Prologue
I am writing this, more or less, to alleviate boredom. Because Luna knows that that bitter, old relic won’t talk with me.
My name is Twilight Twinkle. Never heard of me? Then the wasteland is continuing to do a great job of swallowing up its own history. For most ponies, history ended a hundred and fifty years ago with the megaspells. But believe me when I say the wasteland has its own stories to tell. I, personally, watched the wasteland itself come to the brink, although by the time this is read it’ll probably be forgotten. But if you stick around, then that will be the story you will hear.
My mother named me after Twilight Sparkle, the Element of Magic, because I have a lavender coat with a deep purple mane. All well and good except that I am an earth pony. Still, I like my name. I don’t think I would change it for any other one in the wasteland. However, for what I lacked in magic I more than made up for in Twilight Sparkles other love: books. As a foal I could never get enough of them, I was eating through at least three a week and more than once my mother had to take a book off my because it was too mature for me. By fourteen, I had read ever book in the Stable 46 and had to start ordering them in from merchants. I even took the job as the librarian’s assistant, which is where I stayed until my nineteenth year.
And, in a twist that seems ironic now, the only reason I left the stable was because of a book.
‘Thoughts of Twilight Sparkle,’ a collection of short stories and thought experiments written by the ministry mare herself in the closing days of the war. From the few legends that even exist of it, it had been written to keep herself sane as the world slowly died around her. A bit like me. The only recurring myth was that there were only seven ever printed. So, being the naive pony that I was, I believed that going to look for one would have been worth the strife it would bring. Now to be honest, it was, but not for the reasons I went out for.
