The Moon's Apprentice

Chapters

Chapter One - The First Clue
Chapter Two - A Kindred Spirit
Chapter Three - Growing Up
Chapter Four - A Small Problem
Chapter Five - Navigator
Chapter Six - An Unexpected Surprise
Chapter Seven - The Town Drunk
Chapter Eight - The Longest Night - Part One
Chapter Nine - The Longest Night - Part Two
Chapter Ten - The Longest Night - Part Three
Chapter Eleven - The Longest Night - Part Four
Chapter Twelve - A Full Crew
Chapter Thirteen - From the Early Log of Captain Sparkle
Chapter Fourteen - Darker Matters - Part One
Chapter Fifteen - Darker Matters - Part Two
Chapter Sixteen - The Moon - Part One
Chapter Seventeen - The Moon - Part Two
Chapter Eighteen - The Moon - Part Three
Chapter Nineteen - The Moon - Part Four
Chapter Twenty - The Long Journey - Part One
Chapter Twenty One - The Long Journey - Part Two
Chapter Twenty Two - The Elements - Mona
Chapter Twenty Three - The Elements - Ascension
Chapter Twenty Four - The Elements - Magic
Chapter Twenty Six - The Æthereal Realm
Chapter Twenty Seven - Sunset Shimmer
Chapter Twenty Eight - Perpendicular Perspectives - Between Rivals
Chapter Twenty Nine - Perpendicular Perspectives - Between Sisters
Chapter Thirty - Perpendicular Perspectives - Between Enemies
Chapter Thirty One - Perpendicular Perspectives - Between Friends
Chapter Thirty Two - Perpendicular Perspectives - Between…
Chapter Thirty Three - Among Friends - Part One
Chapter Thirty Four - Among Friends - Part Two
Chapter Thirty Five - Peace and Quiet
Chapter Thirty Six - Date Night in Las Pegasus
Chapter Thirty Seven - Outside Opinions - Part One
Chapter Thirty Eight - Outside Opinions - Part Two
Omake
Chapter Thirty Nine - A Night to Remember
Chapter Forty - HD 9986
Chapter Forty One - Honesty
Original Oneshot/Prelude - A Dream Fulfilled
Chapter Twenty Five - Twilight's Fate

Chapter One - The First Clue

“Hey, mom?” I asked between bites of my breakfast and my parents’ supper.

They’d never managed to adapt to my sleep schedule, unfortunately, although I couldn’t really expect them to. They’d taken me to a doctor once, and she’d said I was legitimately nocturnal, not diurnal. She’d said it was sometimes possible to fix that, but I’d never understood why anypony would want to sleep at night.

And besides, Luna was nocturnal, too, so it worked out perfectly.

Anyway, Mom, Dad, and I were nearly finished eating, and asking for favors worked best just after meals. Or so Luna claimed. I didn’t have enough data yet to draw my own conclusion, but it seemed likely. I knew I was always more amenable on a full stomach.

“Do you think I could go visit the archives tonight?”

My mom looked to Dad for some sort of direction, but he didn’t really seem to care one way or another. That was good news, and even though it was what I’d expected, I had to fight down a squeal of glee. A lot of what Luna had taught me worked far better on one pony than on two.

Mom was always more strict with rules than dad, which is why I’d asked her. If I started with dad, he’d inevitably drag mom into the conversation, and then I’d have had to deal with two ponies.

“I don’t know, Twilight. It’s awfully late already, and Nighty and I are going to go to bed soon.”

“I can go on my own,” I suggested.

I practically knew the way to the archives by heart by this point. Cadance had gotten me permission to use them a season after my first flare, although she’d looked pretty upset when I’d asked. She had said she hadn’t been upset with me, for whatever that was worth.

Anyway, I’d spent so much time in the archives, and I’d had gone there and back so many times, I could probably draw a map completely to scale. But if I took a single wrong turn, even the slightest bit, I had an absurd tendency to get myself hopelessly lost in the castle. I swore that Canterlot Castle had some twisted geometry inside it. Still, there were guards posted everywhere, so it wasn’t like I’d die or anything.

I tilted my head to the side ever so slightly and asked as innocently as I possibly could, “So can I?”

The face my mom made as she struggled against my cute attack was priceless. There were times when I wanted to stay a filly forever. Well, only until I remembered that foals were treated as second-class citizens just because we were a bit younger.

“Maybe…” Mom said hesitantly. “How long were you going to be there?”

“Until you wake up and come get me,” I answered. There was no way I’d ever convince my parents to let me wander dark streets alone, even if we did live in the safest part of Canterlot.

It was silly, really. I knew how to defend myself better than my parents. Luna had taught me a few simple ways to subdue ponies without much magic. There was this place just underneath a pony’s spine where a gentle nudge would induce paralysis until a doctor fixed them who knew how long later. Supposedly it didn’t hurt after the first couple seconds, but I’d never had anypony try to hurt me, so I didn’t really know.

But Mom and Dad didn’t think that mattered at all. Still, I could get them to agree if I stayed in the archives all night. I was sure of it.

“No way, Twilight,” Mom replied. “You’re only eleven. That’s way too young to spend an entire night alone and unsupervised anywhere other than safe at home.”

“Don’t you trust Big Brother?” Okay. Calling Shining ‘Big Brother’ felt really weird, but it was a big plus on the cuteness factor. Mom looked almost as if she’d been struck by my adorableness. Guilt attack successful!

Whenever I was in the castle, I always had somepony looking after me. Whether that be Shining, Cadance, or just a regular guard. The guards were the best because they never bothered me while I was reading, and Cadance and Shining always forgot to tell them not to give me snacks. The kitchens at the castle had everything.

“You can even walk me over, if you want,” I added while Mom was busy mulling it over. “The castle isn’t very far away, and you can leave right after we get there.”

Relenting with a sigh, Mom agreed to take me. Finally, I could spend a whole night in the archives! It was almost pure bliss. That place was magical.

“Thank you so much!” I devoured what little remained of my food, eager to get going, and said, “I’ll go pack what I need!”

Before I could slip out the door, Mom called out, “Don’t forget those books you borrowed last time. The archivists will be wanting them back.”

I nodded and continued my half-mad dash upstairs to my bedroom. The archives technically weren’t a library, but you could take documents out short term if you had permission.

In my excitement, I put a little…well, way too much force into my telekinesis and ripped my closet door right off its hinges. Again.

After checking myself over to make sure I wasn’t going to be in the way of any of the wood shards that had splintered off from the door – I’d once learned the hard way that repair spells take the shortest path to realign the pieces – I cast the spell. The door reassembled back in its proper shape and place, practically brand new.

I tested the door – cautiously this time – swinging it back and forth until I was satisfied that I hadn’t messed up fixing it. Once I was sure everything was functioning properly, I gave a big smile and delved inside my closet. There was nothing quite like fixing something with your own magic, even if what you were fixing was something you’d broken to begin with.

Anyway, I grabbed my saddlebags and took the stairs down two flights to the basement. It was a pretty innocent room with a lot of boxes full of my parents’ random knick-knacks.

I’d once found a box with some outrageous clothing and asked my parents to model them for me. I’d never seen anything so funny, but they’d kept protesting and saying that those clothes had been the cool things to wear when they had been Shining’s age.

I wasn’t that gullible anymore.

Shuffling my way past a few narrow corridors made of boxes, I made it to the back corner of the basement. With a simple spell to sculpt stone – well, it wasn’t actually simple, but it was simple compared to everything else Luna taught me; having magic as my special talent didn’t hurt either – I opened a secret passageway that led straight into the heart of the Canterhorn, the mountain Canterlot was built on.

One of Luna’s first lessons had been the stone sculpting spell so that I could dig my way to the abandoned crystal caverns inside the mountain. It’d taken some time and a lot of guesswork, but I’d eventually broken into one of the tunnels. From then on, I’d done all of my practicing inside the caverns. When things went wrong in there – and they had gone wrong many times – nopony would notice me flaring, and I wouldn’t hurt anypony.

That was why we hadn’t moved to Ponyville quite yet, although, Mom and Dad were looking for a country house. I was still weak enough that Celestia wouldn’t notice me flaring inside the mountain, and the ring still sufficed to suppress my flares. Learning to continuously balance the ring over my horn with telekinesis while practicing magic normally was perhaps the most difficult thing I’d ever been asked to do.

Well, it was the hardest thing besides tracking down the Elements of Harmony. I’d found a few scattered references, but it was suspiciously like somepony had purged the archives of any real information. Honestly, I’d found many more mentions of Luna, but they were all stupid propaganda pieces that made her out to be some terrible, foal-eating monster. Celestia’s work for sure.

I just couldn’t imagine doing something like that to my brother, not even because he keeps distracting Cadance from me somehow. I guess she just likes him more… I’d bet if I were grown up, too, that wouldn’t be the case. Cadance would be all over me.

‘Oh, Twilight. You’re so much more interesting than your brother. I don’t know what I ever saw in him. Let’s go play and maybe even eat a whole cake the size of you for dinner. And then for desert, cookies! We’ve got butterscotch, your favorite.’

Okay, I supposed I felt pretty bad for imaginary Shining. He could have a cookie, too. But just one.

Reaching the bottom of my extremely long inclined plane, I reached the main room – or what I called the main room – of the crystal caves. I’d built rows upon rows of stone bookcases from the walls and floor of the room, most of which were sadly still waiting for actual books. It was almost heartbreaking to see them so wanting.

At least the front fourteen were filled with the books Mom and Dad had bought me. Ever since Luna had become my mentor, Mom and Dad would just buy me any book I asked for my own copy of. In a strange case of reverse tuition, Luna didn’t seem to have any limit on my educational funding. She was, without question, the nicest teacher ever.

I cantered past the filled bookshelves and came to the one that had only a wingful of books on it at any given time. This was the where I put things I borrowed from the archives. Right now there were eight books on it. Half were just books about magic that Luna had said I should read. They were dull and lifeless compared to Luna’s lessons.

Still decent reads, I supposed.

The other half were books I’d hoped to find information about the elements in; they had old legends and myths in them. I’d been hesitant in looking for facts in those kinds of tales, but when I’d asked Luna if I should, she’d rubbed my mane – something I secretly enjoyed more than butterscotch cookies and sometimes even more than magic – and then she’d said I should keep up the good work.

As an added bonus, Cadance would sometimes read those old stories to me, and everything would be just like it’d been before my first flare – everything except that horrid thing I had to wear on my horn in public.

With my saddlebags packed full of the archives’ books, I turned my attention to collecting the magic suppressor Celestia had forced upon me. I never brought it into the house when I could help it. Shining and Cadance always let us know in advance when they were coming over, so I just left it down here to rot when I wasn’t outside or practicing difficult magic.

If I had to choose something in the world that I could never like, it would be magic suppressors, and this one in particular. I looked forward to destroying it in the coming year as a special birthday present from Celestia to me. Some might say I was positively giddy about it.

I grabbed the infernal torus – the most sinister name I’d yet devised for it – and suffered the long march back upstairs. After I exited the barely adult-sized tunnel, I sealed it up behind me and made sure the floor betrayed no sign of the change.

Next was the horrible part. I always wished I could gently place the thing on my horn, but as soon as it went over the tip, the suppressor cut off my telekinesis every time. And my hoof coordination was nowhere near up to the task. That was all dark earth pony sorcery. Luna said I should get used to the idea of being able to use my hooves for things, but it was just so…weird. And apparently earth ponies got tactile feedback, too. Ugh.

Anyway, I could have asked my parents to do this for me, but there was something about somepony else putting my suppressor on me that made the experience infinitely worse, no matter how gently and apologetically it was placed.

I took a few deep breaths to build up my courage. No matter how many times I did this, it always terrified me. The ring passed over the tip of my horn and then clanked down the rest of the way.

And again, as every other time, it felt like a part of me had died. And not just a small part, either, but my very core. It probably wouldn’t have been so bad on somepony like Mom whose special talent had nothing whatsoever to do with magic.

At least I didn’t scream anymore. Maybe I was getting used to it. Just a bit.

Once I was calm again, I made my way upstairs. Mom was already waiting for me at the front door.

“You ready?” she asked.

I nodded, and she opened the door.

I banged my head on the desk I was reading at. I’d been here all night, and I had nothing. This was my biggest research binge ever, and I hadn’t found anything related to the elements. Not even a footnote or a passing reference. I’d even come in with a few leads to follow up on, and I got nothing.

Life just wasn’t fair sometimes. Cadance had been with me early on, but she’d retired to bed and left me in the care of a guard long ago. With the pathetic amount of telekinesis I had access to, I scooted a chocolate chip cookie across the desk and into my mouth.

Some comfort food that turned out to be. I suspected it actually managed to make me more frustrated just from having to work my jaws to chew it.

As much as I hated to admit it, I was tired and worn down, and the sun hadn’t even been raised yet.

But it wasn’t like I had anything else to do. After I swallowed my latest snack – there were well over three dozen more waiting – I hopped onto just my hindhooves and leaned against the table. That put the top of a stack of books I’d had Cadance fetch from the shelves just within my reach.

I knocked the top book off the stack and unsurprisingly let it slip between my hooves. It fell roughly onto the tabletop, breaking the enforced quiet of the archives. I sighed as I got shushed by an archivist from all the way at the entrance while I was near the back.

I cracked open the book I’d dropped to the first page with a hoof. The actual pages I could turn with telekinesis, if only a few at a time, but hardcover books were nightmares to both open and keep open.

I made it to the first page, and what little enthusiasm I had left drained immediately when I saw what it was. How on Equus did I manage to mistake a picture book for a useful reference?

Oh, whatever. There was nothing for it. This was time for cookies. I spent the next twenty minutes in a mindless mush, idly eating cookie after cookie. I was just about to finish off a baker’s dozen when an entirely unexpected voice from behind froze me.

“Hello, my little pony,” Celestia said. “What are you doing here so early in the morning? And with so many cookies, too.”

It sounded like she hadn’t recognized me yet, but I didn’t have a clue how I could possibly escape before she noticed who I was. Luna always told me to work on playing innocent because I was terrible at it, so that wasn’t an option either.

I’d been caught red-hoofed researching the elements. I still hadn’t figured out why Luna thought Celestia wouldn’t want me looking for them, but I was certain I didn’t want to find out what she’d do to me this time if she did.

“J-just reading stories,” I said as calmly as I could, which was not that much under my current circumstances.

“Twilight Sparkle?” Celestia asked. She was not happy I was here. Sure, she didn’t sound like it to a regular pony, but Luna had drilled me too many times in recognizing tiny changes in inflection for me to not notice. I would’ve imagined she’d be better at hiding those changes, but maybe she was letting her guard down around a filly.

“Yes!” I squeaked and turned around in my chair far too quickly. “Hello.”

“Hello,” Celestia echoed back. “What kind of stories are you reading?”

“Oh, um… Just… Fables and myths and stuff.” Oh, Twilight, Luna was right. You really were terrible at this.

“Really?”

Oh, no. Here it came. I was going to be banished. It was probably going to hurt. From what little I knew of the spell, it forcefully broke a pony down into magic and sealed them away somewhere. Not fun!

Maybe she’d send me to the moon to be with Luna. That wouldn’t be so bad.

Finally, the silence broke. “Are you afraid of me?”

What? That was not in the list of things Celestia was allowed to say right now. My brain shut down as it tried to comprehend what it’d just heard, and that certainly wasn’t helping.

Taking my silence as an answer, Celestia said, “I understand. There is no way I can be forgiven for–”

No, no, no. Of all the possible things she could say, this was the last thing I wanted to hear from Celestia. If I were to try my hoof at a metaphor, it’d be like an orphan’s parent coming by to apologize for abandoning her with the orphan’s sibling resting happily at home by the fireplace. And with no intention of taking the orphan home, either.

Interrupting with the only thing my panicking mind could think of, I asked, “Would you read this to me?”

A second passed. All was silent. I opened one eye ever so slightly and saw that Celestia actually looked off balance for once. Celestia. The perfect princess that was always calm and smiling to everypony.

I couldn’t help sighing with relief when Celestia finally answered.

“If that is your wish, I shall happily oblige.” No sooner had Celestia picked up the book I’d opened earlier than her tone had changed entirely. To me, at least. “Twilight Sparkle, would you perhaps care for a different story?”

I would have if you hadn’t said anything. “Why?”

“This one is a picture book. I would assume you prefer more sophisticated books.”

That was just about the best answer I could’ve asked for. It was the most obvious deflection I’d ever heard. Even in my very first lesson from Luna in noticing them, they were never this pathetic. It was insulting, and that was just what I needed. Fear and worry were not emotions I had much control over, but anger, well, anger was another story. Luna knew a lot about anger. How to recognize it. How to control it. How to let it drive you. How to notice when you were losing yourself to it.

As Luna’s apprentice, it was only natural for me to know all that, too.

I puffed out my cheeks and tried to sound as offended as I felt. “So what if I like picture books? Everypony always says a picture is worth a thousand words. So in a way, picture books have more words in them than any other book.”

Her smile genuinely back, Celestia laughed in an overly dignified manner and teased, “You are wise beyond your years, Twilight Sparkle. Maybe we should commission a book of philosophy from you for our archives.”

This time I didn’t have to fake my pout; I wasn’t going to be baited into wasting my time on writing such a book, nor was I so easily distracted. Whatever was in this book was something Celestia didn’t want me to read, and that meant I had to read it. I was about as excited to dig into it now as Shining was around Cadance.

“Can we just start reading?” I asked impatiently.

There was just the slightest hesitation before Celestia agreed. Having no chair around her size, she made one on the spot and sat down next to me. I really didn’t know what she could possibly have been thinking by doing that. If Luna weren’t teaching me, such blatant use of magic probably would’ve hurt me deeply.

Trying my best to pretend like I was pretending not to be hurt – which was really awkward – I turned my chair around to face away from the desk and toward where Celestia had suspended the book between our chairs.

“Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there were two regal sisters who ruled together and created harmony for all the land.”

Oh. So that was why she didn’t want me to read it. Talk about unsubtle. Whoever wrote this wasn’t exactly trying to hide the fact that they were talking about Luna and Celestia. Why not just use their names?

“To do this, the eldest used her unicorn powers to raise the sun at dawn; the younger brought out the moon to begin the night.”

And they also set the sun and moon. That’s a pretty important detail to just skip over. It would be pretty wacky if they just kept raising new suns and moons everyday and left millions of both in the sky. And that part about unicorn powers was just plain false.

“Thus, the two sisters maintained balance for their kingdom and their subjects, all the different types of ponies.”

What about the rest of the world? Does this author think only Equestria mattered or something? Luna had told me she’d managed most foreign relations, which at the time mostly meant, well, war.

“But as time went on, the younger sister became resentful. The ponies relished and played in the day her elder sister brought forth but shunned and slept through her beautiful night.”

That was sort of skipping a few minor details, no?

“One fateful day, the younger unicorn refused to lower the moon to make way for the dawn.”

Unicorn? Those pictures are clearly of alicorns. How dumb was this author? Who wrote this book?

“The elder sister tried to reason with her–”

Yeah, right. Celestia didn’t try to reason with ponies. She always had everything her way.

“–but the bitterness in the young one’s heart had transformed her into a wicked mare of darkness: Nightmare Moon.”

It took everything I had not to explode at that. Luna was not wicked! There was nothing wicked about her at all! Fortunately, Celestia was too preoccupied with the story to notice me scowling next to her.

“She vowed that she would shroud the land in eternal night. Reluctantly, the elder sister harnessed the most powerful magic known to ponydom: the Elements of Harmony.”

My jaw practically dropped off in surprise. That one sentence explained a lot, and it’d come from an awful picture book written by somepony with a mean streak out to get Luna. Terrible. Absolutely terrible.

“Using the magic of the Elements of Harmony, she defeated her younger sister and banished her permanently in the moon. The elder–”

Luna, forgive me. I couldn’t sit there and say nothing anymore.

“Permanently?” my chilly voice said. A filly’s pitch wasn’t exactly good for serious indignity, but I thought I did a decent job.

“Yes, Twilight. That is what it says.” Celestia was obviously confused.

“Isn’t that a bit of an overreaction? I mean, forever? Forever is a long time. What kind of pony would sentence somepony else to an eternal punishment over a temper tantrum? If I were the younger unicorn, I’d be upset, too!”

Celestia tried to interrupt me, but I wasn’t going to let her. I was burning with a righteous fury, and it was blazing out of control.

“Would it really have been so bad to just try it for a week? Let the younger unicorn calm down and then try to reason with her? Would it really have been so bad?”

I was crying by this point, but I barely noticed it as the hair on my face became soaked. I may have been letting some of my own feelings for Celestia slip in…

“The world wouldn’t have ended just from showing the tiniest bit of concern! Did she ever stop to consider how long the younger unicorn must’ve been nursing those feelings? That kind of bitterness doesn’t just flip on and off on command! And – and I don’t think that those other ponies were the real problem, either!”

I got another shush from the archivists and noticed that Celestia had disappeared at some point. Good riddance! She’d even left the book behind. I should have hopped right out of my chair and ran off with it. I really should have. Maybe if I disappeared fast enough, Celestia wouldn’t banish me as well for yelling at her, let alone for defending Luna.

If I were lucky, she’d even think I was just talking about the two of us. If I were lucky.

But nothing was working right. The only thing I could get my muscles to do was to curl me up into a ball and to let me cry myself to sleep with what little comfort my chair could offer.

I awoke to a chaotic haze of emotions about me. The world lacked any real definition other than myself and the comforting wing wrapped around me. Luna didn’t say anything to me. She didn’t ask anything of me. She was just there for me. In my dream, she was softer and warmer than anypony had any right to be. I blocked out the part of my brain rejecting that logical problem and just focused on trying to pull myself together as I collapsed into Luna’s side.

I had no idea how long I sat there. Maybe minutes. Maybe hours. Despite Luna’s best efforts, I’d never managed to figure out how to keep track of time in a dream like I could so intuitively in the real world. Even lessons from her didn’t help much to mark the passing of time. Long or short, I always got so absorbed in them that time flew by unnoticed.

When I was finally stable enough to speak, I apologized, “I-I’m so sorry, Luna.”

“Twilight, I know your dreams, and your emotions are spilling out all over the place. This is not the sadness of a mistake. Somepony hurt you. What happened?”

“I – I had a run in with Celestia…”

Luna pulled me a little closer with her wing. It was moments like this that made me want to be with her in the real world more than anything else; I couldn’t fall asleep like this in a dream, no matter how nice it would be, or even get to that hazy, blissful state in-between.

“One more grievance I must take up with sister dearest,” Luna said venomously. “What did she do to you?”

“I…”

Telling Luna that I’d asked Celestia to read me a book was really uncomfortable, even if it’d made sense in context.

“I was in the archives. She ran into me, and she…said some things. I needed to change the topic, but the only thing I could think of was to ask her to read a book to me.”

“Not terribly appropriate if she knew you – which she does not – but considering your age, a good choice. You don’t need to apologize for that, Twilight.”

I let out a long sigh. I hadn’t realized how nervous I’d been. Reading books with somepony was pretty intimate, and I didn’t want Luna to think I’d forgiven Celestia. For my wounds or for hers.

“That wasn’t it,” I clarified. Then doubling back on myself, I hastily added, “But I didn’t enjoy that at all, either!”

After calming down with a few affection brushes from Luna’s magic helping me, I continued, “It was what was in the book that bothered me. It was the next one I was going to read. It was about you and Celestia and your banishment.”

“Really? I can’t believe my sister would leave such evidence of her duplicity in the archives. But I suppose she has demonstrated an ability to miss things before. Perhaps this is no different. Either way, good work, Twilight. Did you get her to read the entire thing to you?”

I smiled at the praise and nodded, temporarily forgetting my guilt, anger, and sadness. Technically, Celestia hadn’t read the last page, but it probably just said something along the lines of everypony lived happily ever after. A trivially false statement, even if you didn’t like Luna.

Luna couldn’t see my nod, but her wing felt it.

“And did you learn anything interesting?”

“Yeah…” I said. That you were banished by the elements. I couldn’t help but feel that finding that out on my own was some sort of test. “I need to reread a couple books, but I think I finally have a solid lead on finding the elements.”

Luna pulled me out from under her wing with her magic somewhere between gently and forcibly and held me aloft in front of her. She had a huge smile on her face that showed off her strange, sharp teeth. Even I thought Luna should visit a dentist. Ponies weren’t supposed to have teeth like that, and I couldn’t imagine they made it easy to eat.

Luna pet my head just the way I liked it – she’d gotten that down to a science – and said, “Twilight, I cannot express just how proud of you I am. I honestly expected I would need to give you some clues when you were old enough to take trips on your own.”

Yep. It definitely was a test. Or a distraction to keep me from dwelling on being a Flare; I was pretty depressed when we first met, and finding the elements did keep me busy. Either way was fine if I got this kind of praise from Luna.

Just to make sure, I asked, “Do you have any idea where they are?”

Luna’s smile only grew bigger. “The last I saw them was when my sister used them to banish me in the old castle. I have no idea exactly where they went after that.”

“Oh.”

I wasn’t sure if I should be disappointed because Luna didn’t know or happy that my homework hadn’t been taken from me.

Bopping me on the nose, Luna said, “I see you’ve learned your lesson about trusting me – or anypony else – implicitly. Ask questions, Twilight. When you don’t know something, or when somepony seems to be holding out on you, be relentless. Don’t ever forget that, or you’ll turn into my sister: a pony so sure she’s right and so sure she can do no wrong that she can’t even notice her own sister suffering. Or brother, in your case.”

“What? I’m not making Shining suffer, am I?”

Luna hummed to herself and said, “I could have worded that better. I have no evidence to suggest that you’re hurting your brother, Twilight. It was only a general warning.”

I nearly let myself relax from the panic I’d built up, but then I remembered that I’d been apologizing while Luna had been cheering me up. I didn’t want all her effort to be wasted, but I had to say my piece.

“I’m sorry, Luna.”

“There’s that apology again. What ever could it possibly be for?”

Being tickled by magic was making it hard to be as solemn and serious as I should be for an apology.

Laughing uncontrollably under Luna’s attack, I managed to say, “I let my anger get the better of me.” The tickling stopped. “I got so mad at what Celestia was reading to me that I started taking it out on her and defended you.” Mumbling, I added, “And maybe myself a little bit, too.”

“Just that?”

Luna’s face was perfectly neutral. We sometimes made a game of guessing what the other was thinking just from context. Luna only ever had a blank expression when we played that game. As unbelievable as it was, she couldn’t be upset if she was playing with me. Or so I hoped.

“You’re forgiving me? But you said not to–”

Luna gently put a hoof to my mouth and said, “You have every right to be angry with my sister and are old enough to know better than to yell at a tyrant directly. Trust me when I tell you that she has read into whatever you said in exactly the wrong way. Do you know where you were when I entered your dream?”

I rolled my eyes. Even if I was feeling guilty, that question deserved no other response since asking it at all implied I’d been moved.

Luna laughed and said, “All right, I suppose I deserve that. You were in my niece’s company on your way back home. You are safe, sound, and you have done nothing wrong. Even I have times when my anger overcomes me and I make mistakes. That is how I got banished, after all.”

It was at that point that I made the connection and my eyes went wide.

After Luna had told me she’d been banished by Celestia, I’d always assumed that Celestia would want to do it again. The book had only reinforced that thought. I also sometimes worried that this wasn’t Luna’s first attempt to come home after her latest thousand years of banishment, but I never had the courage to ask.

But that was just Celestia being evil. It was the status quo. Nothing at all compared to what I’d just realized.

“She banished you with the elements…” I said dumbly.

Luna’s smile waned, but her eyes suggested I continue.

“And – and you want me to find them before you get back.” There was only one question simple enough for me to make coherent as my mind went at full gallop into a brick wall. “Why?”

“Why? Because you asked for me to help you get rid of your flares. And because of all the ponies I could ask, I should think the one I felt worthy for me to teach would be able and would want to be the one to do so.”

No, that couldn’t be all of it. Not with what Luna had just said about asking questions.

I couldn’t actually make myself mad at Luna, especially considering how long she’d been unfairly jailed, but I had to try to appear to be. Because…Luna would be disappointed if I didn’t.

“So, you’re using me?”

“Exactly!” That wasn’t at all the response I’d expected, cheery or otherwise. “But only in ways that make you stronger.”

I admit I had no idea what the proper response was to that or if there was one at all. I didn’t even know if I was expected to be mad or not. It was just so…different from how Cadance, or Shining, or Mom, or Dad would’ve responded.

On one hoof, Luna had been teaching me. And fantastically, too! But on the other hoof, Luna wasn’t the kind of pony who’d bother pretending to like somepony when she could just find somepony else she did like or who would make a deal with her.

…Huh. It seemed I didn’t have any objections.

I crossed the short distance between the two of us and nuzzled Luna. Even with her sitting down, it was hard to make the act meaningful with our height difference, but I got a loving nuzzle in return anyway.

“Twilight,” Luna whispered without breaking the moment, “I have a voice in Equestria, and that is usually enough, but I will need somepony to be my wings and my magic before long.”

There was only one answer to that in my heart, and I blurted it out without even thinking about the responsibilities before Luna could even ask.

“I’ll do it! I’ll do anything. I want you back so much. I want to go stargazing with you and see the real stars for once, to be able to see you without going to sleep first. It’s lonely in the real world. Books just aren’t enough company, and – and nopony else is awake at night.”

Luna gave me one of the sweetest smiles I’ve ever seen from her. “Thank you, Twilight. You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in far longer than I care to recall.”

After a long hug, one so long that it was actually kind of uncomfortable at the end, we finally broke apart.

“Now then, I believe we last left off on the rudimentary aspects of building electrical charges and controlling their flow, but I think after tonight, a special topic is in order.”

“Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! What is it? Is it the temporary wing spell?”

Luna shook her head and said, “No. I wouldn’t suggest you learn that spell either; it has critical flaws. There are better, similar spells that do full transformations, as well as one that performs general changes. The breezie transformation is pretty easy to learn, but that’s for some other time.”

Argh! Luna was teasing me by dangling interesting spells in front of me! I hated it when she did that! Apparently, I’m ‘cute’ when I’m frustrated and pouting. Maybe if I finally learned to control my expressions around new magic, she’d give it up. Not that I was going to manage that anytime soon.

“Hmm…” Luna hummed. “How about a hint? It’s something I’ve been led to believe you’ve always wanted to be able to do but have not asked me to teach you yet.”

Well that narrowed it down quite a bit. I wasn’t exactly subtle about spells I wanted to learn. But if I was going to guess randomly, I figured I might as well go for broke.

“How to raise the moon?”

If only Luna had been drinking something. I would’ve had the single most hilarious spit take in the history of Equestria.

“Um… That’s…not quite what I had in mind. That’s very flattering, though. Thank you. When I’m released from my banishment, I’d be happy to give you my blessing to do so, but only my sister can control the moon until then.”

“Huh? Why?”

Luna rubbed the back of her head as if she of all ponies didn’t know the answer.

“Well, it’s hard to explain in a meaningful sense to somepony who’s not an alicorn. A lot gets lost in translation. Hmm… Okay. What do you think the answer would be if you asked a random unicorn if it were possible for that unicorn to raise the moon?”

“They’d probably just say it’s impossible,” I answered, confused and unsure of where Luna was going with this.

“No doubt. That’s because they’ve grown up with one alicorn doing it the entire time. Ponies are a product of their times, and right now it’s common knowledge that unicorns cannot raise the moon. But you should be able point to a contradiction in the current culture.”

Luna dropped her explanation there, intending for me to find the answer on my own. She always said a good memory was even more important than raw magical talent, and I was inclined to agree. I couldn’t imagine how much time I would waste if I had to look up spells I hadn’t used in a while or if I had to reread books I’d already gone through once.

Still, having wracked my brains thoroughly for any relevant information, I came out the other end frustrated and with nothing.

But maybe I was going about it the wrong way. Luna said it was a problem with the culture, and that left me with very little to search through. Most of my waking hours were spent in the company of the written remnants of ponies long dead, not with modern culture.

Still, I didn’t think of anything particularly…

There was no response to foolishness quite like a facehoof, and this one deserved a double facehoof. I had completely overlooked the Hearth’s Warming Eve story, the only celebration of the night that didn’t involve monsters in one form or another, the celebration of the winter solstice when the night was longest.

I felt like the biggest fool in Equestria for taking so long to figure it out.

“The canonical story of Equestria’s founding,” I began, “is based on the premise that unicorns brought forth the day and night.”

“Exactly, Twilight. It was once common knowledge that unicorns were the ponies who brought about day and night. Then Discord came, and for the longest time, life became…chaotic, to say the least.

“My special talent was, well, not raising the moon exactly, but I was one of the unicorns responsible for attempting to maintain a sane day-night cycle at the end of Discord’s reign. My sister was on the team responsible for the sun.

“One particularly unpleasant…” Luna sighed. “Saying day or night does not mean much during those times, but I believe the moon was out when we first found the elements and ascended. From then on, the moon was mine and other ponies required…permission…in a sense, to move it. My sister and Discord could still interfere, because they – their magic is…”

Luna sighed again. Even though I was hanging onto her every word, and I was sure I was showing it, too, she said, “There are no words in Equestrian or any other language that would do the explanation justice. It’s not exactly something mortal ponies can relate to, but I promise it will make sense after you ascend. The whole process will be much less magical for you if I give you a half-baked explanation now.”

That pun did not even deserve a facehoof. Putting on my best stiff upper lip – my upper class Canterlot accent was, of course, natural – I said, “The future Alicorn of Magic is not amused.”

“Oh, I do say,” Luna hammed with a ridiculous attempt at a modern Canterlot accent. “Begging your pardon, Your Majesty. I meant no offense.”

Darn it! Luna was too good at this. But I supposed that was why I was the student. I cracked first in our stare down and laughed so hard I could feel the effects spilling over onto my real body. Hopefully, nopony was around to see that, but sometimes Mom or Dad would watch me sleep because it was, quote, ‘entertaining and adorable’.

Soon after my defeat, Luna joined me in laughing. When we were finished, she asked, “So what’s your next guess?”

Oh right! Luna was going to teach me something special! Besides moving the moon, there was something else I really wanted to learn.

“Teleportation?” I hazarded. Luna had made it clear early on what she thought of teaching me spells I could easily kill myself with.

“Right in two.”

“Really! Oh my gosh, yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!”

Before I could properly launch myself into my excitement, Luna said, “Whoa, Twilight. Cool your wings. We’re starting with safety. The spell comes after.”

“Aw…” It was a long shot, but maybe–

“That doesn’t work on me. I taught it to you.”

Horseapples.

“Until you can reflexively answer questions about teleport safety, I will not teach you so much as a fragment of the actual spell.”

“Fine,” I huffed.

I didn’t know why I was so upset when I should have been ecstatic to be learning teleportation at all. Oh well. Pouting was probably ‘cute’, anyway; that would probably help me get to the actual spell faster.

Author's Note

Yes, I removed the footnotes¹. If you didn't like them, maybe you can be my meat shield against those that did.

¹You can still find them here if you wish.

Chapter Two - A Kindred Spirit

“No, means no, Cadance,” I chided. My parents were out for the evening as a sort of farewell to Canterlot. Cadance was foalsitting me tonight, and if she got her way, tomorrow night, too.

“I’m not accepting a no this time, Twilight.” Cadance picked me up in her magic as I tried to retreat upstairs to my room. “You have been in an absolutely terrible mood all week, and this will be good for you. You spend all day every day–”

“Every night,” I corrected. If she was going to hold me against my will and force me to listen to this, she could at least use the proper terminology.

Rolling her eyes, Cadance continued, “You spend all night every night cooped up at home or in the archives. You need to get out more. Meet some ponies your age. Socialize. Develop a foalhood crush, or deepen one you already have. And above all else” – Cadance levitated me closer and looked me dead in the eyes – “we need to do something about that frown plastered on your face.”

Cadance looked at me as though she actually thought I would agree. Naturally, I deadpanned, “No.”

“Fine. I didn’t want to do this, but you leave me no choice, Twilight.”

I fell somewhat roughly to the ground. Cadance was still learning magic herself, and she was not exactly talented at it. Her fine control of heavy objects – such as fillies – especially left much to be desired.

“Twilight Sparkle, I am giving you a royal, princess, foalsitter, adult, alicorn order. You will go out with me tomorrow night, and you will try to enjoy yourself.”

A moment passed in utter silence. I couldn’t believe my ears. Did she really just do that?

“You’re going to pull rank on this?” I asked, still flabbergasted.

Cadance nodded. “It would seem that’s the only way I’m going to get you to agree.”

I still couldn’t believe it. “Really?”

“Really really,” Cadance replied unmoving.

After a short stare down, I sighed. There really was nothing else for it if she was going to go that far out of her way, and I certainly wasn’t going to go complain to the only pony who could overrule Cadance. Well, at least the only pony currently in Equestria. I also wasn’t going to run to Luna and have her reveal herself just to get out of this.

Despite how annoyed I was, Tartarus would freeze solid before I let myself lash out at Cadance like I had at Celestia. Not that I was anywhere near that upset. Cadance was my friend, and even if she was doing it all wrong, she was trying to cheer me up.

And besides, I knew this was the worst holiday to raise an unusually large fuss over. Sure, I didn’t like socializing, but this wouldn’t be any worse than any other of Cadance’s attempts to get me to make friends and to stop binge reading. I couldn’t very well claim I was scared, since I’d demonstrated otherwise from age four to seven. Nor could I believably claim I didn’t want the free candy.

Still, I was so totally going to remember this, and my revenge would be cruel and without mercy.

“Very well, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza,” I said as formally as I could, eliciting a twitch halfway to a gag from Cadance, “you win. I am your humble servant.”

Cadance suddenly wasn’t looking so enthusiastic as she tried to deny what she had just done. “Twilight, I didn’t mean–”

“Yes, you did, Princess” I said with a facehoof. Sometimes Cadance could be really thick. “You’ve given the order, so I’ll try to eke out whatever amount of fun I can from tomorrow night. Now can I go back to reading? I have some stuff from the archives I really want to get through. My move to Ponyville is just next week.”

I nodded toward the study where I could just make out the books related to the elements I’d taken from the archives. From where Cadance stood, she would no doubt be able to see them too if she turned around. I’d fetched them from the mines before Cadance had arrived, since I couldn’t very well get them after. Even waiting until she was asleep was a risky venture, considering how light of a sleeper she was.

Cadance looked over at the books and stared for a moment. She then had some sort of painful internal debate with herself, and it showed so clearly on her face that even eight-year-old Twilight would have noticed.

Not good. I nearly lost control of myself and paled, but I managed to bottle up my panic before it grew out of control for once.

There was no way anypony could know what I was really searching for in the archives. My choices were too littered with failures and dead ends to deduce anything without having at least one thing I considered a success first pointed out. Those were the magic words I repeated to myself as if they were a spell.

“No, not yet,” Cadance finally replied. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your reading material for…a while now, but I kept putting it off. And with the move and all… I – I need to know. Do you think that…that what you’re doing is…right?”

My eyes went wide, and I stared like I was facing my death, which I very well could be. Filtering out everything but Cadance, I wondered if I could break my suppressor if I deliberately tried to flare. She was obviously trying to figure out where my loyalties lay and – and – I didn’t…

But wait. Even alicorns had approximately equine anatomy. I didn’t have to flare. Cadance was a pushover in a fight. She’d be down and out in less than a second.

No. No, that way held madness. Cadance was my friend, and I was sure I was hers. I could talk her around, even if she was Celestia’s pawn right now.

No. No, that was still wrong. A little voice in the back of my head was telling me I was overreacting again and I had once again blown my chance to play innocent in whatever line of inquiry Cadance was really going to press.

Um… Or Cadance could press our bodies together into a hug. That was certainly a speech substitute, although I didn’t really think it counted as an interrogation.

I had two guesses for why she was hugging me, and they required very different reactions. On the one hoof, if this was about learning magic, I had to be strong but sad. If this was about Luna, I had to both act subtly scared of my mentor and be defensive of her while letting my anger toward Celestia seep out.

Whatever Cadance had meant, I had a terrible feeling I was about to lose access to the archives if I messed up even the tiniest bit. For now, I kept quiet and didn’t return her hug. That was the only truly neutral action I could think of.

“Twilight, I – I really don’t know how to talk about this with you. I know you’ve been reading books about magic.”

Cadance, that was the worst place to stop. That told me essentially nothing about what you were really talking about. You could be tricking me into responding wrongly for all I knew, even if it was out of character for you.

“And?” I asked, probing for more information. A bit of my anxiety accidentally came out in my voice, but that was okay in either case.

“I’ve known for a long time, actually. Princess Celestia always told me what the archivists reported to her. I’m worried about you.”

I sighed internally. If Cadance said she was worried about me, then this was about magic, not Luna. Luna would have been worded more along the lines of ‘I’m scared for you’, or something like that.

Not that Cadance hadn’t just – likely unwittingly – confessed something unpleasant to me. It went without saying that Celestia was going to have my activities in the archives monitored, but I hadn’t imagined she would be doing it herself.

But what really bothered me about that was I didn’t have a clue why she bothered, not unless she knew about Luna and me. But if that were so, she would have…taken care of me long before now, so that couldn’t be it.

She could be treating me as a case study in what a pony would do to cope after having their special talent denied to them. That’s probably what I’d do if I were in her position, old, mean, and bored. I’d have to look into that in the future and correct any published mistakes.

Still, whatever the reasoning behind it, I was safe from Cadance, at least. I liked to think I knew her well enough to know she was bad at wordplay and to know her speech patterns. She said worried, so this was about magic.

Now I liked to think of myself as a pretty logical filly, but Cadance would probably treat that as a symptom of depression or something if I tried to reason with her that way. I had to communicate with the Princess of Love on a very emotional and foalish level if I wanted to properly get through to her.

This…might be harder than I originally thought.

“It’s rude to snoop, Cadance,” I pouted.

“I know that,” Cadance half-shouted. “I know that better than anypony, Twilight. I – I’m not supposed to tell you this, but…I – I’m the Alicorn of Love.”

“I am aware–”

The realization sank in. Luna had given me the pieces, but I’d never put them together. Luna was the Alicorn of the Moon, or the night, or something like that. Celestia was her opposite with the day. They both had an iron grip on the moon and the sun.

So what did Cadance control? Thinking back, she’d once show me some of her magic when she patched up an argument between two ponies with a flash of her horn.

My eyes did not go wide. Cadance didn’t know I had enough information to realize what she was about to say, and I couldn’t let on that I did. But I couldn’t help shivering a bit. Not that she noticed.

“You see, I have certain…powers, as an alicorn. You remember when I showed you one of them, right? Spreading love?”

I nodded, albeit weakly.

“Spreading was not the right word. I don’t spread it, I…control it. In a sense. Among other things.”

That was all I needed her to say. “Cadance, have you ever–”

“No.” Cadance put her whole heart into that rejection and nearly deafened me with its intensity. “I have never, ever messed with your emotions, or Shining’s, or your parents’. I don’t change anypony’s unless I really need to. The only exceptions was when I demonstrated it to you, and even that was only a temporary change; I didn’t tamper with any permanent feelings. Just the ones of the moment.”

