Chapters It was that time of the week again. The girls, minus Rainbow (who was always a no-show anyhow), were on their way to the local spa. Since their lives had gotten busier, it felt like each week had been longer than the last, and in consequence, it felt as if they hadn’t done this in far too long.
Twilight looked at her pack of friends walking along with her to the spa, and did a mental head count. Let’s see, there’s Fluttershy, there’s Pinkie, there’s Applejack… where in the hoof is Rarity?
This seemed absurd. Rarity had always been the most punctual of the five. She was always the first one to show-up outside of the library. She never missed a spa day; that she was not here was suspicious.
Maybe she’s already down there waiting for us, Twilight mentally reasoned. For the moment, she pushed the thought out of her mind as she tried to make small talk with her friends. They were unusually quiet. Even Pinkie had always been going on about something or other, but it seemed even they had noticed Rarity’s absence and had been thinking about it too.
Just as she was about to ask, Pinkie confirmed: “Wow, where’s Rarity? She’s usually way ahead of us. I mean, she’s more than a head, wow, that’s such a weird word, you ever think? Like, a- head , is it kind of like abre—“
“Y-y-yes, I was just thinking about that myself,” Twilight cut her off.
“What, the word, or Rarity?” the mare with her head in the clouds asked.
“Rarity,” Twilight said, flatly. “Anyway, you guys know where she is?”
“I dunno,” Applejack answered. “I thought she’d meet us along the way, but I reckon she’s been held up or somethin’.”
“Oh my,” Fluttershy meekly piped-up. “You don’t suppose she got delayed, do you? Like, is she too busy? Oh, I really hope we didn’t pressure her into—“
“Flutters, if anyone’s had to be pressured into going to the spa it’s not Rarity,” Applejack responded. “Matter of fact, I think she’d be the one to pressure someone else into going, like with Rainbow.”
“And we all know how that turned out,” Twilight said knowingly. “Anyway, last time I saw her she was at the Boutique.”
“Was Spike there? I know he likes to hog her attention or help her out with stuff all the time,” Applejack said.
“I don’t think so. I think Spike is still working at the library.”
The girls walked on in silence. Twilight wondered, Would Rarity want us to get started without her? We’ve never had to do that, but I’m afraid it would hurt her to see we didn’t wait for her.
Ultimately, the girls agreed that since it was what they came for anyway, it would be better to get started without her. Some time after arriving, the four were relaxing in the hot tub, just as a frazzled Rarity burst into the spa.
“I’m, I’m,” Rarity tried to catch her breath.
“Runnin’ pretty dern late,” Applejack deadpanned.
“—so sorry girls – I didn’t think my little errand to the mall would take so long. While I was there, some klutz caused a power outage and I got stuck—“
“IN THE ELEVATOR?” the girls asked in shock.
“…on the escalator!”
Rarity recounted her horror story as the girls facehooved and sighed. “So there I was, going up the escalator and waiting patiently when all of a sudden…”
Don't read this, or YOU WILL LOSE IT!!!!
It was no secret to anyone who knew her that Rainbow Dash had a mean prankster streak a mile wide. A little-known fact was that she had been born with only one color in her mane and tail, then as her propensity for pranks grew, more streaks of color were added. So to say she had a mean prankster streak was something of an understatement.
Today, she had something especially cruel and unusual planned for Pinkie Pie. She was going to show Pinkie the greatest mind game ever created and—
“HEY RAINBOW DASH!!!!”
Rainbow’s mark interrupted her train of thought as she often did, by dropping out of the clear blue sky with no possible way of having been up there to start with.
“Heh, hey, Pinks.” Rainbow Dash rolled over to get Pinkie Pie off her back and set her plan in motion. As the two stood up, Pinkie’s mouth started up again.
“So, whatcha wanna do today, huh? We could go swimming, and OH even have a party to celebrate going swimming! Or, we could do nothing, and OH we could celebrate that too! Or—“
“PINKIE PIE!”
Desperately trying to collect her scattered brain before the wind picked it up first, Dash began executing her plan. “Wanna play a game?”
