“Well, Applejack, that’s an interesting question. I suppose it depends on your definition of immortality – does it rely on the persistence of memory? Would a magically created duplicate of you, given a copy of your memories by a simple memory spell, be ‘you’ enough to carry on? Or does it depend on the continued existence of some inner, immaterial spirit or soul, in which case it’s quite likely, given the latest findings in retroectoscopy, that every pony is in fact immortal? Or do you mean, will this form of myself – the pony known as ‘Princess Twilight Sparkle’, continue an unbroken, continuous state of ‘being alive’?”
Applejack frowned and her eyes half-closed. “What ah mean is, when mah great great grandkids go to Canterlot palace and ask about their great great gramma Applejack, is there gonna be a purple alicorn there to tell them stories about me?”
“Well,” Twilight said, looking up from her book, “assuming that we ignore the mundane political and personal factors that might preclude such an encounter, yes.”
“Huh,” Applejack said, looking away from her friend and staring at the trees waving in the gentle breeze on the horizon. “How does that make ya feel?”
Twilight smirked. “Are you jealous?”
“Dunno,” Applejack said. “They say Celestia judges a pony’s soul when they die, and everypony knows she’s a kind-hearted critter. I can’t imagine I wouldn’t meet up with everypony I love in the summer lands, once my time in the sun is through.”
“Assuming they exist,” Twilight said. “Which is something I’ll never have to worry about, so I guess that’s my answer – it makes me feel curious about what’s really there.”
“Should have guessed I’d get an answer like that,” Applejack said, laughing.
Twilight laughed along with her, then as she got a sudden thought, whisked the book she was reading away and replaced with a scroll and quill. “…wouldn’t really be new magic,” she muttered, as she started rapidly scribbling something that Applejack couldn’t make heads or tails of when she looked over the alicorn’s shoulder. “Just a variation of the destiny-altering spell…”
“The what now?” Applejack asked.
“The spell that turned me into, well, this,” Twilight said, spreading her wings slightly. “It altered my destiny, just like it altered all of yours when miscast. Now when I die, I go to the heaven for alicorns instead of… whatever it is that ponies get.” She pointed the quill at a scribble that looked for all the world like a lasso. “Now, I don’t want to alter your destiny again, but there are always unassigned destinies floating about that no pony will ever fulfill. I could take one of them and repurpose it, then attach it to your spirit –“
“You’re planning to tie it in a loop, lasso me, and haul me back from the summer lands after ah die?” Applejack asked.
“It’s – well…” Twilight stammered. “Yes. That would be a good metaphor. And then you can tell me all about what it’s like to be dead! Won’t that be fun?” She grinned widely until she saw that Applejack didn’t look very amused. “Obviously, I don’t intend to hasten your death in any way in order to carry out this experiment. It would be a long-term plan.”
“Uh huh,” Applejack said.
“I’m not crazy.”
“Ah know that, sugarcube,” Applejack said, giving her friend a quick hug. “Just promise me if ah let you do this, you won’t be hoping for me to die? Mah family’s got a bad habit of livin’ to a ripe old age unless somethin’ kills us, and I’d rather not have you loomin’ over me like a big purple vulture.”
Twilight frowned, and nodded. “You’re right. You’re not the ideal candidate.” With a sudden grin, she rubbed her hooves together, “Now, Rainbow Dash – she’s bound to get herself killed with her crazy stunts, one of these days. I’ll tether her!”
“You do that,” Applejack said, “I think I’m gonna go spend some time with my family not thinkin’ about them all bein’ dead in the ground.”
===
For a few weeks, Twilight went on a rampage of soul-tethering, looping discarded strands of fate around not only her closest friends, and their siblings, parents and pets, but around other ponies she knew – Cheerilee, Rose and Lily, Aloe and Lotus from the spa, Ditzy Doo, Caramel, Mr. Breezy, Mr. Davenport, and (after a drunken one-night stand), Cloud-Kicker, Heartstrings and Sweetie Drops. But after a few weeks passed, none of her test subjects had died. When she caught herself contemplating a group camping trip to the Everfree Forest, she decided that as Applejack had warned, the experiment was affecting her thoughts, so she wrote it off as a bad idea and put it out of her mind.
She turned her research into the practical applications of destiny alteration in other directions, and soon was known as the Princess of Wishes, able to grant those she found worthy the fulfillment of their life’s dreams. Since, for the most part, she found those with good hearts and a kind disposition more worthy than those of unchained ambition and a lust for adventure, Equestria continued to become a safer and more pleasant place for ponies to live out their lives and pass on to the next world, or next life, or whatever it was that happened to them after they passed beyond her domain. There were those that complained that her influence was nothing but a stifling blanket of stagnation, strangling the spirit of ponykind, but before any of them could really make an impact they tended to meet with highly ironic and exciting ends, which Twilight never openly admitted to having a hoof in.
