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Selected Excerpts from the Official "Equestria Girls" Novel

by Cold in Gardez

Chapters

Twilight Sparkle and Flash Sentry dance in a fountain on the eve of her departure

Up until this scene, G. M. Berrow's novelization of the movie followed the original script rather closely. In the first chapters, in fact, she barely strays from the movie's dialogue, except for a few internalized thoughts that obviously were not portrayed in the movie.

The "Fountain Scene," as it has come to be known, was the first created apparently out of whole cloth by Berrow for her novel (though some early drafts of the script apparently include references to a fountain scene, there is no evidence it was the basis for what you see below). It is markedly more mature than the movie, dealing with themes of separation and desire that, at first blush, would not seem appropriate for the pre-teen girl audience the book is ostensibly marketed for.

In this scene, Twilight realizes that she has only hours left to spend with human Flash Sentry, and must wrestle with herself over how to spend them.

Twilight Sparkle and Flash Sentry dance in a fountain on the eve of her departure

Book 1, Chapter 3, pp. 62

Twilight laughed as she twirled in Flash's arms. The cool water, though only up to her knees, splashed about the two of them as they danced in the fountain's basin. It was the loudest sound in the night.

"I've never done anything like this," she murmured. Her head swam, and she leaned against his broad chest to steady herself. The rapid thunder of his heartbeat drowned out her thoughts. "Can we stay here forever?"

He lowered his head, and she felt the hot touch of his breath upon her forehead, against the naked skin that withheld nothing of itself from the world. She started to blush, and she silently thanked the night for its concealing darkness.

"Not forever, no." She felt the words rumble in his chest as much as she heard them. "But for a while, at least."

She leaned closer, her eyes closed. His lips were just inches away; she could dart in and steal a kiss, snatching it from him like a heron plucking a fish from the stream. He would not object. He would smile, and his lips would feel as soft as cotton and taste like the apples she smelled on his breath, and she would steal another kiss, and another, and they would kneel down in the fountain, and they would touch each other, and they would complete each other. She raised her eyes to see those lips just inches away.

No! She pulled away from his embrace and turned to face the empty courtyard. Her lungs ached for air, and she heard his shuddering exhale behind her. For long minutes, only silence filled the night.

Something small and cold shifted beneath her bare feet. Desperate for a distraction, she reached down into the water and plucked it from the fountain's rough cement floor. It was a coin – a quarter, she dimly recalled. Age had worn smooth its textured rim, but it still shone as bright as new under the moon. She looked down again, and saw hundreds of similar coins scattered beneath the water.

How odd. Why would anyone cast away money?

"It's for luck," Flash's voice sounded in her ear. His strong arms encircled her, and his fingers wrapped around hers, trapping the coin within their combined grasp. "They say if you toss a coin in a fountain, you get to make a wish."

Twilight felt herself blush again. She hadn't even meant to mumble the question aloud. "A wish, you say?" She felt him nod in reply, his cheek brushing against the wet hair cascading down her shoulders.

"Well, then." She let out a long breath, closed her eyes, and let the coin fall back into the water. Again they were silent.

When Flash spoke again, the moon had begun its slow descent toward the horizon. "What did you wish for?"

"I..." She let out a trembling breath. The warm trails running down her cheeks were not tears; she was not crying. "I'll tell you in a few hours. Come on, let's go get dry."

Twilight Sparkle and Flash Sentry exchange a torrid kiss at the moment of their separation

Commentary!

Twilight Sparkle and Flash Sentry exchange a passionate kiss at the moment of their separation

Book 1, Chapter 4, pp. 71

The moon at last rose to the zenith, and the gateway in the base of the horse statue began to shimmer.  Twilight could feel her two-legged body melting away, and her old, familiar body soon replaced it.

She turned her head aside and tried to hide her face behind a wing.  "Oh, Flash," she said, her voice husky, "I didn't want you to see me like this—"

His hands touched her wing and gently lowered it.  "But why?" he asked.  "You're beautiful."  He gazed into her eyes, and once again she felt her heart flutter.

"Doesn't it bother you that I'm a pony?" she asked in a husky voice.