“Oh I LOVE games! This one time I—“
“This game is not like any game you’ve ever played,” Dashie impatiently cut her off. “The rules are simple. You cannot think of the game, and if you do, you lose and you have to announce it to everyone.”
“Soooo…” Pinkie Pie allowed it to swirl in her sugar-coated cranial neurons before responding, “The game is about not thinking about the game, so if you think about the game, you lose, and if you lose, you have to announce it, which makes everypony else lose too?”
“Yeah-huh,” Dash tried to repress a snicker.
“COOL! Oh, I just lost the game! Oh, I lost it again! Oh, I lost it again! Oh—“
“Pinkie,” it crossed Dashie’s mind that cutting Pinkie off had become something of a habit – no, more like a daily routine bordering on habitual for her – as she continued, “there is a half-hour grace period. You have 30 minutes to forget about it. If you still remember it, you’ve lost it again, and gotta say it.”
Pinkie fell silent for a moment, a rare phenomenon for the sugar-crazed pony. She pulled a stopwatch out of nowhere and set it, “…starting now !”
The two walked together in silence back to Sugarcube Corner, unable to think of a better place to go while this mulled inside Pinkie’s extraordinary mind. Dash, on the other hoof, smiled devilishly to herself, hoping she would drive Pinkie Pie up the wall and begging for mercy for the LAST time she—
“I LOST THE GAME!” Pinkie loudly and proudly announced to Sugarcube Corner. Had it really been a half-hour already?
And then, because Pinkie didn’t sound upset at all at having lost, it dawned on Rainbow Dash that her prank had backfired. Pinkie would never stop because she would never forget the Game; Rainbow forgot that she didn’t play to win anything, she just played to play and took losing very well. She could only bury her face in her hooves as she wondered inwardly, What have I done?
Rainbow carefully balanced a slice of white bread on one hoof as she held a knife with her opposite wing to slather it up with peanut butter. This is gonna be the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich EVER, she thought.
Rainbow would never admit to it, but she loved peanut butter. She would rarely admit to loving anything if it had nothing to do with flying, stunts, or the Wonderbolts. Perhaps her love for the spreadable edible was what gave her such a good memory – it was only that she was selective about what she remembered or cared about. Anytime she volunteered to help Applejack, she would then take a nap that conveniently overlapped with the time she was supposed to help AJ, after which she would remark, “Oh I remembered, I was just busy… napping. I have a very busy schedule, you know.”
Anyway, Rainbow carefully licked the dull butterknife with which she spread her peanut butter. On the other slice of bread, which lay on her plate, she had already smeared zap apple jam, her reward for the one time three weeks ago that she did bother to help Applejack out.
Rainbow had licked the butterknife with which she had spread the jam, but that time she didn’t forget she did that. This time, she did.
It only hit her as the gears turned in her head that she had just stuck the knife she had just licked back into the peanut butter jar.
She wasn’t in her own kitchen. She was in Sugarcube Corner. Pinkie also used peanut butter to bake, and she would be back any minute.
In a panic, Rainbow hid the jar and rushed to the marketplace to replace the peanut butter jar. Pinkie was just returning as she came back, but didn’t seem to suspect a thing as Rainbow put the suspiciously-full jar of peanut butter where the other one had been. She ate her sandwich without incident, and Pinkie remained none the wiser. When Pinkie Pie wasn’t looking, Rainbow tore a little bit of the label off and put it back where she hid it. Now there would be no mistaking it, and Rainbow mentally argued Pinkie would never look there.
The days came and went. As fond of peanut butter as she was, Rainbow was often put-off at the thought of having another sandwich as she knew she would have to use that jar, and other times she was tempted to use the fresh new one she had bought from the marketplace. She naturally didn’t like it when her saliva made its way to the peanut butter jar, which it had.
Finally, her jar was almost empty. Rainbow once again sat making her sandwich in Sugarcube Corner as Pinkie was out to buy some more flour for the day’s baking. The two were here today to make cupcakes; rumors went around as to what Pinkie’s secret ingredient for cupcakes was, and as a joke Rainbow had told those curious that she used, “the blood of the innocent.” It was now a private in-joke between the two, as their affectionate name for the red dye.
