Moving On

by Bad Horse

Rating: everyone
Tags: Slice of Life, Alternate Universe, Princess Luna, Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Pony Joe, Twilight Sparkle
Length: 8690

Celestia has taken on a new private student, and Twilight must find something to be other than the Faithful Student. But how?

Twenty years later, Celestia has for the second time taken on a new private student. Twilight can no longer be the Faithful Student, but feels she has failed to become anything else. She must find out what and who she now is—and the difference between these things.

(Non-Twilicorn universe. On EQD March 17, 2013.)

Published 2013-03-07 20:00:02 UTC
Last updated 2013-03-07 20:00:02 UTC

The new student

The Canterlot Public Library had last been rebuilt nearly two hundred years ago, when civic priorities placed more emphasis on spectacle and less on functionality. The great interior open space of the original plan had been gradually partitioned into wooden reading stalls and rows of ugly but sturdy prefabricated steel bookshelves to keep up with the growing number of patrons and books.

As head librarian of the Canterlot Public Library, Twilight Sparkle dealt mainly with the administrative matters that had given her more than a few of the gray hairs in her mane. But on that day she'd been at the registration desk taking care of customers. She had sensed the library grow even quieter than usual, and looked up from stamping a date-due card.

"So if I can check out three books for four weeks, it stands to reason I should be allowed twelve books for one week!" the older unicorn mare across the desk in front of her continued. "Furthermore ... ah ... excuse me! I am speaking to you!"

But Twilight merely stared, slack-jawed, over the shoulder of the agitated mare, who finally huffed and turned around to see what was there.

A few steps away, Princess Celestia, eldest of the ruling diarchs of Equestria, stood next to a small sapphire-blue unicorn filly. The two of them stood just in front of two tall white unicorns barded in gold and standing at attention, and just behind a brass stanchion with a small white sign on top that said "PLEASE FORM SINGLE LINE HERE".

"Y-Your Majesty!" the library patron gasped.

"Please," Celestia said with a gracious smile. "Do continue."

The panicked mare dropped her entire stack of books on the floor while trying to bow and back up at the same time. She gave a startled whinny when they landed with a bang, then galloped away and was swallowed up in the dim maze of tall old bookshelves in History and Biography.

Twilight pushed forward against the edge of her desk. "Princess Celestia!"

"Shh," Celestia cautioned, then motioned with her eyes towards a sign that said "QUIET PLEASE".

Twilight frantically searched her memory for the proper protocol for greeting royalty from behind a desk. Grinning like a moron was probably incorrect, but it was all she could come up with on short notice.

"Introduce yourself, Starflower," the princess said, nudging the small blue unicorn, who seemed more intimidated by Twilight than by Celestia but stepped bravely up. Her chin barely reached the edge of the desk.

"Excuse me, miss, my name is Starflower, and I'd like a library card, if you please."

"I see. Do you have some identification, Starflower?"

Starflower bit her lips and shook her head.

"Well, do you have anypony here who can vouch for your identity?" Twilight craned her neck far to each side in turn, as if searching the far reaches of the library for such a person.

Celestia stepped forward. "Perhaps my word will do?"

"Oh!" Twilight said, feigning surprise. She rubbed her muzzle. "Do you have some identification, miss?"

Celestia's eyes drifted in thought. "Well ... yes! I have my library card." She magicked a small grey card out of nowhere to land on the desk in front of Twilight with a surprisingly solid click.

Twilight's ears twitched in surprise. "This ... is stone." She squinted at the card. "And it expired ... if I'm reading this inscription right ... fifteen hundred years ago."

"Did it? Oh dear. I may have some overdue fines."

Twilight had never figured out how to tell when Celestia was joking and when she was being serious, and sometimes suspected no such distinction existed for the princess. She turned to the filly. "Okay, Starflower. I think I can trust this nice lady. Fill out this form, draw a picture of your cutie mark in this box, and I'll make up a card for you." She gave Starflower a blank form and a pencil, and turned back to Celestia. "It's so nice of you to visit, Princess! What can I help you find?"

"Nothing today, Twilight. I have my own library, you know. But one's first library card is an important symbolic threshold. I remember how much you loved yours."

Twilight blushed. "You do?" Then she remembered. "Princess! I was thinking about Haydigger's theory of the mitdasein, and that maybe it could form a bridge between Marehayana Buddhism and Neighzsche's will to power—"

Celestia nodded. "I wrote something about that myself, after a lecture by Canter."

"But—but that was a hundred years before Neighzsche or Haydigger."

"Great minds think alike. Which is sometimes a little boring."

Twilight inhaled sharply. Boring. The simplicity of the word chilled her.

She quickly brightened again. "If it's excitement you want, we just unpacked the new edition of the Encyclopedia Equestria! The one with the new magical index that can find all instances of any words or phrase you ask it for!"

Celestia smiled. "As enticing as that sounds, I'm afraid we can't stay. I still have to meet with the Ministers of Agriculture and Horticulture before sunset, and I know they'll spend half an hour just arguing about bee allocations. They always want to overwork the poor dears."

Starflower pushed the completed form back across to Twilight, who saw the filly had listed the castle as her address.

"Where are you staying in the castle?"

