These Shadows
An AU of the Sour Grapes Chronicles
Inspired by and some of the general plot borrowed from Experimental Variables by Donny’s Boy.
It was a quiet Saturday at the Ponyville Library, six days past the Summer Sun Celebration. The town, itself, had recovered from the brief stint of nearly eternal night, and the ponies of Ponyville were getting back to their lives. Twilight Sparkle had been doing her best to integrate into a routine as well. She had to admit Ponyville was considerably quieter than Canterlot, and its ponies were considerably less snobby. She could appreciate the quiet, and the ability to do esoteric research in the Library in which she made her home. Twilight looked up from her notes at the pony that still browsed the stacks. The brown unicorn had come from her home to visit, and chat more about their mutual love of books, and learning. It had been quite nice. Made quite the change from hanging out with her other friends. Often they could not understand a lot of what she spoke about, but with this one...
Twilight was still somewhat shocked, however, that she was introduced to a pony of similar intelligence, and literacy as herself. Applejack, the day after they had freed Princess Luna from the clutches of Nightmare Moon, had dragged all her new friends to a prosperous vineyard across the road from her own Sweet Apple Acres. There they all met, or were reacquainted with, Sour Grapes. A chocolate brown unicorn with lavender eyes, gold rimmed glasses, a wavy dark brown mane, and a bunch of grapes as her cutie mark. She had a rapier wit, strong will, finely honed sense of sarcasm, a self-depreciating sense of humor, and a love for schadenfreude. Sour Grapes had admitted, rather bluntly in fact, that she had found Twilight’s drinking hot sauce at the welcome party to be quite amusing. Twilight was quick to forgive this, though, once she asked about her favorite books. While this elicited amused or frustrated reactions from her friends, Sour Grapes merely raised an eyebrow. She then rattled off a list of the books she had read, including The Fine Wines of Prance, The Grape Grower’s Guide, The Farmer’s Almanac, The Complete Works of Stratford Bard, and On the Confluence of Magics. This was a shock to the studious purple unicorn. Not only had this winemaker from Ponyville read Starswirl the Bearded’s dissertation on magic, she had understood every word. Part of Sour Grapes’ visit, this lovely Saturday, had been spent discussing how she made use of the tome to find a fine balance between her Unicorn magical abilities, and her Earth Pony earth sense.
Now, however, they had moved on. Twilight was examining her notes on a spell experiment, and Sour Grapes was looking for a book to take back to the Vineyard, that she had not read before. Twilight looked over from her notes to see the very serious look on Sour Grapes’ face as she pondered the books before her.
“How’s it going, Sour Grapes?” she asked.
“It’s come down to lurid prose about creatures from old mares’ tales, or action-packed adventure from a globe-trotting pegasus archaeologist,” Sour Grapes said. “Mind you the writing on the one is overblown and dramatic, but the story is well done. It also, unlike the Daring Do books, can be put down easily, and picked back up after a day’s work.”
“Yeah. Daring Do can be pretty hard to put down,” Twilight observed with a chuckle. “The way those books are written leaves you wanting to know what happens next.”
“I know, right?” Sour Grapes uttered, as she trotted over to the table that Twilight had her work spread out upon. “So what are you doing, hm?”
“I’m working on a new spell,” Twilight replied.
“This should be entertaining,” Sour Grapes observed with a slight smirk.
“I’d rather it not go wrong, thank you very much. No matter how entertaining it would be for you,” Twilight uttered with a roll of her eyes. Sour Grapes just chuckled.
“Wrong or right, it’s still interesting,” the brown unicorn observed with tilt of her head. “Why don’t you explain, and get your love of lecturing, and mad scientist monologuing out of the way.”
“Hey! I am NOT a mad scientist!”
“I’m teasing you, Twilight,” Grapes chuckled. Friends do that to one another, you know.”
“Oh. Okay... Uhm... What I’m trying to do is to recalibrate my magical energies so that I can affect fourth-dimensional objects,” Twilight explained.
“Twilight, there are no such things as fourth-dimensional objects,” Grapes replied. “All objects are affected by time, IE the fourth dimension, but there are no actual objects that are a part of the fourth dimension.” Twilight’s jaw dropped. “What? Just because I understood what you were talking about isn’t a reason for you to stand there, and try to catch flies.”
Twilight closed her mouth, and chuckled a bit. “You’re right of course. It’s just that I’m used to having to explain things in simpler terms.”
“Not everybody reads Starswirl the Bearded,” Sour Grapes observed wryly. “So what’s this spell supposed to do?”
“Well what I’m attempting here is to cast magic that will affect things temporally--that is, in terms of time--as well as their position in space.”
“Why do you need a spell for that? We’re all time travelers, traveling at the speed of one second per second. When we move an object we move it in space, and in time, because it takes time to move the object through space.”
’And suddenly I’m turned on in the strangest fashion,’ Twilight thought, as she found herself dumbfounded, again, in the space of minutes. “Uh... Actually, what I’m trying to do is see the life of an object, from the time it came into existence, to present.”
“Oh,” Sour Grapes uttered, enlightened, as she spotted Twilight’s notes, and read over them. “Hmm... You might want to include some way of making sure you see things in chronological order. It looks like what you’ve got here would just give you an information dump, with no order what so ever.”
“Wait... what?” Twilight stammered, as she stood by the chocolate brown unicorn and looked over the magical equations. She quickly levitated her pencil over, and made the proper corrections. “So... How many times have you read ‘Confluence’, anyway?”
