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The Book of Might Have Beens
“Have you ever wanted to just, you know, set a book on fire?” Twilight Sparkle asked Starlight Glimmer at breakfast one morning.
Starlight considered her answer over a mouthful of soft, buttery pancake. As usual she’d loaded it with maple syrup too, and she needed a swallow of milk to clear her mouth before answering.
“Like, a specific book? Or any book?”
“A specific book,” Twilight said. She then clarified: “Except it’s not really a book. It’s more like a spell in the form of a book.”
“A spellbook, you mean?” Sometimes spellbooks set themselves on fire if you weren’t careful. Starlight had lost a rather nice copy of Xenophon’s Examined Exsanguinations in just such an accident as a teenage filly. It took the hair on her fetlocks weeks to regrow.
“No. A book that is a spell.” Twilight nudged her plate of pancakes morosely. She hadn’t taken a single bite yet. Apparently contemplating the fiery death of a book had stolen her appetite. “A magical artifact that merely takes the shape of a book. Also, it doesn’t work.”
“So it’s a spell in the shape of a book, except it doesn’t work. It sounds to me like you’re describing a regular book.” Starlight finished the last of her pancakes, and then, sensing that Twilight had no need for hers, reached out with her magic to grasp the princess’s still-full plate and slide it slowly across the table. They had whipped cream and blueberries on them, which Starlight wasn’t thrilled about, viewing them as a desert-like corruption of a breakfast staple, but she wasn’t going to look a gift pancake in the mouth. Instead she put it in her mouth.
“No, it’s…” Twilight frowned in thought. Then she looked across the table at her absconded pancakes and frowned harder. “It does something. More than a book. But it’s a failure at what it should do.”
“Objects that fail to fulfil their purpose should be destroyed,” Starlight said. She scraped the whipped cream and blueberries off the pancake, restoring it to its proper form, and took a bite. “That is what the old-Starlight Glimmer would say. New-Glim says there’s room for everypony, or, uh, everybook, no matter how imperfect they may be. So no, you should not burn this book. Is this, uh, like a friendship lesson?”
“No, it was a genuine question.” Twilight stood. Her horn glowed, and a dollop of the scraped-away whipped cream on Starlight’s plate lifted away, floating across the table until the princess snapped it out of the air with her jaws. Her tongue flashed out, cleaning away the flecks that had escaped on her muzzle. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
The book was opened to its middle atop a polished cedar lectern in Twilight’s private library, the one attached to her bedroom that only friends were allowed to use. Since Starlight Glimmer was the only friend of Twilight’s who had more than a passing interest in books, it was rare for anypony but her or Spike to set foot within its walls. She’d snuck Trixie in once, just to prove the place existed, but aside from that passing moment of daring it was only ever a place of study.
And now, apparently, spellwork. Starlight trotted up to the lectern and peered down at the book.
It was blank. She flipped all the way back to the beginning. Every page was empty.
“I found your problem,” she said. “It’s supposed to have words in it.”
“Ha.” Twilight trotted up beside her. Her horn flashed and a quill appeared, yanked out of some pocket dimension where she kept an endless array of writing supplies. She offered the quill to Starlight. “Here. Write something in it.”
“Uh.” Starlight held the quill over the page. “What?”
“Anything.”
Fine. Starlight hummed quietly for a moment, considering, then lowered the quill’s tip to the page.
There once was a dragon
Who lived in a wagon.
As soon as she made the final mark with her quill, the period at the end of the sentence, the world around her changed. Her sight vanished, replaced by darkness, and for a moment she floated weightless in space. She started to scream, but before she could draw the breath to do so, light and life returned to the universe.
She stood in a wagon, cramped, packed with all the things a pony could own: clothes in trunks and shoes on racks and a bed decorated with star-and-moon sheets and pots and pans and fireworks and ratty books from distant lands. She started to turn and kicked over a stack of empty bottles; her horn tangled in a silver dreamcatcher. The door opened beside her, and she spun to see an enormous dragon, far too large to fit into the wagon, larger than a house, squeezing its enormous head through the opening, and all the belongings in its horde were squished to the side as the wagon suddenly went from crowded to compactly airless, and for a moment Starlight Glimmer was given to remember that diamonds are made when carbon is compressed as her body found itself squeezed between the cracks of endless detritus, and the pressure grew and her body went from something pony-shaped to something more in the style of a wet red abstract sculpture that seeped—
Starlight Glimmer gasped. She was back in the library, teetering on her hooves, still very much in one piece and pony shaped. She stumbled away from the book, releasing the quill and letting it drift to the floor.
Twilight caught the feather. She set it on the table beside the book. The words Starlight had just written there had already faded away, leaving only blank waxweed vellum behind.
Quick check: limbs, eyes, horn, tail. All yes. Starlight let out a shuddering breath. “What was that?”
“Based on what you wrote, I’m guessing something about a dragon in a wagon. Also pretty disturbing, from your reaction.”
“It, uh… yeah, a little.” Starlight gave her whole body a shake. “What was it, though? Was that real?”
“Oh, no.” Twilight shook her head. “I don’t know exactly what you saw, because that’s unique to you. But I can tell you with absolute certainty that it was not real. Nothing this book shows is real.”
Starlight found the courage to approach the book again. Not even the scratchy indentations of her quillmarks remained on the page. It was perfect and pristine. “So it’s, like, just a fantasy generator?”
“No. It’s… hm.” Twilight tilted her head. “It shows things that might have been true. I wanted to call it Sparkle’s Counterfactual Simulacrum, but that’s not quite alliterative enough. It needs some other title. Anyway, it shows different outcomes. I guess it tried to show you what happened if a dragon really did try to live in a wagon, but since that sounds impossible it must’ve been weird.”
“Uh, a little.” Starlight glanced at the quill. “Why though? Why make it?”
“Because, haven’t you ever wondered?” Twilight’s words took on a hint of zeal. “Haven’t you ever had an argument with someone about what might have happened? If Celestia had done more for Luna before she became Nightmare Moon, or if the princesses hadn’t ignored Scorpan’s warnings about Tirek, or if the Crystal Empire before Sombra had adopted a market-based economy? Can you imagine? Every argument could be solved! We could just ask the book what might have happened and get an answer!”
“Yeah, that sounds pretty neat, actually.” She eyed the quill more thoughtfully now. “So what’s wrong with it?”
“It doesn’t work for any of those things.” Twilight’s muzzle wrinkled. “It’s not powerful enough to reach back across centuries, or to consider what thousands of ponies might have done different. All it can do is show things related to the individual who writes in it. The different paths your life might have taken.”
Oh. Starlight considered that statement for a while. Eventually she noticed Twilight was watching her.
She cleared her throat. “Still sounds like a success. Just not the one you wanted.”
Twilight shook her head so hard her mane whipped about. “No. Think about it, Starlight. All it can ever show you is things that might have been. Maybe it shows that things turned out well for you, but what’s more likely? That, or it shows you how much better things could have been? It shows you all the ways your mistakes could have gone different. All the better paths your life could have taken. It’s…it’s like a magical regret generator. It serves no other purpose.”
Ah. Their earlier pancake conversation made sense now. “So you want to destroy it.”
“I think I do. Yes.”
Starlight reached out to touch the book. The pages were warm and soft. Something like a heartbeat vibrated beneath her hoof.
Twilight raised an eyebrow.
A pony could learn a lot from such a book, Starlight reasoned. And the more mistakes a pony had made, the more they could learn. Ergo, a pony who’d made every mistake could learn everything from it. It was a fountain of knowledge and power inverse to the wisdom and judgement of the pony writing in it.
Perfect for her, in other words.
“Let me use it,” Starlight whispered. “For one night. Let me have it for one night, and I will tell you if you should destroy it.”
“It’s more dangerous than you think,” Twilight said. Her eyes grew clouded for a moment. “Trust me.”
Poor Twilight. For all that she’d saved the world through countless dangerous adventures, she didn’t really accept risk in the same way Starlight did. She didn’t understand that sometimes things had to be sacrificed. A pony had to be willing to step up to the edge of the cliff and risk everything in pursuit of what they wanted. Of what they needed.
“Just one night,” she repeated. “That’s all.”
Starlight Glimmer sat atop the covers in her room. The rest of the castle had turned in for the night, and the only light came from the oil lantern by her beside. She’d opened her window a crack to let the cool evening air in.
The book sat on the covers beside her. It was huge, hundreds of blank pages long, for no reason Starlight could understand. Wouldn’t a single page have been enough? She’d probed at its magical structure earlier, curious to see how Twilight had woven the thing together, and already found a few areas for improvement. Nothing that would solve the book’s paramount deficiency, however; no magic she knew, or apparently Twilight knew, could create a counterfactual world based on other lives. Only the life of the pony writing in it.
But still, such a powerful artifact it was. Her mind boggled again at Twilight’s irrationality. To have given birth to such a wondrous artifact and have already consigned it to destruction. She stroked the flat of her hoof over the gold-embossed cover.
She shifted on the covers. They were soft on her belly where her coat was the thinnest. She could feel the pattern sewn into them scratching pleasantly on her skin.
Enough stalling. One night. She opened the book to the first page, snatched up the quill from the inkpot, and wrote:
Sunburst didn’t move away when we were foals.
The shadows around the bed expanded. They grew like billowing clouds, reared up to swallow the walls and the ceiling and collapsed onto her like waves, leaving only darkness in their wake.
Starlight Glimmer sat at her desk, grading essays. She was nearly done with the entire class, and only one remained. The sun had long-since set outside her window, and the lights come on in the town’s streets. Ponies wandered the broad avenues, in couples or in groups, chattering quietly. It was winter, and the trees bare, and drifts of snow danced across the cobblestones.
Starlight noticed these things only in passing. Part of her wanted to set this final essay down and head out, to grab some dinner or just do a bit of window shopping while there was still time—she really needed to get those Hearthswarming gifts still—but that would just mean having to grade it at home, and that was one rule she tried never to break. So she focused all her waning attention on Petunia’s exhaustive accounting of the trees of Sire’s Hollow. She loved evergreens especially. A full page of neat, foalish mouthwriting detailed the ideal characteristics of the cedar family.
She knew what score it was going to receive after the first paragraph. But still she read the whole thing before affixing a gold star to the top. Petunia’s cutie mark hadn’t manifested yet, but the filly was bound to be a botanist. Starlight would’ve bet her life on it. The task complete, she set the essay atop the pile of other essays, tidied up her desk, and locked up the schoolhouse for the night.
Ponies greeted her on the streets. She was a popular mare, the teacher of their foals and magic tutor for the unicorns. A powerful unicorn, yes—there’d been whispers as a filly about sending her off to the capital, to study with Princess Celestia herself, but instead she’d gotten her cutie mark as an educator, and what use did a young teacher’s assistant need for instruction by a princess? The town’s old teacher, a retired professor from Oxbridge, took her as his apprentice, and in the decades since she’d grown into his job. It was a simple life in a simple town, her days filled with corralling foals and trying despite all their efforts to educate them. She woke before the dawn and rarely returned home before sunset.