He began gently to rub her ears.  "Twilight," he said, "I want you to listen closely to what I am about to say."

"Yes?" she whispered huskily.

He laid his hands on her cheeks, placed his face close to hers, and said, "I love you.  I love you more than I have ever loved anything, or anyone.  What you are or where you are does not matter to me, and I swear to you, even if I have to rip apart the very fabric of the universe, I will find you again.  Even the flames of hell itself could not keep you from me, because my love for you burns hotter still."

"Oh, Flash," she husked.  But then, with aching tenderness, he kissed her trembling muzzle.  They totally made out, human and pony, like it was G1 all over again.

At last, he drew back from her, but her pouty lips still longed for his touch, and her full bosom heaved, except she didn't have a bosom now because she was a horse.  I sort of forgot that part.

"Oh, Flash," she husked huskily in a husky voice that husked, "you are, like, soooo totally hawt."

Assorted scenes in which Twilight Sparkle kisses Flash Sentry, or vice versa, part 1

Commentary!

Assorted scenes in which Twilight Sparkle kisses Flash Sentry, or vice versa

Various portions of Book 1

At the Fall Formal

Wrapping her tightly in his arms, Flash kissed Twilight's bare shoulder.  She gasped, suddenly glad that Rarity had made her Gala dress strapless.

"Twilight," he whispered.  "Twilight, I love you so much."

"But it's wrong!" she cried.  "I'm a pony princess from another realm!  Doesn't that bother you?  Don't you think that's weird?"

"Are you kidding?  That makes me want you more!"  With tender ferocity, he pressed his lips firmly against hers.

After a minute, she pulled away to catch her breath, and then she was all like, "Oh, like, Flash, you are, like, so totally hawt!"

A few hours later, at the Dance-Off

Twilight had never danced like this before, but, of course, she'd never been bipedal before.

"Oh, Flash," she gasped, "I feel like I'm floating on air."

He merely winked in reply.

Easily and manfully, he spun her around the dance floor as the other students watched in awe.  He held her so tight, and his blue, liquid eyes reflected the sparkling lights.  She gazed at him through her long lashes and whispered, "I wish we could stay like this, Flash . . . forever."

She gasped as he pulled her close and pressed his lips against her ear.  She'd never been nuzzled like this before.  Her knees turned to jelly, but his thewy arms held her up.

"Stay," he whispered, his voice fierce, insistent, urgent.  "Stay here with me."

"I can't!  My home, my friends—they need me!"

Grasping her hand, he dropped to one knee, and her heart replied with a staccato pounding.  "I need you," he said, "as I have never needed anyone before in my entire life.  Stay here.  Be mine.  Be my little pony."

She melted.  Sinking to the floor, she clutched his shoulders and, with an intensity of which she never before would have thought herself capable, husked, "Shut up and talk title lines to me."

Then she pressed her mouth to his.

After the dance, at a seedy hotel on the outskirts of town

“Come on, come on…” Flash Sentry’s fingers shook as he attempted to fit the magnetic key card into the slot on the motel room door. In the dim light the slit was half lost in shadow, and he tapped the edge of the card against the metal plate a dozen fruitless times before he finally found his mark*. The key slid in and out, the little yellow LED flashed to green, and the lock clicked open. Flash let out his breath and pushed the door open, motioning for Twilight to follow behind him.

*[Editor’s note: Although Berrow makes extensive use of complex literary techniques later in the novel, this is the first explicit use we see of complex metaphor. The key and hole symbolically represent the male and female, and Flash’s fumbling with them refers to the clumsy virgin efforts he is about to exercise upon Twilight’s body.]

Twilight gave the parking lot another quick glance. It seemed empty enough, but she couldn’t afford to be spotted in her pony form. Although the students back at the school were quick to accept her true nature, and Flash Sentry quicker still, there was no way to tell how other humans might react.

Only six steps separated the open door of Flash’s car from the open motel door. Inside the room, lit from behind by a dim, flickering fluorescent light, Flash motioned for her to join him.

How odd that the gulf between them should give her more pause than the thought of joining him. Wasn’t it shameful to follow a boy to a seedy motel after a high school formal? Wasn’t there a word for girls like her, already naked just hours after their last dance?

