Chapter 1 (Mistakes)
“I CAN’T DO IT SPIKE!”
There was the sound of a startled cry, followed by the sound of rushing water spilling out of something. After a series of pattering footsteps began, I realized I had dragged Spike out of one of his seven hour bubble baths.
He appeared in the doorway a few seconds later, sporting a messily tied lilac towel tied sloppily around his waist. Bubbles still clung to his spikes and even through my anger I felt immensely bad.
I attempted to lighten the mood.
“Nice Towel Spikey!” I said with an extremely forced giggle. “Purple suits you!”
Spike wasn’t laughing, in fact he looked borderline furious.
He glanced around the library, obviously looking for something but having no such luck finding it.
After a few moments of extremely awkward silence Spike sighed and cupped his face into his hands.
“I-I thought there was a real problem Twilight!” he muttered through clenched teeth. “I- I thought Discord was back, or t-that Changeling Queen you told me about had come to claim her revenge! I thought you were DYING!”
“Maybe I am…” I moaned, trying as hard I as I possibly could to win back his sympathy. I placed my fore hooves over my head and let out a long sigh, collapsing to the ground.
“What is your actual problem anyway?” Spike asked, mustering up as much genuine concern as he could possibly manage.
It wasn’t enough.
“LIFE IS MY ACTUAL PROBLEM!” I snap! “LIFE, LIFE, AND MORE LIFE ON TOP OF THAT!”
Spike stopped shaking his head and looked at me, I could see in his eyes that now, he was defiantly worried for my sanity…again…. I unwrap my fore hooves from around my head and gesture towards a pile of books to my right. Spike goes over to investigate and lets out a squeal of surprise.
“Great and good Rarity, Twilight!” he whispered in obvious awe. “Th-these are Equestria Lore books! Do you even understand how old these are! They detail everything and I mean everything about the history of Equestria! Who gave you these?”
I sigh for about the umpteenth time that night and walk over to Spike’s side. Nudging one of the books with my nose I feel the particles of dust float onto the floor and form a sheen. I would have to clean that up later.
On top of everything else I had to do.
“Princess Celestia sent them to me.” I told Spike grimly. “She said it would probably be good if I could study them, to learn more about Equestria, you-know because now I’m an Alicorn…”
Spike shook his and patted me on the back of the head. “No need to shove your new social status down my throat.” He told me. “I can plainly see your two beautiful wings that you can hardly use!”
I glared at him angrily, wanting more than anything to slap him as hard as I could, but maybe I was being too crabby, maybe he didn’t actually deserve a slap…
My thoughts were interrupted by Spike voice, asking even more questions that I didn’t really care to answer.
“You still haven’t told me what the problem is Twi!” he moaned lashing his tail angrily against the floor.
“Isn’t it OBVIOUS?” I shrieked.
Without waiting for Spike to sarcastically utter: “No,” I carried on.
“The words are so old! I don’t understand any of the language and there is too much on one page!” I groaned hitting one of the books as hard as I could with every point I made.
“I can’t take any of the information in and I’m only on THE FIRST CHAPTER OF THE FIRST BOOK!” I shrieked now on the floor again.
“Oh come on Twi, it can’t be that bad now can i-“
“YES IT CAN!”
I lashed out and kicked the wall behind me with my hind hooves. As my hooves made contact with the wall I heard the worrying rattle that indicated that something was about to fall and surely enough Spike was there sliding across the floor, determined to save the day and be a hero.
“What fell?” I asked carefully, too scared to look for myself.
“Oh nothing important!” snapped Spike bitterly. “Just the picture of you and YOUR FIVE BEST FRIENDS!”
I winced instinctively and whirled around. Spike had just managed to catch it thank goodness, it was teetering on the end of his small paw-like hands and I realized that things could have been so much worse.
Spike was angry and I mean REALLY angry. I tried to give him a thank you hug but he pulled himself away from me, something he has never done before.
“That was the most pathetic thing I have ever seen you do Twilight!” he snapped. “Almost breaking something so darn special over a petty book and petty words that you can’t read!”
I turned my back to him angrily. “Maybe they deserve it!” I hissed.
“You what?” he cried, obviously disgusted.
“They deserve it!” I shouted, begging to climb the stairs to my room.
Spike didn’t follow, he stood, statue still in the middle of the rug, fizzing with rage.
“How?” he asked slowly, after a long time had passed. It was evident he was trying to not set me off on a rant but was failing miserably.
“HOW?” I roared. “SPIKE ISN’T IT OBVIOUS? IT ISN’T FAIR HOW HARD I HAVE TO WORK AND HOW HARDTHEY DON’T WORK!”
I stopped shouting once I caught a glance at Spike’s terrified face but continued with my bitter lament.
“Rainbow Dash just sits there until a big scary “cloud” comes along, and when she isn’t “Ridding the world of that ultimate evil” she is acting big headed and oh so arrogant!”
“You don’t mean that!” gasped Spike disgusted however, I was intent on ignoring him
“Fluttershy just plays with the animals all day and when she actually has to do something that requires any actual effort, she just cries about it blaming her laziness on “stage fright!”
I was starting to sound vile but I couldn’t stop! I was trying but I honestly couldn’t stop.
“Pinkie Pie? Ugh, don’t even get me started! So immature! So strange and all she ever cares about is a “Good Party” Yeah, so important!”
“Applejack thinks she works hard but picking apples is probably easier than she makes it out to be! Oh, and she has a massive family so they can easily help her!”
“Who have I not mentioned… oh yeah Rarity! Don’t even get me started on Rarity! She just lo-“
“STOP IT!”
Spike’s temper had finally combusted when I mentioned Rarity’s name and in all honesty, I’m glad it did because who knows what I would have gone on to say next.
