The five foals were all at a table in the train station sweet shoppe. the pink-maned colt on one side of the round table, picking away shyly at his ice cream, the four girls more or less on the other.

Spike was at the counter, nursing a tall glass of ginger pop and watching the goings on at their table. It had been an interesting detente, at first; all four of the fillies trying to sit right next to Breezy Shy at the same time (and prevent any of the others from doing so) while he studiously labored to sit as far away from any of them as possible. For a minute it looked like a serious scuffle might break out but when the ice cream had arrived, they'd all taken their seats. By some unspoken consensus they'd all ended up in their current arrangement, the colt on one side, the fillies on the other, giggling and favoring him with looks as gooey as the sundaes melting in front of them.

"So.... do you come here often?" Applebloom said. She thought over what she said. "To. Um... the ground. I mean. Away from Cloudsdale..." She resisted the urge to facehoof.

"Oh. Um. Not usually," Bishi said, his voice barely above a whisper. "We're thinking of moving to Misty Mountain. It's high enough that the mountain pokes through the clouds, so Mom could plant her flowers on real ground."

"What sorta flowers does your mom plant?" Babs asked.

"Oh, all kinds," Bishi said, smiling. Babs felt her knees turn to water.(1) "She especially likes growing ones from Everfree Forest. It's where she got Snapdragon."

"Snapdragon?" The girls asked in unison.

"Say, Ma'am, that there's an interesting flower you got there," Applejack said. She poked a hoof at the potted plant in Rose Petal's saddlebag. "I ain't never seen one quite like--- Yyeeowch!" She yanked her hoof back as the exotic bloom suddenly growled, sprouted teeth and snapped at her.

"Snapdragon! For shame, snapping at one of the princesses!" Rose Petal scolded. "For shame!" The fanged bloom looked decidedly unrepentant. It growled and crouched down in its terracotta pot. "I'm sorry, Princess Applejack; he must be feeling temperamental from the long trip...."

"Ah'll keep that in mind," the farmpony said, backing away wide-eyed.

"Oh that reminds me, sweetie," Rose Petal said to her daughter. "We had an eensy bit of trouble with Angel. While my back was turned he went and chewed on Audrey..."

"Oh dear!" Fluttershy covered her mouth with her hooves.

"Oh it's all right. We got Audrey to spit him right back out," Rose Petal said with a cheery smile. "So no harm done."

"...I'm just glad she replants them in the Everfree when they get too big," Bishi said.

"Remind me to never go on a walk through your garden," Scootaloo said.

"So how excited are you to have your sister become an alicorn princess?" Sweetiebelle squeaked, crinkling her nose at Bishi. "I'm so excited I think I could burst!"

"Yes," Bishi said. "It's... nice."

The girls stared at him. "He's Fluttershy's baby brother all right," Applebloom said. " 'Nice?'"

"D-don't get me wrong," Bishi said hastily. "It's awesome that Fluttershy's an alicorn and a princess. It's just that... I..." he looked down and sighed.

"I'm scared of how things will change.

"We don't see each other often as it is," he said. "Now that she's a princess, she'll be living in Canterlot all the time. And she'll be busy with princess stuff."

"Yeah," Applebloom said. It suddenly dawned on her that Applejack was in the same boat. She'd be... she'd be leaving. She wouldn't be living at the farm any more.  Oh, Granny and Big Mac had said she'd be back at the farm all the time, as much as possible-- but how much often could that really be?

Sweetie's smile was fading away too. What would happen to the Carousel Boutique? And who would Sweetiebelle stay with when her parents went on their many business trips? Would Rarity forget all about her?

"Hey, c'mon, all youse mopey ponies," Babs said suddenly. "It's not like they're gonna be a jillion miles away or nuttin.' They'll be right in Canterlot, just a train ride away, right? And they're all magical now! They could just teleport from the castle right to your livin' rooms whenever they want!" She reached across the table and thumped Breezy Shy in the shoulder. "Hey, I bet Fluttershy'll visit youse all the time now. Just 'poof', and she'll go from Canterlot ta Cloudsdale!"