It was a good life. She waved at Sand Dollar and his wife as they exited a restaurant across the street. Their colt’s essay on seashells had been one of the first she’d graded that night.
The stores along the main street had already set out their Hearthswarming decorations. She paused outside a haute saddle shop and peered through the glazed windows. There were some fashionable stallion’s saddles inside, and she hadn’t gotten her father’s gift yet. In her head she juggled her finances, the small bonus the town paid her before the winter break, and the fact that Firelight still got her something nice every year.
It could wait, she decided. Surely they’d have a sale before too long. And as much as she loved her father, there were other ponies she had to get gifts for first. So she put a pin in the saddle idea and reluctantly resumed her walk.
Her home was in one of the modest neighborhoods adjoining the central street. She walked down the elm-lined avenue to its end, where a small but tidy house practically glowed from within. Dozens of candles and lanterns and magic-infused crystals chased away the darkness. As she stepped on the path leading to her front door, more lights came on, and warmth as well, and for a moment it felt like a spring day coddling her in the heart of winter. No snow ever touched the ground here. They didn’t let it.
She pushed open the door and was assaulted by the rich scent of lentil-stuffed acorn squash slowly roasting in the oven. A moment later she was assaulted again by a twenty-four pound terror that dove on her from above. Legs and wings wrapped around her barrel and tiny teeth grabbed her mane.
“I’ve got you, mommy!” Cinnamon squealed from atop her. “Rawr!”
“Aargh!” Starlight cried. She sank to the floor and flailed. “I’m gotten! Sunburst! Help!”
There was a shuffling sound from the kitchen. A moment later the love of her life stuck his head out. Sunburst wore the frilly gray Countess Coloratura apron she’d bought him as a gag back in their college days, and a spatula floated beside him. He rolled his eyes at the sight and retreated back to making dinner.
“Traitor!” Starlight called. She yelped in actual pain as Cinnamon found her ear and bit. Pegasus teeth were sharp. “Ow! Careful honey. Don’t hurt mommy.”
“The victow.. Victoriow…” Cinnamon struggled over the words.
“Victorious, baby.”
“The victorious hunter returns home with her prey!” Cinnamon flapped and flapped, but could no more lift Starlight than Starlight could lift a mountain. She panted from the effort and settled on Starlight’s back, still clinging to her mane.
“Very impressive.” Starlight turned her head to kiss her daughter’s cheek, then stood and trotted into the kitchen. Dozens of tools and instruments and utensils floated in a cloud of Sunburst’s magic, and she carefully navigated around them to the table. She deposited Cinnamon in the high chair and took her own seat by the window. “Need help, babe?”
“Nope. Almost done,” he said. Most of the utensils floated over to the sink and settled into the water. Sunburst opened the oven and pulled out their dinner, which incidentally gave Starlight a great view of his ass. She stared at it like a high school filly.
In due course the squash were set out and the family tore into them. They shared the mundane details of their day; Starlight’s class, Sunburst’s library and Cinnamon’s grand adventure fighting pirates who’d buried treasure in the nearby woods with her friends. Starlight listened as her daughter recounted their ever-more-elaborate hijinks and decided, for not the first time, that the filly was going to either be the next Daring Do or a pirate herself.
After dinner was bath time, which meant just little splashes of water for pegasus fillies. Then Starlight carefully helped Cinnamon preen her wings, reading aloud from a book their pegasus neighbor Zipporwhill had lent her. Not all of it made sense to Starlight, but she supposed a book on unicorn magic would be similarly indecipherable to pegasus parents. Someday, when Cinnamon was older, maybe during a summer break, she would finally get around to writing that guide to raising pegasus foals for non-pegasus parents.
Ah, but that could wait. She had a squirming ball of feathers to deal with now.
“Okay, baby,” she said. She uncapped the bottle of feathergloss oil and poured a bit into an empty soapdish. “Remember, just enough to get the tip of your muzzle wet. Not like last time.”
So saying, she dipped her nose in the dish, dabbing it with a bit of the oil. It smelled like sandalwood to her, though Sunburst said it was more like laurel leaf. She started working it through Cinnamon’s left wing, while the filly went to work on the right.
There weren’t any spills this time. Progress.
Later, when Cinnamon was in bed and Starlight had taken her own, longer bath while Sunburst cleaned the last of the evenings detritus, the settled into their bedroom. It barely felt like any time had passed since she got home. Some days, it barely felt like any time had passed since she and Sunburst bought the house, or since Cinnamon had been born, or since they moved back to Sire’s Hollow after graduating, or… Starlight’s thoughts tumbled down time’s endless paths. Where had it all gone? Just yesterday it felt like she’d brought Cinnamon home from the hospital.
Sunburst nuzzled just behind her ear. His breath tussled her mane. “What’s wrong, Glimmy?”
“Just thinking,” Starlight said. She rolled over to face her husband. “Time flies so fast.”
“That’s because, as you get older, each individual day or month or year is a subjectively smaller portion of your entire lived experience, so the thirtieth year of your life seems much shorter than the third year of your life, which—”
She silenced him with a kiss. “I know, babe. I’m just saying.”
“Oh.” He blushed hard enough for her to feel the heat radiating from his face in the darkness. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I love your sexy pedantics.”
He chuckled at that, and they settled back into silence. The room was cool with winter’s touch, and Starlight snuggled closer to him, jealous for his warmth. Sleep began to steal over her in waves.
He cleared his throat. “Glimmy?”
She blinked sleepily. “Muh?”
“Sorry. Uh, Stellar Flare came by earlier.”
“Oh.” Starlight closed her eyes again. “What’d your mom want?”
“The usual. Play with Cinnamon, talk about Hearthswarming gift ideas. Ask about more grandfoals.”
Eyes opened again. Wide awake this time. Her ears perked up, straining forward. She could hear his heart beating. “...oh?”
“Yeah. I said we’d, uh, been talking about it.”
That they had been. Starlight forced her hooves to stillness. “And?”
“And, you know… maybe it is time?”
She swallowed. “You mean it?”
He nodded rapidly. Jerkily. A bit scared by what he was saying, but then, so was she.
But that was fine. They could face their fears together. She lifted her muzzle for another kiss.
It was a while before she got any sleep that night.
Starlight Glimmer gasped for air. The muscles in her back spasmed, drawing her spine into a tight coil that bent her nearly in half. She stared up at the dark ceiling in her room in Twilight Sparkle’s palace. The cold air chilled her sweaty coat.
Her hooves scrambled for purchase. They slid on the smooth blankets, and she tumbled off the bed, landing on the hard crystal with her shoulder. A bright flash of pain disoriented her, and cried out. The darkness blinded her, and for a long moment she could not tell the difference between her bedroom here and the fantasy bedroom conjured by the book. The false vision, the fake, faithless promise of what might’ve been. The lie it told her.
She stood, her chest heaving. Spittle dripped from her lips. She glared at the book, her confusion and pain replaced in an instant with an intense, burning rage. Her horn lit, and the book floated before her. It would just take a thought, a passing wish, and nothing would remain but ashes. It would never deceive another pony again.
“You liar,” she hissed. “I… you!”
She flung it across the room. It struck the far wall with enough force to rattle the lamp on her bedside table.
“You lie!” she screamed. The images paraded through her mind. She remembered flashes of things the book had never told her: her marriage to Sunburst; the surprise when her daughter was born a pegasus; her mother showing her the best way to nurse the little ball of feathers. A thousand things that had never never never happened.
Perhaps Twilight was right. All the book could offer was regret. She lifted it again and was about to cast the spell that would destroy it when a passing thought stayed her wrath.
Shaking, she drew it back to her. She set the book on the bed and opened it to the first page. Blank again.
“What do I have to regret, anyway?” she said. “L-look at me! Student of the princess. Not some lowly teacher still living in the same small town where she was born. I'm better than that! This is better!”
Defiance drove what she wrote next.
I defeated Twilight Sparkle at Our Town.
The deserts outside Our Town were high, dry and cold. Only at the height of summer were ponies in danger of overheating—in the winter months, foals had to be kept inside after the sun set, and many families shivered their way through the nights.
The homes weren’t very well insulated. Starlight Glimmer understood this and understood that it needed to be fixed. Their carpenter just wasn’t very good at filling all those pesky gaps between the planks, and the gypsum wallboard they’d ordered from Las Pegasus was moldering in their little warehouse while they figured out the correct gauge of nails to hang it with, and nopony in the town really knew how to insulate the ceilings or floors at all. Maybe carpets were the answer, said Tapperwhill. But carpets were expensive and Starlight Glimmer knew for sure that cold hooves might be uncomfortable but they didn’t really matter, all that mattered was that everypony’s home was the same.
They could all be freezing in caves in the desert, and it wouldn’t matter. As long as they were all freezing together. Unity of purpose would give them the strength to overcome any adversity.
Or any adversary.
Starlight Glimmer was cold at that moment, actually. Her breath fogged, forming white clouds that drifted through the cave, slowly dissipating. The glow of the enslaved cutie marks filling the wall behind her lent the space an eerie, ghostly sense of menace. Normally she loved to bathe in their light, but today she felt nothing but cold in here.
“You can’t win. You know that, right?”
“Quiet,” Starlight snapped. “You’re hardly in any position to talk about winning.”
Princess Twilight Sparkle was a pathetic sight. Like every other pony Starlight had freed from their mark, she was going through a brief period of lassitude, characterized by exhaustion, loss of color and shallow emotions. An untrained observer might call it despair. It would fade soon, once she realized how joyous it was to be unshackled from destiny, but for the next few days at least the cutie mark withdrawal would leave her weaker than a kitten.
She wasn’t tied up. No need for ropes. Alicorn or no, Starlight could’ve held her down without even needing her magic.
“I don’t know what you thought your little escape was going to accomplish, but it failed,” she continued. “You’re one of us, now. Once you accept that you’ll be happy again. Trying to resist will just prolong this period of suffering.”
“Happy?” Twilight chuckled. It was a lifeless, empty sound. “You stole everything that makes me special. You stole everything that makes my friends special. You call that happiness?”
“I do! You see, your problem is that you don’t understand what happiness really is.” Starlight paced around the cave, growing excited as she spoke. “Ponies think happiness is a warm, fuzzy feeling that they get whenever something good happens to them. Contentment or euphoria. But that’s wrong, Twilight. That’s just an emotion, just the pleasure centers in your brain activating because they’ve received the correct chemicals. No, true happiness occurs when ponies flourish. When we do the right thing and act virtuously to bring about a better world. That feeling, that sensation, that is happiness. And it’s what you will feel soon! When you join our town and become a part of our great project, bringing about a new, egalitarian dawn for all of Equestria, then you will be happy, Twilight!”