Slut. That’s the word they used. Slut.

Of course, as a pony, nudity was her natural state. It followed, then, that sluttiness was her natural state. This iron-clad syllogism settled into her mind, and she felt her mouth twist into a smile. Not a smile shared with friends; not a smile of joy or pleasure. A smile of lust, accompanied by half-lidded eyes and a tongue that flicked between her lips, teasing at them, wetting them, readying them for play.

Flash’s eyes widened as she stepped toward him, her hooves sending faint echoes ringing across the deserted parking lot. She edged through the door and brushed her side against his thighs as she passed. His whole body trembled at her touch.

Men, stallions, they were all the same. So brave in public; so timid in the bower. Twilight hopped up onto the bed, arched her back in a stretch that bordered on obscenity, and lowered herself onto the covers. She flicked her mane away and turned her smile upon him again. His wide-eyed, pale face was filled with hope and terror in equal measures.

Enough teasing, she decided. She was ready; soon enough, he would be too. “Come kiss me, Flash.”

And he did. And so much more.

Human Flash Sentry destroys a monster that was once a pony

Commentary!

Flash Sentry landed with a grunt on the barren rock of a new world. Above him the pitiless sun beat down the earth with a hail of hard radiation, of which visible light was only the merest part. The desert-dry air parched his skin, drawing out his sweat and leaving a crust of salt behind.

Empty sands stretched out all around. Neither hill nor dune nor mountain broke the perfect emptiness of the wasteland. Only a faint ring of ash, with him at its center, gave any evidence that a world-portal had just opened on this very spot. The wind blew, the sands shifted, and in moments even that small sign of his arrival was obliterated. This alien world had seen him, measured him, judged him, and already forgotten him.

With no landmarks to guide his path, Flash simply walked forward, toward the distant horizon.

* * *

How long Flash Sentry walked, he could not have said. Thousands of steps passed beneath his feet before he even considered the question. Time was an interesting concept but ultimately immaterial to him; only Twilight Sparkle mattered, and he would walk through the burning desert for centuries without complaint if it drew him but one atom closer to his love.

Time passed, and the harsh elements took their toll upon his garments. The fine shoes purchased from a goblin cobbler ten worlds ago came apart. His jacket frayed from the harsh abrasion of blowing sand, until it hung in threadbare tatters from his shoulders. The dry winds, infused with grit and burning with all the heat of a furnace, caressed his flesh like a lover until the skin cracked and bled and left shining red runnels all down his limbs. But still he strove on, unflinching, unfailing, no more able to stop than an avalanche crashing down the slopes of a mountain.

Eventually the desert sands gave way to packed earth riven with deep cracks. The skeletal remains of wooden buildings protruded from the ground in places, the only evidence that the land he now walked was once a town. The ruins lined an empty stretch that might have been an avenue. He closed his eyes and imagined, for a moment, that trees had grown here, that children had played where now he walked.

He opened his eyes. Only ghosts remained, now.

But at least the town offered him a new path. He turned to face the broken timbers and set his feet upon the memory that was the road. So oriented, he walked until the burning sun began its slow daily surrender to the incipient night.

* * *

The last light of the setting sun painted the western sky a luminous orange as Flash Sentry approached the cairn.

It was the only landmark for miles around. The ruined town had long since vanished over the horizon behind him. Bare, baked earth stretched out infinitely in all directions. Of the road, only a dustless path remained to remind passers-by that it had ever existed at all. Soon, he imagined, even that would vanish, and nothing would remain in this world but the sky and the sands.

And, perhaps, the cairn. Flash’s steps slowed as he drew nearer to the cluster of rocks. They were piled atop each other chaotically, like memories tossed into the back of a confused mind where they could cause no more harm. The highest of them reached perhaps ten feet above the desert floor, and the shadow they cast stretched for miles to the east. As he took the final steps toward it, the setting sun finally dipped beneath the horizon, and the shadow faded and was lost to the night.

Flash stopped and crossed his arms. Whatever this world held for him, it would be here; he knew it as intimately as he knew the sound of his mother’s voice. This was the center of the gyre.

