That what happened in the night of the storm.

“Aunt Regala…” Twinkle Star whispered. There was something different now. It was like her aunt had become 20 years younger. Her eyes weren’t dark anymore, her skin was smooth… Regala was staring at the river now. It was still flowing quietly, reflecting the light of the morning sun. “Yes, Twinkle Star, this too is what our powers do. Do you really believe I was drunk? Oh, in the beginning it did. But the powers didn’t allow it. They didn’t want me to be like that. So the alcohol had no effect on me in the end. I wanted it to; I wanted to escape… run away. So I pretended. I gave myself a role as the annoying drunk lady… but of course it didn’t work for me. I kept drinking, but even if the alcohol had worked, in the end there is no escape from what you really feel, who you really are…” Twinkle Star couldn’t believe what she was hearing. This was her aunt Regala alright. The soft voice was back, and even though the pendant was black, it was reflecting the light of the sun as well… not everything was lost. “Why did you come for me, Twinkle Star? Who told you where I was?” Twinkle Star walked towards Regala and decided to sit down next to her. “Fiume did. Well… someone I know… someone I care about told me he met you. I decided to go looking for you. Because… I had to find something.” “Find what? I don’t think there is something I have that is yours.” “I don’t know what I want to find. My destiny, I suppose.” Regala laughed. “Your destiny? Don’t you think that is something we all have lost since that day. There is no such thing for us anymore. We’re just lost… a shadow of the past.” Twinkle Star looked at her aunt. “Do you really think so? Do you really think there is no future for us anymore?” “Twinkle Star… it is all lost, isn’t it. The past is forgotten. Haven’t you noticed? Our world has been forgotten. Most ponies are gone. The power of the Friendship Lands will never be seen again. We have lost it all, and when the last pony who was born there passes away… there will be nobody who remembers left.” Twinkle Star sighed. She had noticed most ponies preferred not to talk about the old Friendship Lands. The younger ones never heard of it. But still… “My mother rebuild the Friendship Lands in the north.” Regala looked up. It was obvious to Twinkle Star that she was surprised. “Regina did?” Twinkle star nodded. She explained her aunt about her mother’s new kingdom, how she had been fighting for it for so long, how her 3 sisters were alive (Regala couldn’t stop laughing when Twinkle star told about Fleur… “She never stops does she?”), about the new castle…  “I see, so Regina build up a new kingdom.. but she is looking at the wrong person to continue it, right? Why isn’t she looking for the real heir to the throne instead of asking you… it’s not something you would be good at, anyway. It’s typically her, making others do as she wants… She send you out on this trip too, right? Wanting to find me.” “No… I ran away.”  Twinkle Star admitted. Regala laughed again. “Well, I supposed that’s typically you.” Twinkle Star sighed. “Maybe it is… but I don’t want to run away anymore! I want to return to my mother, knowing what my destiny is, knowing how I can help her. But I don’t know. I am not getting any closer either. I figured… Fiume told me you would show me, so he lead me to you. But you don’t know anything either.”  “Heh. I never said I did, nor did I said I didn’t. I lost much, Twinkle Star. Not only during the eruption, but after that too… I envy Regina. She is strong… being able to move forward, give others a future, while she had lost so much. I was never able to do it. Maybe… maybe I should tell you what happened to me.” Twinkle Star looked at Regala. Her mane were covering her face now, but winkle Star saw the reflection of a single tear. “Aunt Regala… if you don’t want to tell me that’s fine… It’s your decision…” “No, no, I want to tell you. I have never talked about it with anyone because nobody would understand, nobody knew… You still remember running away with me? With Crystal, and my children… Sonchi, Hitade, and my baby girl Togli? Do you remember them, Twinkle Star?” “Yeah. Yeah, I do. I remember losing all of you, losing you while we were running… I was so scared and alone… what happened? What happened with you and the others?”  Regala was staring in the river. For a while she didn’t say anything, she just sat motionless. Twinkle Star sat just as motionless beside her. The breeze was playing with her hair. “I lost them, that night.” Regala suddenly said. “I hadn’t even noticed you were gone, or Crystal was, but when I looked around me all I saw was smoke and ash. Hitade was still with me, and of course Togli, as she was sleeping in the carrying bag. I couldn’t find Sonchi anywhere… I panicked. I wanted to go back, to find him. Hitade begged me to go with her, to leave, but I couldn’t leave my son behind… but I didn’t want to endanger my girls either. But then I heard Sonchi scream… Hitade immediately left for the location where the scream came from. When I arrived there… Sonchi was falling in a crack in the ground. Hitade couldn’t help him anymore. But the crack spread quickly.” Twinkle Star had noticed it was very hard for Regala to talk about it. She was crying now, tears were rolling down her face… “Hitade… my Hitade… she told me to run, she told me to go… that it was her destiny to save the members of the Royal House… I didn’t want to leave her, I didn’t want her to do that, I wanted her to live! I told her to take Togli and go, but she didn’t want it. Then the crack came… she fell down… but a light appeared, and the crack stopped for a while. Togli began to cry, and I didn’t want to lose another child… so I ran away. I left her! I let my own children die Twinkle Star!” She yelled. Twinkle Star finally realised what was haunting Regala… why she had been acting this way. She saw her own children die before her own eyes… Hitade had sacrificed her life for Regala and Togli! Twinkle Star got tears in her eyes now, too. Hitade… her friend Hitade who was so much like her… how could she be so selfless? Hitade… how could she have been so strong even though she was so small? Twinkle Star felt as if Hitade had known her destiny… to protect the members of the Royal House?