So she was never as loved as Celestia, or as feared as Nightmare Moon. She made plenty of friends, at least plenty for her – at least a half-dozen at any given time. She was married twice and assassinated three times, once by her second husband who caught her cheating on him with Spike. Through all of this, even when she was streaking back to Equestria from the beautiful but rather sparsely populated Alicorn Afterlife (population: zero), she never thought much about mortality.
===
Three hundred years later, Duchess Jaqueline of the House of Apple lay on her deathbed, in her chambers at the top of the highest tower of Sweetacre Castle – a room from which, in better times, she could look over the Duchy of Everfree and behold her domain. It had been months since she’d felt well enough to face the bracing chill of the morning air, and weeks since she’d moved a single hoof from the ancient knitted blanket that wrapped her shriveled form. Every breath was a symphony of minor aches and pains, every sluggish heartbeat another tiny interval torn grudgingly from the grasp of death.
“Why?” asked Twilight. Applejack’s bleary eyes looked up at her friend’s face, as young and vibrant as the day they’d met. “I could have granted you a good death, surrounded by family and friends. You could have drifted off in your sleep, content with a life well-lived. But you wanted to live as long as possible, and… I’m sorry, Applejack, but I’m afraid this is it. Were the last few months worth it?”
“I’m scared,” the old pony croaked, closing her eyes and shivering. “I don’t want to die.”
“Don’t worry,” Twilight said, with a smile, “Everypony dies. You’ll do fine.”
Applejack coughed. “I’m glad you’re here, Twi… I needed to know…”
Twilight sighed. “I know I’ve complained a few times about your choice, but you’re still my oldest living friend. I love you, Applejack. I’ve always loved you. You know that.”
“No… I need to know… what comes next.”
Twilight was silent. “Well, there’s only one way to find out,” she said, with increasingly forced cheer.
“Liar!” snapped the aged old mare, shooting suddenly upright in her bed, her withered limb hooking around Twilight’s neck and drawing her closer. Twilight’s kirin guards would have lunged to her defense, but she spread her wings to hold them back. “You lie!” Applejack croaked. “You know what comes next! You tied us all up in your web so that you’d know!”
“I –“ Twilight blinked. “I forgot all about that,” she said, laughing as moisture welled in her eyes. “The tethers! I’m sorry, Applejack, I never actually finished that experiment.”
Applejack released her, and fell back onto her dingy pillow in despair, tears leaking down her cheeks.
“Duchess Jaqueline Everfree,” Twilight said, reaching out with a hoof to gently turn the dying mare’s face towards her. “Would you like to be the first pony to come back from the dead?”
There was no response. After a few seconds, Twilight realized that Applejack had passed away, and awkwardly released her chin, letting her body settle into its final rest. She glanced at her grandchildren, who’d lowered their faces in respectful mourning for the death of their grandmother’s friend. “I think she nodded,” Twilight said. “She definitely nodded. You both saw it, right?”
===
“Twilight Sparkle,” said a regal, commanding voice, “you have a lot of explaining to do.”
“Oh, give it a rest, MOM,” the purple alicorn said with a scowl, turning away from her experiments to greet her guest. “They wanted adventure and glory, so I gave it to them. It isn’t my fault that throwing yourself into a dangerous situation is dangerous.”
That gave the other alicorn pause. “What?”
“So… you’re not here about what happened to Happy Acres Elementary?” Twilight Sparkle said, confused.
“No,” Princess Celestia replied, “although perhaps I’ll return tomorrow, once I’ve heard that story in full. I’m here because I’ve heard that you intend to meddle in the affairs of the afterlife. Such magic is forbidden!”
Twilight blinked. “By who?”
“By myself, originally,” Celestia answered, “but Luna and Cadance were quick to agree with my reasoning, and have always supported the ban. We know not, and shall never know, what happens to the spirits of our ponies beyond the veil. It has always been that way, and to meddle with the affairs of death is to tempt a fate that we cannot even imagine.”
“I am fate,” Twilight replied. “Do you think I haven’t examined my own? I survive until the end of the universe, just like Luna.”
“Luna and me?” Celestia corrected.
Twilight stared back at her. “No comment. Look, I know I can’t really tell the future, but if there was some sort of mass die-off in the works, it would be pretty obvious. Any disaster caused by this experiment will be strictly local. There’s no reason to suspect that anything bad at all is going to happen if I bring Applejack back from the dead.”
“Fate is mutable,” Celestia replied.
“Yes,” Twilight said, exasperated. “Fate can be changed. By me, when I decide to do so. If I promise not to doom myself and Equestria, can I continue with finding out once and for all what all of you are so terrified of facing? Or are you going to hover over my shoulder and make vague proclamations of doom until I slip up and accidentally tear a hole in the fabric of space and time? Not that that’s a possible side effect of the spell going wrong or anything.”