“Okay,” I said. Cadance desperately looked like she needed the acceptance right now. Besides, she was obviously not lying. “I believe you. But I need you to promise me you never will, no matter what. Not even if I ask or beg you or if I turn into a supervillain.”

Cadance managed a flimsy smile and a short chuckle. “You? A supervillain? Twilight, I hate to tell you this, but you just don’t have it in you.”

“Villainy is a matter of perspective,” I explained, unable to let that point go. I then said, “But Cadance, promise me. I don’t think I can be comfortable around you otherwise. I’ll constantly be fretting over whether I should be ignoring my emotions or not.”

Smile turning to frown, Cadance replied, “I promise you on my honor as an alicorn, a princess, a foalsitter, and a friend, I shall never manipulate your emotions.”

“I’m so sorry, Cadance,” I said as I went in to give her a much needed hug, “but I really needed that. Thank you.”

Returning my hug, Cadance whispered, “I understand. Even I worry about myself sometimes.” And then a second later, her voice returned to normal. “But right now we’re talking about you.”

Horseapples! She remembered.

“Part of what I can do is…well, see isn’t the right word either. Feel, maybe? Yes, I can feel how ponies feel about each other. Twilight, you have a lot of hate in you.”

Oh no. “I–”

“Wait. Let me finish. I don’t blame you for that at all. I – I know I don’t have any idea what life must be like for you; my talents aren’t exactly something I use much, but I do get to use them. But…I have to ask. Are you studying for revenge? To prove Princess Celestia wrong? Or – or is it how you cope? I don’t want to see you waste your life, Twilight. Or k – injure yourself in a flare if you do something foolish.”

I thought back to how miserable I felt before I met Luna and managed to get the waterworks going. I needed to have a few tears and a sniffle to make this believable.

“Cadance, my special talent is magic! What would you possibly have me do instead? Even if I can never cast a spell again, I can at least learn the theory! Maybe even invent new spells!

“In some of those stories I’ve read, Smart Cookie was said to help Clover the Clever on her spellwork sometimes. I can be like Smart Cookie…” I trailed off into a whisper and finished, “Just a boring earth pony with a brain and an extra appendage. Twilight Sparkle…the earth pony.”

I got shivers from just thinking about it: a pale reflection of what my life could have been if not for Luna. Unintentional shivers – and I did take a second to berate myself for the lapse in control – but ones helpful for the act nonetheless.

Cadance scooped me up into another hug, and from the sound of it, she’d started crying, too, but was trying to hold it in.

“And that makes you happy?”

I whispered, “Happy enough,” and Cadance squeezed me tighter.

“You don’t know what a relief that is to hear. I’ve been so, so worried about you.”

“Thank you for worrying, Cadance,” I whispered. This was coming straight from the heart without my interfering. “You’re the best foalsitter and friend I could ask for.”

We spent at least a minute in that hug. Cadance didn’t seem to understand that I had to breathe – maybe she didn’t have to – but I made do. Setting me down, Cadance brushed away a tear with her wing and smiled.

“Still,” began Cadance, “you need to find something else in your life besides magic.”

Oh, not that again. She hadn’t revoked my access to the archives, but I still didn’t want to deal with her meddling right now. Or ever, really. Cadance was such a busybody.

“Come on, Cadance! We just had a heart-to-heart conversation, and you’re still going to force me to participate in Nightmare Night?”

“Yes. Nothing has changed. You need to learn how to make friends your own age before you slip out of my grasp. And maybe go through a crush or two…” Cadance trailed off suggestively.

“H-hey!” I nervously shouted. Apparently, her alicorn powers were letting her know I had a strong relationship but not that it was with Luna. I’d really dodged a bolt there. But then again, Luna probably already knew that was how Cadance worked somehow.

“Oh, Twilight. You can’t hide love from me.”

I groaned.

“Oh, don’t be like that, Twilight. This’ll be fun! Start sharing!”

“Can’t we just work on a costume?” I found it hard to believe that I actually preferred preparing for the worst holiday ever, but Cadance had managed to find something even more troublesome.

The mare in question waved a forehoof dismissively. “Oh, pish posh. We can spend all afternoon tomorrow designing one, and then I’ll just put an illusion on you. If you’re comfortable with that.”

“If I said no, would you drop the love talk?”

“Nope.”

“Then that’s fine,” I sighed. “Unless you’ve managed to learn one of the polymorph spells?”

“Um…no. That’s still way too advanced for me.” Cadance sunk into thought for a moment before she snapped back to attention and said, “Nice try, but you’re not getting off that easily. So start talking. Tell me everything.”

“Cadance,” I sighed, “it’s not what you think.”

“Oh, but it is! Whoever this handsome colt is you have your–”

“Mare.” I hoped the interruption would shut down Cadance’s line of inquiry, or at least redirect it away from romance.

“That’s–” gasped Cadance. “I’m so sorry for assuming. But how old is she?”

Falling on my rump, I rubbed my temples with my forehooves. Cadance could be so annoying when her love flag was triggered. “I told you it’s not like that.”

“Don’t even try, Twilight. You have so much love for this mystery mare of yours that she must be on your mind all the time.”

“Well, I admit that’s true. But in a what would she do or think sense. I really look up to her as a mentor.”

“You have a crush on a teacher,” squealed Cadance. “That’s so cute! Is she somepony from before you started homeschooling? Or did your parents hire a tutor? Oh! Or is she somepony you had a moonlit encounter with where she passed down some amazing advice to you? Or – hey! Are you even paying attention?”

It seemed that Cadance finally noticed that I’d busied myself with the book I had been reading before this whole horrible conversation started. I answered her question by not answering it.

“Twiliiiiight. You can’t do this to me. I have to know.”

I turned a page, embarrassingly fumbling with it for a few seconds with my weak magic.

“Twilight. Twilight. Twiiiiiliiiiight.” Cadance moved closer and whispered in my ear, “Twilight.”

I didn’t so much as turn my head to acknowledge her. She would pounce on the first sign of weakness. If I kept quiet until she got bored, she’d fill in the details herself however she wanted. That was one of Luna’s first lessons for me: give a pony just enough information to let them do your lying for you.

Cadance closed my book, and I made a quick note of exactly where I was cut off.

“Twilight,” Cadance whined, “pay attention to me.”

I opted to lay down and rest my head on the floor. It was late enough that I might be able to get a short nap in despite the mild discomfort of the floor. Luna might even notice and visit me.

My respite was denied to me by constant prods from one of Cadance’s hooves.

“Hey, Cadance,” I mumbled as if I were deathly tired. “Do you know where the flyswatter is? I think there are some mosquitoes in here.”

“Wha… I’m not a mosquito!”

I laughed inwardly and yawned, “Sorry, I’m afraid I couldn’t tell the difference.”

“Urgh! How rude! I don’t remember raising you to say things like that.”

I yawned again.

I looked at myself in my bedroom mirror. I’d resisted the urge to dress up as Luna and give candy to foals, but wings still looked pretty good on me despite being a filly’s underdeveloped version. I barely believed I’d never thought to put an alicorn illusion on myself before. Still, there was one problem.

“I said I wouldn’t accept frills, Cadance.”

“But, Twilight, you look so adorable like this.”

“No, I don’t.”

Even with my limited knowledge of fashion, I knew that frills did not mesh well with the wise mage look I preferred when I absolutely had to put on clothes. Although, the warrior princess look that Luna sported was an okay second choice.

“Your idea was ridiculous, Twilight. You don’t want to be seen in public like that. This is much better.”

Alright, Cadance was being really annoying now. One simply did not insult the most important spell caster of the Pre-Classical Era.

“Star Swirl the Bearded had exquisite taste in clothing that perfectly merged the beauty of the night sky right into his cloak and hat. It’s not my fault if you can’t get your illusion to replicate them perfectly.”

Cadance mumbled something incoherent.

“I’m not going outside like this, and if you float me out, then I won’t cooperate in any way.”

“Fine,” huffed Cadance, her horn glowing as she reworked her illusion.

She wasn’t good enough with the spell to change everything at once, so watching the changes in the mirror was an odd experience of sudden patchwork modifications morphing my dress into a star-studded cloak. Lastly, the tiara on my brow changed into a floppy wizard hat with bells dangling from the brim.

It looked pretty good overall, even if the stars on the cloak and hat were static and unrealistic. A little awkward around the wings, but Cadance had done her best. However, she had forgotten one important thing.

“What about the beard?”

“Not happening,” Cadance answered. “You look ridiculous enough without adding a beard to it. Putting aside the fact that you are both female and a foal, when was the last time you saw a pony with a beard?”

“Never,” I grumbled.

“And that’s exactly how often I am going to put a beard beneath your muzzle.”

I thought about protesting, but the wings, my size, and my gender were inaccurate anyway, so arguing for historical accuracy was a moot point. And I would have a hard time explaining how I knew Star Swirl had tried to ascend, if I was being such a stickler for fine historical details.

Instead, I put my saddlebags over my back and sighed, “Let’s just get this over with.”

As Cadance led me out of my bedroom door and down the stairs, she said, “Turn that frown upside down, young filly. Tonight is about fun and meeting new ponies. Nopony is going to like you if you’re nothing but mopey.”

I plastered a huge, obviously fake smile onto my face. Just because Cadance was forcing me outside didn’t mean I had to make it easy on her.

“Hmm… Better, I guess…”

As we passed through the foyer, my dad met us at the door and gave me a somewhat sympathetic look. Out of Cadance’s line of sight, he dropped a bag of cookies into my saddlebags and winked. No doubt they were a reserve treat in case I lost my temper tonight.

I was so glad Cadance hadn’t insisted my parents participate in this wretched holiday as well. I would not have been amused, to say the least.

Dad gave me a quick hug and said, “Do try to have some fun, Twilight.”

“Alright, Dad. I’ll see you tomorrow morning for dinner.”

“Just don’t eat too many sweets before then.”

“We’ll see.” I giggled as Cadance led me out the door. Even if I didn’t like the holiday, it would be a waste to throw all the free snacks away.

As the two of us walked through the streets, Cadance explained what she intended to do tonight. Apparently, she’d found a group of fillies within Celestia’s School for the Uncriminally Gifted who lived on campus, each of which was supposedly some variation of socially awkward to complement my semi-misanthropy.

Oh, Cadance, you could just color me every kind of excited right now. This was going to be one big disaster.

As we arrived at the dorms and Cadance finished explaining her ‘grand plan’ for the night, I mumbled, “I want to go home already.”

The inside of the dormitory lacked any particular interest. Just the same white stone with gold and blue trim as everywhere else in Canterlot. A few other colors made appearances in furniture in what I assumed was a common room, considering the games, bookshelves, and selection of variously aged ponies spread throughout it.

Cadance left me to wait by the door as she had a few words with the dorm mistress. Looking out at the crowd gathered in the common room, I guessed that I’d have four ‘friends’ with me tonight. There were more ponies in costume, but only four that were near my age. Honestly, I’d prefer the older foals, but Cadance wouldn’t share my opinion.

After deducing that and growing sufficiently bored, the one filly I didn’t want to see came charging in through the door. She was fully dressed in a Clover the Clever costume complimented with saddlebags which had her staff-shaped cutie mark embroidered on them.

“Princess Cadance!” Trixie shouted. “Can I come, too?”

This night just went from unpleasant to miserable. There was no way the ever-loving Cadance would be able to reject somepony as persistent as Trixie without my backup, and I despised playing the poor little crippled filly card.

Really, I didn’t blame Trixie for being Trixie, but she was naturally annoying – and by that I meant she never shut up – on the rare occasions when I saw her in the archives. Not that I ever approached her myself; I left that privilege to the archivists. Her being Celestia’s precious student certainly didn’t make me any more inclined to like her, although I did try hard not to hold that against her; it was something completely outside of her control. At least she wasn’t speaking in the third person yet.

Cadance bit her lip and looked nervously in my direction. I sighed and waved my hoof, reluctantly accepting this unpleasant twist of fate. At least I got a small laugh out of Cadance’s surprise.

Once Cadance had nodded and had pointed in my direction, Trixie came to join me.

“Greetings! I am the Great and Powerful Trixie.”

The trial had begun. I could have just told her I already knew who she was and thus could’ve skipped the inevitable ramble that followed – which I tuned out – but I wasn’t eager to inflate her ego anymore than it already was.

I took the entryway being quiet again as my cue to reply. “I’m Twilight Sparkle.”

“Hmm…” Trixie eyed me up and down. “You seem familiar, but I don’t recognize you from this school. Have we met before?”

“Not really. I use the archives a lot, and I’ve seen you there sometimes.”

Technically, we had seen each other much closer before then at our exams, but I didn’t want to help Trixie remember. I doubted that little fact would come to her mind unprompted.

“You have access to the archives? How does that work?”

The Great and Powerful Trixie was clearly not impressed with me – which was just fine – but she was obviously intrigued. I’d much prefer if she just didn’t talk to me tonight – or ever again – so a simple, boring answer would be best. The kind of answer a young noble would give.

With a faintly haughty voice, I said, “I am homeschooled with some family connections. That’s all.”

“Oh,” Trixie said flatly, clearly less interested than before. I didn’t know what she could possibly have been expecting.

Thankfully, Cadance appeared at the lull in the conversation with the other fillies before Trixie could say anything else. No more alone time with Trixie! I was nearly ready to get down on my knees and praise Cadance for her divine favor like the goddess she was, but that would have been grossly inappropriate, especially coming from an aspiring goddess.

“All right, fillies, let’s do some introductions. I’ll go first. I’m Princess Cadance.”

Oh yes, like there was anypony in Equestria that didn’t know that. It wasn’t like princesses just appeared out of nowhere.

Trixie decided to go next and introduced herself. This time she fortunately kept her monologuing to a minimum. It did, however, set a bad precedent that the other fillies picked up on. I thought I saw Cadance cringe, but I wasn’t paying much attention to her.

The filly wrapped in a toilet paper mummy costume went next. “I’m Minuette. My special talent is dentistry, just like my mom’s.”

Fantastic, I needed to come up with a fake special talent. Also, I had no idea what part of her seemed ‘socially awkward’ to Cadance.

Hmm… Now that it was brought to the front of my mind, Trixie was all kinds of socially awkward herself. Perhaps she did belong here.

Next went the…well, I didn’t really know what her costume was supposed to be. She’d turned her coat black and put what I could – with my magic and magical senses sealed – only hope were illusions of holes in her mane, tail, and legs.

“Lemon Hearts. My special talent is empathy magic.”

I took a half step away from her at the expense of moving closer to Trixie. The distance wouldn’t actually help if she cast anything on me, but it felt appropriate. I could definitely see how a pony would have social problems with that as their special talent.

On another note, I decided to go with astronomy as my special talent. I had stars for a cutie mark, and Luna had taught me more than enough to fake my way through any questions that might come up during the night.

“Oh, oh! Me next! I’m Lyra Heartstrings, but everypony just calls me Lyra.”

She was not exactly selling herself as a social misanthrope.

“My special talent is playing the lyre, but I’m way more interested in humans.”

The other three fillies from the school groaned, and the pieces fell into place. Like Trixie, Lyra must drive everypony away with her personality, rather than having issues with ponies herself. Although with that said, I did find myself curious as to what a human was, but I knew better than to ask now. I’d ask Luna later. I’d probably ask her about Lemon Hearts’s costume, too.

Last before my turn came the pirate. She interrupted quickly before Lyra could say anything else.

“I’m Twinkleshine,” the pirate half-whispered. “My special talent is astronomy.”

Oh stars. I couldn’t go with astronomy now. Twinkleshine would want to talk shop – which I’d probably enjoy – all night, and there was no way she wouldn’t see through the lie.

“I’m Twilight Sparkle, or just Twilight for short. My special talent is…magical theory.”

“What?” chorused Trixie and Lemon Hearts. Leave it to the two with magic based talents to call me out.

Rather awkwardly injecting herself into the middle of the group, Cadance ushered us towards the door and said, “Okay, we’ve finished introductions. Time to hit the streets.”

And we did just that with some gentle nudging from Cadance’s magic to hurry us along. As we walked away from the school and castle and back toward the residential area, the seven of us fell into a few distinct groups.

At the front was Cadance with Lyra and Minuette. The three of them were engaged in some sort of small talk. Near me, yet a fair distance off, were Trixie and Lemon Hearts. From the occasional glances they threw my way, I would guess they were talking about me and probably would be talking to me if I weren’t fending them off with Twinkleshine.

After much prodding and some application of my own knowledge, I’d managed to get Twinkleshine to open up about her interest in astronomy. It would seem that she was the shy one of this group. And as much as I would hate admitting it to Cadance, she was actually enjoyable to talk to.

And yet it seemed that Twinkleshine was not as effective of a Trixie repellent as I’d hoped. We’d visited only a single house for candy before Trixie and Lemon Hearts interrupted us and quieted Twinkleshine.

“So,” Trixie began as we walked, “you only know magical theory.”

“Yes,” I sighed.

“Well, that explains the sloppy work on the illusion,” Lemon Hearts commented.

“Not really. This is her work,” I said, pointing at Cadance. Lemon Hearts looked a bit sheepish. I probably would have laughed if Trixie hadn’t spoken up.

“Then you can’t cast your own illusions?”

“Yes.”

“That’s so sad,” Trixie said and set my teeth to grinding. There was something about the way she said it that put me on edge. “What can you do?”

Asking like that was not getting you any friendship points.

“Research.”

Lemon Hearts asked, “Just that?”

“Yes.”

“Boring,” said Trixie. “But I suppose not everypony can be as interesting as Trixie.”

Interrupted by another round of free candy, everypony’s attention was drawn away from me, and I facehoofed. Did Trixie really just say that? It was like talking to a five-year-old. And not in the way that Cadance claimed was fun.

I collected my candy and returned to the back with Twinkleshine. It seemed Trixie and Lemon Hearts had lost interest in me and were leaving the two of us to ourselves.

“So, where were we?” I asked Twinkleshine. I’d actually forgotten due to those two annoyances.

Twinkleshine’s face did a complete tone shift from a bit scared to full-on excitement.

“We were talking about comets!”

“Oh, right. Did you get to see Shimmer’s Comet a half season ago? It was absolutely beautiful.”

“I wish! That’s one of the few comets we can see at night! The dorm mistress wouldn’t let me stay up that late, though.”

Now that it came up, I wondered how many comets we’d be able to see if the sun went away forever. Well, that was a thought for another time. Right now, I had a sad filly to deal with.

Having seen Twinkleshine eye my latest candied good, I tossed it over to her, and she caught it with her magic.

Her eyes lit up as she asked, “You’re giving this to me?”

“No, I just want you to hold it for me for no reason.” I rolled my eyes at how serious Twinkleshine took me. “I’m joking. Yes, it’s yours. Cheer up. You can see the comet yourself in a couple years.”

“Two years, one season, six weeks, and nine days to be precise.”

“Wow, you really want to see that comet.”

Twinkleshine blushed and said, “Well, it is my special talent.”

I didn’t really have anything to say to that. I had an incredible memory for magic myself. Not that it was any worse for anything else.

Except for languages, unfortunately. Luna had tried to teach me the minotaur language so I could dig into their engineering books, but that hadn’t panned out. Despite that, and although nowhere near as fluent as Luna, I did manage to pick up quite a bit of Old Equestrian.

“You’re right, you know.”

I paused for a few seconds to stare blankly skyward. Canterlot’s light pollution hid much of the beauty of the night sky, but it was still nice to look at.

“You should just put your hoof down and tell that mare to let you stay up next time. Your special talent is important to you, and she has no right to shut you down over society’s preferred sleep cycle.”

Twinkleshine sighed and said, “I tried something like that once. It…didn’t work out.”

“I could just get Cadance to get the dorm mistress to back off, if you want,” I said without thinking. I’d been trying to avoid letting everypony know how close I was to Cadance, lest I bring any unwanted attention to myself, but it seemed I’d slipped in my frustration with the world’s insistence on being diurnal.

“Princess Cadance? Do you really think she would do that for me?” Twinkleshine asked, completely ignoring my informality. I kept forgetting that fillies didn’t notice that kind of stuff.

“Yep. She’s a very nice princess and really likes foals.”

“Oh! So that’s why she’s taking us out tonight.”

Not really, but I wasn’t going to correct Twinkleshine.

“Um… Would you…” Twinkleshine began.

“Yes, I’ll ask her for you later tonight.”

Twinkleshine shook her head vigorously. “Would you watch the comet with me?”

My jaw fell nearly halfway down before I regained my composure. I…did actually like Twinkleshine on the whole astronomy level. And I probably would watch the comet anyway if I remembered. I’d certainly have teleporting down by then, too, so I could go to and from Canterlot on my own. Or I could just spend the night with Shining or Cadance and take the train home.

“If you don’t want to–”

“No, no. I’d be happy to. I was just thinking. I’m moving out of Canterlot soon–”

“There’s one during the day in two weeks and one day,” Twinkleshine said as fast as she could.

“–but I’m going to visit frequently for the archives…” Well, this was just a little bit awkward. “Ehem. My parents are moving early next week, but I can probably convince them to let me stay with my brother a little–”

I received a hug of opportunity. Yep, awkward. And it was only getting more so.

“Twinkleshine…we’re kind of being left behind.”

“Oh, sorry,” she said, releasing me from her grip. We trotted to catch up with the others. “There’s just nopony around that I can really talk to about this stuff.”

I rolled my eyes and said, “We are in the capital city of Celestia the sun goddess. It’s not really the ideal place to meet ponies that like stargazing.”

Twinkleshine giggled a bit and said, “True. So how often would you be visiting?”

“Canterlot?” I got a nod. “Honestly, not that often, I’d imagine. I have permission to raid the archives and take stuff, so I probably wouldn’t stay long, either.” Then since I was sure it was why she was asking, I added, “But I could spare a few minutes to say hi when I do.”

“That’d be so much fun! We could have a sleepover and stay up till midnight watching the stars and stuff.” Mumbling, Twinkleshine added, “And maybe help each other with our homework…”

I just pretended I hadn’t heard that last part. Or the part before that. Although, I did suspect a ‘sleepover’ would be a little fun if I was worn out mentally and needed a break.

Much like tonight. I had to admit, it was nice to wind down with somepony who knew less than me for once. I loved spending time with Luna, but on very rare occasions, that whole ‘I’m over a hundred times older than you’ thing got a little annoying. Even Cadance ultimately knew more than me in most matters apart from magic.

Regardless, I was just going to let tonight run its course, ignore Cadance’s I told you sos, and get back to reading about a devious little compulsion spell. Some might say I wanted it and I needed it.

Chapter Three - Growing Up

“Don’t expect too much,” Twinkleshine said. “And it’s a bit messy. I share my room with–”

“It’s fine,” I said, resisting the urge to growl the words. I’d been feeling a little off since last afternoon, and all of the little things had been irritating me more than usual. “Just open the door, and let’s get set up.”

Nodding, Twinkleshine opened the door with her mulberry magic, which was only a shade or two off from my own. Inside was, as forewarned, quite the mess. I didn’t know if the dorms made fillies do their own laundry, but from the giant piles of clothes scattered around – some personal, but from a casual glance, mostly for school purposes – I wouldn’t bet otherwise.

But that was just the regular, innocent part of the mess, the kind of mess that foals and adults alike produced. No, the inexcusable part was lying perfectly in the center of the room so as to deliver the maximum possible insult.

“Who did this to this poor book?” I shouted, rushing over and unbending the hardcover spine which had been cruelly shaped to make the covers meet. Stars! The book was even a two-century-old first edition of Mirdin’s treatise on elemental magic. The poor thing would never be the same again.

Well, not without magic. But it was the spirit of the problem that mattered.

I whirled back towards Twinkleshine with the book held protectively in my foreleg. I demanded my answer silently with the sheer force of my gaze.

“M-Moondancer!” Twinkleshine eeped.

“Where is she.”

“P-probably a-at classes.”

I would have liked nothing better than to track down this Moondancer to give her a piece of my mind, but Twinkleshine had said something even more unforgivable.

“You’re skipping classes?” I hissed.

I could feel my magic building up withing me, wanting to lash out at the world as if it had a mind of its own, only for it to be dammed by the suppressor I wore for the last day. And yet I knew it was trickling out all the same as it swirled and grew within me. What little that escaped instinctively reached for magic outside of me to supplement itself in a way I’d never been able to replicate purposefully.

Before I could say anything else or calm myself, Twinkleshine shook her head vigorously as she took a step away from me.

I demanded, “Explain,” with the same anger in my voice. However, seeing Twinkleshine practically faint under the sheer pressure I was exerting on her was like being thrown into a pool of cold water. There weren’t many foals that were mentally equipped to deal with a raging Twilight Sparkle, and I knew for a fact that Twinkleshine wasn’t among them.

All my irritation and rage vanished as quickly as it’d come. My magic was still begging to be released, but it had stopped expanding wildly and unchecked as the suppressor finally managed to keep pace with me.

Unfortunately, I didn’t quite stop in time to avoid getting at least a cubic meter of water dumped on me.

Sighing, I looked down at the book I held. It was slightly charred in places and waterlogged to the point of practically falling apart. I’d caused it more damage in less than a minute than anything Moondancer had done.

“I’m sorry,” I said, half to the book as I gently lowered it to the soggy carpet and half to Twinkleshine.

The water having knocked her down, Twinkleshine shakily returned to her hooves. The next words out of her mouth spoke wonders to her character.

“Are you okay, Twilight? The campus hospital isn’t far from here. Are you able to move? Or maybe we shouldn’t move you. Or–”

“I’m fine, Twinkleshine,” I said. I held no illusion that she would drop the issue there, but it was an automatic response, the kind that got drilled into a pony’s head from a very early age.

“But you were on fire! And your coat is pure whi – well, a bit more purple now. It’s fading. But it was snow white!”

I sighed again. I just couldn’t help it. Was it really too much to ask just to watch a comet in peace, Life?

“Listen, Twinkleshine, I really am fine. And sorry for getting mad. I can explain, but if I do, then I want you to promise me not to tell anypony.”

Without hesitation, Twinkleshine said, “I promise.”

With a small smile, I said, “Okay, the first thing to understand is you won’t get in trouble for knowing this or if you tell anypony else. It’s just…very personal for me, and I’d rather it not become common knowledge.”

After Twinkleshine nodded, I continued, “My special talent isn’t magical theory. It’s just magic.”

“What kind of magic?” Twinkleshine interrupted.

I managed a laugh at Twinkleshine’s confusion. “Just magic.”

Eyes wide, Twinkleshine asked, “You – you mean all of it?”

I nodded.

“That’s – I mean, Moondancer is – and Trixie–”

Knowing that she wasn’t getting anywhere fast, I stepped in. “That wasn’t the main point, just a clarification so the rest makes sense. Do you remember there being an incident at the exams three-ish years ago?”

“My parents said something about that, but we’d already left. We – wait! Did something happen to you then?”

“Other way around,” I said with more good humor than I was expecting. “I happened to Canterlot.”

Enjoying another good laugh at Twinkleshine’s expression, I added, “I’m a Flare: a pony with access to huge, outrageous amounts of magic. And I keep getting stronger as I grow. Sometimes it gets overwhelming, and I lose control. That was the incident. I caused a lot of damage that day.

“Anyway, Ce–” Catching myself before I spat her name, I restarted my sentence. “Princess Celestia put this ring on my horn which keeps my magic in check. Mostly. I’m strong enough right now to leak out enough power to turn a couple of pages in a book, and my flares die down quickly with it on, but not before leaking out some semi-wild magic. It usually takes cues from my mood or intentions, but only cues.

“Hence why I was on fire. Angry flares are the most predictable and tend to last until I calm down. I’m rarely not on fire when I flare while mad. Not that I flare every time I’m upset, just that if I flare and am upset, then I usually turn white and fiery and pull in additional magic to supplement my own, which is why the ring doesn’t do it’s job as well when I’m mad.”

I licked my dry lips and caught my breath. I’d been talking far too much today.

I was about to ask for questions when Twinkleshine said, “I’m really not skipping classes, Twilight. Moondancer is just in more advanced ones than me. I’m…not that good at magic.”

Befuddled was too strong a word to describe me. I just didn’t do befuddlement. Baffled was too strong as well, but it was a step in the right direction. I didn’t see the connection at all between what I’d said and what Twinkleshine had said.

Unless…she thought I was upset because she thought I thought she was wasting her good fortune to be in school instead of my being upset because classes were not to be skipped.

Ugh, that thought needed revising.

I took a cold, squishy step and remembered that I’d caused the dorm’s fire alarm to flood the room.

“Does anypony come to clean this up and repair damages?” I asked, letting the issue before go.

Twinkleshine nodded. “Eventually. Definitely before bedtime, but I don’t know when they’ll show up.”

“I see. Perhaps we should take our business elsewhere, then,” I said, looking towards the fortunately undamaged telescope near the window. “You’re not going to get in trouble for this, are you?”

“No, this kind of stuff happens here all the time,” Twinkleshine laughed. She actually laughed. Not just her weak giggle, but a real laugh. It was really endearing in the strangest way.

Regardless, we quickly packed up Twinkleshine’s telescope and saddlebags and then made our way outside. The school campus was remarkably large and roomy for the tightly packed city of Canterlot, and Twinkleshine claimed to know all of the best hiding places to sit and watch the celestial bodies.

Along the way, we enjoyed some small talk over constellations and eventually got sidetracked with discussing star beasts. I’d once asked Luna what they were, but she’d said they were older than both her and Discord. In particular, she’d said that any wild theories I came up with were as good as any of her own and then had regaled me with what it was like to be eaten by an ursa major. I probably would’ve had nightmares after that story if Luna hadn’t been around to deal with them.

Anyway, after sneaking into a restricted area – a surprisingly bold move on Twinkleshine’s part – we reached our destination. We were at the top floor of the clock tower where all of the bells hung directly above. There was no physical railing, but Twinkleshine assured me there were enchantments in place in case anypony fell off. Aside from the bells, then, it was no more than a large, elevated platform with a roof. No good for lying down and gazing up, but perfect for using a telescope.

Twinkleshine quickly reassembled her telescope with her magic. She was so fast at it that I almost suspected she’d developed a spell specifically to do the task, but the telltale signs of telekinesis were obvious to me.

After she finished, Twinkleshine lit up her horn one last time and placed a nifty illusion on the telescope to make it project what it was looking at onto the floor.

Seeing Twinkleshine practically begging for a compliment, even if she was trying to hide it, I said, “Interesting spellwork. You’re not as bad as you claimed.”

“T-thanks. But it’s not really that great.” Twinkleshine’s voice soured. “Moondancer took one look at it and figured out how to cast it herself.”

Ouch, that must have hurt. Something similar happened between Shining and I when I was four. I drove him to near desperation when he was trying to make amends with me. Of course, Twinkleshine didn’t need an overture of apologies right now. She needed a heavy dose of confidence.

“Ink and parchment,” I said. To Twinkleshine’s confusion, I added, “You brought some with, right?”

With a nod, Twinkleshine retrieved a notebook – fortunately the kind that would stay open without effort – a stoppered vial of ink, and a quill. She then placed the implements in front of me and stood back.

And now I found myself in a rather embarrassing position. I’d been given a stoppered vial of ink. I wasn’t going to be able to fix that anytime soon without taking the suppressor off. Well, I might have been able to with two steady hooves and my mouth, but I’d just as likely end up with ink on my face as not.

But to both my relief and indignation, Twinkleshine noticed my distress and solved the problem for me without a word. In the end, I decided to pretend the entire thing had never happened.

Forgoing the quill, which I wasn’t sure I could pick up and didn’t want to try, I pulled a small amount of ink from the vial and formed it into effectively the same shape it would’ve had in the quill. This was a very early trick I’d learned when developing my telekinetic control to surgical precision, and it still made me smile every time a pony saw me doing it, even if it required far more focus than simply using an especially light quill.

As I started writing, I noticed Twinkleshine staring at me. I knew she’d been impressed when I told her what my special talent really was, but I also knew she hadn’t really appreciated what that meant. Not until now, that was.

Still writing, I said, “You can learn to do this, too, Twinkleshine.”

Incoherent stuttering was all the reply I received.

“Not that I would recommend it. This is a very low power substitute for a quill or for simply magicking words onto parchment.”

“I don’t think–”

“Why do you like astronomy?” I interrupted. I didn’t need Twinkleshine losing even more self-confidence before my surprise was done, and astronomy was the only thing I knew that was sure to distract her.

“What?”

“Why do you like astronomy?” I repeated. “What initially drew your interest?”

“Oh. Um… I don’t really know. Sorry. It’s just…fun. And everything… It’s all so beautiful. Almost as if it were a painting ready to come to life at the slightest touch. If – if that makes any sense.”

It made more sense than you knew. I stopped writing for a few seconds to look up at her and nod. I doubted she noticed, though. She was in her own little world.

“Sometimes… Sometimes I gaze up at the night sky and… I don’t know. I feel like it’s gazing back. But not like those horror stories of seaponies and the depths. It’s…gentle and loving. Like getting lost and finally finding your mother after crying your heart out. And–”

Twinkleshine blushed and tried to hid her face behind her hooves. “Oh, Celestia, that was the most foalish thing I’ve ever said.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I said, barely keeping the jealousy out of my voice.

I had no real evidence and only a vague notion of how alicorns worked to go on, but just listening to Twinkleshine talk made it sound like she did have some special connection to Luna that I’d never have or even understand. Her special talent was astronomy, after all, and the stars fell under Luna’s domain just as much as the moon did.

What would happen if she ascended? Would Twinkleshine rip a part of Luna away from her? Maybe the two would fuse somehow. Perhaps Twinkleshine would get the short end of the stick and get nothing. Maybe they would share control of the stars.

Too many questions and too little information.

I noticed I’d stopped writing at some point and started up again before Twinkleshine also noticed. At least I hadn’t let the ink drop all over the parchment.

Not pursuing the matter, Twinkleshine returned my own question back to me, “So why do you like astronomy?”

“Well, I didn’t used to like it so much. I liked the night more in general. It was quiet, and I really liked the low levels of light and lying down with a book illuminated by my magic. I was always a night owl, and my parents constantly fought me on it until…external factors came into play.

“I don’t really have much appreciation for art, but even then I had to admit the stars were a wonderful backdrop to the world. Canterlot lighting ruins the effect, though. But what really made me interested was meeting somepony who…really liked stargazing. Now when I look up at the stars, I think of her and get a warm feeling inside.”

I sighed and noticed that I’d stopped writing once again. I really shouldn’t have said that. All I wanted to do now was go to sleep.

“That’s really sweet,” said Twinkleshine. Unless I was hearing things, I thought I heard a tinge of disappointment in her words.

Letting her remark pass unchallenged as she had mine, I put the final touches on my work and returned the remaining ink to its vial. I resisted the urge to proofread it a couple times for grammar and typography issues, then gestured for Twinkleshine to take a look.

“I’m pretty sure this will work as intended, but there may be a few bugs you’ll have to find yourself.”

Barely into the first page, Twinkleshine said, “This – Twilight, this is brilliant! Where did you learn this?”

“I cobbled it together just now from a double application of the classic mirror scrying spell and a simple illusion spell that’s probably very similar to the one you just used. If I spent more time on it, I could come up with a much more elegant solution, and I’m sure professional astronomers have something higher quality already, but this will probably be a lot easier for you to learn. I’ll leave it to you to make the improvements.”

Apparently, it took Twinkleshine this long to figure out that I gave her the spell for her to learn, use, and improve, as she said, “I can’t do this, Twilight. This is too–”

“Yes you can,” I asserted. “This kind of magic is right up your alley. If you have trouble, try learning the regular and the mirror scrying spell first in that order.”

“But the range–”

“Is petty. Look, I understand what it’s like to not have an endless supply of magic. I really do. But scrying is a low power spell, as are illusions. Sure, you probably can’t sustain this spell indefinitely without building up your magical reserves, but you can keep it going for at least few minutes.

“And just think about what you’ll get to see! The stars completely unfiltered by lights or by the atmosphere. You could be making original discoveries and be heralded as a prodigy if you’d only have more confidence in yourself.”

The bait was set, and I waited with bated breath to see if Twinkleshine would take it and reach for greatness.

“I…”

That didn’t bode well, but I didn’t give up. I kept up the most expecting yet supportive face I could and hoped it would be enough.

“I – I suppose outer space isn’t that far…”

I let out the breath I’d been holding. It wasn’t exactly a shout of passion to the heavens, but Twinkleshine had taken a small step forward, and that was enough for now.

And I had to admit, I felt pretty good for the part I’d played in that step. Perhaps this was how Luna felt when she’d pulled me out of the gutter. Maybe when I’m one- or two-hundred years old, I would enjoy having a proper student of my own.

For now, though, it seemed I’d walked into tutoring Twinkleshine all on my own – cantered, really, if not galloped.

“It’s really not. Ponies scry across the world, which is hundreds of times farther than space. I’ll come see how you’re doing when I visit Canterlot, and if you’re having problems, I can help you work them out. Okay?”

Twinkleshine nodded and smiled.

“Great. Now let’s actually do what we came here to do.”

The deafening sound of the train’s whistle echoed through Canterlot Station. The Ponyville Express was making its last call for passengers and was set to leave in less than a minute.

And with that call, Cadance released me from her hug. “I’m really going to miss you, Twilight.”

“Me, too. But I’ll come visit often, I promise.”

Cadance smiled and pushed me toward Shining, who was waiting for me at the train door. “I’ll hold you to that. And I’m sure Shining will want to see you, too.” Then whispering in my ear, Cadance said, “And Twinkleshine as well.”

“I swear, if you say ‘I told you so’ one more time, I won’t be held responsible for what happens.”

Completely ignoring me, Cadance said, “I told you so.”

Seething, I stomped away from her and jumped onto the train. I briefly turned around and blew a raspberry at her. I left before she could respond. Super foalish, yes. But Cadance was being just as foalish herself.

The Ponyville Express whistled once more and suddenly lurched forward before settling into a slow pace as it left the station. Shining joined me as soon as the car we were in pulled out of sight of the platform.

“That was pretty rude, you know,” Shining said as we walked. We were heading toward the very last car in the train: the royal box. Cadance had given us permission to use it whenever we wanted.

Well, except when it was occupied during a state of war, but Equestria was never at war anymore. Nopony was stupid enough to attack the only known being who could cycle day and night, and even that disregarded the overwhelming power she could bring to bear against her foes.

“Cadance started it.”

Laughing, Shining said, “Yes, I can certainly imagine she did. But you could have tried being the bigger pony.”

“Maybe next time,” I mumbled.

We arrived at the royal box, and Shining took out one of the key copies Cadance had given us to unlock the door. Inside was not exactly what I had expected. Sure, there were the trappings of office and a number of luxuries, including a large cloud bed, but it didn’t scream, ‘This is the property of immortal goddess royals, and you are lucky to be given the briefest of glimpses’ the way I’d thought it would. I could imagine Cadance having a hoof in that.

“So how was your visit with Twinkleshine?”

“Oh, not you, too, Shining,” I moaned. And I’d just found a comfortable spot on a chair that wasn’t made of clouds. “Please, Cadance was bad enough.”

“How so?” Shining asked. His face showed that his confusion was honest. Maybe Cadance hadn’t shared her opinions with him. If that was the case…

“Nevermind. It was fun. And I got to experience a new side of myself.” Not that I had any plans to do any real teaching for a long time, especially considering I was very much still a student myself.

Shining nodded approvingly. “I’m glad you’re finally making friends, even if they’re kind of out-of-the-way.”

“No, no, no. Just stop there. I don’t need or want to hear Cadance’s lecture again coming from you.” I paused for a moment, then giving Shining the benefit of the doubt, I added, “Whether she’s putting you up to it or not.”

Having the sheer gall to laugh, Shining said, “Very well, Twily. But please promise me you’ll make friends in Ponyville. Cadance and I won’t be able to be there for you like we were in Canterlot.”

Just to put an end to the conversation – hopefully a permanent end with a gruesome death – I said, “Fine, I will.”

To pass the time, I thought about reading one of the books I’d picked up from the archives between visiting Twinkleshine and catching the train, but I thought better of it. I wasn’t going to see Shining as often anymore, so I asked him to play a game of poker with me.

Long ago, Shining had initially been very mad when one of his fellow guards had taught me the game, but after I’d given him a humiliating defeat, he’d quickly changed his tune.

It was one of the saddest, yet funniest, things. Shining had some sort of stallion pride thing going on that made him unable to refuse my invitations despite my continuous winning streak. Honestly, we’d lost track of how many games I’d won, but we both knew Shining was sitting at solid zero. Still, it was good practice for me.

I could read Shining like a book. And as for his point of view, well, Luna’s lessons had a lot of mundane, practical uses, too. Really, he should’ve given up trying to read me and played as statistically as possible long ago, but I wasn’t going to point that out.

“All in,” Shining bluffed. It looked like he’d been practicing, but it was still obvious he had nothing.

I turned over my measly pair of twos, and Shining let his head fall onto the table in defeat.

“Ugh, why are you so good at this?” Shining moaned. “Has dad been coaching you? Or one of my friends? I could see them doing that.”

“Both wrong,” I answered. Then to rub salt in the wound as usual, I said, “Perhaps you’d like some coaching yourself?”

To my great surprise, Shining whispered, “Yes. Teach me your ways.”

Ha! Shining had finally truly admitted defeat! As for teaching him, well, nopony could say I wasn’t generous in my own way.

“Alright, protip one. If your opponent is easy to frustrate” – I gave Shining a knowing look – “disrespect her at every opportunity underneath a calm, dignified manner.”

“That’s horrible! Who taught you that?”

“It’s not horrible, Shining. It’s how you play the game. Poker is stupid and boring until you pay attention to the ponies playing. That’s where the game really takes place. Ponies are very stupid when they’re upset, and it makes it very easy to win. As a soldier, that’s something you should really work on, unless you want to get yourself injured.”

After a moment, I whispered, “Or worse,” letting my own worries for him slip out.

Shining let his head fall back onto the table and buried it under his hooves. “Great, now my little sister is telling me how to do my job.”

“Speaking of, did you ever look at that list of spells I gave you?”

“Briefly.”

I waited for Shining to add something, but apparently that was all he had to report.

“And? Did you start learning any of them?”

Shaking his head, Shining said, “I don’t see the point. If a unicorn strong enough to cast something actually requiring that level of defense wanted me dead, I’d be dead one way or another.”

I sighed. Shining just didn’t understand. I didn’t really have a tactful way to put it, either, so I decided to say it as bluntly as possible.

“Shining, guards are like…like wallpaper. You remember the point I made last season, right?”

Face contorting in disgust, Shining said, “Yes.” I really couldn’t blame him. It wasn’t every night a filly with essentially no magic dropped a fellow guard and a friend in less than a second. Despite the squick of the incident, it’d been a necessary flaw I’d had to point out to the guard. You just didn’t send in unwarded ponies against a unicorn regardless of how cute and innocent she appeared.