“So I took Togli and I ran for it.” Regala continued, “I ran out of the country. I don’t know how I survived… but I could run until I reached a little town. They took care of me there, and they took care of Togli. But I wanted to move on when I was healthy again. I didn’t want to stay so close to the place where Hitade and Sonchi… So I travelled on and I settled in a place a little bit more south from here. I build a house there and I raised Togli alone. I had to live on, I had to hold on, I couldn’t give up, because of her… Togli was everything to me. She was such a cheerful girl. She loved her life! I didn’t keep the past a secret for her. I have always been true to her, told her when she asked about it, told her about Sonchi and Hitade… he wanted to know them, or know all about them that there was to know. They had a special place for them in her heart. One day she decided they should have a little place in our garden, like a place to remember them… so we took a stone and she carved their names in it, and we put it under our big tree… she helped me so much with that. I had a little place to remember them. She was so sweet, and she loved her friends her life… but the past was still pulling at her. One day she proposed to me to go back to the old lands. I was so shocked when she said that. But she wanted to go. She wanted to see it. She said it would be good for me too, to go back there, to see what had happened to my home…” Twinkle Star couldn’t believe it. All those years Twinkle Star had tried to stay away from the old lands as long as possible, as far as possible… she didn’t  wanted to go back to that place. But Regala had been there? Togli wanted to see it? “I didn’t want to go back at first of course. To think I would see what had happened… It must be so horrible. But I went with Togli in the end. I still didn’t know why I went back exactly. If I did it for Togli, or for me? Anyway, we went. Yes Twinkle Star, we went back to the old lands. The journey was way too short for my liking. We met Fiume on the road. I knew it was Fiume at once, and the way it cleaned my pendant only confirmed it for me. I was so surprised, seeing it was still flowing, this river full of memories…

 I didn’t look forward to going back, but I found out what Togli had said was true. I felt better every day as we drew closer. I was going to be able to close it there. We arrived at an evening in August. It was a nice summer. A beautiful twilight… It was a deserted place, next to the mountains. A desert was there now. No sign of the old forests and meadows that were there too, once. Just sand. The mountains… they were nothing but shadows in the light of the setting sun. Dark shadows of the horrible thing that had happened there. I wanted to wait till the next morning with climbing the mountains, but Togli wanted to go at once. So we went, climbing the mountains… the old passes were all closed of course. Streams of rock were flowing out of them still… a river of rocks it looked. We saw the place where Fiume was born… the highest mountain. Do you remember the Araine Twinkle Star?” Twinkle Star definaltely remembered the Araine, the highest peak of the mountains that were enclosing the kingdom. It was at the western border of the kingdom, so every sunset was blocked by it. It was the only mountain with a snowy top. “Well, Fiume was still Flowing from the Araine. Just going to the other side of the mountain. Anyway, we climbed. It took a long while for us to reach the top, more than a few hours. Clouds had gathered in the sky and by the time we reached the top it was raining pretty hard already. A wind was growing. We couldn’t see much actually. When lightening struck we could see nothing but rocks in the old kingdom… I had forgotten how big it was. It was so deserted… there was nothing left of that what I remembered. The beauty, the purity, the grace, the strength… it was all gone.” This didn’t surprised Twinkle Star too much. What else could have happened? It was all gone anyway…

“We decided to go down as soon as possible, because it wasn’t just a bit of rain this time, it wasn’t just a bit of wind… a storm was there, and it would only grow worse. We wanted to go down to the little cave we had found, so we could shelter and we would go back up the following day. So we climbed down, but the rocks had gotten all slippery from the rain, the wind made it hard for us to go down safely. And when we were halfway… When we were halfway, Togli slipped. I tried to safe her. I tried to hold her, but I couldn’t. She fell. My dear Togli, the only reason I was alive for, she fell… I lost her just like my other two children, Twinkle Star. She fell. I will never forget her scream. Her scream fading in the dark. I went down as soon as I could, slipping, falling…. Trying to find her. But when I got down, I couldn’t find her. She wasn’t there! I looked for her, I looked for her… I don’t know for how long. A few days? A week? A month? But there was nothing. No sign of my little girl. I still don’t know what happened. But in the end, I found myself being caught in a storm again. Fall was coming. Nature was moving on. I figured maybe she had survived. Maybe she had left the place and went to a safer place. So I looked for her one more time before I went back. Hat night, that night of the storm… I went up one last time. And then I saw her, Twinkle Star. The glow in the dark. The pony that wasn’t hurt by the storm. She was just standing there, shining in the wind. It was as if she was glowing herself. A unicorn she was. A white pony, with silver mane. Silver horn. Her body being covered with Silver light. She was just standing there for a while, staring at me. She didn’t get wet from the rain, she didn’t move at all, it was as if she didn’t even had to breath. But then I knew she was a real unicorn. I finally saw it, for the first time in generations, I saw what it was to be a unicorn, I saw what the powers that were given to her long ago were for. Yes, Twinkle Star, you’re right. I see it in your eyes that you know what I am saying, and I don’t doubt what I have seen. I saw her. Yes, Twinkle Star, Stelline is alive.”