“Twilight Sparkle, I will ask you one last time – please, please, my faithful student, listen to your teacher one last time. If you never listen to anything I say, ever again, listen to me now – leave well enough alone. There are things that ponies should not know; not even Princesses of pony-kind.”
“Princess Celestia,” Twilight replied, “I will always love you, and respect what you’ve done for me and for all of our little ponies, but with all due respect, this is outside of your area of expertise. I know what I’m doing. Trust me.”
Celestia sighed, and turned away, wings drooping and head dipped in resignation as she gracefully made her way out of the lab. “So be it. Luna and I will summon the Elements of Harmony, in case the worst happens – we will not let this destroy Equestria. But I fear that if this goes bad, we will be unable to save you from your own –“
“Enough!” Twilight snapped. “I’ll be fine! Everything is going to be fine! I know what I’m doing and it’s… it’s fine.”
She glanced back at her experiments, and found to her delight that the resistance constant was an order of magnitude lower than she’d expected. “It’s almost like she wants to come back,” Twilight said. “This’ll be like taking candy from a baby. Only without all the screaming and blubbering, and the angry looks from the parents.” She sighed, glancing back at the doorway to her lab. “And afterwards, I’ll apologize to Celestia. I have to live with her for another thirteen thousand years, after all.”
===
Twilight Sparkle lay herself down on her silken sheets, sighing in contentment as she leaned into Spike’s warm scales. The young drake’s claws combed through the hair of her back, and her wings twitched slightly in ecstasy as he tickled their base. “Promise me you’ll come back to me,” the dragon said.
“I’m not really going anywhere,” Twilight replied, curling one wing around him in a quick feathery hug. “That’s why I need you to guard my body while I astrally project. It’ll be helpless in the waking world while I’m on the other plane, and I don’t want to have to organize another state funeral if something happens to it. They’re so expensive and pointless. Everypony knows that alicorns don’t really die.”
“What if you get lost? What if –“
“I’m not going far,” Twilight replied, putting a hoof gently to Spike’s mouth. “I’m not going anywhere, really – I just need to be in spirit form to interact with Applejack’s spirit. I’ll be right here –“ she waved her wing above the bed – “the whole time.”
“Okay,” Spike said, frowning. “I just don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Twilight nuzzled him affectionately. “I love you, don’t you ever forget that,” she said, then her horn glowed briefly, and the world faded away into mist.
She floated in the swirling grey emptiness of the astral plane, a purple unicorn, her wings nowhere to be seen. “Interesting,” she said, noting their absence, then shook her head, and watched the threads of fate she’d used as tethers splay out from her mane where she’d kept them concealed all these years. Applejack’s thread was easy enough to spot – it was Applejack-colored, and, when she took it in her mouth and gave it a tug, Applejack-flavored as well. “Synesthesia,” she muttered around the immaterial tether. “Fascinating!”
Then she dug her hooves into the nothing, and pulled. There was a brief resistance, and then the tether went slack. For a moment, she thought she’d pulled too hard, and dislodged it, but then a familiar orange pony appeared from the mist, looking like she had in her prime – young, strong, and happier than Duchess Everfree had been in centuries. “Applejack!” Twilight said, leaping towards her, and they embraced. She felt Applejack-textured as well, and was neither warm, nor cold, but Applejack temperature.
“Hey there, sugarcube,” Applejack said, releasing her and smiling. She glanced down at the tether wrapped around her neck, and leading to Twilight’s mane. “Ah guess your little trick worked, at last?”
“It did!” Twilight said, gleefully. “So tell me! What’s it like, on the other side? Is everypony there? Did you get to meet your family? Our friends?”
“Whelp,” Applejack said, tilting her head and looking a bit thoughtful. “Everypony’s there, all right…”
“Is it the green land of eternal summer, like the stories say?” Twilight asked. “Tell me everything!”
“Ah can’t rightly say,” Applejack replied. “It’s… indescribable.”
“Well, let’s start simply,” Twilight replied, nodding. “Are you conscious of yourself as an individual? Do you retain your memories of your life?”
“Ah can’t rightly say,” Applejack said. “It’s… complicated.”
“Can you try to describe it?” Twilight said. “Please?”
Applejack opened her mouth, then shut it again. After thinking for a bit, she opened her mouth again, only to shake her head in frustration.
“Okaaaay,” Twilight said, starting to get a little frustrated. “Can you at least tell me if time passes?”
Applejack scrunched up her face. “I’m sorry, Twi. I guess you’ll have to see for yourself.”