“THAT IS IT! TWILIGHT!” he screamed, his face turning a rather unpleasant shade of red.
It was then when I realised I had gone too far, much too far. It’s one thing to get angry at yourself and take things out on your own belongings but to go off the rails Pinkie-Pie style at your friends for something they can’t control is rather pathetic.
I dragged myself the rest of the way up the stairs, not feeling completely sorry for what I had said because I still believed it had some truth, maybe not as much as I had made out but there was still some truth for sure! I faintly heard Spike shuffling around downstairs and knew he was getting into bed himself. I contemplated going down to apologize, but it was too early, Spike was still utterly disgusted with me and so he should be.
I slid over to the window and gazed outside, you could see most of Ponyville form this window and it wasn’t very pleasant to see the houses of the “friends” whose whole livelihoods I had just slammed into the ground. Everything looked beautiful, wonderfully tranquil and more so than usual.
Because of the moon.
It looked absolutely beautiful, suspended in the sky, cascading a ghostly light down onto the entire village. It looked a lot grander than usual too its calming demeanour causing me to smile even though I still felt so bitter
“Good work Luna…” I whispered, feeling my eyes start to well up.
“I’m really, really sorry…”
I decided that it wouldn’t be very pleasant to stay up any longer in my current mood, so I crawled under the covers of my bed and waited for sleep to do me a favour and take me in for a while.
“You are really, really sorry are you?”
There is someone in my room.
Not Spike.
Someone else.
“Are you sorry Twilight Sparkle?”
And they know my name.
I pull the covers tighter over myself and begin to quiver, feeling more scared than I have in a very long while.
“Do not be afraid Twilight Sparkle! I do not intend to hurt you!”
(Well isn’t that reassuring…)
“I only intend to teach you a lesson…”
This rather sinister statement brings me to my senses.
“SPIKE!”
To my greatest surprise, almost as soon as I had screamed for him, I felt Spike’s presence next to my bed. Any grudges from last night had long since dissolved into the air. I was still buried deep within my bed sheets and quite frankly didn’t have a flying feather what was going on. I was still shaking really violently, despite telling myself that if Spike was ok… then maybe the intruder wasn’t too aggressive. In fact after a while, the two erupted into a whole conversation of unintelligible whispering!
I felt the covers quiver around me and let out a pathetic squeal, only to find myself face to face with Spike.
“Hey, hey!” he whispered, stroking my mane comfortingly in an attempt to calm me down.
“It’s ok! It’s only Luna! She wants to talk to you that’s all!”
“Luna?”
“Yeah, it’s fine Twi I promise, now stop shaking!
I slowly began to lift the covers off my head, when I heard the tone and sound of the intruder’s voice properly for the first time:
“Thank you for the comments about my moon Twilight Sparkle! It means a lot to me.”
I whip the covers completely off myself knocking Spike onto the floor in the process.
“Luna!” I cry, a mixture of relief and confusion plaguing my voice. “Why are you here it’s the middle of the night, I was sleeping!”
Luna face hinted at a smile, before returning to the elegant and formal expression that I had come to know so well.
“Like I said, I have come to teach you a lesson.”
I felt my blood run cold and grimaced as my heart dropped into my stomach.
“I apologized Luna!” I protested, moving shakily into a bow of respect. “I genuinely am sorry! I said some horrible things last night that were terrible beyond belief and I know that I was in the wrong!” But please jus-“
“ENOUGH!”
For the second time in a very short space of time, I found myself being cut-off mid-sentence and silenced by a raised voice. I was beginning to realize how horrible of a pony I had become and felt my eyes filling with tears again…
The silence that followed clung on to the air like thick poison, refusing to drop or disappear. It was as if I was being smothered by the awkward sensation that filled every inch of my room.
It was Spike who broke this horrible silence.
“Luna, gr-great Luna, just tell Twilight what her punishment shall be… so she can get it over with and…forgive herself…
As brave as the exterior Spike was showing was, I could really tell how amazingly scared he felt. Even so, it was absolutely nothing compared to the lingering dread that I was feeling whilst waiting for Luna to deliver my punishment.
After what seemed like an eternity, Luna spoke:
“Princess Celestia and I have agreed on your punishment Twilight Sparkle. Due to the absolutely dire way you spoke about your friends, a thing that a true princess should never even consider doing, your punishment will be as such: For five nights, every time you fall to sleep, you will transported into the mind of one of your friends. You will see everything. What they worry about, their main goals and most importantly, what they think of everybody else.”
I just sit on my bed, utterly gobsmacked at what Luna is instructing me to do, go into my friend’s minds? See what they really think of me, of each other? Discover their true worries and unearth all the things they have decided not to tell me? This seems so… wrong… so preposterously wrong but, if Celestia has instructed me to do this then I know I must.
“Wait!” Spike pipes up from the floor, where he now lies in a crumpled heap amongst the bed sheets. “I’m going to!” he announces boldly. “I can’t have Twilight do something so potentially crushing without me there to help her!” I leap to Spike’s side and go to hug him with my fore hooves, this time, he doesn’t object.
Luna smiles for longer this time before nodding in agreement and readying herself to leave.
“Remember Twilight!” she begins to warn me. “Make sure you remember exactly what you said about your friends, when you are searching through their minds!”
As suddenly as she had arrived, Luna was gone.
I nudged Spike’s cheek with my nose in great appreciation.
“I super love you!” I whisper as he nuzzles me back.
“Good replies Spike looking pleased with himself. “That’s good.”
“Anyway!” I begin, a smirk tugging at my face. “The only real reason you wanted to come with me was so you could plunge yourself into the mind of Rarity, am I right?
Spike laughed shyly and began to blush violently.
“Right-o!” he exclaimed with a wink.
