The Fate Most Cruel
In the beginning it had been amazing. With my knowledge of the Magic of Friendship I was magically promoted, from an extremely magically powerful unicorn to an all-powerful Alicorn. My new wings took some getting used to, I had difficulty dressing and would sometimes knock things off of shelves when I turned too quickly, and I don’t even want to mention flying. But with the help of my friends I was able to overcome these difficulties. Fluttershy helped me learn how to dress with the addition of wings while Rarity modified many of my outfits and made me many more with new wing holes. Applejack and Pinkie Pie helped me to learn to walk and not break too many things. I also learned a handy repair spell that helped a lot. And of course there is no pony I would rather have give me flying lessons then Rainbow Dash, the sole performer of the sonic rainboom. I loved my friends and loved being around them. They taught me so much and I knew at that moment that I would continue to learn from them, even though I had mastered the Magic of Friendship.
Shortly after the coronation Princess Celestia took me aside. She had said she wanted to have a private word with me. When we were alone she gave me some advice for a new Alicorn. Make memories with your friends. Memories are what last. Those memories can never be taken from you. When she told me to return to my friends there was a look of sadness in her eyes. I couldn’t tell what that was for then, but I know what it is from now.
The other Princesses and I spent many years helping each other and keeping Equestria safe from harm. Princess Luna protected the night and the dreams of pony kind while Princess Celestia watched over and ruled the land during the day. Princess Cadence used her magic to spread love to help keep the world safe from her seat on the Crystal Throne. I used the Magic of Friendship to help maintain harmony throughout the land. I knew that no matter what I would always have my friends by my side to help me through any crisis.
Over the years each of my friends grew and matured. Rainbow Dash eventually attained her dream of joining the Wonderbolts, the best aerial team in Equestria. Not only that but she was eventually made captain. Her first act as captain was to recruit another young filly who showed a lot of promise, Scootaloo, Rainbow’s adopted younger sister. Rarity became a world famous fashionista like she had always wanted to. Her dresses and outfits were known all over Equestria and even beyond to the Griffin Kingdoms. She designed the dress for her younger sister, Sweetie Belle's opera performances. Applejack continued to work on the family farm for years until her brother started a family of his own, then she moved to start her own farm with her new husband and the fast approaching foals. They provided delicious apples for many of the Canterlot elite for years. And for once her barn didn't collapse every time someone gave it a stern look. Applebloom, her sister used her construction abilities to make you think the barn was raised by magic. Fluttershy kept doing the thing she did best. Taking care of woodland creatures. Eventually she taught her skills to other ponies and they started a whole new veterinarian company. Not that Flutters took care of the business side of things, she was never cut out for that sort of work. Pinkie Pie continued being Pinkie Pie. She stayed just as random, openly flaunting the rules of physics no matter how much her inexplicable behavior annoyed me. I loved her though, she always was there to bring a smile to my face whenever the royal duties became too much.
In fact all of my friends were always there whenever I needed them. I could always count on the other bearers of the Elements whenever something went bad, or even if I just wanted to enjoy a quiet talk. No matter the issue I knew I could count on them to stand at my side and face it.
This was the golden age of Equestria. While many problems arose and many monsters both new and old tried to attack the country, with four Alicorn princesses, the Elements of Harmony, and the reformed Lord of Chaos, Discord all fighting for good, there was nothing that could stand against us. An age of peace and prosperity hadn’t been seen like it since Celestia and Luna first created the land of Equestria a thousand years ago.
It wasn’t until several decades later that I noticed anything was wrong. At first I couldn’t tell what was different. It wasn’t until my brother Shining Armor was away in the Crystal Empire for several years that I could tell what it was. He was old. He had always been a few years older than I was but now he looked closer to twenty years older. His mane was peppered with grey and he was clearly no longer in his prime. This was a shock for me because he had always seemed so strong to me. He had been Celestia’s captain of the guard for years before the discovery of the Crystal Empire. Then he had helped to rule alongside his wife Princess Cadence for even longer.
