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2. Chapter Starlight 1869

Sunday, 20 June, 1108

(Spell diagram for my Revelation spell. Work in progress.)

The Summer Sun Celebration is tomorrow.

Today, Starlight finished her new spell.

Also Double Diamond has left The Village.

As soon as she discovered this fact, Starlight used Communion to speak with DD.

“Why did you go, Double Diamond?” she asked.

“Didn’t I tell you?” Double Diamond replied. “I’m going to Canterlot, to convince Princess Celestia to give up her cutie mark. She’s been working too hard, and she deserves to rest. The unicorns can take over moving the sun and stuff, like you said.”

“Oh,” Starlight said. She considered telling him to come back home. She didn’t see his chances of convincing the Princess as being very high. However, he had the right to try, and it was not like he was going to be thrown into the dungeon for suggesting it. “Very well,” she said.

“Would you like me to visit Rosemary while I’m in Canterlot?” Double Diamond had asked.

“No!” Starlight exclaimed. “I’ve already corresponded with her. I think she will be fine.”

Starlight had told Double Diamond of her attempted reconciliation with Rosemary…and nothing else.

“I will attempt to contact you nightly at sunset, to see if anything bad has happened to you,” Starlight told him. “You do not need to respond. Other than Fridays.”

“I’ll give you updates whenever I can,” DD told her.

“Very well. Have a pleasant journey.”

She ended the spell, fed and refreshed herself, and used a cart to move her things into the cave. It only made sense: from here, she could easily see the arrival of new potential Followers. And she could test and refine her new spell.

When she got to the cave, she put off her first test of Revelation, instead inspecting the marks in the Vault and recalling what she knew of each pony. But this was merely because she knew what to come would be painful.

Finally, she lay out a sleeping bag and curled herself prone upon it so her cutie mark was in her sight. And she cast the spell upon it…

(How I remembered it.)

Sunburst and I once did everything together. In fact, I don’t remember us ever being apart. Until that fateful day. I was trying to see how high I could stack all the books in my father’s private library. The tower grew too high for me to control, and it fell, right towards me. One book knocked me out, but Sunburst was able to catch all of the others, a bigger magical feat than he had ever been capable of before. He then sorted the dozens of books and re-filed them with his magic, without even a thought. A sudden glow signaled the arrival of his new cutie mark: the sun, so bright it blinded the intellect.

He went to show his new mark to his parents. And just like that, my friend was gone. His family recognized his magical talent and sent him off to Canterlot. I never saw him again.

And do you know why? Because of his cutie mark! He got his, and I didn’t! He moved on…and I didn’t.

I never did move on from that moment. Instead, it all built up: The schoolponies teasing me for being a “blank flank”. Sunburst leaving me for the destiny his mark gave him. Mom leaving us for the big city, for the fame and glamor that her mark promised her. Dad being completely worthless, because of a mark that made him care more about books than ponies. All of my problems. They were all caused by cutie marks. Cutie marks were the cause of all misery in the world! All of it! And I alone could save equinity by removing them all!

In a hail of metaphorical lightning bolts—actually my first migraine—I gained my cutie mark, and my ability to take away the cutie marks of others.

With the Revelation spell, Starlight was able to see the two parts of her cutie mark origin story: Sunburst’s departure, and the moment she actually gained her mark.

Both of these moments had been obscured to her when they happened. She had only learned the story of how Sunburst got his mark from his mother after he had left Shire’s Hollow forever. And she had been so overwhelmed with emotion at the moment of markdom that her perception of reality had completely broken down. But now she could observe them from outside herself.

On the first pass, it all appeared to happen as she had experienced it. Including the lightning bolts.

This…was strange. She got up, walked over to the bench, and got to work on diagnostics. She wished that Double Diamond hadn’t left, so that she could use him as a second data point. But the spell’s effects were definitely 1.0 relative to Equestrian reality. The lightning bolts striking her noggin were real.

She laid back down again, summoned up the viewing window, and watched that part again. It was stormy that day, with both thunder and lightning very nearby. The other ponies had sensibly retreated to shelter, but young Starlight was too preoccupied to notice. Until the moment she was struck. There was a strange magic building at the tip of her horn…

With a shrug, the watching Starlight decided to accept it. Stranger things were known to happen. There was plenty of pegasus blood in her lineage. And pegasi were known to shrug off lightning strikes on a regular basis. No, the more-important part of Starlight’s cutie mark story was the first part, with Sunburst. So she went back to that.

(What actually happened.)

On this second viewing, Starlight no longer paid any attention to her filly self. No, her eyes were all on Sunburst. And what she saw shook her. When he saw that Starlight had been struck, he caught all the books by instinct. And then, when he saw that he was alone in the room, he changed. The emotion completely dropped out of his face, out of his eyes. Leaving absolutely nothing. He turned his attention to the cloud of floating books, and studied them with those cold, dead eyes. With an idle flick of his head, he sent them all to their allotted spaces on the shelves. He smirked in satisfaction. And then he got his cutie mark. He trotted out of my house to show his parents. And he didn’t even look at my unconscious body to see if I was dead or not. It was only later that Stellar Flare wandered into the room to look at the place where her son had gotten her mark, and saw filly me still lying there, for her to revive me and tell me what had happened. (And no, Father didn’t find me first, despite being in the next room working on one of his dissertations instead of caring for his possibly dying daughter! That stallion is worthless!)

~~I was~~ Starlight was appalled. Who was this pony? Was this who he was all along? Was being normal, was having emotions, was being my friend, were all of these a lie? Something he put on just to trick others into thinking that he was a normal, caring pony?

I went back to that frozen moment when the mask fell and I walked right up to his face, trying desperately to read this thing that I was seeing. Thanks to yesterday’s letter, I knew there was something wrong with him. I would have been ready for a sneer, a laugh of contempt. But what could I do with this?

But beyond that came the revelation: Sunburst didn’t leave me because of his cutie mark. He was always going to leave me someday. Just as he would later abandon Celestia’s school, his parents, and the rest of his life by faking his death.

Every time he cared about me was a lie. Every time he helped me, it was because my magic was better than his, and he needed me to use it for him. I was nothing more than a toy to him!

Just like I was nothing more than a fashion accessory for Mother, a miniature version of herself to walk in sync with her through the gardens of Sires Hollow, wearing a tiny version of the latest styles from Manhattan or Prance that she was wearing as well. Was she broken in the same way as Sunburst, in a way that had nothing to do with her mark, that predated it?

Was it possible that I got it all wrong? That my father, that Double Diamond, that everypony I ever helped, got their bad cutie marks not because of external forces, but as a manifestation of their own flaws?! My mark, my purpose, are worthless!!

…And that was when Starlight collapsed, struck low by another of her migraines. She was inside the cave, so this time she definitely had not been struck by a dozen lightning bolts, no matter how it had felt at the time.

Note to self: Fix first-person breaks at earliest convenience. This is a journal, not a self-indulgent diary.