[Hope] That Cruel Road We Call Life (Lyra/Anon)

She showed it to me, once. Her gazing pool. It was my reward for helping save Equestria. I hadn't wanted treasure or anything of the sort, and I didn't want my ugly face on any stained glass windows. She was floored by me refusal to accept anything, and the longer she badgered me for a reparation I asked her for something, something of true value to her beyond riches.

I asked her for one of her secrets.

She smiled in that special way she smiles when she's proud of a clever answer, and she wordlessly led me to secret room of the castle. Deep down into the tunnels it led, behind a door only her horn could open, into the womb of Mt. Harmony. A still pond, crystal clear. She showed me where to stand and called it's power forth, leaving me permission to ask a single question.

I asked it the only thing on a new father's mind, the crushing weight of "How will my child turn out?"

I could not have expected what came next. More than just sight, every one of my senses was affected. I smelt salt and sweat as my daughter fought in the desert alongside another, I watched her meter out justice in the arid badlands, I watched her be a happy wife on her wedding day, I watched her slit a sleeping man's throat for his satchel, I watched her fighting with fillies at the school yard and I watched her commit suicide in her room, die in a gunfight, be lanced by the royal guard, and be laid to rest by grieving grandchildren.

As I snapped back to my own senses I collapsed to my knees, overwhelmed. I asked her, "Which one of those visions was true?"

She replied, "All of them. Each and every one. To hold a newborn is to see a million paths through life, and with each decision you and her make the doors are shut, one by one, until her path is walked."

Lyra never knew what changed me that day, or why I seemed about to cry every time I held my infant daughter. It was all I could do to focus on never shutting the wrong doors for her, and always wondering if I'd chosen wrong.