Although, I mostly had been trying to make a point to Mom and Dad about letting me walk the streets at night alone, as well as making sure I was doing what Luna had taught me correctly. Not that Mom or Dad accepted the argument when they heard about it.

“You all have an important job,” I continued. “You keep order. You don’t need to protect alicorns. That’s a job for the ancient, romanticised idea of a knight. You’re just not equipped to deal with the really serious problems, and those problems know that. If you survive the room clearing attack meant to remove annoyances, you’ll be just fine if you don’t do anything stupid and let somepony like Celestia deal with whatever is happening.”

“Hiding behind my princess isn’t why I joined the guard, Twilight.”

“Neither is getting yourself killed for no reason!” I countered. I really wished I had all of the evidence I wanted to throw at him right now, but I didn’t generally carry around history books even I thought were dry.

“Shining, I mean this in the least offensive way when I say this, but history doesn’t lie. If you read through all of the records of major incidents in Equestrian history, it’s always Celestia or some great heroine who solves the problem. If you dig a little deeper, you can find a list of” – I had to hold back a sniff after imagining Shining’s name among them – “of names. All dead guards who died for nothing.”

My hooves slammed on the table as well as I could make them. “Nothing, Shining! They didn’t hold the line or save the day by delaying their foe. They just died senselessly. Please don’t add your name to those lists. Mom and Dad would be heartbroken. Cadance would be heartbroken.” Whispering once more, I finished, “I’d be heartbroken.”

I felt Shining pick me up with his magic and float me over for a hug. I struggled a bit, but he wasn’t going to let go.

I didn’t want a hug. I wanted him to promise me he wasn’t going to get himself killed. It would be all too easy to happen by accident if Luna or I didn’t realize he’d gotten in our way.

“I’m not going to die so easily, Twily. You don’t have to worry so much.”

“You don’t understand. It’s not just me. We’re all worried about you. Your special talent is protecting ponies, and you sometimes take that too far. No. You often take that too far. We’re terrified that with only Cadance around, you’ll do something crazy.” Crazy like trying over and over to beat up Luna; even her patience had its limits.

This was the point where I wanted to stare Shining down silently, but his hugging was getting in the way of that.

“Even Cadance?” Shining finally asked.

That was a stupid question. Of course Cadance was worried, too, and I told him as much.

“And you know what?” I asked. “I was going to have you buy me a bag of treats from a new bakery I heard of in Ponyville for my winnings this time. Instead, I’m going to force you to actually try learning every spell on that list I gave you. And you have to really try. No halfhearted attempts.”

“I…” Shining hesitated for a moment, but in the end, he said the words Cadance, Mom, Dad, and I all wanted to hear. “I promise I will.”

“Good.” This time I managed to struggle out of his hug and returned to my side of the table. “Now, if memory serves, you’ve finally humbled yourself enough to ask your little sister for help.”

I laughed as Shining’s face flipped from terribly serious to foalishly indignant in an instant. Still, he didn’t object, and I spent the rest of the train ride giving him a few pointers. Some he didn’t approve of, but considering the game was based on lying to begin with, he didn’t really have any valid arguments against them. It was oh so delicious to watch him squirm, because he knew it, too.

Eventually, the train finally pulled into Ponyville. From the windows, I could make out a huge number of thatched roof cottages and some sort of crazy tree home. Although, it looked like there was a balcony on top for star gazing, so whoever lived in that tree couldn’t be completely crazy.

I didn’t get a better view once we were off the train. Rather than heading into town, we veered off immediately for the countryside. We passed by several farms, as we were taking a path in-between them. The largest one by far was an apple orchard, but there were also flower fields and a wheat field. In the distance, I spied an apiary and made a note either to give it a wide berth or to put up a shield in the future.

So far, I was rather unimpressed with Ponyville. But really, that was the point of moving here. I needed to be somewhere uninteresting and inconvenient, but not somewhere crazy like inside a volcano. Although…it would be pretty cool and magically challenging to make that work. Maybe that could be something to do in the future.

Finally, we arrived at a short winding road that led to a sizable estate somewhat near the Everfree Forest. In Canterlot, ponies would look at a grassy yard half the size of the attached house and consider it prime real estate. But if the open field behind our house were anything to judge by, I had to come up with a new standard for what it meant to be a large backyard.

Shining whistled. “I knew our parents were well-off, but I never knew they had this kind of money to throw around.”

I was vaguely aware of that myself, but considering we had kept our Canterlot home, I wondered if we had dipped – legitimately, since this move was for my education – into Luna’s money. It was possible Cadance had lent a bit or two as well, but I considered that less likely.

The house itself was a rather impressive two story building. Although it was made of wood with a thatched roof, it at least looked as sturdy as the stone and brick buildings of Canterlot. It probably had to be, too. The wild weather of the Everfree was well-known across Equestria, and it was painfully obvious we were going to be on intimate terms with it in the coming years.

Stepping inside, the first and only word that come to mind was boxes. There were so many boxes. Unpacking apparently either had not been an easy process or had been low priority. My guess was on the latter. Mom and Dad would almost certainly be getting to know the town and its residents first.

Not that they weren’t home to welcome Shining and I. We barely made it one step inside before both of us were pulled into a group hug with Mom.

“Oh, I’ve missed you both so much! How was the train ride?”

A bit lacking in air, I answered, “I beat Shining at poker again.”

From the back of the house we heard a large thump and a laugh from Dad. Apparently sound carried well in here. Very good to know.

Mom frowned a bit but didn’t say anything. She didn’t think it was proper for a filly to play such games, but she also never tried to put a stop to it. Anything to get me to be a little more social, probably, even if that usually meant playing games with ponies two or three decades my senior.

“Anyway, how was spending time with Twinkleshine?”

“Um…” Shining said. Apparently he hadn’t picked up on the fact that I was fine talking about making friends so long as I wasn’t being lectured about it. Kind of annoying. I wasn’t exactly being subtle about it. Whatever.

Before Shining could say anything else, I told Mom the same thing I’d told him.

“That’s great, Twilight! I imagine you’ll be wanting to visit her on archive runs, right?”

I nodded. “I did promise to help her with something. I’m not really sure how long the visits would last, though.”

“That’s perfectly fine,” Dad said as he entered the room and gave us both his own hug. “Velvet and I have occasional business in Canterlot that will require overnight visits.”

“That’ll make Cadance happy,” Shining commented and gave me an annoying nudge.

“Ah, but what are we standing around for?” Mom asked. She had a smile that said mischief, and everypony knew it. After all, I’d inherited most of her looks and mannerisms. “There’s a lot of work to be done here, and we’ve saved both of you your fair shares.”

I got a small laugh seeing Shining gulp and take a step back. “I – Uh… I need to be getting back to Canterlot. Twilight wants me to do some stuff.”

“I’m afraid not, my little knight in shining armor.”

Shining groaned at Mom’s, quite frankly, horrible pun.

“You arrived on the last train to or from Ponyville today. There won’t be another until tomorrow morning when Canterlot’s next produce shipment leaves.”

“Oh,” Shining said weakly.

“Yes, we have a lot of very heavy things that need moving. Do come along. The sooner we finish, the sooner we can get you supper.”

Head hung low in defeat, Shining sighed, “Yes, Mom.”

After those two had left, Dad and I gave each other a knowing glance. Mostly likely we were thinking the same thing: where was the evil laugh?

“He’s been kind of busy with his work lately…” Dad mused. It was true. Mom might have just been missing Shining more than either of us had thought. “Anyway, I’ll show you to your new room.”

My room! I’d completely forgotten. This was going to be fantastic! With Shining grown and in Canterlot, I was going to be treated to all the comforts of an only foal, and that meant a huge room with all the associated amenities, like my own bathroom.

Dad led me upstairs and opened a door. My parents had not let me down. Even buried in unopened boxes, it was obvious my room was huge. Probably three times the size of the one I had in Canterlot.

But there was one thing troubling me. My eyes scanned the room for the most important of my belongings, but I couldn’t find hide nor hair of them.

“Dad, where are–”

As I looked up at my dad’s face, he had a smile no less mischievous than Mom’s and motioned for me to follow. He led me down the hall to the next room over and said in a corny stage voice, “Prepare yourself for the unveiling of secrets not meant for mortal eyes.”

The anticipation was killing me, and he was purposefully delaying even longer. Equally irritated and eager, I took matters into my own hoof and pushed open the knobless door.

Now I know I had one before in the abandoned mine, but having one properly in my own home and right next to my room was just the best thing ever.

“Oh. My. Gosh!” I shouted as I ran into the library. Words failed me as I explored the shelves. I didn’t even recognize half the titles present. My parents must’ve added an enormous number of books to my already substantial collection.

“After the basics for us to live,” Dad began, “this was the first thing we unpacked. Consider it an early Hearth’s–”

Dad didn’t get another word out as I tackled him with a hug. In addition to the best thing ever, this was the best present ever.

Whispering the first word, Dad said, “Luna suggested a few titles herself. We put those” – he gestured towards a half-filled shelf of books next to the door – “right there. She said you might want to take a look at the ones about tracking and magical signatures in particular. She didn’t say why, though.”

The reason was obvious enough knowing what I was looking for. “I think I know why. But all this, I just – I don’t know what to say. This is just so amazing! Thank you so much!”

I squeezed Dad a little too tightly and forced the air out of him, sending him into a bout of coughing.

“I’m glad you like it,” wheezed Dad, “but not so tight, please, Sweetie.” After embarrassingly loosening my grip, he added, “Be sure to thank Velvet, too. Just…maybe not so passionately.”

“I’ll try.”

I giggled as I headed out the door to do just that.

Having lessons in my dream gave me certain advantages over Luna, advantages which I just plain wouldn’t have in the real world. To put it simply, she never saw me coming as I knocked her down.

“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

Recovering from her daze, Luna wrapped a wing around me and returned my nuzzle. “I take it you arrived in Ponyville last night.”

“Uh-huh. Your book picks were wonderful.”

“I actually have another dozen or so to give you, but they’re currently stored in my – at the old castle in the Everfree. I imagine you’ll be taking a trip there once you master teleporting. Let me know before you do, and I’ll tell you how to find them.”

Still sitting on top of Luna’s barrel, I broke my embrace and looked her in the eyes. With barely contained enthusiasm, I asked, “What are they about?”

“Well,” Luna said playfully, “so far we’ve been working solely with regular magic, but I think it’s time for you to begin your study on dark magic.”

I nearly gasped. There was a lot of propaganda against dark magic in the world. But so far as I knew, it was just that: propaganda. I, and everypony I knew except Luna, knew about as much about dark magic as the common pony knew about Luna. If Luna thought it was safe, then it was safe.

And besides, even if Luna thought it was dangerous and that I shouldn’t study it, I probably wouldn’t listen. My curiosity would’ve gotten the better of me sooner or later.

“The books I want to give you are actually my own personal notes on the subject.”

This time I did gasp. That was like giving somepony not just a first edition, signed copy of the first Daring Do book, but the original manuscript and multiplied by a million. It was a good thing I was sleeping, or I probably would’ve fainted on the spot.

“I – thank you. I mean, what can I possibly say?”

“Thank you more than suffices, Twilight. I have little need for them anymore myself. Oh, and how was spending time with Twinkleshine?”

“It was fun. The comet was nice, but I had more fun putting together a real star gazing spell for her to learn and work on. I’m definitely not ready yet, but someday I think I’d like to try teaching for real and not just tutoring.”

“It is a rather pleasant experience,” Luna said, probably with a smile, if her tone were anything to go by. I was still curled up comfortably on her barrel with her face was out of sight. “To be honest, teaching was always more my sister’s thing.” Rubbing my mane, she added, “But I completely understand why she does it now.”

After an indefinite silence, Luna asked, “Has everything else been going well for you?”

“Ye – yes.”

“Hmm? Why the hesitation?”

“It’s nothing important,” I said, not wanting to spoil the mood.

“Well, now I have to ask if you put it like that.”

“What? Why?” I said it was nothing important. How in Equus does that make it high priority?

“Twilight, it’s the little things that cause the biggest problems. Just tell me what’s wrong.”

“It’s really nothing. I’ve just been a little moody lately.”

“Moody?” Luna asked, clearly a bit confused. She hummed thoughtfully and asked, “Has this happened before? Perhaps just before or just after Nightmare Night?”

I thought back a couple weeks. Was I moody? I was definitely not happy, but I was unenthused around Nightmare Night every year.

Hmm… I may have been a bit more sulky this year, but there was too much noise to really draw a meaningful conclusion. How annoying.

“Maybe?” I answered. “I’d put slightly more probability on yes than no, but not by much.”

“Excellent!” Luna exclaimed, getting up and sending me tumbling off her. “I was so hoping to catch this before your parents did, and it would seem luck is on my side.”

“Catch what?” I asked. I was a bit worried now despite how benign Luna made whatever my problem was sound. I wasn’t prone to illness – I’d never even gotten the standard once-in-a-lifetime foalhood diseases – but when I got sick, I got sick. It was always something doctors didn’t know how to cure instantly. And seriously, high fevers were the worst.

“In due time, Twilight. In due time. First, I need to gather my thoughts a bit. I only get one chance to expose you to this the right way. It’s really unfortunate that you get moody from it though. It’s not exactly a rare side-effect, but it’s not common either. Either way, I’ll direct you to some spells that will get rid of your mood swings for you later.”

Leaving my question unanswered and my curiosity unsated, Luna plunged deep into her own thoughts. After several excruciating minutes, she finally spoke, although, what she said wasn’t particularly helpful.

“Congratulations. You’re a mare, Twilight.”

I sat staring at Luna with a blank look. After a few moments to recover from the sheer unhelpfulness of her response, I deadpanned, “What?”

“You’ve had your first two – perhaps more – estrus cycles. It’s not unusual for a mare to not notice for quite a while. The most common way a mare finds out is when a colt does something incredibly stupid around her when her parents are nearby.”

That didn’t exactly help either, Luna. “And that means…”

“Well, from a purely academic perspective, it means you are now capable of both intercourse and conceiving a foal of your own. The former is, of course, the process by which the latter is performed.”

“Um… I don’t really want a foal,” I hazarded. Luna seemed really psyched about this for some reason, and I didn’t want to let her down, but I simply wasn’t interested in being a mom.

“Nor should you. You are far too young to pursue either option right now. But you are now able to understand intercourse, and as it is a fundamentally important part of nightly culture, so much so that even my sister partakes in it, I want to make sure you are introduced to it from the right perspective.”

I cocked my head to the side and asked, “As opposed to?” Luna still hadn’t explained what intercourse was, but I was sure that she’d get to it in her own sweet time, regardless of how much or little I inquired or whined.

“Society’s,” Luna answered, her disdain not well-hidden. “You see, ponies – and everyone else in the world – have a tendency to view sex–” Luna stopped to explain that was another word for intercourse before I could ask. “They have a tendency to view sex as something shameful and prop it up as something that should only be done between married couples or lovers in steady relationships.

“And before you ask, a steady relationship essentially means married without the paperwork, considering how easy divorce is. And I suppose you now want to know what divorce is.”

I nodded.

“It just means a married couple going their separate ways, usually permanently, although they may remain friends.

“Anyway, as paragons of the night and as its greatest supporters, we are under no such delusions. We embrace our feelings and passions but do not let the flames grow out of control. For us, sex is not something we dance around or shackle to odd traditions. It is an expression of deep friendship and trust, as well as pleasure.”

Luna shivered as though she were cold and said, “And believe me when I say that it is pleasurable, Twilight. Even my prudish sister cannot resist its call, though she has the world believe she does.” Sighing, Luna said, “Ah, it has been so long since I had a partner.”

“I–”

Luna cut me off before I started my second word. “I already said you are too young, Twilight. Both physically and emotionally.”

I couldn’t help but be upset at that. Luna was the only pony that didn’t truly treat me like a filly, and I hated that she was now. Doubly so given that she’d just said I was a mare now.

Still, as grating as it was, this was obviously a lesson, and Luna always knew when I was ready for something and when I wasn’t. I’d just have to trust her judgment on this one.

“Just because you can,” Luna continued, “doesn’t mean you should. Experiment on your own when you’re a few years older, and wait until you really understand what you’re getting into before you ask anypony to lay with you. Understood?”

I nodded, and Luna made me promise that I wouldn’t try anything until I was at least fourteen, and preferably not until sixteen or later with another pony.

“One other thing to mention,” Luna began. “I said that few, if any, ponies will be coming from the same cultural viewpoint as us on this subject. It is incredibly important that you explain our perspective first, or you risk causing serious emotional damage to your partner. Jealousy and betrayal are not feelings to be taken lightly. Understood?”

I nodded again and idly wondered if Shining and Cadance were having sex. They did seem awfully close, and Luna would approve of their ages. I made a note to ask Shining this evening after I woke up. If not, I might be able to push them into it. If it was really everything Luna made it sound like, I didn’t see why they wouldn’t want to.

“Alright. Now that we’ve covered the significantly more important cultural aspect – and don’t let anypony tell you otherwise, not even your parents or Cadance – let’s move on to anatomy and mechanics, beginning with the female side of things.”

Almost as an afterthought, Luna added, “I will warn you in advance that this might seem gross and make you squeamish until you get comfortable with the ideas.”

“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” I huffed. Luna just smirked.

“Now it all begins with the estrus cycle. There are two main phases you want to be concerned with: the estrus phase and the diestrus phase. The former usually lasts half a week to a week, and the latter is fairly predictable at about a week and a half. The two repeat one after another endlessly for much of your life – or forever for us. Remind me afterward to direct you to a few spells that will force your body to remain in the diestrus phase. That will deal with your moodiness.

“The estrus phase is when a mare is capable of conceiving a foal. It’s also when you may experience unpleasant side effects. In your case, this would be moodiness. Stallions are usually able to tell when you’re in this phase, and it leads to…some pretty stupid behavior on their end if they find you attractive.”

I laughed as I remembered some really dumb things Shining had done around Cadance. In hindsight, they made a lot more sense to me now.

“There are rumors that sex is more pleasurable for females during this phase, but it’s complete nonsense.

“On a historical note, since I know you love them” – Luna got a smile out of me; I did love trivia – “there is a third important phase called the anestrus phase. In the distant past, in the later half of fall and all through winter, mares would enter this phase and be unable to conceive a foal. In the present day, entering this phase is often surprising and scary for a mare. The biological mechanism for entering this phase is quite simple: reduced exposure to light.”

“But we have so much artificial lighting now that it’s irrelevant,” I finished for Luna and got a brief rub of my mane for the trouble.

“Exactly. Now stallions, on the other hoof, are able to reproduce all year, regardless of external circumstances. By the way, this is where things might get awkward for you.”

“I’m fine,” I reassured Luna again. Whatever she was going to say couldn’t be so weird that she needed to warn me so much.

“First, I should mention that there’s no reason for sex to be restricted to male on female, especially not when shapeshifters like myself – or you in perhaps four years or so – get involved. However, we’re just considering this from the academic standpoint and how the biology works, so we’ll discuss that some other time.

“Anyway, I’m sure you’ve seen a penis before, even with the prepuce concealing them. Stallions don’t exactly make a strong attempt to hide them in pony culture, and at your height, you have a rather low view. Now at it’s simplest, intercourse is performed by…”

As Luna went on, I blushed hard enough and then some for my cheeks to appear red through my coat. Things got awkward.

Author's Note

A minor note: I am using the same calender in this story as I do in Seeking Power, so that means ten days to the week.

Read all about it! Another problem with eternal night, experts believe. Is your mare staring at a light long enough each night? Get all the facts in the Manehattan Times.

Chapter Four - A Small Problem

It was a lovely summer night on the edge of the Everfree Forest. Or at least it was as nice as nights get on the edge of the Everfree.

“Okay, calm down, Twilight,” I said, my voice the exact opposite of nice, lovely, serene, and all those other pleasant words. On my horn was an imitation suppressor, one enchanted to be unnoticeable to touch on the inside so I could wear it all night, every night without tearing it off and destroying it. I nervously kicked a rock into one of the craters my flares had made that I hadn’t bothered to clean up yet.

“You’ve put this off for far too many seasons now. You know how to teleport, you’ve extracted your horrible vengeance against your suppressor, Luna’s waiting on standby, you’ve calculated a minuscule probability of flaring if you make a lot of short, quick jumps. And even if you do, you’re so desensitized to the pain that your flare should scare everything off long enough for you recover enough to flee for your presently mortal life.

“You can do this. There’s only horrible pony-eating, magic-resistant beasts of unstoppable terror and impenetrable stealth that tear through shields like butter lurking in these woods. Nothing you can’t manage.”

Oh Luna, what was I doing? I was going to die, and my family wouldn’t even know where my corpse would end up as fertilizer. I didn’t want to become fertilizer! Maybe I should go back. I should go back and reevaluate the necessity of this whole excursion.

No. I shook my head and turned to face the forest again. I couldn’t go back home. This trip to the old castle was too important. I had to do it. Even if I weren’t picking up part of Luna’s Hearth’s Warming present to me two seasons late, I had to follow up on my only real lead on the elements.

If only the Everfree didn’t make my legs quiver at the very thought of entering.

But what did I need legs for? I was going to teleport! I promptly sat myself down on the ground and felt somewhat emboldened for the small victory of steadying my legs.

Riding off that courage, I closed my eyes, cast a light spell on myself, and set off my first teleport. Embarrassingly, I altered my destination at the last second to a mere meter past the tree line. Still, it was another small victory. I was inside the Everfree Forest.

I regretted opening my eyes immediately. The light spell I’d cast on myself was making the most terrifying shadows that falsely hinted at the presence of some terrible beast that’d wandered to the edge of the forest. Thankfully, I had the good fortune to be seated, or I probably would’ve stumbled over my legs fleeing as I sent off another teleport out of the forest.

Okay, new plan. I cast a cloud walking enchantment on myself and ripped a cloud from the sky with my telekinesis, silently apologizing to the Ponyville weather team. I then hopped on top of the cloud, made myself comfortable, and teleported far, far above the trees.

The next step was to cast a warming spell on myself, because it was freezing this high in the sky. I then checked the cloud for any degradation it might have been undergoing from the added heat, but fortunately, I found none.

Sighing, I looked down over the edge of the cloud and found myself more glad that I wasn’t afraid of heights than ever before in my life. Sure, I’d be a lot more vulnerable to the forest’s flying predators, but at least this way I wouldn’t be in the forest. It’d be much easier to dodge if something came at me, too.

Ugh… But what if I flared? I could bring my cloud lower; I could survive a shorter drop with branches to break my fall. But that was just asking for something hungry to notice me.

“Who.”

“Oh my gosh, don’t eat me!” I shouted as I teleported myself and my cloud away from whatever had snuck up on me. I then did what I should’ve done long ago and snuffed out my light spell. I had no need of it in the sky, and it would only draw attention.

Teleporting semi-randomly, I tried to locate whatever was assaulting me.

“Who,” the creature called again. I turned my attention towards the sound and found something I did not expect: an owlet.

I sighed as I let my next teleport spell fizzle, but the owlet had already noticed the glow of my horn and flew to join me. It landed on my back as if it were the most natural thing in the world and made itself comfortable.

“Well, this is…odd.”

“Who.”

Did I just randomly gain a pet?

“Um… Do you want to come visit some ruins with me?” I asked.

Unsurprisingly, the only answer I got was another, “Who.”

“Yeah… Right… I guess I’ll call you… Hmm… How about, Owlowiscious?”

“Who.”

Wow, this was awkward.

Anyway, I had a task to accomplish. If Owlowiscious flew away from teleport shock, then it flew away. Surprisingly feeling braver with the mere presence of the owl, I fired off the first of many teleports tonight. Owlowiscious didn’t fly away or even get up from where it rested.

Huh. Maybe it’d already been domesticated by somepony. Although that raised the question of how it’d ended up with me and who it belonged to. But those were questions for another time. I fired off another teleport.

And another.

And another, all in an near endless stream of pink, magical blinks with half-second pauses between. Fortunately, nothing noticed me so high up – or maybe nothing wanted to bother flying so high up to eat me – and I made it to my destination after well over two-hundred teleports and some questionable use of navigational skills.

I wasn’t anywhere near out of magic, but that’d still been exhausting on my horn. I collapsed onto my side on the cloud for some well-earned rest. Owlowiscious fluttered and landed on top of me again, this time nestling on my flank.

I lifted my head briefly to glance at the owlet. “You better not be leading momma owl here to eat me.”

Turning its head around one-hundred-eighty degrees to look at me, Owlowiscious said, “Who.”

Shivers ran through my body. That was creepy. Perhaps the creepiest thing I’d ever seen.

Sighing, I got to my hooves – with Owlowiscious now hitching a ride on my back – and teleported the two of us down to the front gate – if I could even call it that anymore – of the old castle. The large, wooden doors certainly blocked passage, but they were heavily damaged, and the vines growing along the walls had ruined the stonework and wedged the doors together. They’d probably fall down or crumble to pieces before they ever swung open again.

After a precautionary scry on the other side of the doors – I didn’t want to end up inside of a wall or something worse – I teleported inside. Time certainly hadn’t been any kinder inside the castle. The twin tapestries hung in the hall bearing Luna’s and Celestia’s cutie marks were still mostly intact, so they were probably enchanted, but everything else in the entryway gave the distinct impression of a ruin.

Ignoring the fallen sections of roof littering the ground, I took the last of three staircases on my left. It led down into the dark.

I recast my light spell to the slight annoyance of Owlowiscious and prepared a teleport to take me high into the sky at the first sign of anything living. At the end of the stairs, my hoofsteps echoed loudly through the corridor I’d landed in.

The echoes were worrying at first. Who knew what they would attract? But on the other hoof, I should be able to hear anything trying to sneak up on me long before it arrived. Still, there was no point in inviting trouble, so I cast a silencing spell on my hooves. It didn’t prevent the clattering of stray debris I knocked up, but my journey was much quieter for it.

Following Luna’s directions, I slowly made my way down the hallway, occasionally taking a turn when it split. I soon found myself at a second set of stairs leading deeper underground. I ventured down them and entered the second room on the right. The door was long gone along with whatever furniture that’d previously occupied this space.

All that remained were three marble bookcases lined with perfectly preserved books. Passing up the other tomes through sheer force of will, I located the innocent looking journals Luna had gifted me one by one until I had the full set of eleven suspended in my magic.

It was incredibly tempting to simply take all the books with me. Sure, they were all in Old Equestrian, would’ve taken forever to read, and probably didn’t have anything interesting in them that I couldn’t get from a modern book, but they were books. They might even be the last of their kind!

I reached out for one that caught my eye. If I was translating right, it was called The Wonderful Magic of Storm Chaser. A minute or two of reading couldn’t hurt. I’d just read the abstract and the first few pages.

“Who.”

I sighed and put the book back. Owlowiscious was right. I should get back to what I came here to do.

Wait… Did I just pretend Owlowiscious was talking to me?

I strained my head to get a look at the owlet on my back. It was as small and innocent looking as ever. All it did in return was stare at me and offer, “Who.”

“Owls…” I said dismissively.

I forced myself to leave without looking back at the alluring presence behind me and shaped the stone walls shut for good measure. I did leave a note engraved into the stone that read, “This was a door,” in case anypony else ever came down here.

Anyway, now eleven books heavier, I made my way back upstairs to the entryway more quickly and confidently than I’d gone down. From what I’d seen of the castle so far, I doubted there was anything living inside of it. There hadn’t been any signs of an oft-walked path through the dust and debris, or even any disturbances at all. Nor had there been any damage to the castle that clearly wasn’t the work of plants and weather. Both were strong indicators of an empty ruin.

Thankfully, I also hadn’t spotted any bones, nor did I stumble upon anything worse, like a half-eaten pony struggling to reach a door, leaving a trail of blood behind her as she–

Bad imagination! This was not the time for that.

Taking one of Cadance’s trademark, deep, calming breaths, I emerged on top of the original staircase I’d taken and turned away from the main gates. Only a dozen or so steps ahead of me was a grand staircase that lead directly to the throne room where Celestia had last used the elements. If luck held out, their overwhelming magic would’ve left traces of itself in the area.

Well, to be fair, Luna and I weren’t actually holding out for luck. That level of magic almost always left traces. Really, it would be unlucky if I didn’t find something to work with, even after a thousand years.

Skipping the frankly ridiculous number of stairs, I teleported to the doorway at the top. Like most of the internal doors, the ones to the throne room were missing, although I could see what looked like half of one of them inside the throne room, as if somepony a little too eager to see Luna had knocked a bit too hard.

There was also a large boulder blocking most of the door, but I moved it aside easily enough. Looking around inside, the throne room was definitely the site of a battle. There was some strange pedestal…thing…that was remarkably untouched, but everything else had seen serious damage. The floor especially was scorched with missed attacks, and some spots on the carpeting – also intact like the tapestries – had conspicuous stains that were probably from blood.

Now came the long, boring part of tonight. I walked to the very center of the room and made myself comfortable. Even without prodding the ambient magic in detail, it was obvious there was an assortment of random spells present. There was sure to be a lot of background noise, though, like the spells preserving the tapestries. It was going to take a while to filter out all the junk.

At least an hour later, I’d proven myself right. There was so much noise in the background magic. I was even beginning to worry if I’d be able to succeed at all.

When I was a little over halfway done chewing on a vine for a snack – which I’d foolishly discovered I did not need to break out medical spells for – I finally caught a hint of unusual magic. Following it, its source was from above me, right out through the most damaged part of the glass ceiling.

Spotting a free roaming cloud in the sky, I teleported it down and myself up. Life was so much simpler with clouds. I couldn’t remember how I ever got by without them.

I was exposed to the open air now, but I had yet to hear a single hint of an animal while I was in the castle, so I kept my paranoia to an appropriate medium level as I worked.

And finally, finally, I found what I was looking for. Probably.

The magic I was poking at was the strangest mixture of warm and comforting. Of course, that wasn’t a strange mixture all on its own, but magic wasn’t supposed to feel like anything.

But, I thought to myself, if there were anything that would break the rules, it would be the strongest known magical artifacts. Knowing that they were called the Elements of Harmony sort of made it easier to accept that at face value, too. Not that I wouldn’t be experimenting on them once I finally got my hooves on them. This was just one more question to add to the list.

Anyway, I fired off a tracking spell now that I had the appropriate signature to look for. The elements were more than powerful enough for me to pick up on their magic from any reasonable distance, as well as any unreasonable distance.

I sighed when I felt the direction of the pull. Of course Celestia would be rude enough to hide the elements on the opposite side of the world. That wasn’t even within her sphere of control! The minotaurs lived there!

Well actually, that was a pretty good objection. Celestia wouldn’t put the elements somewhere were somepony random could stumble upon them.

I teleported a short ways into the forest on the opposite side of the castle from the throne room. When I’d cast the tracking spell, I’d felt the pull slightly in that direction, though mostly downward, and if my hunch was right, I should get a very different result where I was now.

I cast the spell again and grinned at my cleverness. Celestia had buried the elements beneath the castle!

Within a second I was on the ground and digging out a large corridor, shoving the ground out of the way into densely packed walls like a maddened mole. I’d just cast a fresh air spell – an important precaution Luna gave me back when I dug into the Canterlot mines – when I realized that I needed to be more careful.

Not because of the tunnel’s structural integrity. That was certainly a concern, too, but I knew how to deal with that.

No, the problem was magical. There was no way Celestia would leave the elements lying around without putting her centuries of experience to work protecting them from thieves with the best wards available to her. No doubt including many of her own invention that hadn’t been made public.

Yes, this would have to be a painstakingly slow process.

I spent the next fifteen or so minutes poking at the magic around me, checking, double checking, and triple checking for the slightest trace, the slightest hint, the slightest tiny disturbance of an enchantment or a ward in the immediate vicinity.

I paid special attention to finding teleport wards and made several inspections specifically for uncovering them. Teleport wards were the absolute worst, and I’d be as good as dead if I got caught in one.

Finding nothing, I dug straight towards my target – which was not straight down – another few dozen hooves and repeated the process.

Nothing. I dug some more. Still nothing. Again, and again I repeated the process, each time coming up with nothing.

A cold sweat soaked my coat. Had I missed something? Was Celestia so much better than me at magic that she could stitch her spells into the background magic and not leave a single inkling of their existence? Was she already on her way here with the entire royal guard, Shining included?

My breath turned raspy. I didn’t want to be banished for a thousand years! I didn’t even know if I could survive that!

Or worse, I could be flat out killed and have my entire family condemned for treason along with me!

And Cadance would be banished like Luna. Or – or locked inside a vat of acid forever with a tiny glimmer of hope for escape that would be crushed every time she tried until she was utterly broken inside.

And – and – and–

“Who.”

–and who! Who?

My mind scrambled for answers as to the question of who until I collapsed to the tunnel floor. In a moment of clarity at the point of exhaustion, I remembered Owlowiscious and let out a deep breath.

Now that I was too tired to spin in circles, I recognized my panic attack for what it was. There was no way Celestia could be that good. I was Twilight Sparkle. My special talent was magic. I was the future Alicorn of Magic. If I couldn’t find a hint of a spell at such a snail-like pace, then there was no spell to be found.

Confident, yet still cautious, I continued my descent.

Eventually, my patience was rewarded. I stumbled upon one – no, two spells.

I fell to my haunches. Now that I’d actually found something, I made a point to remove all of the sticky, unpleasant sweat from my body that I’d built up. And while I was at it, I gave myself a quick magical cleaning. Even I was offended by how I smelled after sweating so much and playing in the dirt.

Now then, I was very suspicious that there were only two spells; I’d have thought there would be a lot more. I made an extra long sweep for spells one last time but found nothing new.

I was strangely disappointed, and even a little insulted. This was a pretty flimsy defense that even a moderately competent ward breaker could deal with. Well, at least if she found the second spell first. I had to admit that one had been extraordinarily well-hidden, not that the first had been suspiciously obvious. Rather, the opposite was true; it’d been unsuspiciously difficult to find.

Anyway, first I had to carefully pick apart the second spell. It was set up to send a signal the moment the first spell, a proximity alarm, failed.

It would’ve been better to have the signal be continuous so I would have to trick the second spell into thinking I wasn’t messing with the first, but I could easily imagine listening to it constantly getting old after the first day or two, let alone after a millennium. I couldn’t blame Celestia for that oversight.

But she could have double cast the spell to have both watch the first spell and each other. Simultaneous deconstruction of both would have been a serious challenge that even I might not have been up to.

And really, there was no reason to stop at two. Why not three? Or four? Or a thousand? Well, maybe not a thousand. At some point she wouldn’t have been able to hide them so well, but my point stood. This spellwork was lazy and uninspiring for what it was guarding.

Oh well. I’d just think of this as the elements being gift wrapped and hoofed over to me with a silver bow on top.

With one last æthereal slice of magic, I dispelled the second spell. It wasn’t anywhere near my record time, but that was perfectly okay. I would be more concerned if I were taking this so lightly that I came close to finishing so quickly.

The hard part done, I quickly and easily scrubbed away the proximity alarm and returned to my digging, perhaps proceeding a little too quickly in my anticipation.

And at long last, after a full night of hard work, I broke into a small cavern. At first, I didn’t notice the faint blue glow emanating into my tunnel, since I, myself, was glowing, but that quickly changed.

I almost teleported away on reflex when I finally noticed, but I knew I should be fine. There weren’t any more actual spells inside, and I hadn’t been killed by some mechanical trap yet. If there were poison gases or the like, it’d be filtered out by my fresh air spell, too, so that wasn’t a problem.

Owlowiscious was quite eager to fly inside, but I grabbed it in my magic and pinned it to the ground. It wasn’t that I was jealous and wanted to be the first to see the elements. Definitely not. I just didn’t want it accidentally triggering something.

I cast a shield over myself, knowing that it would deflect anything that might be thrown at me. Then far less cautiously than I probably should’ve been, I stuck my head into the cavern.

On the floor there were some weird, semi-hallow, stalagmite-like, rock things on the ground filled with water. Floating on top of a few were lily pads with pink, glowing blossoms, or maybe they were lotuses. I’d never learned to tell the difference, and neither ever agreed with my stomach, so I didn’t particularly care to.

I also noticed a few stray, large, purple crystals much like the ones found in the mines in Canterlot. It would be interesting to follow up on the connection sometime later, but I let the mystery drop for now.

What I failed to see were the elements. I turned to examine the other half of the room.

My jaw fell to the floor.

It wasn’t the elements, but a glowing, blue tree made entirely of crystal with strange, ornament-like leaves hanging from its branches. The six-pointed star that symbolized magic and adorned my haunch was emblazoned in the center of the branches on the trunk. Below that, the tree bore Luna’s and Celestia’s cutie marks, although those two looked like they’d been carved into the tree, and rather crudely so at that.

On the end of five of the branches were large, blue crystals that practically oozed those spherical leaves, which, now that I looked closer, were glowing as brightly as the main part of tree. On each crystal was a small indentation that reminded me of the rupees dragons used as currency. When they weren’t eating them, that was.

But taking the entire tree in at once, if ever something were to be universally pointed to as beautiful, this tree would be it.

Grabbing myself with telekinesis, I floated down to the floor of the cavern and explored it in more earnest.

The chamber was small and sealed off to the world. Much to my disappointment, there was nothing interesting at the bottom of the pools of water. And the tree was as stunning from the back as it was from the front, although with less decoration.

But there were no Elements of Harmony. The tracking spell consistently pointed to the tree, no matter which direction I cast it from.

Getting pedantic about it, I tried to pinpoint exactly where on the tree I was being pulled to, and the spell sent me to an empty space between branches. If I were to make a hasty guess, I’d say that empty space was the circumcenter of the five rupee-shaped crystals.

Now as interested in investigating the tree as I was, I needed more information. I set an alarm spell for five minutes and cast a sleep spell on myself.

The next instant – from my perspective at least – Luna was standing in front of me.

“Complications?” she asked, to which I nodded my head.

“Everything went smoothly until the end. I found the magical signature of the elements, and I had time to follow it to the source, but all I found was a tree. It had your cutie mark on it, so I figured you’d know something.”

“Hmm, that’s unfortunate,” Luna said. “It seems you’ve been led to the Tree of Harmony. It’s where the elements came from.”

I raised an eyebrow. “So where did the tree come from?”

Luna shrugged.

“Well, somepony must have made it. Magical artifacts with a useful purpose – and multiple purposes, too – don’t just randomly appear. I wonder if we can make another one.”

“Perhaps, but I’d imagine you have a more pressing question right now.”

Oh right. I looked at the non-existent ground of my empty dream with a blush. It was amazing how quickly I could get off-topic.

“So do you have any suggestions for finding the actual elements? Time might be a factor. I had to destroy a couple of spells in the area to get to the tree, and I don’t know how often Celestia checks or recasts them, if ever.”

Luna bit her lip for just an instant, but she soon said, “I think I know how we can solve this problem. The elements are born from the tree, true, but individually, they possess most of the magic. You could think of the elements as the fruit of the tree; they possess an unusually large amount of energy compared to the rest of the tree from whence they spring. If you can filter out the magical signature of just one of those fruits, you should be able to overcome the bias for the tracing spell to fix on the much closer tree.”

That made sense, at least to some degree. Luna had always treated the elements as a set, but they also each had their own name. Maybe it was more appropriate to think of the elements as six artifacts that were designed to work together instead of as six pieces of one artifact.

“If that doesn’t work,” Luna began, a prod of her hoof knocking me out of my train of thought as usual, “you can try tracing the flow of magic between the tree and the elements. That would, however, likely be significantly more difficult.

“Either way, why don’t you call it a night? You can try again tomorrow after taking your mind off it and getting a refreshing morning’s rest.”

It didn’t take me long to agree. It was getting pretty late, and my parents would be waking up soon from the magical sleep I’d put them in. I’d only done that as insurance in case one of them would have woken up for a midnight snack or something and decided to have a chat with me.

And besides, I was tired, and I was probably going to regret waking up in less than a minute.

I moaned as I felt all the stress I’d left behind again. Yep, I was not happy about waking up. I teleported high into the sky, bypassing the tunnel I’d made. Then remembering Owlowiscious, I teleported to my previous location instead of to the ground. I then teleported into the tunnel I’d made and recovered my still bound owlet.

“Sorry about leaving you behind, Owlowiscious. I don’t usually have somepony else with me on this kind of stuff.”

“Who.”

“Now let’s go see what Mom and Dad think of keeping you. Then I think both of us need to go to sleep.”

Frustrated beyond belief, I moved on to the last element: Magic. Every time I tried to attune to one of the others, I felt it squirm out of the way. I didn’t think it was impossible to succeed, it was just…frustrating. It was like trying to work a quill without magic.

I blew my frazzled mane out of my eyes and reached out with my magic.

Closer.

Almost there.

And…success!

“Finally!” I huffed. “What a pain in the flank!”

I let out a few angry breaths and tried to calm down with mixed results. At the very least, I had the Element of Magic’s magical signature available. It wasn’t much different from when I was tracking the elements as a whole, but there was definitely subtle quirks to find.

And find them I would! No matter how much it squirmed and protested, the element’s signature was mine now. All mine!

Oh, horseapples. Talk about a textbook example of a mad scientist. For crying out loud, the element wasn’t even alive.

Well…probably. There was a Tree of Harmony, but I didn’t know if was actually alive or not. I would guess not, but it was always a bad idea to make assumptions when dealing with ancient magical artifacts. I didn’t actually have any other experience with such things, but it seemed like one of those prudent common sense things.

Anyway, not wanting to deal with getting the Element of Magic’s signature ever again, I decided to get creative. Hopefully, this would work.

I turned my attention back toward the tunnel I’d walked in from again and pulled out a slab of stone. Another application of the stone sculpting spell, and the slab was crushed into sand.

The next step was rather simple. Just add heat. Lots and lots of heat.

Keeping my project far away from me on the other side of the room, I overloaded a heating charm to extraordinary levels. I had no idea how hot I needed the sand to be to melt it, but a few thousand degrees seemed to do the trick.

Interestingly enough, the molten ball still qualified as stone, so I kept using that specialized spell to save myself from jumping through the mental hoops I’d have to go through with telekinesis.

Utilizing half of the molten glass, I shaped it into a hollow sphere with a shell thick enough to allow it to be dropped without breaking. If I were doing this right. I vaguely remembered some step about…something or other that prevented glass from becoming brittle in the smelting process.

Whatever. If I messed up too badly, I could always copy the spell later onto something nicer.

Finally, I flash cooled the sphere and was rewarded with an ear piercing squeal as it shattered.

Well, that was nothing a quick repair spell couldn’t fix.

After the pieces reassembled back into their sphere shape, I was left with a fine example of the reason why I wasn’t a professional glass maker. The end result was, to put it simply, a mess. Oh, it had the right shape, and it was transparent…ish, but I’d clearly forgotten something important along the way, or I’d used the wrong ingredients, or something.

“Blegh.” I gagged just looking at my finished work up close. “I’ll buy something nice later or learn how to actually do this myself.”