The others brightened a bit at this. "That's right," Sweetiebelle said. "They can visit us in a blink of an eye now."

"But what if ponies won't let them?" Applebloom fretted.

Scootaloo snorted. "They're princesses now. They can pretty much do whatever they want!"

"If they still want to," Bishi said quietly. His dewy blue eyes filled with worry. "What if being an alicorn changes them? I mean... with all that magic and immortality and stuff they could start getting all weird--"

At that moment Twilight Sparkle burst into the ice cream shop. She was ranting and hooting and gabbling in what sounded like demented Zebrican, eyes and nose gushing, smoke pouring out of her mouth and ears. She ran to the counter, dancing a mad tarantella, and threw down a hoof full of bits. " Gimme I'cree, hot hot hot HOT HOT--'nilla! Nilla I'cree!"

The pony behind the counter shrank back, holding up his icecream scoop defensively. "Wha wha, hu how much? A cone? Two scoops?"

"ALL OB ID!" Twilight screamed, pointing a hoof at the tub behind the counter. The soda jerk jumped and scrambled to hoof over the freshly opened bucket. As soon as it was up on the counter, Twilight grabbed it. She rammed her entire head in, mouth wide open. Steam rolled up; she sagged in relief, the only signs of life the occasional "blurp" as she gulped her way to the bottom.

The foals stared silently at the spectacle. "Well," Sweetiebelle said finally, "She seems about the same..."

After a minute or so Twilight surfaced for air. "Aaahhhhhh. Ahem. Towel, please?"  The soda jerk quietly handed her a clean damp bar towel and carefully backed away. "For future reference," she announced to all present, her voice muffled by the towel as she mopped off her face, "Don't eat any of Mother Pie's special recipe cupcakes."

"Tabasco frosting, right?" Applebloom said. "Pinkie entered them in the bake-off once."

Twilight stared, but refrained from commenting. "Say, why all the long faces?" she asked, dropping the towel on the counter.

Spike butted in. "They're kind of worried that you girls are gonna change and drift away, now that you're alicorns," he said. The foals glared at him. "What? I'm sitting five feet away. I'm supposed to go deaf now?"

"Oh, kids," Twilight said kindly, "ponies change all the time. It's called growing up. But that doesn't mean they're not the same pony. Rarity and Fluttershy and Applejack and yes, Rainbow Dash--" this was directed at Scootaloo-- "will always love you and be there for you."

"Even when you're all busy with Princess stuff?" Applebloom said doubtfully. She came from a family of hard workers, and her sister was the picture of a workaholic; she knew darn well that Applejack could forget everything else in the world once she got set into something that needed doing. And princesses always had something that needed doing.

"Even then," Twilight reassured. At the same time though, the thought tickled at the back of her mind. She was reminded that to the foals, this ascendance didn't mean a grand adventure. It meant that their big sisters-- and big sister stand in, in the case of Rainbow Dash-- were going away. Maybe for years, on this quest. Promises of frequent visits and letters were a sorry bandage for that.

The gears and wheels in Twilight's mind began to turn. Maybe she had an idea to help with that...

It was the evening after the coronation. The Coronation Gala (2) was underway, and every noblepony in Equestria was in attendance. The new princesses were circulating amongst the dukes, duchesses, counts and barons and lords and ladies, making everypony's acquaintance(3) and subjecting themselves to more social stress than most of them had experienced in their entire lives before. To be fair, some of them were experiencing less stress than others. Twilight Sparkle was in a private discussion with Princess Celestia, Luna and a certain other individual, Applejack and Rainbow Dash didn't give two toots what the fancy-pants ponies thought of them.

Rarity, of course, was having the time of her life.

