It was a deep brown morning, dark and oily. The new moon rolled in its empty socket, murky like muddy water. Not a single star shone through the thick twisted canopy.
Twisted thin black fingernail-like trees rap against the wind, sparse ashy leaves droop down with a smoker's sorrow. The gnarled branches hold up the snow-bound sky, so dark against the white it’s black to the eye. They whistle and howl, clawing against invisible foes.
Fresh snow falls on snow already fallen. Crisp dunes of white that pile into mounds untreaded, before being squashed and swept under the hooves of a caravan slowly pushing their way through the once untouched beauty.
If anyone had bothered to ask Twilight why they had traveled here of all places — of which they had several times to themselves — all they would receive is a shrug and a ‘It feels like I should be here,’ before she went back to ignoring the whispers of calling her an insane mare.
Despite the sun only just cresting over morning, they had decided to pause to survey the landscape to whichever way they were traveling, though Twilight had tried to poorly disguise it as a ‘rest.’ That had only worked a few days into their trip, now several weeks later, only the princess seemed fooled by her own words, and even that confidence had begun to wane.
Twilight paced just outside the wagon circle, not even the flickerings of light touched her coat, compass in hoof she frowned over the spinning red needle. Moving back and forth and back and forth to try and get it to work before groaning in frustration and hitting it to get it unstuck.
With a quiet clink, the needle spun back into place for a brief, tantalizing moment, before suddenly snapping off its center and limply hitting the glass face.
Twilight tried to bottle her rage but exhausted and annoyed she let the anger out, throwing the compass in a glorious arch, like doves at a wedding, before sailing straight into the trunk of a tree, breaking into a million pieces.
Frustration turned to more anger, mostly directed at herself, before letting it sizzle out in the snow with a deep breath that came out like dragon’s smoke.
Resigned to her outburst, she walked over to the tree and began to paw at the snow, trying to find all the pieces to her compass when something other than anger-tossed metal caught her eye.
A wall of white light gleamed from the other side of the tree, not at all unusual in a snow dipped forest, but with the sun still chipping away at the night sky, Twilight found this strange sight, not at all touched by the rising golden rays, questionable.
Suddenly, golden light, so bright it nears white, blinds them. Blinking away the dots that fill their view, they find themselves transported to a clearing, a lush oasis that never could have survived without magical influence.
Swaths of fruits and vegetables of every known color burst from the dirt, hanging off knotted vines, plump with their sweet meat as they sweat under an overbearing sun. This was the fruit Hades would hang just out of reach of Tantalus. Perfect for both a king's gilded plate and a peasants' muddy fist.
And there, tucked like a first-lover’s bouquet in the crook of an elbow, was a small, teeth-yellow cottage, next to a babbling brook.
All Twilight could do was stare. What else could she do? Scream? Jump for joy? Maybe the snow they had melted into water had some sort of effect on her. She definitely should turn back, clearly she’s finally lost it.
So turning around, firmly in the knowledge that, yes, she has finally gone off her rocker and that this was a bad idea, Shining, you were right, the sound of crunching leaves made her ears twitch.
And really, what else could she do but turn around and see what else her mind has decided should be part of her descent into madness.
To be honest she didn’t expect a mare. Her mother perhaps, yes, maybe even Celestia or Cadance, hell maybe even Luna! But not a random mare.
Said random mare, ignoring the personified fit of hysteria at the edge of her garden, took a green watering can in her mouth and began to tend to her crops.
There were a lot of things Twilight wanted to say at that moment, a lot of things she probably should have said, but all she could come up with was— “Why don’t you use your horn to hold the can?”
The mare, not even bothering to turn at her solicitor’s question, responded thus. “I prefer to get my hands dirty.” Pause. “Hooves, I mean.”
Then she returned to her garden. As if Twilight was an errant fly that needed to be shooed away for a moment.
Suddenly remembering her manners, Twilight shook her head clear, cleared her throat, and took on the ‘princess voice’ that sounded a bit too much like her mother answering the door.
“Um. Hello! Ma’am?” She took a cautious step forward, silently marveling at how soft the grass felt after weeks of ice and snow. “My name is-“
“There is nothing for you here, Twilight Sparkle.” The mare interrupted, trading the watering can for a pair of shears. “There hasn’t been for a long time.” She snipped the edge of a torn off with a precision of a mare twice her age.
Twilight watched her work for a moment, the orange of her coat almost blending in with the sunrise. “…How do you know my name?”
The mare sighed, world-weary, and set her sheers aside to look at Twilight properly. When their eyes met Twilight’s breath stalled: the blue-green color dappled by bits of golden light, like leaves floating on a nature reclaimed pool. It made Twilight ache terribly for a home she had never been too except in dreams and moments of déjà vu.
“What are you?” The words spilled out as she thought them, before even thinking of stopping them. Twilight tried to back peddle, crashing and burning over her words to try and bring some semblance of coherence back into the conversation.
The mare just smiled. Chuckling to herself like reading an old book you knew all the jokes too. She spread her arms wide and in a grandiose manner that was clearly only funny to those who knew it’s joke.
“This,” she began. “Is the end of all things. Forgotten things. Things you outgrow, move on from, or even… purposely lock away. This, Twilight Sparkle,” the mare murmured, leaning in uncomfortably close. “Is my home.”
