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.