His instincts were rewarded. The winds, now chill with the touch of evening, swirled around him and carried with them an abyssal rumble, as of rocks crashing together in the far distance. If the dead could laugh, this would be their sound.

“Show yourself!” he shouted. “Show yourself, or bother me not with your mockery!”

The winds died, and the graven laughter followed. Silence reigned in the space afterward and stretched out interminably, until Flash prepared to turn away. Before he could raise his foot to depart, a hollow, ruined voice responded.

“It has been so long.” The words existed at the edge of his hearing, at the threshold between noise and speech. They were dry and rotten and bruised his mind to hear. Death inflected them. Loss accented them. No mortal throat could ever have uttered such empty sounds. A lesser man would have fled from them; Flash merely assumed a fighting stance, his chest turned at an angle while his arms rose to strike or defend.

“So long,” the not-voice continued. “So long, and I am glad you have come.” The cairn rumbled, its rocks shifted and threatened to collapse, and above it rose a creature that might once have been a pony, if ponies could be twisted into nightmare forms that affronted nature with their very existence. Long, sharp bones stretched and punctured a skin the color of dust. Its mane was a curtain of sand, ever flowing from its scalp onto the rocks beneath its feet. Sunken eyes peered out from a face stretched tight as the head of a drum, and they glowed with a malevolent spark that bespoke a thousand thousand years of ravenous hunger.

“Cast not that foul gaze upon me, beast or demon,” Flash shouted. “Get back to whatever hell spawned you.”

“Hell? No, it was not hell that spawned me.” The beast took a step down the stairlike rocks of the cairn. It was larger than any mortal pony, its head nearly level with Flash’s own, and as it spoke it smiled, revealing row upon row of shark’s teeth behind its cracked lips. Sand puddled around hooves as it stepped closer. “No, manling. I was a pony, once, born in paradise. Now I am so much more.”

Flash’s disbelief must have showed on his face, for the creature laughed again. The rumbling peals shook Flash’s bones.

“I speak the truth, boy,” it said. “This world you see was once a garden. Forests and meadows spanned the continents. Clear rivers flowed from snow-capped mountains to gentle seas. It was always summer here.”

Flash stepped back and began to circle around the creature. It turned to follow him, a look on its face not unlike what a cat might give a too-brave mouse. “I see no gardens. What unmerciful disaster struck, and where have all your brethren gone?”

“It was no disaster, little man-thing. It was a miracle.” The monster’s grin stretched wider, and sand spilled from its mouth like drool. “We lived like gods, and we defeated every enemy but one: death. So our greatest minds bent all their efforts to curing us of wretched mortality, and they succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. They found a way to turn our most abundant resource into our most valuable – eternal life.”

Flash risked a glance away from the sand creature. “Water. It was water, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, water.” It took a step toward him again. “We drank the oceans first. They were so large and so deep, they could never be exhausted. But in time they were.

“The snowcaps went next.” It too glanced away, this time into the distance, as though seeing something no longer there. “Entire cities moved to the mountains to consume the glaciers. They bought us another thousand years.”

“And then the rivers, and swamps, and everything else?”

“Yes, yes and yes. And now it is all gone.” For a fraction of a second, what might have been sorrow appeared in the creature’s eyes. Just as quickly it was gone, replaced by the predatory gleam. “We succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”

“This is success?” Flash snorted and sneered at the deluded monster. “I see nothing but death.”

“Then you are blind, little mayfly. I have lived a million years, and I will live a million more. I will see the sun go dark in the sky and the earth crumble to dust around me. When whatever gods may exist at last blow their trumpets to herald the end, I will be their only witness, and then I will be victorious over death.”

“Your victory is hollow. What has it bought you?” Flash motioned with his arm to encompass the barren world. “An empty world? Dominion over nothing? Where are your kin?”

“They are gone, too. There was not enough water for us all. In the end, we drank each other, and now only I remain.” The beast took another step toward Flash. The air around it burned like a blacksmith’s forge. “And I am so glad you have come to slake my thirst!”

