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“…Happy birthday to you.”
Bow and Adora stand on either side of Glimmer, hands on either of her shoulders, as the group finishes singing to her. The other princesses smile and look to her at the head of the table. They all instinctively hold their breath, waiting for the queen to blow out the candles.
Glimmer looks down at the table. Her friends, her family, disappear from her peripheral view until all she can see are eighteen little flames. Eighteen melting candles placed, some neatly (Bow’s doing) and some haphazardly (Adora’s) in a sweet-smelling purple and pink cake.
Everyone’s watching, so hold it together. She squeezes her eyes shut and leans down, about to put the candles out.
But not everyone is here. That’s the problem. Glimmer’s eyes fly open, and the eighteen pricks of light swirl and warp into eighteen amorphous blobs as she tears up over the cake.
She tilts her head up to stop her tears from falling into the icing. The silence has gone on too long, the gap between the last “happy birthday” and the present moment yawning uncomfortably wider and wider.
“Glimmer?” Concern creeps into Bow’s voice. “Is everything alright?”
Her best friend’s voice brings her back to her senses. But she doesn’t want to lie to him.
“I’ll be back.”
Glimmer turns and swiftly exits the dining hall, the dumbfounded silence of her friends broken only by the sound of her boots on the freshly polished marble floor.
As she makes her way down the darkened corridors, she scans the familiar etchings that mark their walls. She approaches the mural of her parents before she can make it to the safety of her bedroom, and her feet start to drag without her consciously making the decision to stop there. But she does, and she looks up at the towering figure of her father and even taller figure of her recently passed mother.
“Mom…” Glimmer brushes the engraved hem of her billowing skirt. She looks up into the drawing’s geometric eyes and doesn’t find the warmth she used to find in her mother’s gaze. Her voices catches in her throat. “I’m sorry. If you can see us all, if you’re watching me now, I’m sorry. You went up against a portal that would’ve ended the entire world if you hadn’t…” She drifts off, and her eyes find the floor, reacquaint themselves with her scuffed purple boots and their worn moon patches. How many times had they fallen off? How many times had Angella stitched them back on for her?
“And yet here I am, and I can’t even go up against a stupid birthday cake!” Her voice rises, and she whips her head to either side to make sure she wasn’t heard. No one comes. She sighs.
“I just… didn’t prepare for this. Why would I?” Her voice starts to rise. “I mean, it’s not like you expect your mom to miss any of your birthdays when she’s supposed to be immortal!”
Her last words ring throughout the empty hall. Glimmer looks away from the mural’s eyes, as if her mother was looking back at her. She narrows her eyes.
“I thought I’d always have family to celebrate with. To make wishes on candles with. And I guess I always thought I’d be your – the kingdom’s – princess. But now everything’s wrong, and I’m the queen.”
She takes one last look at the mural and closes her eyes. With a flash, she teleports away.
Now, she stands at the entrance to the war room. It is dark and quiet, like the rest of the castle. On the far side, at the head of the long table, are the silhouettes of two thrones. They are empty just like the rest of the chairs. Unlike the rest, they will stay that way.
Glimmer takes a solemn step towards them. “What am I supposed to do without you? I know we had our fights here, but I needed that. I needed you to keep me in check, to help me grow.” She gets closer to the end of the table. “I needed you.”
She thought she’d stop at the table’s edge, but she plants a foot up on its surface and keeps walking. “So how could you leave me like that? You had no right to abandon me here with this mess. I’m no queen compared to you.”
As she makes her way down the table, maps and pens fall to the floor. One of her boots sends an old scroll bouncing across the surface of the table, unfurling like a living, leaping thing. She steps on the button that brings a holographic map of Etheria flickering to life. All around Bright Moon and her sister kingdoms are pairs of angry red wings, the symbol of the Horde, symbols of battles lost under her own command.
Glimmer stands on the other end of the table before the throne, eye to eye with her mother’s ghost.
“How am I supposed to be queen when I could never be you?”
The tears that have clung dutifully to her eyes finally let themselves fall, first down one cheek, then the other. She feels her legs grow weak, and she drops to her knees there at the edge of the war room table.
“I guess I’m trying to say…” she sniffles. “I don’t know what you wanted me to do with all this. It feels like by saving me, by saving all my friends, you’ve given me the biggest gift ever. But by leaving me behind, it’s also been the biggest burden.”
The scroll she kicked sent flying across the table earlier catches up to her, rolling to a slow, sleepy stop and bumping gently against the sole of her boot. Glimmer turns, looks down at it, and picks it up gingerly.
It’s a map, much older than those she’s used to. A map of Etheria from the time of the first Rebellion, the one Queen Angella led. Worn ink shows the crests of various kingdoms blotted out by the Horde insignia, not unlike the holographic map that she finds herself on now. She passes a hand absentmindedly back and forth through one of those floating wings as she examines the scroll she holds in the other. It doesn’t look all that different, save for one corner where the Horde wings have been etched out in much fresher ink.
In the northeast, just shy of the edge of the Whispering Woods, the Horde wings are replaced by a four-pointed star. A glimmer in the town of Thaymor. And next to it, in her mother’s handwriting, just a sentence and a date.
“I have hope now.” Underneath: the day the new Rebellion first pushed back against the Horde and won almost three years ago. In a battle led by Glimmer and her friends.
Glimmer blinks a few times, checking that she read that right. She grins through her tears, and one of them falls and sizzles against the circuitry of the hologram map. The symbols of the lost battles of the past waver and vanish.
“I guess I can’t be you.” She collects herself and stands, looking down on the empty throne. “But you couldn’t be me, either. We both did things the other could never do.”
She scoots off the edge of the table, her feet dangling before finding the floor. The seat of the throne comes all the way up to her waist. She thinks for a moment about hopping up onto it, but decides instead to brush her fingers over her mother’s wonders one more time before rolling up the scroll and returning it to its spot in front of Bow’s chair. She turns to leave the war room.
“I wish you could see who I am now, mom.” Glimmer chokes up a little bit as she walks. She turns to face the throne one last time. “But I guess that was your last gift. To let us keep going on so we could become who we are now at all.”
She turns back towards the door and walks out with a spring in her step. Just as she steps into the hallway again, she’s greeted by two of her favorite faces in the world.
“There you are!” Bow scoops her up in a worried hug.
Adora stands behind him, gripping her shoulder insecurely. “We had a feeling you’d be here. I’m so sorry, Glimmer. Are you okay?”
“No.” Her best friends stop in their tracks, and their faces go blank. Adora bites her lip guiltily. “But I’m me. And that’s okay enough.”
Bow blinks, shaking his head a bit. He and looks down at her, still holding her tight. “What?”
“And Adora.” She looks up when she hears her name. Her brows furrow, and Glimmer notices that a few strands of hair have wrenched themselves free from her perfect blonde ponytail. She breaks gently from Bow’s embrace to tuck the loose strands back behind Adora’s ears. “You don’t have to be sorry. This is what she wanted. For us to be here with each other today.”
She puts an arm around Adora, who lets go of her vice grip on her shoulder to loop her arm back over Glimmer’s shoulders. Bow smiles, relieved to see that Glimmer’s going to be alright. He embraces the two of them, closing the circle. The three of them stand there holding each other, breathing together.
“Thank you. And thanks, Mom. For giving me hope.”
Glimmer pulls away just enough to see her friends, her family, and finds that they’ve both teared up as well. “Now, let’s go have some birthday cake. I think I know what to wish for now."