The One and Only Twilight Sparkle

THINGS WERE GOING well for Twilight and I; she had been here for almost a whole week and she hadn’t been discovered. I knew that my luck was running out and I had to figure out what to do.

I was in my 5th block classroom waiting for the dismissal bell to ring when, like I normally do, I began to worry. What if someone saw Twilight and called animal control? What if someone broke into the house? What if—

KZZT KZZT KZZT

The extremely annoying sound of the dismissal bell rang out. I grabbed my backpack and ran to the bus landing. I shouldered and shoved my way through the crowd of students waiting for their bus to arrive. The people I passed were shouting and talking about a weird animal, so I feared the worst. In the front of the crowd was… nothing but my bus.

“Someone, grab it!”

“Huh?” I turned around and the entire crowd stared at me.

“It can talk?” shouted a girl with a southern accent.

“It has a pair of wings! What cruel person would glue such a thing onto a poor defenseless animal?” said a fancy-sounding girl with clothes to match.

“I wonder if it likes cupcakes?” asked a girl in bright pink clothes.

“I bet even with its wings it couldn’t beat me in a race!” cockily proclaimed another girl in a somewhat scratchy voice. She was wearing the school’s track-and-field uniform.

“I-um, I wonder if it likes carrots?” whispered a shy girl hidden behind the group.

“Hold on, a pegasus? They don’t exist! It’s not scientifically possible! You are not scientifically possible!”

That last girl’s voice sounded familiar. I could feel the metaphorical gears grinding in my head, trying to figure out who that voice was. Suddenly I realize…

“Twilight?!”

“Mark, you’re finally awake!”

“Hm? Oh, Twilight, it’s just you.” I looked at the calendar. Saturday, that means both my parents are at work.

“Can’t I sleep in for once?” I say.

“No, you told me to remind you that you had friends coming over today.”

“Huh? Oh no, my friends!” I stood up and covered my face. “Ugh, we’ve been planning to meet up for weeks now, so I can’t just tell them not to come! But they can’t come, what if they see Twilight, how will they react? Oh my goodness, my parents said I can’t have anyone over, oh no, oh no, oh no!” I began frantically pacing. Everything was rapidly going bad. I headed down the stairs and made myself some coffee.

“I think I can help. When I have a question that I don’t know the answer to, I just follow a few steps.”

“Okay… So, what’s the first step in this scientific method of yours?”

“How did you know what it was called?”

I sighed. “Twilight, what experiment could we possibly design that could help with this?”

“Well, uh… Umm…” she began. “Well, there's a different way, too. First, we need to state the problem.”

“That’s easy, I promised my friends they could come over, but they can’t.”

“No, no, we have to be more specific. What’s the problem with that?”

“My parents wouldn’t like it if the house got trashed.”

“Well, then we should just be careful. Is there another problem?”

“Yeah… We can’t let anybody see you. Talking lavender unicorn girls aren’t exactly commonplace here.

“Aww… Okay, well that’s a starting place… Hm. Let’s see. Well, what if I became like you?”

“My friends would question why I had a kid here.”

“Hm. That might be a problem. What if you said you were watching me for my parents?”

“Like a babysitter? That could work.”

Twilight seemed visibly offended. “I’m not a baby!”

“Okay, okay! Sorry! You still get what I mean, though, right?”

“Yeah…”

“We still need to come up with alternatives, thought, just in case that doesn’t work.”

“Well, I could always use magic to make myself invisible…”

“That’s a great idea!”

“Except it’s really hard and I’d just have to hide the entire time anyway, so nopony bumps into me.”

“That’s… not so great. How hard would it be to make yourself a human?”

“Assuming that’s what you are, not very. I don’t even need to know much about humans; I provide the will, the magic provides the way, up to a certain point.” she summarized.

“That’s… that’s amazing! So it’s like making a wish?”

She scrunched up her nose. “Uh… kinda? Not really. It’s more like channeling thaumic energy so you can will it to do what you want. In that way, it's sort of like molding clay. It’s not intelligent like a genie is; it just does what you tell it to do, no trickery involved. Although you do have to be pretty specific…” she said, trailing off as she noticed me staring at her. “Umm… what’s wrong?”