"In the north tower. I have my own room! Way up so high that when I look out my window I can see—"

"Ponyville," Twilight whispered along with Starflower. She blinked and shook her head. "I'll print up your card right away, Starflower. Of course, you can pick it up tomorrow. Or I can mail it to, um, the castle. If you really can't stay." She looked hopefully toward the princess.

"Thank you, that would be perfect," Celestia said. "It is always a pleasure to see you, Twilight." She turned to leave, then stopped, and added, "And, Twilight? I am always interested in your opinion. But you do understand, you don’t need to impress me anymore.”

Impress her?

"Goodbye then, and thanks again," Twilight said as the princess and her entourage departed. "If you need anything, I'll be—" The doors clicked shut behind the last guard on his way out.

"—right here."

She wondered how Bluebell, Celestia's last star pupil, was doing. She probably ought to write her a letter or something. Welcome her to the ex-students club. Help her adjust.

Maybe later.

Author's Note

I spent a long time working on this—not to get it perfect, just to make it less awful. It was once one of the least-liked ponyfics ever.

The deadline for Clarion West applications is coming soon. No one has yet claimed the fimfiction writing scholarship. Details here.

Friendship is just a stage

Twilight once again found herself alone in the library long after it had closed and her assistant Nickerdoodle had put the chairs up on the tables, swept the floor, and departed. The draft of her article lay unrolled on the table before her. Books with covers in different colors and fonts but all bearing Celestia’s seal were scattered across the rest of it surface. These were just the ones the princess had written while Canter had been lecturing. Celestia had written so many books over the course of thousands of years that no one but Celestia even knew what was in them all. It would take more than a lifetime just to read them.

If she’d taken that position at the University of Hoofington, Twilight could have done work like this during the day, as part of her job, instead of in an empty library at night. She'd been all set to—she'd even gone shopping for a house. For some reason she'd just never said "yes" to the search committee.

Twilight pushed Hoofington out of her mind and focused on the book open in front of her. If Celestia had had similar thoughts about Haydigger, it meant Twilight was onto something publishable. True, beside the princesses there were only six unicorns in all Equestria who might understand her essay. One was arguably insane, two hated her, and two would appreciate her work only if she inserted enough complimentary references to their own. But that was par for the course. Twilight rubbed her hooves together and began working her way through the old books, savoring the rough texture of their thick pages and the gradient of yellowing, from light brown at their edges to creamy white in the middle of each page. Her thesis might drag her into unknown waters, but she’d hang on relentlessly until she’d reeled it in, like the fisherpony in The Old Stallion and the Sea. If Celestia thought Twilight was still just trying to impress her, she’d think differently then.

After an hour, she found the relevant passage. Celestia had been talking about a god of the ancient Hipponians, but it was a similar idea. She anticipated Haydigger's thesis and dismissed it, demolishing Twilight's interpretation in a footnote. The essay was dated nearly three hundred years ago.

Twilight closed the book in a daze, realizing three things all at once. First, she really did want to impress Celestia. Second, nothing she could ever do would seem impressive to Celestia. Third, she didn’t give a damn what six unicorns in Canterlot and Hoofington thought of her.

As she reshelved the stack of books, rolled up her little scroll, and dropped it in a trashcan, Twilight recollected with a pang the days when she’d written simple reports about friendship that any of her friends could appreciate. She could hardly talk to them now. They used the same words she did, but they took them out of one context and plopped them willy-nilly into others, until everything degenerated into non-sense and Twilight had to use a special spell she had developed to stop herself from screaming at ponies about the implicit assumptions of dualistic thinking.

Also, there were the husbands and foals. The few times her friends were available, they spoke of meals, diapers, tantrums, or parent-teacher meetings. While she had become an expert on semantics and epistemology, they had become experts at life. Even Rainbow Dash, who had adopted but never married, sometimes seemed to be humoring her, as if there were something they all knew, as basic as knowing when to assume linearity or statistical independence, that she was blind to.

Once, the solitude and silence of the late hours had seemed peaceful to her, and the vast space reaching down to the tall windows at the end of the reading room and up to the vaulted ceiling had seemed grand. Now, it just made her feel small and alone.

She trotted over to the information desk, opened a drawer, and removed a roll of parchment. She unrolled about a foot of it on the desk, setting one small stone on each of the four corners to keep it open.

“Dear Princess Celestia,” she wrote. “Today I learned that friendship is just a stage.”

She set the quill back in the inkwell and stared at the paper for several minutes, but could think of nothing to add. So she cut it off from the roll, rolled it up tightly and tied it with a bright red ribbon. Then she opened the door to a large cabinet, which was nearly full of similar-looking scrolls, and added it to the pile.

The library turned dark as she turned out the last of the gas lights. She could still dimly see the rows of thick hardcovers and royal committee reports lined up in the reference section, as indistinguishable as the bureaucrats who had written them. Once Twilight had lived in a library, and the walls of books had defended her from the uncatalogued wilds outside, and at night she had felt the answers to all her questions nestling close about her, wrapping her more securely than any blanket. Now she had a library and a home, both full of books, none of them with the answers she needed.

She stepped out into the street, her breath misting in the crisp night air, and locked the door behind her. The moon which hung close over Canterlot reminded her that she knew one pony who would still be awake. A pony who knew something about loneliness. A pony who must, at times, have felt her special talent was a curse. A pony, she remembered with a twinge of guilt, whom she hadn't seen in years.

