring the loose dirt back into the hole, tamping it down securely as she went.

Dropping soil into a hole took less effort than dragging it out, but she was still spent by the time the hole was filled in. She took another break to rest and rehydrate herself, then packed up her bags and began the long trek back to the boutique, looking forward to nothing more than a long, hot shower and the comfort of her bed.

When she arrived, now in the late afternoon, she felt thoroughly drained. No wonder this is my last day, she thought to herself. She’d barely even managed a jaunt into the Everfree. Why, in her youth she would have thought nothing of galloping there and back.

Wasted on the young, she supposed.

She dropped her saddlebags inside the front door, and made her way into the kitchen on shaky legs. A snack and a drink before her shower, she thought. A tall glass of cool water and an apple or two sounded heavenly. Not that the apples were as good as the ones from her youth, though Applejack’s daughter was no slouch and very nearly managed to keep up her mother’s and great-grandmother’s standards of excellence.

The refreshments and break in the kitchen restored much of her strength, and her legs did not shake as she climbed her stairs for what she knew was likely the last time. Yes, a shower and then bed, she thought. Lovely.

She took her time in the bathroom, luxuriating in the shower, sitting at her vanity and applying her favorite face cream, lightly oiling her hooves. She almost felt like a new mare, except of course she was a very old mare. It only took a glance in the mirror to remind her of that.

She’d had a good life. It almost felt like she’d had two lives, a hoof in the present and a hoof in the future. She hoped she’d done a suitable job keeping the two separated.

Too late now, at any rate.

She put out the lights in the bathroom and returned to her darkened bedroom. She’d left a lone lamp burning on her nightstand to guide her way now.

I so would have liked to see Twilight again, one last time, before…

Ah, well.