Twilight Sparkle followed behind her youngest son as they made their way through the cemetery. He walked slowly, eyes lingering on every grave before he moved on. “There’s so many,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine that every one of these used to be a pony.”
“Yes,” said Twilight. Sunrise was young, not quite eighty years old. Nopony had died for a millennium before his birth. “It wasn’t just ponies, you know. Zebras and changelings and everyone else used to die, too.”
Sunrise stopped and looked at her. “Everyone?”
Twilight nodded. “Everyone.” Explaining death to the younger generations was always a challenge. Sometimes the idea of it seemed absurd even to her.
“Sun and stars,” said Sunrise. “How could anypony go through the day, knowing everyone was going to die?”
Twilight concentrated, remembering. “I guess it was the only way we knew how.”
Sunrise turned away and tapped the nearest tombstone with a wingtip. “Who was this one?”
The stone was inscribed with a sigil of a shooting star. It wasn’t the original headstone, of course; they had been replaced more than once, when the granite wore away. “Her name was Cloudchaser.”
He walked on. “And this one?”
Three butterflies. “Fluttershy.”
Twilight thought she had hidden the catch in her voice, but she never could slip anything past Sunrise. He looked back at her. “Tell me about Fluttershy.”
“To be honest, I don’t really remember. It’s been so long.” Almost three thousand years. “She was a good friend, though, I remember that. I loved her very much.”
A shadow flitted over her. Moments later, Rainbow Dash landed beside them. “Hey, guys. Honey Apple said I’d find you here.”
“Grandma!” Sunrise embraced Rainbow Dash almost before she finished landing. She wasn’t literally the kid’s grandmother. Three or four “great”s preceded the title, but it had been a long, long time since ponies had paid attention to such things. “This is a nice surprise.”
“Yeah, well,” said Rainbow Dash, “I wanted to be here the first time you saw this.”
“You were there during the first days, right?”
Rainbow nodded. “I was there, alright. I’m the third alicorn there ever was, not counting the Royals.”
“What was it like, before?”
It was several seconds before Rainbow Dash answered. “Scary. It was scary, and it hurt. And it was frustrating during those early centuries, when so many ponies still chose to die. Watching that without helping was real hard.”
“I don’t understand,” said Sunrise. “Why would a pony choose to die?”
“They thought it was the right thing to do,” said Twilight. “I thought so too, for a long time.”
Rainbow Dash shrugged. “Not for that long.”
“Long enough.”
Rainbow Dash followed her gaze to the headstone. “You better not be beating yourself up about Fluttershy again. You were too late for her, but you saved the rest of us.”
“Yeah,” said Sunrise. “Compared to everything you built, what’s one more death?”
Twilight looked at him. “She was my friend.”
“Seriously,” said Rainbow Dash. “You’re making me worry.”
“It’s okay.” Twilight composed herself. “The guilt isn’t a big deal. I can go decades without thinking of it. I only get this way when I’m here, in this place.”
“We can leave,” said Sunrise.
Twilight looked up at the sun, blinking. “No. This is important. You need to understand, and I need to remember.”
“You tell him about Macintosh yet?” said Rainbow Dash.
“No,” said Sunrise. “Who?”
“Oh, have I got some stories for you.” Rainbow Dash indicated the tombstone beside Fluttershy’s. “He was Fluttershy’s husband, way back when. This one time, Scootaloo and her friends—you know Scootaloo, right?—anyway, they hit him with this love potion, only it was super powerful. So then he…”
Twilight tuned out the story and took in the scene, watching her youngest child listen raptly to her oldest friend. In the background, she could see the city that had once been humble Ponyville. It was strange; she had lived there only half a century, but it felt like more of a home than places she had stayed ten times as long.
“Hey, Twilight!” Rainbow Dash was saying. “You there?”
She snapped back to reality. “Sorry, what?”
“I said, let’s go. Pinkie and Rarity will be waiting by now.”
“Waiting?”
Sunrise chuckled. “You really were out of it. Grandma Dash got them to come to Ponyville today.”
Twilight felt a smile creep across her face. “Wow. This is a real reunion.”
“Hey, I know how you get when you come here. I gotta do something. Now are we going, or what?”
“Of course.” Twilight nodded. “Let’s go see our friends.”
... You know what's funny? I never really cottoned on to the whole friendship-vs-obedience question. Too caught up in the immortality debate, even once I'd said my piece and started trying (and failing) to stay out of it.
Maybe because my disdain for obedience-for-the-sake-of-obedience is so concrete that I never even considered it a question.
2496524
I completely missed it too. From my point of view, Twilight's bonds with her friends and with her mentor stood equally. That she would have to choose between them made the conflict all the more tragic, but that was hardly the heart of it.
And boy! That epilogue certainly didn't chicken out on the moral conundrum. Here, death is a thing of the past, pratically alien to some. Ponies even took other species for the ride. I shiver at the questions Celestia must have to answer!
It certainly is interesting to say the least, and reading this, I'm happy you decided not to include it - as I wrote in my review in the final chapter, the story never really was about immortality per se, so much as it was about the Ponies -- I honestly can't say that I picked up on the friendship vs obedience theme...I saw it more as a old order vs the new...again, my mind was too wrapped up I think in the immortality debate, which really exceeded it's need .
2496524>>2501620>>2503846
Obedience wasn't the right word, and I've edited it out. (Not sure what the right word is. "Respect for authority"? "Need for maternal approval"? The best I can do is point towards Twilight's whole relationship with Celestia and say "that thing.")
why didnt you redeem twilight? i asked you NOT to end this with tradgedy!
2504931
Tragedy?
2504354
Aww, it's no big deal -- in the end, it was the deleted scenes, so there is no need to stress out over it
"Mortal" in emoticons:
- RIP
- "Hey ... you know your friend who just died? You can totes make your friends into immortal alicorns. You could all along. But don't ... even ... think ... about doing it."
- "Guys. I've got pony cancer."
- "Pony cancer!? Not cool! Twilight - it's alicorn time."
- zzzz
- "Um ... can we just talk about this next week?"
- "It hurts when I ... anything."
- "Wait, you're gonna make Fluttershy an alicorn, right? Right???"
- RIP
- "Wow. 20% uncooler."
- "My leg! It's most unstylishly broken! I'm ... I'm going to the fabulous light!"
- "No, not the sexy one! Okay, yes. It's alicorn time."
- "To the mooooon!"
- "How about 'no?'"
- "Time for magical interior decorating! Oh, and making more alicorns. You get wings and a horn. You get wings and a horn! EVERYPONY GETS WINGS AND A HORN!"
- "Sup? Can I get wings and a horn?"
- "YES!"
ALICORN FUTURE PARTY!
2513216
2504931
It's not a tragedy. The outcome of the debate rests on the true consequences of the decision, not a priori the decision itself. In this epilogue, the issues Celestia was worried about were clearly either not concerns, or were solved. Open your mind.
So I'm noticing that Sunrise is described as Twilight's youngest son, while being Rainbow Dash's grandson (with an indeterminate number of greats preceding the grand). We know that Twilight wouldn't be a remarried widow in this context (well...maybe, as she might have married someone early on who didn't want to get alicornized). This implies one of two things. Either Twilight waited a very long time to get married (quite possible, as she would be in absolutely no hurry), or else marriage is gone/drastically changed (presumably since "'til death do us part" takes on an entirely different meaning here).
2543798 In both epilogues, Celestia's concerns were trivialities. Compared to death, what wouldn't be?
The joy of starting the day well and finding a continuation, after reading, was replaced by something better. A strange sadness... can't fully describe how I feel