"Why hello, Darlings!"  she said, swanning her way to a sizeable clique of fussily dressed ponies on the ballroom floor. "Are you all having fun?"

There was no mistaking her real reason for singling out that particular group; Prince Blueblood was there in the midst of them. She had spotted his blow-dried mane from across the room and had zeroed in. His expression when he'd seen her heading his way had been priceless; it was what one might see on the face of a shipwrecked sailor when he looks up and sees fins slicing the water. "Ahh, Prince Blueblood, how nice to see you again!"

Blueblood looked as if he was strangling on his cravat. "To what do we owe your charming presence...." he choked a moment. "...Princess Rarity?"

"Oh well, I'm just going about, meeting and greeting and getting to know everyone," she said casually. She flicked her fan about casually in her magic. "Though it is nice to see a familiar face in the crowd, isn't it, Blueblood dear." She crinkled her nose at him.

"You know Prince Blueblood?" One of the other dissipated young nobles standing with him said. "Er. That is to say, from... before?"

"Before my ascension," Rarity finished for him. "Oh, of course! Why he was my escort for the Grand Galloping Gala, weren't you dear?" The last time Blueblood had seen a smile like that, he'd been at the Canterlot aquarium and it had come with a fin over top of it. "Oh, that does make quite the story to tell..."

"Oh well, you know, old times gone by and all that," Blueblood said, laughing nervously, his eyes pleading. "I must say it was quite the honor to attend the coronation.."

"You attended? How nice," Rarity said. She knew quite well that he'd attended; she even knew the exact moment he'd seen and recognized her. When she'd passed his seat on her walk down the aisle he'd made a sound like someone stepping on a baby seal. "Why the other girls will be delighted to know you were there. Especially Applejack, I'm sure."

"Applejack...?" Blueblood said carefully. He sounded like he was trying to speak a foreign language.

"Surely you remember her." Rarity paused, for just a half a heartbeat. Her smile never faltered. "You spit her food on the floor and told her it was 'common carnival fare.' "

"IIiiieee..."

"You do recall. It was shortly after you used my cloak to mop a spill on the floor, and just before the cake--" She tsked. "Oh dear, memories do tend to slip. I'm sure Princess Applejack can refresh your memory. Ah there she is!" She started to wave a hoof.

"Oh my is that Duke Wellington?" Blueblood exclaimed in a terrified falsetto. "Oh do excuse me everyone I fear I have some important business involving boots to discuss if you will please excuse me..." He didn't so much hurry away as frantically scuttle, his hooves skidding on the tile floor in his haste to be quit of this particular fresh slice of hell.(4)

"What a shame," Rarity sighed, watching him go. "That's the life of a prince, one supposes-- busy busy busy." She gave a sidelong glance to the rest of Blueblood's erstwhile circle, taking quiet note of the ones who looked embarrassed, aghast at the slaughter they'd just witnessed, or who were suppressing smirks of malevolent glee. "Oh do lighten up, everypony," she teased in a lowered voice, fetching a drink from a passing waiter and knocking it back in one go. "I'll let him off the hook eventually... but I wouldn't be pony if I didn't tweak him just a little." The others chuckled and the tension lowered a bit. "Now, do please introduce yourselves, I do want to get to know you all..."

Twilight ducked back out onto the balcony, letting the french door swing shut behind her. "Well, Rarity seems to be having fun," she said.

Celestia chuckled. "Well, I'm glad to hear that, at least," she said. "Now, what precisely did you pull us out here to discuss?"

"Indeed," said Discord irritably. "I'm missing out on the canape's."

Twilight regarded the draconequus thoughtfully. It was strange, after all that happened, how comfortable she felt around the chaos entity. Maybe it was just time and experience. Maybe it was Fluttershy's influence, and Discord's sincere, if somewhat fitful, desire to reform.

