The End
I.
The years had been good to Princess Twilight Sparkle. She had become distinguished not only within her own borders as the princess of friendship, but also as the arm of Equestria reaching out into other lands. In the course of her nearly fifty-year reign, she had gained immense acclaim as a diplomat, and traveled many thousands of miles to faraway lands with exotic creatures, languages, and cultures. Always eager to learn and adapt to those around her, she threw herself into studying these new languages and peoples with an intensity that frightened even Princess Celestia. As a result, she was able to blend into and associate with an incredible diversity of peoples around the world, and was respected and highly regarded by lower classes and elite rulers alike. It was her friendship with Spike, in fact, that helped pave the way for a number of interactions with kingdoms of other species. With Spike by her side, the peoples in other nations and other species saw how genuine a friendship with someone so different could be, and they began to warm up to the possibility of accepting her into their lands and into their hearts. Her life was enriched by the many sincere, genuine friendships that she had thus far made, and she could count as her friends most of the major world leaders.
Her diplomacy didn't only have gains for herself, either. It ended many centuries of silence between kingdoms. No longer did other nations regard Equestria as a country permanently crippled by the violent rebellion of one of its rulers. No longer was it used in schools and governments as a cautionary tale against the dangers of an oligarchical government. Instead, because of Twilight's skills as a diplomat and friend, Equestria became known as a haven of life and light, and other kings and queens sought advice from the princesses of the land on everything from matters of state to issues in their personal lives.
In short, her life had contained innumerable riches, and she looked back on her time thus far with deep gratitude and satisfaction.
Through all of these accolades, though, the greatest gift that she had been given in her long and fulfilling life was by far her five friends, the mares who stayed by her side through thick and thin. Throughout the decades, her friends stayed by her side as much as possible, even traveling to distant lands with her when they could afford to spend that much time away from home. Because of her friends, Twilight continued to learn about the nature of friendship, and continued to cultivate that gift across the world with grace and dignity.
When they were younger, there had been many dangerous foes to overcome in Equestria, and they had united together in the powerful magic of friendship to defeat these foes and preserve friendship in the land. Together they fought hate with love, they fought division with unity, and they fought enmity with friendship. As her influence spread to other kingdoms, she and her friends traveled to these lands to fight similar fights. The challenges and rewards of friendship know no national boundaries, and it seemed that the need for a group of ponies united by the magic of friendship was by no means limited only to ponykind. The six ponies bravely faced every challenge that the world threw at them with their laughter, kindness, generosity, honesty, and loyalty, united into one by Twilight's magic.
As the years passed by, peace reigned in Equestria. The need for overt heroism lessened. More than these heroic exploits, Twilight especially savored the quiet moments they shared together. In the garden with Fluttershy, laughing at the antics of the woodland creatures. Admiring a new creation from Rarity's dress shop. At one of Pinkie's innumerable parties, one where everything goes absolutely wrong, and laughing helplessly with Pinkie at the sheer bad luck of it all. A cool, misty morning on the orchard with Applejack. Settling on a cloud with Rainbow Dash, relaxing in the sun and just talking. Those moments in the sphere of rainbows that characterize an outpouring of this magic of friendship against a foe—those were always mere outgrowths of the quiet, undramatic moments of friendship between the six ponies. Great deeds are never accomplished without great preparation, and in friendship, that preparation is in these mostly-overlooked times of quietly sharing one another's company.
One of the greatest challenges facing their friendship was age. As an alicorn princess, Twilight did not age—or, if she did, she aged so slowly as to be imperceptible. For example, nopony knew how old Princess Celestia was, but it was well over a thousand years. Twilight looked the same now as she had fifty years ago, and Spike had grown somewhat but remained still very much a baby. He and Twilight carefully monitored his intake and possessions, making sure that his dragon greed never caused him to become a monster. But although Twilight and Spike remained largely unchanged physically, their friends, it was sad to say, did not.
Fluttershy had aged, as she did everything else, with grace and quiet dignity. Her already-light pink mane had faded but not grayed, so that it was now a barely-perceptible halo around her delicate features. Her cottage had long since crumbled due to age and extensive animal habitation, but she now lived in a cozy bear's cave out on the edge of town, and slept snuggled with the cubs and other woodland creatures in the rocking chair every night. The cave had become the center of woodland life, as the entire forest gathered there around their aging matriarch, who settled quietly into her cushions and her cup of tea and tended to their various ills and hurts with the instinct and care of one who had dedicated her life to this task. With age had come a secret courage, and the once-shy pony who was afraid to so much as say her name was now no less quiet, but she was immeasurably less afraid. Her quietness was now a choice, hidden behind a small, wise smile, rather than something forced upon her by shame and fear and hidden behind a downward glance and a retreat behind her curtain of a mane.
