There's Indifference on the Wind
She comes in on a train.
It's not the train she remembers, the quaint one from a thousand years ago. That's long gone; this one's a high-speed maglev car. The technology was perfected about two hundred years ago; she supervised the replacement of the old networks herself. When she first made the trip from Ponyville to Canterlot way back when, it took two hours. Now, it takes ten minutes.
She's calm. She's been calm for a long time. Princesshood taught her how to control her emotions.
She's also in disguise—changeling magic, another thing she’s perfected over the decades—making her look to all the world like a normal pony and not like Twilight Sparkle, its ruler for a thousand years.
She's got a small suitcase with her. It's on the shelf above her. Just the essentials. Toothbrush, manebrush, some photos. Change of clothes.
It's time for her to disappear.
There are other ponies on the train, sitting across from her; they pay her no mind. If only they knew, she thinks, looking out the window. The landscape flies by at breakneck speed. There are buildings out here now. Back when she was young this was all rolling hills and grass. But the buildings aren't crammed together like they are in Canterlot these days, all the thousands of ponies trying desperately to fit their homes onto the mountainside. There's room to breathe here. Room to grow.
She casts her eyes up at the screen at the front of the car. "Ponyville: 3 min" in orange text. Perfect.
Maybe she isn't as calm as she thought. Her heart’s thrumming away. But there's still something serene about it, about leaving your old life behind and starting over.
In a very literal sense, she's come full circle. And there's something wonderful about that, she thinks.
Three minutes pass in an instant, and she feels the train slow down. It's almost unnoticeable; the train was designed that way. You used to really feel it with the steam trains, when they braked. The entire car would jerk, and the sound of metal screaming against metal would burn into your ears. Now it's smooth, and silent. Progress is real. This is what a thousand years of her guiding hoof has brought about: nicer train rides.
It's the little things that make her happy. The small advances that lead to bigger ones that snowball into great world-changing advances in magic and science and culture and—
"Now arriving: Ponyville. Now arriving: Ponyville. Doors open on the left."
It's her stop. She gets up. Her horn lights and her small suitcase floats down from the shelf. She extends the handle and it trundles along behind her on little wheels as she walks over to the doors.
The train finally comes to a stop and the doors open with a swish. There are ponies waiting on the platform, but they stand back and let her exit first before they cram in. More ponies going from Ponyville to Canterlot than the other way around. It's early in the morning; they're heading to work.
The world is so connected now that you can get from one side of the continent to the other in an hour. Not to say anything of the advent of the telegraph, which gave way to the telephone, which became the sound crystal, and so on. Ponies are friends with griffons, griffons are friends with changelings, changelings are friends with dragons, and none of them have to buy a single ticket to see each other.
Progress.
She pushes her way through the train station. It's big and ornate—a far cry from the single open-air platform that used to be here. They built this about 200 years after she left. It's a historic landmark now.
Most of Ponyville is a historic landmark now.
She pushes her way through the train station, little suitcase trundling along behind her, until she reaches the doors. Her heart is fluttering again, despite it all.
She opens them and steps outside.
It's warm; the sun is strong, this spring in Equestria (not her decision, it was voted on). There's only three clouds in the sky. Rainbow Dash's house is not one of them; it was relocated to Cloudsdale, to the museum in her honour they built on the hundredth year after her death. Young pegasi can tour it, see the hoofwork of a national hero, look on with wonder.
Twilight made sure none of her friends would ever be forgotten. It was her right, as the only one of them who would live forever. Time would allow her this transgression, at least for now.
The buildings are different than she remembers. Most of the old ones have crumbled to dust, and new ones have sprouted up. But they look just like the old ones. Only she would be able to tell the difference.
Does she still remember the way from the train station to her destination?
Like the back of her hoof, civic planners willing.
She sets off.
Children play in the streets. Not just earth ponies, now, but unicorns and pegasi and changelings and griffons and hippogriffs and even some dragons. The fruit of centuries of diplomatic work, although it wasn't all her. She had good help.