Rainbow finally got the last dregs of peanut butter out of the jar using a rubber spatula, and threw the nearly-clear jar into the trash… just as Pinkie Pie walked in through the door.
Pinkie looked at the trash can, then back at Rainbow, then back at the trash can. She recognized the slightly-defaced label, and realized Rainbow had used it for her sandwich.
“That’s my personal jar of peanut butter,” the pink one said. “You know I eat it right out of the jar using the same spoon, right? That’s why I have my own.”
Twilight liked to think of herself as a rational pony. Sure, there were some things she knew she could never understand – Pinkie Pie, for example – but she figured, as long as science marched onward, all mysteries would be revealed in time. There was no sense in worrying herself over something she couldn’t do.
This of course only came after her coronation, by which time she had fretted over Pinkie Pie’s inexplicable hold on reality and being visited by a doppelgänger of herself from the future.
She also liked to think that because she was rational, she could see when and why others were not. Being able to think logically, she was able to see through the things that others feared, which they usually feared because they could not understand, but she could.
So naturally, when she received a strange letter in the mail, she did not worry about it. She had strange things in her junk mail all the time; this one foretelling doom and gloom for those who were too unwise to send it along was just one of them.
She did notice other ponies sending strange letters to each other more frequently of late, usually letters that stressed the urgency to be passed along. These “chain letters”, as they were apparently called, often told horror stories of previous recipients of the letters who did not do as instructed, and success stories of those who did.
This particular letter implored her to copy and send it to seven others to meet her soulmate by Friday, or else sprain an ankle, lose her job and go to prison the next day (in that order). “This is so scary ‘cause it actually WORKS!!!!” ended the letter.
Naturally, Twilight scoffed. She tossed the letter and went about her day.
The next day, Twilight tried to get out of bed. For some reason, the sleep wore especially heavily on her today, so in her haste to get up and face the day, she stumbled so hard she sprained her front right ankle. The letter briefly flashed into her mind as Spike helped her nurse her injury, but she quickly pushed the thought out of her mind.
But once she received a letter signed from the former owner of the library that effective immediately her employment was over, she began to wonder if the letter was true. Dejectedly, she packed her and Spike’s things and headed over to Rarity’s to crash.
Along the way, Twilight tried to fly, but accidentally caused a cross-eyed pegasus to crash. Mayor Mare was on the scene and instantly punished Twilight with up to five years in prison and a 250,000 bit fine.
Panicking and swearing she would appeal, as she rode away in the police wagon she tried to think back to all of her studies of Equestrian law… and then she remembered the chain letter. Had it all been true?
As she screamed her last free scream, she woke up with a start in a cold sweat in her bed. It had all been a dream; she quickly roused Spike from his sleep to send a letter to the Night Mare to inquire as to whether this was a joke, but Luna would later reply that it wasn’t she who had perpetrated the dream…
Meanwhile, a certain spirit of chaos grinned as he remembered his adventures in slumberland the previous night, sipping his morning tea with Fluttershy.
Could one expect a day in Ponyville to be any less than perfect? One could go through the motions of mentioning Celestia’s sun shining high in the sky and the birds singing and the townsponies going about their business, but to do so would be redundant. Such details would only be worth mentioning if they did not follow this strict protocol of perfection.
Today, they did – at least initially. But it was not to last.
A frantic Lily raced into the town square amid the stares of her fellow citizens as she screamed, “The horror! The HORROR!” repeatedly and ran aimlessly around. To see Lily so upset was nothing new, but it had been awhile since her last episode. Her therapist had even given her a prescription and that seemed to work just fine, but today the pills were hardly enough.
So a perceptive Bon-bon, who was just then passing through the town square, knew there was trouble, and Lily’s reaction to whatever terror was coming to pass might have been justified.
“Slow down, Lily,” said a concerned Bon-bon, catching her as she made another lap around the square. “Slow down, take a deep breath, and tell me exactly what’s going on.”
