Magic and motor coordination poor, thinking fuzzy and short. So many things I know that I should know, but can’t seem to hold. I’m barely articulate about certain topics. So frustrating. Can’t work much like this.

Little to record for a long time now. I appreciate having this journal, but I don’t know if I’ll get much use out of it for a while. I’m in a nebulous holding pattern of boredom and a vague pretense of a child’s naivete until circumstances are more ideal.

Not that there’s nothing to do, but patience for the things I really want is among my greatest challenges right now. Youth really is wasted on those who aren’t actually young, isn’t it?

Well. I’ve been casting spells all day, and it seems I have finally reached the point of being capable of both real nuance and real forcefulness of magic use.

It’s always the simplest ones we take most for granted, isn’t it? I suppose under ordinary circumstances I might feel embarrassed about the possibility of anypony ever reading this, but just at the moment, lying here, everything feels so much like cotton candy and warm relaxation that it’s hard to even care, so I’m writing it anyway because basking in rambling words, like everything else, just feels too good.

Needless to say, I’m rather calmed now. Involuntary nocturnal magical emanations igniting any more pillows aside (being a teenager is wretched in some ways), I’m pretty sure I’ll sleep better, too, which is great because that’s another thing I’ve been missing.

I think I’m going to try that now. Goodnight, future me and whoever else reads this.

I dusted this journal off today, after finding it sitting in a shelf unused for a long time. Wow. That last entry. I guess having a teenager’s brain really went to my head.

Still, through her haze, past me manages to raise an important problem to ponder over. Recent conversations with those who have been where I am leaves me thinking. I realize that my situation, if it was known to ponies, might lead to some interesting questions. It may be difficult for them to understand the answers, or to get them to see those answers from my perspective.

To explain it, I would need to wax philosophical, which has never been entirely easy for me to do. It’s particularly not easy now, because I’m not fully decided on a perspective myself.

Pronouns! Such simple things make all the difference. They define so much of our thinking, without us even realizing it most of the time. They’re where everypony trips and stumbles in their comprehension. Is it I, or she? Am ‘I’ still the me I was, or is that a different ‘her’ now? Is this thing that is ‘me’ really anything more than what exists at the current instant? Does it go back in time? And if it does, how far back? Who decides? If these things we call ‘me’ are phenomena arising out of interacting collections of parts, then how many parts can we change and still be able to say that this thing is ‘me?’ The average pony would claim they’re the same person as the foal who was born with their name, and legally speaking they’d be right, but conceptually this strikes me as patently untrue. Body, mind, behaviors, thoughts... what could any adult really say is the same about them as the foal they used to be? Do we not all change in all these respects? We are all our own Ship of Poneseus, I believe.

The best I can do for the moment is to say that I think – I hope – we each get to choose the person we are, including which parts of the past us that we carry forward into who we are in this moment.

It’s all a matter of perspective, and what’s clear to me is that we decide on perspective based on what’s useful to us. But this is part of why it’s so difficult; there are two answers, both useful in their own ways and in complement to each other, even though to a limited view they would seem so contradictory. I can’t say that I’m her, because I’ve grown and changed some of what I didn’t like, and that makes me someone different. At the same time, there are so many other parts that I’ve kept, and those pieces of her are me. In this sense, I’d be inclined to say, yes, we are – I am – the same person, but this doesn’t feel whole enough as an answer; I fear to oversimplify and be misunderstood for it.

The irony is, struggling with this question feels so asinine and prosaic. It’s not one that I (whoever ‘I’ am) particularly care about, since I have no difficulty accepting myself, whoever and whatever I am. I struggle simply because I dread the day when other people ask, ‘Who are you? What are you?’ and I won’t know how to explain it to them.

Their perspectives will be so limited when they can only see one view of it at a time.

How do you describe color to the colorblind? How do you convey that many hues exist all at the same time to somepony who can only see black and white?