I cast an illusion on the sphere. Even though it naturally looked like trash, that didn’t mean I had to put up with it. It now looked like a proper clear glass ball. For the next two steps, I removed all the air inside it and then teleported a flower petal from one of those glowing plants inside.

Lastly, I made a minor change to the tracking spell to make the pull kinetic instead of mental, and I cast it on the petal.

Satisfied with my work, I stared at the petal as it rose from the bottom with a smile. It settled against the glass mostly upward and a little bit to my left and backward.

It was perfect!

The elements, or at least the Element of Magic, were likely close by, too. Judging from the direction, they were somewhere in the castle.

Noticing the remains of my foray into glass making, I shifted some earth a few hooves beneath me and teleported it all inside where it would never to see the light of night or day again.

Now ready to go, I teleported myself back into my tunnel and eagerly cantered out, closing it behind me as I went. Just because I’d knocked out the spells that’d once been there, it didn’t mean I had to go leaving obvious clues as to my entry. If I were lucky, Celestia would think her spells just failed due to environmental factors. Or even better, she just wouldn’t come here at all between now and Luna’s return.

But those were pretty optimistic thoughts. I certainly wasn’t going to count on her not noticing eventually, and I doubted Luna would either.

Although, successfully stealing the elements would draw far more attention than a missing spell or two. Right now, all I really wanted to do was find them and keep an eye on their location. I wanted to filch them at the last possible moment. That way, Celestia would be distracted by Luna’s imminent return, and I’d have the highest chance of ascending on the spot, thus rendering the elements useless for ‘a while’, where a while meant something along the line of decades.

Anyway, I made it outside and sealed up the tunnel entrance. I frowned at the lack of grass, but it would grow back quickly enough. I was in the Everfree Forest, after all. For now, I just threw some leaves on the bare patch of dirt and looked at my shiny new compass…and frowned.

The petal had had a distressing dearth of movement from when I was right next to the Tree of Harmony.

I suspended the sphere such that my line-of-sight matched up perfectly with the petal.

Yep. I wasn’t crazy. It was pointing straight up into the sky.

That was sort of a neat trick. Get your enemies to search desperately on the ground for the elements, but have them floating around in the upper atmosphere all along. It certainly wouldn’t have been on the top of my list of hiding places to check.

Still, I double checked my tracking spell for problems, just to be sure.

When the spell turned out to be functioning properly, I summoned a cloud to me and hopped on, only to rethink my strategy moments later. The petal itself hadn’t moved despite my having moved a considerable distance. That meant the elements had to be pretty far up there, and I was not going to take the distance a dozen hooves at a time tonight. That would take seasons, and all I wanted to do tonight was to case the joint.

I couldn’t help but giggle. I’d been having a little too much fun with the dictionary recently.

All right, all right. I had my laugh, now back to the math.

“Pft… Heh…” I tried suppressing the second bout of laughter, but I was still too high from the previous one to resist. It was long before I recovered.

Settling into an occasional giggle at my unintentional near-rhyme, I marked the petal’s location with an illusion and teleported myself and my cloud roughly a kilometer toward home in two short jumps.

To my growing horror, when I looked at the compass, the petal hadn’t moved. It probably hadn’t moved even an angstrom.

“That’s – that’s a skinny right triangle. Let’s…um…go a bit farther…”

As I traveled back to Ponyville, I stared at the compass the whole way, paying no heed to the dangers of the Everfree.

“Oh please, oh please, little petal. Please won’t you move?”

I made it home without so much as a change in the petal’s location. I’d disturbed it’s position with every teleport with minor fluxes in my telekinesis, but every time it moved back to the exact same spot.

Abandoning my faithful cloud, I teleported to the front door and ripped it off its hinges. I dashed upstairs to my library and ripped that door off its hinges as well. I forced myself to slow down and focus my magic as I pulled an atlas off the shelves. I opened it to a map of Equestria and pulled out a piece of parchment and a quill at the same time.

I had to blow my mane out of my eyes again as I turned the pages of the atlas and calculated the multiplicative inverse of the tangent of point one degree at the same time. Eventually, I came to the page I needed: a scale map of Equestria.

Ponyville to the old castle was at least one-hundred kilometers.

My quill scribbled more furiously than ever as I turned my full attention back to the math I was doing. I had a number for the tangent. I rounded it off to a solid six-hundred. Then doing the multiplication…

Dear Luna, the elements were at least sixty-thousand kilometers off of the planet’s surface and probably several orders of magnitude farther than even that.

“No, no, no, no. This isn’t fair. This is completely unfair. This is cheating!” My quill snapped. “You can’t put the elements in space!”

I knocked myself out, barely remembering to set a wakeup call.

“Luna!” I shouted, eye twitching. “They’re – the elements–”

“Twilight, calm–”

“I’m perfectly calm! The el–”

“Twilight Sparkle,” boomed Luna at the traditional royal level, causing me to take a step back from both the intimidation and the intensity. “Calm down.”

“I – they–” I sniffed once or twice and felt tears at the corners of my eyes. This was not how it was supposed to be.

Luna wrapped me in her wings, rubbed my mane, and cooed, “It’s okay, Twilight. Just tell me what’s wrong.”

“H-how…how f-far can Celestia t-teleport?”

“Oh, Twilight,” said Luna, obviously worried, “you didn’t get caught, did you?”

I shook my head. “I-I’m fine. And safe. Just…how f-far?”

“Well, I’m not sure of the exact distance, and we’ve never pushed ourselves to our limits, but we have both made trips from our celestial body to Equus when it was the opposite period of the night-day cycle. So to answer your question, unnecessarily far. Why do–”

Luna’s face turned to a frown in an instant. “Oh,” she said flatly. Then squeezing me tighter, she continued, “Oh, Twilight, I’m sorry for pushing this on you. Now that you mention it, it is a rather obvious hiding place. But all hope is not lost. We merely need to reevaluate our options.”

I looked up at Luna, wanting to believe. She had a small smile like everything would be alright, but it seemed so hopeless.

“First, we should identify the primary concerns. Or just the concern, in this case.”

Luna looked at me expectantly, and I gave a weak smile in return. It was just like her to turn this into a lesson.

“Celestia wants to banish you again with the elements.”

“Not quite,” Luna said.

It was rubbing salt in the wound, but getting a question wrong was a familiar hurt, one I was used to and could bear.

“The problem is not, ‘Sister wants to banish me with the elements,’ but rather, ‘Sister wants to banish me,’ an important distinction to make. I do not believe she could do it alone without the elements, but…”

But what? Who else could possibly wield that kind of power? I certainly wasn’t going to be forcibly ascended and conscripted to the cause.

Trixie? Please. Trixie was a decent enough mage, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

Discord? That – that would just be insane. Even Celestia wouldn’t purposefully release Discord. Then who–

I would’ve facehoofed, but Luna still had me in her wings. “Luna, Cadance is awful at magic. And I mean that in the nicest possible way, but she’s just abysmal. There’s no other word for it.”

“Too true,” Luna chuckled. “But she works perfectly well as an alicorn-grade battery. Keep that in mind for future discussion.”

“So…I just need to keep Cadance out of the way? I might be able to…”

“We do need to keep my sister from ganging up on me two versus one, but you won’t be able to prevent her from abducting my niece when the time comes. You do not have the raw power, and my niece does not have the skill, so it is a fruitless effort.

“This limits our options significantly. We either need the working elements ourselves or a second alicorn.” Luna turned her gentle petting into a gentle noogie. “And the second option sort of makes the first redundant, doesn’t it?”

“So,” I began, “I need to find some other way to ascend? And we ignore the elements?”

“No. Whatever else happens, we cannot ignore the Elements of Harmony. Even if my sister were not the one to wield them, they are what you might call a game breaker. If we are forced to fight against them directly, we will lose. It is as simple as that.

“As for finding another way to ascend, I still highly recommend against that. It is extremely dangerous. I didn’t want to tell you this, but my niece was incredibly lucky. I know of at least fifty other ponies who failed to ascend before her and died in the process.”

A shiver crawled up my body. Ascend only with the elements. Very good to know.

“Then between now and the final confrontation,” I said, getting my mind off self-destructing, “I need to steal the elements, right?”

Luna nodded. “The closer to the fight, the better. I have no doubt you can find a way to make the elements hard for my sister to track while they are in your possession, but that is a risky venture. Ideally, you would simply ascend as soon as you entered their presence. You could then fly away, never so much as touching them. Not that you couldn’t also move them somewhere else and make my sister’s life miserable as she tries to hunt them down.

“So, Twilight, what are your options for obtaining the elements?”

“Hmm… Well, if somepony else can wield them” – I looked up to Luna for a direct answer and got a nod – “then I guess it would be Trixie that would wind up with them. If she had them in her possession for any significant length of time, I could probably steal at least one from her. Assuming Celestia didn’t watch them like a hawk. Stealing one would be enough, right?”

“Not quite, Twilight. But that is a good point to raise. The elements are only truly useful as a whole. However…” Luna trailed off, expecting me to finish. And for once, the answer was obvious to me.

“However the chances of Celestia not watching them like a hawk are essentially zero. And that doesn’t resolve the two alicorn problem.”

Of course, that was all under the assumption that Trixie would wind up with the elements, which seemed unlikely. Anypony else could be substituted into Trixie’s place without changing the argument. Anypony except–

“And if Celestia’s wielding them,” I said, “then she’d no doubt have them constantly at hoof until the battle was over. I’d never get a chance to steal any of them from her. So really, I have to obtain them before Celestia goes to retrieve them if we’re to have any chance at winning.”

I got a sinking feeling in my stomach as what I just said sank in. That was the whole reason I’d run crying to Luna to begin with.

“That is pretty much what it comes down to,” Luna agreed. “The question you need to ask, then, is how.”

How indeed. Luna must have had an idea, or she wouldn’t have led me down this whole train of logic. She must have been railroading me into something. If only I could figure out what.

Well, when in doubt, start with identifying the deadline.

“If Celestia has hidden them this long,” I began, “she’ll probably delay picking them up until the last possible moment.”

“I would agree with that. That means you have a time limit of roughly six-and-a-half years.”

That was a long time. And yet on the astronomical scale, it was so short. What could I possibly do in that amount of time? Think, Twilight. Think.

Despite my command to think, my brain was not producing ideas.

Argh! There had to be an answer! Luna wouldn’t be sitting here comforting me so easily if there weren’t.

Frustrated, I reconsidered the problem from the very beginning.

What resources did I have?

There was myself, the strongest – but semi-unreliable – unicorn in the world. Not exactly a resource I didn’t consider very often in my plans.

I had an essentially unlimited amount of bits from Luna. That translated to any material resources I might need, but it wasn’t much of a solution on its own.

I had lots of contacts through my family and through Luna, as well as the ear of–

That was one more time I had wanted to facehoof but had found myself blocked by Luna’s wings, and for the same reason, too! Still, I had objections.

“Even if I managed to convince or to trick her, Cadance is untalented at magic. She won’t be able to learn teleportation in six years. And if my flares are a valid point of comparison, trying to funnel her power through me would fry my horn long before I made it to the moon or anywhere else.”

Luna just smiled down at me.

What was I missing? Surely she didn’t want me to try tricking Celestia. That had no chance of working. I might be able to fool her for a second, but she was too powerful. She could take care of me with pure brute force if I tried anything. She could probably kill me in the process of ascending, too.

Chuckling, Luna hinted, “I used to have a rather silly nickname: Sailor Moon.”

What? That didn’t make any sense. It was total cryptic nonsense. Well, it was the kind of nonsense a pony would expect from her ancient, wizened, magic teacher. But that wasn’t the point! Cryptic nonsense was…was…

Hmm… Something I’d once told Twinkleshine came back to me. Technically, without gravity holding one down, it wasn’t that far from the Equus to space.

“Luna, how fast do you think I could get a…a spaceship moving with magic?”

“Very fast, Twilight. Very fast indeed.”

Author's Note

“Mom, I need to take a field trip.”

Chapter Five - Navigator

This time for sure. This time I was practically going to sweep her off her hooves. I was going to pull out all the stops, all the dirty tricks. I needed a navigator, and by Star Swirl’s beard, I was going to have a trustworthy one, even if I had to stoop to questionably moral acts to get her.

No more memory spells to erase mistakes. Everything was going to be perfect this time. And if she still refused, well, I’d have to find somepony else.

Finally, the door opened, and I made my move, only to abruptly abort when I realized Moondancer had been the one to open the door. A minor setback, but at least I’d stopped quickly enough that I didn’t have to contrive a reason to bring her and Twinkleshine outside the school’s wards so I could erase their memory of the event.

“If you’re looking for Twinkleshine,” Moondancer said, despite the redundancy of the prompt, “she went to the bathroom. Coming inside?”

I shook my head. No, this evening was not going to be spent within the stifling the confines of this school’s tiny campus.

Moondancer said, “Suit yourself,” and closed the door behind her.

I, on the other hoof, waited down the hallway, just around the corner. If everything went right, Twinkleshine would walk right past me without noticing, and then I could surprise her properly.

A few minutes later, Twinkleshine did just that. I put on the friendliest smile I had in me and called out, “Twinkleshine.”

The mare in question, for she was definitely a mare by now, spun around to face me. “Twilight!”

Before she could move in for a hug – I’d managed to get her to come completely out of her shell around me over the past year – I swooped in and gave her a kiss on the cheek. I had to suppress a laugh and keep my face locked on ‘warm and friendly’ as I watched Twinkleshine blush and struggle with feelings she didn’t really understand. It wouldn’t do to distract her from this evening’s main purpose too much.

In hindsight, a lot of things made so much more sense after Luna had given me the sex talk. Shining’s more awkward moments around Cadance, which had once been mysterious and idiotic, were obviously attempts at flirting now. Mom and Dad had some weird flirty quirks, too.

And then there was Twinkleshine. It was quite obvious she was attracted to me, although she was too young to really understand why, and I doubted anypony had explained it all to her yet at this school.

I did feel a wee bit guilty using her budding feelings against her, but it wasn’t like I wouldn’t be willing to reciprocate when we were older. She was a dear friend and fairly easy on the eyes. And if I had my way, we’d be spending the next several years together.

Anyway, it was time for action. “Twinkleshine, you haven’t eaten yet, have you?”

I got a nervous shake of her head and a deeper blush in answer.

“Good. In that case, let’s head over to my house.”

“I’m not sup–”

“I got Cadance’s permission for you to come home with me tonight.” And that came with a noticeable lack of stipulation on which home, not that I was limited by what Cadance let me do.

“How did you–”

I waved away Twinkleshine’s question as we walked. “Cadance was my foalsitter. Well, she still is, technically, but my parents are more okay with letting me stay home alone lately. They’re both in town this time, so you’ll finally get to meet my mom after we eat, and my dad will have time to be around, too.”

It took a few seconds, but I noticed Twinkleshine had stopped walking.

“Princess Cadance was your foalsitter?”

I nodded and explained, “She’s dating my brother. That’s probably supposed to be a secret, so please don’t tell anypony.”

“I – that – you–”

Turning away from Twinkleshine, I resumed walking and called back, “Come along, Twinkleshine. We don’t want our food to get cold.”

Not that I couldn’t heat it back up with magic, but I wanted to keep Twinkleshine on the tips of her hooves. The stunned respect was all according to plan – it helped immensely that I knew how Twinkleshine would react to certain pieces of information ahead of time – but it ran the risk of making this about Cadance if I let Twinkleshine dwell on it too long.

“So how has your magic been coming along since I last visited?”

Stumbling over her words, Twinkleshine answered, “Great. I mean, you’re an excellent teacher, Twilight. And a genius.”

My smile grew just a little bit wider. One of the biggest things I had to convince Twinkleshine of, not necessarily today, but soon, was that I could finish her education for her. From the sound of it, that wouldn’t be very hard.

I spent the rest of the walk home keeping Twinkleshine from asking any untoward questions by asking my own questions about her spellwork and other little things.

When we reached my house, Twinkleshine had worked herself up into a little ball of energy about to burst. The whole surprise library thing had overshadowed my own excitement in investigating my Ponyville home, but I couldn’t say I didn’t understand the feeling somewhat.

We’d only taken a single step inside before Twinkleshine threatened to run off to every corner of the house.

“Hey, Twinkleshine,” I said, reining her in before she could dash off. “There’s another secret I need to tell you, but this one is a lot more important. I need you to promise me ahead of time that you won’t tell anypony.”

Twinkleshine’s attention shifted completely over to me remarkably quickly. “I promise.”

“No. Don’t make a snap decision like that,” I said, trying to make Twinkleshine understand the importance of this. She was young, and she’d never been trusted with anything of real importance, but I could at least try to impress how important this was upon her. “This is the kind of secret that could ruin my life if it got out, Twinkleshine. I need you to truly think about whether or not you can keep it and make a vow to yourself and to me to do so. I cannot stress how important this is.”

I looked nervous, but I certainly wasn’t. I knew how this conversation played out. Shy as she was, like most foals, Twinkleshine couldn’t resist when I phrased it like that. Every time I said this to her, I made it sound as mysterious and adventurous as possible without going too far and making it comedic. And every time, she said…

“I promise, Twilight. I, Twinkleshine, shall neither repeat nor record a single word you say here without your express permission.”

It was almost eerie that she said that exact sentence every time, even to slightly different prompts. I could only assume it was a quote she was particularly fond of with her name substituted in. Probably from some foals’ adventure novel, if I considered the sheer number of loopholes I could point out.

But Twinkleshine wasn’t the kind of pony to take advantage of them, so I let her promise pass unchallenged as I did every time.

With that done, it was time to reveal the first surprise. I floated off my fake suppressor ring and received a gasp from Twinkleshine.

Clearly nervous, Twinkleshine asked, “Twilight…you’re…you’re not going to blow up or anything, are you?”

I raised a single eyebrow, “Why would I do that?”

“Well, I did some reading in the school library about Flares. The last one suddenly went missing a decade ago…”

“Ah, I see. Well, I won’t comment on whatever you’ve read, but the likelihood of me flaring is quite low if I don’t strain myself magically or emotionally, and it’s essentially zero if I’m not using magic at all.” Remembering my exam and wishing for completeness, I added, “Unless a strong external source of magic sparks the process, which is also a rare event.

“And even if I did flare,” I continued, “I have enough control before my magic goes completely wild to ensure everypony around me is safe.” That was something I was rather proud of, in truth. I wasn’t supposed to be able to do that; prevention was supposed to be my temporary cure, not control. Even Luna was beyond impressed with my natural talent, and at her age, she’d seen it all.

“I see…” Twinkleshine said, her fear retreating from her face. “So this is your secret? You take off that ring when you’re alone?”

“Part of it. And it is just as important that you keep that secret as the other part. I have no idea how much trouble I would be in with Princess Celestia if she found out, but banishment comes to mind.”

“B-banishment!” Twinkleshine stuttered.

I nodded solemnly. “I hope you understand now how much I’m trusting you.”

“I-I-I do. I don’t know what to say, Twilight. I’m flattered.”

I made my best wistful smile. “As much as I hate to admit it, I’m mostly telling you for myself, not because you’re my friend. You see, I have an…opportunity and a request for you. A gargantuan, life-changing opportunity and request.”

“You need my help? Anything, Twilight.”

I nearly sighed. She said that every time, and the answer was always no. But this time, this time would be different. Everything was going right.

“You shouldn’t promise to help before you know what you’re promising,” I said reproachfully. I held up a hoof to silence Twinkleshine’s oncoming expression of undying loyalty, or at least the foal equivalent of it. Next, I floated over the blindfold from a nearby table that I’d prepared in advance.

“Teleportation” – Twinkleshine’s jaw dropped at the word – “can cause a bit of bodily discomfort for new teleporters. If you wear this, the effects should be diminished. You and I would both regret it if what I’m about to show you was ruined by your gag reflex.”

Her magic was shaky, but Twinkleshine took the blindfold without question and placed it over her eyes.

“Ready?” I asked. Twinkleshine nodded. As I cast the necessary protective spells, I explained, “We’re going to be making several thousand jumps in rapid succession.”

“Thousand!” squeaked Twinkleshine.

I placed a comforting leg across her withers. “Yes, thousands. If I try to span the distance in anything less, I run a very high risk of flaring.” Now petting Twinkleshine’s mane to calm her down the same way Luna did for me, I added, “But don’t worry about that. Even if I do flare, we can ride the surge to safety before I lose control. And yes, that does come from both theory and experience.”

What I didn’t tell Twinkleshine was that experience was very scary, terrifying experience. I had done the math first, and I did do several tests on the ground – which had caused a lot of environmental damage that I’d had to clean up – but the first time I had to jump from space to the ground while flaring was the most frightening experience of my life. If I’d made the slightest error, then I would’ve died of asphyxiation, from burning up in the atmosphere, from splatting on the ground, or any number of other problems.

It all had a way of making a pony nervous, but I hid it well. I had no intention of burdening Twinkleshine, too, with those worries.

“O-okay. I trust you, Twilight.”

“Thank you. The teleportation part of our trip will take about a half-hour. I have a picnic basket prepared for our dinner after that, during which time I’ll be carrying us the rest of the way with telekinesis for another half-hour or so. And before you ask, it’s going to be way different than being picked up by telekinesis, so it’s not going to interfere with dinner.”

Getting a nod, I finished, “If at any time you start feeling sick, let me know, and we’ll take a rest and go slower.”

I didn’t know how Twinkleshine would react to teleporting. Really, it was probably something I should’ve checked on a previous attempt, but oh well. I was sure it’d be fine.

“Then if you have no objections” – Twinkleshine shook her head – “I’ll make our first teleport in three” – I brought our picnic basket to me – “two” – I built up the steady stream of power – “one.”

I teleported us straight up, high above the airspace of Canterlot. My other spells, anchored to myself, were doing their job. We were at a constant temperature, we had plenty of oxygen, we were covered in a highly-reflective shield to keep the sun from blinding us, my gravity spell was ready to go, and Twinkleshine hadn’t vomited.

We were good to go.

After the first minute of nervously clinging to me, Twinkleshine eased up and said, “This isn’t so bad.”

“That’s good,” I said, finding it a little difficult to speak while teleporting. “Teleportation sickness is usually caused from rapid changes in imagery. Some ponies respond poorly anyway.”

Over the next few minutes, Twinkleshine and I shared some idle conversation, although much of it was apologies on my end for being unable to form a coherent response.

After approximately ten minutes of travel, Twinkleshine asked, “Am I supposed to be feeling…lighter, I guess?”

“Ah, sorry. I’ve gotten used to that.” I adjusted the gravity spell to be a little stronger. Apparently I’d fallen a bit short of Equus’s level. “Better?”

“Yeah. How are you doing that?”

I chuckled before answering, “It’s a surprise for later.”

A few minutes before we arrived at the halfway point of our journey, I watched the sun disappear and the moon take its place. The stars never left this part of the universe – whatever Luna had meant by that – so they slowly faded into view as the sun departed, starting with the brightest.

I also made my shield non-reflective to better see the stars. There was no sense in creating the same blinding effect as Equus’s atmosphere at night in space.

“Drat,” I whispered.

“Hmm?”

“Oh, nothing.”

It seemed I was running a few minutes late. Moonrise was far more magical in space than on Equus, and I’d really wanted to show it to Twinkleshine. Even the astronomy spells she’d been developing didn’t compare to having a proper panoramic view.

Shrugging off the disappointment, I finished the first stage of our journey and quickly set about preparing for the second.

First, I spread out the picnic blanket and pulled it tight from all four corners. Satisfied that the blanket was as flat as I was going to get it, I modified my shield from spherical to a hemisphere and re-anchored it to be centered just below the blanket’s centroid. Now all I had to do was move the blanket to move the shield.

For safety purposes, I didn’t re-anchor the spell providing us with oxygen or the spell maintaining the temperature away from me, but I did make the gravity spell relative to the blanket instead of to an arbitrary point below me. With that, our weight would feel natural now without interfering with our trip.

Twinkleshine let out a small eep when her hooves touched the ‘solid land’ of the blanket resting on my shield. Once she’d gotten over her initial surprise, she asked, “Can I take this blindfold off now?”

“In a minute,” I said, casting a tracking spell to find a signal I’d left for myself. “Just let me get us at a stable speed first.”

I grabbed the blanket with my magic and pushed. With the lack of any appreciable gravity fighting me and absent the drag from Equus’s atmosphere, I relaxed and enjoyed the easy task of accelerating us forward.

The only thing I had left to do was fine tune the fake gravitational acceleration I’d put on us to play nice with the telekinetic acceleration. It was just adding two vectors together, so it was a simple enough task that I finished in seconds.

When I was satisfied we wouldn’t be dragged back toward Equus if I accidentally stopped pushing us away, I shoved my ongoing telekinesis to the back of my mind and let it do its work without my constant attention.

A giggle escaped me; I couldn’t help it. Short astronomical distances were so easy to travel once you were actually in space. I could probably pick any grown unicorn off the street, and they’d have no problem powering the telekinesis for this.

Of course, longer distances were an entirely different matter. I couldn’t make us go faster than light like this, so traveling to other suns and planets would need a less brute force solution.

Well, I’d have to ask Twinkleshine to know for sure; Luna had probably left a few stars only a few dozen light years away from Equus, which wasn’t too far away.

“What’s so funny?” Twinkleshine asked. Her voice was a mix of excitement and caution. “You didn’t just set up some kind of prank, did you?”

“No, no. Just thinking about how foolishly I’d acted back in summer. It’s nothing. Anyway, you can take your blindfold off now.”

Twinkleshine happily complied. “So what…” Rubbing her eyes, Twinkleshine asked, “Is – is this an – an – an…”

“It’s real, Twinkleshine,” I said with the utmost seriousness. I sidled up next to her but slightly behind so as not to block her view. Placing a hoof on her shoulder, I added, “I did say this would be life-changing.”

“Life-changing…” The whisper came so quiet I wasn’t even sure if I’d heard Twinkleshine correctly. “This… This isn’t…”

I floated out a napkin from the picnic basket and held it up to her. She snatched it from my grasp and blew her nose.

Twinkleshine whispered, “It’s so beautiful.”

“Heh. I give a whole new meaning to dinner under the stars, don’t I?” I joked.

My jest only receive a few weak laughs. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve guessed them to be pity laughs.

“You’re spoiling the moment, Twilight,” Twinkleshine said between sniffs.

A warm smile grew on my face. “Take as long as you need. But your dinner will get cold if you just stand there all night. I brought spaghetti and garlic bread. I even managed to snag some leftover Apple family cider.”

“Hey, Twilight?”

“Hmm?”

Both of us had finished our meal now, but I’d finished in a bit of a rush. We were approaching our destination, and I had to slow us down just right or risk either overshooting or undershooting a few thousand kilometers. That would be terribly awkward. If only teleporting didn’t preserve momentum…

Still staring out into the stars, Twinkleshine asked, “Not that this hasn’t been the best day of my life, but where are we going?”

“We’re going to an arbitrary point in space that happens to lie on a radial line from Equus through Equestria.”

“Okaaaaay.” I didn’t look, but Twinkleshine was probably rolling her eyes. “So what’s at where were going?”

“Space junk.”

“Space junk?”

I nodded. “Space junk.”

“Um…”

“Yes?”

“What kind of ‘space junk’?”

“The kind that used to be terrestrial junk.”

“So stuff you’ve brought up here?”

“For the most part. I think I picked up a meteoroid at some point, but I can’t track the bugger” – Twinkleshine snickered – “down. What?”

“‘Bugger’. That’s just so…so not a word I’d expect you to use.”

I paid that comment no attention, just as it deserved. “Anyway, we’re almost there.”

Twinkleshine looked around in a frenzy of head movements. Before long, her mane was a giant pink mess. “I don’t see anything.” Her head moved back and forth between me and the direction we were headed, her face reminding me of an excited puppy.

“Of course you don’t. Of all ponies, you should know better than me how big space is. We’ve barely even left Equus behind.”

I glanced over my shoulder to see the planet behind me. I had to admit, it looked better during the day, but it wasn’t a sight to write off at night either. There were so many magical lights on Equus; it almost looked like a second night sky, one entirely separate from the one Luna had created.

“When I say, ‘we’re almost there’, I mean we’re traveling at a mostly sane speed again, and we’ll be there in a couple minutes.”

Twinkleshine sat back down in a huff and leaned against me. She kept silent until we finally arrived and reached approximately zero velocity. Approximately, because Equus was still close enough to slowly drag things back toward it. I gave everything I left here a little nudge radially outward every day, lest anything fall back to Equus.

“I can see…metal cubes and…is that dirt?”

“Silica sand, too,” I said. “I looked up how to make glass, and that was the primary ingredient. Other ones were aesthetically optional.”

“Glass?”

“Glass.” I was having way too much fun teasing Twinkleshine, especially when I was trying to recruit her as a navigator, but it was irresistible. “You wouldn’t believe how much work it was to get all this up here. Even I have limits.

“Although one time – which I couldn’t replicate – I was bringing up a huge pile of dirt. I flared, but I actually managed to output all of my magic into teleports. That was my quickest trip yet.” I did later scold myself for being so suicidally foolish, but no one needed to know that.

Twinkleshine looked to me. She was utterly lost at this point. Deciding I’d received more than my share of fun, I gestured upward with my head.

Looking up, Twinkleshine’s eyes went wide, and she leaned back to get a better look. Deciding that wasn’t good enough, she got up on two hooves to allow her head to lean back further. Within seconds, she toppled over herself for her trouble. Still, she kept staring.

“Impressive, isn’t it?”

My question added yet another weak nod to my growing collection of them today.

Following Twinkleshine’s eyes, she seemed to be looking at the bridge of my spaceship, which was the only part I’d finished so far, minus the interior design. It was a simple hemisphere with a thick glass dome and an appreciably thick metal base.

I could see my seven significantly improved – I’d made them much larger and had used a smaller needle to get heightened accuracy – compasses held in place in a septagon and appropriately tinted to its element, but I doubted Twinkleshine was paying them any attention as her eyes buzzed around.

I’d gone back to the Tree of Harmony for the other five elements when I got sufficiently bored transporting cargo. Each had been a huge, monumental pain to make a compass for, but I’d managed to do it for each and every one in the end. The seventh and last one was a compass for the elements as a group, just in case.

Besides the seven housed on the bridge, I was also probably going to make spares and secretly stash them in storage somewhere safe, again, just in case. I wasn’t going to let one little accident, or stars forbid, one case of sabotage ruin my entire journey. I was fairly sure I’d made them durable enough and placed enough wards on them that they wouldn’t break by accident, but it never hurt to take precautions.

But the real work I’d put into the bridge, the work I was proud of, was the spellwork. We were close enough to Equus that I just managed to power them with the planet’s ambient magic. But as soon as the ship departed, I’d have to power everything myself. I’d done the math, and I was sure I could do it, but I might have to gather up the crew for some downtime on occasion to depower everything nonessential.

“Shall we go inside?”

Twinkleshine wasted no time answering. “Yes, please.”

I obliged with a teleport, forgetting to momentarily blind Twinkleshine, but she seemed no worse for the dimensional disjunction, running eagerly toward the compass for the Element of Loyalty.

“What’s this?” she shouted, not knowing I’d teleported to her side. “Oh, sorry. What’s this?”

“It’s a compass.”

“Are all the others–”

“Yes, they’re all compasses, too. They probably all point to the same position – except the one that obviously doesn’t – but I’m not entirely sure of that.”

“So you’re trying to find something? In space?” Twinkleshine asked.

I liked the eagerness in Twinkleshine’s voice, and I had to take an awkward moment to calm myself. At this rate, I was probably going to be successful in getting her to be my navigator this time, but I couldn’t rush it. She was in a state of overwhelming passion, and I needed to make that stick in the right way.

“Yes, I am. I’m looking for–”

“Can I come, too!” Twinkleshine interrupted. “Please, please, oh please, can I?”

I didn’t snark at her request. It was entirely reasonable that I’d brought Twinkleshine up here for some other reason. And after some of the many embarrassing things I’d said to Luna over the past four years, I could completely understand where she was coming from; excitement could make it hard to see the obvious.

“Yes, you can, Twinkleshine.” Once her excitement and hugging died back down, I continued, “I brought you up here to ask to be my navigator. You know far more about astronomy than I do, and I’m looking for a very small set of objects in space. I have a compass that points straight to them, yes, but there are a lot of mechanical problems that I don’t know how to properly address. I don’t particularly fancy overshooting and undershooting my target for years, especially as I’m on a time limit.”

“A time limit?” Twinkleshine’s head cocked to the side. “How long?”

I gestured Twinkleshine to follow me and walked her over to the edge of the bridge. There we could get an unimpeded view of Equus. I wanted to put a hoof on her shoulder, or over her withers, or hug her, or something, but I would give away just how much I was sweating right now.

“Twinkleshine, how far do you think we are from Equus right now? A rough estimate?”

“Um…” Absorbed in thought, Twinkleshine adorably bit her lip as she crunched numbers. “Maybe…fifty-thousand kilometers. Oh Celestia! That’s so far! I didn’t even think about how far we are from home.”

“And yet,” I said, pausing for dramatic effect, “we have gone nowhere. It took us an hour to get nowhere, Twinkleshine. What I seek–”

I paused again for dramatic effect as I rotated the bridge about the axis parallel to one of Equus’s tangents. The planet slowly disappeared from sight as we turned, and the stars flooded our view.

“–is out there. That is the price you must pay for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You won’t see home again for many years. This ship will become your home; its crew, your family; me, your teacher.”

Twinkleshine fell silent. I waited as long as I could bear before turning to her.

“I have a lot of work remaining before I can leave; you don’t have to decide right away. But remember, you promised to keep this to yourself, utterly and absolutely. If you must discuss your options with somepony else, ask me first, and I will go with you.”

I quickly recast my shield and oxygen spell and teleported back into space. I truly did have a lot of work to do, and Twinkleshine needed some alone time to sift through her thoughts. I was fairly sure that if I just left her alone for a while, she’d decide to come with.

For now, I turned my attention toward my greenhouse-in-progress, the second most important part of the ship after the bridge. Luna had suggested the shell of this part be made completely out of glass to avoid any mysterious rusting or maintenance issues, and I’d voiced no objections. Silica sand was a lot cheaper and a lot easier to buy in bulk than steel was.

What Luna and I did debate over was whether to use traditional farming methods or hydroponics, the latter being something Luna had never heard of, which wasn’t that surprising. Hydroponics wasn’t exactly a new idea, but it hadn’t really seen any use outside of a wingful of random scientists’ labs until recently.

In the end, Luna had made the better, far simpler argument: I wasn’t going to be the one growing anything. Rather than unnecessarily narrowing my pool of candidates to earth ponies with a specialized style of farming, I should just suck it up and make old fashioned fields of various soil depths and climates.

The biggest issue was deciding how to manage proper irrigation. We’d spent a whole week working out the kinks there. Our solution was…somewhat lacking, but we were trying to minimize the magical burden placed on myself. All we were going to do was have the water drain into a tub at the bottom and have the water pumped up into an artificial pond. We’d chalked the rest up as ‘a pegasus’s problem’.

We’d also decided on bees as our pollinators very reluctantly on my part. I liked honey, but…well…they were bees.

Anyway, I also needed to acquire a bunch of chickens and to find somepony that knew how to cook and bake from true scratch. There was no way I was going five to six years without eating a cookie.

And while I was at it, I needed to stuff the library with missing parts of my own collection: cook books, pegasus magic, earth pony magic, husbandry books, a wider selection of entertainment books, et cetera.

Picking up trees – particularly cacao trees – flower seeds, wheat seeds, grass seeds, whatever sugar was made from, and anything else that came to mind was also high priority on the list of things to do. I wanted to get the greenhouse up and running as soon as possible. That meant recruiting a farmer as soon as possible, though, and I was dragging my hooves on that.

Urgh. There was so much work that needed doing that I was beginning to worry I’d start making obsessive compulsive checklists again. Luna would kill me if I relapsed after all the work we did to weed that behavior out of me.

Well, she wouldn’t literally kill me, but it wouldn’t be a pleasant experience. I didn’t want to go back to that, nor did I want to fall back into a bundle of frayed nerves anytime I was around authority. Or let myself be pedantically tidy and organized again. Or…a lot of other mental issues I’d had. There’d really been something wrong with young me.

I let out a long sigh. Maybe I could teach Twinkleshine enough to do some of the construction for the ship and ease my burden. That would probably help.

Speaking of whom, I’d left Twinkleshine alone for quite a while now – about forty minutes – while working. I probably should take her home before it got too late in case Cadance came over looking for…us…

Horseapples! I left my fake suppressor back at home. But rushing back wasn’t an option, either; I was still in the midst of my recruitment scheme. I could always wipe Twinkleshine’s memories of today, but I always moped about for days after feeling guilty and got nothing done. And then there’d also be the delay of redoing my entire pitch.

What were the chances that Cadance would come over?

Knowing her, pretty high, actually. So what were the chances that Mom or Dad wasn’t home yet to keep her out of the house or to at least distract her?

Um… Where were they going tonight? A play? No, that was four weeks ago. An opera? No, that wasn’t right either. It wasn’t work, I remember that. Stars, I couldn’t remember. Well, I’d just assume they are at home with medium probability.

So I’m only in trouble if Cadance came over, barged in past my parents or found the house empty and barged in anyway – for some reason – and then had the good fortune to notice the ring which I’d left…somewhere in the living room. That was much less of a risk than I’d originally thought.

Still, it was best not to tempt fate. We needed to head home as soon as possible, if for no other reason than to keep good on my promise to introduce Twinkleshine to Mom.

I turned back toward the bridge to find Twinkleshine had been watching me work. It took her a few seconds, but eventually she noticed my gaze and waved a friendly hoof. I waved back and then teleported to her side, causing her to start.

“Wondering what I’m making?” I asked, successfully containing my sense of urgency.

“Just a little bit.” What an understatement. Absolutely nothing about Twinkleshine’s posture or her expression said ‘a little bit’.

“It’s going to be a greenhouse. Although the lighting will be artificial once we leave Equus behind, so I guess that’s not exactly the right word for it. Hmm… Well anyway, it’s going to be the biggest part of the ship.”

We fell into silence for a few moments before Twinkleshine asked, “You’re not going to have us do the gardening, are you?”

“No way. It’s better to get ponies suited to the task. I know a little bit about earth pony magic, enough to know the soil won’t undergo degradation, but that’s as far as I go on the whole nature thing. I’m going to recruit a pegasus or two and a few earth ponies to–”

Twinkleshine’s words finally clicked. I asked, “Does that mean you’re coming with?”

Turning to me, Twinkleshine nodded. “You were right. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance, and even if I ended up miserable out there” – Twinkleshine gestured toward the stars – “for whatever reason – which I’m sure I won’t – I would be a wreck at home.”

Wow, way to unintentionally throw memory erasing guilt in my face, Twinkleshine. You wouldn’t be a wreck. You wouldn’t even remember.

“Please don’t make your decision for those reasons.”

“Oh, I’m not.” Twinkleshine beamed, looking happier than I’d ever seen her. “I just know you well enough. You won’t let me come unless you think I’ve thought about the worst possible scenario.”

I chuckled. “Very true.”

“But I do have one question.”

“Fire away, Navigator Twinkleshine.”

“Yes, Captain Twilight.” Giggling, Twinkleshine asked, “Or would that be Captain Sparkle?”

“I think I like Captain Sparkle better,” I mused, rubbing my jaw. “It has more of a…a ring to it.”

“Heh. Okay, Captain Sparkle. How are we going to keep this a secret if a bunch of ponies suddenly disappear?”

Well first of all, everypony wouldn’t move here all at the same time. It would be much better to leave one at a time at random intervals. But Twinkleshine was not a master schemer or an apprentice schemer, so I didn’t bother lecturing her on that point.

Besides, there was a much better option which Luna had agreed with when I’d suggested it.

“Oh, that’s easy. Nopony is going to disappear.”

I got another one of Twinkleshine’s adorable confused faces. Oh, what fun it was to be vague and confusing! I could easily see why old mentors had a reputation for being so.

Still, it wouldn’t do to not explain.

“Remember when we first met? There was…um…Lemon Hearts, I think was her name. The filly with empathy magic. Anyway, I had no idea what her costume was, and I have a feeling it was lost on everypony else, too.”

Twinkleshine nodded. “I forgot about that. I was way too shy back then to ask. I probably still am, too…”

Giving Twinkleshine an encouraging pat on the shoulder, I said, “You’re doing much better now, and I’m sure this trip will do wonders for you.”

“Thanks,” mumbled Twinkleshine.

“But back to the point. I asked a friend what her costume was. It turns out it was a changeling, which are apparently pony-like beings that are not myths. As the name implies, they can change their appearance at will, so I’m going to make a deal with a few to offer up our places while we’re gone.”

“You mean…I’ll be replaced?”

Twinkleshine’s will was wavering. It was obvious in the droop in her smile. It was time to be blunt.

“Yes. And it’s better that way. Imagine if you weren’t. Your friends and family would be worried sick and would eventually move on. You’d never be able to reclaim your life on Equus. At least not ever like it was.

“Even if you told them where you were going, that would still leave them the troubling task of explaining your absence. Knowing Celestia, they’d probably have to flee from justice for a crime they didn’t commit. If nothing else, there’d be the eternal presence of suspicion, and that can be even worse.

“And I doubt you’d get permission to fly off into the stars with me, even if I turned myself into an adult and acted prim and proper. That would leave me with the troubling task of making sure your parents didn’t start talking.”

Wow, I had no idea how I did it, but I’d actually managed to make that not sound like a threat. Twinkleshine lacked her previous cheer, but she wasn’t hollering bloody murder either, so she probably didn’t take it as one, thankfully.

I let out a sigh. “On a more positive note, you’ll be able to pick up your life exactly where you left it when you get back, even though you’ll have missed some of it. There’s also the fact that you’ll have somepony approaching a long-lost twin sister to bond with on your return.”

“When you put it like that,” Twinkleshine said, a bit of a jesting tone creeping into her voice, “it almost sounds like you think everypony should take some time off from their life.”

Well, I’d certainly heard stories of ponies that really did need time off. And maybe Luna and I could create some sort of witness protection scheme later. Ooh! Espionage was a big, open option. And–

And I was getting off topic.

Going with an eye roll, I replied, “I can understand if you want to back out.”

“No,” Twinkleshine said, firmly and decisively. “It’s just…weird. It’s going to take a while before I really wrap my head around it and accept it.”

I nodded, though I didn’t think Twinkleshine noticed, and set about preparing for the journey home. I hadn’t planned to tell Twinkleshine about her replacement until after I’d actually found one, but it’d worked out better than I had ever dared to hope.

Sure, my parents had been accepting of my being replaced, but they knew the whole story. And we’d already argued for days just about my leaving before I’d even mentioned the idea. I didn’t know if they were just tired and sad or if they were happy to have a pale imitation of me to hold them over until my return at that point, but they had accepted the idea without further argument.

“Twinkleshine” – I regained her attention – “I’m going to teleport us outside now. We need to start heading home. The return trip is faster, but we don’t want you to be out too late. We can talk more on the way; it’s still a long trip.”

Author's Note

The Dragon obtained one Trusted Lieutenant!