“Oh, it’s terrible!” Lily wept. “The end is here!”
Bon-bon tried to ignore the feeling that she was wasting her time by asking what would drive Lily to make doomsday proclamations, but she didn’t have time – a massive explosion sounded across the town, and the ponies (as they often had before by this point) made their usual flight to safety in hiding. Even as panicked as an observer might describe them to be, in reality they knew these kinds of things were commonplace and even routine since Twilight Sparkle moved to town. Trouble seemed to follow that mare everywhere she went. By now, they had shelters set-up and procedures in place – there were even drills done occasionally, as a schoolhouse might in anticipation of tornadoes.
Incidentally, the explosion seemed to come from the library where she lived. Another explosion followed, as trees were uprooted and landed perfectly upside down as though their leaves merely migrated to the roots, leaving the naked branches behind. Entire houses were also flipped-over in like manner, as the unseen though obvious cause moved through town.
Twilight couldn’t stop herself. She had been going about her day when she noticed something out of place. Her brief investigation led her to conclude that reality was starting to unravel; nothing made sense to her anymore.
Naturally, the other Elements of Harmony wasted no time in trying to corral the rampaging princess, and despite the blood, sweat and tears involved, the procedure was soon complete. From her previous experiences with inadequacy and failure, her friends had been able to find ways to calm her down or at least restrain her.
That done, the quintet headed for the library where the chaos had started. There, they saw Spike standing dejectedly with a broom in one claw as he stared at the gaping wall his surrogate sister had left. He spoke before they could.
“Know how she tends to sweat the small stuff?” he deadpanned.
The girls nodded.
“Well, today, she tried to make ramen noodles and found they didn’t come with the flavor packet.”
Rainbow Dash considered herself a careful pony. Although her preferred use of time was blasting through the skies at neck-breaking speeds, she did take care to keep herself and others safe. Her knack for loyalty meant that she would put them first ahead of her latest stunt if she had to, and she would always accept responsibility if anything went wrong on her watch.
Such was the situation facing her now. She stared at the broken ceramics, the carefully-tended soil scattered across the road, and the plant that now hung from a lamppost.
Her knack for safety had certainly failed her this time. She had wanted to swoop in and make a spectacular entrance to precede her rather mundane activity of baking with Pinkie Pie, but she swooped in too fast and accidentally knocked a flower pot off a windowsill. In fact, her wake was so intense, the pot was dashed across the ground and the plant, if such a thing were possible, bounced off the ground and now hung from a lamppost.
She could work-out the physics of bouncing flowers with Twilight later. Right now, she had to do the responsible thing.
I gotta get the heck outta here , she thought initially. Then of course her greater sensibilities took over and she felt she had to find the pony who owned the flower pot. She looked up at the building where it had come from.
Now she had a problem. Which window was it again? I don’t remember – it all happened so fast… She silently reviewed the events of her arrival in her head, and tried to match up the window that previously held the flower pot in it.
She narrowed it down to a corner cluster of three. It had to be one of those windows, but every time her memory tried to say it was one she immediately came up with a reason it was another: It was the corner window… no, no, it was further in, closer to the center of the row, couldn’t have been that one.
Her logic centers were fizzling out, so she felt it would be most prudent to go inside and ask who had a flower pot on their windowsill. Someone in this building oughta know – heck I might even walk right into the pony I’m looking for!
She went inside and noticed a resident heading out the door. “Excuse me,” she asked the egressing elderly mare, “but do you know which window had a flower pot sitting on the sill?”
The elderly mare stopped, and turned around. “That was my window,” she said, sending a streak of guilt through Rainbow’s heart.
“I’m really sorry about this,” Rainbow began, “but I was coming in for a landing and I knocked it out of the window.”
After an awkward pause, she hoped to inject some humor into the situation: “You shoulda seen it, really. I tore that thing up without even touching it! Heh heh, must have been my wake…”
Her smile died as the elderly mare returned a stony gaze.
“Look, I’ll replace it, okay? I even have some bits on hoof right now, lemme just go get ‘em and I’ll be right back, okay?”