So saying, the beast leapt upon Flash. Its tremendous weight bore him to the ground, and only his hands clamped around its neck kept its shark-like maw from tearing out his throat. Its dry, parchment skin burned beneath his fingers, and a terrible pain erupted at its searing touch. His skin cracked, opening rivers of blood that flowed into the beast. Its eyes closed in delight, and it pressed down closer upon him. Rank breath that stank of ancient crypts washed over Flash’s face, gagging him with its stench.

His legs were still free, though. He curled beneath the beast and kicked up with all his might. A thousand pounds of rock and sand and bone met his feet and barely budged. But that was enough – Flash shoved the monster’s face away and rolled upright just in time to dodge a blow from its hoof that would have left him insensible or dead.

They circled each other again. The beast’s chest heaved like a bellows, drawing in dry air and expelling an ashen cloud of smoke and cinders. The bloody handprints on its throat faded as they were drawn into the sandy skin. It pawed the ground and lowered its head for another charge.

Flash leaned to his left, then suddenly leapt to the right as the monster thundered past. Tatters from his shredded jacket brushed against its side and disintegrated on contact, leaving him even more exposed to the chill night and the beast’s burning presence. Before it could recover, he leaned down, scooped up a handful of dusty sand, and flung it into the monster’s face.

It didn’t even flinch. Its lips drew back and twisted into a mocking grin, and the last traces of thought vanished from its eyes, replaced by an ageless hunger, a predator’s instinct that had served it well over the millennia as it hunted down its last fellow ponies and consumed them. The shark’s jaws spread wider, and it roared with a sound that shook the earth. The stone cairn behind Flash shuddered and collapsed, raising a cloud of choking dust that obscured everything but the burning sparks in the beast’s eyes.

Again it leapt, but this time Flash met its charge. His forearm slammed against its throat, and he ignored the rending pain as it drew the blood and moisture from his skin. Monstrous jaws crashed just inches from his face. Burning sand and embers scoured him, searing away his eyelashes and brows. Slowly it pushed him back, until his feet could no longer hold against it, and he began to tumble.

He had only seconds to live. Desperate, he grasped at the monster with his free hand, grappling with its battering leg until he trapped it in an iron grip. Ignoring the horrid pain as his skin dried and sloughed away, he shoved the monster’s leg into its own mouth and terrible jaws.

The beast shrieked, but not in pain. Its eyes lit up with savage joy as it devoured its own flesh. Forgotten, Flash fell and rolled away from the monster as it bit again and again, each time consuming more of its parched body. When there was nothing left of its leg, its head twisted at an impossible angle to bite into its shoulder, and so it went, on and on, eating itself until nothing remained but a set of clattering jaws that trembled, shuddered, and finally went still.

Flash shivered on the ground beside the ruined cairn. His flayed hands and arms began to burn as the rush of adrenaline fled from his blood, and the cold touch of night wrapped its arms around him.

He gave himself a few moments to recover and then, ignoring his inconsequential pains, stood. A cold blue light surrounded him as another world-portal began to open, and he stepped through it without a second glance at the dead world he left behind.

Flash Sentry and Buck Withers duel to the death for Pirate Twilight's heart

Critical Commentary goes Here.

- DGD Davidson

Flash Sentry and Buck Withers duel to the death for Pirate Twilight's heart

Book 3, Chapter 2, pp. 47-49

With a snort of contempt, Buck tossed his head, and a length of cold steel clattered against the floor and slid to Flash’s feet.

Flash glanced down at it before returning his eyes to Buck’s face.  “What is this?”

“What does it look like, fool?” Buck snarled.  “A weapon.  A sword.  Pick it up and fight me, if you’re stallion enough.”