Twilight cringed. “I can’t – I can’t do that,” she said. “I mean, whatever is or is not true about the other world, one thing that’s perfectly clear is that there’s no way out – no pony has ever left. No pony without a tether, at any rate, and nopony is holding a tether to my spirit. If I went to the afterlife, how would I ever leave?”
“Why would you want to?” Applejack asked. “Everypony you ever loved is there, ‘cept for the ones that aren’t there yet, and they’ll join us soon enough.”
“So you’re saying it’s nice there,” Twilight said.
“I can’t honestly say that it’s nice,” Applejack replied. “I can’t rightly describe it in any way, not with the words we have to use here. They just don’t work.”
“I’m sorry, Applejack, but I can’t come with you. I guess if you really can’t say what it’s like, I’ll just have to go on not knowing.” She sighed. “But it is nice to see you again.”
“I’m sorry, Twi,” Applejack said. “But I think it’s best if you come with me.”
Twilight froze, and glanced at the thread, and how Applejack had wrapped the slack around her hoof. The orange earth pony took a step back, pulling the purple unicorn deeper into the mist. Twilight dug in her hooves, and pulled back. “Applejack, stop.”
“This is for your own good, Twi,” the orange pony replied. “Ponies weren’t meant to live forever.”
“Yes, some of us were,” Twilight said. “Look –“ she pointed at the thread of fate that ran through her chest, extending into the future and past farther than the eye could see. “This is my fate. This is what is meant to happen to me. I live forever.”
“One thread connects you to life, my dear,” said a long-forgotten voice, and Twilight glanced over to see a white unicorn, with a fabulous purple mane, holding another thread in the blue glow of her magic. “How many connect you to death, now?” Rarity asked.
“All of them!” said Rainbow Dash in her brash voice, appearing on the other side whole and healthy, as if she’d never been torn apart by the sea serpents. Twilight spun around, to see all her old friends and acquaintances emerging from the mist, each of them holding a thread. “Come on, Egghead!” Rainbow Dash said, zipping backwards and pulling Twilight several stumbling steps forwards as she jerked on her tether. “Get with the picture!”
“We’ll throw you a party!” Pinkie Pie said, bouncing up and down. She wasn’t actually holding her tether, but with a dozen other ponies pulling, she hardly needed to. “It’ll be so much –“
Twilight’s consciousness whited out as Pinkie Pie described the indescribable, unable to comprehend the words she was hearing. When the pink pony stopped talking, she found herself wrapped up in spirit tethers like a pig at a rodeo, being dragged through the mist by a herd of ghosts, towards a brilliant glowing light. “Almost there now,” Applejack said. “Don’t worry, sugarcube. Everypony dies. You’ll do just fine.”
“No…” Twilight said, closing her eyes in a futile effort to block out the light that overwhelmed her. “I promised Spike…”
===
When Twilight Sparkle didn’t awaken from her trance, the assembled forces of Celestia and Luna kept watch over her empty shell for several days, until finally, with no spirit inhabiting it, its vital functions shut down. As they had three times before, they had her body prepared and placed in a glass coffin, and with all pomp and circumstance, announced yet another funeral for the Alicorn of Fate, Twilight Sparkle.
It was a well-attended ceremony – few ponies had been alive the last time Twilight Sparkle had died, and her return was said to be a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle that no pony should miss. They sat vigil through the night, telling stories of her exploits and the wishes she’d granted, and waiting with ‘bated breath for her star to appear in the sky, and shoot back to earth to herald her return.
That night lasted for eighteen hours, but at last Celestia was forced to admit that this time Twilight Sparkle was not returning, and allowed the sun to rise. The party atmosphere dissolved like the morning mist, along with most of the crowd, until at last only Spike and a few others remained, to truly mourn her passing.
“She could never leave well enough alone,” Celestia said, shaking her head. “I should have known that this would be her fate.”
“Nopony could stop her from choosing her own destiny,” Luna replied. “Perhaps one day you will see her again.”
“I’m afraid that will never happen,” Celestia said. “To live eternally is our blessing, and our curse.”
Luna looked at Celestia with a tiny smile, then shook her head. “Whatever you say, dear sister.”
And then, as the eternal sun shone down on the happy land of Equestria, Twilight Sparkle was placed into the ground, and consigned to the final mystery.
===
Two years later, in the middle of an unremarkable autumn night, a purple star streaked from the sky to smash to earth in the middle of an open field. A battered alicorn crawled from the crater, staggering around with a splitting headache. She moaned in agony, and collapsed onto the grass.
In minutes, two glowing orbs flew in from over the horizon, resolving themselves into the alicorns of the sun and moon.
“Twilight!” Celestia said. “You’re alive! I’d given up hope!”
Twilight groaned. “Never again,” she moaned, holding her head.
“What happened, Twilight Sparkle?” Luna asked, looking down at her. “What did you see beyond the veil?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Twilight grumbled. “Dead people are JERKS!”