Still no answer. The mare’s gaze hardened.
“Ooookay, so you want me to buy you a new one?” Rainbow asked nervously. Still nothing.
“Stay away from my window,” the mare growled at last as she walked out, leaving a baffled Rainbow Dash to ponder just how awkward she felt right now.
It was a quiet day in Ponyville. Such days were rather infrequent for the townsponies’ tastes, so they tended to cherish whatever they could get.
Twilight, for the thirteenth time that week, had just finished organizing the library again. The amazingly lifelike replica of her assistant fell over, clueing Twilight in that Spike had skipped out on this activity (not that she couldn’t be understanding about it at this point) and making her jump.
Suddenly, the real Spike burst in through the front door. “Message from Princess Celestia!” he shouted as he eagerly raced to Twilight gripping the scroll in his claw.
Twilight took the message in her magic and set it aside. Spike blinked. “…you’re not gonna read it, Twi?”
“I… don’t know if I can,” she replied uncertainly. “I’d like to say I look forward to her correspondance, but it’s usually for some important errand, with the fate of Equestria in the balance. Or it could be more tickets to something and I don’t want to go through all that again. I’m starting to get tired of not being able to just write back and forth to her for the sake of being pen pals; there’s just always something urgent going on.”
But by the time she had finished speaking, Spike had left again. Although it was rude of him, and he did often lack tact at crucial moments, she decided not to care at the moment. She stared at the letter for a brief moment, then continued triple-checking her double-checking that the library was in order.
Afterward, she went to the spa with four of her fellow Element bearers, minus the usual no-show, and after the relaxing time she spent there, Equestria’s hero went home and found the letter still sitting on her desk.
She mentally slapped herself with a hoof for thinking it would just disappear. She once again set it aside and found some research to occupy her time.
The rest of the week went much like that day had – she spent her time avoiding the letter as much as she possibly could. All this time, doubt had creeped into her mind and told her if she didn’t open it, it could mean the very undoing of Equestria itself, but then she reasoned the Princess would probably pursue other means of contacting her were it truly urgent.
And then there was always some other reason why this was the best she could do – perhaps she had been taken prisoner and had just barely gotten this letter out in a moment of desperation – and then there was always some other reason why that was so silly (Celestia being the big powerful alicorn she is would not simply be taken prisoner, especially without news eventually reaching Twilight in a form aside from this letter, and the letter itself looked normal, which didn’t suggest a struggle…).
Meanwhile, in Canterlot, a concerned Celestia paced back and forth in her room. She hadn’t expected an immediate response, but certainly Twilight would have replied back by now .
Luna happened by and walked in to join her sister. “Tia,” she began in concern, “what troubles you?”
“I think I’ve wound her up again by sending her a letter,” Celestia sighed. “She must think something is wrong and I don’t blame her for wanting to avoid more trouble… but all I wanted was a good omelet recipe.”
Celestia blinked. She turned the scroll over and saw that the other side was blank. She flipped the paper back to the front and reread it, hoping to comprehend what she was seeing.
It was good to hear from Twilight again. Since her life had gotten busier, she had learned most of the fundamentals of friendship that she could write in a letter and her friends had also taken up her mantle for lessons they learned on their own (or just to let Celestia know they hadn’t learned any thing on their latest outing, as Applejack had once done and would never live down for all her days), Twilight had been writing to Celestia less & less.
Now, it had been almost three months since her last letter. Celestia knew her student was doing just fine in her new life, but she had hoped for more casual correspondance. She loves writing to me, Celestia thought. Surely she knows she can simply write to me anytime about anything she wants, right…?
But that changed today. As Celestia was attending to Day Court, just as a stallion approached and began describing some stuff she couldn’t care less about, she saw a scroll materialize right next to her and felt her heart leap into her throat.
She would know Twilight’s postal style anywhere, and she felt herself get a little giddy. Celestia saw Twilight as her adopted daughter of sorts even though Twilight’s parents were alive and well even at this moment, but she had been suffering from a mild form of empty nest syndrome for some time.