Flash’s lip curled into a sneer.  “I?  Stallion enough?  If you only knew, little pony, what I have—”

Buck spat on the marble floor.  “Do you claim great deeds, you puny, two-legged freak?  Am I to cower before you, a mighty hero from the worlds beyond?  Ha!  I see nothing before me but a sniveling churl, yet five months weaned from his wet-nurse.  You are, no doubt, one of those worthless sorts who are great heroes in the bedroom but not on the battlefield.”*

[*Footnote:  As fans of My Little Pony no doubt know, Equestria is a masculine, militaristic society that places great value on honor and skill at arms.  Thus, in order to seduce mares or fillies, stallions will often ply them with long, involved tales of martial triumphs.  Buck is here accusing Flash of embellishing or inventing his stories of combat.  According to Equestria’s elaborate honor code, any stallion who receives such an insult is to respond immediately with violence. —GMB]

Flash bent down, picked up the sword, and tested it in his hand.  It felt good; its weight was solid against his palm.  “And I see before me,” he said, “nothing but an obstacle, a nuisance to be smashed like an insect.  Do you want to know who I am, little pony?  I am Flash the Unmaker, Unraveler of Worlds.  Countless planets have fallen beneath my tread.  Countless nations have crumbled at my touch.  I have destroyed men, women, and children in my quest, and I can easily brush you aside as I might brush aside a fly.  Do you hear me?”  He slid his feet into the en garde position and pointed the tip of his blade at Buck’s chest.  “I am Flash Sentry, fool, and you will not deny me my wedding night.  Leave here now, and do not come back.”

Buck scoffed.  “I, turn tail and run?  I think not, puny human.”

At this, Twilight at last rose to her hooves.  With eyes half-lidded, she looked at Flash and said, “Your speech does you no credit, my lover.  You have unmade worlds, but would you leave a rival unvanquished?”

“He is beneath my contempt,” Flash replied, “and therefore unworthy that I should kill him.”

Twilight chuckled mirthlessly.  “You are in Equestria now, darling, where a stallion’s bravery and skill in the fight are paramount.  You have been challenged to a duel, and no lover of mine will turn his back on such a challenge:  much as I cherish you, I would see you dead rather than dishonored by shirking combat.”  She turned her back on him, but cast a sharp, sultry glance over her shoulder as she added, “If you wish to take me in your arms, you must do so as a conquering warrior—not as a coward.”

Twilight stepped to her brass chest and opened it, revealing the booty she had captured in her many raids.  She pulled forth a bright necklace of gold set with lapis lazuli, which she draped over her long and supple neck.  She adorned her legs with bangles and her hooves with bell boots of gold.  Into her ears she clipped earrings of silver and pearl, which she attached by a length of golden chain to another ring in her nose.  She painted her eyes with kohl, pulled a filmy and translucent veil across her face, and then, at last, brought forth an alabaster jar.  After snapping the jar’s neck, she poured its contents—olive oil beaten with cinnamon, cardamom, and myrrh—over her mane.  The scent of the perfume wafted throughout the chamber.

Now bedecked with jewels and dripping with both unguent and fecundity, Twilight mounted the steps of her pedestaled and petal-strewn couch, where she lowered herself amongst the down-filled pillows.  As she languidly wound her hooves in the silken sheets, she again gazed at Flash from half-lidded eyes.  Sliding her tongue across her lips, she husked, “The one of you who conquers the other shall likewise conquer my heart.  Delight me now with the strivings of your thewy limbs, and to the victor shall go the spoils.”

But Twilight’s hair was not the only thing in the room that was well oiled:  with a grunt, Flash ripped open his shirt to reveal his broad and muscular chest, which rippled and shimmered in the candlelight like the waves of a storm-tossed and moonlit sea.  He bowed his head toward Twilight and said, “Your Highness, since you wish it, it will be my honor to rid the world of this vermin.”

“And,” said Buck with a whinny, “it will be my honor to slay this misshapen creature who has so stained your virtue.”

Without further ado, but with deafening roars of rage, the two heroes fell upon each other and brought together their blades with a mighty clash that would have left lesser mortals senseless.  They struck and struck again, unmindful of their hurts, until the marble floor was beslicked with their blood, yet still they strove, neither giving an inch.

And as this he-man and this he-stallion pressed close, as their blades shone in the flickering light, and as their sinewy thighs bulged and pulsated with the strain, Twilight took a cup of dark wine in her pastern and sipped daintily.  Lowering the cup, she again slid her tongue across her full lips, and she whispered five words in her characteristically husky voice:

“This . . . is . . . so . . . totally . . . hawt.”

