Imagine you are a grain of sand.

You are basking in the sun, surrounded by an endless ocean of your nearly identical brothers and sisters. Don’t get me wrong, I know for certain that you’re anything but ordinary in this crazy crowd. You feel a cut above the rest, and rightfully so—your amber skin has a roguish red streak, envied greatly by many your age, and you’re also the one who inspired that earth-shattering avalanche last week. Sure, some would say shortening a dune by a quarter of an inch isn’t much of an achievement, but what do they know? When was the last time they took responsibility for shaping the greatest desert of Saddle Arabia?

Don’t let those sad cynics get to you, grain. In fact, I see you don’t let anyone get through to you, which is admirable as much as it is unsettling. You’re lounging at the peak alone because you think you alone deserve it, because you earned your position through passion and hard work. Or was such a great prestige simply thrust upon you? Oh, don’t give me that look, I’m not judging. I know there’s only so much space at the top, so if you say your goals and dreams are infinitely more important than those of the masses, who am I to preach otherwise?

You dream of adventure. You dream of traveling beyond the sun-scorched horizon and everything you have ever known, to a place where the scenery is made of more than just sand hills and withered bushes. Where fauna and flora is lush and vibrant, and not limited to jackals, vultures or rude cacti like the one you saw the other day. Where weather is for ambiance rather than sucking the life out of everything that crawls.

It’s a beautiful vision, many thanks for sharing it with me. You know, I come from a place such as the one in your dream, and I would like to propose an exchange: you tell me more about the desert life, and I’ll give you a foretaste of how it’s like living in a faraway land. No, no need to thank me, the pleasure is all mine. Let me even go first, grain, as a small token of my friendship. Ha! I can see you’re tumbling with excitement already!

Now, where do I begin? Imagine… imagine…

Imagine the shadow of an alicorn cast upon you.

“Look ahead, Princess. A sandstorm.”

Celestia squinted at the approaching wall of dust. “I would prefer to not have my mane all ruffled for our meeting with Rashid and the ponies of Al-Hoofuf.” She glanced at her student who already put on a pair of oversize goggles—a handy measure whenever sand was involved. “How about you, Sunset? Do you think you could get us through?”

“With pleasure.”

With a cocky grin, Sunset took a step forward and her horn began to glow. Celestia felt a slight twitch when the filly attuned herself to the streams of magic, little rivers full of arcane energy flowing around them. The magic took shape of twelve fields which appeared out of thin air one by one, twirling like snowflakes never to be seen in these parts. They joined together to create a barrier around Sunset and her mentor, separating them and a wheelbarrow’s worth of sand under their hooves from the rest of the dune sea.

Celestia passed her hoof along the shimmering bindings, feeling soft vibrations underneath. She admired the ease with which her protégée weaved her spells. This time Sunset went for a sturdy construction with little options to alter the form. In a way, the filly was wagering the strength of her spell against the strength of the sandstorm.

“Very good,” Celestia said. “The storm should last about thirty seconds if I’m not mistaken.”

The world around them took a cyan tint as Sunset poured even more magic into the barrier.

“That’s it? I dare it to last twice as long!”

“Try to maintain your spell for as long as you can, but there’s no need to strain yourself. And remember: I’m right behind you, so if anything goes wrong—”

“It won’t.”

The storm reached them sooner than expected.

The earth began to shake, a massive cloud of dust blocked out the sky, and the barrier, however lasting, was only partially good at filtering the sound of the roaring wind. In a matter of seconds tons of harmless sand became a force to be reckoned with, once again justifying the reason for naming seasonal sandstorms after dragons. Both could level a village and make nothing of it, swallowing unlucky ponies and depriving them of their prized possessions—and yet, or perhaps for that very reason, the Dragon Dominion approved greatly of such a convention.

Celestia was more interested in her student’s condition than in the ravaging chaos only two steps from her. Sunset’s horn was flickering with enough magic to illuminate their little field of serenity, and the filly herself stood firm with no intention of yielding. She treated it like another challenge, drawing great strength from her desire to overcome it. But it was not enough. Sunset held her prideful posture for a good twenty seconds when it became clear that the sand’s continuous assault was too much for her to handle.

When Celestia opened her mind to the streams of magic as well, she discovered something... unnatural. It was like a long forgotten sensation of malevolence locked in the very flow of the wind, a faint magical echo guiding the storm explicitly against them. It was almost as if the sand which had already passed by them wanted to return for another lash, again and again. The origins of the phenomenon, however, were elusive at best.

Sunset maintained the barrier valiantly despite trembling and trickles of sweat coming down her forehead. She paid no attention to her hooves either, already buried deep in the sand. A grimace of pain twisted her mouth, but her eyes were burning with the passion she was full of whenever she attempted to push her limits.

“Exemplary performance!” Celestia shouted over the wind. “I’ll take it from here!”

The fields at the front were barely holding, and tiny cracks along their surface were growing at an alarming rate. Sunset tried to turn the barrier around, but the arcane bindings were too rigid.

“I’m… I’m f-fine!” she snapped angrily between heavy breaths. “I will not lose… just let me…”

“That’s enough!”

“Argh!”

Sunset fought to the last second. When the last ounce of magic ebbed away from her horn, she screamed and fell to the ground, her entire body jolting from the struggle. The barrier went from cyan to transparent only to be torn to shreds a moment later. Sunset curled up and braced herself for the merciless force of nature to fling her back to Canterlot and beyond.

When no such journey occurred, she breathed a sand-free sigh of relief and opened her eyes.

“Wow.”