The world is so connected now, not just physically, but culturally, even emotionally. It makes her smile.
She walks the well-trod path until she reaches it: the tree.
She'd planted it a decade after she became the sole princess of Equestria. Right where the old one was. Entrusted it to the city, told them to turn it into a library when it had grown.
Boy had it grown.
Twilight Sparkle, new Head Librarian of the Golden Oak Library, Ponyville Branch, looks on in fond contemplation.
Her era was ending. Ponies didn't need princesses anymore. They could forge their own path now. Best to disappear, at least until she’s needed again, and leave all the seeds she's planted to germinate.
And, being honest, she thinks she’s earned the rest.
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This is good
"Please do not ask me to add the Alternate Universe tag; I refuse."?
I not sure how that is work as all Fanfic is Alternate Universe as none are canon unless if Hasbro said so but anyway
This is so beautiful and bittersweet in a so many small ways. I hope she enjoys the rest. n_n
Good luck in your many contest entries!
Glad I could help with the cover art. Nice job on the fic as well!
Also she now retiring?
Good for her as she has been through a lot like a thousand years since G4
That was touching, and left me with a hopeful smile. A much better fate than G5's ruinous future, I'd say.
Good story, I'd lie If I said I didn't want to see more.
This one’s my favorite.
This would be really cool if it did actually happen in canon! I like the idea of the princesses just going on with their lives when they were done with their duties.
This is very nice. thank you for writing this :D
That's why people write fanfiction
Inspirational, RB. Very well done.
Bittersweet; nicely done :)
Arby's with the sleeper hit (he didn't see this coming cuz he was asleep)
i love the melancholy you captured here - the mountain goats influence definitely shows! (i need to relisten to goths, i just keep replaying rain in soho) the mix of weariness and hope, still getting those old feelings on entering ponyville, it's wonderful
i also noticed you're going for a thousand words sweep with all five categories, and it looks like you've got some great entries! i'm attempting the same, best of luck to the both of us!
oh damn... Yeah nah this is great Arby's. You really feel the weight of progress on Twilight's shoulders with every word.
There is a sadness in seeing the town you grew up in change around you. I remember when I was a kid and seeing the fences along the roads, the empty fields full of overgrowth and lakes. They're all gone now, you have to go pretty far to see greenery like that again.
I I guess it's a bit about nostalgia, a bit about an aversion to change. It's bittersweet. I see the world change for the better and yet I can't help but want to go back.
You captured that feeling well Arby's. Thank u Mr meats man.
Ah, you see, this is what I like.
I’m getting so tired of the "immortal Twi cries about her dead friends", here it’s a much happier variant.
It’s making me nostalgic about things not even MLP too.
I too prefer having G5 not being canon, I can only read so much of depressed friendless Twilight raging at Sunny for bringing back magic.
There is something beautiful in the idea of Twilight returning to Ponyville to run the library after a thousand years of ruling Equestia. As upbeat as the story is with her simply wanting to take a well earn rest, I find it hard to believe that she would be able to function with all the haunting memories of happier, simpler times.
Everything would remind her of her friends.
This reminds me of an older story, in which a changeling runs into Twilight a couple of hundred years after the show. In that one Twilight is a middle manager, because successfully created a world that didn't need princesses.
Have a like
11940314
Do you remember the name of it? I'd like to read it.
I enjoyed this take! There's a pleasant circularity to it.
very sweet
Spike's probably still around, but there may not be enough magic to shrink him enough to fit inside the new tree.
(Discord might be able to, but this all looks too harmonious for his tastes. He's probably taken a page from Rick Sanchez and moved to a wackier timeline. The Pony Life universe perhaps)
Cool read, gives a hopeful perspective of life for twilight after her friends pass.
11940359
I cannot find it. Given my record of finding things on shelves, it may still be there.
I know that it was soon after the first introduction of changelings, but before much had been done with them. I don't remember if it was after she became a princess. I don't think that it was.