She ended in front of Twilight, their muzzles just inches apart. She was breathing hard — she always got worked up when she gave that speech. It roused a fire inside her, burning away doubt and cowardice. Every time she recruited a new pony and freed them, her own convictions were reborn. It was the best part of what she did. Better than any food or wine or drug or sex, this feeling, bringing a new pony into the fold, this was joy.
Starlight Glimmer was happy.
“You’re an idiot.”
Starlight flinched as if slapped. “What?”
“You heard me.” Twilight said. She spoke slowly and evenly, without any heat or emotion in her voice. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a pony so deluded. I actually pity you.”
“You...” Starlight had to stop. Her belly spasmed in a gutteral, humorless laugh. “You pity me? Look at you! You have nothing! I have won, princess!”
“You think you’re happy? You think this is victory?” Twilight looked around slowly. “This is misery, Starlight. You’re fooling yourself. Oh, and I do have something you don’t.”
Starlight sneered. “What, those wings? You think being an alicorn makes you better than me? That’s exactly the sort of unequal lie that I’m trying to destroy—“
“No.” As soft as Twilight’s voice was, she interrupted Starlight effortlessly. “I have friends. Friends who will never stop fighting for me, not because I’m making them or they’re afraid of me, but because they love me. Do you have anypony like that, Starlight?”
“What? I have friends. I have lots of friends! A whole town of friends!”
“You have prisoners. Slaves. And someday they’ll rise up to overthrow you.”
Starlight snarled. “They will never oppose me! They—WE are all committed to this project. We have all sacrificed for it, more than you can imagine, and I won’t let your stupid sentimentality put it at risk.”
Twilight rolled her shoulders. Her whole body slumped, weighed down by exhaustion and cutie mark withdrawal. Everything but her eyes. They bored into Starlight’s, and in them Starlight saw not just determination and resistance but something far worse. Not scorn, not hate.
Concern, pity and love.
“Stop it,” Starlight growled. “Don’t you dare look at me like that!”
“It’s not too late. I know you feel trapped here, Starlight, but it’s never too late—“
“Shut up!”
“It’s never too late to do the right thing. I know you don’t really believe all that babble about happiness. I know what you’re hiding in there, a scared little filly who lost something and doesn’t know how—“
“SHUT UP!” Starlight’s horn flared, burning with enough light to fill the cave like the sun. She lifted her captive into the air, squeezing her roughly. “You know nothing about me!”
Twilight laughed. It was a weak, defeated sound, but still her eyes were filled with force. They reflected the light of Starlight’s horn like jewels.
“Everything you do, everything you say, it just proves how wrong you are.” The words gurgled out of Twilight’s throat. “You know it. Come with me, Starlight. I can help you. I’ve helped ponies who’ve made mistakes—”
No. No, she hadn’t used that word. Any other insult Starlight might have abided, but to say that, to call into question everything about her great work, that was unforgivable.
“I. HAVE NOT. MADE. MISTAKES!” Starlight’s vision went red. She felt the blood singing in her veins as she screamed. With every beat of her heart the aura of her magic grew, until everything in the cave was either light or shadow.
“You don’t understand!” Starlight screamed at the dark, pitiful shape hanging before her. “I am the hero here, not you! I am the one saving the world! I will—”
A loud crack cut through her rant. She felt something give in her magical grip, a sudden resistance that vanished, replaced by a sandy, grinding, dripping weakness. She gasped for breath, closed her eyes, and slowly let the power out of her horn.
Deep breaths. She was the one in charge here.
She opened her eyes. Twilight lay crumpled on the ground, her neck bent at an angle that no pony’s neck should bend. Her chest neither rose nor fell.
She licked her lips. “T-twilight?”
The cave was silent in response. Only the quiet, omnipresent hum of the imprisoned cutie marks behind her filled the void.
“Twilight, I’m sorry. P-please don’t do this.” She was shaking. The edges of her hooves rattled on the stone floor. A sudden dawning horror welled up out of her heart and seized her brain. Her eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to scream but nothing emerged because she couldn’t breathe, her chest wouldn’t move, and still the horror grew inside her like a cancer, crowding out everything else until nothing remained but a scared little filly lost in an endless darkness crying for her mother.
“T-this. This.” Starlight swallowed. Her heart began to beat again, and slowly the rage returned. She welcomed it, embracing it to chase away the horror. “This is your fault. Your fault! Not mine, yours!”
She stalked around the body, the rage inside her growing with each step. “You made me do this! You could’ve just accepted it, like everypony else, but no! You had to be a fool, and now look! Look at what you’ve done! YOU!”
The room spun. Not enough air. She closed her eyes again, waiting for the vertigo to pass. Everything replayed itself behind her eyes, the argument, the screaming, the wet sound of Twilight’s neck breaking. She couldn’t get it out of her head. And all the while, something else grew inside her.
Hatred. For the first time in her, Starlight understood hatred. Not the pitiful emotion foals felt for bullies or grown ponies for their rivals, but a true, deep, all-consuming malice. The kind that fueled rage unto death.
Starlight opened her eyes, and a new clarity overtook the world. Everything was sharper. Clearer. The fog was gone.
She leaned over Twilight’s body and whispered to it: “Everything that happens now is your fault. All your friends. It’s all on you.”
She stalked to the entrance. The guards outside shied away as she emerged. It was all she could do not to strike them for their weakness.
“Bring the unicorn next,” she snarled.
The collapsing spell hit Starlight Glimmer like a meteor. The cave and its memories washed away, but nothing could erase the image of Twilight’s body, crumpled on the ground before. Crumpled on the ground because of her.
She was lying on the floor, she realized. An acid tang filled her mouth. She coughed and spat out a vile mix of saliva and phlegm. A pool of vomit surrounded her head.
She tried to stand and failed. Her legs wouldn’t support her weight. She crawled across the floor away from the bed and the book.
The sound of claws on crystal slipped in through the crack beneath her door. “Starlight? Are you okay?”
“Spike,” she croaked. Her throat was raw. She tasted blood in the back of her mouth. “I… I’m fine. Just a dream.”
“I heard, uh, sounds.” There was a pause. More clicking of claws. “I’m coming in, okay?”
“No!” She found the strength for power again, and her horn came to life. Light surrounded her door, holding it fast. “No. I’m… I’m fine. Go back to bed.”
“I’m getting Twilight.”
“No, please…” Starlight squeezed her eyes shut. Tears flowed from them, hot and stinging.
He didn’t reply. A few minutes later she heard the quiet clip-clop of hooves on crystal. Her lungs seized, and she curled into a tight ball, covering her face with her hooves.
“Starlight?” Twilight’s voice was dimmed by the thick door. “Spike’s, um, he said something was wrong. Can I come in?”
No. No no no no no no. Starlight curled up tighter. Ever muscle constricted. Her jaw clenched and her teeth squealed. “Please don’t. I can’t, I can’t look at you.”
“It’s okay. You used the book, right? I don’t know what it showed you but it doesn’t matter, Starlight. We’re your friends and we love you—”
“Stop. Please,” Starlight moaned. Every word was poison. She had done nothing to deserve such kindness. She poured more power into her horn, wrapping the magic around the door. The crystal began to vibrate from the force of her grip.
“Spike got some water for you. Do you want some water? I’m just going to slide it in—”
Starlight felt Twilight’s magic start to mingle with hers. It was a familiar sensation, as comfortable to her as her own skin after so many years as her student. But now she saw Twilight hanging in the air in the cave again, and the touch of her magic was like fire.
“NO!” She gripped the door with more force than she’d ever used before. The crystal sang, ringing like a bell, and then it cracked full across its face with the sound of a canon. It deafened her.
In time, sound returned. She was standing now, panting, unable to hold a breath in her lungs for more than a second. The magic had faded, and nothing prevented Twilight from simply pushing open the door and walking through.
“Okay.” Twilight’s soft voice came through. Subdued, calming. The voice one used with a wounded animal. “Okay. And the book?”
The book. Starlight turned. It lay open on her bed, undisturbed by her tumble. The pages were blank again. She swallowed the lingering taste of vomit.
“I need it still,” she whispered.
She walked back toward the bed and picked up the quill.
“You’ve shown me the life I could have had,” she mumbled. “You’ve shown me the evil I could have done. Please, please, please show me that I could have done something right. Show me that I can be good.”
She lowered the quill and wrote.
I said yes to North Star.
Starlight Glimmer could see Our Town from the cliffs around her magic cave. She could see her house, even.
More specifically, she could see the wreckage of her house. The townponies had done a rather thorough job on it, tearing through it and tossing most of her belongings out into the street. It looked like they were searching for something. Or maybe they were just really upset. There had been that mob chasing her.
More was in ruins than just her house. Everything was ruined, in fact. All her plans. The years of effort. The sacrifices she’d made. The life she’d built out here, scratched out of the unforgiving badlands with nothing more than the force of her will and the unity she inspired in her followers.
All gone. Just… gone. Like dried leaves picked up by the wind and carried away.
She ought to be more upset. But mostly she was just numb. An endless emptiness filled her gut. The strange beating pulse in her chest was somepony else’s heart.
The clatter of disturbed stones broke her reverie. She turned her head to see another pony scrambling up the rough path to the cave. A unicorn stallion with a chestnut mane and sandy coat. He froze, seeing her, then slowly walked toward the cliff and took a seat a few paces away.
“Come to push me off?” she asked.
North Star recoiled. “What? No! No, I just, I thought you might be up here. I wanted to talk.”
Oh. Alright then. She made a little motion with her hoof to continue.
“We, uh, we talked down there. About what happened.” He gestured down at the town below them in the distance. “A lot of ponies are upset.”
Yeah. She’d gotten that impression. “Uh huh.”
“And, um, ponies want to know what you’re going to do.”
What? She squinted at him.
He fidgeted in place. “You know, like, what you’re going to do. Now, I mean.”
She had a few ideas, actually. Little fantasies that had filled the wreckage of the past hours. Mostly they involved kicking Twilight Sparkle’s ass.
“Why do you care?” she asked.
“Well, I wanted to make sure you were going to stay.”
She blinked. “Stay?”
“Yeah. Like, as our mayor. Without the cutie mark stuff though.”
“Without the–” She caught herself and took a deep breath. “The ‘cutie mark stuff’ was the whole point, North Star.”
“So that didn’t work out too well, right? Like, I feel so much better now. I didn’t even realize I was missing it before, it’d been so long, but getting my mark back…” He sighed. “It was like having a weight on your back for years, for so long you’d forgotten you were even bearing it. Every day it crushed you, grinding you into the dirt until you thought the dirt was where you belonged. And then, one day, gone! And it felt like I could fly. It feels like I can fly, Starlight! All that stuff was wrong, but now it’s right!”
