Sunlight flooded into the main hall of the castle through the open double doors, interrupted by the silhouette of the pony standing in the frame. The clop of hooves echoed throughout the crystalline chamber as the pony walked inside, the double doors closing shut in its wake. The light filtering in from the stained glass windows high above the front doors revealed this mysterious pony's identity as, step by step, her entire body was bathed in a dim filtered light. Twilight Sparkle was back home, and her spirits were high, as her song would confirm.

"Morning in Ponyville shimmers, morning in Ponyville shines
And I know for absolute certain, that everything is certain-"

"Don't sing that song!" a voice shouted from one of the open doors adorning the hallway.

Twilight, the newly crowned Princess of Friendship rolled her eyes. "It's a catchy song, Spike!" she argued aloud, the acoustics in the hall making it difficult to tell where exactly the voice had come from.

Spike's head popped out from the open doorway that read "Library" above the frame, the dragon's face wearing an irritated frown.

"You remember what happened last time you sang that song, right?" he reminded her.

"Of course I do," Twilight said, "and look how everything turned out. I became an alicorn, and everything turned out alright."

"But not before nearly bringing Ponyville to ruin and destroying the lives of all of your friends," he argued. "Messing with destiny and all that."

Destiny, destiny, destiny, destiny, destiny

Twilight's ears perked up at the sound of what seemed to be a mysterious whisper and foreboding rattling. She looked around, and discovered the source - a strong breeze had entered the castle through an open window above the front doors. The howling sound seemed to reverberate against the curtains and the decorative chandelier above, making an ordinary breeze sound eerily foreboding. She still wasn't used to this castle - it was much more grand in scale than her cozy library had been.

"I sincerely doubt that singing that song is what caused all of my friends' to swap cutie marks," she remarked, her gaze looking down from the ceiling back to Spike. "I think you might be reading a little too deep into things."

"Maybe." Spike shrugged his shoulders, turning around and making his way back into the library. "But I wouldn't take that chance!"

Chance, chance, chance, chance, chance

There was that sound again! Twilight looked back up at the open window with furrowed eyebrows. Her horn ignited, and the glass slowly lined up within the frame until the gap was just about sealed, but it wouldn't quite close all of the way. After a couple more tries to no avail, she dismissed it, and stuck her head into the library to observe what was becoming of her second favorite room in the castle thus far.

"How did everything go today?" she asked in a friendly voice, hoping that an excuse for some praise would cheer him up after their minor argument.

The dragon spun around the chair at his desk, holding a large quill in one claw, and an unrolled section of parchment in the other. "Actually, it went really good! Another shipment of books showed up, and I'm just cataloging them now before I put them in the shelves." He gestured behind him with his quill to a sizable stack of volumes on top of the desk. "Did you get the mail on the way in? My new Power Ponies volume set is supposed to come in today," he explained.

Twilight shook her head. "I checked the box on the way in, but the mail must not have come yet. I'm expecting another mail-order catalogue addressed to Twilight Sporkle again."

"Darn," Spike grumbled. "How did the rest of your day go?"

"It went well. I grabbed a bite to eat with the Crusaders, and browsed around in the marketplace," Twilight answered with a smile.

"Anything interesting?"

Twilight tried to remember the many odds and ends on display today. "Yeah, a whole bunch of really cool looking amulets and necklaces, but I didn't stay too long. It was surprisingly cold."

Cold, cold, cold, cold, cold

"Spike, do you hear that?" the alicorn inquired with a mild hint of frustration.

Knock, knock, knock

"Yeah, there's somepony at the door," the dragon answered. "You want me to get it or..?"

Twilight stepped back into the main hall, looking around perplexedly. "No, I'm already here," she replied as she trotted to the double doors she had just entered through. The right handle glowed in a magenta light as it rotated, and the bright light outside filled the hall once more when the door opened. From the entryway of the castle, Twilight could see the various homes and buildings of Ponyville not too far down the road, but she didn't see who had knocked on the door.