Synopsis: Decades into the future of Equestria, a changeling in disguise goes into a business meeting, and finds somepony else there who a) speaks changeling and b) looks like Twilight Sparkle. The changeling assumes that this "Twilight Sparkle" is another changeling with really poor disguise-choosing skills, and pulls her aside to give "Twilight" a piece of the changeling's mind.
It turns out that it really is Twilight Sparkle, who learned the secret language of the changelings in her spare time, because Twilight Sparkle. When queried as to what Twilight Sparkle is doing as corporate middle management, Twilight explains that with all the electronic and systemic improvements to Equestria (my phrasing), she's no longer needed. And that's the way she likes it.
Lovely -- a good message, and good slice of life.
This would make for a very interesting start for a multi-chapter fic, with Twilight playing the mysterious and all-knowing librarian and mentor for a new group of heroes. It would be interesting to see such a story told from the POV of a retired hero that's pretending to be a civilian.
After all, conflict and disharmony won't just disappear just because we're in an era of peace and inter-species cooperation...
This is nice, I like this story. This is way better than the absolute train wreck that is called generation five. Hope there’s a sequel to this coming up. But if not, that is fine.
That was absolutely wonderful.
It feels like the first chapter of a very nice slice-of-life story. It's fine as a one-shot, but if you choose to continue, I'll be tracking this.
Congrats on the Feature!
This was a delight. Absolutely love when future Twilight is written in a positive light. It’s beautiful seeing her gush over the world she helped build and can now take that well-earned break.
11940791
Same. Twilight loves spreading friendship and knowledge, so I can't imagine she'd be upset at being able to do that on a global scale for entire centuries. Always sucks when people make her a mopey recluse after her friends pass away. The entire point of the show is that she learns to not shut herself away anymore and to actually socialize and deal with her problems normally. She'd probably have all her baggage involving outliving her friends packed away before any of them even pass on. I wish I saw more fics of Twilight in an advanced utopia future she helped make, far more interesting than her being a failure sitting in a shack in the edge of a wasteland.
11940539
Ah thanks
I like it; definitely a step in the right direction when it comes to stories about future Twilicorn.
I never understood the 'she's going to outlive her friends, oh noes' problem anyway.
It's not as if, as an immortal, you'd make a couple friends when you're young, then never get close to anyone outside of that group and never make more friends for the rest of your existence.
What I don't love about this story is that apparently Twi's idea of a perfect 'retirement' from princessing is another gig as Ponyville's librarian.
It's not like that has ever been her dream job; she liked books because they contained the knowledge she was after. Golden Oaks was convenient.
Well, this new one would be as well; not like she's in a hurry. So, minor gripe I guess.
Makes you wonder ... what would Twily do with herself in a modern Equestria? A Princess in a world that doesn't need the guidance of a princess anymore, a former worrior and celebrated hero in a peaceful world, the world's most powerful mage in a society that relies more and more on technology ...
11940735
If I had my say, it would be the prologue to an anthology.
You know that ten minutes after she moves in, she will hear there voices in the descendants they left behind. Harmony has fun like that and Chaos loves a good laugh.
Spike should still be around, right?
great story
Good one, time never really stops. It's just flow.
This is a breath of fresh air!
A delightful 1K. :3
Lovely.
11941347
Probably in the middle of a dragon nap, with a note waiting for him when he wakes up.
11940539
Do you mean https://www.fimfiction.net/story/232939/intern ?
This would be an amazing Prologue to a multi-chaptered story
My only question is what happened to the Crystal Tree castle? I would guess it became some sort of museum itself, "where Princess Twilight started". Yes, I know she technically started in Golden Oaks.
11941035 The angst over outliving friends is a VERY childish sentiment. I've already outlived 90% of the people I knew as a child.
People in the West are very fragile.
And then the next day, Opaline showed up.
I see the mountain goats helped with writing this one.
11942152
Yes, by gum, that's the one!
My need for a seeing-eye person strikes again!