She closed her eyes. “It wasn’t supposed to be like that. It was supposed to free everypony. If I’d just been able to finish it, everypony would’ve forgotten how terrible being different was, and then we could all be happy for once—”
He snorted. “I’m happier now, Starlight. I’ve never been this happy before. I never knew what happiness was until my mark came back to me.”
“That’s not really happiness. That’s just pleasure,” she said. The rote words tasted like chalk. “True happiness is when ponies flourish and work to bring about a better world.”
“Yeah, well, maybe that’s what we’re doing now, then. Cause I feel pretty happy.”
Had North Star ever been one of her true-believers? She’d thought so, but how quick he was to betray her. She closed her eyes.
“You want to know what I’m going to do?” she asked.
“Yeah, that’s kind why I came up here, remember? The others are all—”
“What I am going to do is find that… that bitch of a princess!” Starlight said. She pushed herself back on her hooves. The emptiness in her chest faded, replaced by something warm and welcome. Anger.
“I’m going to find her and her friends,” she continued. “And I’m going to get my revenge! I don’t know how, but they’re going to pay for ruining our dreams! I don’t care how long it takes. I’ll make them all pay!”
“Oh. Uh.” North Star gawked at her. “What about us?”
“What?” She blinked, suddenly returned out of the clouds. “What about you?”
“The town. It’s still there. We still need you.”
“I don’t care about the town! The town was never the point!” She stalked in a circle, stomping her hoof for emphasis. “The point was to build a new society based on equality and freedom! Never again would ponies be slaves to their cutie marks or forced into destinies they didn’t want. We could have escaped from fate and forged our own paths! No more being shackled to some idle whim from our childhood. The point was to make a world where ponies could be free! The town was just a… just a byproduct. A, a side-effect. A way to make the dream come true. And now that dream is gone.”
She stumbled to a halt by the end, and sat again. She watched the colorful little dots in the distance that were ponies walking through Our Town’s street.
North Star sat beside her. His shoulder brushed against hers. “Yeah, well, it’s still a pretty nice town. Best one I’ve ever lived in! You did a good job with it.”
Yeah. She had, she supposed. Something small to hang her hat on.
“Look, I’m not saying you have to stay or live with us or anything,” North Star said. “Just, you know… come down and talk? I promise nopony’s too upset. They’re a little worried about you. I… you know… I’m a little worried about you.”
He set his hoof on hers. She stared down at it, baffled.
How long had it been since another pony had willingly touched her? She wracked her mind, trying to recall the last time. Never in Our Town, certainly, and before that… she flipped through the years, desperate, trying to find a single shred of shared contact. Of even the most casual affection. Something that resembled friendship.
Not since she’d started her quest. That… that bore consideration.
“Starlight? You there?”
She started, shocked out of her reverie. “Sorry. Just, uh, thinking about something.”
“Okay. You looked, uh, a little spaced out there.”
“I know.” She paused, suddenly afraid. But she’d never let fear stop her before. “North Star… can, um… ah dammit this will sound weird. Can… can I get a hug?”
Silence. He stared at her. The slender tendril of hope that had begun to sprout in her heart began to wither. Her mouth twisted, and she wished she could go back in time, taking back those words. Anything to avoid the burning humiliation starting to flood out of her chest. She squeezed her eyes shut and turned away so he wouldn’t see her cry.
She didn’t get far. A pair of strong legs surrounded her, squeezing her tight. For the first time in years another pony held her in their arms. The warmth of another body washed over her, and something inside her broke.
“Sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t sure I heard you right.”
She sniffed. “It’s okay.”
His grip eased. “So, uh, you wanna come back and talk?”
Did she? Starlight considered the paths before her. Her spirit still cried out for Twilight’s blood. She couldn’t abandon her life’s work so easily. Revenge might be years away, but she deserved it. They all deserved it.
But this warmth, this… friendship. That was the word. There was friendship here now, waiting for her to accept. All she had to do was let the past go.
“Yes,” she said. “I think I do.”
Twilight Sparkle had entered her room at some point. She sat by the desk, a quiet, steady presence. The early morning sunlight painted her mane with amethysts.
Starlight closed the book. She tried to speak but nothing came.
Eventually, Twilight broke the silence: “I’m sorry.”
Starlight shook her head.
“I used it too, you know?” Twilight gazed out the window as she spoke. “I wanted to see how my life might have been. If I’d made friends as a foal. If I hadn’t cloistered myself with my books. If I’d been happier.”
Ah. Starlight stared at the cover. It seemed so harmless, closed like that.
“Sometimes I was happier,” Twilight continued. “Sometimes I wasn’t. Sometimes the world ended because I’d changed my path and wasn’t able to stop Nightmare Moon or Sombra. But I never learned anything useful from anything it showed me. Only that I’m worse than I could be, or I could be worse than I am. I thought it might be different for you.”
Starlight shook her head again.
Twilight closed her eyes and tipped her head, resting it on the window sill. “Then I hurt you for nothing. I’m sorry.”
Starlight licked her lips. They tasted foul, bitter, tinged with hours-old vomit. She worked her sore throat until it yielded enough to croak: “Twilight?”
Twilight’s ears perked. “Yes?”
“Can…” Starlight swallowed. Her voice was a ragged whisper and would be for days. “Can I get a hug?”
Twilight moved without hesitation. She jumped over the bed between them, wings flared out for balance, and wrapped Starlight in the gentlest, kindest, most welcome hug she’d ever known.
Starlight inhaled Twilight’s scent. That lavender shampoo she always used. Her own coat stank with sweat and worse, she knew. But Twilight never pulled away.
“Friends?” Starlight croaked.
“Best friends.” Twilight squeezed her tighter for just a moment. “Hey, want some breakfast? I bet Spike’ll make pancakes again if we ask nice.”
Starlight nodded. She glanced back at the bed. “And the book?”
“Eh, we’ll figure it out later. C’mon.”
And they left behind what might have been, and went to start their day.
Starlight considered her answer over a mouthful of soft, buttery pancake. As usual she’d loaded it with maple syrup too, and she needed a swallow of milk to clear her mouth before answering.
“Like, a specific book? Or any book?”
“A specific book,” Twilight said. She then clarified: “Except it’s not really a book. It’s more like a spell in the form of a book.”
“A spellbook, you mean?” Sometimes spellbooks set themselves on fire if you weren’t careful. Starlight had lost a rather nice copy of Xenophon’s Examined Exsanguinations in just such an accident as a teenage filly. It took the hair on her fetlocks weeks to regrow.
“No. A book that is a spell.” Twilight nudged her plate of pancakes morosely. She hadn’t taken a single bite yet. Apparently contemplating the fiery death of a book had stolen her appetite. “A magical artifact that merely takes the shape of a book. Also, it doesn’t work.”
“So it’s a spell in the shape of a book, except it doesn’t work. It sounds to me like you’re describing a regular book.” Starlight finished the last of her pancakes, and then, sensing that Twilight had no need for hers, reached out with her magic to grasp the princess’s still-full plate and slide it slowly across the table. They had whipped cream and blueberries on them, which Starlight wasn’t thrilled about, viewing them as a desert-like corruption of a breakfast staple, but she wasn’t going to look a gift pancake in the mouth. Instead she put it in her mouth.
“No, it’s…” Twilight frowned in thought. Then she looked across the table at her absconded pancakes and frowned harder. “It does something. More than a book. But it’s a failure at what it should do.”
“Objects that fail to fulfil their purpose should be destroyed,” Starlight said. She scraped the whipped cream and blueberries off the pancake, restoring it to its proper form, and took a bite. “That is what the old-Starlight Glimmer would say. New-Glim says there’s room for everypony, or, uh, everybook, no matter how imperfect they may be. So no, you should not burn this book. Is this, uh, like a friendship lesson?”
“No, it was a genuine question.” Twilight stood. Her horn glowed, and a dollop of the scraped-away whipped cream on Starlight’s plate lifted away, floating across the table until the princess snapped it out of the air with her jaws. Her tongue flashed out, cleaning away the flecks that had escaped on her muzzle. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
The book was opened to its middle atop a polished cedar lectern in Twilight’s private library, the one attached to her bedroom that only friends were allowed to use. Since Starlight Glimmer was the only friend of Twilight’s who had more than a passing interest in books, it was rare for anypony but her or Spike to set foot within its walls. She’d snuck Trixie in once, just to prove the place existed, but aside from that passing moment of daring it was only ever a place of study.
And now, apparently, spellwork. Starlight trotted up to the lectern and peered down at the book.
It was blank. She flipped all the way back to the beginning. Every page was empty.
“I found your problem,” she said. “It’s supposed to have words in it.”
“Ha.” Twilight trotted up beside her. Her horn flashed and a quill appeared, yanked out of some pocket dimension where she kept an endless array of writing supplies. She offered the quill to Starlight. “Here. Write something in it.”
“Uh.” Starlight held the quill over the page. “What?”
“Anything.”
Fine. Starlight hummed quietly for a moment, considering, then lowered the quill’s tip to the page.
There once was a dragon
Who lived in a wagon.
As soon as she made the final mark with her quill, the period at the end of the sentence, the world around her changed. Her sight vanished, replaced by darkness, and for a moment she floated weightless in space. She started to scream, but before she could draw the breath to do so, light and life returned to the universe.
She stood in a wagon, cramped, packed with all the things a pony could own: clothes in trunks and shoes on racks and a bed decorated with star-and-moon sheets and pots and pans and fireworks and ratty books from distant lands. She started to turn and kicked over a stack of empty bottles; her horn tangled in a silver dreamcatcher. The door opened beside her, and she spun to see an enormous dragon, far too large to fit into the wagon, larger than a house, squeezing its enormous head through the opening, and all the belongings in its horde were squished to the side as the wagon suddenly went from crowded to compactly airless, and for a moment Starlight Glimmer was given to remember that diamonds are made when carbon is compressed as her body found itself squeezed between the cracks of endless detritus, and the pressure grew and her body went from something pony-shaped to something more in the style of a wet red abstract sculpture that seeped—
Starlight Glimmer gasped. She was back in the library, teetering on her hooves, still very much in one piece and pony shaped. She stumbled away from the book, releasing the quill and letting it drift to the floor.
Twilight caught the feather. She set it on the table beside the book. The words Starlight had just written there had already faded away, leaving only blank waxweed vellum behind.
Quick check: limbs, eyes, horn, tail. All yes. Starlight let out a shuddering breath. “What was that?”
“Based on what you wrote, I’m guessing something about a dragon in a wagon. Also pretty disturbing, from your reaction.”
“It, uh… yeah, a little.” Starlight gave her whole body a shake. “What was it, though? Was that real?”
“Oh, no.” Twilight shook her head. “I don’t know exactly what you saw, because that’s unique to you. But I can tell you with absolute certainty that it was not real. Nothing this book shows is real.”