She had never dropped in on either princess uninvited. They had invited her numerous times to do just that, but Twilight had never dared to. And now that Celestia no longer wanted to spend time with Twilight, it seemed far less likely that Luna would.

The library's clock tower said it was nearly time for bed. She stood in the center of the empty street feeling as tired as she ever had. Far better, far safer, just to go home. Home, to the books, which were always there for her.

Twilight turned instead towards the castle and walked slowly up the nearly-empty streets.

* * * * *

As she approached the castle gates, Twilight saw that the guards on duty were barded in the gunmetal gray of Luna's night watch. They surely wouldn't recognize her, wouldn't believe that a middle-aged mare wearing an off-the-rack tan cardigan and a beaten canvas tote bag was a personal friend of the Princess of the Night. She stopped, wondering whether to give up and head home, when she remembered she still had Starflower's new library card in her bag.

Stepping forward, she floated out the card and introduced herself as the head librarian. The only proof she had of her story was the card and the brightly-colored "Ask a Librarian!" button attached to her cardigan, but the ranking guard brightened immediately at Starflower's name. "She's a sweet one. Bright as brass, too. You can leave that for her with the night porter."

As her hooves clicked on the slate tiles leading around the courtyard fountain and into the keep, she reflected that she was now more welcome at the castle as Starflower's delivery mare than as Twilight Sparkle. Of course those were just the outer guards. There would be no problem now that she was inside. Tailspin, the porter, was always pleased to see her. He was one of the few pegasi in the castle with a strictly groundside job. She suspected his cutie mark, which looked like a pegasus doing a cartwheel, had something to do with that.

She considered leaving Starflower the copy of Haydigger's On Being and Tea-Time she still had with her as well as the library card. Just to show the little darling what she was in for.

But once inside the keep, she found some strange unicorn mare behind the porter's desk instead of Tailspin, with a white coat and a tightly-bobbed black mane, wearing the silver vest of her office. She looked up from her ledger with a bored expression as if daring Twilight to say something. Of course, Twilight remembered with a sinking feeling, Tailspin was the day porter.

"I ... I have this library card for Starflower." She pulled the little white card out of her bag and floated it over to lie on the table.

"Princess Celestia's student?" The night porter's expression changed from boredom to amused pity. "That's sweet of you to come all this way, but ... you really didn't have to come all the way up here in the middle of the night. You do know we have mail service at the castle?"

"Oh, yes. I know. I—I also came to see Princess Luna," Twilight said, smiling as if she did this all the time.

The porter looked back down at her ledger. "Cases for the Night Court must be filed by sunset."

"Not a case. Just a visit."

The night porter peered over her spectacles and looked Twilight over more closely. "A visit."

Twilight nodded.

"On what business?"

"On ... she asked me to come."

The porter looked back down at her ledger, and flipped the first page over. "You have an appointment?"

"Oh, no. I mean, she asked me to come years ago."

The white mare blinked, set down her ledger, and fixed Twilight with a less-friendly gaze. "The Princess of the Night asked you to come years ago? And you didn't get around to it until now?"

"It's not like that! Well, it is like that, but...."

The porter removed her glasses, pulled a white handkerchief from her vest pocket, and began cleaning her glasses with them, all the while staring intently at Twilight.

Twilight gulped. "Is it a bad time? I can come back tomorrow if this is a bad time. Or the next day. Or I can just write her a letter. Can I leave a letter for her with you? You know what? Just tell her I said hi." She turned and trotted back towards the gate.

"Wait," the porter called after her. "What's your name?"

Twilight broke into a canter. She had no right, no right to come prancing up to the castle unexpectedly and expect Princess Luna to drop everything to see her. Not after all these years. Thank goodness she hadn't given her name. Her face burned just thinking about what she'd almost done. The guards at the gate stood aside and stared as she hurried past them.

Twilight increased her speed once out of the gate and galloped through the gaslit streets of Canterlot. She had to stop after only a block. A night watchpony watched with an air of professional curiosity as Twilight leaned against a lamppost, gasping for breath.

After catching her breath, she began walking. She didn't want to go home, or to the library, or back to the castle. Soon she realized she was heading downtown, toward the edge of Canterlot and the long road down to Ponyville. Which was absurd.

She stopped in the middle of an intersection and turned around in a circle slowly. The windows of the storefronts and of the walk-up apartments above them were dark. Almost a block behind her, back the way she had come, light streamed from a single lonely ground-floor window. She dimly remembered noticing it as she had run past it.

She turned back and approached it. Above the window a giant O loomed in the darkness. Twilight smelled a leftover trace scent of rising yeast and realized it was Pony Joe's donut shop. She quickened her pace. A donut. She didn't deserve to see the princess, but if she could just get a donut without being recognized, and sit in a corner and nibble on it, well, there wasn't anything wrong with that.

She pushed the wood paneling on the door with her nose and gave out a little yelp as it stayed solidly closed. She backed up and looked inside. A sign hanging in the window said, "Sorry, we're CLOSED! Come again tomorrow!" There, just beyond the locked door, was the table she and her new friends had stood around with Celestia all those years ago while they laughed about their disastrous first Grand Galloping Gala.

Twilight sat down abruptly, slumped against the door, and began to cry.

The wisdom of muffins

She wasn't sure how much later it was when the door pulled away from her, a bright light shone in her eyes, and she fell inward and landed sprawled on the tile floor. She wiped her eyes and saw Pony Joe looking down and blinking at her. He had some gray in his mane as well, but his eyes soon lit up as brightly as ever.