Chapter Six - An Unexpected Surprise

“Space,” Twinkleshine said from behind me. We were both on the bridge of our ship. She was taking measurements, and I was reviewing my speech for, hopefully, tomorrow night.

It’d been a little over half a season since I’d first brought Twinkleshine up here, and much of Equus was now covered in snow, transforming it from a beautiful tapestry of color to a dull white. Growing up in Canterlot, we never had much snow, and I’d loved it on the rare occasion when we did.

Now having lived through several weeks of winter in Ponyville, I officially hated snow. Maybe I could convince Luna to take it out of the weather cycle.

“The final frontier,” Twinkleshine continued. Curious, I turned around and found her working at the desk I’d brought up from Equus for the bridge. She hadn’t moved since she’d last checked a compass, but she had mumbled nonsense from time to time.

“These are the voyages of… Hey, Twilight,” Twinkleshine said, looking up from her work. She jumped when she saw I’d walked over to join her at the desk. I swore she tuned out the world even more than I did when she worked.

“What have you been mumbling this whole time?” I asked.

“Oh, just a quote from a sci-fi book I’ve been reading. I wanted to get in the mood, I guess. Visiting other planets, meeting new species, having crazy adventures, breaking all the rules. It sounds like so much fun! I mean, I’ve never broken the rules before, at least not in any significant way.”

I facehoofed. “Twinkleshine,” I said with as much patience as I could manage, “you know this isn’t going to be like that, right? Teleportation is faster than light, but I don’t have the power” – yet – “to cover any useful distances with it. Other than leaving the surface, that is. We’re not going to be battling giant monsters, or sightseeing, or – or whatever. We’re probably not even going to see a single asteroid!”

Twinkleshine gestured toward the star charts and calculations she had littering the desk. Her face said everything for her. In hindsight, it was fairly obvious she knew that.

“So anyway,” I said, changing the topic about as gracefully as an rampaging ursa major changed direction, “have you figured out what happened last time?”

“Yeah!” Twinkleshine’s smile faded a bit as she continued, “Well, probably. It’s hard to know for sure when we can only orbit Equus. I’ll be able to say for sure once we actually leave.”

“Yes, yes,” I interrupted, getting impatient. “I understand the math. Get on with it.”

“Oh, um, right. Sorry, Twilight. I didn’t–”

Sighing first, I said, “Don’t worry, Twinkleshine. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. This is just really important to me.” With an almost sickeningly sweet smile, I asked, “Forgive me?”

Twinkleshine blushed and turned away, stammering, “O-of c-course, Twilight.”

Oh, Twinkleshine, you were just so much fun to tease. Stars, I was turning into Cadance.

“A-anyway, I’m pretty sure whatever” – Twinkleshine was still upset I wouldn’t tell her about the elements until after we left – “we’re retrieving is moving, and fast.”

“Astronomically fast, or normal fast?”

“Astronomically fast. I’m not sure if it’s not on an escape velocity yet, but at the very least, it’ll be centuries before it returns to Equus.”

An idea struck me. “Any chance it’s on–”

“A comet?” Twinkleshine finished, grinning from ear to ear. I couldn’t help smiling, too, taking a strange sense of pride in her. “I have to admit, what you told me didn’t make much sense. I assumed that somepony had to have put whatever you’re looking for out here” – I smiled a little brighter; she really was learning – “but all these compasses point to the same spot. At least roughly.

“But that’s the weird part. If somepony wanted lose a bunch of stuff forever and couldn’t just destroy them for some reason, there’d be no reason to keep them together. Or not to give them a definite escape velocity or not to throw them in the sun, but that’s not the point. The point is, they’re supposed to be findable. Just…not for a while.”

Ruffling Twinkleshine’s mane like Luna did mine, I said, “Nice work. You’re right, but you never mentioned the time limit.”

I barely stifled a laugh at the look Twinkleshine gave me. She looked as if she were about to die.

“Oh, cheer up, Twinkleshine. Even I’m not a natural; I just have a good teacher.”

Twinkleshine looked at me, eyebrows raised. I suppose I would’ve been just as confused before I met Luna if somepony told me they had somepony teaching them how to plot.

“So we’re chasing a comet, then?”

“Probably,” Twinkleshine finally said after a large pause. “It’s in the right area to be Mona, at least. Period unobserved because of Discord, if it even has one. Went by a little less than one-thousand years ago.”

I could have guessed that one myself.

“A day comet. Kind of boring, really. The only interesting part about it is that its tail is a particular shade of green, so it probably has some copper on it, oddly enough.”

“Copper? Any thoughts on why?”

“I have no idea, but I’m not a real expert yet. I’m only thirteen.”

I rolled my eyes at Twinkleshine. I wasn’t at Luna’s level, but I could probably compete with most magic teachers – if not the researchers – and I was only twelve. Still, if Twinkleshine thought the comet was strange, that was not a good sign. It could be benign, or it could be a deathtrap.

“Do you know if Mona always had a green trail?” I asked. With a thousand years, Celestia certainly had enough time to make any edits she wanted, but if she hadn’t bothered and the comet had gone on record as suddenly burning green, that would give me a clue.

Unfortunately, Twinkleshine shrugged. “The charts don’t go back that far.”

Why was I not surprised?

“As I said,” Twinkleshine began, “we don’t even know if it’s a periodic comet. Your guess would be as good as mine. Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering if somepony left a nasty surprise for me.”

“Oh,” Twinkleshine said. It took her a few seconds to realize what I’d really said. “Oh! You don’t think there’s…”

“A trap?”

“Or maybe even a civilization? I mean, what if whoever put whatever it is you’re after never left!”

“I highly doubt that.” Celestia, at least, certainly didn’t live there. “From what I know, that sounds much more like a possibility than a probability.”

“Hmm… Alright. Anyway, this is good news, though! We can shave some time off of the end of our journey since we won’t have to slow to a stop or reverse direction.”

That was actually a really good point. I barely believed I hadn’t thought of that. “Any idea how much time we’ll save?”

“No. I haven’t done the math yet” – Twinkleshine turned to her notes and scribbled a few numbers – “but it’ll probably be a lot. Maybe a whole year or more! Your promise to take a shortcut back is still good, right?”

I nodded.

“Great, because otherwise it wouldn’t matter at all.”

“If…” I began. This was a really bad idea, but it was too good to pass up. Besides, Twinkleshine was already on the edge of her seat, waiting for whatever I had to say. I couldn’t not say this now. “If we do have a bunch of extra time, would you – would you pencil in a quick stop at the moon? Please?”

Twinkleshine dropped her quill. A huge splotch of ink seeped through several of her calculations.

“O-of course! Twilight, I would love to go to the moon! But are you sure? We might need that time if we mess up.”

“I know. I know it’s a bad idea, but…but I really want to. It’s stupid, and I’m not going to get what I really want out of it, but…”

I sighed as Twinkleshine hugged me. She was definitely not the pony I wanted right now, yet she would do. We broke apart some unknown time later.

“Did something happen, Twilight?”

“N – sort of. A long time ago. Please don’t worry about it.”

“If you say so,” Twinkleshine said, her face the picture of worry, but only until she suddenly remembered something. “So back to what I was thinking earlier. These are the voyages of…what? What’s our ship called?”

“Do we really have to–”

“Yes.” There was no uncertainty in Twinkleshine’s answer, to say the least. “You’ve been putting this off for forever. The ship is pretty much done now, too.”

“If by ‘pretty much’, you mean ‘an empty shell with some dirt’, then yeah.”

Twinkleshine just stared at me.

“Fine,” I sighed. “Just – just pick a name.”

“Hmm… How about the HMS Beagle?”

“No. Look, first of all, we’re not naming our ship after another one. Second, we are not having HMS in the name. Absolutely forbidden. Understand?”

Twinkleshine managed a tight nod. I hadn’t, strictly speaking, lost my temper, but Luna would be disappointed in me all the same.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean – well, I did, but… I’m sorry.” I really needed to deal with my temper flaring whenever Celestia was mentioned; it was a huge weakness somepony could exploit. “Please, though. Pick a different name.”

“Alright,” said Twinkleshine, recovering. Still rather warily, though, she added, “Your coat was turning white.”

I mumbled a curse. Maybe I had lost my temper just a little bit. I really, really needed to work on that.

“How about the Nebulous?” Twinkleshine suggested, taking my mind off of my issues with Celestia. “It’s spacey and mysterious.”

“It sounds wonderful.”

“Great! Then these are the voyages of the starship Nebulous. Its…some-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to–”

“Are you going to do this the whole time?”

“No,” pouted Twinkleshine. “Just this once. I promise.”

“Go ahead,” I sighed.

“To…um… Hmm… Oh! To seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no pony has gone before.” Finished, Twinkleshine leaned back with a smile.

“Do you finally have it all out of your system?”

“Well…”

“Twinkleshine,” I scolded.

“Fine, fine. I just wish I could make a map or something as we go. I mean, I can only write ‘nothing here’ so many times before I get bored and start writing ‘here be dragons’.”

“It’d probably be an improvement,” I said, chuckling. “Maybe you could keep a log. Not really a space log, but more of a diary, I guess.”

“Maybe,” Twinkleshine pondered.

“Just one thing, though.”

“What?”

“Please, please, if you do, don’t use stardates.”

Mom and I had walked Twinkleshine home to the dorms and had returned to our Canterlot home. I still had things to do at the school that required my attention, but I didn’t want either Mom or Twinkleshine to know what I was doing. In all likelihood, I would have to get…aggressive.

So under cover of darkness, once everypony was asleep, I made my way back to the school, teleporting most of the way. I didn’t know if the school had wards against teleportation, and I didn’t care to find out. No doubt I’d set off an alarm so close to Celestia’s seat of power if I tried teleporting in.

But there was one interesting tidbit I’d managed to extract from a teacher off-campus. Apparently, some magic was so unknown, so forgotten, nopony felt the need to ward against it anymore.

The first step was to get inside the dorms. It should have been hard, but the dorm mistress recognized me as one of her own by now, so all I had to do was spin a short story about leaving something important – and embarrassing – behind. And explaining where my parents where, but that was simple enough. It was still early enough that some stores somewhat nearby were still open, although not the kind I would be allowed into.

That done, I found my way to Lemon Hearts’s room. I was never so glad before for adults’ utter disregard for foals’ rights. I opened the door – the lockless door – and found Lemon Hearts in bed nearby. It seemed she and whoever her roommate was favored bunk beds, and she ended up with the bottom.

Now…now came the hard part.

First things first, though. I cast a spell Luna had taught me to detect changelings. Honestly, I didn’t know if I was surprised or disappointed when the results came back negative. It would seem awfully foolish to set up a fake identity here, after all.

Still, Lemon Hearts obviously knew one. I couldn’t find a single scrap of information on changelings in the archives, and Twinkleshine took the same classes and didn’t know about changelings. The odds of Lemon Hearts not knowing a changeling were pretty small.

And besides, it wasn’t like I had any other leads. I might have time with Twinkleshine’s good news to hunt one down more directly, but I didn’t want to take that chance unless I absolutely had to.

And it wasn’t as if Lemon Hearts would remember anything. Or that I could afford to let her remember anything.

And – and I was just stalling. I had to do this.

The first step was to place a sleeping spell on both fillies; fillies had a bad tendency to scream. This way, they’d wake up either when I found it appropriate or sometime long after breakfast. There was, of course, no school tomorrow. I was not inequine, after all.

Next, I placed an illusion on myself of myself. The magic I was going to use was not exactly subtle, and I couldn’t walk out of here looking, well, evil. That was probably the real reason dark magic was shunned. Not because of what you could do with it, but because of its admittedly sinister appearance.

And it sort of required a certain feeling, one I unfortunately had in abundance.

I focused on my hatred of Celestia, on what she had done to me, on what she had done to Luna. It only took a second; it never took long, and I’d only been getting better at it.

I could feel the sheer raw power of dark magic welling up within me, waiting to lash out at my slightest whim. It was no wonder Luna was so controlled and why she wanted me to be. The slightest slip, and I could find myself killing a pony by accident.

Taking a deep breath, I cleared my mind – not at peace, just clear, calm, controlled.

It was time. I cast the first spell both Luna and I had learned in this branch of magic. My mane bulged and grew, moving of its own accord, or at least it did underneath my illusion. Once the spell had settled, I reached out with my mane and seized Lemon Hearts with it, imprisoning her inside in a dimensional subspace.

The dimensional prison spell didn’t have to be anchored on a pony’s mane, but Luna said it was something of a tradition. It also wasn’t very difficult to escape if the pony trapped in it knew how to teleport, although it did take some effort.

With my prize claimed, I headed back to the entrance and left the building, giving a nod and a blush to the dorm mistress when I saw her.

As soon as I was far enough away, I bolted into a gallop to leave campus as quickly as possible. I didn’t see anypony along the way, and I slipped out the front gate without trouble. Sneaking down a few alleys, I teleported to my old practice room in the crystal mines.

Immediately after I arrived, I collapsed and threw Lemon Hearts roughly from my mane as I did. Once she was out safely, I ended the spell and rested.

I didn’t know how long I laid there, but I was sure it would never be long enough. Even now, long after I had caught my breath, my heart was still racing. Foalnapping did that to a pony, even if she intended to give the foal back the next morning no worse for the wear.

I reworked my illusion and went through a few rounds of the royal breathing exercises. I was not feeling up to any detail work right now, so I only made a few changes: coat color, mane and tail color, eye color, and size – scaling up of course. I still had the proportions of a filly, but I doubted Lemon Hearts would notice. She would be…preoccupied.

I changed my manecut, too, mostly by ruffling it up. I’d never seen another pony with my manecut before; I was probably the only pony in the world who played up to the librarian look without a bun. It wouldn’t do to give Lemon Hearts any chance of identifying me.

“Wake up,” I said coldly as I cast the relevant spell.

Lemon Hearts jerked awake with a snort, her eyes lazily opening. “Huh? I’m not ready to wake up. Just a little longer.” She groped about for something, probably a pillow and blanket, but found nothing.

“Wake up,” I repeated, forcing her to her hooves. That did the trick.

“Wha? Where am I?” she shouted. “Who are you?”

Ignoring her question, I asked, “Where can I find a changeling?” A word or two in, I realized I’d forgotten to disguise my voice with magic. Berating myself for the oversight, I did the best I could without.

“What are you talking about?” she protested, but her face told another story. Underneath the fear and panic, there was just the slightest momentary widening of her eyes. I was right.

“I will ask you one more time. Where can I find a changeling? I know you know at least one.”

“I-I don’t know.”

I didn’t know whether her tears were real or not, but I would guess not. It was too early. Whatever relationship she had with the changelings, she was not up to their level in acting.

“I warn you, I have no patience tonight.”

Lemon Hearts tried to creep away, but I pinned her to the ground with magic.

“Very well,” I said, my voice as cold and empty as possible. “In that case, I will force you to speak.”

I called forth my anger and hate again, but made no attempt to hide the effects. My eyes glowed a sickly green color, and a blue and black flame flared from the sides. The glow of my magic shared the color but also boiled as if it were a liquid.

I took one measured step forward. My hoofstep echoed throughout the room. I dimmed the lights – my own spellwork years ago – for effect.

Now, yes. Now those tears were real.

“W-w-w-wait! I’ll talk!”

“Too late,” I said, uncaring. I took another step forward.

“M-my s-sister! She’s a changeling! Replaced at birth! Stillborn! Please, please don’t kill me! Please!”

I stood still, silently asking for more.

“Her name’s Amethyst Star! S-she lives h-here in Canterlot!”

“What makes you think we are in Canterlot?” Ever so slightly, I pulled up the corner of my lips. Not enough to suggest I was happy or would enjoy whatever I would do next. No. Only enough to suggest I held the barest hint of amusement.

I crossed the remaining distance between us as slowly as ever and brought our faces close.

“Where?” I whispered. I narrowed my eyes when I felt something wet against my hooves. “Where?” I repeated.

“S-sunflower S-street,” she squeaked, her voice even quieter than mine. “S-six seventeeeeen.”

“Thank you,” I said, knocking Lemon Hearts out again. “I promise you won’t remember this nightmare in the morning.”

The next night, just after sunset, I stood on Sunflower Street. I’d slipped into the dorm early in the morning and had returned Lemon Hearts to her bed. I’d spent the next few hours with Twinkleshine exhausted, quiet, and pretending I’d been enjoying myself instead of wanting to collapse.

This morning, Luna had had little to say when I’d told her about my little escapade. Proud but worried would have described her well enough – that, and a comforting hoof. She’d spent the rest of the morning with me reviewing my role and speech tonight. It had been terribly distracting from last night.

Now waiting just outside the home of Amethyst Star, whom I’d confirmed earlier to be a changeling, I wished I could feel as excited as I should be. It wasn’t often a pony got to be an ambassador, after all.

An ambassador that practically tortured one of their citizens first…

No. No, worst case, I would’ve cast a geas on Lemon Hearts to make her talk. She was young and too inexperienced to resist dark magic at all, so there wouldn’t have been any permanent or even temporary damage done. It wasn’t my fault she was so scared of ponies that only looked scary.

And Lemon Hearts wasn’t a changeling, so she wasn’t a citizen either, regardless of her claimed sisterly relation with Amethyst Star.

And it wasn’t like Lemon Hearts would’ve told me where to find a changeling otherwise. An entire civilization couldn’t manage to extirpate itself from every record and mind – barring Luna and Celestia – without first having tight lips.

Shaking my head, I swapped out my moral contemplation face for my goodwill face and knocked on the door. As funny as it would be in a history book, having first contact be a philosophical debate wasn’t exactly the kind of message Luna and I wanted to send.

The door swung open. Amethyst Star – real name or otherwise – had the form of a light purple coat not much different from my own shade. Her mane and tail were purple as well with a purple stripe, both darker than her coat. Her eyes were purple, too.

Now that I thought about it, she looked an awful lot like me, just bigger and lighter in hue. She probably wouldn’t even need shapeshifting powers to pass as an older version of myself in the right light. Well, except for the three diamond cutie mark. That was a bit of a dead giveaway.

“Hel…lo?”

“Ehem. Down here.” I waved a hoof to help attract Amethyst Star’s attention.

“Oh! Sorry, I completely missed you. Are you one of Lemon’s friends?”

“No, but I am aware of her existence.” Before Amethyst Star could invite me inside – I doubted she would immediately attack in public – I said, “I am here to extend a hoof in friendship from my princess to your queen.”

“I see,” Amethyst Star smiled and nodded. “What a delightful imagination you have. Why don’t you come inside? I just put on a fresh kettle of tea.”

“I’m afraid I must decline until you either take me seriously or promise to neither poison me nor attack me as a matter of course. It would be inappropriate to begin relations with violence.”

Amethyst Star’s jaw hung low. She didn’t say a single word and gave me only an expression of shock and disgust. This, this was the acting quality I expected from a changeling.

“Why? Why would you say such things? I – I would never – how could you – where are your parents?”

I fought off the urge to sigh and said, “If you wish, I can explain to you in great detail how to detect and how to reveal changelings. I could also simply reveal you here and now, but neither of us desire that.”

The only thing that betrayed Amethyst Star was her eyes. They were flying to and fro, no doubt analyzing my face for the slightest hint of uncertainty or deception. Of course, there was none to be found.

Finally, Amethyst Star said, “Come in.”

“May I assume that is a promise to exchange words civilly?”

Naturally, Amethyst Star would say yes either way, so when she turned back, I turned up the scary just a bit. I let my eyes glow green with half-empowered darkness, forgoing fully accessing my dark magic to avoid the flames.

Amethyst Star paused. It was the first true break in her act. The words of her answer were as obvious as the necessity of inviting me inside, but she actually took the time to think before she answered.

“Yes, little miss hatred.”

Oh, right. I forgot about the empathy sense.

“My apologies,” I said, returning to normal. “Naturally, that was not directed at you or your species.”

“Naturally,” Amethyst Star echoed as she directed me to a couch in her living room. “Would you care for tea?”

“Yes please,” I said, taking my seat. I would have loved to have said that as a pure gesture of good faith, but I didn’t know enough about changelings, so I watched her with a scrying spell until she returned. Even Luna only knew Changeling 101, so I had no idea what she could do to the tea.

Amethyst Star hoofed off a cuppa into my magic, and I took a sip. I never really understood the whole tea thing, but I wasn’t going to say no to sugar and caffeine.

“Thank you, it’s delicious. Shall we get started, then?”

A moment of silence passed.

“Yes. How did you find out about me?”

“A detection spell,” I lied, although technically I had cast one on her earlier in the day. “It was only a matter of time.”

“Then where did you learn that spell?”

“From the rightful princess of Equestria, Princess Luna.”

A second or two went by before Amethyst Star choked on her tea. Recovering, she rapidly asked, “How do you know that mad mare?”

“She is understandably upset, not insane,” I corrected, not bothering to check my tone or my emotions. “I am her apprentice. How do you know her?”

Nearly a full minute came and went without a word. Obviously, there was a secret to uncover here.

“Celestia was not able to purge our records,” Amethyst Star answered. I was pretty sure that was not the secret.

Still, it was an answer. I’d half-expected – well, mostly expected – Amethyst Star to ignore my question or to give an obvious lie. Perhaps this was a peace offering. Especially since she hadn’t affixed princess to Celestia’s name, although I didn’t know enough about her to know if that was what she wanted me to think. Or if she wanted me to think that. Or…

Right. Moving on. There was an easy way to test if what Amethyst Star had said was true. I didn’t expect her to have any on hoof, but her reply could tell me something of her thoughts.

“I would love to read your historical texts. I’ve never had a chance to read an uncensored version of world history.”

“Why not just ask Ni – Lu – Princess Luna?”

Unable to decide between a smile and a frown, I said, “I don’t know about you, but I would not want to try passing on thousands of years of history orally in any appreciable detail.”

Amethyst Star’s mouth hung slightly open as she failed to find the right words. Eventually, she settled on, “Fair. So…friendship.”

“Ah! Yes, so I was talking with Princess Luna, and neither of us could see any reason why changelings couldn’t live openly in Equestria. There’s so much we could do for each other, and your magic is fascinating. I have to resort to dark magic to do much of what you can, and I still haven’t puzzled out that empathy sense of yours. I really, really want to take a closer look at that sometime. Unicorns have some similar magic, but nothing like your passive magic. Oh! And I promise not to go all mad scientist on my research subject, too. Luna scolded me for days the last time that happened, and I–”

“Ehem,” Amethyst Star interrupted. “Not that you’re not delicious right now, but Queen Chrysalis would prefer to continue this face to face.”

“Ah… Good. That’s – that’s good,” I said, blushing and turning away. “Um, how do you know that? You’re not going to say something really cheesy like, ‘I am Queen Chrysalis,’ are you?”

“Oh, no. I’ve just been speaking for her.”

“Oh, right. Changeling. Sorry.” I had no idea what Amethyst Star was talking about. “If you don’t mind, I’m sort of curious how that works.” I really hoped she – or maybe it was they? – took the bait. I was far more curious what ‘that’ was at all than how ‘that’ works right now.

“You won’t be studying any of our magic, especially not the hive mind, for a long time, if ever.”

Hive mind. Right. I tucked that name away to bring up later. If I said just the right things, I could pretend like I’d known about it all along.

“I – I mean me, me, not the queen – will find you tomorrow and take you to meet Queen Chrysalis.”

“He’s growing up,” Cadance said from the kitchen, “very slowly, but surely.”

I was upstairs in my bedroom listening in with magic and fairly miffed Mom and Cadance had told me they wanted to talk in private. This was hardly the first time I’d heard a conversation like this, but I still didn’t know what I wanted to do about it.

“He finally said his first word a week or so ago, you know. We need to make a final decision now. Twilight is technically his mother, and regardless of her age, the law is very clear that she has to make and sign off on the decision.”

“Why do you even have those laws?” Mom half-shouted. “They’re nonsense!”

“They’re there so nobles can’t do to their foals what we’re doing to Twilight in more reasonable circumstances. You have no idea how many mothers and foals have been kept together because of them. The nobles have been looking for an excuse to remove those laws for centuries, and my breaking it here would be the perfect opportunity. I know Twilight is young, but we can’t even risk letting this law be repealed. It’s been hard enough ‘foalsitting’ him at the castle these past four years.”

“You know what she’s going to say!”

“Twilight will understand if we just talk to her, Velvet. You’re being paranoid.”

I gave a light buck to one of the columns on my old bed. I really wished they would talk about this with me, but it might be for the best that they didn’t. I really didn’t know what to do, and I might have said something I’d regret if Cadance had pressured me into making a decision right away.

On one hoof, I had no idea what I’d do with a wyrmling. I wasn’t anywhere near old enough to try being a mother, even if I was more mature than most fillies my age. And now there was the whole leaving for space thing, too. I probably wouldn’t be a good mother, either.

And yet the idea wasn’t something I could just ignore. I was going to live forever. Forever was a long time. I knew dragons were mortal, but they didn’t die of old age. The more people who could accompany me into eternity, the better.

Also, I wasn’t going to delude myself enough to think I’d never want to be a mother. I probably wouldn’t really be interested for…I didn’t even know. A long time, at least. But eventually, I’d want to give it a try. I could always adopt a dragon later, but I was sure I’d feel terrible about it.

And really, behind it all, I didn’t know if I could bring myself to abandon Spike like Celestia had abandoned me. The thought of it was repellent, if not necessarily logically so. These were very different situations.

A knock came at the front door.

“Tomorrow night,” Mom grumbled. “We’ll talk to her then.”

“It’s always tomorrow, Velvet. You have to mean it this time.”

“I…do. Twilight’s going to a…sleepover tonight, I guess.”

Ha! I chuckled on my way down the stairs as I dismissed my spell. I was spending the night at Queen Chrysalis’s, but it certainly wasn’t for a sleepover.

Mom and Cadance joined me in the foyer, and I held my breath as I opened the door. I didn’t know if Cadance could spot changelings on sight – seriously, what did it even mean to eat love? – but I was about to find out.

I carefully watched Cadance’s reaction to Amethyst Star. Raised eyebrows came, but no signs of shock, horror, et cetera. Excellent. Last night and tonight would be pointless if she could recognize changelings with a casual glance.

I turned to find Amethyst Star waiting on the other side – and drooling. That explained the raised eyebrows. It only took me a second to figure out why.

Stepping forward, I whispered, “Please don’t mind the Princess of Food. She’s not coming with and doesn’t know.”

“Ah,” Amethyst Star said, wiping away the drool. “Right. Um…”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Amethyst Star,” Mom said. “Twilight can be quite a wingful, so please be careful with her tonight.”

“Mom,” I groaned, only half-faking it. I knew she meant it as a threat, not as a careless embarrassing comment. Still, I could make my own threats.

“Oh, Twilight. Your mother means well,” Cadance said as if she hadn’t been fighting with Mom only moments ago. “It’s good to meet you. Might I ask how you know Twilight?”

Amethyst Star was staring blankly at Cadance again. I gave her a sharp kick while Cadance wasn’t looking. Was it really so hard to just ignore a feast? Honestly.

“Yes! Good to meet you, Princess. I uh, oh. Uh, I’m Lemon Hearts’s big sister.”

“Ah, I remember her.” Cadance turned to address me and said, “I wasn’t aware you were hanging out with her.”

Ugh, Cadance was such a pain to work around. At least she hadn’t confronted me about Twinkleshine’s feelings yet.

“It’s complicated filly stuff,” I said, going with sarcasm and disdain over haughtiness. Cadance would never buy it if I debased myself enough to act like a normal teenage filly. If she stuck her muzzle any deeper into this, Amethyst Star and I had a consistent explanation – an overly dramatic one, just for Cadance – for why we were spending the night together without Lemon Hearts. And without any love between us, too, because I was positive Cadance could tell.

“Oh, I’m sure,” Cadance said. If I had to guess, I would say she’d lost interest, but for once, I had no idea what she was thinking. “My foalhood wasn’t so long ago for me either, although the whole princess thing made the latter half weird.”

After humming to herself, Cadance added, “Anyway, have a good time. Your mother and I still have things to talk about.”

I said my goodbyes and headed outside. Amethyst Star followed shortly after. We made our way through Canterlot in silence until we arrived at her house. Directly inside were two unicorns, or rather two changelings disguised as unicorns.

All three changelings said nothing, but their faces clearly showed conversation taking place. I was fairly certain the hive mind Amethyst Star had mentioned allowed them to talk to each other telepathically – which sounded awfully convenient – but I wanted to know what else it could do. Talking was just an exchange of information, so in theory, they should be able to share any random information. In theory. It might not be as simple as sending an image or a string of neuron states – okay, it almost certainly wasn’t that simple, but the potential applications were still astounding.

My very irrelevant train of thought was interrupted when one of the unicorns turned himself into me. I gave him a quick once-over. The transformation was flawless. It wouldn’t fool Cadance, but on the off-chance anypony else came looking for me, it should deceive their casual glance.

With a few nods amongst the changelings – I felt a strange sense of exclusion – the other unicorn-changeling built up power for a teleport. A ring of fire flared up around me, and he and I sank into the ground. It was an odd experience, to say the least: clunky, slow, and…unsmooth. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was a rough or turbulent ride, but it completely lacked the grace of my own teleports.

It was, however, a respectable display of power. We found ourselves at the base of the Canterhorn. That wasn’t anywhere near my max range – with or without risking a flare – but it was far more power than most unicorns could muster.

We went through a series of teleports before I was hoofed off to another changeling who continued the journey. After one more hoof off, I found myself – ironically – in the Everfree Forest, a ring of changelings encircling me and one very big one in front of me. If my knowledge of the flora was right, we weren’t very far in, and considering the direction we’d come from, we were probably close to Ponyville.

The circle was rather warm for winter, but a bit cool for summer. The snow had melted long ago, as the ground was only slightly muddy. I made a mental note to ask Luna to add muddy terrain to my sparring lessons.

“Well met, Twilight Sparkle,” the big changeling said. She was almost certainly Queen Chrysalis or another changeling taking her form. If I were her, I would be one of the guards right now. Probably one of the ones behind the big changeling but slightly to the side to watch my expressions.

Or even better, she could be somewhere else entirely, and all this was just to see what I would do when I met her in person. Either way, I was almost certainly speaking with the real queen.

“Queen Chrysalis, I presume,” I said, not betraying my suspicions more than looking at, but behind, the alleged queen more often. None of the changelings behind her looked suspicious, but if anypony besides Luna could notice my suspicions and keep herself hidden, it would be the queen of the changelings.

“Indeed. I must admit, your sudden appearance has caught me off guard, which is quite the rare event. Imagine my surprise when a filly threatened one of my nymphs enough to make her contact me directly.”

I see, so we were going to play that game. “I trust you understand why that was necessary. After all, a filly could.” Ugh. Clumsy, Twilight. Very clumsy. You could do far better than that.

Queen Chrysalis sneered. “Oh, quite. Now if I may ask, where is the princess?”

“Still banished, unfortunately, but it is common knowledge in certain circles that she will return soon.”

“Interesting, and here I believed she was permanently dealt with like Discord. I take it she’s visiting dreams?”

If I just wanted to read changeling records before, now I would kill to read them. Queen Chrysalis had more information than just an unbiased account of history.

Nodding, I said, “She spends all morning, every morning with me.”

“Ah, yes. You are her little apprentice, the little Flare that Celestia abandoned and Mi Amore adores.”

Okay, note to self: never, ever underestimate the changeling information network.

A silence settled, and Queen Chrysalis looked as if she were thinking of what to say, but I wasn’t buying it. There was no way she’d entered this conversation without planning it out.

“I have one question to ask you before I lend you my changelings.”

Queen Chrysalis paused, no doubt expecting that to have shocked me, but it was an obvious guess. Why approach the changelings now instead of any other time the past thousand years? We needed something. And what did changelings have that nopony else did? An expertise in disguise, acting, and espionage.

There probably were some other outlier reasons, but that was by far the most probable motivation I could think of.

“I am sure a smart little filly such as yourself realizes that with Princess Luna’s attention on me, my hoof is now forced. I must pick a side, and it must be the winning side. Why yours?”

Alright. Luna and I had worked out all the details, and I’d practiced this for several days, and now it was time for that effort to pay off.

“Long ago in the days of old, Celestia required the Elements of Harmony to defeat Princess Luna. She alone cannot defeat Princess Luna, and–”

“Celestia has Mi Amore,” Queen Chrysalis countered, interrupting me, but that was fine. If she wanted to make this a back and forth, point and counterpoint, I had no complaints. Or at least I had none beyond a frustrated ripping up of parchment in my mind.

“Cadance is useless in combat–”

“Except as a power source,” Queen Chrysalis interrupted again. “Our records are very clear that Princess Luna had to fight with all her strength to win.”

“As you said, Cadance adores me. I can–”

“Celestia would never allow it. Even then, what of the elements?”

I gritted my teeth, and Queen Chrysalis waited silently. I was sure I’d already given away that we had a plan by virtue of not answering, but it really hit me now just how much of a do or die situation I was in. There were at least two changelings waiting in Canterlot to rush to Celestia if I failed here, and then the elements would be beyond my reach forever. And that was ignoring the certain banishment or execution that would be waiting for me.

“Celestia has hidden the elements. I’m leaving to recover them and render them useless. That is why–”

“You need replacements. Interesting. Where are the elements, then?”

“They are on Mona, a comet. I will be gone for a long time.”

“Ha! And how do you plan to get there? Wings will only carry you so far, so fast, little apprentice.”

Using the spell I’d cobbled together for Twinkleshine oh so long ago, I gave Queen Chrysalis a view of the Nebulous. Satisfyingly, she actually appeared lost for words, although again, that could just be a changeling posing as her being lost for words.

“I have been busy the last approximately two seasons. Space is not that hard to get to, when you know what you are doing. The math is done. I will catch up to the comet, and I will retrieve the elements. However, Cadance will want to see me while I’m gone.” I let the implication hang in the air.

“Twilight Sparkle, I am…impressed. However, you have not addressed how you expect Princess Luna to overcome both Celestia and Mi Amore.”

We assumed I would have to reveal this, but I still hesitated. “I’m going to ascend.”

“You say that with such…certainty.”

“There are two historical precedents for ascension using the elements.”

“I will take your word for that. Now be honest, how likely do you believe your plan is to succeed?”

“It w–” Queen Chrysalis’s stare cut me off. Fine. Her constant interruptions and quick questions were annoying, but if she wanted a real answer, I’d give her a real answer.

“With ninety-nine percent probability, I will be able to reach Mona. Princess Luna and I agree that I will be able to make it before Celestia can bother her royal rear to fetch the elements, but if you want a pessimistic estimate, I would say I have an eighty percent chance of success there.

“In Princess Luna’s opinion, based on many past attempts, I will be able to ascend when I arrive, although I may have to kick-start the process with a ritual. I have no idea how likely Cadance would be to spot my replacement; that is all on you.”

I wished I hadn’t emphasized that last word, but it was done. “The risky part is the final confrontation. Celestia and Princess Luna can crush Cadance and I, but I can easily defeat Cadance. Pessimistically, I would put our side at a seventy percent chance of victory.

“So,” I concluded, “worse case, I estimate we are more likely to succeed than to fail.”

Queen Chrysalis smiled and relaxed her wings. “And thus you conclude that I should wager on Princess Luna.”

I nodded.

A second passed in silence, which Queen Chrysalis would normally have filled with an instant response.

“No.”

My jaw dropped before I could help it. “What do you mean no?” I shouted.

“You are overconfident, and your scheme requires too many things to go right,” Queen Chrysalis said, walking to me and forcing me to strain my head up. “You are going to fail. This is not your best plan; this is your only plan. You two are desperate and out of options.”

“That is not–”

“It is the truth!” Queen Chrysalis shouted, stomping her hoof. “Besides which, this is the perfect chance to gain, as you called her, the Princess of Food’s favor. Why would we ever risk her displeasure? She could eradicate us, should she be so inclined. Do not think I do not know the secrets of alicorns!”

“No! Cadance would never do that! She’s a huge softie! I know she will come around if Princess Luna and I win.”

“If. Ifs are all you have. We are done here.”

“Wait!” I shouted. I couldn’t let the conversation end. Queen Chrysalis would send her minions to Celestia as quickly as possible, preempting any story I might come up with.

I tried forming words while Queen Chrysalis stared at me, but I couldn’t think of anything. I had nothing. Luna and I had gambled everything and lost. It was all over. My head fell to the ground.

No! I snapped back to attention, dark flames pouring from my eyes. If Queen Chrysalis really was here, I could place a geas on her. I just needed to do it before she could send out a warning or a request for aid.

I readied myself to attack, and I could see the guards responding, but Queen Chrysalis stood unmoving. And then a thought struck me. I could use the geas spell without actually using it, in a sense.

Relaxing my stance, I tried one last attempt, my manners and grace completely forgotten and my breathing ragged.

“Chrysalis, I know dark magic. There’s a spell that allows me to override the will of others. I could place a harmless, unrelated one on you, and if Luna and I are defeated, you can reveal that you were under a magical compulsion to help us. You can play both sides! You don’t have to pick!”

Silence descended.

The guards were ready to pounce at a moment’s notice.

Queen Chrysalis’s face was blank.

I…I had a teleport spell ready on a hairpin trigger, ready to run for my life and nearly in tears. Cadance was alone and vulnerable. If I could get to her first, I might be able to make a geas stick. Then… Then something.

I waited; that was all I could do. My heart was beating so hard, I could feel all of my veins pulsing. That wasn’t helping.

“Twilight Sparkle.” Queen Chrysalis broke the silence and waited, saying nothing more. Finally, she continued, “I have two conditions.”

I nearly fell to the ground and cried. Knocking myself out was a second option, although I’d almost had that choice taken out of my hooves. I’d never fainted before, but I’d never been closer.

“Name them.” I could barely hear myself, but I thought I managed to speak clearly through the euphoria.

“First, if you and Princess Luna succeed, you will see to it that Mi Amore becomes a friend to changelings.”

“Done,” I agreed immediately. I then spewed an explanation as quickly as possible. “You said you know alicorn secrets. Then you know that Cadance will be able to spot a fake me if there isn’t mutual love between the fake and her. She won’t let go of that love, and if she likes one of you, she’ll like you all in general. Maybe not specific instances, like you for betraying Celestia - I don’t really know – but she won’t condemn your entire species, and she wouldn’t kill its queen.”

“Very well, but you still will be responsible for ensuring she will always be there for us. Forever. Understood?”

“Yes! Completely!”

“Good. Second, I will be coming with.”

I cocked my head to the side. Coming with where?

“To retrieve the elements,” Queen Chrysalis added. “I will not risk accepting a geas unless it becomes absolutely necessary. This precludes me from leaving your presence during your trip. Unless you have another dark mage on your…team?”

I opened my mouth and shut it. “Not…that I know of. I can ask Princess Luna, but I think she and I are the only ones. But what about your hive?”

“They can manage without my physical presence.”

“Oh, okay.”

Wait. That didn’t sound right. “What do you mean?”

“I shall simply rule completely over the hive mind. I have had weeks where I did not get out of bed. This will simply be a bit longer.”

“You…do realize space is big, right? You will probably be out of range within a day.”

“Do not worry. So far as we can tell, the hive mind is rangeless, or rather it has no range.”

“Alright then,” I said, smiling. Then the implications sank in. “What?”

Amethyst Star dropped me off at home the next afternoon to keep up appearances, and Mom received me with a frown. Besides a few words with Luna last night, the whole matter with Spike had gone completely out of my mind. Although it was possible Mom could just be worried about me instead. I might be a fake, after all.

Regardless, I was far too excited to be dragged down by Mom’s mood.

“Mom, I have something really important to tell you!” When I saw Cadance come outside, I added, “In private.” Then I remembered to say the codeword ‘synecdoche’ – correctly pronounced, of course – and Mom relaxed a little bit.

It wasn’t exactly the best Turning test to identify me as Twilight Sparkle, but it was enough to ease Mom’s worries, and Luna would know or would quickly find out if I wasn’t who I said I was.

“Could it wait, Twilight? Cadance and I have something we need to talk to you about.”

“No, it can’t wait. It’s really, really important. I’ll meet you up in my room.”

I bolted off after quickly greeting Cadance and headed up to my room. I cast a few privacy spells. They weren’t anything that would stop the dedicated eavesdropper, but they were both subtle enough Cadance wouldn’t notice them and good enough to prevent her from listening in.

Finally, Mom entered my room, and I beckoned her over.

“Mom!” I whispered. It wasn’t necessary, but I couldn’t help myself. I was too excited. “I found a way to stay in touch while I’m gone!”

Mom’s eyes went wide, and she hugged me with all her might.

“Can’t…breathe…”

“Sorry. Please hold out a moment longer.”

Several seconds later, Mom released me, and I took a huge gasp of air. When I moved back enough to see her face, I could see tears at the corner of her eyes.

“You don’t know how much that means to me and your father, Twilight. Thank you. Just – thank you.”

Squirming out of her affections and fixing my mane, I said, “Okay, okay. I get it. I love you, too. Now let’s go have that talk with Cadance.”

I ran out of the room, leaving Mom behind, and headed for the living room. Cadance was waiting for me, well, us, on the couch. I took a seat across from her, and Mom joined us soon after, sitting down next to Cadance. In the interim, Mom had managed to compose herself and had returned to her ‘I have something terribly serious to discuss’ face.

Cadance had the same expression.

Mom tried to speak a few times, but failed. After the third time, Cadance said, “Twilight, do you remember–”

“Spike?” I interrupted. I was in far too good a mood to play along with the obvious weighty matters script.

Both Mom and Cadance wore their shock on their face, but Mom’s faded soon after. She sighed and said, “Eavesdropping is a very bad habit, Twilight.”

I smiled, not bothering to comment. Keeping secrets from the pony they concerned was just as bad of a habit.

“Still,” Mom began, “I guess this makes things easier. How much did you overhear?”

“Pretty much everything.”

“Twilight!” Cadance scolded.

Nope. Still in too good a mood. I just chuckled.

“This is a serious matter, Twilight.”

“Why? All you want me to do is sign some papers to give up somepony I’ve never really met who’s never really met me.” It really was that simple.

Cadance gaped at me, looking much like I’d just slapped her. Mom, on the other hoof, couldn’t seem to decide what face to make.

“Is that what you…” Cadance looked away and floated a small stack of parchment onto the table with a vial of ink. “Here. We need your signature next to your mother’s everywhere it appears.”

“No.”

Ah, I knew that would be worth it. Both of them were so easy to get worked up.

“Honey…” Mom began, but Cadance interrupted her.

“Twilight, Spike is a dragon. He’ll still be a foal when you…”

I had little doubt the next word was supposed to be ‘die’. Cadance hadn’t really thought very hard about that in advance, had she?

Mom tried to say something to Cadance, but ultimately, she didn’t, or perhaps couldn’t. Instead, she bit her lip and looked away. When Luna told my parents exactly why I needed to go to space to make sure they didn’t do anything stupid, she’d forced them to make the same promise I had when Luna first told me of ascension.