Starlight found the courage to approach the book again. Not even the scratchy indentations of her quillmarks remained on the page. It was perfect and pristine. “So it’s, like, just a fantasy generator?”
“No. It’s… hm.” Twilight tilted her head. “It shows things that might have been true. I wanted to call it Sparkle’s Counterfactual Simulacrum, but that’s not quite alliterative enough. It needs some other title. Anyway, it shows different outcomes. I guess it tried to show you what happened if a dragon really did try to live in a wagon, but since that sounds impossible it must’ve been weird.”
“Uh, a little.” Starlight glanced at the quill. “Why though? Why make it?”
“Because, haven’t you ever wondered?” Twilight’s words took on a hint of zeal. “Haven’t you ever had an argument with someone about what might have happened? If Celestia had done more for Luna before she became Nightmare Moon, or if the princesses hadn’t ignored Scorpan’s warnings about Tirek, or if the Crystal Empire before Sombra had adopted a market-based economy? Can you imagine? Every argument could be solved! We could just ask the book what might have happened and get an answer!”
“Yeah, that sounds pretty neat, actually.” She eyed the quill more thoughtfully now. “So what’s wrong with it?”
“It doesn’t work for any of those things.” Twilight’s muzzle wrinkled. “It’s not powerful enough to reach back across centuries, or to consider what thousands of ponies might have done different. All it can do is show things related to the individual who writes in it. The different paths your life might have taken.”
Oh. Starlight considered that statement for a while. Eventually she noticed Twilight was watching her.
She cleared her throat. “Still sounds like a success. Just not the one you wanted.”
Twilight shook her head so hard her mane whipped about. “No. Think about it, Starlight. All it can ever show you is things that might have been. Maybe it shows that things turned out well for you, but what’s more likely? That, or it shows you how much better things could have been? It shows you all the ways your mistakes could have gone different. All the better paths your life could have taken. It’s…it’s like a magical regret generator. It serves no other purpose.”
Ah. Their earlier pancake conversation made sense now. “So you want to destroy it.”
“I think I do. Yes.”
Starlight reached out to touch the book. The pages were warm and soft. Something like a heartbeat vibrated beneath her hoof.
Twilight raised an eyebrow.
A pony could learn a lot from such a book, Starlight reasoned. And the more mistakes a pony had made, the more they could learn. Ergo, a pony who’d made every mistake could learn everything from it. It was a fountain of knowledge and power inverse to the wisdom and judgement of the pony writing in it.
Perfect for her, in other words.
“Let me use it,” Starlight whispered. “For one night. Let me have it for one night, and I will tell you if you should destroy it.”
“It’s more dangerous than you think,” Twilight said. Her eyes grew clouded for a moment. “Trust me.”
Poor Twilight. For all that she’d saved the world through countless dangerous adventures, she didn’t really accept risk in the same way Starlight did. She didn’t understand that sometimes things had to be sacrificed. A pony had to be willing to step up to the edge of the cliff and risk everything in pursuit of what they wanted. Of what they needed.
“Just one night,” she repeated. “That’s all.”
Starlight Glimmer sat atop the covers in her room. The rest of the castle had turned in for the night, and the only light came from the oil lantern by her beside. She’d opened her window a crack to let the cool evening air in.
The book sat on the covers beside her. It was huge, hundreds of blank pages long, for no reason Starlight could understand. Wouldn’t a single page have been enough? She’d probed at its magical structure earlier, curious to see how Twilight had woven the thing together, and already found a few areas for improvement. Nothing that would solve the book’s paramount deficiency, however; no magic she knew, or apparently Twilight knew, could create a counterfactual world based on other lives. Only the life of the pony writing in it.
But still, such a powerful artifact it was. Her mind boggled again at Twilight’s irrationality. To have given birth to such a wondrous artifact and have already consigned it to destruction. She stroked the flat of her hoof over the gold-embossed cover.
She shifted on the covers. They were soft on her belly where her coat was the thinnest. She could feel the pattern sewn into them scratching pleasantly on her skin.
Enough stalling. One night. She opened the book to the first page, snatched up the quill from the inkpot, and wrote:
Sunburst didn’t move away when we were foals.
The shadows around the bed expanded. They grew like billowing clouds, reared up to swallow the walls and the ceiling and collapsed onto her like waves, leaving only darkness in their wake.
Starlight Glimmer sat at her desk, grading essays. She was nearly done with the entire class, and only one remained. The sun had long-since set outside her window, and the lights come on in the town’s streets. Ponies wandered the broad avenues, in couples or in groups, chattering quietly. It was winter, and the trees bare, and drifts of snow danced across the cobblestones.
Starlight noticed these things only in passing. Part of her wanted to set this final essay down and head out, to grab some dinner or just do a bit of window shopping while there was still time—she really needed to get those Hearthswarming gifts still—but that would just mean having to grade it at home, and that was one rule she tried never to break. So she focused all her waning attention on Petunia’s exhaustive accounting of the trees of Sire’s Hollow. She loved evergreens especially. A full page of neat, foalish mouthwriting detailed the ideal characteristics of the cedar family.
She knew what score it was going to receive after the first paragraph. But still she read the whole thing before affixing a gold star to the top. Petunia’s cutie mark hadn’t manifested yet, but the filly was bound to be a botanist. Starlight would’ve bet her life on it. The task complete, she set the essay atop the pile of other essays, tidied up her desk, and locked up the schoolhouse for the night.
Ponies greeted her on the streets. She was a popular mare, the teacher of their foals and magic tutor for the unicorns. A powerful unicorn, yes—there’d been whispers as a filly about sending her off to the capital, to study with Princess Celestia herself, but instead she’d gotten her cutie mark as an educator, and what use did a young teacher’s assistant need for instruction by a princess? The town’s old teacher, a retired professor from Oxbridge, took her as his apprentice, and in the decades since she’d grown into his job. It was a simple life in a simple town, her days filled with corralling foals and trying despite all their efforts to educate them. She woke before the dawn and rarely returned home before sunset.
It was a good life. She waved at Sand Dollar and his wife as they exited a restaurant across the street. Their colt’s essay on seashells had been one of the first she’d graded that night.
The stores along the main street had already set out their Hearthswarming decorations. She paused outside a haute saddle shop and peered through the glazed windows. There were some fashionable stallion’s saddles inside, and she hadn’t gotten her father’s gift yet. In her head she juggled her finances, the small bonus the town paid her before the winter break, and the fact that Firelight still got her something nice every year.
It could wait, she decided. Surely they’d have a sale before too long. And as much as she loved her father, there were other ponies she had to get gifts for first. So she put a pin in the saddle idea and reluctantly resumed her walk.
Her home was in one of the modest neighborhoods adjoining the central street. She walked down the elm-lined avenue to its end, where a small but tidy house practically glowed from within. Dozens of candles and lanterns and magic-infused crystals chased away the darkness. As she stepped on the path leading to her front door, more lights came on, and warmth as well, and for a moment it felt like a spring day coddling her in the heart of winter. No snow ever touched the ground here. They didn’t let it.
She pushed open the door and was assaulted by the rich scent of lentil-stuffed acorn squash slowly roasting in the oven. A moment later she was assaulted again by a twenty-four pound terror that dove on her from above. Legs and wings wrapped around her barrel and tiny teeth grabbed her mane.
“I’ve got you, mommy!” Cinnamon squealed from atop her. “Rawr!”
“Aargh!” Starlight cried. She sank to the floor and flailed. “I’m gotten! Sunburst! Help!”
There was a shuffling sound from the kitchen. A moment later the love of her life stuck his head out. Sunburst wore the frilly gray Countess Coloratura apron she’d bought him as a gag back in their college days, and a spatula floated beside him. He rolled his eyes at the sight and retreated back to making dinner.
“Traitor!” Starlight called. She yelped in actual pain as Cinnamon found her ear and bit. Pegasus teeth were sharp. “Ow! Careful honey. Don’t hurt mommy.”
“The victow.. Victoriow…” Cinnamon struggled over the words.
“Victorious, baby.”
“The victorious hunter returns home with her prey!” Cinnamon flapped and flapped, but could no more lift Starlight than Starlight could lift a mountain. She panted from the effort and settled on Starlight’s back, still clinging to her mane.
“Very impressive.” Starlight turned her head to kiss her daughter’s cheek, then stood and trotted into the kitchen. Dozens of tools and instruments and utensils floated in a cloud of Sunburst’s magic, and she carefully navigated around them to the table. She deposited Cinnamon in the high chair and took her own seat by the window. “Need help, babe?”
“Nope. Almost done,” he said. Most of the utensils floated over to the sink and settled into the water. Sunburst opened the oven and pulled out their dinner, which incidentally gave Starlight a great view of his ass. She stared at it like a high school filly.
In due course the squash were set out and the family tore into them. They shared the mundane details of their day; Starlight’s class, Sunburst’s library and Cinnamon’s grand adventure fighting pirates who’d buried treasure in the nearby woods with her friends. Starlight listened as her daughter recounted their ever-more-elaborate hijinks and decided, for not the first time, that the filly was going to either be the next Daring Do or a pirate herself.
After dinner was bath time, which meant just little splashes of water for pegasus fillies. Then Starlight carefully helped Cinnamon preen her wings, reading aloud from a book their pegasus neighbor Zipporwhill had lent her. Not all of it made sense to Starlight, but she supposed a book on unicorn magic would be similarly indecipherable to pegasus parents. Someday, when Cinnamon was older, maybe during a summer break, she would finally get around to writing that guide to raising pegasus foals for non-pegasus parents.
Ah, but that could wait. She had a squirming ball of feathers to deal with now.
“Okay, baby,” she said. She uncapped the bottle of feathergloss oil and poured a bit into an empty soapdish. “Remember, just enough to get the tip of your muzzle wet. Not like last time.”
So saying, she dipped her nose in the dish, dabbing it with a bit of the oil. It smelled like sandalwood to her, though Sunburst said it was more like laurel leaf. She started working it through Cinnamon’s left wing, while the filly went to work on the right.
There weren’t any spills this time. Progress.
Later, when Cinnamon was in bed and Starlight had taken her own, longer bath while Sunburst cleaned the last of the evenings detritus, the settled into their bedroom. It barely felt like any time had passed since she got home. Some days, it barely felt like any time had passed since she and Sunburst bought the house, or since Cinnamon had been born, or since they moved back to Sire’s Hollow after graduating, or… Starlight’s thoughts tumbled down time’s endless paths. Where had it all gone? Just yesterday it felt like she’d brought Cinnamon home from the hospital.
Sunburst nuzzled just behind her ear. His breath tussled her mane. “What’s wrong, Glimmy?”
“Just thinking,” Starlight said. She rolled over to face her husband. “Time flies so fast.”
