Headcanon MLP:FIM - Who is left?
Growing older means you will certainly lose contact or grow apart from those you once were close with as a child. While the finale showed that Twilight kept in contact and they’d meet up - here’s a random headcanon to make you sad.
Twilight will suffer through the loss of her friends, parents, brother, mentors and students. And while she has students to guide from time to time, each student she raises seems to do well enough job of mentoring the new one, spreading the word and meaning of friendship as though an enacted gospel. She watched her friends families grow, and decline, until it was too far gone from her reach and watching over them became too painful.
This leads Twilight to become increasingly more reclusive. Her coat becomes duller, faded to gray-white toward nose, fetlocks, ears, horn, wings. Eyes dull, hair becomes shaggy at the tips. She becomes reclusive, filling her days with paperwork and public appearances become less and less. She loses herself in her more permanent friends once again - books.
Luna and Celestia have gone. Not dead per-say, but ascended to become part of the actual moon and sun through some lofty bullshit ‘so they didn’t have to die’ magic. Or perhaps became part of the magic of Equestria - however you want to write them off - they are gone.
Glimmer seemed most likely to become an Alicorn next - but as we’ve seen, becoming a transformed Alicorn is very rare (except Cadence whom we never got an explanation of how she earned it but I have my own headcanon for that - Flurry doesn’t count.) It seemed like it would have actually occurred, however, when the time came, Glimmer shunned it off in order to remain ‘mortal’ and stay by her friend Trixie’s side. Trixie protested at first as Glimmer ran from it, but eventually understood that should Glimmer become an Alicorn, she would not be able to mentally be able to withstand the inevitable loss of Trixie and Sunburst.
The pillars have passed on as well - despite Starswirl seemingly being too stubborn to die. They were all mortal after all. It was simply that Starswirl outlived them with the aid of some magical spell support. Even so, he, too, became reclusive at the end of his times to write books over various subjects, spells, spell theory and creation, and his memoir to add to Twilight’s collection.
Spike is around, but his ambassador job means he was not about often. He’d be traveling to other kingdoms. I imagine at some point he became such a great dragon that he simply grew too big to be in Canterlot (as witnessed how big an elder or great dragon can get by Ember’s father). and semi-retired to the dragon lands, handing the duty off to Smoulder, and such down the line.
Smoulder, however, avoided the school in Ponyville and also Canterlot at large due to the memories she had there, and couldn’t face Twilight for how many memories it would dredge up - hiding from her feelings.
Dragons live forever but while they now inter-mingle with other societies, there is no cause for any to form an actual bond with Twilight. Any official business is done by envoy or breath-message. Occasionally Spike sends correspondence, but now being as big as he is, most of his days are passed in slumber.
Ember might be a thought to having loosely known Twilight. She became a great dragon, but was able to maintain a relative size. She’d spend her days ruling and taking care of Spike and especially overseeing the hatchery, often watching the eggs for days at a time - talking to them, telling them about friendship and I daresay - singing as a pony is prone to do.
Then there is Discord. After he failed to have Fluttershy remain with him through chaos magic (It was a nasty process that he tried, eventually having to snap her back again as it basically hurt her and caused some bad side-effects) he had to say goodbye. He visited Twilight to antagonize her from time to time, but they both lost their spark. He became, for a time, like a ghost in the halls of Canterlot castle - moving books around from the walls (now that the whole place looks like a library with every open wall being lined with books), until he was simply an empty shell.
He still had all the power of a chaos god, but nothing seemed to amuse him enough to bother with it anymore. You can now find him back in the garden, as a handsome statue. He was not turned with Alicorn magic this time, however. Discord has shelled himself up. He can easily come out again if he chooses, but now waits for some other pony to come up and free him from his proverbial prison that he may find another bond by fate - should he even want to chance loss again.
Cadence is another ‘immortal’ to think about. I imagine her personally being kept in the north to rule, and in her progression, She becomes less able to travel. Advisors once tried to take over for her so that she could visit more often, but with the death of Shining, she threw herself and all of her love into the Crystal heart and her kingdom, refusing to leave it.
Her daughter supports her mother and is often seen about the Crystal kingdom, helping on the ground level. She often would visit her Auntie Twilight, but while it would cheer her for a time, Twilight was never fully able to break out of the rut. It pained her to see her aunt in the similar state as her mother, so Flurry did the best she could and would often make a big to-do about visiting, so much that she began to visit on important celebration days so that she could help run the events and give the city at least one Alicorn to be able to see it.
However, Twilight remained as like a spirit, haunting the Castle’s halls.
Any celebration requiring the presence of an Alicorn Flurry would take over - until she found someone to call her mate and start her family and simply became too busy (I imagine another mare and then adopted - perhaps one of Twilight’s students at the time that had cause to talk to her and then grew close). The honors were then placed on whomever Twilight’s current student was, and then eventually turned to lottery where an ‘honored’ pony would get to stand in. It was a great thrill for those that were picked.
Becoming Twilight’s ‘student’ also faded from a hoof-picked position to whomever seemed best for guidance which she did through scrolls much like Celestia had. This ended up being a process of convoluted spells set up in a lovely chamber for judgement. This meant, however, it was open to any student of her school and not just Pony, so over the years there were a few other species mentored directly, including a Zebra, which opened up the arid nomadic tribes to become a valued trade companion and the rise of non-unicorns being able to create potion spells and the betterment of society through herbology and medicine.