Maybe it was the heavy rune-engraved iron collar clamped around his neck that diminished his power to a mere trickle, and which could turn him back to stone in an instant if he broke his parole.(5)

"Oh cease thy prattle, Discord," Luna said. "Thou didst consume seven hors d'oeuvre trays alone already."

"So?"

"So thou left the treats and ate the trays!"

"Exactly. Sterling silver, absolutely not filling..."

Celestia shook her head. "Anyway, Twilight; you were saying?"

Twilight bit her lip and took a deep breath. She searched for the words to start. "I want you to know-- I agree with 'The Plan,' " she said, making quote marks in the air with her hooves. "We need to find the alicorns. We need to find the cure. I just want to make sure that this... that this expedition is one hundred percent necessary."

Celestia regarded her pupil. "How do you mean?" She asked carefully. She wasn't sure if she wanted to know; her former student had developed a disconcerting habit of dropping metaphorical bombs at her feet.

Twilight paced back and forth. "I mean, have we already exhausted all other options?" she said. "The... what did you call the Senescence Cure, Princess?"

"We threw around a few names--" Celestia said.

"I wanted to call it 'Bob,' " Discord interjected.

"--But we decided on calling it the Panacea," Celestia said, rolling her eyes in annoyance at Discord.

"Whaaaat? Bob is a perfectly decent name..."

"The Panacea. Do we absolutely have to have the power of alicorns, of an alicorn race, to create it? I mean, we have unicorn magic, pegasus magic, earth pony magic, dragon magic, zebra magic, we have the elements of Harmony, the phoenixes, the wild magic of the Everfree-- surely there's some magical plant or other in there-- " She waved her hoof at Discord. "We have a draconequus, for pony's sakes, a creature who can alter reality at a whim.... "

"Believe me, Twilight, we researched all those avenues," Celestia said. "Many held promise. The phoenixes in particular. Poor Philomena; I think I plucked more feathers out of her tail for experimental potions than I can count. And I think Luna and I both picked at least three of every plant in the Everfree..."

"Tis not a matter of sheer power, Twilight," Luna explained. "But a matter of mindpower. Hooves to share the workload, minds to pursue all the possible avenues of discovery." She sighed. "We have mortal ponies scattered all over the world, doing their own research. But their lifespans are so brief-- they barely have time to learn anything before another need be found to carry on their work. This is work for those who have more than a few years, and more magic than a single unicorn can muster. And we are too few in number to do all the work..."

"And too few to make up a proper study sample, for anypony trying to figure out alicorn immortality," Twilight said. "I know. But..." she shot an accusing glare at Discord. "Well, what about him? Can't he just--- snap his fingers and make a potion or a fountain of youth or something?"

Discord snorted. "Just because Chaos magic seems to have no rules, doesn't mean it has no limits," he said disdainfully. He tapped the restraining collar around his neck. "Case in point.

"Among other things, it's Chaos magic. Which means it's unpredictable. Sure, I can get the general result I want, but Chaos magic always does its own thing, to some degree. Remember the soup tureen?"

"Yes, I remember the soup tureen," Twilight said dryly. At their first informal "friendly dinner" with the reformed Draconequus, he had animated the tableware to serve the meal. She vividly recalled the sensation of soup being sprayed up her nose by an irate ceramic fish. To this day Discord insisted the soup tureen had assaulted her with soup of its own accord.

"Well there you go. I could try to whip up a fountain of youth, or a potion of youth, or a magic live-forever fruit, or what have you. For that matter, I have... I've been a good little boy and been helping Tia and Lulu out in the lab. But the results..." for a moment the draconequus looked disappointed and disgusted.

Celestia nodded. "Sometimes it made the person who took it age backwards... younger and younger, till they were infants. Other times they were trapped in time, living in super slow motion. Or they'd turn into a bristlecone pine. Or  it wore off in mere minutes. Or it would backfire sometimes, aging them decades...and those were the pleasant results." She shuddered. "We spent more time undoing the effects than actually doing anything."