“When you’re grown, and married, and your own foals have grown,” Cadance finished rather lamely. “You won’t be able to treat him like a brother. You won’t be able to treat him like a son.”

“Cadance, believe me when I say I don’t care about that. You’ve been arguing with Mom over this for half a season now. I’ve had plenty of time to think about it and to discuss it with an older friend.”

And if that wasn’t completely true, Cadance didn’t need to know. I still wasn’t sure if I wanted to do this, but Luna had recommended I try it for a few years to see how things went if I were undecided, which I was. And who could possibly give me better advice? Celestia and Cadance were the only two with comparable lifespans, and only Celestia was as old, but I couldn’t talk to either of them.

Well, technically, there was also Discord, but he was legitimately a monster. Nopony should go to him for advice.

“I – Twilight – argh!”

Sigh. Now I felt a little bad. Just a little. I really shouldn’t try to purposefully frustrate Cadance like this.

And she was understandably frustrated. There was very little Cadance could do to oppose my choice, even on a trivial level. If I didn’t give up Spike, then her efforts were wasted.

On the other hoof, there was an entirely different problem. If I gave up Spike, I was almost certainly going to be dragged into court, administered a zebra truth serum, and forced to reveal everything relevant Cadance, Mom, and Dad had said to me about the matter. If Cadance said anything against my decision here and I changed my mind, that would come spilling out, which would be disastrous for her little legal problem.

Mom whispered aside to Cadance, “As I said.”

Cadance shot Mom a dirty look.

Ignoring the look, Mom asked, “Twilight, Honey, are you sure about this?”

“Velvet? What are you–”

Mom shushed Cadance. “This won’t be like taking in Owlowiscious. You will have a lot of help, I know, maybe more than you can manage. But I also know you’ll feel miserable if he becomes too much for you, to say nothing of how poor Spike would feel.”

Smiling, I said, “I’m sure, Mom. I know the first decade will be rough, but I think I have a chance at something…something magical, and I would regret it forever if I ignored this chance.”

Well, I would get over it eventually in the same sense that Spike would die eventually, but there was no telling how long that would be. And that wasn’t a very good approach to immortality. It was singularly bad, actually. It was the perfect mindset to become an all-powerful bystander, and I wanted no part of that nonsense. Ultimately, in all honesty, I thought the deciding factor for me was that I just didn’t want to be like Celestia.

Mom gave me a weak smile. That was something, at least. Cadance, on the other hoof, was scowling and grumbling to herself.

“So?” I asked. “When can I expect Spike?”

Making a sound somewhere between a sigh and a growl, Cadance bit her lip. She said, “Tomorrow afternoon,” got up, and left.

I watched Cadance leave, sad to see her go. I’d expected this to upset her, but I hadn’t expected her to leave. Turning back to Mom, I found she was still smiling. At least one of us was.

“Later,” Mom began, crossing the gap between us. She hugged me and continued, “When we’re with your father – and nopony else – we need to have a long talk about this. I think I understand, but I want to hear everything from you directly.”

I nodded and returned Mom’s hug.

Author's Note

The Dragon negotiated one Telephone!

The Dragon adopted one…Dragon?

Next chapter, Twilight recruits a farmer. Hint: it is not an Apple.

Chapter Seven - The Town Drunk

Having learned a harsh lesson, I collapsed to the ground and moaned. The snow was cold, but the warming enchantment I’d cast kept me comfortable. I was halfway back to Ponyville proper, but I just couldn’t summon the strength to finish the trudge or to teleport.

Rule number one of living in Ponyville: never agree to let the Apple family feed you.

I rolled over onto my back and then rubbed my stomach, futilely trying to comfort it.

“Sooooo much foooood,” I groaned. “So many apples.”

Ungracefully belching, I reviewed my list of potential agricultural engineers, as Twinkleshine would put it, or more colloquially, my list of potential farmers.

The Apple family in general was a no-go despite being my first choice. They were outrageously influential in Equestrian agriculture; there was at least one branch of the family in every city, town, village, and countryside. It would be great to have one of them on the crew, especially one of the main branch, like Big Macintosh.

Well, on second thought, his younger sister, Applejack, instead, not him. I buried my head under the snow to hide my blush. I now knew exactly what it meant to say ‘a whole lot of stallion.’ I was pretty sure we wouldn’t find each other interesting on a personal level, but he just – he was just so distracting.

Ehem. Anyway…the family was so tightly knit, I’d have to take them all, and that probably included all of the extended family, too. And even if I did, they were so – so earth ponies. Even before I’d made my observations, it was obvious they would never leave Sweet Apple Acres. In hindsight, I didn’t know why I’d bothered.

So they were now officially off the list of candidates. That was no big deal. There were more than enough farmers in Ponyville. I was sure I could find two or three who would be interested, preferably ponies I could like. Luna could manage the politics of keeping Equestria fed just fine on her own.

I’d gone through a lot of ponies now with no success. I had tried convincing a few to join my crew, but I’d failed and erased their memory of the event. Ponyville ponies just didn’t have the spirit of adventure in them. I needed a new approach, or at least a different type of farmer.

But that left the question of how or who. Not to sound tribalist or anything, but all of these earth ponies seemed to want the same thing: the simple life. But then that would explain why they lived in Ponyville rather than in a city.

That meant I needed a new approach. And now that I thought about it, I had a good idea who I should try–

“Hello!” shouted a cheery voice. “You know, if you’re not careful, you’re going to end up with pneumonia or something. I mean, being half-buried in snow looks super duper fun and all, but it’s not good for your health. Or” – the voice gasped – “what if somepony stepped on you or ran you over with a wagon?”

She – it did sound like a she – had a point, although she spoke way too fast and too cheerily for my tastes.

I shifted back out from underneath the snow and stood up. The mare in front of me was pink. There really was no better way to describe her. She was pink incarnate. Sure, she was older than me by several years and had three balloons for a cutie mark, but those were incidental details.

“Hello! My name’s Pinkie Pie!” the mare said, grabbing my hoof and shaking it up and down. Earth pony grip magic officially felt as weird when used on a pony as I imagined it would be to use.

“I just got into town. I’m a traveling party pony, going where I’m needed most. I’ve been following my Pinkie Sense for some time now, moving from city to city and helping sad ponies in need of a party. And now it’s led me to Ponyville.”

Oh. My. Gosh. Did she tell her life story to every pony she met?

“That’s nice, but–”

“Anyway, I think I’ve finally found the pony I needed to find here,” she finished, looking straight into my eyes.

Well this was awkward. It wasn’t very often a random pony walked up to you and told you you were so depressed you needed a special party.

“I’m not sad.” Well, maybe I was just a little bit, but that was background noise in my emotions from Luna being banished.

“Hmm…perhaps not. But my ears are twitching, and my tail is swirling, so I know you need a party of some kind. Ooh! Ooh! Let me guess! Hmm… Is it a birthday party?”

“Completely wrong half of the year,” I answered. She might just go away if I said nothing, but I had this sneaking suspicion that was not the case.

“Oh! Then it must be your half-birthday!”

After some quick subtraction, I said, “That was twenty-three days ago.” The Equestrian calender was so much nicer than other ones, especially that crazy thing the Griffins did with months. What could be better than four seasons with a hundred days each?

“Aw, you should have told me.”

What – I didn’t – whatever. I wasn’t going to fight the crazy.

“Maaaaaybe it’s somepony special’s birthday?”

“It’s not anypony’s birthday!”

Ignoring my outburst, Pinkie Pie fell to her haunch and tapped her jaw with her hoof. “So it’s not anypony’s birthday… Is it an anniversary?”

“No. I’m reasonably sure that there’s nothing special about today at all to me or anypony I know.”

“Well, then we’ll just have to make it special!”

“I don’t need a party,” I said.

Wait a second… Something was on the tip of my tongue, something Shining had said sometime. A party. A. Party. Oh, no. Adventuring party.

I facehoofed.

“Ooh, ooh, ooh! You thought of something, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

“I guess…”

Pinkie Pie stood perfectly still, obviously expecting me to elaborate. It was rather unsettling to see her not moving after how much energy she’d displayed.

“Look, I’ll just ask you a few questions, and if you say no to all of them, will you go away?”

Getting a nod from Pinkie Pie, I asked, “Do you know how to farm?”

“I totally learned how to farm rocks when I was a filly!”

It took my brain a few seconds to process ‘rock farmer’ into ‘miner’. What kind of parents would make a filly learn how to mine? Mining was dangerous work, even with the highest standards of magical safety.

I shook my head and asked my next question. “So that was a no. How about animal care? Do you know anything about that?”

“Hmm… Weeeeell.” Pinkie Pie pulled an alligator out of her mane. “This is my pet alligator, Gummy! Say hello, Gummy!”

Gummy blinked at me, his eyelids noticeably out-of-sync. For some reason, he had no teeth.

“Right… Um… Anyway, that’s also a no. Do you know how to cook from scratch?”

“Cook and bake!” Pinkie Pie made some motions that vaguely left me with the impression of cooking.

“Just to be clear, by scratch I mean from raw ingredients plucked from the ground.”

“Yepperoony!”

“Can you make butterscotch cookies?” Okay, I had to admit that was a really petty question.

“Of course! I know how to make all kinds of sweets.”

“Would you be interested in joining an adventuring party?”

“Ooooooh. I’ve never been in an adventuring party. That sounds like some serious jollification.”

“Great. Come back in a couple days” – after I got a background check and figured out which asylum you’d escaped from – “and I’ll talk to you some more about it.”

“Alright,” Pinkie Pie sang. “I’m gonna go introduce myself to everypony in Ponyville for now, then. See ya!”

I watched Pinkie Pie skip off toward town for a minute or two before remembering I was headed there, too. After a few steps, it occurred to me to wonder something.

What just happened?

Okay, so I probably had a cook now. Fortuitous, but extremely confusing. She could be a spy, but there were far better ways to spy on a pony with magic. I’d think if Celestia wanted to send somepony to check up on me, she’d just do it herself. Or she’d at least pick somepony less obtrusive.

Still, Pinkie Pie was definitely going to be put through a background check. Her appearance was just so…random. Not that she’d given me the impression of being anything less. Anyway, I had more important matters to attend to right now.

Berryshine, or Berry Punch as she was more commonly known, was mid-meeting with somepony named Filthy Rich. Not exactly a subtle name, but the more I observed the ponies of Ponyville, the more I realized that this town didn’t understand subtlety.

Regardless, Berry Punch was purple, and purple, and more purple. What was it about ponies lately and purple? Purple was a great color and all, but there seemed to be a statistically larger number of purple ponies than any single other color.

Anyway, Berry Punch had grapes and a strawberry for a cutie mark, which was rather fitting considering she was the town drunk. I’d had to cast an illusion to make myself look older to get somepony to tell me that a couple weeks ago, annoyingly enough. It wasn’t like she was being subtle about it. She’d been taking drinks at every opportunity all afternoon. Anypony with half a brain could have figured it out after a little shadowing, although she held her liquor well enough that she could fool a casual observer.

More interestingly, despite that, Berry Punch managed to be a reasonably affluent farmer. Her most prominent crop was – who would have guessed – grapes, which was rather impressive in itself. Ponyville wasn’t scheduled for the ideal climate for growing grapes. Not that it was untenable, per se, but it was her magic that made it work.

I’d had some of them, of course. Pretty much everything I ate in Ponyville was grown in Ponyville, after all, and those grapes were pretty good. There must have been something in the soil…or some other plausible farming explanation. Okay, I had no clue. The point was, Berry Punch was good at what she did.

As far as I could tell, she only had one friend in town, the dentist, Colgate, and that relationship was quite strained if what other ponies had told me was accurate. But Berry Punch didn’t strike me as asocial.

On the other hoof, Berry Punch’s daughter, Berry Pinch, had had nothing but praise for her mother. At least, I thought so; it was kind of hard to understand Berry Pinch at her age.

Something was up. Something I could work with.

While I was flipping through my notebook, Berry Punch and Filthy Rich rose and bumped hooves. The conversation they’d had didn’t sound relevant, so I disregarded the latter when he left and continued pursuing Berry Punch invisibly. Unfortunately, I didn’t know the proper invisibility spell – I had more interesting spells to learn – but I was making do with a few fancy illusions. It wasn’t like anypony in town would notice them.

As she walked, Berry Punch continued to drink from the bottle of wine she’d stashed in her saddle bags, keeping in line with her behavior the rest of the day. I would say I disapproved of this, but she was never overtly drunk. She probably had a constant – what was the word – buzz, and while I found the act rather…disturbing, I didn’t see anything fundamentally wrong with it.

Arriving at the dentist’s office, I slipped inside just after Berry Punch opened the door. It was late in the day, and the only ponies present were Colgate and Berry Pinch, both in the lobby playing a game of make believe. I think Berry Pinch was supposed to be a dragon and Colgate a royal knight.

I tried ignoring the play fight, but it made me feel…awkward. Unable to look away, I watched Colgate’s dramatic death, honestly unable to figure out if I should be cheering or not.

Berry Punch scooped up her daughter into a hug. “That’s my little Blossom! So strong and fierce!”

‘Blossom’ giggled, but that was as far as she got before Colgate spoke.

“You’re late, Berry.”

“Sorry. Rich keep dragging on and on in legal speak. I kept having to ask him to translate.”

“Yeah. Imagine that.” Colgate was frowning, and her tone was clearly frustrated, but Berry Punch either didn’t notice or didn’t care. My bet was on the former, given the attention Berry Punch was giving her daughter.

When mother and daughter were done with their displays of affection that I had zero inclination to repeat with Spike, Berry Punch said, “Thanks for watching Pinch for me today.”

Sighing, Colgate said, “It’s fine.” She walked over to her desk and pulled out a few papers. “I only had a few appointments today, and I needed to give Pinch her checkup, anyway.”

“Oh? How was that, Pinch?”

“Terrible.”

“Heh. No kidding. How much do I owe you?”

“You could–” Colgate rubbed her head with her hoof. “Nevermind. It’s on the house.”

“Cool. Thanks, Colgate. See ya tomorrow.”

“Yeah. See ya.”

I briefly wrestled with deciding who I should follow. In the end, I decided to stick with Colgate in her office for the moment. After a couple minutes of her doing nothing but paperwork with a huge frown, it was clear she wasn’t going to give me any useful information.

I ran up to a window and peered outside. Nopony was around, so I teleported directly outside the window and checked to make sure I hadn’t missed a pony. An instant later, my illusion spells caught up to the discontinuous change in scenery, hiding me once more. I then began the walk to Berry Punch’s house.

So far, I hadn’t picked up anything new today. Berry Punch’s friendship with Colgate was definitely strained, but I wasn’t ready to blame it on the alcohol. While that was certainly a part of it, I had a feeling it was a symptom of a different problem. If not, then why wouldn’t Colgate have pressed the issue already? She clearly expressed her dislike of something about Berry Punch, even in front of Berry Pinch. If she was already that frustrated, she would have confronted Berry Punch by now if the problem was something as simple as alcoholism. There had to be some deeper explanation, a bigger trouble.

Well, there didn’t have to be, but I found it more probable given the information I had.

Anyway, I arrived at Berry Punch’s house and peered in a window as I had back at Colgate’s business slash home. Seeing nopony nearby, I teleported in and headed toward the kitchen. There, Berry Punch was busy making a light dinner for her and Berry Pinch, the latter of whom had made a mess of both herself and the counter with strawberry jam.

I left a scrying spell to listen in – they were both giggling like fillies and doing nothing important – and left to explore the house.

Now I knew I did not have a normal life, what with Luna, politics, intrigue, magic, flaring, a princess foalsitter, et cetera, but I’d never actually taken the time to investigate a more ordinary home. I figured it would be boring and disillusioning, and I could at least pretend other ponies secretly led exciting lives that way.

But wow, was this house mundane. It was like my own little slice of Tartarus brought up to Equestria. Paradoxically, it reminded me just how glad I was that my life had played out like it had. Past Twilight might not have minded a simple life like this, but Present Twilight certainly would. I would go out of my mind with boredom.

That didn’t mean I didn’t still hate Celestia, but I did feel a certain sort of grudging gratitude for ripping my heart out.

I sighed and returned to my hunt for clues. Clues Berry Punch certainly wasn’t going to give me, if the nonsense I was hearing through my scrying spell was any hint. I didn’t know what just happened with that jam, nor did I want to know.

Jumping onto the living room sofa, I sat down and thought over what I’d seen: some books, but mostly books about how to raise a unicorn; no signs of abuse in either direction, nor from an outside party; plenty of pictures of Colgate and Berry Punch when they were younger, and even more of Berry Punch and Berry Pinch plus or minus Colgate.

All of the alcohol was locked securely in the basement so far as I could tell. The house was clean, but not too clean, although Berry Pinch’s room could qualify for disaster relief funding. I suspected nopony would notice that I’d knocked a few toys around when I’d tripped on them.

Berry Punch’s room, on the other hoof, was rather tidy. Her closet was the only exception, as it was stuffed with the random junk a pony collected throughout her life. Some of it had been in boxes. Most of it had not.

I rubbed the tip of my horn, remembering that unpleasant surprise.

Nothing in particular jumped out at me, but there was something off about the house. I just couldn’t figure out what.

“Argh!” I whispered, rubbing my mane vigorously. Why couldn’t I figure this out? There had to be something. Ponyville struck me as the kind of town that wouldn’t just sit back and let Berry Punch drug herself like this without a reason. It was just populated by too nice of ponies for that.

I needed…

I needed to meet sober Berry Punch.

The next morning – I’d magicked myself asleep during the night – I rose bright and early, rushing to Berry Punch’s house with only a few daffodils for breakfast. I was only a few minutes early, but that was enough.

Berry Punch had her bottle of wine in her saddlebags, both lying unprotected on her couch. She had gone upstairs, probably to check on Berry Pinch. It was winter vacation for the normal foals, so she was likely still asleep.

I teleported myself and the wine bottle to the kitchen sink, subsequently teleporting most of the wine into the sink and letting it flow down the drain. I left just enough to leave the right flavor behind after I watered it down. I then put the diluted wine back and began the world’s worst game: the waiting game.

Berry Punch went about her business as usual – shopping today, it would seem – and it wasn’t until an hour later that she obviously noticed something was wrong. She’d been twitching for a good ten minutes now, and the last five had had double takes. It was as if she were terrified of something, and the added haste in her step was not a good sign.

Her eyes widened, and she pulled out her wine. She took a sip and washed it around in her mouth, spitting it out soon after. Her eyes grew even wider, and she bolted off toward her home, taking the most direct route available.

As bad as I felt about this, I couldn’t let her ruin this now. Berry Punch turned down an alley – what she’d thought would be a shortcut, no doubt – and I cast a spell from my growing pool of dark magic, trapping her in an endless alleyway. At least, that was how it worked for her. It was rather disconcerting to watch the space warp from the outside.

It took Berry Punch a whole minute to realize she wasn’t going anywhere. A look of panic shot through her face, and she turned. She turned on a wall and proceeded to break it down. Little good that did her.

After bursting through a few more walls, she finally gave up and fell to the ground, sobbing uncontrollably. I heard her whisper the name Noteworthy, and something occurred to me. I had no idea who Berry Pinch’s father was. That hadn’t even registered with me when I’d been investigating.

Alright, so based on how she’d whispered that name, he was probably well-loved and dead. But would Berry Punch really go through all this just over the death of a loved one?

It was possible, but that would make her such a statistical outlier that the thought wasn’t even worth entertaining without evidence. No, there had to be something else at work here, especially considering her pure terror. That wasn’t the kind of fear a pony showed with a normal death.

I took a deep breath to steady my nerves; I had a sneaking suspicion that I wasn’t going to like what I would hear. I teleported silently a couple meters behind Berry Punch and placed a new illusion on myself. Going with a classic, I made myself look like a filly sized, pink elephant only a few shades away from Berry Punch’s coat color. My voice was, naturally, disguised as well.

“Hello,” I said.

As soon as I’d made a sound, Berry Punch scrambled to get away from me. I waited patiently until the warped space we were in sent her back to me. Hearing her hooves screech to a halt behind me, I turned around slowly with a smile.

“Berry Punch, dear, please listen to me.”

“W-who are you?” she shouted.

“I’m the rational part of you that you’ve kept locked away. You’re going through alcohol withdraw and hallucinating.” I had no idea how frequent that symptom was or how quickly it set in, but I knew that it was a symptom. I hoped sober Berry Punch bought it.

“A-a hallucination? Oh, thank Celestia!”

Rather proud of myself, I didn’t so much as twitch, much less turn white or burst into flames.

“Yes,” I began, “but I’m afraid we won’t be of much use to anypony until I disappear, so I thought this would be a lovely time to chat.”

“Chat?” Berry Punch echoed the word, eyes widening. “No! Never! I need to–”

“No.” I said, my voice amplified tenfold with magic. “I have been locked away for forever, and you will talk to me.”

Backpedaling, Berry Punch tripped over her own hooves in tears again. I crossed the distance between us and put a hoof on her withers.

“Let’s start at the beginning,” I said, softly and sweetly, my magic giving my voice a loving singsong quality. “Talk to me. Tell me about the good times.”

“I – I…” Her head falling, Berry Punch whispered, “Okay.”

I caressed Berry Punch’s mane for her as she recovered enough to talk. She was shivering no less now than before, but her twitching had died down. Well, it mostly had.

“The day Pinch was born was the happiest of my…our…” – Berry Punch looked to me, and shrugging, I smiled – “my life. Well, besides my wedding night.”

“No doubt. That Noteworthy, right?”

Berry Punch actually managed a weak laugh. “Yeah. Practically zero experience, but he was so passionate.”

“He was. He was. There’ll never be a better stallion.”

“Mmm… I could never forget his kindness, or his crazy love of music, or his warmth next to me, or…anything about him.”

“If only Pinch could’ve known him,” I said, hoping the conversation would move along.

“Yeah… I almost think he was even happier about her than I was. Neither of us expected a unicorn, but I suppose our parents didn’t expect earth ponies, either. Genetics are crazy like that. And let me tell you…err…tell me. My mom had it easy. Earth ponies? Psh, no problem. Unicorns? Ow. That horn hurts like Tartarus and gets caught on all the wrong spots.”

Note to self: never give birth. Stick with adopting dragons.

“You know, now that I think about it, that was what brought us together to begin with: two earth ponies born to unicorn parents. They had no idea what they were doing, and Noteworthy and I always felt like outsiders in our own families.”

Berry Pinch sighed. “I know I’m going to be just as bad with Pinch, even with Colgate helping, and that drives me mad. And that new teacher, Cheerilee, down at Ponyville Elementary. She’s great at what she does, but she doesn’t have the first clue about how to teach unicorns. I don’t know what I’m going to do…”

Aha! Now here was something I could work with. “Let’s just get her a good tutor.”

“What? In Ponyville? There’s nopony here that can do that.”

“What? Did the alcohol keep those memories from getting past the hippocampus?”

“The hippowhat now?”

Drat. “Remember back in the day? No, the alcohol probably took that away, too. The hippocampus does the heavy lifting in moving memories from short-term to long-term storage.”

“Ah. Right. Of course I remember that. I’m not dumber than me.”

I had to put all my willpower into not rolling my eyes or laughing. Tell somepony they’re hallucinating you, and they’d believe anything, apparently.

“Don’t you remember meeting Twilight Sparkle?” I asked, knowing full well what the answer would be.

“Yeeeees. But why don’t you remind me?”

This time I did roll my eyes. I could see even Berry Punch wanted to herself.

“She met Pinch yesterday, and you two talked for a little bit while Pinch was distracted. She’s one of the most knowledgeable unicorns we’ve ever heard of.”

“Really?” Berry Punch put a hoof to her forehead and massaged it a bit, as if that could make her memory work better or something. “I can’t believe I forgot that. What else am I forgetting?”

I shrugged. “Probably a lot. I’m afraid I’m just a halluciiiiination,” I said, barely remembering in time to keep my vocab in check. I was going to say ‘hallucinatory construct,’ and as great as that would be, I didn’t want to raise any more red flags.

“I can only remember what you could remember,” I added.

“I see… Oh, well. I’ll just have to go about remembering Twilight Sparkle the hard way, then.”

“I’m proud of you,” I said, patting Berry Punch on the withers. “That’s a good first step. Pinch deserves so much more than we’ve been able to be.”

Sighing, Berry Punch said, “I know. I don’t understand how she can love me, but I’d be an even worse wreck without her.”

“It’s probably because we act pretty foalish when we’re drunk. She probably sees us as a playmate as much as a mother. Maybe more.”

Berry Punch bit her lip. “Rational me, why do you have to be so…honest?”

“Comes with being rational, I’m afraid. We can’t be rational unless we’re willing to face the truth, whatever it is.”

“The truth…” Berry Punch’s eyes went wide, and she threw me off her. “Oh, Dear Celestia, no! No! Not again!” She fetched her saddlebags and pulled out her wine bottle, only to remember it was useless at the last second.

I walked up to her and locked eyes. I had to hold her head steady in my hooves as she weakly tried to squirm away.

“Hey! Don’t revert now! We’re making progress. Just a little more. Just a little more, and we can move on. We can move on once and for all and be everything Pinch deserves!”

“No! No, I can’t! Not again. Please, no! Not the Everfree again!”

Oh no. This wasn’t going to be good.

“We have to do this,” I whispered, moving as close to Berry Punch’s face as I dared. “For Pinch.”

Berry Punch threw me off again and stared at her trembling forehooves.

“S-so m-much b-b-blood. I could hear him. I could hear him! The screaming. It only lasted a few seconds, but I could hear.”

I forced Berry Punch to look me in the eyes again.

“Listen. I’m here for you. Pinch is here for you. Colgate is here for you. Buck, I’m sure even Twilight Sparkle would be there for you if you just asked. You don’t need to bottle it up anymore.”

I wheezed as Berry Punch squeezed the air out of me, but I didn’t say anything. Hallucinations didn’t need to breathe, after all, and she needed this hug.

“Oh, Celestia. It ate him. It ate Noteworthy! It didn’t even do it whole! It didn’t even kill him first! It tore him in half and swallowed him alive. Those screams still haunt my nightmares.”

I froze. I had expected something bad, but stars above, that was horrifying. If Luna hadn’t told me a similar story of her own experience with an ursa major, I would’ve teleported away and vomited just thinking about it. Even now, I was still struggling. And Berry Punch had lived it.

“I can’t even imagine a worse way to die,” Berry Punch continued. “Alone. Dark. Eaten. His last word to me was ‘run.’ And I did. I never even looked back. I could hear his bones snapping, but I didn’t even look! That monster wasn’t even interested in me anymore, and I still ran. It was full!”

I hugged Berry Punch as tight as I could, which wasn’t much at all right now.

“It was all my fault. I wanted to get a rare flower for Pinch’s birthday. ‘It’s a short trip,’ I said. ‘It’s not far,’ I said. ‘The scary things live deeper in,’ I said.

“And when I got back, nopony blamed me. Nopony! Not a single pony! I can’t deal with this. I can’t. I – I need to get home. I–”

I slapped Berry Punch.

“You do not need to go home. You do not need to go to our cellar. You do not need to drown the memories.” I paused, waiting for Berry Punch to turn back to me. When she did, I smiled as kindly as I could. “You need your friend. You need your daughter. You need” – I felt a bit guilty about this, but it was true – “to get away from this accursed forest.”

Berry Punch remained quiet, a thoughtful expression on her face underneath the twitching and anxiety.

“Where would I go? What would I do? My whole life is in Ponyville.”

“I – ah…”

I pretended to notice something, and Berry Punch turned her head to look the same way I was. When she saw nothing – there was nothing to see – she turned back.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I said, smiling. It was time to end this conversation. “I’m sure something will come up soon. For now, just be better for Pinch.”

I cast my usual sleeping spell, but let it take effect slowly instead of instantaneously.

“And remember,” I began, “just because I was a hallucination doesn’t make this any less real. I hope we never meet again.”

After another second or two, Berry Punch collapsed onto the ground. She’d wake up in a couple minutes, so I quickly swapped out my elephant illusion for the invisibility illusions and dismantled this warped space. We were back in a regular old alley again, and I teleported on top of a roof; alleys were rather narrow, and I didn’t need Berry Punch bumping into me.

When she woke up, Berry Punch did it with a moan. She struggled to her hooves, still trembling. She didn’t rush to them, but she did go to her saddlebags. I frowned when she pulled out her wine bottle. If she didn’t learn anything from…that, I was going to throw in the towel and pretend she didn’t exist.

Leaning forward, I watched with eyes wide as she turned the bottle to the side, but then she said, “Oh, right. It’s mostly water.” She then promptly drank the whole mixture.

Well, symbolism averted, but she did learn something, and that was what counted. I watched her for another minute as she walked away into town.

Into town toward Colgate’s house.

I smiled and teleported home.

I looked up from my book when somepony triggered my ward. I squeed when I looked out my window and saw Berry Punch walking this way. I had a good feeling this time. Soon, so soon, I would have my first farmer. Walking downstairs, I was nearly to the door when the knock came.

“I’ve got it!” I called out with barely suppressed glee.

I stood on the inside of the door and did a short dance to get all the excitement out of my system. With one last deep breath, I opened the door, smiling warmly.

“Um…hello,” Berry Punch said. If the slight blush weren’t enough, she was also rubbing her foreleg with her other forehoof. It would seem somepony was embarrassed – or nervous, perhaps – about getting her life back on track. She still twitched, and her eyes still wandered, but it was great to see her relatively peaceful.

“Hello, Berry Punch! It’s good to see you again.”

“Yeah… I was hoping to talk to Twilight Sparkle. I heard she lives here.”

I made a slightly hurt expression and said, “Sure. Would you like to come in?”

Berry Punch nodded. “If I could.”

I smiled again and teleported the two of us onto couches in the living room. Berry Punch was understandably confused, but for the wrong reason.

“Oh Celestia,” she said. “Did I just blank out for a while? Have…have we been talking?”

Hmm… This was a rather unfortunate unintended consequence, but it shouldn’t take too long for Berry Punch to trust her memory again.

“No, I teleported us here. I’m kind of lazy.” Well, I was, but I’d really done it to quickly demonstrate competency. Berry Punch didn’t recognize me when she showed up, so I assumed she didn’t find out how old Twilight Sparkle was when she tracked me down.

“You did? You…teleported us?”

I nodded. “So what was it that you wanted with me?”

Yep, she’d definitely never bothered to ask how old I was; Berry Punch’s face was more of an open book than most ponies’. That, or she’d asked Berry Pinch and had gotten an unhelpful answer like ‘she’s super old’.

“Excuse me, but you’re Twilight Sparkle?”

Just loud enough for her to hear, I whispered, “I guess you forgot me.”

“I – I think I made a mistake.” Berry Punch moved to get to her hooves. “Sorry.”

“I see…” I made a sad smile and looked to the floor. “I don’t get to meet many ponies with my sleep schedule.” I sighed and let the invitation hang in the air.

Berry Punch bit her lip, looking about the room somewhere between anxiously and embarrassingly, before sitting back down and fidgeting with her hooves.

“So,” I asked again, “what did you need me for? Is it about what we talked abou – no, you forgot me.” I sighed again before smiling. “It must be about magic, then!”

“Ah…yeah.”

I giggled a bit. I’d always wanted to try the traveling salespony voice but had never found the right moment before now. “Have a problem with a tough spell? Need some insight on which direction to go? A magical disaster on the horizon? Look no further than Twilight Sparkle to cure all your spellcraft related woes and…uh…goals.”

Wow, I’d felt so confident going into that rhyme, but it just fell flat on its face. Oh well. At least Berry Punch was amused.

“Seriously, though. What do you need?”

“Ah, well…” Berry Punch played with her forehooves nervously and avoided my eyes. “I was, at the time, hoping you could help tutor Pinch, but–”

“Sure,” I answered, not letting her make excuses. If she never actually said them, they weren’t real. Stupid, yes, but Luna said most ponies gave a lot more weight to their thoughts once they’d actually said them to another pony.

Berry Punch looked straight at me and blinked a couple times. “Really? Can you? Just like that?”

“Yes, yes, and no, I’m afraid.”

“Oh! I wasn’t asking you to do it for free!”

I waved a hoof dismissively. “No, don’t worry about that. I have all the funding I could ever need.”

“Funding?” Berry Punch echoed quietly.

I smirked – just a little bit to let her know I’d heard – and continued, “I’m willing to do it for free, but I won’t be in Ponyville during Berry Pinch’s early education, which is probably the most important part to get right.”

“I un–”

I held up a hoof. “However, that doesn’t mean you two can’t be with me. I’m leaving in a season or two on a jaunty, peaceful adventure with a group of ponies, and you two would be welcome to tag along if you help us.”

“I don’t…” began Berry Punch, but she quickly lost her enthusiasm. Her brows scrunched up, and she descended into a silent contemplation. Eventually, she asked, “Could you tell me more?”

“Certainly! Although I would much prefer to show you when you have a free night instead. You could bring Berry Pinch with, too. In fact, I’d recommend it.” Of course, that recommendation came from knowing somepony Berry Pinch’s age would beg to go on a space adventure.

“I suppose it couldn’t hurt. I’m free tomorrow night, if that would work.”

“Tomorrow it is, then.”

It took me longer than I had hoped to convince Berry Punch that she was, in fact, not hallucinating. Berry Pinch, on the other hoof, was predictably excited and running about the ship. I didn’t know what she could have found interesting about a mostly empty glass and metal shell, but we were in space, and that made everything better. Unfortunately, the novelty of space had worn off for me.

There were the doors, though. Those were pretty cool. At Twinkleshine’s…request, I’d made the airlocks between rooms open and close automatically and split at the middle rather than swinging open like a normal door. I’d drawn the line at ‘spacey sound effects’, but still.

Speaking of whom, Twinkleshine was in the library ‘looking busy’. I’d brought her up earlier in the afternoon with a load of bookshelves, books, and miscellaneous furnishings and had asked her to get to work. Mostly I just wanted the ship to seem more alive for Berry Punch’s first impression, but also, the work just needed doing.

Of course, I wasn’t making Twinkleshine do a bunch of heavy lifting; she still didn’t have the magic for that. She was instead directing a small swarm of changelings – all disguised as ponies – in the construction of the library.

And I had to say, I’d been impressed with how effective changelings were with group tasks. In retrospect, that should have been obvious, but it was quite the sight to watch them throw books around fast enough to qualify the exchanges as a flow of books.

“Twilight Sparkle,” Berry Punch began. Her voice was distant and her eyes were wandering. “Who–”

“Again, just ‘Twilight’, please.” I had nothing against my full name, but it was a bit of a mouthful, and it wasn’t called for here.

“Who are you really? Whose…thing is this? Where are you going?”

“Well, I’m still the one and only Twilight Sparkle, but I suppose you meant that in a more political sense. If you must know, I have connections to three…well, four royals, and one of them commissioned the construction of this spaceship.”

“Wait, wait. Four Royals?” Berry Punch asked, punctuating each word. “You know the entire royal family?”

“Ah, no. That’s an easy mistake to make. I don’t know Prince Blueblood or his mother, but it’s not like they’re real royalty, anyway. Cadance, that is Mi Amore Cadenza never has anything good to say about those two. Well, not anymore. Blueblood was apparently much nicer when Sunset Shimmer was around to keep him in line. Anyway, there are other royals in this world than just Cadance and” – I nearly spat the name – “Celestia.”

I giggled at Berry Punch’s gape. Ponies weren’t used to Cadance and Celestia – especially Celestia – being addressed so informally.

“Moving on, I built this ship–”

“You built this? I don’t – how could – I can’t believe that. You’re only, what, eleven? Twelve? Thirteen?”

“Twelve-and-a-half, but I started construction at twelve proper. And I’m the pony that brought you and Berry Pinch here.” I exaggerated a sigh and locked eyes with Berry Punch.

“I’m not a filly, whatever my biological age might have you believe. Twinkleshine is.” I gestured off toward the filly in question. “She tries. She really does. But she doesn’t have the experiences or the responsibilities that make a pony an adult. But I do.”

I frowned, narrowed my brows, and turned away to gaze out into space. I didn’t actually want to talk about myself that much at the moment. Instead, I simply said, “We’ll have plenty of time to get to know one another if you decide to join us, but I don’t have the time or interest to spin sob stories right now.”

When the silence was just about to become overbearing, I sighed and turned back purposefully slowly.

“Anyway, to answer your last question, we’re going to recover one of Equestria’s long-lost artifacts, which we believe was placed on a comet centuries ago. Given that this hasn’t been announced to the public, I trust you realize that this is a secret, and should not be discussed with anypony.”

After a sufficiently long stare down, Berry Punch said, “I promise. Ah, what about Pinch?”

I waved a hoof dismissively. “Nopony will take anything she says seriously, so don’t worry.” And I was going to have both of you watched until you moved up here permanently. Or until you lost your memory of this. I loved having changeling minions so much. They made life so much simpler.

“I… When you said I had to help, what did you mean?”

“Oh, not much. This will be a multi-year journey, so we need to produce our own food. We also need earth ponies to do it, because my magic doesn’t mix well with growing things. The closest I can get with any ease is conjuring air and water. There’d probably be some other miscellaneous tasks, but your main responsibility would be farming – something I hear you are very good at.”

“Ah, well, maybe.” Berry Punch’s gaze dropped to her hooves, and I could make out just the faintest blush.

“So what do you think? Would you like to get away from Ponyville for a few years and see things practically nopony else ever has? We’re even going to make a stop at the moon, if Twinkleshine can figure out the technical difficulties.” Difficulties like the sun incinerating us if we stuck around past moonset.

Biting her lip, Berry Punch said, “Maybe. I…would like to get away from Ponyville for a while.”

“Oh, before I forget,” I interrupted, “as this is a crown-sponsored, secret mission, we’d have a pair of agents take care of your property and make sure nopony knows you’re missing.”

“Nopony?” Berry Punch asked. “Not even my family or a close friend?”

“Not even–”

Now that I thought of it, I’d never updated that policy to account for the hive mind. Luna was a slow and clunky means of communication who didn’t want to act as such and had no idea what her max range was in banishment. The changelings were none of those things, although Queen Chrysalis might share in the ‘not wanting to do it’ aspect.

Twinkleshine’s case was still an open and shut book. I probably could convince her parents to let her come without cheating eventually, but I wasn’t going to waste my time doing so. And changeling surveillance was good, but not perfect. The more potential leaks – especially ones that would march straight to open court if given the chance – the more likely this mission was to fail.

And Queen Chrysalis might get moody if I asked too much from her or induced too many risks into this operation.

However, Berry Punch’s case was different. Her parents…were still questionable choices. Parents in general had this sense of duty to protect their foals, and that was an unnecessary risk.

But if she told Colgate, it would probably be okay. The replacements would be spending a lot of time with Colgate already anyway, so it wouldn’t be asking for much more from them to keep an eye on her. Although that might interfere with the love they would otherwise get from her.

And yet the replacements could work to get love that was intended for them instead of for Berry Punch and Berry Pinch. I didn’t know if that made any difference in the love’s nutritional value, but it made sense on an intuitive level that it would.

“Twilight?” Berry Punch called.

And now I realized I’d zoned out for several minutes. How awkward.

“Sorry. Anyway, you might be allowed to tell one particularly close friend who’s not a family member. I’d have to consult a couple ponies first. But no matter whom, you would have to keep the exact details of this mission secret.

“Well, only until we get back, that is. We’ll let you know when you’re free to talk about this adventure, but I’d imagine it wouldn’t be too long after we return to Equus that you’d be free to speak of it.”

A thought struck me. “Or you can not talk about it and ask to have your participation kept quiet, if you wish. Either way, the crown would be in your debt.”

Another idea came to me. I laughed and added, “Berry Pinch would be in your debt, too. She seems quite taken with space, after all.”

Looking into the farm area from one of the adjoining rooms, I saw Berry Pinch cannon ball into the pond after pushing one of the changelings into it. Hopefully she wouldn’t roll around in the dirt afterward and track mud everywhere, but I was under few illusions about that.

Berry Punch turned to look the same way I was and watched Berry Pinch for a minute or two. I idly wished Spike would be as enthusiastic about water. It would make baths so much easier.

Sigh. Maybe I should switch the bathwater to lava. I wouldn’t even have to use soap that way.

“Do I have to decide right now?” Berry Punch finally asked.

“No, but I do need a prompt answer from you especially. We have a nonnegotiable deadline to meet, and we need to get our food supply going before we can leave.”

After a few seconds, Berry Punch asked, “Why aren’t you just using government employees like you are for unpacking right now?”

I was so glad I’d asked Cadance for a legitimate answer to that in advance.

“We employ a number of very talented gardeners, but no proper farmers. Part of why I moved to Ponyville was to scout for ponies who could both do the job and keep a secret. That’s why I asked your daughter a few questions about you a number of days ago.”

Turning my head toward Berry Punch, I continued, “She was very informative. You’re lucky to have her.”

It took her a few seconds, but her eyes widened when she fully processed that I had been investigating her. “Wait. Did you–”

“No,” I interrupted. “But I was watching. When I couldn’t bear it anymore, I cast a sleep spell on you. After you woke up, you looked…better, so I left. I was actually going to offer you this job tonight, but you came to me yesterday, instead.”

A silence fell, and when I felt it was right, I asked, “Do you want to get away from the Everfree?”

Berry Punch’s head fell to the ground. “Yes,” she whispered.

There was just enough space between Berry Punch and the wall for me to walk in front of her and hold out a hoof. Holding my breath in anticipation, I waited.

And then I smiled.

“Welcome aboard.”

Author's Note

The Dragon had one Random Encounter!

The Dragon induced one Hallucination!

Next chapter, Twilight discovers the true meaning of Hearth’s Warming.

Chapter Eight - The Longest Night - Part One

“From what Berry Punch has told me, Queen Chrysalis, we should be ready to leave in early to mid summer,” I said over the roar of the Canterlot Main Square fountain. Even in winter, Canterlot radiated a summer vibe. We were, as tradition dictated, scheduled for snow tonight in time for Hearth’s Warming Eve and the winter solstice in two days.

“The exact date depends on how quickly I can find another earth pony to help her. And if I wait to give my parents one more of my birthdays… Anyway, she’ll be moving up permanently with Berry Pinch two weeks after Hearth’s Warming, so we’ll need to get her replacements ready before then.”

“Speaking of which,” said Amethyst Star, relaying our conversation for Queen Chrysalis, “your replacement is of far greater importance, and to a lesser degree, Spike’s as well.”

Harrumphing, I said, “I know. I won’t get in the way of the plan.”

“Says the little filly with an underdeveloped, emotional brain.”

“Oh, yes. Ha, ha. Pick on my age. That’s always an easy one.”

Amethyst Star gave me a meaningful stare for Queen Chrysalis. Obviously, she did not feel reassured. I couldn’t really blame her, but it was still annoying.

“Look,” I began, “I realize that I’m taking a non-trivial risk of breaking my relationship with Cadance for years. But remember, if that does happen, I won’t care. Well, I will in the sense that I’ll remember I lost something wonderful, but I won’t feel the loss, so it won’t be hard to follow the plan. Satisfied?”