She was encased in a bubble of golden energy, bright and imposing like the sun itself. Unlike her own barrier, it had its fields in constant motion, and the bindings served as rails which moved them around. Across multiple layers, the bubble was shifting and adjusting to the currents pushing against the surface, and the sand which met it head-on was instantly vitrified. As tiny droplets of liquid glass, it was sticking to the outer side to further protect Sunset and the one responsible for this impressive show of power.

Nature was a force to be reckoned with, but so was Princess Celestia in her blazing might.

The storm raced on with the desert wind, leaving them under the clear blue sky as if nothing of interest had ever happened. After the final wave of dust settled down, Celestia dispelled the bubble, threw away the glass umbrella and attended to her student.

“Are you hurt, little one?”

Sunset carried out a swift revenge on the world’s stocks of sand by kicking a nearby pile into the air.

“Just my pride,” she reluctantly replied and let the goggles slide down her neck. “Sorry I failed you, Princess.”

“You should not be ashamed of your performance, as it was admirable,” Celestia replied. “I know of no other unicorn your age capable of conjuring a twelve-piece shield, let alone maintaining it under such pressure and not losing their composure within the first five seconds. That said, while you never cease to amaze me with your magical prowess—”

“What can I say, I have a great teacher.”

Celestia furrowed her brow. “That said, you’re not getting away that easily.”

Sunset shrugged and casually flicked the sand off her saddlebag. “Still, worth a shot.”

Against all reason and the atmosphere of tuition she wanted to establish, Celestia let out a gentle chuckle. Yes, she was entrusted with raising and setting the sun every day, and yes, she was the leader of a wonderful nation, but in the end she had a pretty soft spot for her students, and her subjects overall. She wasn’t capable of reprimanding them for their own charming quirks and little behaviors which made each and every one so unique.

Still, she was a teacher at heart. She could at least try to make it a valuable lesson.

“Sunset Shimmer,” she said on a serious note. “While you have certainly developed your skills since we were first introduced, I’m concerned about your attitude. Trying to be your best is one thing, but there is no shame in admitting you cannot do something on your own, especially when you’re with someone you can trust. You know you can rely on me. Why do you insist on going through life alone?”

Sunset remained silent. Instead of answering the question, she broke off a shard of glass from the umbrella and took it as a souvenir.

It was fine. Celestia wasn’t expecting any dialogue in the first place. Her student was smart enough to be presented with thought-provoking topics, but if it wasn’t related to her, magic, or her doing magic, she would often discard the ideas as boring. Without a solid, palpable example which would drive the message home, she had a hard time remembering the lessons Celestia was trying to deliver.

Fortunately, palpable examples were literally at the tips of their hooves.

“A single grain of sand cannot harm you,” Celestia said. “It is too small and light to pose a threat. Yet, as we have just witnessed, those innocent grains of sand can quickly become a threat when they are many, and when their greatest ally, the wind, is ready to carry them,” she added. “Consider it a metaphor. If you surround yourself with others and show readiness to both carry and be carried through the adversities of life, then there will be no stopping you. Alone, however”—she tilted her dust-ridden hoof towards the filly—“you are just this single grain.”

Celestia leveled herself with Sunset to look her in the eyes, but the other decided that a mini-dune next to her hoof required immediate and thorough smoothing.

“It’s been almost a year since you first… visited my chambers, Sunset. The world from which you’ve come taught you that distrust and setting yourself apart from others was the only way to live, but you already know it isn’t true. You have to leave your past behind, and live for your future.”

The desert metaphor must have worked—much to Celestia’s surprise, Sunset did nothing to belittle the importance of the lesson. No snorting nor eye-rolling, and not a single snarky remark was uttered. Instead, she was listening, and Celestia savored the moment. There were times in every teacher’s career when their student would slow down and reflect instead of barking a comment, or taking some kind of offense because their mentor “just wasn’t getting it”. She learned to appreciate those episodes, as they were especially rare in Sunset’s case.

“I… I’ll try, Princess,” the filly replied. “Thank you.”

“There you go.” Celestia landed a reassuring nudge on Sunset’s chest and lifted her muzzle up. The fiery temper of her stare was gone, replaced by a mixture of serene gratitude and, to some degree, hope. “Now, let’s see that pretty smile of yours. Casual visit or not, we still represent the nation of Equestria today and I do not recall allowing any village to call itself a Gloomville!”

Sunset’s reverie was gone in a snigger, but the joke, despite its plainness, had brought a short-lived smile to her face, for once genuine and not rakish.

“Let’s just go, Princess. The dryness is killing me.”

“After you, Sunset.”

Small steps, Celestia mused as she followed her student up the dune. It was the only way to mold Sunset Shimmer into a truly exceptional mare. She was skilled in the fields of both theoretical and applicable magic, in addition to possessing a wide range of somewhat questionable talents derived from her equally controversial past, but Celestia could see the greatness the filly herself was yet to discover. Of course she was always trying to see the best in a pony, but in a way, she also suspected Sunset had a role to play—a role which involved her and one of the crucial magical artifacts from Equestria’s past.

Sunset had some rough edges, of course she had them. Even her Introduction to Spellcasting teacher, old Mrs. Inkwell, had once described her as a bundle of wonderful talent dragged back by a hopeless lack of patience. Other professors reported her character as pompous, often mentioning she couldn’t back down from a fight, especially when her self-styled infallibility was on the line.

The worst thing, however, was that she didn’t establish any lasting friendships since she enrolled to Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. Her picture of self was built solely on personal achievements of which there were many—Celestia and the teaching staff all agreed—but she never shared her successes with her classmates, and seldom talked to anyone who wasn’t tied directly to her assignments. Indeed, there was a long way ahead of the filly, but if Celestia had anything to say, Sunset was going to get there eventually.

The day was still long.