shimmer verse: a new dawn

sunset is an orphan living in canterlot with her friend ember “the rejected dragon.” sunset, like the rest equestria, adore their princess and watches her raise the sun every morning until one day she decides she wants to the best unicorn she can be. She studies for weeks out in the sun, with Celestia and Discord (as Event Horizon) spending a lot of their days with her when they can manage, until they give her access to the canterlot library. She spends about a month or so practicing her magic and, a little embarrassingly, ends up bonding a lot with the princess and prince (not that any one in the orphanage believe her) until the day she (and they) feel she’s ready to take the test.

her test is to hatch a phoenix egg, but her nerves get the better of her and she can’t do it. she can take the test again when she feels more capable, but sunset is stubborn and knows she can do it. angry and embarrassed and more sure of herself, her spell is cast but quickly grows out of her control. her magic is stronger than her ambition and she blanks out, not realizing what everyone else in the room is seeing - that her magic moved the sun. celestia sets it right and calms sunset down. sunset has no idea what happened, only that one minute she’s casting a spell and in the next the egg hatched and she got her cutie mark.

but like all schools, you can only attend with parent’s permission no matter how gifted - and sunset has no parents. later that night celestia and discord, after deciding together what to do, speak to sunset and ember and explain the guardian rule - and that they want to adopt her (and ember, although they can not legally adopt a dragon). she wastes no time in agreeing, and a few days later she is accepted into her new school, and adopted into a new family with ember.

it doesn’t hit her until she’s at home in the castle that she’s suddenly the new princess.

other points:

• ember is not technically part of the orphanage - she just loves sunset and they allow her to stay together even though most of the other ponies do not like having a dragon near them. ember is not technically adopted and refers to celestia and event by their names more often than mom or dad
• it takes sunset almost a month or two to stop calling her parents princess/prince. sometimes she calls them “princess mom” or “prince dad” just for fun. if she’s upset, as kids can do, she calls them by their full title
• discord ends up bonding with ember especially bc he empathizes with ponies rejecting her, since he fears the same will happen to him if he’s ever discovered [the yellow glow around discord means his disguise is still up, even if we/celestia see him as normal]
  
• captain cadance is assigned as her body guard and ends up bonding with sunset like an older sister especially during her adjustment period. cadance loves the royal family and, being adopted herself, the two easily connect