“Six or seven. Maybe more. I had to reread some chapters to make sure I understood them correctly. I had to reread chapter six, after I had matured in order to understand Starswirl’s pegasi fetish...” Twilight facehoofed.
“So you know how to read magical equations,” Twilight observed, as she went back over her work, making sure the calibration for chronological order was accurate.
“That’s a given, since that’s Chapter Two,” Grapes deadpanned. Twilight simply gestured to the calculations, and Grapes looked them over, carefully. “That looks much better. This way you see things from beginning to end, rather than just a massive information dump.”
“Oh. Kay,” Twilight said, facing an open space. The purple unicorn could feel Sour Grapes’ warmth at her side, and a slight flutter against her mane from her breath. “A little space, please?” she asked. “This is a delicate spell, and I need to concentrate.”
“Right. Sorry,” Grapes murmured, taking a step back. Twilight stood there, her horn beginning to glow with power.
’Focus. I must focus,’ Twilight thought, as she looked at the candle on her lectern. It was perfect. Uncomplicated. Easily scried. The life cycle of a candle should be a good, simple test of this spell. Behind her, and a bit to the side, however, Sour Grapes was having a slight problem.
’Of all the bucking times to get a tickle in my throat,’ the brown unicorn thought crossly. She struggled valiantly to keep quiet, for Twilight’s sake, even managing to quietly sit on her haunches and cover her mouth with her hooves. Just as Twilight was about to release the spell, Sour Grapes coughed, slightly.
’Sour Grapes’, Twilight thought, then blinked, realizing that she had JUST released the spell! The unicorn wizard tried to reverse, or even stop the magic, but it was too late, and a burst of violet light filled the room.
Twilight saw everything, and as she had specified, she saw it from the beginning. A difficult birth, a casual comment about the scrunched up look on the little foal’s face, playing in the field, school, cutie mark being gained after being horn-led to a bunch of soured grapes. As the events of Sour Grapes’ life played like a film reel, Twilight realized that the spell had worked, despite it missing its intended target. The purple unicorn watched, fascinated as the chocolate brown unicorn’s life played out before her eyes. The filly matured, and was taken by a sour looking old unicorn mare to the Grand Galloping Gala. Twilight could see Sour Grapes grow more and more upset, finally exploding at an arrogant-looking unicorn stallion, before leaving the Gala, throwing away her finery as she left.
“You know, Twilight, if you wanted to know more about me, all you had to do was aaaaaa...” Grapes started to say, then trailed off, as past reached present, then slipped into the future. “Is... Is that... US?”
“You’re seeing this, too?” Twilight asked. It had started easily enough. An awkward question, a cheerful if very amused reply. Then picnics, walks, long talks over magical notes, dinners, and shows. Then, suddenly, after much courage was gathered, one kiss that led to more. Chaste, and sweet kisses, then later kisses that were not chaste at all. Nuzzles, cuddles, whisperers in the dark, and then a startled sounding moan. Interspersed with all of these intimate moments were others. Life lived, arguments had, break ups, make ups, crying, and joy. But the moments that were shared at night seemed to have the most staying power in the memories of the two unicorns.
“I never knew I was so limber,” Sour Grapes uttered sounding quite surprised. “I never knew you were so... kinky... It’s always the quiet ones, I guess.”
“Hey!” Twilight uttered, and the spell finally faded.
“Well, that was entertaining,” Sour Grapes said with a wry grin. “Looks like it worked.”
“Well, yes... But...”
“But what?” Sour Grapes asked. “It was just a vision of an impossible future.”
“Why do you say it’s ‘impossible?” Twilight asked, looking at Sour Grapes. The winemaker shrugged.
“It just is,” Sour Grapes said, with a shrug, as if that explained everything. Twilight was silent for a moment, thinking about one of the more recent past events. The Gala, and how Sour Grapes was treated. “Don’t try to analyze it, Twilight. Maybe I’ll give you the full story about me, but... Best to forget that.
‘If these shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding, but a dream’,” Sour Grapes quoted from one of Stratford Bard’s best loved plays.
“But what if they haven’t offended?” Twilight asked. “True, because we saw that future, it could not happen, exactly, like that, but...”
“W-wait... Are you saying... You’d like to try a relationship with me?” Sour Grapes said sounding astounded.
“Yes. Yes I would. I’m comfortable around you, and I never have to simplify anything I’m talking about with you,” Twilight said.
“Are you sure about this?” Sour Grapes asked. “I’m prickly, snarky, and hard to get along with... You don’t know me all that well.”
“No, I’m not sure. But I’d love to get to know you better.”
“Oh... Good to know... Also glad to know I’m not the only one who’s nervous about this.” Twilight stepped closer, then gently brushed her lips over Sour Grapes’. The winemaker shivered, blinking, looking into Twilight’s eyes. Sour Grapes took a deep breath, then took the plunge, kissing Twilight with a passion that surprised the both of them.
“Somebody liked what she saw,” Twilight said when they finally parted.
“Maybe. But you were the one who was always initiating the... experimentation,” Sour Grapes observed. “My little mad scientist.”
“My favorite test subject,” Twilight giggled.
“Not yet. I don’t think I’m ready for that yet,” Grapes mused. “Just got to get my head wrapped around the fact that you like me like that, then maybe we can get creative.”
“You’re not the only one who has to wrap their head around the idea of a relationship... But... I can wait. We’ve got time.”
“Yeah. We do.”