I dreamed about being in the diamond phylactory last night, and of what I did there, while I waited.

What I dreamed was what satisfaction there is in turning the tables! I found her, the fiend who so loved to interrupt my sleep by gazing in on the crystal walls and leering at me as if I were an animal in a glass cage to be tormented for amusement. I shudder to think what might have happened, had I not been safely encased with barriers and wards between us all those long years.

But fortunes were reversed, and she found that she enjoyed no such protection from me. I found her, and now it is she who has her freedom only at my pleasure and by my good graces. Oh, the panic when she realized whose circle she’d been summoned into! I couldn’t see the look on the face of her physical form, whatever it is, but I could feel it, the terror, burning within her. I’m sure she feared the worst, and in times of old, she’d have been right to be terrified; I might have made an example that would speak loud and clear to her ilk.

I think some of [REDACTED] better nature has rubbed off on me, and truly, I’m happier for it. Harm to others is fundamentally distressing to a creature of empathy, something little ponies are rich with. That’s always been my experience. As much of a bitch as I know I’ve been at times, I dislike hurting anyone or anything. I merely sometimes found it pragmatic enough to rationalize.

But no longer will I slide inch by inch down that slippery slope, at least not without the most dire necessity. Merely imposing a geas to keep her out of my business was perhaps better than a thing like her deserved, after what she tried, but I see now what’s more important; that not having to hurt myself by hurting others is what I deserve.

And ultimately, I find myself content simply to have sent her on her way and gone on with mine. It’s far better than the grim alternatives.

I will destroy her if she forces my hoof. But the benefit of the doubt may yet be the path that saves us both.

I cried with the rain until it stopped because I couldn’t stop thinking about [REDACTED]. I miss her so much.

I have seen from granddaughter grandmother [REDACTED]’s mind the story of how the rains came back to Equus, about the miracle that saved us all from a slow, dry death choking in dust. I wish [REDACTED] ^[a]^[b]^[c]could see it. I wish she knew how green this world could be. I wish she knew the wonders of it, the bright future we’ve been given a new lease on.

I don’t think I ever understood how sad it was possible to be until I discovered how much I miss my best friend, here in this new world that I can’t share with her.

Where are you, [REDACTED]? I hope it’s a better place. I hope it’s a place as green as this.

I’ve been trying to learn this new magic, but it’s difficult. There’s so little to go on, all the old sources are so fragmented and speak in vague terms.

I don’t feel inadequate very often, let alone this overwhelmingly unprepared. It’s... troubling.

What we suspected is true! Somepony is undoubtedly trying to influence solar motions. I saw the wobble and the perturbation myself through the observatory. It was slight, trembling, like a unicorn foal only just reaching out with telekinesis for the very first time. But foals eventually grow stronger, more confident, more capable...

I do know that I have to find the source. We cannot simply trust that this upstart will be as benevolent as Celestia was. Nor can we risk another series of intercalary wars should some new player decide to act on her own ideas, or sell out to the highest bidder’s agenda, regarding what properly constitutes a year.

But even that may not be the worst of our worries. Sisters help us all if this mysterious meddler has other, more sinister ambitions. It’s worrying enough that there’s already one orbital death platform hanging over our heads. The last thing we need is another, especially when the one that already exists could pale by comparison to the raw power of the sun turned to malicious purposes.

And finally, though it’s quite frivolous and selfish, I admit no small measure of jealousy over having apparently been beaten to the punch. I must know how they did it, even if for no other reason than my own curiosity...

[a]Interesting. I had thought her lover was Willow Wand, her foal's father, but looking at the wiki again I guess that wasn't actually the case, they were mostly just friends. Huh.

[b]This passage was about Willow Wand. Obsidian/Dawn loved her a lot and missed her terribly as a friend, even though they never became conventional lovers.

[c]Wait, then why is it redacted? Willow's name and relevant actions vis-a-vis Obsidian are on the wiki. Unless she had another name, which is interesting...