“You’re… wearing my glasses.”

“Oh, these? Sorry, however I got here apparently didn’t bring my glasses.”

“No, no, you can keep them on if they’re the right prescription. I have contacts.”

“Why does it matter that you know ponies? Er, humans. People?”

“People, and that’s not what I mean by contacts. Contacts are lenses you place on the surface of your eye to correct vision problems. But as soon as I turn eighteen, I’m getting laser eye surgery. The small cost I’d have to pay for that would be nothing compared to the lifetime cost for all the contacts I’d need.”

“That’s… that’s brilliant. Why didn’t we have those back home?”

“I don’t know. Maybe our technologies are advanced in different ways? We have better electronics and things like contacts, but you… ponies… have magic, which in a ton of ways is so much superior. You’re nullifying almost every law of physics with your magic.”

“And what laws of physics would those be?” said Twilight, her eyes lighting up.

“I’ll tell you later, Twilight, but we should really see if that spell works first. You do know the spell, right?”

“Yeah, the adaptable transformation spell. It’s one of the only spells written by Starswirl the princess would let me learn. Something about time loops and temporal paradoxes... Anyway, all I need to do is name the species I want to become and have a general picture of what they look like, and the magic will fill in the details… to a certain extent. I will also have no idea what I’ll look like.”

“Hmm… So you’re sure this will work?”

“Yes, it may.”

“That’s… not a clear answer.” I said.

“What I mean is, I’ve never, uh… cast the spell before. I know a lot about how it works though. It’s perfectly safe. I just don’t know if I have enough magic to pull it off.”

“Well, it’s worth a shot, right?”

“Yeah, I guess. So… should I try it now?”

“Sure.” Her horn lit up. “Wait. How will you cast the spell to change back after you become a human?”

“It just wears off after a while.” she says, smiling.

“Oh, and one more thing.” I say.

“Yes?” she says, tapping her hoof.

“Can you create clothes? It’s basically taboo to be naked in public as a human.”

“But this property is owned by your family!” she says.

“You get what I mean.”

“Fine… yes, I can, although they won’t necessarily look good. They’ll fit, though.” When she finished talking, her horn began to glow, wrapping herself in an aura of lavender energy. Suddenly, she was a young girl, wearing a t-shirt and jeans. “Hmm… What are these?” she said, examining the garments of clothing.

“They’re a cotton t-shirt and denim jeans. They’re quite common casual clothing here.”

“Really? Hm. They are pretty comfy.” she says. “Now… how do I walk with these things?” she asks, looking at her feet, examining them carefully.

“It’s quite easy. You put one foot in front of the other—”

“This isn’t time for Hearth’s Warming Eve songs, Mark.”

“Wait, that exists in your world?” I shook my head. “Nevermind that. You just move your legs and feet like this,” I say, demonstrating a walking motion.

“But how do you stay balanced without a tail?”

“I think our leg muscles do that automatically. You might want to hold onto something until you get the hang of it, though.” I say, looking at her apprehensively as she tries to stand up.

“Hey… this is kind of like how Spike walks. I remember him falling a lot a few weeks after he started walking.” She looks at her hands. “And these look like his claws, too. Why do humans look so much like baby dragons?”

“Wait. You have dragons in your world?” I quickly rephrase that as, “You know a baby dragon personally?”

“Yes, he’s like a little brother to me. He’s six years old since he hatched. Princess Celestia takes care of him, and since I’m her student, I see him a lot.”

“You’re the student of a princess with a baby dragon as a little brother?”

“Yes, I just told you that.”

I sighed. “All right, all we can do now is wait until my friends get here.” I sit down on the couch. Twilight managed to awkwardly shuffle over to the couch, supporting herself with the table and armrest, and she sat down beside me.

“When are they supposed to get here, anyway?” she asks curiously.

“I’m not sure exactly; it should be pretty soon.”

Suddenly, I hear the doorbell ring. “Oh, boy. They’re here.” Well, it’s now or never.

“Showtime, Twilight.”