"Well! I ain't going crazy in my old age! It is Twilight Sparkle!" he boomed. "Ponygirl, just knock if you want a donut that badly."

"Thank you," she said quietly, taking the big hoof he held out to her and pulling herself to all fours. "Sorry to bother you. I was just leaning, on the door, you know. Catching my breath."

"Yeah, sure," Joe said, shutting the door behind her. He ran one hoof over his cap, straightening it. "Come on, catch your breath at this table here." He led her to the table she'd seen through the window, then disappeared behind the counter.

The shop's shelves were bare. The counter, the drying racks, the narrow, downward-sloping wire trays on the back wall that were lined with paper and filled with donuts during the day, were spotlessly clean, waiting for the day, full of purpose.

"Joe? It's okay. I don't need anything. Really, I should be going."

"Just stay right there," he called. "Won't be a minute." She heard him pulling trays out of racks, then shoving them back in with a huff of irritation before finally saying, "Hah! Gotcha!"

He trotted back out with a large paper bag in his mouth, and dropped it onto the table. "Just what you wanted! Day-old muffins! On the house."

Twilight opened the bag and drew out a muffin. She hefted it, felt its weight. This was a real thing, that real ponies wanted, and Joe had made it, here in his workshop of wheat and hay. "Cranberry," she whispered.

"Yeah, I save the left-over berry ones for Derpy. If I try throwing 'em out, I have to bag 'em real tight or she'll like as not smell them and dig them right out." Joe shook another muffin out of the bag and took a bite out of it.

Twilight's muffin crumbled too easily, disintegrating into a dry, tasteless powder that stuck behind her gums. "Derpy's in Canterlot?" she asked through a mouthful of crumbs.

"You didn't know? She was getting a little old to fly all over Ponyville. She's got a foot route now. Still wings it sometimes. Don't have to, though."

"I don't know how she does it," Twilight said. "Trace over the same route, day after day."

Joe stopped chewing and swallowed. "Guess that seems pretty dull to somepony like yourself, Miss Sparkle." He checked his cap again, then glanced around the shop with the air of a pony who unexpectedly found himself entertaining Canterlot nobility in his home and hadn't even had time to clean up. Which, Twilight realized with a start, was technically the case here.

"I musta baked about a million muffins here," he said. "And three million donuts." His foreleg fell to the table, hoof up. The remaining half of his muffin rolled out, flopped over, and lay upside down like a helpless turtle.

Twilight reached over and laid her hoof on his. "Joe." He looked up. "Your muffins are amazing."

"Yeah?" Joe took another bite and grimaced, as if noticing its dryness for the first time. "Hoo boy. You're being nice, Miss Sparkle. These are terrible."

Twilight laughed, spitting muffin fragments. A large brown crumb landed in the center of Pony Joe's white baker's cap and stuck there. "I wasn't going to say anything!"

"I made 'em this morning. You shoulda been here then." Joe shook the muffins to the bottom of the bag. The crumb on his cap rocked back and forth as he folded it closed again. "Let's save the rest for Derpy. She'd eat a muffin-shaped rock and like it." He noticed Twilight's eyes on his cap, and felt around until he found the crumb and flicked it off. "Sorry I tried to give you these lousy muffins, Miss Sparkle. But I haven't got anything else."

"Joe. I don't mean these particular muffins are amazing. I mean, you take bags of flour, sugar, all those things, and you mix and knead and roll and bake. And then...." Twilight remembered once watching Joe take muffins out of the oven. She remembered feeling the warm air wash over her, and that powerful odor, the kind only things that are or have been alive ever have. The rows of muffins swiftly but carefully extracted onto a drying rack, small round tops perfect as foals' hooves, all the same yet all different. "It's like giving birth."

Joe scratched the back of his head. "Uh, thanks." He bit down on the bag of old muffins, yanked it off the table, and scuttled back into the kitchen.

"I mean, in a masculine way!" Twilight called out over the abrupt scraping and banging of metal shelves. "It's, uh, Joe? I mean, it matters. Baking food, feeding ponies—it gives you a purpose."

Joe shuffled back over to the table with a brush, held in his mouth as if he were an earth pony, and began whisking the crumbs off the table carelessly, getting several on Twilight and on himself. He finished and spit out the brush. "My purpose is to make you donuts?"

"Oh, Joe, I didn't mean it like that." She took a step toward him and brushed off the crumbs still clinging to his apron, ignoring those on herself. "I mean, look at me. I manage the library budget, hire and train and sometimes fire, write flattering letters to donors. But my purpose, my reason for being, is to help ponies check out books. If I ... vanished, all that would happen is that a few ponies would wonder how they were going to get their next bad romance novel."

Joe stared at her. "I don't get it," he finally said.

"You don't?"

"Making donuts is just what I do. You're a smart pony. You should know that." He moved on to the other tables and brushed them each off in turn, bending down low to inspect each tabletop from a low angle.

"Huh," Twilight said. "I'm not sure I understand."

"Ask Derpy. She knows," Joe answered without pausing in his work.

Twilight walked across the room to look over Joe's shoulder. "Joe? Are you mad at me?"

Joe sighed and set down his brush. "No, Twilight, I ain't mad. Just tired."