"Hello?" She stepped onto the cobblestone walkway, looking up and down the length of the castle wall, hoping to see somepony. "Hello?" she called again. Other than the light breeze, and the sun shining down upon her from a nearly cloudless sky, no response was given. With an unsatisfied huff, she stepped back into her home.

Twilight shut the door once more, and turned around once she heard the lock click into place."Not sure what that was - AH!"

Twilight would not have noticed the figure standing in the darkened hallway if not for its eyes. They glowed bright red, like the embers of a dying fire. The pony moved forward, stepping into the same light from the windows above just as Twilight had done moments ago. The pony's fur was black as night, and blended in perfectly with darkness of the unlit castle. It was no surprise then, that Twilight was surprised by his sudden appearance.

"What in the world are you doing here?" she cried. "You scared me half to death!"

"I'm sorry for the misdirection," the stallion spoke in a smooth, deep, and calm voice. He tilted his head back to adjust the long red hair that covered half of his face, a long black horn protruding from his forehead. He adjusted the satchel he wore around his shoulders. "I am not used to being around other ponies without the comforting embrace of the shadows."

"Clearly, you aren't used to common societal norms either," Twilight snapped with her heart still pounding. "Just because you're a unicorn and can teleport doesn't mean you should just zap yourself into my home. Why did you even bother to knock?"

"A unicorn?" he asked affronted, and instead of answering her question, he turned his body slightly so that Twilight could see a set of black feathery wing resting along his ribs.

"An alicorn?" Twilight mouthed, her eyes widened in surprise. There were more than just her and the other princesses? She paused for a moment to contemplate what that meant, but her heightened pulse reminded her that this mysterious alicorn had entered on his terms, not hers. "What are you doing in here?"

"Again, I apologize. I could not risk detection by lingering on the doorstep of a castle such as this for long," he explained.

"Detection?" Twilight asked in confusion. "Detection from what? It took me all of ten seconds to answer the door! Why are you even here?"

The black alicorn sighed, his breath shifting his hair, revealing a long scar running up the left side of his face. "I wish I could explain everything to you, truly. But, suffice it to say, destiny has brought me here to you."

Twilight raised her eyebrow. "Destiny?"

"Destiny," he repeated.

"You shouldn't have sang that song!" Spike cried from his desk.

"Ugh!" Twilight groaned. "Listen, mister... who are you again?"

"Who I am is not important," he stated. "The more pressing question is, who are you?"

Twilight raised her other eyebrow at him, the stallion's face remaining blank and emotionless. "You come into a castle of all places under the direction of your so-called-destiny, and you ask who I am?"

The stallion blinked. "I know who you are."

The pitch in Twilight's voice rose. "Then why did you just ask-"

"I can read your thoughts," he explained calmly, seemingly unaware that he had interrupted Twilight's question.

"Really..." Twilight said with more than hint of skepticism. Throughout her years of studying magic, the notion of mind-reading was pursued by many various interested parties, and claims of it's existence were always shown to be elaborate readings by con-men, or faked. "So, what am I-"

"You're thinking that 'there's no way he can read my mind'," he answered preemptively.

Twilight uttered a tiny gasp, genuinely surprised that he had guessed, more or less, precisely what she was thinking.

"You're thinking that 'how did he know that?' Now, 'Can he actually read my thoughts?' 'Oh no, think of something else-"

"Okay, okay! So say you can read minds," she conceded reluctantly. "You still haven't answered who you are, or why you're here!"

"My name is Reveille," he sighed. Twilight could swear she could hear a distant horn sounding once he said his name, like one she'd hear in a parade. "I don't blame you for asking so many questions. It can be difficult to know who to trust in times like these. I trusted somepony once..."