Celestia crawls toward her dying sister on the last day of the world

One of the unusual choices Berrow makes, particularly in the final book, is to provide detailed and unique descriptions of every single death that occurs in her novel. No two ends are the same, and even lowly, unnamed soldiers' deaths are as vividly described as Twilight's is on the final page.

In places, Berrow takes this to extremes. When Princess Skyla detonates her nega-bomb, Berrow dedicates the next 86 pages to listing every single pony killed by the spell and the exact mechanism of their deaths. Some commentators have compared her in this sense to the ancient poet Homer, whose Illiad is written in the same manner (though on a lesser scale).

This particular scene describes Luna's death. Berrow, perhaps understanding that the reader needs a lighter moment after so many pages of horror, chooses to give Luna what might be called a gentle ending, filled with hope.  -Cold in Gardez

Celestia crawls toward her dying sister on the last day of the world

Book 3, Chapter 84, pp. 2,876-2,877

Celestia heard the flames before she felt them.

They crackled weakly, barely heard above the lonely whine of the wind through the broken rocks beneath her. For long moments the sounds died away entirely, and she wondered if they were truly gone, or if her senses had finally fled.

She opened her right eye. The left was smashed shut and likely would never open again. Pieces of the boulder that had closed it lay in fragments all around, and she let out a mirthless chuckle at the sight of them – Luna always said she had a hard head. This just proved it.

The mourning wind returned, and with it the sound of the fire. With terrible effort she pried her head away from the earth, ignoring the lances of pain that tore their way from her skull down her spine with each twitch of her muscles. The bones in her neck ground together like broken gears. It was a miracle she could even move.

“Luna?” Her sister’s name came out a jumble of vowels. She worked her jaw a few times and spit out an apple’s worth of blood. Something that might have been a tooth glittered in the red mess. She didn’t give it a second glance.

“Luna?” she called again, her voice stronger. Only the wind and the sound of the flames answered.

Years ago, millennia ago, ages ago, they had played as foals in the Everfree. Luna, ever the smaller, would crowd her slender form among the trees in the gardens, between their elegant trunks, and hide there within the fragrant herbs. She would giggle, and Celestia would hunt for her, and pretend she could not see the indigo feathers protruding like flowers from the brush. And then, when Celestia’s back was turned and she at last announced her surrender, Luna would pounce upon her back, and they would roll through the soft grass together, laughingly as only sisters who undaunting faced forever at each others’ sides could. They laughed, and did it again the next day, through the eternal summers of their youths.

“Luna?” Her voice broke upon her sister’s name, and the grey world around her blurred through her tears.

She had to move. The fires creeping along the bare rock grew closer with every moment. They were not normal flames, and would not stop when they touched her divine form. They would eat it, just as they at everything else they touched. So, ignoring the pain, she ground her forehooves into the loose scree and dragged herself down the slope.

Time passed – hours, perhaps? She could no longer say. The cloud-veiled sun no longer moved across the heavens. Somewhere, far away, the battle still raged. If she listened hard enough, she could hear the clash of armies over the wind and the flames. Ponies, it seemed, yet lived.

At last her journey ended at the base of the hill, barely a dozen yards from where she began. Behind her, a trail of disordered rocks and blood marked the short passage. She looked back at it and coughed out a bitter laugh. A fitting, final march for the ruler of the world.

“Tia?” A weak, ragged voice sounded above the wind. It was the most beautiful thing Celestia had ever heard. She dug her hooves into the rocks again and pulled herself toward a shadowed outcropping. There, in the depths beneath the rocks, hiding from the sun, slumped a broken indigo form.

“Luna?” She pressed her snout against her sister’s shoulder, leaving a dark smear on that beautiful coat. “Luna, I’m here.”

“Tia… did it work?” Her sister’s voice rattled in her throat. Celestia’s heart bled at the sound.

“Yes, we…” She paused to lick her dry lips. “It worked, Luna. We won.”

“That’s good… That’s good.” For a long moment there was only silence. Luna’s chest rose and fell, rose, then fell, and stayed still.