"Sorry." She headed for the door.

"Wait."

She froze where she was.

Joe walked up from behind and stood next to her in front of the door, breathing heavily. The entranceway was a little small for two ponies. He smelled like yeast and flour. "I ain't that tired. Can we start again?"

Twilight turned her muzzle towards his. "Do I have to fall down on the floor again?"

"You don't have to," Joe said. "But it was kinda cute."

The fourth F

Joe had turned out the dining area's big overhead lights, to discourage more late-night visitors. They stood side by side at the same table as before, lit only incidentally by the kitchen lights. Joe had thrown his muffin out in disgust, but Twilight insisted on finishing hers.

Joe never pressed her for the reason why she had been crying on his doorstep, nor about the library. Twilight found it felt easier to listen when the lights weren't on her. She didn't have to nod her head or smile at the right parts, or even answer. She just relaxed and listened to Joe telling her about his regulars, about the bakery two streets down that had tried selling donuts for a tenth of a bit less, about the new tariffs on beans from Zebrica. She actually knew something about that last one, but found she'd rather keep on letting Joe's deep, comfortable voice wash over her than interrupt.

Eventually he went back to talking about Derpy, and that seemed natural, just as every long conversation in Ponyville eventually mentioned Pinkie Pie. He leaned over and touched her foreleg lightly. "Lemme tell you about when she come up with the 'banana split muffin'. One banana muffin, one cherry muffin, one chocolate-chip—all at the same time! Just stuffs them all in and starts chewing." Twilight giggled—it was all too easy to imagine exactly how Derpy would have grinned while eating it.

"So just then this cello player from the orchestra comes in, mane all tidy, spotless grey coat. Derpy sees her and runs over to tell her how good it is! Only, her mouth's still full of muffin, see? So she leap-flies over there and gets right in the dame's face, who I don't think even knows her 'coz she says "Oh, I say" and backs away right up against that wall there." Twilight snorted and barely suppressed a whinny at Joe's eerily accurate imitation of a Canterlot mare. "And Derpy's grinning and flapping her wings and going 'Mrph mrmble mrf MRFFN!'"

Twilight re-envisioned the scene in her mind, but instead of Derpy and this Canterlot mare, it was Pinkie and Rarity. She could see exactly how Rarity would arch her eyebrows and look not quite directly back at Pinkie.

"The poor mare is frozen, she's got banana-chocolate-cherry muffin crumbs bouncing off her face like she's a statue. And then—" He tapped her foreleg again. "—and then all of a sudden she shuts her eyes and shouts, 'LENTO! LENTO'"

Twilight leaned back and took a deep breath. If only they hadn't ....

He struck the table with one hoof and laughed. "Lento!'"

Hadn't not followed her to Canterlot?

Twilight suddenly realized that Joe had fallen silent and was just looking at her, and that her eyes were wet. "It's nothing," she said, and pawed at them ineffectually. "Just thinking about some old friends."

"Yeah?" Joe leaned toward her. His horn glowed yellow, and the end of his apron billowed up toward her, offering itself. She shut her eyes and tugged at it twice, once for each eye.

"I bet you got some stories too," he said.

So Twilight told Joe about how special a treat donuts were when she was a filly, and how grown-up she'd felt when she could finally afford to buy them herself. "Walking in and ordering a double-glazed for myself, with my own money. It made me feel more grown-up and powerful than the first time I addressed the House of Nobles."

She stood up a little straighter, and told him about the night of the Gala. "And in the end, all the fancy food and music and dancing weren't as sweet as sharing donuts with friends."

"I coulda told you that," Joe said. "All you need is the four Fs. Food, family, and friends."

"That's only three." Twilight had the nagging feeling she'd read somewhere what all four were, but couldn't recall.

Joe shrugged and winked. "The fourth is up to you, then."

Twilight absently took another bite of stale muffin and looked at the wooden table, pondering that list as she chewed. What would her fourth thing be? What in her life was worthy of adding to that list? Leaving the initial letter aside for the moment, what had been trying to do with her life? Learning. Publishing books and articles. Those had seemed terribly important, once upon a time. But if they were important, then by definition something important would happen once she'd done them well. Which she had.

Pleasing Princess Celestia? Was that her fourth F? Favor? Following? Fawning?

Suddenly Twilight wondered whether Celestia's visit to the library had been as casual and thoughtless as it had seemed. Was it really a coincidence that Celestia walked in the only time that week Twilight had been at the front desk? Maybe she was trying to give Twilight one final lesson, one that couldn't be taught, only learned. The teaching of no teaching. How very Zen.

And just now, running away from Luna. Deathly afraid of being rejected. Of losing that lousy fourth F. When what she needed was...

Freedom.

"Joe," she said, looking up, "thank you. You're right. I just need to take care of that fourth F."

Joe coughed violently, choking for a few seconds as if some muffin remained in his throat. "What? Now?"

"No time like the present," Twilight said grimly, stepping away from the table.

"Um, yeah, I guess." Joe gulped. Twilight stared back at him, jaw set firmly. "You're acting funny tonight. You sure you're ready for that? Sudden-like?"

Twilight shook her mane impatiently. "I've never been readier." She stamped one hoof. "It's got to be now or I'll lose my nerve."