Panicked, I tried to do research to find a reason why living in the Crystal Empire would age him so rapidly. Cadence didn’t look any older though she did seem to have more worry lines. My books revealed no answers, so I went to the person who had been my teacher for years and was almost a second mother to me, Princess Celestia. I told her of the changes I saw in my brother. She looked at me sadly then told me to her walk with her. When we reached the highest tower, Celestia stood and looked at the sky. It was night, Luna was off making sure that Equestria stayed safe without the sun. Eventually Celestia, after looking at the stars for what seemed like hours, revealed the reason.
It was my fate to watch as those around me continued to age. Alicorns don’t age. When we reach our full maturity we stop growing. Celestia had been alive for more than a thousand years. Maybe several thousand years. Her sister could only be a couple of decades younger. Cadence had been alive for more than a hundred years. It was the curse of being an Alicorn, almost unlimited magical power, but having to watch your loved ones fall one by one to the scythe of time.
That couldn’t be the truth, I had raged at her. I had done everything I could to do convince her that she was wrong, but I knew she was right. Celestia and Luna had learned this lesson the hard way many thousands of years ago. Cadence had learned this when her husband, my brother, continued to age despite her youth. She kept back the worst of the time’s ravages with her magic for many years, but it was strain on both of them. She loved him, and her magic was fueled by her love, so she kept him alive for many decades longer then he would have lived. Eventually the pain of seeing him slowly age and the strain the years had put on him made Cadence release the magic's hold on him. After the magic left he appeared to age sixty years while just two passed. His last months were spent in daily agonizing pain. It was so terrible for Cadence that when he finally passed she had to leave Equestria for nearly a decade.
I learned from the lesson Cadence set with my brother and tried to find a different method to help my friends live longer. Finally I found a spell. I could cast it on each of my friends to stop their aging. They would survive, but the cost was too great. They would live but their children wouldn’t, or their husbands, or their siblings. The only way I could save any of them would be to save hundreds of ponies, thousands of ponies. There simply wasn’t enough magic in the world to cast the spell that many times. I realized that if I was really their friend then there was no way I could cast it.
So I let them go. One at a time all of my friends died. Rarity eventually worked herself to death, and Applejack died on her farm. Rainbow tried to do a new trick years past her prime and her heart couldn’t take the stress. Fluttershy eventually withdrew completely from society, living solely with her animal friends. She died out in the woods. Her animals brought her body to be buried. Watching my friends slowly age and die was torture for me, but Pinkie Pie simply couldn’t handle the stress. She was the last of my close friends. When Fluttershy died Pinkie fled into the wilderness. For years Celestia thought she had died in the wild somewhere, but I knew she was still alive. Luna said that she hadn’t been able to find Pinkie’s dreams, but that just meant that Pinkie had wandered farther than even Luna’s magic could reach. One night I found Pinkie Pie laying outside my door in the palace. How she had gotten here from where ever she had been without either Celestia or Luna sensing her, and how she had gotten all the way to my door through all the guards I never found out. It would simply be one of those mysteries of Pinkamena, the secrets of whom would never be revealed.
I held her and cried desperately up and down the hallway for someone to come and help her but it was too late. She lay in my hooves as the light faded from her eyes.
“I couldn’t go without saying goodbye. Now smile Twilight, I want to see you smile.”
And she was gone.
Now I was the last of the bearers of the Elements of Harmony. All of my friends were buried in the Canterlot graveyard.I went to see them the other day. As the bearers of the Elements of Harmony they deserved a permanent place here in Canterlot. It was the least Celestia could do after all they had done for Equestria. She said that it also makes mourning for them easier. That is another thing that I finally understand.
Rarity of course designed her own headstone. It was a marvelous affair that perfectly matched her personality. It was studded inconspicuously with the gemstones that she made her career on finding and adding to her outfits.
Even though the Apple family usually buried their dead on the family farm they made an exception for Applejack and let her come to her final rest here. Just as the Apples had traditions on where to bury one of the family, they also had traditions on the headstone. The standard was a carved apple-wood marker. Simple, effective, like everything they did. A plain wooden marker would never suit in a Canterlot grave yard, but before she died Rarity was able to help me create something that would suite AJ. It is a rounded headstone, with a small opening in the center. There I put a heart carved of apple-wood. Over the years the heart would rot away, but whenever I needed a new one, I could travel to any Apple farm and get another one. Even now, generations later the Apples still remember. I feel guilty throwing the old one way, so I just set it to the side. Eventually it will turn into dust, but there has always been one in the hole in her headstone.