Celestia laid her head upon Luna’s wings, still as soft as she remembered them, and wept.

An Interview with G. M. Berrow

Cold in Gardez: Ms. Berrow, thank you for agreeing to this interview. I understand Hasbro was reluctant to let you speak about your role in expanding their intellectual property?

G. M. Berrow: They were, but not for the reasons you might expect. They had no qualms at all with discussing Through the Mirror, despite the controversy it’s generated. They were more concerned with several future projects I am collaborating on with them, and I’m afraid I can say no more on that topic today.

CiG: I understand completely. I’ll start by addressing the elephant in the room: why is your novelization of the Equestria Girls movie so much more mature than the movie itself?

GMB: There are several reasons. The first and most obvious is that novels, by their nature, require more intellect and maturity to understand than simple cartoons. A child may enjoy a cartoon without fully comprehending it, simply because they enjoy bright colors and joyful music. Novels require a bit more than that.

CiG: Fair enough. Does that apply to the content of the novel, in addition to its reading level?

GMB: I think children, especially girls, are more mature than we give them credit for. Yes, the Twilight Sparkle in my novel does engage in some adult behaviors that were not depicted in the movie, but any girl who is smart enough to pick up a novel is ready to confront topics like intimacy, love and death.

CiG: And sex?

GMB: Yes, and sex. Most human activity can be reduced to its component parts: writing, for instance, is a combination of creativity, technical expertise, patience and social interaction. But there are a small number of activities that cannot be simplified; they are irreducible and thus constitute the basic building blocks of what it means to be human. I speak of things like friendship, eating, and -- yes -- sex. To ignore sex is to ignore part of what makes us human, and I think that does a disservice to my readers, regardless of their ages.

CiG: Does including sex necessitate graphic depictions of sexual acts, though? I specifically refer to the scene at the beginning of book three, when Buck Withers and Flash Sentry finish their duel and agree to—

GMB: Yes, I know the scene you refer to. I’ll admit I thought I might be “pushing the envelope” a little far, especially with some of the particular fetishes Twilight indulged in, but ultimately it was Hasbro’s decision, and they decided to include it.

CiG: Onto another topic. Over the course of the three books that comprise your novel, you adopt a progressively more literary tone, until the sappy romance of the early pages is lost entirely. Was that deliberate?

GMB: It was. I had more freedom once I started describing Twilight’s flight from Canterlot and her slow descent into wantonness and lust. I felt the subject matter deserved a different tone, and I set out to make it clear that we had, at last, passed through the looking glass.

CiG: Touche. Book two was also the first time you started each chapter with an epigraph. I remember thinking at the time how odd it was to see Twilight’s joyous reunion with her pony friends in Canterlot beneath the line from Dante’s Purgatorio:

‘Be mindful in due time of my pain.’

Then dove he back into that fire which refines them.

GMB: My intent was that the epigraphs would foreshadow the moral struggles the ponies would soon face. Obviously book 2 starts on a seemingly happy note, but by this point Twilight has already sown (or, should I say, harvested) the seeds of her own destruction. She has joined, body and soul, with a man from another world, and this transgression against the natural order will doom them all.

CiG: On that note, you use numerous allegorical passages in the novel. Some, like the epigraph, are explicit; others are obvious only upon rereading the text with an eye for them. Can you tell us why Luna chooses to recite this line toward the end of book three?

Fate – monstrous

and empty,

you whirling wheel,

you are malevolent,

well-being is vain

and always fades to nothing,

shadowed

and veiled

GMB: That’s from O Fortuna. I think at some level Luna is aware of her incipient death. She knows, now that the world-walls have crumbled, that soon Equestria will succumb to the same dissolution that has already ended millions of other universes. There is nothing she could have done to prevent this, nothing anyone could have done. Their deaths are preordained, and she can do nothing but rail against fate.

CiG: Hopelessness and surrender to inevitable death seem like weighty topics for a novel aimed at tween girls. Did your publisher ever question these decisions?

GMB: They did not. Like I said, Hasbro stuck up for me through the entire process. I couldn’t ask for a better partner.

CiG: I hope it continues to work out. I can’t wait to see the next book!

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