"Uh, yeah. Great." Joe blinked, then took a deep breath. "I mean, sure! Just let me finish closing up here." He looked around the little shop as if to make sure no final customer was hiding underneath one of the other three tables. "Truth is, there were times, lotsa times I, but I didn't think...." He went and opened the closet that stood just inside the front door. "I get up real early, you know," he said apologetically. He grabbed a broom in his mouth and began sweeping the floor over-energetically, as if it were his first day on the job.

"Of course. Don't let me keep you," Twilight said, and headed for the door.

Joe stopped, the broom still in his mouth. "Mrmph?"

"Thanks so much for talking, Joe. And now, I have a princess to see." She had to see Celestia eventually, in person, and cut the apron strings herself, but it would be easier to start with Luna. And if Luna wouldn't see her, well, that was Luna's problem. As she stepped outside, she barely noticed the sound of the broom clattering to the floor behind her.

Nothing

"Please wait here, Miss Sparkle," the usher said, halting in front of a plain wooden door on the last landing at the top of the tower staircase. He headed up the final section of stairway and through the trapdoor to the roof.

The maps, books, and telescopes, Twilight knew, were in a donut-shaped room behind that door, circling the staircase. If he'd let her wait there, she could have distracted herself studying the star charts and the fine mechanical astrarium that the sisters used to precisely plan sunrise, sunset, and every other astronomical event years in advance. Celestia called it "the world's most inconvenient clock."

She'd had no problem getting this far. It turned out her name had been written years ago on the list of ponies who should be admitted to see the princesses. She could have come at any time. But the list, unlike princesses, couldn't change its mind over time.

She looked around, squinting in the flickering light of the wall sconces to study the slight depression worn in the center of each wooden stair. She noticed where the mortar was crumbling between the stones in the wall, which piqued her interest, but she saw with a glance that there weren't enough stones to conclude with confidence whether the decay had a Poisson or a power-law distribution. She looked up at the trapdoor and wondered how it could be secured from the inside if the hinge was on the outside.

Always with the questions. If you could just stand here quietly for five minutes and be bored like a normal pony, she scolded her inquisitive mind, I could have a normal life.

The trapdoor finally opened. The usher came down to the landing, said, "Princess Luna will see you now," then turned around and walked back up. Twilight followed him up into the night air.

Princess Luna stood in the open air on the roof of the south tower, which was about forty feet in diameter. Before her was a folding table. Several astronomical instruments lying on it gleamed a dull silver in the white moonlight, though they were probably brass. She was levitating an astrolabe before her in a way that suggested she hoped this would not take so long that she would have to set it down.

The only lights were the moon and the stars. Standing atop a tower high above the city, behind crenellations that blocked much of the light and noise from below but none of the wind, they were as immersed in the night as if they stood on a mountaintop. Luna scoffed at astronomers who "observed" through windows. The temperature, the humidity, and the wind were an important part of what she was orchestrating. Twilight had heard that the only concession Luna made to the harshest thunderstorms and blizzards was a very un-regal wide-brimmed hat, rumored to have once belonged to a royal gardener.

Twilight noticed the absence of guards. She knew Luna could take care of herself, but it still seemed strangely intimate. Celestia rarely went anywhere with less than two guards, and often four within the castle grounds, even though they would only get in the way if anything dangerous happened.

The usher stood at attention just in front of the trapdoor, facing Luna. "Your majesty. Twilight Sparkle, head librarian of the Canterlot Public Library."

"We are well acquainted with Miss Sparkle," Luna said in a regal voice that would ordinarily come from somepony much larger. "It has been too long since our last meeting."

"I beg your pardon, your majesty," Twilight said, curtseying. Goodness, that was more stressful to the knees than she recalled.

"And what brings you to our humble observatory today?"

Here came the awkward part.

"Well, you see, your majesty...."

"Yes?"

"It's just...."

"You require funds for the library, and my sister would not grant them."

"No, nothing like that. It's ... this is going to sound a little bit silly...."

Luna raised one eyebrow at the usher and then glanced downward for a fraction of a second. He touched hoof to horn in a crisp salute, and quickly removed himself down the stairs, closing the door after himself.

"Speak."

Twilight steeled herself to tell Luna everything she had realized in the donut shop. That she was sorry she had tried to cling to the way things were, that she'd come back to Canterlot instead of going to Hoofington and becoming the brilliant mage they'd intended for her to be, that she'd blamed her friends for staying behind instead of staying herself or making new friends. That she couldn't be who they wanted her to be anymore.

"It's nothing," she finally said. If Luna only wanted to hear from her as head librarian, then there really was nothing to say.

Luna's nostrils quivered ever so slightly. "We have much to do and many observations to make before allowing the moon to pass to the second quadrant of its arc tonight."

Twilight sighed. "I just ... wanted to see you. I'm sorry I disturbed you. Please forgive me. I'll just let myself out." She glanced towards the trapdoor and waited for Luna to dismiss her.

"Let us be certain we understand," Luna said. "You came up to the castle. You passed in at the gate, had the porter ring us and waited with him there, walked to our tower, walked all the way up the stairs, waited again for us there, without having any official business to conduct? No report, no petition, no favor?"

"Nothing," Twilight said, lowering her ears.

Luna set the astrolabe down on the table. She looked at Twilight with a steady, unreadable gaze. Then the corners of her lips turned up shyly in a hopeful smile.

"Really?"

Moving on

"Now what?" Twilight asked.

