Epilogue
I sighed as I turned to the last few pages of my book, pausing briefly in my writing to reminisce about the events that took place shortly after I had arrived in Equestria.
It wasn’t until one of my friends had returned from a late-night trip to the bathroom that anypony noticed I was no longer unconscious. The commotion they caused upon their realization woke the entire room, and it wasn’t long before I was at the center of a large hug pile.
I shook my head and smiled sadly as I remembered the events that followed.
When I attempted to tell my tale, nopony would believe me. In fact, more than one of them demanded that the princesses subject me to more tests, fearing that the Elements had somehow fried my brain. It had taken weeks… and in some cases even months to convince them I still had my full mental faculties, much less that my story was true.
The princesses, though… the princesses believed me right away. Despite only having a name and a message, they thanked me profusely for delivering the message once they finally had some time alone with me. Familiar as they were with the Elements, and Harmony’s will by extension, they didn’t take much convincing to believe what I had said. Although she had been deeply saddened by the passing of her student, Celestia still took me under her wing, as she had her student, and made sure I had everything I needed to adjust to my new life.
Luna was just as supportive, though I soon found out for different reasons. Even though she hadn’t been in control of herself at the time, the fact that she had not only killed Twilight but was responsible for my being stuck in her body had been eating her up inside. Although Harmony had done a good job of harmonizing my mind and body the experience still left its scars, and Luna saw it as her duty to help me come to terms with what had happened. What had started as nightly visits to alleviate me of my nightmares soon blossomed into a close friendship, and it wasn’t long before the Night Princess found herself making excuses to visit me, both in the waking world and in my dreams.
Looking down at the page I frowned slightly when I noticed that my quill had wandered with my memories, writing down every thought that had passed through my mind as I recalled my time spent recovering. The pages began glowing with a pale lavender light as I prepared to tear the pages from the book, but my frown slowly morphed into a smile as I made the decision to keep them.
“Needs an epilogue anyways,” I giggled to myself, putting quill to parchment once more.
My friends, although they didn’t quite believe me for some time, never faltered in their support. Each and every one of them took time out of their daily routines to stop by and make sure I knew I wasn’t alone, and that others cared for me.
Spike, on the other hoof…
“Twilight, you about ready?” Spike called from the hallway. Giving a quick knock, he cracked the door open and poked his head in. “Everypony’s here, we’re just waiting for you.”
“Speak of the devil,” I mumbled to myself before turning to face him. “I’ll be down in just a minute, Spike. Just finishing up here.”
“Oh, is that the book you were writing?” He asked, stepping into the room.
“Yep,” I said, “just putting the finishing touches on it now.”
“Oh, sweet! Can I read it?” Spike asked excitedly.
“You can after dinner,” I said, giggling at his enthusiasm. “For now, though, we should get going. It’s bad enough that I’m running late for my own birthday dinner, it would be rude to make them wait any longer.”
“Aww, ok, Twi,” Spike relented.
Standing from my seat, I moved to follow Spike before pausing and looking back to my book. Glancing back at the open door, I turned around and returned to my desk.
Spike, on the other hoof, hasn’t left my side. From what everypony told me, he refused to even leave the bed during my second hospital stay. For months after my release, he refused to let me out of his sight, stating that he needed to be around to help me with everything. Despite his childish looks and the way he was acting, I soon discovered a deep thinking individual hidden beneath the surface.
One night a few weeks after we had returned to Ponyville, he had gotten fed up with me trying to convince him that I wasn’t the Twilight he grew up with and admitted that he had known for some time. He told me that he had lived with Twilight long enough to tell that I wasn’t her, or at least not fully and that despite knowing this, it would go against everything she had taught him if he didn’t do his best to help a pony in my situation. Needless to say, in the years that followed he and I became almost as close as he had been with Twilight… but I could never, nor would I ever want to, replace her.
Surprisingly, Twilight’s family… my family was both the quickest to accept, and the first to open up to me. They did take time to mourn the loss of their daughter, and for most of my stay in the hospital I was afraid they’d reject me, but when it came time for my release they welcomed me into their home with open hooves. While we had had our fair share of awkward moments, they made it more than clear that I was welcome to stay until I was healthy enough to travel to Ponyville, and longer if I so desired.
“Twilight Sparkle,” an agitated voice called out from behind me. Jolting in surprise, I turned just in time to see my mother stepping through the door. “You’ve got more than a dozen hungry ponies sitting downstairs, and we’ve been waiting more than twenty minutes for you to finish getting ready.”
“I know, mom,” I said, smiling nervously. “I’m just…”
“You’re just nothing,” Twilight Velvet scolded. “If you don’t march your plot out that door and down those steps this instant I will put you over my knee in front of your friends. Those wings don’t make you too grown up for a proper spanking.”
“Yes, mother,” I conceded, giggling when I saw the poorly concealed smile on her face.
Dipping my quill in its inkwell one more time I turned and made my way to the door, my book levitating in front of me as I wrote.
Despite all of the fears and misgivings I had after my first trip to the Ethereal Plane, I have never once been made to feel like I didn’t belong. Even after ascending and being crowned a Princess of Equestria, I was never given anything but love and understanding from the ponies who knew of my origins. Despite everything I had been through I felt one-hundred percent the pony I had come to be.