"And his particular magical knowledge, while vast, isn't really useful in our research," Luna said. "'Tis just... too different."

"Yes. You see--" Discord was suddenly wearing a painters smock and fedora and holding a brush and painters' mortarboard "--- Chaos magic is more of an art than a science..."  he proceeded to paint one of the statues on the balcony in polka dots and checkerboards. "In fact it seems to get irritable if you try to get all science-y with it." He said the last in a flat voice as he regarded his work. "Bleh. I wanted stripes."

"Hard to do lab work when you try to add two and two and keep getting 'potato,' " Celestia admitted.

"I thought so. I just had to ask, to be sure." Twilight lowered her head. She was startled by the feel of Discord's paw resting on her withers. She looked up at him in surprise. "Believe me, Twilight Sparkle," he said, his voice unnaturally solemn. "If I could just snap my fingers and change this, I would. It's not the kind of thing that chaos magic can do."

Is he really sincere? she thought in astonishment.

Celestia's voice filled her mind. Yes, he is, Twilight, she said. Fluttershy's friendship with him, as trite and insincere as it may have seemed, has affected him deeply. Why do you imagine he was so petty and carelessly cruel? For tens of thousands of years, before Luna and I were even born, he has remained utterly alone and friendless, because he knew that any friendship he had with a mortal creature would be gone in a blink of his eye. For a moment Celestia looked pitying. Fluttershy's friendship only had to be the slightest bit sincere to pierce his armor and break his heart. Love can be a terrible and frightening thing, even in the weakest of doses.

Twilight was profoundly moved.

Be that as it may, you had more you wished to discuss with us I believe? Celestia said with a twinkle in her eye. I think Discord is getting impatient.

"I'm right here you know," he said, annoyed.

"Sorry. And moving on to my next question. Or problem. Whatever."

"Which is?" Celestia asked.

"I'm not sure I like splitting up the Elements of Harmony," Twilight said. She started to pace again. "In fact, I don't like it at all. That handicaps Equestria's single greatest defense. And I know we're all alicorns now but... only two of us have any training with magic, and it's going to take years to get the others up to par on their elementary magic. Much less teaching them how to find emergent or nascent alicorns... which brings up another thing..."

"Is she always this..." Discord's face screwed up in distaste. "Analytical?"

"She and her friends defeated you, you tell me," Celestia said, amused.

"To retrieve your missing elements just make sense of this change of events. Twists and turns are my master plan. Then find the elements back where you began." Discord vanished in a puff of fuschia scented smoke.

The elements gathered in a huddle. "Okay, that first part about twists and turns..." Rainbow Dash said. "It's gotta be that big hedge maze I saw outside--"

Twilight groaned. "No Dash, it's not the hedge maze," she said, her eyebrows in a level line.

"Well how do you know--" Dash began belligerently.

"Because it's a riddle and that's the first thing that comes to mind. Trust me, I know riddles, I've read every bit of riddle folklore in the library and It's NEVER the first thing that comes to mind," Twilight said. "Riddles are always about what you DON'T expect. The most important part of a riddle, nine times out of ten, is the last part, because it puts a twist on the end that changes the meaning of the the rest. Hedge mazes don't end 'back where you began'--- they end in the middle. Regular mazes start on one end and finish on the other. So it's not a maze... besides, he said it's where WE all began."

Applejack ruminated on this. "She's right," she said. "So... where did we begin?"

"I stood waiting in that stupid maze for nearly an hour," Discord grumbled. " While they teleported back to that library and dug out that book. Turned around and there they were, all decked out in their elements..."

"We know," Luna said smugly. "We saw the expression on thy petrified face. It was priceless."

"In other words, yes, she's always like this," Discord said dryly.

"Well, yes. She got a lot more assertive about that sort of thing after the, ah, Crystal Empire incident," Celestia temporized. "that was nothing compared to the shakeup from this year's Winter Wrap-Up..."