This, for a time, brought Twilight’s spark back, but once she had devoured all she could learn from the tribes, she became reclusive again.
Who is left? I may have forgotten someone who knew Twilight that could live as long - but I feel I’ve covered most bases.
The only one that is left that springs to mind is a certain other student of Celestia;
Sunset Shimmer.
Sunset suffered her own joys and losses in the human world. She never had children, and did not have a relationship outside of her friends to lean on as they couldn’t understand where she had come from. She may have even had a romantic relationship with her friends from time to time, but it never worked out and they all still remained good friends regardless.
She maintained correspondence with Twilight, but as she got older and became working class, writing became more sporadic and there were less problems and more gossip and venting - which at some point she realized and stopped including and looked for a way to fix those issues instead. I imagine whatever company she went into, she was able to climb easily - perhaps going into HR, but always seemed not to stay long as once the place seemed to be running smoothly, she left to look for other problems to solve. Eventually she ended up bouncing around at her friends businesses when they needed help.
But what of the friends on the other side of the mirror?
Aj’s family farm products gained massive popularity and were sold nation-wide, especially their applesauce, cider, and most of all - rainbowy-looking jam as someone may have brought back some seeds...
Rainbow competed professionally in various - usually track-related sports for a time. Unfortunately without cheating with use of her powers, she became less and less the fastest with age and ended up with a knee injury. After a period of depression, AJ was able to flip her way of thinking and urged her to try a different approach to the sports she loved so much. Rainbow became coach of various track teams and lead them to victory, on top of taking an interest in rehabilitation from her process of healing with her knee and helped many a promising young track star. She eventually retired with AJ but would run summer training camps at the farm as they set aside some land for it.
Shy had a pet store for a time, but became more passionate about animal care as a whole and did plenty of travel and rescue work, and ended up in the conversationalist field. She visited home when she could, but was often helping organizations and away.
Rarity had her fashion line - which also lead to a fair bit of travel for fashion shows, store openings and debuts. Stars would often commission her directly as well. The high-power high-stakes glamor of the fashion life captured her heart fully and she was always researching and traveling the world in search of ‘inspiration, darling!’.
Pinkie had a moderately successful bakery and party supply store which, with the help of her husband, Cheese, grew into a chain. She still manages and bakes for the original store from time to time, but eventually retired and her children and grand children run it.
Twilight went into the scientific research field and won many an award and wrote many times more research papers. Often she thought of letting the world know about Equestrian magic, but deemed that it would bring up too many other questions, although she still did her own science projects about it on the side in secret with the aid of her loyal pup, Spike.
So what about Sunset?
Everyone had their own families, retired, and eventually began to drift and leave. Toward the end of her days, one last time she wished to see Equestria and to pass peacefully there. Her friends surrounded her in a goodbye, and she passed her journal on to Twilight, encouraging that, whomever is left, pass the book on to write in so it might keep the other Twilight company.
(Sidenote on Sunset’s Book: The books symbol, once ownership was passed or shared, would change on the cover and the pages renewed to write again with an imposed magical forward from Sunset, explaining, in short form, the purpose of the book and what it means to be the current caretaker of it.)
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Stepping through the portal, Sunset was covered in the drape that had been set over the mirror in one of the cramped rooms of Canterlot’s basement, sending up a cloud of dust. The room smelled of old books. Sunset sneezed her way through the cloud and with blurry eyes looked back at the reflective surface towards the friends she had said goodbye too. However, what she saw was not an enfeebled nag, but a more youthful looking unicorn with a fiery mane and longer legs than she remembered. It was then that, moving toward the mirror, her makeshift cloak would fall away to reveal the wings now set upon her back.
With excitement and - after knocking some of the piles of books down with her wings and trying her magic (which was wobbly at best from lack of use), she dashed through the halls to be met with the vision of Twilight; defeated.
At first she couldn’t understand it, but eventually began to understand, with human Twilight’s help, that the leak of Equestrian magic in the human world had become less and less, and so their timelines began to diverge and the pony world’s time line must move much quicker than theirs. However, Twilight theorized that it was safer for Sunset not to try to return to the human world, as she had been there for so long, it may kill her to do so, despite now being a generally immortal being on the pony side of things.
Sunset found pondering how - when - she had gotten wings to be a lost line of thought. She got to see the ‘other Twilight’ again, the pen pal she always splurged to and had a special fondness for.
Twilight’s response was that of shock, then a jaded attitude. Now that Sunset was an Alicorn - she’d leave her too. However, Sunset didn’t leave. She would venture out here and there, sure, but always with the assurance she’d return. She’d send messages every night, and return with new books and stories for Twilight. Sunset found contentment in taking care of her friend and the bond they’d share from then out was inseparable.
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I like to imagine that eventually Sunset was able to coax Twilight out on adventures which they’d disguise themselves for, and enjoyed a little bit of mayhem from time to time, but Twilight was never able to fully recuperate from her losses.
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As Sunset never fully set - it was though the world was draped in eternal, gentle Twilight. Their friends and connections made along the way decorated the sky with stars.
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Just random thoughts. Thanks for reading :3