“That’s because, as you get older, each individual day or month or year is a subjectively smaller portion of your entire lived experience, so the thirtieth year of your life seems much shorter than the third year of your life, which—”
She silenced him with a kiss. “I know, babe. I’m just saying.”
“Oh.” He blushed hard enough for her to feel the heat radiating from his face in the darkness. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I love your sexy pedantics.”
He chuckled at that, and they settled back into silence. The room was cool with winter’s touch, and Starlight snuggled closer to him, jealous for his warmth. Sleep began to steal over her in waves.
He cleared his throat. “Glimmy?”
She blinked sleepily. “Muh?”
“Sorry. Uh, Stellar Flare came by earlier.”
“Oh.” Starlight closed her eyes again. “What’d your mom want?”
“The usual. Play with Cinnamon, talk about Hearthswarming gift ideas. Ask about more grandfoals.”
Eyes opened again. Wide awake this time. Her ears perked up, straining forward. She could hear his heart beating. “...oh?”
“Yeah. I said we’d, uh, been talking about it.”
That they had been. Starlight forced her hooves to stillness. “And?”
“And, you know… maybe it is time?”
She swallowed. “You mean it?”
He nodded rapidly. Jerkily. A bit scared by what he was saying, but then, so was she.
But that was fine. They could face their fears together. She lifted her muzzle for another kiss.
It was a while before she got any sleep that night.
Starlight Glimmer gasped for air. The muscles in her back spasmed, drawing her spine into a tight coil that bent her nearly in half. She stared up at the dark ceiling in her room in Twilight Sparkle’s palace. The cold air chilled her sweaty coat.
Her hooves scrambled for purchase. They slid on the smooth blankets, and she tumbled off the bed, landing on the hard crystal with her shoulder. A bright flash of pain disoriented her, and cried out. The darkness blinded her, and for a long moment she could not tell the difference between her bedroom here and the fantasy bedroom conjured by the book. The false vision, the fake, faithless promise of what might’ve been. The lie it told her.
She stood, her chest heaving. Spittle dripped from her lips. She glared at the book, her confusion and pain replaced in an instant with an intense, burning rage. Her horn lit, and the book floated before her. It would just take a thought, a passing wish, and nothing would remain but ashes. It would never deceive another pony again.
“You liar,” she hissed. “I… you!”
She flung it across the room. It struck the far wall with enough force to rattle the lamp on her bedside table.
“You lie!” she screamed. The images paraded through her mind. She remembered flashes of things the book had never told her: her marriage to Sunburst; the surprise when her daughter was born a pegasus; her mother showing her the best way to nurse the little ball of feathers. A thousand things that had never never never happened.
Perhaps Twilight was right. All the book could offer was regret. She lifted it again and was about to cast the spell that would destroy it when a passing thought stayed her wrath.
Shaking, she drew it back to her. She set the book on the bed and opened it to the first page. Blank again.
“What do I have to regret, anyway?” she said. “L-look at me! Student of the princess. Not some lowly teacher still living in the same small town where she was born. I'm better than that! This is better!”
Defiance drove what she wrote next.
I defeated Twilight Sparkle at Our Town.
The deserts outside Our Town were high, dry and cold. Only at the height of summer were ponies in danger of overheating—in the winter months, foals had to be kept inside after the sun set, and many families shivered their way through the nights.
The homes weren’t very well insulated. Starlight Glimmer understood this and understood that it needed to be fixed. Their carpenter just wasn’t very good at filling all those pesky gaps between the planks, and the gypsum wallboard they’d ordered from Las Pegasus was moldering in their little warehouse while they figured out the correct gauge of nails to hang it with, and nopony in the town really knew how to insulate the ceilings or floors at all. Maybe carpets were the answer, said Tapperwhill. But carpets were expensive and Starlight Glimmer knew for sure that cold hooves might be uncomfortable but they didn’t really matter, all that mattered was that everypony’s home was the same.
They could all be freezing in caves in the desert, and it wouldn’t matter. As long as they were all freezing together. Unity of purpose would give them the strength to overcome any adversity.
Or any adversary.
Starlight Glimmer was cold at that moment, actually. Her breath fogged, forming white clouds that drifted through the cave, slowly dissipating. The glow of the enslaved cutie marks filling the wall behind her lent the space an eerie, ghostly sense of menace. Normally she loved to bathe in their light, but today she felt nothing but cold in here.
“You can’t win. You know that, right?”
“Quiet,” Starlight snapped. “You’re hardly in any position to talk about winning.”
Princess Twilight Sparkle was a pathetic sight. Like every other pony Starlight had freed from their mark, she was going through a brief period of lassitude, characterized by exhaustion, loss of color and shallow emotions. An untrained observer might call it despair. It would fade soon, once she realized how joyous it was to be unshackled from destiny, but for the next few days at least the cutie mark withdrawal would leave her weaker than a kitten.
She wasn’t tied up. No need for ropes. Alicorn or no, Starlight could’ve held her down without even needing her magic.
“I don’t know what you thought your little escape was going to accomplish, but it failed,” she continued. “You’re one of us, now. Once you accept that you’ll be happy again. Trying to resist will just prolong this period of suffering.”
“Happy?” Twilight chuckled. It was a lifeless, empty sound. “You stole everything that makes me special. You stole everything that makes my friends special. You call that happiness?”
“I do! You see, your problem is that you don’t understand what happiness really is.” Starlight paced around the cave, growing excited as she spoke. “Ponies think happiness is a warm, fuzzy feeling that they get whenever something good happens to them. Contentment or euphoria. But that’s wrong, Twilight. That’s just an emotion, just the pleasure centers in your brain activating because they’ve received the correct chemicals. No, true happiness occurs when ponies flourish. When we do the right thing and act virtuously to bring about a better world. That feeling, that sensation, that is happiness. And it’s what you will feel soon! When you join our town and become a part of our great project, bringing about a new, egalitarian dawn for all of Equestria, then you will be happy, Twilight!”
She ended in front of Twilight, their muzzles just inches apart. She was breathing hard — she always got worked up when she gave that speech. It roused a fire inside her, burning away doubt and cowardice. Every time she recruited a new pony and freed them, her own convictions were reborn. It was the best part of what she did. Better than any food or wine or drug or sex, this feeling, bringing a new pony into the fold, this was joy.
Starlight Glimmer was happy.
“You’re an idiot.”
Starlight flinched as if slapped. “What?”
“You heard me.” Twilight said. She spoke slowly and evenly, without any heat or emotion in her voice. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a pony so deluded. I actually pity you.”
“You...” Starlight had to stop. Her belly spasmed in a gutteral, humorless laugh. “You pity me? Look at you! You have nothing! I have won, princess!”
“You think you’re happy? You think this is victory?” Twilight looked around slowly. “This is misery, Starlight. You’re fooling yourself. Oh, and I do have something you don’t.”
Starlight sneered. “What, those wings? You think being an alicorn makes you better than me? That’s exactly the sort of unequal lie that I’m trying to destroy—“
“No.” As soft as Twilight’s voice was, she interrupted Starlight effortlessly. “I have friends. Friends who will never stop fighting for me, not because I’m making them or they’re afraid of me, but because they love me. Do you have anypony like that, Starlight?”
“What? I have friends. I have lots of friends! A whole town of friends!”
“You have prisoners. Slaves. And someday they’ll rise up to overthrow you.”
Starlight snarled. “They will never oppose me! They—WE are all committed to this project. We have all sacrificed for it, more than you can imagine, and I won’t let your stupid sentimentality put it at risk.”
Twilight rolled her shoulders. Her whole body slumped, weighed down by exhaustion and cutie mark withdrawal. Everything but her eyes. They bored into Starlight’s, and in them Starlight saw not just determination and resistance but something far worse. Not scorn, not hate.
Concern, pity and love.
“Stop it,” Starlight growled. “Don’t you dare look at me like that!”
“It’s not too late. I know you feel trapped here, Starlight, but it’s never too late—“
“Shut up!”
“It’s never too late to do the right thing. I know you don’t really believe all that babble about happiness. I know what you’re hiding in there, a scared little filly who lost something and doesn’t know how—“
“SHUT UP!” Starlight’s horn flared, burning with enough light to fill the cave like the sun. She lifted her captive into the air, squeezing her roughly. “You know nothing about me!”
Twilight laughed. It was a weak, defeated sound, but still her eyes were filled with force. They reflected the light of Starlight’s horn like jewels.
“Everything you do, everything you say, it just proves how wrong you are.” The words gurgled out of Twilight’s throat. “You know it. Come with me, Starlight. I can help you. I’ve helped ponies who’ve made mistakes—”
No. No, she hadn’t used that word. Any other insult Starlight might have abided, but to say that, to call into question everything about her great work, that was unforgivable.
“I. HAVE NOT. MADE. MISTAKES!” Starlight’s vision went red. She felt the blood singing in her veins as she screamed. With every beat of her heart the aura of her magic grew, until everything in the cave was either light or shadow.
“You don’t understand!” Starlight screamed at the dark, pitiful shape hanging before her. “I am the hero here, not you! I am the one saving the world! I will—”
A loud crack cut through her rant. She felt something give in her magical grip, a sudden resistance that vanished, replaced by a sandy, grinding, dripping weakness. She gasped for breath, closed her eyes, and slowly let the power out of her horn.
Deep breaths. She was the one in charge here.
She opened her eyes. Twilight lay crumpled on the ground, her neck bent at an angle that no pony’s neck should bend. Her chest neither rose nor fell.
She licked her lips. “T-twilight?”
The cave was silent in response. Only the quiet, omnipresent hum of the imprisoned cutie marks behind her filled the void.
“Twilight, I’m sorry. P-please don’t do this.” She was shaking. The edges of her hooves rattled on the stone floor. A sudden dawning horror welled up out of her heart and seized her brain. Her eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to scream but nothing emerged because she couldn’t breathe, her chest wouldn’t move, and still the horror grew inside her like a cancer, crowding out everything else until nothing remained but a scared little filly lost in an endless darkness crying for her mother.
“T-this. This.” Starlight swallowed. Her heart began to beat again, and slowly the rage returned. She welcomed it, embracing it to chase away the horror. “This is your fault. Your fault! Not mine, yours!”
She stalked around the body, the rage inside her growing with each step. “You made me do this! You could’ve just accepted it, like everypony else, but no! You had to be a fool, and now look! Look at what you’ve done! YOU!”
The room spun. Not enough air. She closed her eyes again, waiting for the vertigo to pass. Everything replayed itself behind her eyes, the argument, the screaming, the wet sound of Twilight’s neck breaking. She couldn’t get it out of her head. And all the while, something else grew inside her.
Hatred. For the first time in her, Starlight understood hatred. Not the pitiful emotion foals felt for bullies or grown ponies for their rivals, but a true, deep, all-consuming malice. The kind that fueled rage unto death.