The mare cackled, clearly pleased with this inside joke she had spun around Twilight, before settling herself back up straight.
“I…” Twilight fought to even think. “I don’t know what to say to that.”
The mare shrugged, clearly not caring to explain any of her insane proclamation, and turned around towards her cottage.
Twilight watched her trot off for a moment, before suddenly remembering she was actually here and not just imagining a story from a book in her head, and scrambled after.
Coming to a stop just a few paces from the front door, Twilight stood behind the mare, taking note of the large gashes that seeped down her back in twin healthy pink scars.
Taking in more of her surroundings, Twilight arched her neck up to peer at the brook that sat behind the well-loved home. Not expecting the red water that ran fast and thick against stones and twigs. But despite only taking a quick look, Twilight saw no fish. None. Not a hint of life besides the occasional leaf that fell into the waters greedy clutches.
“Could you get that for me?” The mare pointed up at her roof, where just the edge of an instrument could be seen. “I threw it up there when I got mad a few days ago but now I can’t reach it.”
Twilight nodded, mostly acting on autopilot, unfurling her now thawed out wings, and gently flew up the roof.
True to the mare’s word (Twilight should really get her name) there was an old battered guitar, with a mishmash of stickers splattered across it. Some were in Equish, others were in some sort of angular symbols that made Twilight’s head hurt looking at.
Floating back down, Twilight hoofed over the guitar to the giddy mare that looked like Pinkie on caffeine. Giving her privacy to baby-talk to the instrument, Twilight gave another once over to the garden around them, particularly to the river.
“Don’t you worry about the river? It could flood at any moment.”
The mare scoffed. “Princess, when death comes for me, I will sit him down and tell my story, twice over so that he can remember it, for I have lived a life that will stall even death at my door.”
She settled herself on a log turned bench, cradling the guitar in one hoof as she pointed out at the red waters with the other.
“So no, the river does not scare me. You know there’s an old saying back home, you might’ve heard it before: ‘There won’t be a puddle you can sail in between here and Nova Scotia except the River Styx.’ Well.” She laughed to herself quietly. “Nobody can claim I do anything by halves.”
Twilight waited for the other shoe to drop. She waited, and waited until she finally realized it wasn’t happening. “You mean to tell me that, that, is the River Styx?” She pointed an incredulous hoof at the river. “No pony has ever found it!”
“Forgotten things, forgotten things,” the mare hummed.
Twilight stood at the edge of the river. The River. The one that's said to ferry off the dead for judgment. Its red color makes sense now, if a tad gruesome. She backed away once she realized that not even her reflection could survive the waters.
“I tried to stop it, you know? Live with it.” She plucked a few strings, before tuning it at the other end. I used pictures, videos, hell even got Spike involved. But that damn stone…” she shook her head with an old, muted fury. “She just kept using it, over and over again, and I knew it’d start to affect their health, so I left. I thought maybe coming here would be better, at least some people- ponies, would remember me.”
She stopped plucking for a moment, looking over the red river that raged through the slice of grass she had cultivated.
She turned back to the guitar, tremors shaking her hooves. “…but not even here was safe from that stone’s influence. Like the universe snapped up a me-sized hole like a water to a ditch… I guess I should have seen it coming.” She hung her head low, finally picking a beautiful sounding set of cords. “Nothing good never lasts forever, especially for Sunset Shimmer.”
Wait. Twilight knew that name. From a book maybe? No, the newspaper? Not that. Celestia sake, the library catalogs? Where in the world had she heard that name before?
Then it hits her. A portrait shunted to the back of a forgotten broom closet in Canterlot Castle. The edge of a fiery orange mare’s hoof peeked out from under a tarp, a name scrawled in the corner sucker punches Twilight back into the present.
Yes. She knew Sunset Shimmer. Somehow. How could she have forgotten her?
“Twilight.” Sunset looked down at her, balancing the guitar on her lap as she strummed a few curious cords. “I appreciate you coming. It means more than you’ll ever know. But… it's time for you to go.”
“Wait-“ Twilight tried to fight back, to say she knew her, she remembered, she didn’t mean to forget, she swore, but it was too late.
Sunset began singing. As sweet and cruel as time, the words neither lept or fell from her lips, they simply bloomed in the air, as if they had always existed and she just simply plucked them from the air itself.
She sang until her voice was as unfamiliar as an overused word in Twilight’s ears.
And with every passing moment, a light grew and grew, it grew until it blinded Twilight and all she could hear was the distant sound of guitar strings humming.
Then nothing.
“Princess?” A voice called out. The travel guide she has hired back in the Crystal Empire her brain supplied. Cadance had introduced them. “Princess, are you alright?”
She licked her chapped lips, the taste of home coming to her like a dream, and never once looked away from the clearing that had turned back into densely wooded hills. “How much food do we have left?”
“Er,” the guide mumbled, thrown off by the question. “Three weeks worth give or take?”
Twilight did some quick math in her head before turning around, and giving the guide a small smile, one she hadn’t worn since saying goodbye to her friends. The taste of salt dried on her tongue as she spoke. “It’s time to go home.”
And she walked back into the snow, heart a little heavier, humming the tune to a forgotten song.