Twilight was experienced with most astronomical instruments, so the observations had gone quickly once Luna had explained what needed to be done. Now she and Luna both lay back, their legs folded over their bellies in a most undignified manner, on a large circular mattress near the center of the tower's roof. Luna had had it brought here because Equestrian anatomy was unsuited to staring straight up overhead for long periods of time. She also had a large mirror a pony could use to examine the sky while standing, but Twilight agreed that it wasn't the same thing.

"Now nothing. You brought me an unexpected gift of free time."

"You could get an assistant. They're very useful. And they can be nice just to have around."

"Then I would have even less excuse to spend so much time here. Look now, ten degrees north of Achenar." She pointed with a forehoof.

A shower of distant, intermittent sparks flashed across the spot, so dim you had to look a little bit away to see them properly—an effect Twilight had never understood.

"I hope somepony else saw that too," Twilight said.

"I used to fill the night sky with shooting stars so bright they hurt your eyes," Luna said. "But I learned that less is more."

"Is it really?"

"Well, it's more, but for fewer ponies."

"Like stories," Twilight said.

"Stories?"

"I used to write stories."

"I didn't know." Luna grinned slyly. "What kind of stories?"

Twilight flushed. "Nothing like that. Stories about ideas. I used a pen name. I was afraid it wasn't respectable. But it didn't matter. Hardly anypony read them."

Luna rolled onto her side and lifted her head off the mattress to face Twilight. "I can imagine how that could be upsetting."

"I studied the stories that were popular. They had less talking, more action. I tried to write like that."

"Did it work?"

"Sometimes. But I didn't enjoy it as much."

Luna nickered. "I understand too well. The ponies would have loved it if I'd made every night a carnival. And I could have ... if I were a different pony myself."

Twilight watched patches of stars vanish and reappear as invisible clouds blew by far overhead.

"I wish I were a different pony," she said.

She regretted the words immediately, and flinched in anticipation of Luna's rebuke. The night princess said nothing. But Twilight couldn't just leave that hanging, so she said, “Your sister should have warned me it wasn’t worth it.”

“What?”

“Books. Learning. Knowledge.”

"Your friend Applejack spends her days kicking trees. Kicking trees, Twilight. Day after day, year after year."

“I know! They did their simple, boring things, and ended up with families and friends and, yes, money. I worked all day, every day, thirty years. Doing things nopony else could. All I've got now is an apartment, full of books, and empty."

She whacked the mattress irritably with a hindleg. "I wanted to finish them all before I died. But I’ll be dead either way. All that learning will be gone. And the books will wait for their next victim. I hate them. I hate them!" She paused for breath after the rush of words, panting.

She looked down at her "Ask a Librarian" button and ran one hoof around its edge. "When did I become so bitter, Luna?”

Luna waited, not smiling, not frowning, but studying Twilight clinically, like a doctor waiting to see if there was any more pus in a wound.

"I can't be the pony you and Celestia wanted me to be. I thought it was what I wanted, but ... it wasn't. What I really wanted was to be close to you and her." She shut her eyes tightly. "That's what I came to tell you. I can't. I want to, but the price is too high. I'm sorry."

Luna said nothing. Twilight pulled all four legs in close, and they began to tremble. Then she felt a soft nuzzling on her chin.

"Dearest Twilight. What is this price you speak of?"

Twilight kept her eyes shut, just in case opening them would reveal mocking eyes. "I'm supposed to be the Faithful Student. And the Scholar, and the Great Mage."

Luna drew in a long breath. "I was cold towards you when you arrived because I thought you were only here as the scholar. It's true, my sister first noticed you as a tool to be wielded. But our lives are connected now. We know you, and love you, and always will."

"Always?" Twilight said in a small voice, opening her eyes.

She saw Luna smiling back at her. "If you imagined the longest time you could conceive of, Twilight, time enough to wear the mountains to dust and fill their ranges with seas, and for the seabed to rise up into new mountains, that would not be long enough for us to forget Twilight Sparkle."

Twilight sniffed. "Even if I became ... I don't know, a baker?"

"My sister and I both have exceptional memories for bakers!"

"I think I like bakers, too."

Luna lay her head back down on the mattress. "I was once bitter myself. The only way out of it is through regret."

Now Twilight raised her head to look at Luna. "What? Regret's a bad thing."

Luna shook her head without looking at Twilight. "Regret is when you wish you'd done something differently. Bitterness is when you don't think you could have done anything differently. As long as you're still bitter, you can't do anything differently, and nothing will change. It encases you in its cold grip, like a suit of iron...." She trailed off.

"Armour," Twilight said without thinking. She waited for a response, but there was no sound other than the chirping of crickets and the far-off clacking of a sentry's iron shoes.

"Um ... sorry, princess. Are you okay?"

"I was just thinking. Perhaps we should blast you with the elements of Harmony. I hear they are most efficacious."

Twilight bit her lip.

"Twilight, the difference between you and Applejack is that at the end of the day, she remembers her trees are just trees.” Luna rolled back toward Twilight, who saw to her relief that Luna was grinning.

"I know just how you feel about your books," Luna said. "Once you've given yourself over completely to something, defined yourself by it, and been disappointed—it will never be the same again." She looked up wistfully at the moon. "What I am is the Princess of the Night. But who I am is Luna. I am only now learning how vital it is to remember the difference."