Equestria’s Surrogate Light.
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Great story. I can't wait to see if you do anything else with this one. Probably should have done this earlier, but I'm going to favorite this one.
Is this bit supposed to be italicized?
8656980
It was not, I forgot to close out the italics. Good catch.
I have to say, this was really sweet.
It had all the right elements to it. It went from tragic to dramatic to triumphant! It took an angle that i never have seen before.
In short, I liked this.
However, the fact that this is concluding here just leaves me unsatisfied, so i can only give it 8 on the
itude meter. 
But that's no reason to be discouraged!
I hope for a bright future for everypony involved!
Gotta admit I was a bit skeptical about the 'male human in Twilight's body' premise, but you did this amazing well. It was a great read.
not bad.
meh
8660691
Mind elaborating a bit? If you didn't like the story, that's fine, but just commenting "meh" doesn't really do much to help me understand what I did wrong and how I can improve it.
My two cents, if you will have my frank and possibly unfair criticism.
There is nothing glaringly wrong with this story, but it's bland. The reason is that a significant portion of it followed too closely to the original; and the premise of the story, that somebody else is assuming Twilight's identity, had little bearing on how the events played out.
When I first started reading, what's on the forefront of my mind was: How much will the course of events be changed by this different Twilight? What new perspective will she bring to the table? After all, that's one of the draws of "x becomes y" stories, isn't it? On this site there exists multitudes of works each with a different incarnation of Twilight or Twilight stand-ins, each acting out a different permutation of their first adventure through the Everfree. When we readers pick up another one of those fanfics, it is our hope that it will once again take the existing setup and venture in a previously unexplored direction.
Instead, the journey through the Everfree and the confrontation with Nightmare Moon more or less followed the formula laid out by the original from start to finish, there were no drastically new challenges or dangers to keep the reader in suspense. The actual encounters may have been rehashed and reshuffled, but their basic function of assigning characters to Elements remained predictably the same. And that makes the story ill fitted for the adventuring genre.
I would personally have prefered for the main focus of the story to be on this new Twilight's coming to terms with her identity. One would expect a longer lasting trauma from someone whose previous life had been abruptly ripped away and their memories and sense of self jumbled, feeling like an impostor with inherited memories. And there are a few directions you could have taken with the story after the excitement with Nightmare Moon died down. Does Twilight reveal to her family and mentor that she's not the same pony that left Canterlot? (They might not believe her, or worse, accept her) Or should she try to keep it a secret? (Relying on her patchwork of memories. Sooner or later she'll slip, and arouse suspicion) Either case, there were opportunity for tension or conflict to arise to further develop the story. But instead, all of that was resolved off-screen, mentioned in passing by Twilight in the epilogue.
All in all, the story as it is, reads to me like a neatly written opening act to something with the potential to be more. This Twilight's tale had just begun, and that's what made its ending unsatisfying.
8672747
Well this review right here.
But I did enjoy the story. I just would have like to seen more behind the scenes as it where. I mean a version where NMM our right murders ponies in her return... so many good stories could have been written here that we just get to glimpse.
Anywho followed and appreciate the story.
Twilight was replaced by a male human who subsequently slipped seamlessly into her role, behaved like normal Twilight for the entirety of the story, and even operated on actual Twilight's own memories at several points, making him even less of a different character.
You could have removed the Twilight Gets Replaced plot point from the story and absolutely nothing important would have changed. Not a single thing.
That's kind of bad when "Twilight died and was replaced by someone else" is such a major change. It's basically a bait and switch. The cover image and the description say "hey check it out, Nightmare Moon knew what was up in advance, oh my gosh what will happen? Also Twilight was replaced by someone else", but when we get in, the ACTUAL change is that Twilight was hugely delayed in getting started on the Friend Quest and had to make up for lost time.
Except you could remove that with almost no impact to the story, too. The only thing it actually winds up affecting are some side comments about disliking the constant dark, which aren't important to the plot, comments that some bad things are happening elsewhere, which aren't important to the plot, and... that's it. Meeting her friends is delayed, but they all meet her on their own in a very short time, so it doesn't matter. They have no reason to all show up at her library at the same time, but they do anyway because reasons, so it doesn't matter. It's cold, but not enough to affect them at all, so it doesn't matter. It's dark, but they can apparently generate enough light to see just fine, so it doesn't matter. The threat of potential monsters and poor visibility keep Rainbow grounded, but she stayed grounded in the original anyway, so it doesn't matter (but at least you provided a legitimate reason where the original provided none, so kudos there). You even had Spike sleep through everything just like the original, killing two birds with one stone and sticking to the canon rails while simultaneously avoiding a conversation with Spike that could have actually gotten some mileage out of the replacement plot point.
This is effectively just a retelling of the second episode with some changes to the details. Granted, I like the changes to the second episode's details. It's just that the two major changes to the premise had no impact on what actually happened, and the almost complete waste of good potential makes me sad.
Remarkably shallow
Seeing as he is using Twilights memories instead of his own, as Faust said, his own fractured I can see how this works
want to see psychological story of princess Luna. with self-harming and suicide attempts.