"But snow melts."

"Ayeah?" Applejack said suspiciously.

"Look, This has been bugging me ever since the FIRST Winter Wrap up. I didn't say anything but..." Twilight shook her head and went on."Okay, look, I can buy having to wake up all the hibernating animals and guiding the birds back; around here they're all practically Fluttershy's pets anyway. I can buy building nests for the birds even though they can make their own, because hey, birdhouses, right?  I can even buy shoveling snow off the rooftops-- that's something everypony should do regularly in winter anyway if it gets too deep. I can buy plowing the streets. But shoveling snow off the FIELDS? That's ridiculous!"

"Why?"

"Because SNOW MELTS!"

Applejack cocked an eyebrow. "So what's yer point, Twi?"

"My point? Would you just---" Twilight facehooved, and started over. "Applejack. What do you do with the snow that you plow off the fields?"

"Well, we just pile it up in big heaps over yonder--"

"And what happens to it?"

Applejack shot her a sarcastic look. "It melts, Twilight. I get that."

"When the Pegasi move the clouds and let the stronger sunshine through," Twilight added. Applejack nodded. "Which it would do anyway if you just left it there! In fact it would melt faster if you left laid out on the fields than if you heap it in big piles!"

"But we need t' get down to the soil and plant new grass and flowers!"

"Only because you scrape them off every time you run those plows over them! Leave the snow be, let it melt, and it'll water the grass and flowers and all the seeds they dropped last year. And plants might grow a little better if you weren't scraping all the topsoil off, too! And look at this--" the exasperated unicorn started digging through the bags of seeds Caramel had brought. "TREE seeds? Maybe you didn't notice but those are kind of PERENNIAL...."

"But Twilight, if we don't get rid of the snow, the meltoff will make the river flood and flood out all the poor little forest animals--"

"BUT THE SNOW MELTS ANYWAY, NO MATTER WHERE YOU PILE IT, Fluttershy! It all ends up in the river anyway! ARGH!" Twilight waved her hooves in the air in frustration. "What idiot pony came UP with this Winter Wrapup program??"

"Hey now, don't y'all be talkin' like that about ol' Sandwich..." Applejack said, her voice lowering dangerously.

"Sandwich??" Twilight asked.

"Soup Sandwich, the first mayor of Ponyville," Applejack  said. "You seen his statue in the town square."

Twilight paused. "The one wearing pants."

"Ayep."

"On his head."

There was a brief pause as Applejack, for the first time, reflected on the advisability of trusting the wisdom of a pony who routinely wore his trousers for a hat. "...Um... ayep."

Twilight gave her a thousand yard stare. "I'm starting to see which way this is going..."

"And then there was that little thing last fall..." Celestia ruminated idly.

"Now, my little ponies, competition is all well and good. But due to your rivalry-- and cheating-- the Running of the Leaves still needs to be redone--"

"Uh, Princess?"

"...Yes, Twilight?"

"We have how many ponies competing in the Running of the Leaves?"

"...Um..."

"And you're saying that just two ponies squabbling and doing a bad job was enough to keep the leaves from falling when a couple hundred other ponies were running as well?"

"Twilight--"

"And these ponies are all doing a worse job than gravity? You know, it could just be the leaves aren't READY to fall...."

"...Twilight," Celestia said with a strained smile, "you're kind of buggering up my lesson on Friendship..."

"And half of them are pegasi! Call me obtuse but wouldn't more leaves come down if the pegasi were airborne and generating, I dunno, some sort of WIND....?"

"Snowflakes."

"Yeah!"

"By hoof."

"Ah, yeah...?"

"One at a time."

"Umm... yeah? Whatcher point, egghead?"

"Rainbow Dash, do you know how many snowflakes are in a single cubic foot of snow...? Call it a hunch but I think the way water freezes into crystals on the way down has more to do with it..."