Amethyst Star laughed – had she really needed to repeat that? – and said, “So young. No, I am not concerned about that. I’m concerned you shall interrupt the plan the next morning.”

It took me a half-second to make the connection. In my best indignant voice, I said, “I’m not so petty as to be overcome by some simple jealousy.”

Snickering, Amethyst Star asked, “You are quite forgetting the precedent, are you not?”

“Huh? What are you talking about?” I wasn’t playing dumb. I really had no clue what Queen Chrysalis was alluding to. I might have some problems, but they’d never stemmed from jealousy of all things.

Looking at me like I was an idiot, Amethyst Star replied, “Your mentor.”

“Oh,” I deadpanned. I had to admit she had a fairly reasonable concern there, given whatever information was available to her, even if it was a rather insulting concern. Luna wouldn’t ruin this, either. “I don’t have any evidence to submit to allay your fears there. However, I can promise to sleep through the solstice and Hearth’s Warming. You can even have one of your changelings cast the sleeping spell if you want. After that, you know it would cost too much to interfere.”

That was true if by ‘too much’, I instead meant ‘everything’. There was no way I was going to drag a changeling version of me in front of Cadance to show what had really happened. That would require too much explanation, and then Celestia would inevitably become involved, and then it would all be over.

“Very well, although I believe we have some of your evidence descending upon us. I shall take my leave and observe this little comedy from afar.”

“Wha…”

Completely ignoring my confusion, Amethyst Star left and took her privacy wards with her, quickly disappearing into the crowd of ponies in Main Square. I hated it when ponies did the whole cryptic exit thing. Although, I admittedly enjoyed doing it myself…

Anyway, there was no use puzzling over Queen Chrysalis’s words without first finding out more. The way she’d phrased it made it sound like I just needed to wait for something to happen.

Turning behind me, I said, “Spike… Spike?” Great, now Spike was missing. I could easily find him with magic, but I took the easier option and scanned the crowd first. How hard could it be to spot a baby dragon in Canterlot?

Oh, horseapples. The answer was not hard at all, especially not if said baby dragon were playing with a filly wearing a ridiculous hat and cape. I facehoofed for good measure before fixing a smile onto my face and walking over to the pair.

“Hello, Trixie,” I said. I moved over to stand beside Spike and rubbed his head gently, saying, “You’re not supposed to wander off, you know.”

Spike looked at me. His confusion was obvious. Sighing, I reminded myself that Spike was too young to parse most syntax.

“Don’t wander off, Spike.”

“Sorry,” he replied, settling – presumably comfortably – into my hooves.

Looking up from Spike, I turned my attention to Trixie. She looked away as I looked to her and fidgeted on her hooves. For a half-second, her muscles twitched to allow her to bolt, but she stopped herself with visible effort.

“Hello, Twilight… Long time no see.”

“Not since last year’s Nightmare Night.”

“Yeah…”

Silence fell between us, although the square had a lot of background noise, and Spike was not exactly quiet himself. So why was Trixie here?

Well, that could be any number of reasons. I doubted she’d actually been looking for me; Spike had probably run into her instead. So rather than asking why was she here, I should ask why she felt so awkward around me this time. Or if I were feeling bold, I could just actually ask her instead of trying to puzzle it out. Trixie had never left me with the impression of being uninterested in talking about herself.

“What’s wrong, Trixie?”

Still fidgeting on her hooves, Trixie replied, “I was – well, I just – Spike – I hadn’t seen him in a while, and I…um…I missed him.”

Wow, talk about obviously lying – lying about that being why she felt awkward. From the little interaction between them that I’d seen, Trixie did appear to like Spike. That wasn’t terribly surprising, considering Cadance had kept him at the castle for four years.

“Okay, Trixie, you might have fooled me when I was – I don’t know – four. What’s really wrong?”

“I…uh…” Trixie’s withers fell, and she slumped down to her haunches, clamming up.

Sighing, I said, “Well, if you have nothing to say, we should–”

“Wait!” shouted Trixie, lifting a hoof. Somehow, I couldn’t help but think she had thought I’d been further away. “Er…wait. I…have something I need to ask you.”

After a long enough silence for Spike to actually fall asleep on us, I asked, “Well?”

“Just give Trixie – me a minute to prepare myself.”

I rolled my eyes but waited anyway on the off-chance I could learn something useful from Trixie’s question. That, and because I had no idea how I was supposed to score points with Queen Chrysalis here other than not blowing up at Trixie – for whatever reason – but walking away probably wasn’t the right answer. Maybe Queen Chrysalis didn’t know that I held no particular dislike for Trixie.

But I still found her annoying in a Celestia-independent manner.

Finally, Trixie asked, “Why do Princess Cadance and Princess Celestia get all weird when you come up in conversation?”

“What, did they not tell you?” I asked on instinct. “No, stupid question. I need to stop doing that. Rather, did you not ask them?”

Trixie frowned. “They won’t tell me anything.”

“Ah. Well, have you tried asking anypony else? I’m sure there are a lot of ponies on staff at the castle that could tell you enough for you to force Cadance or Celestia to tell you the rest.”

On second thought, maybe not Celestia. I had few doubts about the number of ponies she took into her confidence. If what she’d done to history were any indication, she did not like sharing information. She was probably trigger happy with memory spells, too. I at least tried to minimize how many I absolutely had to use.

“Trixie is asking you!” Trixie half-shouted, stomping her hoof. “I mean…I’m asking you. This sounds like a private kind of thing.”

I sighed. “Look, I’m not very comfortable talking about this.” Mostly because I didn’t know why Celestia would feel awkward, but also since Trixie didn’t already know, I assumed Celestia didn’t want her to know, and I wasn’t going to bring Celestia’s wrath down on me by giving Trixie information to guess with.

Still, Trixie had given me some interesting information. Celestia and awkward were two words that rarely went together. Maybe I could get Trixie to find out the details for me if I pushed exactly the right buttons.

“I–” Trixie began in what have no doubt been a very blunt manner before calming down. “I…I’m sorry. I’ll just go, then.”

“Trixie, wait,” I said. “You’re always welcome to come visit Spike when we’re in town.”

“I, uh, sure. Thanks. But maybe some other time.”

Trixie turned to leave, and as she took her first steps away, I said just loud enough for her to hear, “Cadance can’t keep secrets. Catch her alone.”

Ears twitching, Trixie walked a little faster.

I chuckled as I lifted Spike gently onto my back. Cadance was going to be mad. I couldn’t remember ever seeing her mad before. Maybe she never had been.

Oh, this was going to be fun.

Cadance getting mad was also good for the replacement plan, and I might learn something interesting from this, but I knew those were mostly just rationalizations. Anger and Cadance were just so conceptually far from each other: I was curious.

However, excuse or otherwise, I wasn’t going to pass up a perfect opportunity to say those four magical words.

“All according to plan.”

Luna pulled me closer with a hoof and lowered her voice so that only I could hear. Not that there was anypony around but me to hear.

“Pay close attention, Twilight. This will be one of the most complex, critical, confounding spells I can teach you, and perhaps the single most important spell of all time. But first I need you to stabilize your dream into an outdoor area.”

I nodded and focused on rearranging the world from a cozy little starlit room to a generic wide open park. Just for good measure, I dotted the landscape in the distance with the occasional tree.

Pausing momentarily for a deep breath, Luna made good on her promise. I felt the spell grow and weave together in unexpected ways around us. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. The sheer intricacies involved were baffling.

Finally, when the spell finished, the brilliant cyan and violet light of Luna’s magic died down. In its place was a waffle cone with one scoop of strawberry and one of rocky road.

My jaw dropped. That was what that spell did? It summoned ice cream?

Luna took a sizable bite out of the strawberry and presumably swallowed it whole. She shivered next to me and asked, “Want some? It’s quite good.”

The alicorn-sized ice cream held up to me, I took a small, awkward bite out of the rocky road. It was good.

After a few more dazed samples of the ice cream, I finally asked, “Is…is that it?”

Luna took a while to break away from her snack. “What could possibly be more important than ice cream?”

“Wha… Oh, I get it. The ice cream is a distraction. Whatever the spell really did,” I continued, looking around with both my eyes and my horn to find some obvious spell effect, “the ice cream was just to get my attention away from it.”

After another large bite and a quiet squeal of delight, Luna said, “Well, there is an art to misdirection while casting spells, especially in theater and combat. You’re picking that up slowly in our little sparring matches well enough. But I’m afraid all I did was make some ice cream.” Aborting a lick halfway through, Luna asked, “Oh, did you want another flavor?”

“I… No, I like rocky road just fine. Strawberry is okay, too, I guess.”

“Twilight!” Luna gasped. “Our friendship is over. Strawberry is clearly the best flavor.”

“What?” I shouted. “How can you say that? Strawberry pales in comparison to butterscotch!”

“Eurgh. I don’t understand how you can stomach that stuff, let alone be so obsessed with it. Something must’ve gone wrong when you were being born. I swear, your sweet tooth is worse than S…”

Luna briefly looked like she would finish her sentence before she frowned and took another bite of strawberry. An extra large one that she paid for with a bout of brain freeze.

“Ha,” I laughed weakly. “Strawberry always betrays you in the end.”

“Yes,” whispered Luna, frowning, “yes it does.”

Putting the flavor debate on hold, I crossed the already short distance between us and gave her an obviously much needed nuzzle. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing, Twilight. I just get sentimental around the winter solstice.”

Well duh. Luna got like this every year, but she was never this bad. Something extra troubling must’ve been on her mind this year.

Hmm, maybe…

“I spoke with Queen Chrysalis this afternoon,” I said. Luna turned to look at me slowly, her eyes inviting me to continue. “She was concerned I’d do something stupid, so I promised that I’d sleep through the solstice and Hearth’s Warming. Do you think we could spend them together this year?”

“I–” Luna began.

She sounded like she was going to say no again, so I put on my best pleading face, exaggerating my sad pout and widening my eyes. I might even have accidentally added a sparkle to my gaze by virtue of being in my dream.

“That doesn’t work on me, Twilight,” Luna said, a faint smile creeping up on her face. “The most that’ll get you is another ice cream.”

“Aw…”

“But I would enjoy spending Hearth’s Warming with you.”

Did Luna really say what I’d just heard? “Are – are you sure? Do you really mean it?”

“Yes, I have…” Luna sighed. “I could really use the company.”

Nearly skipping, I moved to Luna’s side and snuggled comfortably into her. This would be the best Hearth’s Warming ever! A few minutes of simply enjoying each other’s presence later, I remembered something else important that had happened.

“Hey. I also ran into Trixie today, and she said something strange.”

Laughing weakly, Luna said, “I was under the impression everything she said was strange.”

“More strange than usual,” I replied, rolling my eyes and nudging Luna in her side. “She said that when I come up in conversation, Cadance and Celestia ‘get all weird’. She was acting weird, too.”

“Oh? How so?”

“Prepare yourself, because this is shocking,” I joked. “She was making a deliberate effort to avoid illeisms.”

“Ha! Do you take me for a fool?” Luna asked, smirking and obviously holding in more laughter. It was a big change from her earlier melancholy, and I was ecstatic to be the pony that had cheered her up; Luna almost always had to pull herself out of her funks despite my best efforts.

“It’s true!” I insisted. “She was also clearly uncomfortable around me, and I really don’t know what to make of it.”

“Well, let’s try to puzzle it out. Maybe if we line up enough facts, something will jump out at us.”

“Okay,” I said, bringing a large chalkboard into existence. Holding a piece of chalk in my magic, I asked, “So what’s first?”

“Hmm… I believe we can ignore my niece’s part in this for the moment. Her behavior is quite straightforward.”

Talk about an understatement.

“So we should focus on the relationships between you, Trixie, and my sister. What are your thoughts there?”

“Well, I haven’t so much as seen Celestia since…last time, and it’s been a while since I’ve seen Trixie. I would assume Trixie is fond of Celestia, which means the feeling is likely returned to some degree.”

“Yes,” Luna said, “I can vouch that my sister usually enjoys her student’s company to some degree, although she teaches because she enjoys teaching rather than for her student’s sake.” When I’d finished writing that information down, Luna continued, “You should add Trixie’s odd behavior to the list as well. How did she think of you before?”

“Um…indifference? We never really talked much.”

“Fair enough. That’s five directions down, but what about that last one between my sister and you?”

Ugh. I was so very tempted to just write down uncaring and be done with it, but Luna would just scold me and tell me to try again.

Sighing, I said, “Well…Cadance once told us Celestia has the treasury open to me, if I ever needed it, and I think we may have taken a bit or two to make us look less suspicious for the bits you’ve given us for stuff. But I’d chalk that up to Cadance pressuring Celestia into making that concession as some sort of pathetic compensation.”

“And…” Luna trailed off suggestively.

I grumbled, remembering that terrible but helpful morning, “And that one time she paid lip service to all that guilt she must be feeling which must keep her up late at night tossing and turning over how not sorry she is.”

Luna held me tight with a wing and gently said, “Yes, exactly. She probably feels some sense of obligatory guilt, but she doesn’t truly care. If she did, she would have at least tried to help you where it really counts.”

I relished in my seething for a moment before getting around to calming myself with a few deep breaths. Luna’s cuddling helped a lot, too.

“I have a key piece of information to add myself,” Luna said once I was calm again. “I doubt you ever would have been presented with an opportunity to learn it, and I never saw the need to upset you with it.”

My first thought should have been that Luna’s wording made it clear that she already knew why Trixie was acting weird. Instead, I found myself distracted by the relative triviality of bad news on the horizon.

“My sister’s previous student, Sunset Shimmer, you’ll recall, was a Flare.”

“What?” I exploded. “I don’t – I – that’s – argh!”

“Yes. She knows exactly how to teach Flares, and she is quite good at it. She always made it her business to see to the education of every Flare herself. She would certainly be a better teacher than I if she didn’t have that terrible habit of letting her students flounder alone without direction or purpose.”

Shaking her head, Luna quietly added, “I simply cannot understand why she can’t learn from her mistakes.”

“Anyway,” Luna continued, “Sunset Shimmer mysteriously disappeared some years ago and was never heard from again. I believe you would have been two at the time.”

“I don’t…” I started, but the realization hit. What if Celestia…

Oh no, oh no. I needed to leave as soon as possible. I couldn’t give my parents those extra weeks. And what if Celestia decided it was time to take care of me after I’d left? She’d discover I’d been replaced, and what then? My parents couldn’t act to save their lives, and they’d need to. They were only two or three steps lower than Cadance on the loose lips scale. I–

“Twilight!” Luna shouted directly into my ears. I hadn’t even noticed she’d moved me to face her. “I know where your thoughts are going, but I promise that my sister doesn’t terminate even the most unruly foals unless she has absolutely no other choice. Even she has standards.”

“I – my family’s safe?”

“Yes, Twilight,” Luna said, hugging me. “They’ll be fine. Truthfully, I do not know what happened to Sunset Shimmer, but unlike my sister, I made an actual effort to find her. All I know is she was nowhere to be found.”

That – that still sounded really bad. Everypony’s dreams were open to Luna’s inspection, if the dreamer were alive. Luna should have been able to find Sunset Shimmer, but why look for her at all?

I’d bet Sunset Shimmer was a fully trained Flare, but regardless of whatever Celestia had done to her, there was no way she could be trustworthy. Ponies had this terrible habit of forgiving the unforgivable in moments of dramatic tension. Using Sunset Shimmer for anything would be a huge risk in general and a plain old liability if she came into contact with Celestia.

But then again, Queen Chrysalis’s words had been harsh, yet they rang with truth. Did Luna have any other option at the time? There weren’t many ponies that could deal with whatever magic Celestia had placed to protect the elements, and adding in that dreadful requirement that they would was extraordinarily problematic.

“Was…” I began. I didn’t have to ask this question. It was just a mere curiosity. Not that I’d ever demonstrated I could resist such things… “Was I a plan B?”

Luna laughed. It was a full, nearly maniacal laugh. Once she finally settled down, she said, “That, that was exactly my reaction when you were brought to my attention. You were not a plan B. You were an incredible stroke of luck.”

Nestling me in between her hooves and petting my mane, Luna continued, “You, a filly who desperately needed my help. Who it wasn’t too late to help. Who – to my great surprise – was charming and adorkable with an inspiring passion to learn everything.”

“Adorkable?”

“Ah, it’s a term I heard from somepony else recently: a portmanteau of dork and adorable. It means you’re adorable in a really nerdy way.”

Blushing and sinking further into Luna’s chest, I stammered, “I – um – uh – t-thank you. I t-think.”

“You see?” Luna asked, giggling. “That’s exactly what makes you adorkable.”

“Well, anyway,” I said, changing the topic not very subtly, “what were you getting at before?”

“Oh, yes. My point was my sister always puts a few decades between her students unless the appearance of a Flare forces her otherwise, and yet she has taken on a new one already. A new one who’s not difficult to teach, but who’s still reasonably talented.”

I nearly facehoofed as I realized exactly what Luna was trying to say. “Celestia has some use for Trixie, some important use.”

“And…” Luna trailed off suggestively again.

And… And what? That was incredibly important all on its own. What use could Celestia possibly have for Trixie?

Humming with a faint touch of disappointment, Luna asked, “What question were we originally trying to answer, Twilight?”

“Oh,” I said. Luna had every right to be disappointed in me there. “Trixie was acting strange, and she said Celestia ‘gets weird’ when I’m mentioned. I…don’t see the connection to me, but what if Trixie found out that she’s being used? That could explain her behavior.”

“No, I wouldn’t put much stock in that. I’m sure she would be happy to hear my sister has some grand plan for her. Her students always are when she does, although their initial reaction varies. You have anecdotal evidence yourself.”

“I suppose so,” I said, a bizarre mix of happiness at the reminder and disappointment at getting a question wrong warring within me. It was nice to be able to do something actually useful for Luna. Trixie would probably feel the same way toward Celestia.

So what could… This time I did facehoof. Trixie’s problem was exactly the same as the question I had asked Luna but a few minutes ago.

“Trixie found out she’s a replacement for Sunset Shimmer!” I said triumphantly, awkwardly straining my neck to look up at Luna, who was smiling down at me.

“Very close, but not quite. As I tell you every time we do math together, stop skipping steps.”

Skipping steps? I looked at the chalkboard, which I’d mostly forgotten to write anything down on. Cocking my head to the side, I added the information I’d learned from Luna about Sunset Shimmer and Celestia. I sincerely doubted that was what she had meant by skipping steps, but they were steps I had skipped.

And I still didn’t see what was wrong, even after staring at the board for who knew how long.

Luna sighed. “Twilight, you have grown up accustomed to many things most ponies can only dream of, so I can at least understand why you’re having such trouble here.”

“Hey!”

“Who was your foalsitter?”

“Cadance,” I answered indignantly. I even wrote it up on the chalkboard for emphasis.

Luna said nothing as we stared at the chalkboard. Still nestled between her hooves, I could only imagine what her face looked like. Probably something along the lines of wry amusement. It always was at times like this.

Then the realization struck me, and I felt a little sick to my stomach from the implications. I erased Cadance’s name and rewrote it as Princess Mi Amore Cadenza.

“Trixie isn’t Sunset Shimmer’s replacement. She’s mine.”

“And you were Sunset Shimmer’s replacement until your first flare.”

“I–” I was hyperventilating, and Luna wasn’t going to calm me down this time. “She abandoned me twice!” I think I deafened myself and maybe Luna, too. “And she had the nerve to tell me it was for my own safety that she tried to ruin my life. Because I wasn’t useful.”

I blew the chalkboard to pieces on pure impulse, as if doing so would…I didn’t even know. Make me feel better? Bah! Make it less true? What did I care? I already knew Celestia was horrible.

“Luna,” I growled through my stupid tears, “I’m useful, right?”

“I wouldn’t have taught you if you weren’t,” she answered, her voice so wonderfully full of concern.

“What if I lost all my magic?”

“I’d help you get it back.”

“What if I couldn’t?”

“You’d still be incredibly intelligent.”

“What if I suffered a brain injury?”

“I’d heal you.”

“What if you couldn’t?”

“You’d be dead.”

“What if – what if I was dead?”

“Twilight, I’m not omnipotent…” Whispering, Luna added, “Please don’t die.”

“Y-you’re not going anywhere, right? You won’t l-leave me alone?”

Luna didn’t answer right away, and I looked up nervously. She was biting her lip, but that was all I could see of her face.

“L-Luna?”

I felt Luna wince as her horn glowed. She still hadn’t said anything, but she put something in my mane and fussed over it with her hooves.

“Hey. What are you doing?”

“Well, you…needed some tidying up before it would stay put. My feathers are a little too big for you.”

Huh? “Um…thank you?”

“I promise I’ll give you a real one when I return to Equus, and hopefully you can give me one of yours when I do.”

Oh, now I understood. “Of course!” I replied, wiping the rest of my tears away. “Thank you for…for everything.”

I rose to my hooves, turned around, and hugged Luna, an act which she returned with her wings.

“You are more than welcome, Twilight.”

Some time later, disturbing the pure bliss and tranquility that had been lingering, I mumbled, “Hey, Luna? Do you know what Celestia wants Trix – what she wanted me to do?”

“Hmm? Oh. No, I don’t know. I dare not touch my sister’s or my niece’s dreams, and Trixie remains in the dark so far as I can tell. I do believe that once she is sure she is a substitute, her pride will force her to pursue the truth. I may get lucky and see something useful in her dreams.”

“Or,” I began, suppressing a laugh but not my smile, “maybe I’ll find out soon. I told Trixie to go pester Cadance for answers. Hopefully one of the two will be mad enough to accidentally tell me.”

A second passed in silence before Luna withdrew her wings. Tousling my mane – somehow not knocking out her feather – she said, “Why you devious little rascal.”

A knock came at my bedroom door. I probably groaned, “Come in,” but it was still too early in the afternoon for me really to know or to care. Whether I did or not, whoever was at my door entered and crossed the distance from the door to my bed.

Thump, thump, thump, came the annoying sound of hooves. I could sleep through just about anything, but that blissful state between sleep and waking didn’t benefit from that little perk. I definitely grunted as a substitute for a ‘good afternoon’ while shoving my head underneath my pillow.

“Twily, are you awake?”

“Nooooo,” I groaned.

“Ah. I see. Talking in your sleep again, are you?”

Even underneath a pillow and a few blankets, I winced when whoever it was magicked open my curtains from beside my bed. Why, oh why did ponies always feel the need to open curtains when other ponies were still in bed?

“Twily, you need to get up. Cadance is in princess mode for some reason, and she’s been sitting on the couch all morning waiting for you without saying a word.”

“Wha…princess mode…” Grunting from the exertion, I unburied myself and pried my eyes open. After I had sufficiently rubbed the rheum from them, I blinked a couple of times and saw Shining next to me. I supposed I should have known it was him from the ‘Twily’, but my brain probably couldn’t add one and one together at the moment.

“And you should clean yourself up, too. You’re quite the sight right now, and you look like you had a pretty awful nightmare.”

“Not a nightmare…” I mumbled, crawling back underneath my blankets.

“Come on, you lazy filly. Out of bed.”

I felt myself be picked up with magic, my nice, warm blankets sliding off me in the process. My legs dangled limply underneath me, and if the slight breeze wasn’t my imagination, I was probably being carried somewhere.

Suddenly, my hooves touched something freezing cold, and my eyes shot open just in time for me to see a wave of hot water oncoming.

“Shining!” I shouted from my shower, soaked and awake. “You’re not my BBBFF anymore!”

“I love you, too,” he said as the bathroom door closed.

“Humbug!” I muttered.

Well, at least the water was warm, even if it wasn’t the same comforting warmth of blankets.

So what had Shining said? Cadance was here? And something about a mode? Whatever. Cadance was here, and that was relevant, so it probably wasn’t to decorate for Hearth’s Warming. Her business must concern Trixie.

Or she came bearing gifts, but that seemed unlikely.

I spent way too long in the shower, but every minute had been filled with the dread of losing the warmth it provided. Perhaps I was old enough now that Shining wouldn’t question it if I cast a warming enchantment on myself.

I sighed. “Probably not…” Somewhere in the deepest, darkest part of my mind, I regretted destroying my suppressor, because I had no idea how much more magic I was allowed to use as I grew. Still, the act had been immensely satisfying, an ecstasy certainly worth more than the costs.

Shivering as I stepped out of the shower, I gave myself a quick drying off and brushed my mane out of my eyes. Perfect! I looked every bit like the upper class Canterlot unicorn I was.

I held my laughter in for a couple seconds before breaking down into quiet snickering. I looked like a mess.

“Never did figure out how to shower without magic. Oh well.”

Shining had left a holiday themed sweater for me, so I put it on and made my way toward the living room. On my way down the stairs, I spotted Cadance on the couch facing away from me and Shining sitting across from her. I didn’t see anypony else, oddly enough. Disregarding Mom, Dad, and Spike, we had a number of extended relatives over for a family reunion. Yawning, I asked, “Where is everypony?”

Shining was the first to respond. “They’re out for lunch and to go shopping for Hearth’s Warming dinner. Cadance was nice enough to treat them.”

“So it’s just us?” I asked pointlessly. Cadance must have sent everypony else away so she could yell at me properly. How helpful of her.

That said, it was kind of weird how Cadance twitched when I spoke. I’d dismissed the first time as her being surprised by my appearance, but the second one was odd. Then again, I had a feeling I was going to see a lot of odd behavior from Cadance this afternoon.

But before I could, there was still one mitigating factor hanging around.

“Hey, Shining, could you get me something sweet? I’m still feeling pretty tired.”

“Sure, Twi–” Shining started, getting to his hooves, but Cadance interrupted him.

“No! I mean, please stay. I need a gu – some supp – magic… Just stay, Lieutenant.”

What? I halted on the last step of the stairs. That had not been anywhere near normal for Cadance. And if I looked closely, she was trembling.

“Cadance, is something wrong?” I asked, walking around to sit next to Shining.

“N-no. I’ve just been thinking about…things. I’ve had too much time to think.”

I frowned. Something was off.

“You haven’t stayed up all night reading horror stories again, have you?” I asked.

“What do you mean by again, Twily?” Shining asked. No doubt he was hoping for information to tease Cadance with.

“I only did that twice!” Cadance shrieked.

Okay, she was probably not a changeling; that information was completely arbitrary and irrelevant to a successful cover. And as a bonus, that test had amused Shining and embarrassed Cadance. A true win-win.

“A-anyway, what did you s-say to Trixie?”

This…was not a mad Cadance. This was a scared Cadance, but scared of whom?

Me? It would make sense with the timing, but why would she be scared of me?

Celestia? She could be threatening Cadance somehow over this, and she could even be watching us right now. That wouldn’t explain why she wanted Shining to stay, though. He was useless against Celestia. He could be moral support. Maybe.

Perhaps Cadance’s fear wasn’t directly related. Something important could have been taken from her, or she could be being blackmailed.

Hmm… I needed to answer her question no matter what her problem was. Attempts to make her mad were probably going to be counterproductive right now – which was irking – but a proper reconciliation…of some sort…was out, too. I needed Cadance to be upsettable tomorrow night. Turning the responsibility for the conversation back to her could work; it was a neutral action. Especially since I didn’t know what her problem was.

“Nothing much,” I answered. “Why? Did she say something to you?”

“I – yes. She found out…t-things she’s not supposed to know. And we couldn’t figure out how. And Ce – you were brought up as a p-possib-bility. And Trixie had mentioned that she’d seen you. And you – you hate–”

“Cadance,” I interrupted. It was time to make a choice.

I could claim responsibility and try to fumble my way through this conversation blindly. That never worked when I practiced that with Luna, but Cadance was orders of magnitude less experienced at matters of subtly. On the other hoof, I had no idea what I would be claiming credit for; I could be inviting a lot of trouble onto myself.

The safe option was to just tell Cadance the truth, but I would risk her ending the conversation there…and possibly her ordering Shining to erase my memory of this event. I hadn’t learned anything useful yet so that wouldn’t be much of a loss.

Now that I thought of it, it was possible I was misinterpreting nervousness as fear considering how strongly they correlated. I could easily see Cadance reacting this strongly if she had to order my brother to erase my memory.

Okay, so quick judgment call. The dangerous option could give me some important, possibly essential, information, but it bore a nontrivial risk of being ruinous. The safe option might let me learn something useful and would cost me nothing.

Right. Safe option it was.

After an awkwardly long pause, I said, “All I said to Trixie was that you can’t keep secrets. She came to ask me about me – which is public information, even if it was kept quiet, and she has every right to know – so I told her to go pester you.”

“O-oh. I – um – thank you, Twilight. Yes, t-thank you.”

“Are you going to tell me what she found out?”

“Twily,” Shining scolded, “don’t ask for state secrets.”

“Why not?” I asked innocently. “I know plenty of other stuff already, and Cadance suggested I already know the secret.”

Shining gave me a disapproving frown and stare. I ignored him and turned to look pleadingly at Cadance.

“N-no. Sorry, Twilight. It’s secret st-stuff. And I w-will keep this one.”

Ominous. I really needed to work out some way to let myself know when I’ve had my memories erased. A thought which occurred to me only now that I was on the other side of the spell. And would soon forget. Hmm…

“A-anyway, Twilight, tomorrow’s Hearth’s Warming Eve, and there are r-romantic associations with it.”

What? That was a…sudden change in topic. Did anything seem discontinuous in my memory?

Not that I could tell. Was Cadance not interested in preserving state secrets? Or maybe she was trying to get more information out of me now and needed me to have the current context. It would certainly explain her clunky attempt at a deflection.

Cadance gulped, and that settled it. She was definitely after something. “Have you had any thoughts about w-who you might like to spend it with?”

“Cadance,” I said, halfway to a whine, “I’m not even thirteen. I don’t have anypony to spend the solstice with. Are we really going to have the same discussion as last year again?”

“O-of course, Twilight. I am the Alicorn of Love, after all.”

I think I heard Shining whisper something next to me, but I missed it while I was focusing on Cadance. It was hard to tell – her coat hid it well – but she appeared to be sweating.

That her whole body wasn’t squirming from her nerves at this point surprised me. Her princess training must have been paying off right now. Don’t let the commoners know how nervous you are and all that. Of course, it would seem Cadance had only learned enough to make it work at a distance.

“How about Twinkleshine?” Cadance suggested.

“Twinkleshine?” Shining echoed before I could make a proper reply. “Cadance, are you saying–”

“If you must know,” I interrupted, glaring at Cadance and eliciting quite the cringe from her. I didn’t really care if Shining knew I had no preference, but she had been careless and not acting mad would have been odd. I was going to avoid acting odd – beyond the normal level for me – until I knew what Cadance was fishing for lest I give something away.

I sighed. “If you must know, I’m pansexual. Yes, I’m old enough to know what that means, and yes, Cadance has known for a long time. I can’t exactly hide that from her.”

“Twilight,” Cadance hissed. Nearly instantly after, her eyes widened, and she collapsed back into her chair as if she had just given a speech in front of all of Canterlot.

“What? You gave away one of my secrets. I can at least hint at one of yours.”

Shining looked from me to Cadance. “What is she talking about?”

Letting out a ragged sigh, Cadance replied, “W-we can talk about it l-later, Shining.”

“Cady,” Shining said, his frown obvious in his tone, “are you alright? Please be honest.”

Aw, how cute. Shining had a pet name for Cadance. Maybe they’d finally make their relationship public. Or maybe they’d at least bother to tell the rest of the family, as if we didn’t know.

“Yes,” Cadance insisted, her voice at least one octave higher than normal. Neither Shining nor I were fooled. “B-besides, d-don’t you have something to say to Twilight?”

“What? Oh. Oh! Twily, I–”

I interrupted Shining with a hug. I really didn’t want the conversation to derail right now.

“It’s fine, Shining. The fact that you forgot so quickly tells me plenty. I love you, too, even if you throw me into showers to wake me up.”

It took Shining several seconds to regain his wits and to return my hug.

“I had to do it, Twily. You looked terrible.”

I released my grip and squirmed out of Shining’s. Sitting back down, I looked up at him and asked, “What do you mean?”

“You must have had a nightmare or something. Your mane and tail were a mess and your coat was tear-stained.”

My eyes widened just the tiniest bit, and I slowly, calmly turned back toward Cadance.

Jumping to conclusions was bad when the stakes were this high.

Lashing out at potential threats made them into definite threats.

The probability of Cadance having heard me mumble something troubling in my sleep was low.

Surely she was fishing for some other piece of information.

There was no way Celestia would even tell Cadance Luna’s real name.

I laughed off Shining’s comment. “I guess so, but I can never remember my dreams, so it doesn’t really matter.” Technically true. Luna overrode them with her presence.

“Twily, just because you don’t remember something doesn’t mean it can’t affect you.”

Very, very true, but in a very, very different sense. Erased memories could be some of the most important ones of your life, otherwise nopony would have bothered to remove them to begin with.

“I guess. So anyway,” I said, now fishing for information by getting Cadance to fish for information, “no, I’m not going to spend the solstice with Twinkleshine. I have more important ponies to spend it with.”

“Aw, Twily,” said Shining, scooping me up with one foreleg and giving me a soft noogie with his other forehoof. When he was done, he held me up facing him and flatly said, “But either way, you’re too young to date.”

Rolling my eyes, I said, “I know, Shining. Please give me some trust that I know what I’m doing socially.”

“Alright. So long as you understand.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said as Shining set me back down on the couch. I was pretty sure I caught the tail end of one of Cadance’s breathing exercises, but I’d seen too little to know for sure.

“What about that mentor of yours?” Cadance asked. “I still haven’t met her, but you seem to like her a lot. Would you want to spend Hearth’s Warming Eve with her?”

I took a deep breath. It was officially conclusion jumping to time.

“Mentor? Twily, when did Mom and Dad get you a proper tutor?”

I knew what I had to do.

“They didn’t,” I answered. “She found me a few years ago.”

I could only hope Celestia wasn’t eavesdropping.

“Somepony teaching you, eh? She must be really impressive to manage that. Who is it?”

I had to make this morning not have happened.

“I’d like t-to know, too,” Cadance added.

One last deep breath. Shining first. He could run away and was easier.

I had to do this, and if I had to do it, I would make it dramatic.

“My teacher” – my horn lit up – “is Princess Luna, Alicorn of the Night.”

I turned and hit Shining with a sleep spell in full force.

His eyes were already wide, but they were even wider now. I – I saw fear in them, and I nearly teleported away from the shock.

Shining’s horn surged with magic for some combat spell, still too primitive to tell what it would do. But that was okay; he never had a chance. I felt his resistance fail as I overpowered him.

And myself.

I could feel it coming.

I didn’t have much time.

I fired off a panicked memory erasing spell on Shining. It was a sloppy job, but it shouldn’t destroy too many extra ones.

I vaporised my fake suppressor ring. As long as I got to Cadance first, I could pass this off as an accident.

A heavy thump filled the room. I turned to see Cadance tumbling on the ground behind her couch.

Earth pony strength had backfired this time, it would seem.

Cadance stared at Shining in horror. There were already tears in her eyes.

Even given the circumstances, I couldn’t help but feel hurt that she thought I would actually hurt my BBBFF.

I teleported directly in front of Cadance, burning off a tiny piece of my excess magic and buying me a precious fraction of a second.

Holding nothing back, I poured every bit of magic I had in me into a memory spell with the sheer audacity of hoping to overpower an alicorn’s magic.

Cadance was untrained.

It would work.

It had to work.

I could sense her clumsily trying to bring her magic to bear against mine.

She failed.

The battle of wills lasted less than a second, and I won.

I won!

For good measure, I blasted Cadance through a few walls with a raw burst of magic.

She was immortal; she’d get over it.

And that was the least of what she might have suffered had she been so close to me.

I tried to be more gentle with Shining, but from the sound of it, I ended up sending him crashing through the front door.

My last properly coherent thought was my hope that I hadn’t given him a real concussion.

Finally, a scant few seconds after the flare had begun, I lost control.

Chapter Nine - The Longest Night - Part Two

“Ugh…”

I felt lightheaded and sick to my stomach. There were so many spells on me that I could feel them without even trying.

“She’s waking up,” came a muffled voice. Well, the voice probably wasn’t muffled itself; my ears felt weird.

In fact, pretty much every part of me felt weird, and a lot of it felt wet. Some parts felt stiff. And there were other ponies’ magic on me, too. This all needed to be fixed.

“Stop her!”

“How?”

“Wake up Princes Mi Amore!”

Ignoring the voices, I brute force countered every spell nearby as I did every time after a flare since destroying my suppressor.

Wait, something about that sounded…

Oh no! My eyes snapped open, and I tried to jump to my hooves, but something was holding me down. “Cadance! Shining!”

Frantically examining the room, I found Cadance being awoken by a nurse. She was slumped over on an uncomfortable looking hospital bed nearby, which Shining was sleeping in.

I gave a sigh of relief and only then noticed that there were several doctors pinning me down. Before I could freak out, I noticed that I was in pretty bad shape and relaxed. With my minor adrenaline rush wearing off, I could feel every ache and pain in my body, and there were a lot.

My rear hind leg was placed in a temporary cast, as was my barrel, and most of my body was covered in bandages of varying levels of tightness from useless to suffocating.

Aaaand now I had wounds reopening. Great. I’d normally just patch myself up right away through sheer brute force, but I couldn’t with so many witnesses around that expected the doctors to do it.

Gritting my teeth, I asked, “What happened?”

Seeing that I’d settled down, the doctors released me. One said, “Please stay still.”

I nodded once and was rewarded with a skull-piercing surge of pain and a sharp look from the same doctor.

“Ehem,” he said. “You appear to have instinctively removed all of the spells affecting you at once, which has caused a number of complications. Now if you’d kindly stay put, we’ll have you back to normal just as soon as each specialist can see to you.”

Twitching as something healed on my skull, I said, “That’s not–”

“What part of stay put, don’t you understand? That includes talking.”

I closed my mouth. Taking my silence as consent, the doctor lit his horn and returned to work. Every so often, I’d start when a particularly painful wound was patched up and get a stern, annoying, and unnecessary reprimand.

Meanwhile, Cadance was waiting off to the side out of everypony’s way, awkwardly shuffling on her hooves and stealing glances at me when she probably thought I wasn’t looking.

So Cadance felt awkward around me. Was that a sign that I needed to leave post haste, or was that because of some other reason? Hmm, probably the latter. I’m positive that I made the memory spell work for at least a whole day. And I was sure she would find it hard to let Shining be in the same room as me after I’d demonstrated I was willing to use force to keep my secrets…

I sighed inwardly as a pale substitute for a real sigh; that doctor had quite the mean glare.

A few nerve wracking minutes later, I noticed Shining had awoken as well and was watching me – no, watching the doctors carefully. I took a deep breath and flushed that thought out of my mind; he was still my BBBFF. Anything else could wait.

Leaning into the bed properly, I let my body fully relax for the moment. At the very least, it seemed I wasn’t in immediate danger.

I didn’t know how long it took – it felt like hours – but the doctors finally finished with me. That one doctor, on his way out, said to Cadance, “Don’t let her move at all or talk much. She still has several broken bones, muscle damage, and injuries to a number of organs. There’s quite a line for the first two, but Twilight is next on the list for the latter.”

Okay, maybe I wouldn’t have patched myself up quite so easily. I’ve never had injures that severe before. That certainly explained why my entire body felt like it was on fire. You know, without actually being on fire.

When Cadance didn’t respond, the doctor turned to Shining and made the same request. Shining agreed as soon as he could bring himself to look away from Cadance.

Once the door closed – and presumably once that doctor was out of earshot – I asked, “What happened?”

Cadance was unresponsive, so Shining answered for her.

“Our house fell on you, Twily, and–”

Finally returning to life, if for but a moment, Cadance shot Shining a sharp glare, and he sank back into his own bed under the pressure like he was a turtle retreating into his shell.

“Ah…sorry. It’s probably better to wait until you’re better.”

Frowning, I said, “Shining, my magic is unrestricted right now, and I have a number of spells I’ve been desperate to try, including some scrying spells…”

“Twily, don’t!”

I lit up my horn, not forming a proper spell but holding just enough power to make it look like I was.

“Fine!” Shining shouted, concern and distress at war in his voice. “We’ll tell you! Just please stop.”

“Great!” I sang cheerfully, only to be reminded why I wasn’t supposed to do that. “Ugh… Remember the doctor told me not to talk much, so don’t force me to keep asking questions.”

Shining made a frustrated hum. “Do you remember what happened yesterday?”

“Yesterday? Is it Hearth’s Warming Eve?” Had I missed my date with Luna?

“As of about four hours ago, yes.”

Whew. I hadn’t even missed my normal time with Luna yet.

“But more importantly,” Shining continued, “do you remember? Cadance can’t remember anything from after autumn, and I’m missing the last couple weeks.”

Thank you very much for volunteering that information Shining. You’ve been officially upgraded from big brother best friend forever to big brother bestest friend forever.

You also had my deepest apologies for how much extra time I had taken from you. Hopefully nothing too important had happened then, but I had my doubts given the time of year and his relationship with Cadance. I silently promised I’d make this up to him when I could.

“Not really,” I answered. “I remember waking up and showering, but that’s about it.”

It was true that I seemed to be having a memory lapse myself; however, that was only a little distressing. I could recall up to the beginning of my flare, but no further. If Shining hadn’t been exaggerating, houses falling on a pony were probably prone to doing that.

“Well, we weren’t expecting anything less, really. Cadance and Princess Celestia talked, and they think you flared under extreme emotional distress, that you wanted to forget something. Was that how you put it, Cadance?”

Cadance turned to look at me for a moment before turning away. Now that I got a good look, I noticed that her face was the one that looked guilty in this room. I could only guess as to why. The most likely reasoning which occurred to me was that Cadance had relearned that she had come to yell at me about Trixie, which would make her think she was responsible for this.

Ugh. I was going to have a lot of apologies to keep track of before this was all over. Maybe I should make a list to keep – no, Twilight. Lists were bad. That way led back to checklists for checklists, back to weird obsessive compulsive habits.

“Cadance,” I said, “this wasn’t your fault. I shouldn’t have told Trixie to pester you.”

She turned to me for a moment, tears in her eyes. She winced over and over again just trying to look at me.

“Cadance,” I repeated, my voice faltering. That was as far as I got before she flew from the room, bursting through the door and not bothering to close it.

The idea of teleporting her back and telling her the truth – some of it, at least – momentarily crept into my mind, but I dismissed it just as quickly. It would just make her feel a whole new kind of terrible. And it would put a legitimate charge of treason on me.

“It’s not her fault,” I whispered. “It’s mine.”

“Twily, it’s nopony’s fault. It was an accident.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but no words came out. Instead, I said, “Please continue what you were saying, Shining.”

“Right… Well, anyway, what happened is the house fell on you. The random effects of your flare are probably what – what saved you, but not before you saved my life and…prevented complications for Cadance.”

“I – what? That’s not – you wouldn’t–”

Interrupting me on the verge of tears, Shining said, “Numerous eyewitnesses reported Cadance being thrown far from our home. The same was true for me, but with…less gusto. Thanks for remembering I’m not immortal, Twily.”