The purple alicorn coughed quietly. "Well, before we get off track, I'd still like to know-"

"Many years ago, in a mining village far away from here, the pony that I consider my mother found me," Reveille continued, interrupting Twilight's question. "I was not born to her, for she was a simple earth pony earning a living just as best as she could. But the odds were never in her favor, for she was born with an unlucky streak as long as Equestria itself. Even her name was fitting for how she coped with such misfortune and sadness."

******

"Despair!"

An earth pony mare with a grey coat and silver mane looked up at the sound of her name being called. Standing before her was a young stallion wearing a rather dapper black suit.

"Yes, sir?" Despair answered shakily.

"Throw away that garbage and strap up," her boss told her. "Another meteorite landed down south of our campsite on Monday, and we need somepony to go and see if there's any evidence of valuable ore we can mine from it. Seeing as it's the weekend shift, and you got selected to work it again solo, you'll have to take this one, okay?"

"Yes, of course, sir. May I ask a question, though?"

"The paycheck's in the mail," he answered.

"Oh good," Despair acknowledged with a nod. "I'm still waiting on the last three. But, actually I wanted to ask... if it landed on Monday, why are we just getting to it now, on Friday, and at the tail end of my shift?"

The boss mumbled under his breath, rubbing his forehead with one of his hooves. "...always has to be difficult... it's a matter of economics," he informed her matter-of-factly. "The last guy we sent on asteroid detail died of radiation sickness, and we had to pay his family a metric ton for his life insurance policy. You don't have one, so the balance between risk and reward leans more to reward. For us. Not you."

"Well, I'm trying to afford one, but I just don't quite have enough money," she explained.

"And whose fault is that?" Her boss tightened his tie almost menacingly.

"Um..." the crestfallen pony lowered her head, picking up her hardhat and flashlight. "I guess I'd better get going then."

"You'd better. I don't want to have to not dock your pay again," the stallion turned away and began walking to his carriage. "Oh, A few minutes before his heart failed, that other meteorite detail guy said that explosives were effective on opening it. Take some with you, but be careful with them - losing explosives to an employee would be a great loss. And get rid of that trash!"

The sound of her boss' command addressing her directly startled the mare, and she fumbled to grab her hardhat while it bounced across the ground with each grope of her hooves.

"Will do, sir!" Despair offered a salute, unwittingly striking her forehead with her hardhat in the process. After a quick massage, she placed the yellow cap on her head, gathered up her sizable pile of losing scratch-and-match game cards to throw out, and went on her merry way.

Cart full of dynamite trailing behind her, Despair approached the meteorite site. She was a little winded after ten miles, but she managed to make it while the sun was just barely above the horizon, and the axle on the cart only came undone twice.

As she approached the crater that the chunk of space rock had created, she stopped to gaze up to the purple sky above as she unhitched the explosives.

"Every night, I look up to the night sky. At all of the stars, the distant suns, and the moon," she said aloud to herself. "Every night, I spend wishes upon them, hoping that my fortunes may be reversed someday, and that I can finally experience true happiness like everypony else."

Despair hopped down in the darkened crater, and turned the flashlight on her mining helmet on.

"And the night sky replies with an irradiated chunk of rock that is probably going to kill me," she sighed, slowly clambering down the slope. Suddenly, she heard a soft cry from further down the hole. Despair quickened her pace, and then found the source.

At the very center of the pit was a meteorite. Or rather, half of a meteorite. The white rock seemed to have been hollow, for the remainder of its 'shell' formed a small basin of sorts. Or more appropriately, as Despair soon discovered, a cradle.

A tiny foal lay within, fur as black as the sky that had fallen, and his mane the color of dark crimson. Upon his forehead was a small horn, and on its side were a pair of little, feathered wings. He stirred and emitted a soft wail, his tiny limbs flailing about in search of something to hold on to. A few seconds later, it found the calloused but loving hoof of Despair. The sensation unfamiliar, the foal's eyes blinked open, and looked into the face of his new mother. Despair lifted him up, whispering her words of thanks to the stars, sun, and moon for finally answering her pleas.

Author's Notes:

Poet Elliot had it all wrong