Starlight opened her eyes, and a new clarity overtook the world. Everything was sharper. Clearer. The fog was gone.
She leaned over Twilight’s body and whispered to it: “Everything that happens now is your fault. All your friends. It’s all on you.”
She stalked to the entrance. The guards outside shied away as she emerged. It was all she could do not to strike them for their weakness.
“Bring the unicorn next,” she snarled.
The collapsing spell hit Starlight Glimmer like a meteor. The cave and its memories washed away, but nothing could erase the image of Twilight’s body, crumpled on the ground before. Crumpled on the ground because of her.
She was lying on the floor, she realized. An acid tang filled her mouth. She coughed and spat out a vile mix of saliva and phlegm. A pool of vomit surrounded her head.
She tried to stand and failed. Her legs wouldn’t support her weight. She crawled across the floor away from the bed and the book.
The sound of claws on crystal slipped in through the crack beneath her door. “Starlight? Are you okay?”
“Spike,” she croaked. Her throat was raw. She tasted blood in the back of her mouth. “I… I’m fine. Just a dream.”
“I heard, uh, sounds.” There was a pause. More clicking of claws. “I’m coming in, okay?”
“No!” She found the strength for power again, and her horn came to life. Light surrounded her door, holding it fast. “No. I’m… I’m fine. Go back to bed.”
“I’m getting Twilight.”
“No, please…” Starlight squeezed her eyes shut. Tears flowed from them, hot and stinging.
He didn’t reply. A few minutes later she heard the quiet clip-clop of hooves on crystal. Her lungs seized, and she curled into a tight ball, covering her face with her hooves.
“Starlight?” Twilight’s voice was dimmed by the thick door. “Spike’s, um, he said something was wrong. Can I come in?”
No. No no no no no no. Starlight curled up tighter. Ever muscle constricted. Her jaw clenched and her teeth squealed. “Please don’t. I can’t, I can’t look at you.”
“It’s okay. You used the book, right? I don’t know what it showed you but it doesn’t matter, Starlight. We’re your friends and we love you—”
“Stop. Please,” Starlight moaned. Every word was poison. She had done nothing to deserve such kindness. She poured more power into her horn, wrapping the magic around the door. The crystal began to vibrate from the force of her grip.
“Spike got some water for you. Do you want some water? I’m just going to slide it in—”
Starlight felt Twilight’s magic start to mingle with hers. It was a familiar sensation, as comfortable to her as her own skin after so many years as her student. But now she saw Twilight hanging in the air in the cave again, and the touch of her magic was like fire.
“NO!” She gripped the door with more force than she’d ever used before. The crystal sang, ringing like a bell, and then it cracked full across its face with the sound of a canon. It deafened her.
In time, sound returned. She was standing now, panting, unable to hold a breath in her lungs for more than a second. The magic had faded, and nothing prevented Twilight from simply pushing open the door and walking through.
“Okay.” Twilight’s soft voice came through. Subdued, calming. The voice one used with a wounded animal. “Okay. And the book?”
The book. Starlight turned. It lay open on her bed, undisturbed by her tumble. The pages were blank again. She swallowed the lingering taste of vomit.
“I need it still,” she whispered.
She walked back toward the bed and picked up the quill.
“You’ve shown me the life I could have had,” she mumbled. “You’ve shown me the evil I could have done. Please, please, please show me that I could have done something right. Show me that I can be good.”
She lowered the quill and wrote.
I said yes to North Star.
Starlight Glimmer could see Our Town from the cliffs around her magic cave. She could see her house, even.
More specifically, she could see the wreckage of her house. The townponies had done a rather thorough job on it, tearing through it and tossing most of her belongings out into the street. It looked like they were searching for something. Or maybe they were just really upset. There had been that mob chasing her.
More was in ruins than just her house. Everything was ruined, in fact. All her plans. The years of effort. The sacrifices she’d made. The life she’d built out here, scratched out of the unforgiving badlands with nothing more than the force of her will and the unity she inspired in her followers.
All gone. Just… gone. Like dried leaves picked up by the wind and carried away.
She ought to be more upset. But mostly she was just numb. An endless emptiness filled her gut. The strange beating pulse in her chest was somepony else’s heart.
The clatter of disturbed stones broke her reverie. She turned her head to see another pony scrambling up the rough path to the cave. A unicorn stallion with a chestnut mane and sandy coat. He froze, seeing her, then slowly walked toward the cliff and took a seat a few paces away.
“Come to push me off?” she asked.
North Star recoiled. “What? No! No, I just, I thought you might be up here. I wanted to talk.”
Oh. Alright then. She made a little motion with her hoof to continue.
“We, uh, we talked down there. About what happened.” He gestured down at the town below them in the distance. “A lot of ponies are upset.”
Yeah. She’d gotten that impression. “Uh huh.”
“And, um, ponies want to know what you’re going to do.”
What? She squinted at him.
He fidgeted in place. “You know, like, what you’re going to do. Now, I mean.”
She had a few ideas, actually. Little fantasies that had filled the wreckage of the past hours. Mostly they involved kicking Twilight Sparkle’s ass.
“Why do you care?” she asked.
“Well, I wanted to make sure you were going to stay.”
She blinked. “Stay?”
“Yeah. Like, as our mayor. Without the cutie mark stuff though.”
“Without the–” She caught herself and took a deep breath. “The ‘cutie mark stuff’ was the whole point, North Star.”
“So that didn’t work out too well, right? Like, I feel so much better now. I didn’t even realize I was missing it before, it’d been so long, but getting my mark back…” He sighed. “It was like having a weight on your back for years, for so long you’d forgotten you were even bearing it. Every day it crushed you, grinding you into the dirt until you thought the dirt was where you belonged. And then, one day, gone! And it felt like I could fly. It feels like I can fly, Starlight! All that stuff was wrong, but now it’s right!”
She closed her eyes. “It wasn’t supposed to be like that. It was supposed to free everypony. If I’d just been able to finish it, everypony would’ve forgotten how terrible being different was, and then we could all be happy for once—”
He snorted. “I’m happier now, Starlight. I’ve never been this happy before. I never knew what happiness was until my mark came back to me.”
“That’s not really happiness. That’s just pleasure,” she said. The rote words tasted like chalk. “True happiness is when ponies flourish and work to bring about a better world.”
“Yeah, well, maybe that’s what we’re doing now, then. Cause I feel pretty happy.”
Had North Star ever been one of her true-believers? She’d thought so, but how quick he was to betray her. She closed her eyes.
“You want to know what I’m going to do?” she asked.
“Yeah, that’s kind why I came up here, remember? The others are all—”
“What I am going to do is find that… that bitch of a princess!” Starlight said. She pushed herself back on her hooves. The emptiness in her chest faded, replaced by something warm and welcome. Anger.
“I’m going to find her and her friends,” she continued. “And I’m going to get my revenge! I don’t know how, but they’re going to pay for ruining our dreams! I don’t care how long it takes. I’ll make them all pay!”
“Oh. Uh.” North Star gawked at her. “What about us?”
“What?” She blinked, suddenly returned out of the clouds. “What about you?”
“The town. It’s still there. We still need you.”
“I don’t care about the town! The town was never the point!” She stalked in a circle, stomping her hoof for emphasis. “The point was to build a new society based on equality and freedom! Never again would ponies be slaves to their cutie marks or forced into destinies they didn’t want. We could have escaped from fate and forged our own paths! No more being shackled to some idle whim from our childhood. The point was to make a world where ponies could be free! The town was just a… just a byproduct. A, a side-effect. A way to make the dream come true. And now that dream is gone.”
She stumbled to a halt by the end, and sat again. She watched the colorful little dots in the distance that were ponies walking through Our Town’s street.
North Star sat beside her. His shoulder brushed against hers. “Yeah, well, it’s still a pretty nice town. Best one I’ve ever lived in! You did a good job with it.”
Yeah. She had, she supposed. Something small to hang her hat on.
“Look, I’m not saying you have to stay or live with us or anything,” North Star said. “Just, you know… come down and talk? I promise nopony’s too upset. They’re a little worried about you. I… you know… I’m a little worried about you.”
He set his hoof on hers. She stared down at it, baffled.
How long had it been since another pony had willingly touched her? She wracked her mind, trying to recall the last time. Never in Our Town, certainly, and before that… she flipped through the years, desperate, trying to find a single shred of shared contact. Of even the most casual affection. Something that resembled friendship.
Not since she’d started her quest. That… that bore consideration.
“Starlight? You there?”
She started, shocked out of her reverie. “Sorry. Just, uh, thinking about something.”
“Okay. You looked, uh, a little spaced out there.”
“I know.” She paused, suddenly afraid. But she’d never let fear stop her before. “North Star… can, um… ah dammit this will sound weird. Can… can I get a hug?”
Silence. He stared at her. The slender tendril of hope that had begun to sprout in her heart began to wither. Her mouth twisted, and she wished she could go back in time, taking back those words. Anything to avoid the burning humiliation starting to flood out of her chest. She squeezed her eyes shut and turned away so he wouldn’t see her cry.
She didn’t get far. A pair of strong legs surrounded her, squeezing her tight. For the first time in years another pony held her in their arms. The warmth of another body washed over her, and something inside her broke.
“Sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t sure I heard you right.”
She sniffed. “It’s okay.”
His grip eased. “So, uh, you wanna come back and talk?”
Did she? Starlight considered the paths before her. Her spirit still cried out for Twilight’s blood. She couldn’t abandon her life’s work so easily. Revenge might be years away, but she deserved it. They all deserved it.
But this warmth, this… friendship. That was the word. There was friendship here now, waiting for her to accept. All she had to do was let the past go.
“Yes,” she said. “I think I do.”
Twilight Sparkle had entered her room at some point. She sat by the desk, a quiet, steady presence. The early morning sunlight painted her mane with amethysts.
Starlight closed the book. She tried to speak but nothing came.
Eventually, Twilight broke the silence: “I’m sorry.”
Starlight shook her head.
“I used it too, you know?” Twilight gazed out the window as she spoke. “I wanted to see how my life might have been. If I’d made friends as a foal. If I hadn’t cloistered myself with my books. If I’d been happier.”
Ah. Starlight stared at the cover. It seemed so harmless, closed like that.
“Sometimes I was happier,” Twilight continued. “Sometimes I wasn’t. Sometimes the world ended because I’d changed my path and wasn’t able to stop Nightmare Moon or Sombra. But I never learned anything useful from anything it showed me. Only that I’m worse than I could be, or I could be worse than I am. I thought it might be different for you.”
Starlight shook her head again.
Twilight closed her eyes and tipped her head, resting it on the window sill. “Then I hurt you for nothing. I’m sorry.”