"Do you ever ... wish you didn't have to be Princess of the Night?"

"That would be a fruitless wish."

Twilight glanced down at the six-pointed star on her flank. "Do you remember the Cutie Mark Crusaders?"

"Long after the mountains have crumbled, and the seas have dried up, et cetera."

"It's just ... I wonder if there's a way to undo a cutie mark. To start over. To be somepony different."

Luna clicked her tongue. "There is no way to start over, Twilight. But you can always start again. As to cutie marks ... that sounds like a problem for a great scholar to tackle. But I have sometimes wondered how I would look with flowers instead of moons."

"I'd help you find out if I knew how. But they'd probably be nightshades," Twilight teased.

"I will hold you to this offer, Twilight Sparkle," Luna said in her court voice, and if she was teasing, Twilight could not tell. "Together we will find something for me to be in addition to the Princess of the Night. And we will find something that brings you more joy in your present state of mind. If it be baking, as you have mentioned, I will not be at all disappointed."

Twilight grinned at Luna. "We'll be the Blank Flank Crusaders!"

They lay there, neither speaking, until the earliest of birds began their pre-dawn chorus. Then Twilight finally broke the silence. "Luna. May I give you a report? For old time's sake."

"Certainly. In a letter?"

"No. I don't think I need that anymore."

"All right. So what have you learned?"

"I was confusing what I was with who I was."

"And?"

"It turns out I was Twilight Sparkle."

"Really. I hope you didn't have to go far for that revelation."

"Just—" She sniffed. "Just to Pony Joe's." Suddenly her face turned bright crimson. "Oh no!" she said, raising both hooves to her mouth. "I just remembered what the fourth F is!"

Author's Note

GhostOfHeraclitus wrote everything from "May I give you a report?" through "Just to Pony Joe's."

Donut diplomacy / A thousand years sneakier than thou

Luna wouldn't relent until she'd dragged the entire story of Twilight's evening in Joe's donut shop out of her, and when she got to the end, Luna snorted so loudly that the usher had come back up to check on her. Then Twilight had burst into laughter watching him struggling to keep a straight face while the princess emitted bellows of deafening laughter interspersed with snorts like breakers crashing on rocks. He had hurried back down without even waiting to be dismissed.

"Poor Joe! Twilight, you must go back and apologize."

"Go back?!" Twilight crouched anxiously. "Oh, no, no, I can't go back. I can't look him in the face! And ... and supposing he misunderstands? This is a delicate situation! It calls for diplomacy, and, and—"

"Well, then it's convenient that I am both a dough-nut lover and a diplomat. They are one of my favorite modern inventions! Come, the night is nearly over, and we are approaching the dough-nut hour."

"The donut hour?"

"The hour before dawn, when on some days I leap from my tower and fly to the finest dough-nut establishment in Canterlot, to join one of the finest stallions in Canterlot for my morning wine and a rye dough-nut. With sprinkles. I bring the wine. He has coffee."

Twilight clasped her hooves together. "Who?"

Luna groaned.

"Oh. Right."

"You will accompany me this morning," Luna said in a commanding voice. "We will have dough-nuts and wine. You will apologize. I will mediate as necessary."

"I don't believe you fly off to Pony Joe's in the morning with a bottle of wine," Twilight said. "It sounds very un-princess-like."

Luna raised an eyebrow at Twilight. Then she put her head down underneath the desk with the astronomical instruments arrayed across its top and rummaged about. There was a click, and Luna emerged, a dark-blue bottle floating behind her, almost black in the darkness.

"Take this," she said, pushing it towards Twilight. "Meet me outside of the dough-nut tavern." No sooner had Twilight taken hold of the chilly bottle and floated it into her tote bag than Luna leapt into the air with a muted flapping and a burst of wind as if a flock of owls had flown close by Twilight in the dark, and was gone.

.

* * * * *

"Have you the bottle?" Luna whispered.

Twilight nodded and indicated her tote bag. "Why are we being quiet?" she whispered back. She looked around her at the empty streets outside of the donut shop.

"We do not wish to make a scene." Luna began to lead the way toward the front door, then stopped suddenly, wincing. Twilight rushed over to her side in alarm.

"It's nothing," Luna said. "A tight wing-muscle. I will take a few moments to stretch it. Go knock on the door, Twilight."

Twilight looked dubiously at the door. It was just light enough that she couldn't tell whether the lights were on or off inside. "Is he even awake?"

"Yes, yes," Luna said, and waved impatiently toward the door with one hoof. "Smell. He is making the dough-nuts."

The wonderful smell of baking yeast was much stronger than last night. Twilight went to the door and knocked lightly. After a few seconds, the door swung inward again, and this time it was Pony Joe who leaned against the door frame for support and blinked at her.

"You again." His eyes were narrowed against the light, and he held up a hoof against the sky as if it were keeping him awake. His mane looked like he had just slept on it. He must have fallen asleep minutes after she left and gotten up just now.

"Yes. Me again. I came to apologize for last night. And so we could have donuts!"

Joe kept staring at her, just as if Princess Luna weren't standing a few paces behind her.

"Princess Luna isn't standing behind me, is she," Twilight said through her grin.

Joe yawned and reached up to rub his eyes. He stared at her a few seconds more, then shook his head slightly. "You're a funny one, Twilight. But I guess I got a couple of minutes." He stepped back and held the door open for her.