The other pegasus pony of the group, Rainbow Dash, had the opposite reaction to her age. Always a highly athletic and active pony, Rainbow was dealt an especially hard blow, and suffered from a long, protracted battle with arthritis of the wing joints. For years one of the premier fliers in Equestria, and still the record holder for longest-standing captain of the Wonderbolts, Rainbow had taken it very hard when the pain all but grounded her for life. Flying was a constant struggle, and the skill that had once defined her had now become her undoing. Having built an identity and a career around her flying, it pained and confused her to be grounded. She was still a highly sought after writer for magazines, journals, and books on flying, and she still did some coaching in the area, but no amount of flying hobbies and duties could replace the thing itself, the sensation of soaring through the clouds with exhilarating speed, diving and swooping in the crisp air. Her still-bright mane now framed a pony made old not by age, but by circumstance, laid low by the harsh hand of chronic illness. Her sole comfort now came in the company of her friends, standing always ready with a kind word and an encouragement for her.
Although the ailments of age now prevented her from being the workhorse of Sweet Apple Acres she once was, Applejack was content in her advanced years. The farm swarmed with children, grandchildren, and two little great-grandchildren, who she bounced on her knee and cooed to while their parents were working the farm during the day. She'd met her husband, Joe, on one of Twilight's trips to Canterlot, where they would always stop for breakfast at Joe's donut shop. After years of long-distance courtship, Joe finally agreed to move his shop to Ponyville, where they were married. He passed away three and a half years ago, but his children and grandchildren continue to carry on his legacy and keep secret his recipes at his donut shop, just as they continue to work the orchard at Sweet Apple Acres. Applejack looked at his broadly smiling face in their family photo, hanging above the mantle, and sighed deeply and contentedly. She was, as Granny Smith had been before her, the mothering center of the Apple clan, and she owed everything to her family around her, both living and dead.
Rarity had always dreamed of moving to places where the great centers of fashion were—Canterlot or Manehatten or Filliedelphia. However, when her friends kept her in Ponyville at the Carousel Boutique, she found to her surprise that, after a few years, instead of moving her shop to the centers of fashion, the centers of fashion moved to her shop, and the Carousel Boutique became a hub of fashion in Equestria. Her mane had turned gray quite early, and although she dyed it for some time, she eventually let it shine its natural colors. Her stunning and carefully groomed gray-white mane became a trademark, and she bore it with grace and not a little vanity. Carousel Boutique became an Equestria-wide chain, with every dress a current or former Rarity original, and the little shop in Ponyville was the source of it all. At first, she had become quite swept away by pride at the awestruck gazes of fashionistas and elite ponies from across Equestria, but her friends and age combined to bring her back down to earth. She eventually converted the Carousel Boutique into a purely charitable organization, with all profits going to clothing poor and underprivileged ponies around the world. With the help of her friends, she learned to bear this success with the humility that she had lacked in her younger days, and to let loose her natural generosity more freely, without expecting reward in the form of pride or personal satisfaction. As she sewed dresses and reflected on her life, she smiled in contentment most at the good she selflessly gave to the world, rather than the good feelings she gained from it.
Pinkie Pie was, not surprisingly, still Pinkie Pie. Of course she had aged, and her face was lined with laughter lines born of a lifetime of joy. Many years before she was in a terrible carriage accident, which left her wheelchair-bound for life. This did absolutely nothing to diminish Pinkie in any way, and if anything, simply gave her another prop with which to entertain her friends and admirers. She wheeled around town, pulling a series of ever more elaborate, physics-defying tricks to display her undiminished enthusiasm for life. Upon hearing the news from the doctor that she would walk no more, she immediately had a confetti gun installed on the wheelchair, and this she sprayed liberally at all Ponyville residents on their birthdays, or whenever she felt like cheering somepony up, or for inexplicable reasons known only to Pinkie. Ponies walked around on their birthdays with a smiling anticipation, waiting for Pinkie to inevitably spring out from around the corner and, with a bang, shower them with confetti and a loud "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" Though she had physically changed more than any of the other ponies, Pinkie remained the most unchanged of them all.
Through all of the triumphs and tragedies, joys and sorrows in each of these ponies' lives, the friendship of the six ponies never wavered. It was friendship which pulled each of them out of their darkest moments, and which continually guided each of them in the true way of goodness, virtue, and happiness. Though the six ponies had used the magic of friendship to defeat monsters and save the world, in the end, the magic of friendship is not naturally a weapon against an enemy, but a bond that enriches and uplifts everyone involved in it.