The Wonderbolts make sure that everybody who joins takes care of their last will and testament. Aerial combat and exhibition has never been a safe occupation. So Rainbow Dash had her headstone designed long before she died, though not carved like Rarity's had been. Rainbow’s was a stylized image of a wing. Before she died she had mentioned that she was going to have her proudest accomplishments inscribed on it. Yet for a pony who had done so much, and was rarely afraid to tell of it the headstone only had two deeds. They read: “Represented the Element of Loyalty” and “Captained the Wonderbolts.” I guess that everything else she did probably fell into one of those two categories.
Fluttershy’s was a simple affair, it had her Cutie Mark on it, and the paw prints of the animals who had been her pallbearers. Whenever I visit it there is always some small animal resting on it. Even now when several generations of ponies have past, the animals still remember. Discord often visits Fluttershy’s grave. He usually leaves some flowers growing upside down out of a cake or something similarly zany like that. He never forgot how Fluttershy first showed him the magic of friendship.
He also visits Pinkie Pies grave. I think that he had fallen in love with her, but I don’t think Pinkie ever understood. I had carved Pinkie’s headstone myself. When I found her dying on my doorstep there had been no preparations made for her funeral arrangements, so I used my magic to carve her something I knew she would have liked. It has her balloon Cutie Mark on it, it also stands surrounded by her friends, just like she had been in life.
Celestia was right, it did help to have the graves in Canterlot, where I could visit them whenever I wanted or needed to. Now I also knew why she kept a phoenix as a pet. A creature that came back to life whenever it died was the perfect companion for someone for whom death is only a torturous mystery. I think that Philomena had been the only thing that had kept her sane during the thousand years that she ruled Equestria by herself, while Luna was banished in the moon. For me, I had Spike. In the time before I was a princess he had been my dragon assistant, helping me with my homework and my research, constantly writing and sending letters to the Princess. Before long he had stopped being my assistant and became almost a younger brother to me. We had gone through so much together. Celestia told me that dragons will continue to age, but never die save for a wound or sickness. So he grew and grew. By now he is so large that he can't fit in even the largest rooms in the castle anymore. He lives in a cave on a mountain nearby. I go to visit him often.
Rather than turning into a brutish monster like most other dragons, Spike maintained his sense of self. He also mastered powerful dragon magics, which allowed him to transform at will, as well as manipulate the elements. He would sometimes take on the form of a pony and come to visit me, staying in the castle with me. Then it would be just like old times when he would fall asleep at the foot of my bed after a long night of working on some project for Celestia.
It was like this that he went to visit Rarity's headstone. Even before she died he had visited her often, first in his true dragon form, then in the form of a pony. He had been the only one with her when she died. In his grief he had torn apart half a forest, almost reverting to the dangerous monster his dragon peers became. I was able to calm him down before the Wonderbolts had to be called in. The years we had spent together had given me exactly the tools I needed to help him on his bad days. I can always tell when Spike has visited Rarity’s grave, there will always be a heart shaped diamond there after he has gone. At first I thought he would leave the same diamond there each time, then come back and take it later, but it turned out he would carve a new diamond each time he went. He takes the old one and buries it next to her. He’s been doing that for years.
Just as I know exactly what to do to cheer him up, he knows exactly what to do to make me happy. He will fetch one of the old books of pictures, and we will go back and remember all the good times we had together, and the good times we had with our friends. Seeing all the pictures of my friends made me sad at first. But then I remembered all the good times we had and I would feel better, just like Celestia said. It was Spike’s companionship that helped me deal with the first shock of realizing my immortality, and it was him that comforted me with the deaths of each of my friends and family. It was because of him that I didn’t have to leave Equestria like Cadence had, even though my grief was as strong as her's.
The years have gone by, so slowly at first, but now faster and faster it seems. Each year seems to race into the next. Yet each year I think back on all the memories my friends and I made together. Most often to that Summer Sun Celebration, so many centuries ago, when I first met my friends, and first learned that Friendship is Magic.
Fin