Hence, why she suddenly shot ten feet straight into the air shouting, “WOO-HOO!” after the letter had materialized.
The stallion mistook her approval for Twilight’s letter for approval for his own petition, and after thanking her profusely, ran out of the throne room happier than ever. To this day, no other pony has ever run out of a Royal Court session so happily; it led to a brief upsurge of attendance in the Royal Courts (and double the workload for the poor princesses who had to host them).
Well, now I gotta give him whatever he was asking for, I suppose, she thought dismissively. But nevermind that! Twilight just wrote to me! I can’t wait to read it! She struggled to calm herself down as another pony approached her throne and began to regale her with some more boring ponyfeathers she couldn’t give two hoots about.
Day Court couldn’t have lasted longer if it had been stretched out for ten consecutive eternities. Or at least, that was how Princess Celestia, ruler of the day, felt. But now, Day Court had finally concluded – even at its worst she couldn’t recall a Day Court that was ever so long – and she was free to go back to her chambers and read the latest correspondance from the mare she wished were her real daughter, which she did without further ado.
But now that she had read it, she wasn’t sure if her anticipation and giddiness were worth it. Twilight’s letter read thusly:
Dear Princess Celestia,
I heard you like reading my letters,
so I wrote you a letter about me writing you a letter so you could read my letter while you read my letter.
Your faithful student,
Twilight Sparkle
Author's Note
...I know, I know, I'm horrible at this. XD
Twilight busily swept the broom back and forth across the library floor. The girls would be here any minute. They hadn’t had the opportunity to simply hang-out together in too long; their lives had taken them into too many different directions.
At around the time she expected, she heard someone knock on the door. She opened it to reveal Fluttershy.
“Oh hello, Fluttershy!” Twilight beamed. “Glad you could make it! Please, come in, make yourself at home, the others will be here soon.”
Not one to dispute or even give the appearance of disputing, Fluttershy entered and sat on the couch without a word. Before long, the two heard another series of knocks at the door, which turned out to be both Rainbow Dash and Applejack arriving simultaneously, the latter towing a cart on which she stowed a cooler loaded with apple cider.
As usual, Twilight greeted them both cordially and invited them in to sit down. Applejack left her hitched load at the door and had Rainbow’s help bringing it in; the duo set it down on the floor next to the couch.
For a time, the four did nothing beyond listening to Twilight sweep the floor, a task she may have ordinarily reserved for her adoptive little brother Spike who was in Canterlot visiting her family. Her own reason for not going was that she had just been there the week prior; her responsibilities as a princess kept her busy and forced her to schedule her use of time differently from Spike’s, and she needed him for simple caretaking responsibilities for any time she wasn’t there, which caused their schedules to drift apart.
Finally, both Rarity and Pinkie Pie showed-up, arriving together much as Rainbow and Applejack had, and now with everyone there Twilight served the tea and cookies she had made (or in the case of the tea been making) in anticipation of seeing the other five.
Recently turned into an action bookworm, Rainbow Dash scanned the shelves in search of the latest Daring Do novel. Finding it, she opened to the first page, squeeing like a six-year-old fangirl inside, and settled down onto the couch. Rarity and Pinkie Pie engaged in a quiet game of cards using the coffee table, while Applejack and Twilight also found books of their own to read. Fluttershy simply watched Rarity and Pinkie play.
Everything was going as planned. From here, the six simply basked rather silently in each other’s company, the only noises to be heard coming from pages being turned, cards being used, drinks being sipped or cookies being eaten.
Eventually, Twilight excused herself to the restroom, and half an hour later Rainbow followed suit. Fluttershy apparently did so without anyone knowing she had, which explained why she seemed to be holding it in for the whole evening.
As the time passed, the six munched on their cookies and drank from their cups. Each mare alternately drank tea (chamomile) or the cider Applejack had brought for the occasion, neither exclusively. Much of it was consumed before anyone realized it.
Rainbow was already on Chapter Six when she realized her own mug of cider was empty as she went to take a sip. She couldn’t quite see the cooler from where and how she sat, so she elbowed Applejack and asked, “Hey, we got any more cider?”