Starlight licked her lips. They tasted foul, bitter, tinged with hours-old vomit. She worked her sore throat until it yielded enough to croak: “Twilight?”
Twilight’s ears perked. “Yes?”
“Can…” Starlight swallowed. Her voice was a ragged whisper and would be for days. “Can I get a hug?”
Twilight moved without hesitation. She jumped over the bed between them, wings flared out for balance, and wrapped Starlight in the gentlest, kindest, most welcome hug she’d ever known.
Starlight inhaled Twilight’s scent. That lavender shampoo she always used. Her own coat stank with sweat and worse, she knew. But Twilight never pulled away.
“Friends?” Starlight croaked.
“Best friends.” Twilight squeezed her tighter for just a moment. “Hey, want some breakfast? I bet Spike’ll make pancakes again if we ask nice.”
Starlight nodded. She glanced back at the bed. “And the book?”
“Eh, we’ll figure it out later. C’mon.”
And they left behind what might have been, and went to start their day.
Pics
I thought this was a really stellar entry, and it wrapped up very nicely. Nothing has changed except for Starlight herself. Wonderful character work.
I suppose I have a few notes though. The first is that this story is very exposition-heavy in a peculiar way. Since every new instance of the book needed to be told as if it was a new story, with the exception of the Victory in Our Town timeline, a lot of the text went to setting up scenes and characters. The first timeline dragged on a little, especially, and I wonder if it could be trimmed. After all, it's hard to get too invested in things you know haven't actually happened. For me, anyways.
I also found North Star to be a rather blank character, without much to him. If he is to stay in this story and have such an important role, a more vivid personality would go a long way. That, and I couldn't really follow his or the town's thought process. What she did was truly horrible, and that kind of sudden elation at the return of their cutie marks doesn't seem like it would be followed up with, "but wait where's Starlight she didn't seem so bad."
But in conclusion, I was engaged. So thanks! And ciao for now.
I suppose I have a few notes though. The first is that this story is very exposition-heavy in a peculiar way. Since every new instance of the book needed to be told as if it was a new story, with the exception of the Victory in Our Town timeline, a lot of the text went to setting up scenes and characters. The first timeline dragged on a little, especially, and I wonder if it could be trimmed. After all, it's hard to get too invested in things you know haven't actually happened. For me, anyways.
I also found North Star to be a rather blank character, without much to him. If he is to stay in this story and have such an important role, a more vivid personality would go a long way. That, and I couldn't really follow his or the town's thought process. What she did was truly horrible, and that kind of sudden elation at the return of their cutie marks doesn't seem like it would be followed up with, "but wait where's Starlight she didn't seem so bad."
But in conclusion, I was engaged. So thanks! And ciao for now.
Everybody take notes. This is how you write a hook. And this is also how you present your premise. And this is also how you craft brain-stabbing imagery. And this is also how you keep your readers engaged with a steady upramping of tension. Just very excellently put-together, IMO.
Despite how much I enjoyed reading this, I do have a few nitpicks about the ending that I think are worth bringing up. Specifically, it's hard to get a sense of what the book is, well, supposed to mean. And I get that a degree of deliberate ambiguity is both deliberately attempted and ultimately desirable, but IMO thematic ambiguity is something best used to lead the reader to draw conclusions. But it's a little difficult to draw any conclusions, since it felt like all of the interludes between each vision seem to try to say that the book is only evil and wrong, but the ending seems imply that good things came out of it. And I get that the story is about good things coming from bad things (I mean, Starlight is your main character after all), but I do think that reinforcing this theme once or twice in Starlight's post-vision scenes would go a long way to making this motif clearer.
Again, it's a nitpick. I know that I'm not always the best reader, so I personally do like reading stories with clear messages, so long as they avoid neon-lit signs. I'm still going to rate this very, very highly because I enjoyed it very, very much. Thank you for sharing!
Despite how much I enjoyed reading this, I do have a few nitpicks about the ending that I think are worth bringing up. Specifically, it's hard to get a sense of what the book is, well, supposed to mean. And I get that a degree of deliberate ambiguity is both deliberately attempted and ultimately desirable, but IMO thematic ambiguity is something best used to lead the reader to draw conclusions. But it's a little difficult to draw any conclusions, since it felt like all of the interludes between each vision seem to try to say that the book is only evil and wrong, but the ending seems imply that good things came out of it. And I get that the story is about good things coming from bad things (I mean, Starlight is your main character after all), but I do think that reinforcing this theme once or twice in Starlight's post-vision scenes would go a long way to making this motif clearer.
Again, it's a nitpick. I know that I'm not always the best reader, so I personally do like reading stories with clear messages, so long as they avoid neon-lit signs. I'm still going to rate this very, very highly because I enjoyed it very, very much. Thank you for sharing!
Good Stuff: Starlight's journey through the what-if scenarios was the heart and soul of the fic, and I found it really engaging and well-developed. I don't have a problem with the ending like the other reviews so far do; I think you built it that way, and that's what I like about it. If anything, I'd love to see an expanded version where Starlight explores more "What if?" scenarios with the book. The hook is just that good. And I really like the argument Starlight and Twilight have in the "Starlight Wins" scenario. It's nice to see Starlight's delusions and insecurities tackled by Twilight. There was a little of it in the last one as well, and I would have liked more exploration. At the end of the day, I'd love more of this, and that's a great sign.
Bad Stuff: This feels like it needs another check to finish it. That opening line is weirdly phrased, and put me off at first. I get the OOC-ness is the point, but it's phrased in a way that feels deliberately misleading after reading the rest, when we learn Twilight is concerned about one book rather than has an urge to burn books generally. The first flashback definitely went on too long, and in the last one all I could think was "Who's North Star?" I didn't like the visceral imagery much in the "Starlight wins" one either. It felt too much like obvious shocking moment, which took me out of the story at the time.
Verdict: Top Contender. There are a few problems that need ironing out, but who cares? They don't stop this being a strong entry with a great hook and good character exploration. One of my faves!
Bad Stuff: This feels like it needs another check to finish it. That opening line is weirdly phrased, and put me off at first. I get the OOC-ness is the point, but it's phrased in a way that feels deliberately misleading after reading the rest, when we learn Twilight is concerned about one book rather than has an urge to burn books generally. The first flashback definitely went on too long, and in the last one all I could think was "Who's North Star?" I didn't like the visceral imagery much in the "Starlight wins" one either. It felt too much like obvious shocking moment, which took me out of the story at the time.
Verdict: Top Contender. There are a few problems that need ironing out, but who cares? They don't stop this being a strong entry with a great hook and good character exploration. One of my faves!
I love the intro here! The first sentence immediately hooked me, and the premise of going through alternate worlds and seeing what might have been worked well. I think the choice of what to visit first (well, extensively) worked well - it was an engaging scene - but I'm not sure that the "I need a hug" thing being mirrored so immediately worked as well as it might have, though on the other hand, it was a nice way to finish the piece. That final what if scene didn't feel very strong because North Star didn't feel like a very strong character, and didn't feel as compelling as the other two scenes, so it sort of ended the trio of scenes on a bit of a whimper rather than a bang.
Definitely:
The class of the contest. Two things bothered me, though: first, I don't recall North Star being the name of anypony we meet in Starlight's Village. There was Night Glider and Party Favor and Sugar Belle, of course, but Double Diamond seemed to the "second in command," if I'm remembering right. Maybe use him instead?
Second, I'd suggest making Twilight either more aware of what this book might mean to Starlight or less aware. Right now, I don't see any indication that she's even considered how Starlight will react to this spell, and that doesn't seem like Twilight to me. Maybe make her more reluctant to bring Starlight in on this at all since she knows how much Starlight will want to use it, or maybe go the other way and have her bring the book to Starlight excitedly because now Starlight can find out what might've happened if she'd made different choices.
Or maybe Starlight comes across Twilight trying to destroy this book, and that forces Twilight to tell her about it. It just seems monumentally thoughtless of Twilight to bring this spell up in an offhanded conversation to the one pony in Equestria who will be absolutely dying to use it once she knows it exists...
Mike
The class of the contest. Two things bothered me, though: first, I don't recall North Star being the name of anypony we meet in Starlight's Village. There was Night Glider and Party Favor and Sugar Belle, of course, but Double Diamond seemed to the "second in command," if I'm remembering right. Maybe use him instead?
Second, I'd suggest making Twilight either more aware of what this book might mean to Starlight or less aware. Right now, I don't see any indication that she's even considered how Starlight will react to this spell, and that doesn't seem like Twilight to me. Maybe make her more reluctant to bring Starlight in on this at all since she knows how much Starlight will want to use it, or maybe go the other way and have her bring the book to Starlight excitedly because now Starlight can find out what might've happened if she'd made different choices.
Or maybe Starlight comes across Twilight trying to destroy this book, and that forces Twilight to tell her about it. It just seems monumentally thoughtless of Twilight to bring this spell up in an offhanded conversation to the one pony in Equestria who will be absolutely dying to use it once she knows it exists...
Mike
Sparkle’s Counterfactual Simulacrum
Paused reading just to toss this out: Sparkle's Semi-Serious Simulacrum Storybook*
* Soon available in Softcover Series
Back to work.
<^>
I want that book. Even knowing that the whole point is that it's probably a useless, terrible thing, I want it. I am actively upset that I can't have it. Anyway.
This is very much a self-inflicted, choose-your-own-adventure "A Christmas Carol" deal, except Starlight has already learned her lessons and is just being a curious camper. Which is still incredibly cool, both in concept and execution. I was hooked basically start to finish. Starlight waking up after her first solo round hit me extra hard. I've lost little people in my life, and quite suddenly, so her shock of waking up and "oh ha that child I have memories of loving is gone and out of reach forever now" is just... yeah I'm surprised she took it as well as she did, really.
Good work. One of the longer stories, but no word feels wasted.
>>TitaniumDragon
One thought:
The story might be stronger with what if #1 (the family one) and what if #3 (the North Star one) were reversed. That would make the emotional impact of each scene that much stronger, I think - the North Star one is just a slightly different course, the "what if she won" was one that stretched further back, and the family one stretches the furthest back, and they feel like they have successively greater impacts. The family one seems like it would be the one that hurt the most, and it also has the advantage of making Starlight more right about the book, because she could actually learn something from the book that way (as she would realize that having something with someone wasn't beyond her reach, as she is still close to Sunburst).
One thought:
The story might be stronger with what if #1 (the family one) and what if #3 (the North Star one) were reversed. That would make the emotional impact of each scene that much stronger, I think - the North Star one is just a slightly different course, the "what if she won" was one that stretched further back, and the family one stretches the furthest back, and they feel like they have successively greater impacts. The family one seems like it would be the one that hurt the most, and it also has the advantage of making Starlight more right about the book, because she could actually learn something from the book that way (as she would realize that having something with someone wasn't beyond her reach, as she is still close to Sunburst).