Powering through my body’s objections, I managed to turn my head to get a full and proper view of Shining. His face held such genuine gratitude in his smile while he lay suffering slash recovering from who knew what. I – I couldn’t deal with this right now.

I turned my head away from Shining – thoroughly ignoring his protests for me to stop moving – so I could cry in peace.

“What else did I do, Shining?” I asked, my tone just barely below accusatory.

“What else happened, but not what you did, was…well…unfortunate. You know how Canterlot is built on top of the Canterhorn, right?”

Oh no…

“Well, a few of the main supports were damaged, and part of the city…fell.”

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Hastily, Shining added, “But it took a while. The Royal Guard was able to evacuate everypony in time. With some help from the pegasi caught up in the accident. There were…injuries, but nopony died.”

‘There’s quite a line for the first two.’ Those words echoed in my mind. Just how many ponies had I hurt today? How many families had I almost broken? How many friends had I almost torn apart forever?

I wanted to curl up into a little ball and to pretend none of this had happened, but that wasn’t a possibility, not for a number of reasons.

Hesitantly, I asked the question I dreaded the answer to. The only thing that would distract me right now. “How did I escape?”

I knew how. There was only one pony on Equus besides myself who could pull me out of a pile of wreckage while I was flaring in a disaster area. And based on my memory loss, I was unconscious at the time.

“Princess Celestia saved you.”

Nooooo…

“I’m still impressed with how quickly she responded; she must have teleported in as soon as she heard the first ‘crack of doom’, or so the ponies are calling it already. A good thing, too. Canterlot would’ve been in deep trouble if anymore damage to the foundation had occurred before she took you away.”

Aha! Proving that you’d earned that upgrade to bestest already, Shining! Celestia was just saving her capital.

Of course that was what she was doing.

And Luna had said she wouldn’t just kill a foal. Even if it would’ve looked like an accident. It would have been, too. I would’ve gone down with the rest of Canterlot and would’ve been buried there, and it would’ve been nopony’s fault but my own.

No. Just, no. I – this was too much right now.

“Shining, could – could you put me to sleep?”

No answer came for a while, but it wasn’t long before the sweet embrace of sleep took hold of me.

I lay curled in a tight ball, shivering and stroking my tail. If I dropped it, it would need to be wrung out.

I’d tried removing my ears, but it hadn’t helped. Nothing helped. The voices came all the same. There were so many. They never stopped.

“You destroyed our lives.”

“Where will we go now?”

“My mother nearly died.”

“You owe me your life.”

“We have no hearth to warm anymore.”

“You took our homes.”

“Why couldn’t you be normal?”

“Daddy? Daddy? Daddy!”

“Thank you for saving us.”

“Traitor! Treason!”

“How did this happen?”

“You.”

“It’s my fault.”

“Why don’t you just go live on the moon?”

“Her? She’s ancient!”

“Why did I ever love you?”

“She deserves nothing less than execution!”

“Don’t look at her, Dear.”

“Best laid plans, Twilight…”

“Dear Celestia, no!”

“Honey? Honey, where are you?”

“No! Please, no!”

“You’re useless.”

“Enough.”

The chatter of voices died off with a scream: of pain or terror, I couldn’t tell. Maybe it was both. Maybe it was neither. It didn’t matter.

Black wings and black hooves enveloped me and held me tight. I – I made an absolute mess of their owner.

Luna said nothing.

I said nothing.

As I awoke, I couldn’t help but notice everything felt nicer. The world, that was. I felt horrible in every sense of the word, but with a huge emphasis on physically right now.

But the world, it felt soft like the moon – er, like Luna. Awkward. The moon wasn’t soft. But the moon was Luna’s, and Luna was soft, and – and I wasn’t making sense anymore, not even to myself.

I knew I was not an afternoon pony, but this was a rather different kind of mental haze.

“You do not have to tell her, but you do have to talk to her.”

That sounded a lot like Celestia. That…did not bode well.

“I – I know. But I broke my promise. Twice.”

And that sounded like–

“Cadance?” I moaned, sitting up. I froze and opened my eyes when I properly remembered the condition I’d been in when I’d gone to sleep.

Cadance and Celestia were both in front of me at the base of my bed. It would seem I’d been moved to a new room without Shining. This looked much more like a proper bedroom than a hospital room. The simple fact that I was in a four-poster bed was enough to jump to that conclusion, but the rest of the room radiated the same vibe.

Far more importantly, my injuries had been healed while I’d slept. I still felt awfully sore – which I attributed to muscle pain and the aftereffects of healing magic – but this was a major improvement.

“G-good afternoon, Twilight,” Cadance said. She was nowhere near as nervous or scared as before, but she still refused to meet my eyes. “How are you feeling?”

“I–” My eyes flashed toward Celestia for the briefest of moments, an act which I was pretty sure did not pass unnoticed. “Pretty terrible. But great.”

At the very least, I was all cried out. My face felt soaked, so I gently removed the sweat, tears, mucus, and whatever else that was there with the fine telekinetic precision I had developed so long ago. Cadance looked half-terrified and half-guilty while watching me, and Celestia…had that same stupid smile she always wore.

If the background pain were good for anything, it was for dulling my sense of panic, or urgency, or danger, or – or something. Whatever. I was feeling a little loopy right now, but I had most of my cognitive facilities – faculties working.

I sent the slimy, green ball in my magic flying into a trash can and asked, “How is everypony? Is Shining okay?”

Cadance frowned for just an instant before pulling herself into an obviously strained smile. “He’s fine. He just got hurt a little more than you did. He’ll be up in time for Hearth’s Warming. Your parents are with him right now during…”

Fantastic. I hurt Shining badly enough that the doctors were having difficulty fixing him. That’s just what I needed to make everything better.

“If you are wondering where Spike is,” Celestia continued, picking up the conversation with a decent distraction, “he is sleeping right here” – she gestured directly in front of my bed – “on a number of stolen pillows. Would you like me to wake him?”

“No, I–” I sighed. “I want to know what you’re going to do with me.”

“Do?”

Interrupting Celestia, Cadance rattled off, “It wasn’t your fault!” like it was a litany. Maybe everypony thought if they said it enough, it’d become the truth.

“Yes it was. Let’s just get this over with; I don’t want any nasty surprises waiting for me.”

Cadance looked away from me so quickly, I momentarily thought she’d snap her neck. Was Shining really in such a bad state? He sounded fine earlier.

“Twilight,” she half-whispered, “it really is my fault. I’m so, so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking… Literally…”

“Whatever,” I huffed. If Cadance was going to be stubborn right now, she could be stubborn.

“Please, please don’t blame yourself, Twilight,” Cadance begged – begged – looking straight at me again. “Please.”

“O-okay,” I stammered. Why was Cadance acting like this? She seemed desperate for…something. Approval? Forgiveness? Neither of those made any sense. There was no way she could reasonably take this much blame upon herself for yelling at me about Trixie.

But then again, the result was…disastrous. Maybe those weren’t so far-fetched of a hypothesis.

Celestia put a hoof on Cadance’s withers, causing her to jump in surprise.

“Cadance, go to Lieutenant Armor. You are not ready for this.”

Rising to argue, Cadance wilted under Celestia’s gaze. Trudging – it was definitely a trudge – she left the room, silently closing the door behind her.

Leaving me alone with Celestia.

“Twilight Sparkle,” Celestia began. Her smile hadn’t faltered in slightest, but her tone was stiff and all business underneath that pretense of concern. I – I could deal with business right now. “I shall answer your questions honestly if you but do the same for mine. If this is not agreeable to you, I shall take my leave and send your family to you.”

It was my turn to wilt under Celestia’s gaze. Could I say no here? What would Celestia take that to mean?

“I promise,” I replied a little too abruptly, barely managing to keep myself from stammering. I was absolutely certain that my panic was showing through on my face, too.

This was going to be a second disaster worse – no…not worse than the first.

“Very well,” said Celestia. I braced for the worst. “When, and how, did you learn dark magic?”

That – that wasn’t the worst question Celestia could’ve asked, but it was pretty darn close.

“W-what do you mean?” I couldn’t believe I held back a gulp. Not that what I had said had been convincing. Even Spike would call me on it.

“Goodbye, Twilight Sparkle.” Celestia turned to leave.

“Wait,” I squeaked. Celestia stopped and turned her head back. “P-Ponyville. About a year ago. By experiment. It’s…efficient and efficacious.” Celestia turned fully back, and I sighed inwardly. “H-how did you know?”

“Traces of dark magic appeared in your medical examination. That type of magical residue is built up slowly over time rather than from a single burst of wild magic.”

“I – I see… Do anypo – does anypony else know?”

Celestia shook her head. “Just the nurse and doctor who performed the initial tests, and they did not realise what they were looking at. You are walking a dangerous path, Twilight Sparkle, and I would see you leave it behind. There is a reason nopony uses dark magic anymore.”

Of course there was; you scoured every collection of books for the subject and removed them.

I turned my head away, and when it was clear I wasn’t going to say anything, Celestia sighed.

“I shall ask your brother to observe you while he is in recovery. We can continue this particular discussion afterward.”

Recovery? That – “What happened to Shining?”

Celestia paused. She’d lost her smile. Her mouth made tiny movements as she mulled over how to respond.

“Let me be perfectly clear. You saved your brother’s life.”

From myself.

“However, during the…descent, he was gravely injured, as were many others. It shall take some number of seasons and dedicated care, but he will regain his rear leg.”

My eyes widened, and I dry heaved. Apparently, I had nothing in my stomach to give up…

“I – I need a drink.” So I could cry again. I couldn’t – no, I could believe I hadn’t noticed earlier.

A glass of water appeared in front of me, and I gratefully accepted it without question or comment.

In between refills – I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was until I started drinking – I asked, “How?”

“Lieutenant Armor was unconscious in an area that was falling apart quite near your home. A large chunk of rubble fell on him. If it makes you feel better, he does not remember any of it.”

No, no it did not make me feel any better.

After my third glass, while I was guzzling down a fourth, Celestia asked, “How much do you know about my sister?”

I did a spit-take, much to my regret. Now I was wet and in deep water.

Okay, okay. If I just calmed down, I could get through this. For some reason, Celestia knew I knew about Luna. No, not ‘some reason’, she’d read me the book that had told me about the elements, and it’d explicitly described the two of them as sisters. Obviously I knew about Luna in the narrative sense.

And Celestia knew I was smart. She knew I would’ve understood the connection, if perhaps not right away. She was just probing to find out how much else I hypothetically had managed to pull from semi-historical texts. If I just made a small concession of information, Celestia might lose interest and continue to leave me alone.

“E-enough to know her real name.” I silently cursed myself for the stammer. It hadn’t been intentional, although it probably helped me seem less threatening.

One of Celestia’s eyebrows rose just the slightest bit before she brought it back down. “I see. And how much did you tell Trixie?”

“Wha – nothing! I didn’t tell Trixie anything. Just that Cadance was – is bad at keeping secrets when she’s alone.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes! Well, I also told her she could visit Spike when I was in town and that she could ask the castle staff for answers, but that’s it. Honest!”

“Then what about…” A frown overtook Celestia, and she changed her question. “Do you remember me?”

What? Of course I did. It was kind of hard to forget the pony you hated most in the world. Not that I understood the point of the question. Well, unless she was hoping that I’d forgotten all about everything she’d not done for me for some reason.

A knock came at the door.

Celestia let out a little breath of air which I took as a sigh. “Nevermind. It’s too late to matter. Come in!”

The door opened to reveal a nurse holding a clipboard in her green magic. When she looked up from it and saw the princess, her magic flickered, and she nearly dropped her notes.

“Ah! G-good afternoon, Princess Celestia.”

“Good afternoon, Nurse Redcross. Do you require something?”

“Uh, yes, I think. This is Twilight Sparkle’s room, correct?”

Celestia gestured toward me with her head.

“Ah, good. I’ve been authorized to share some information with her that she would probably like to hear. But if this is a bad time, I can come back later.”

“No, it is quite fine,” Celestia said. “I need to check up on my niece, anyway.” Turning back to me one last time before leaving, she sent the strangest look my way. I really had no idea what it meant, but I didn’t want it to continue. Finally, there was a singular sense of solemnity as she said “Farewell, Twilight Sparkle,” and departed.

Nurse Redcross and I watched Celestia leave, and as soon as the door closed, I breathed a sigh of relief. That could have gone better, but it also could have been much, much worse.

Chuckling, Nurse Redcross said, “The princess can be quite intimidating at times, can’t she?”

“You have no idea.”

Her horn glowing a little brighter, Nurse Redcross looked down at her clipboard. “Anyway, are you aware of your brother’s condition?” I nodded. “Well then, we have good news for you. He’s expected to make a full recovery sometime shortly after the fall equinox.”

Nurse Redcross’s magic dimmed again, and she smiled. And then slapped me across the face with her clipboard hard enough that I felt a tooth loosening.

“You unbelievable moron! What part of ‘get Mi Amore drunk enough on the solstice and goad her into doing something so horrendously stupid, she’d never want to talk to me again’ sounds like ‘destroy half of Canterlot’ to you? What part of ‘I won’t get in the way of the plan’ did you not understand?

“It was so simple! Her biology won’t let her lose her memory from alcohol poisoning, so we create a scene she would legitimately regret forever to the point that she believably might even remove the love between you two immediately afterward just to bear it. Was that too complex for your insect-sized brain to comprehend?”

Rubbing my muzzle, I asked, “Queen Chrysalis?”

“Of course not. I’m just some other incredibly talented mistress of intrigue that just turned your absolute disaster into a pure, undiluted magnum opus of espionage. When we next meet, you are going to get on your knees, kiss my hooves, and thank me for salvaging this train wreck of a plot you call a scheme.

“Argh! Do you understand how hard it is for my changelings to infiltrate the medical profession? Do you understand how hard it is for my changelings to infiltrate Canterlot Castle? Do you understand how hard it is for my changelings to do both at the same time? Right under the nose of Celestia? They worked their chitin off for this, and you are going to personally thank each and every one of them before we leave on your little trip in space.

“Understood?”

My jaw hung loose.

“I said, understood?”

Barely out of my stupefaction, I nodded. It was a tiny but definite act.

“Good. Now listen for once in your life so you don’t buck this up. Your replacement, my dear little heir, Pupa, volunteered to take on the same spells and injuries that were afflicting you to make this work. You are going to love her, feed her, and make her fat yourself for the rest of her life, or so help me, I’ll kill you myself.”

“Y-yes, o-o-of c-course.”

“That wasn’t a request, so shut up and listen. We swapped you and her just long enough to feed Mi Amore misinformation about your condition and for her to ‘correct’ it. Now guess who has to learn to love her mother all over again? Can’t figure it out? It’s Pupa.”

Nurse Redcross slapped me even harder than last time for Queen Chrysalis. I took the blow without complaint, but I did rotate with it to avoid losing any teeth. That would be hard to explain. And really, the blows were more sort of a dull throb above the rest of my aches than anything else, which was probably not a good sign.

As for Pupa. Wow. Just – wow. I’d never met her, but at this point, I really wanted to.

And Cadance’s behavior made a lot more sense now. I completely understood why she’d blame herself for everything if that’s what she thought had happened. I could easily see her thinking I’d flip out and flare if she took my love…and hate, and everything in-between and stirred it all up until it became unrecognizable.

It was possible that I might have, too, if I were in that situation. There was no telling how I’d react to that kind of stress. I wonder how Pupa–

“Pupa’s in her room right now, crying her heart out. Not from the pain. Oh no. She’s crying because she can’t figure out if she regrets her decision because she can only remember who she was and why she made it to begin with.”

This time Nurse Redcross took a swipe at my horn. I grit my teeth just in time to suppress a scream. That I could still feel in full force.

At least my question had been answered.

“She now looks approximately exactly like you to Mi Amore, who took it upon herself to ‘fix’ everything that had gone wrong. My daughter now has a venomous hatred of Celestia and an outrageous love for Luna.”

That – that would be the expected outcome. I hadn’t spent enough time with Spike to properly sympathize, but I understood Queen Chrysalis’s loss a little bit.

“You owe us everything that goes right in your life from now on, and when it comes time to return the favor, you are going to return it tenfold!”

“I – of course I–”

After snorting, Nurse Redcross continued, “I’m done here. If you mess this up, I’m finished with you. I’ll sell you and Luna out and get my daughter back, regardless of her wishes.”

Her wishes? Was that a Twilight-ified Pupa who loved Luna talking, or was the normal one really willing to take all that upon herself?

For me? For Luna? No. No that felt utterly wrong.

For the hive? Did she really think Luna and I could do that much for her? For them? That’s…

I – I silently promised myself not to let her down. Not that I’d planned to let anypony down before, but…but I–

I called upon Cadance’s royal breathing exercises. It was strange how the deep breaths and the cold burning from stretching my muscles were actually calming instead of…literally anything else.

Meanwhile, Nurse Redcross had fallen silent and hadn’t moved an inch. Almost as if she were expecting some–

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you so much for what you’ve done…”

“Chzix,” Nurse Redcross said. Okay, I had no idea how to go about pronouncing that, even having heard it, but I tried my best.

“Thank you, Chzix. What can I do to make this up to you?”

Chzix’s horn glowed, and I felt…strange. Not bad, per se, but definitely strange.

“I’ll just take your gratitude for now, Twilight Sparkle. However, Princess Pupa is well-loved within the hive; prepare yourself for some changelings who will be less…reasonable.”

I could understand that completely if what she had done for them today – or was it yesterday? – if what Pupa had sacrificed were her normal behavior.

“I…thank you. Just thank you.”

Faintly smiling, Chzix said, “You are welcome. Please do not make me regret that.”

I stumbled into Shining’s hospital room; I’d underestimated how many injuries I still possessed when I’d snuck out of mine. Still, my magic didn’t falter, so Spike remained undisturbed in his nap. That was something.

And the pain was also a great distraction from all of the problems that I’d caused. It was hard to think properly when you were interrupted every few seconds by a feeling equivalent to being struck by lightning when you had the pure hubris to bend a leg the wrong way or when you had the audacity to twitch an ear.

Dad was missing – I’d probably missed him coming to my room – but Mom, Shining, and Cadance were all here and crowded around Shining’s bed.

Wow, my thoughts just really jumped there, hadn’t they? Horseapples.

Anyway, Shining was, naturally, the first to respond. Nothing ever slowed him down, it seemed, not even losing a leg. No wonder he was a lieutenant already. It seemed like only yesterday he was just a wee little cadet.

“Twily!” he shouted, the distress in his voice obvious. He unnecessarily supported me with his magic. It was a nice gesture, at least.

Okay, I probably needed it, but I needed the distraction of walking through fire more.

I set Spike down and looked between the three other ponies in the room. Which part of my mess did I have to address first? Who had it the worst?

Cadance still wouldn’t look at me. I sighed. She was as good a place to start as any.

Hobbling across the room, shrugging off Shining’s magic trying to pick me up, and ignoring Mom’s attempt to help me physically, I made my way to Cadance. She backed away from me as I approached and made me walk further. I just grinned and bore it. I deserved the extra distance and the effort that came with it.

Once I had Cadance backed into a corner, she tried to take flight. Before she could, I summoned a short burst of energy to jump on her in a hug.

“Cadance,” I said, hoping to finish before she decided to throw me off and flee, “Celestia didn’t tell me, but I figured out what happened. It’s not your fault; I’m sure I was being mean given the context. Either way, even though there’s nothing to forgive, you have my forgiveness all the same. And my apologies.”

Some large amount of time passed as Cadance trembled in my hooves. I really wished I had more to say, but that was about as much as I had planned out. I would’ve polished that teeny, tiny speech into something decent, but I was working with limited mental resources, and I had three other ponies to deal with.

“How?” Cadance whispered.

“How can I forgive you?” I finished. It wasn’t hard to guess what Cadance had wanted to say. At least I could do that much for her. “Because I love you. Even if I didn’t feel it, I’d still know I love you.”

I couldn’t help myself from realizing that I had evidence proving I was right. Pupa wouldn’t be having such a hard time right now if it – if I weren’t right.

“I’m a logical pony, remember? I listen to my brain more than my heart, and that’s where my memories are.”

Cadance fell to her haunches and into quiet sobs. It made it all the easier to give her a proper hug.

Eventually, Shining disturbed our moment by asking, “Twily, Cady, what are you talking about?”

“It’s complicated filly stuff,” I answered for the both of us. I smiled at the weak laugh I got from Cadance. “You wouldn’t understand, Shining.”

Well, that was one pony down. It hadn’t made me feel any less guilty, but Cadance looked better. A little bit. Okay, at least she was looking at me so I could tell she didn’t look any better. That was all that mattered.

I turned toward Mom next. She should be fairly quick to deal with. She met me barely one step into my journey to her, scooping me up into a light hug as if she were afraid I would break, which I was willing to admit might be possible a outcome of a real hug at the moment.

Returning the affection, I whispered, “I’m okay, Mom. But you see why I absolutely have to?” I left the last word unsaid; we both knew what it was. “I’m unstable and dangerous to everypony like this.”

Mom didn’t say a word, which I took as acceptance – hopefully. Either way, neither she nor Dad had done anything silly like tell Celestia about Luna in a panic. I knew I couldn’t ask much more from them right now.

“Do you think you could find Dad before he raises a panic when he finds Spike and me missing?” No response. “Mom?”

“Shh…”

Mom kept the hug up for a very awkward, very uncomfortable length of time, but I didn’t say anything. I…might have needed the support myself, if I were being honest.

After breaking apart and kissing my forehead, Mom said, “Right now, I’m just glad everypony is alive. I’ll go find your father.”

I shivered as Mom left. She’d really driven home that I’d nearly died. That…wasn’t something I wanted to think about right now. If I just made it a paltry few more years, I’d only ever have to worry about philosophical deaths.

Last, but far from least, I turned to my BBBFF. “Shining, I–”

“Twily, I don’t know how many times we’re going to have to tell you this, but it’s not your fault.”

At least once more forever, Shining, because it was my fault.

“I can do without a leg for the better part of a year. You know how good I am with magic. I’ll be just fine. Besides, it’s a paid vacation, since I was technically injured in the line of duty. Nothing better, right?”

Making a weird face that might have been a frown, but also possibly a smile, Shining added, “And Cadance has…er…volunteered” – Cadance gave a single dry laugh – “volunteered to help nurse me back to health, so we’ll all get to spend more time together.”

Maybe for a few weeks…but how wonderful it would have been. I unfortunately had a tight schedule to keep, and I’d be leaving Pupa in my place more often than not until I left.

“That reminds me,” I began. I certainly wasn’t embarrassed or feeling guilty about this, but I couldn’t imagine Shining or Cadance taking this well. “Celestia…found out about…something, and she’s going to order you” – I pointed to Shining – “to keep an eye on me.”

“What?” Cadance and Shining chorused. After an awkward look at each other, Shining continued, “What are you talking about, Twily?”

“Would you two please promise not to freak out in advance?”

Shining frowned but gave his word. Cadance, on the other hoof, looked all too eager to agree. I didn’t know how I felt about that. It was…good that she was being amiable, but this semi-desperation to earn my forgiveness could – would make things even worse between us when Cadance found out I was Luna’s apprentice.

I was so tempted to say oh well and take it as punishment, but I knew Luna would tell me I was being stupid. I had made a mistake – a big one – but I’d also learned…was in the process of learning from that mistake. Punishments were there to make ponies learn from their mistakes when they wouldn’t themselves.

Still, I didn’t know what I could do short of telling her the truth to get Cadance to stop. Well, I’d figure it out later.

“So you two both know I’ve been studying magic, right?”

I got a sad smile from Cadance and an eye-roll from Shining.

“Yes, well, anyway, I’ve been dabbling in pretty much every branch of magic, because it’s, you know, my special talent.”

“Twily, you can skip all this.”

I sighed. “Okay. Just, you two have no idea what it’s like to live with so little magic. I found a branch that’s…very efficient in how much magic it consumes.”

“Twily, please get on with it.”

“Fine.” Abandoning all sense of grace – or poise, or…something – I said, “I’ve been studying dark magic.”

Silence fell. For Cadance’s part, her face was frozen with her jaw dropped. Shining…not so much.

“Pfft. Heh. Oh, good one, Twily. And here you had us all worried. Imagine you learning dark magic. Oh wow. That’s just what I needed right now. Thanks.”

With an exasperated sigh and an eye-roll of my own, I brought forth my inner darkness. “Slap yourself.”

The sound of a slap echoed throughout the room. Afterward, Shining mumbled, “Ow,” while rubbing his cheek.

“Twilight…why?”

“I already told you why. And you promised not to freak out.”

“I don’t understand,” Cadance began, “do you really…”

Hate Celestia enough to use it to fuel dark magic? Most other negative emotions worked well enough, too, but I knew what Cadance meant. “Yes, Cadance. But it gets easier over time. It…takes less. Just more control.”

“Would you two please stop doing the cryptic conversation stuff?” Shining asked. “I’d like to think my opinion on this matters.”

Taking a deep breath and preparing for the worst, I said, “Shining, I don’t really know how to put this nicely, so I’ll just put it bluntly. It doesn’t. I know far more about the field than you – that is to say anything at all – and uninformed opinions are worse than useless.”

“Twily, just listen to yourself.”

I facehoofed. The pain was worth the gesture. I knew he was injured, and I really didn’t want to stress him like this, but this kind of stuff really bothered me.

“Shining, do I really need to remind you of every other time you’ve said that to me?”

“No,” he grumbled. “But this is–”

“Exactly the same as every other time I’ve been right. Look, you haven’t said that to me since before I started…dabbling. Compare my behavior between then and now. Is it really that different?”

Shining opened his mouth in the right shape to say no, but the word never passed his lips. I probably should’ve turned off the dark fire flaring from the corners of my eyes, but I was trying to make a point.

“No,” Cadance answered for him, “but if we’re going to address your flaws, you could work on your sharp tongue and tendency toward condescension.”

I turned toward Cadance. “Those…aren’t the first ones I’d address, but duly noted.”

A knock came at the door, and Mom and Dad entered without waiting for permission. Dad made a beeline to me and absorbed me into the same awkwardly long hug Mom had given me.

“Did you two know Twily has been practicing dark magic?” Shining asked.

I couldn’t see his face – I was buried in blue fur – but his tone was accusatory. I really wanted to say something, but I was sure Shining was smart enough to realize the problem with my testimony. And maybe he’d figure out why asking Mom and Dad was also pointless.

“Aah,” Mom and Dad said together, equally flatly.

“Twilight asked us not to say anything,” said Dad.

“Asked,” Shining began, “or commanded?”

Well, he was halfway there to realizing why asking them was pointless.

Both of them half-shouted, “Asked,” together.

“How do you know that? What if she’s made you say–”

Cadance put a hoof on his wither, and they shared a short look of some significance. Well, at least he realized that if he was suspicious to begin with, asking anypony he was suspicious of being under my control to some degree was pointless. Hopefully.

“I’m sorry, Twily.”

Squirming my head out of Dad’s grasp, I looked to Shining, genuinely smiling. “It’s okay. It’s not everyday your little sister tells you she’s a dark mage. In addition to every other type of mage, of course.”

“Yeah… The only thing stranger would be if Princess Celestia came in and said she knew how to use dark magic.”

Cadance coughed. “That would be strange.”

Wow, not very subtle Cadance. But it was very good to know for sure that Celestia could cast dark magic, too, not that it was very surprising.

Sigh. I really should help Cadance out before anypony else noticed that she had just validated the joke.

“Shining, you still want to learn how to detect dark magic, right?” I asked. His face said everything I needed to know. “It’s okay. I don’t blame you. I did totally abuse it for an extra dessert once.”

“Hey!” Mom said. “Are you talking about that time you ate a whole–”

“Ehem. And you could get yourself a niche specialty in the field in the guard. I don’t think anypony else really bothers learning anything about dark magic anymore – defensive or otherwise.”

Shining chuckled. “Twily, I know you’re an academic, but we don’t need niche specialties in the royal guard.”

“Ugh! I know! You’re wasting your resources by having everypony learn everything.”

Seriously. Besides the automatic…niche-ifying…that occurred with ponies’ special talents, it was just plain impossible to learn everything about everything. Even an alicorn would have trouble. It probably wasn’t even possible anymore, given the rate new information was generated now compared to, say, when Equestria was first founded.

“Coming from you,” Cadance said, “that’s not a very convincing argument.”

Now that was hitting below the dock. And ad…uh…homi – homm – homini…whatever wasn’t even a valid argument. Oh well, I’d just let Cadance have this victory. She desperately needed the win to ‘even out’ the score.

Heh. Even out. Please.

Even as I thought that, another thought came to mind, something I remembered I needed to ask about.

“Hey, Cadance? Remember how I said that this was my fault and not yours?”

Hesitantly, Cadance replied, “Yeeeees…”

“What did Shining really mean when he said you volunteered to help him?”

Chapter Ten - The Longest Night - Part Three

This time there was no dream waiting for me. The moment before, I’d been awake, and the next, I was asleep but conscious. That only ever happened when Luna was waiting for me to fall asleep. She usually just checked every once in a while.

Luna was probably just eager to talk, but I’d take it as a Hearth’s Warming present nonetheless. My subconscious wouldn’t have a chance to torment me this time.

“Twilight,” Luna said. I turned toward her voice and saw her walking and fading into view. “Are you ready to talk about what happened?”

“I am.” There was no point in putting this off, and I really did need somepony I could really talk to, somepony I could tell the entire truth to.

“Good. First, let me state the obvious so you won’t run your head in circles like you usually do.”

How rude…but true.

“I am not going to abandon you over this. I still care for you as I always have. That said, there are a lot of ponies rather upset with, and I quote, my baby pet monster. Telling them that I don’t know what happened hasn’t exactly helped matters. I didn’t want to do this to you tonight, but–”

“It’s okay, Luna.” It really was. That she still both wanted to and could spend the solstice with me was plenty already, even if we had to fill some or all of it with business.

“Have you talked with any of the changelings yet?” I asked.

Luna made a face like I’d just forced her to eat festering hay. “No, and I do not care to ever visit another one of their dreams ever again. The hive mind – let’s just say that their dreamscapes are distasteful and leave it at that. One star.”

I cocked my head to the side. “How many stars is that out of? One? Two?”

“As many stars as there are in the sky, Twilight. And that one star is Saiph, the star I put in the wrong place and forgot to fix.”

Luna had managed to keep a straight face throughout her answer and for a short time after. I had not. The way she had managed to say that as if she were explaining the simplest thing in the world to me was just so – so – Equestrian lacked the perfect word. Comedy magic could approximate it, perhaps.

Recovering much quicker, Luna said, “Anyway, I’ve managed to piece together a general idea of what happened–”

Well duh. Even if I wasn’t quite…all there at the time, Luna had just spent a morning comforting me. That sort of implied she knew something of the events.

“–and I have several guesses, but I would like to hear the full story from you directly. We can discuss what you did wrong while we go, too.”

I gave Luna a faint smile in thanks. Finally, a pony who would tell me to my face that this was my fault without…verbal or physical assault. I’d managed to run into a few changelings vacating the castle while on a food run who had been less understanding than Chzix.

Although, Queen Chrysalis at least, I couldn’t blame at all for getting emotional.

“Where do you want me to start?”

“At the beginning.” What an unhelpful answer. When I opened my mouth, Luna added, “Whatever you think is the beginning.”

Nodding, I took a deep breath and began the story. “So going over what you already know quickly, Queen Chrysalis and I had our plan to get Cadance – what’s the term – wasted at my family’s Hearth’s Warming Eve party.

“We were going to…you know…wreck my friendship with her. We just had to get her mad and drunk, which isn’t that hard during those kinds of parties when you’re trying. Cadance wouldn’t have been able to put herself in the same room as me – or my replacement – for years.”

On a less professional note, I was glad we didn’t have to do that anymore. Disregarding the other problems I’d caused, Cadance had a completely different kind of guilt, which while no easier on her, at least left us as friends. She’d even have the chance to move past it while I was gone with Pupa being able to spend time with her.

It was possible we might not even have to tell her the truth ever. Well maybe not ever ever, since eternity, but it was possible I might not have to tell her I’d ever left for a long time.

No, on second thought…just no. That wouldn’t work out. Ignoring the promises I’d made to Queen Chrysalis to get Cadance to help them prosper – even Cadance could put two and two together given enough time and information as she’d demonstrated yesterday – Pupa deserved the recognition.

“Twilight,” Luna called, bringing me out of my thoughts. “Do try not to get absorbed in your thoughts while you’re telling a story.”

“Ah, sorry.”

Smiling, Luna said, “It’s fine. You have more than enough talents at your age. We can work on bard, skald, jester–”

“I get the point,” I interrupted, much to Luna’s apparent amusement. “Anyway, I tried getting a head start using Trixie–”

“Which was a good idea,” Luna interjected. “Do not let the results tell you otherwise.”

“Right, well, apparently Cadance and Celestia identified me as a suspect for giving Trixie information. And I still don’t know exactly what she found out.”

Luna added, “Neither do I.”

“So Cadance came over to have a discussion about it with me and caught me after or during my…episode concerning Sunset Shimmer.”

Holding up a hoof, Luna took a minute or two to think about something. Perhaps she was updating her guesses on what happened. Eventually, she merely said, “Continue.”

I sighed. “The exact details are lost to time. I don’t know if it was bad timing, or if Cadance was shocked by my appearance and couldn’t figure out what to do, or if she was deciding whether or not to wake me up, or whatever, but she must have overheard me mumble something important.

“When I did wake up, her behavior was obviously off. It took me a while to figure out why, but as soon as I was sure, I…flew into a panic. The flare was an accident, even if it was a predictable one. I tried to make the best of the situation and erased their memories.”

Uttering what could only be described as a long-suffering sigh, Luna asked, “Did you bother to find out if either of them had sent a message to my sister?”

“I…” I buried my face in my hooves. “No. I didn’t. I don’t think she did–”

Interrupting, Luna said without hesitation, “She did. The probability she didn’t is astronomically low.”

“But Celestia didn’t–”

Luna gave me a glare that said, ‘Stop being stupid.’

Had I admitted to more than I thought when I spoke with Celestia? But she hadn’t thrown me into the dungeon, and she had saved me instead of just throwing me off the Canterhorn.

No, no. Celestia didn’t kill foals.

But she had assigned Shining as my parole officer. She’d worded it nicely enough, but that described the situation perfectly. And Cadance would be spending a lot of time around me – well, Pupa – too.

But if Celestia already knew about me, then Pupa’s sacrifice was pointless. She’d just go retrieve the elements immediately and never let them out of her sight.

“Luna, have we lost?”

“No, Twilight.” Luna was obviously losing her patience with me. “Try again.”

That – something I believed was wrong. Luna asserted that Cadance had sent the message, so that wasn’t it. I didn’t see how we could possibly win if Celestia knew about our connection, so that couldn’t be it either. The only fact stringing them together was–

I facehoofed. “I think I owe Queen Chrysalis too much.”

“Yes, you do. Be sure to thank her for intercepting that message for us.”

She didn’t say them, but the two worst words in Equestrian were hanging in the air: I’m disappointed.

“I, uh…anyway,” I said, not really caring how gracefully I moved the conversation on so long as it moved on, “after that–”

“We’re not done yet, Twilight. What did you plan to do after you erased their memories?”

“I – I don’t know,” I mumbled, unable to look Luna in the eye.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know! I wasn’t thinking! But I would’ve had hours to come up with something.”

“You would’ve had hours,” Luna repeated. “Did you take that into account at the time, or are you just justifying your actions now in hindsight?”

Huh? What did that matter? “I…probably knew it at the time – perhaps in the background of my other thoughts. I was pretty distracted.”

Luna sighed, and I took a quick glance at her out of the corner of my eye. She caught me looking and gave me a small smile.

“Why don’t we declare your decision to immediately pounce neutral for now. If you really did think at least a little bit ahead, that is.”

“R-really? It wasn’t stupid?”

“Oh, no. It was stupid, but it was understandably stupid. However, you didn’t hesitate to do what you had to when your hoof was forced. That’s something, at least.”

Ugh. Way to build my hopes up and knock them down. Understandably stupid was still stupid, regardless of whatever virtue it had incidentally displayed.

“What should I have done?” I asked. More of my disappointment in myself leaked out than I’d expected, and Luna’s smile faded with it.

“I suppose I’ll have to ask for your forgiveness here, Twilight.”

What? What, what, what?

“You absorb theory and learn so quickly that I’ve forgotten how much you need raw experience. All the knowledge in the world won’t help you if you don’t know how to apply it.”

Oh. This was an ‘I’m over a hundred times older than you’ kind of thing.

Luna was completely right, though; I needed more hooves-on application slash practical experience. I’ve been improvising well, but now that she’d pointed it out, it was obvious that was really the only thing I knew how to do when I didn’t have hours or days to plan things out.

“I’ll take a week or two to revise your lesson plan accordingly so we can instill some decent instincts in you,” Luna continued, “but for now, why not ask yourself why you didn’t utilize a place you specifically built to flare in.”

Stars above, I was an idiot.

I had an entire cave system below Canterlot that I knew how to teleport into, a cave system which Shining and Cadance had no idea how to leave. I would’ve had all the time in the world to deal with them. I might’ve even been able to avoid flaring, although it wouldn’t really have mattered down there if I did.

Even if I didn’t have the crystal mine available, I could have teleported the three of us literally anywhere else in the world. Shining might have been able to counter my teleports after the first half-dozen or so, but he probably would’ve been too surprised to do it. And by then, I would’ve had them at the base of the Canterhorn where I could also work in peace.

Ugh, I was so stupid. I could have avoided…avoided destroying a large chunk of Canterlot if I had just stopped to think. Thinking was supposed to be what I did best!

A hoof rubbing my mane broke me out of my thoughts.

“Try not to blame yourself too much, Twilight. It’s unhealthy, and you’re learning.”

Sighing, I took a moment to lean into the affection. I really didn’t deserve it, but it was an irresistible siren call.

“We can move on now, Twilight. What happened next?”

“Well, I was unconscious for a while, so I’m working from the…emotionally charged version of events that I got from Queen Chrysalis. Everypony else’s story supported hers, though. Cadance in particular–”

“Twilight, while I am thrilled you have taken the time to cite sources and to analyze their biases, that will only distract you from the goal of this retelling. Please skip it.”

“Fine,” I grumbled. “My flare destroyed my house and… Horseapples! I never closed off the tunnel from my house to the mines. If anypony finds it–” I looked up at Luna, who looked unconcerned. “It’s…buried in rubble, isn’t it?”

“Probably. If not, it would be a very small hole set in a rugged mountainside that somepony important who had nothing better to do would have to notice. I wouldn’t imagine there are a large number of such ponies.”

“Right… Sorry for overreacting. Would you remind me to deal with that after I escape the castle?”

Luna shrugged that special way that said, ‘Sure, why not?’

Now that I’d noticed one of them, I knew I needed to spend a few hours thinking over all the little problems. I didn’t know how closely Celestia would be keeping her eye on me, but I couldn’t afford to leave any small clues lying around in the aftermath of the disaster.

Speaking of which, it was a good thing I didn’t have anything irreplaceable – like Luna’s research books – in my house yesterday. I doubted anything would’ve survived the fall.

“Thanks, Luna. So anyway, my house…fell on me. Obviously, I survived.”

Hmm… Luna had explicitly asked me not to die the morning before. What irony. I couldn’t help wondering what her initial reaction to this was. Disappointment? Concern?

I didn’t know which I’d prefer. Disappointment sort of implied she believed in me enough to naturally think I couldn’t have died, but it was still disappointment.

Well, whatever it was, Luna didn’t seem interested in sharing anything beyond a frown.

Skipping over how I survived, I said, “My flare apparently hit some of the main supporting structures of Canterlot. I made a quick trip to the archives, and…well, I kind of have a hard time believing something like this hasn’t happened before. I know it’s still my fault, and I don’t know what I would’ve done if anypony had actually” – I gulped – “died…but Canterlot isn’t very difficult to destroy. Not even the parts that rest directly on the cliff face.”

“And what would you recommend, Twilight?”

In no uncertain terms, I said, “Move the capital.”

Luna smiled. “That’s great to hear. I feared you might protest on sentimental grounds.”

“What? You are planning to move it? Where to? Certainly not back to the old castle, right?”

Waving her hoof dismissively, Luna said, “No, no. The old castle is finished. That is something my sister and I are in full agreement on. Rather, a few decades ago, a delightful little town named Hollow Shades was founded, and I quite fancy the atmosphere.”

Hollow Shades? I’d never heard of… Wait, wasn’t that the place in that forest? “Did it just recently get a connection to the Equestrian Railway?”

“Indeed. It’s west of Manehattan in the…” Luna’s eyes lit up in recognition, and she giggled for a moment. “Wow, I can’t believe I never made the connection.”

Oh, great. Here it came.

“I suppose I’ve just demonstrated that even I can miss things once in a while.”

Ugh! Just get on with it!

“Anyway, it’s west of Manehattan in the” – Luna snickered – “Twilight Forest.”

“Ugggggh! Not you, too. Please.”

“Oh?” Luna said, eyebrow raised. “While I would love to hear the story behind your distress, we should return to our primary topic.”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. “Where were we?”

“You were casually destroying Canterlot.”

Oh. Right. That. I blushed and turned away. “So…I ended up in the castle hospital with Cadance and Shining. Cadance recovered quickly. Shining…didn’t. There were a lot of other ponies injured, too. Shining said nopony died, but…but I really hope he wasn’t lying to me. He didn’t look like it, but he’d tell me the same thing whether or no–”

“Twilight. Facts. Chronological order.”

“Sorry, I just–” Falling to my haunch, I continued, “Nevermind. Just before Cadance got back on her hooves, Queen Chrysalis swapped Pupa and me. From my understanding of it, she told Cadance whatever the doctors would have told her and that ‘I’ was suffering from some other magical problem they couldn’t quite identify.”

“Which my niece,” Luna interjected, “interpreted as you having none of the emotional bonds she expected to find. Very clever. Please pass on my compliments. I assume she did not take it well.”

Sighing, I half-whispered, “The words distraught and hysterical came up when I talked to Squama – the changeling who actually made the swaps.”

“That’s not surprising. She is young for a pony and even younger for an alicorn.” After humming to herself, Luna continued, “I believe I can make a comparison you could fully appreciate.

“Post-ascension, I have no doubt you’ll be able to ‘see’ the magic in ponies. Suppose you ran into a pony who had no magic. Not suppressed, but simply not present.”

I shivered, knowing more or less that what Luna was going to say next would be horrifying. Not that having zero magic wasn’t already a horrifying thought.

“Now imagine you were the one that caused that…wrongness in the pony. That you had reached inside them, had torn their magic to shreds, and had simply erased it. That they’d lost something that you’d come to view as a core, defining part of what it means to be a pony. Something which a pony cannot be without and which cannot be without a pony. And you couldn’t even remember why you had done it. To a loved one, no less.”

Wow…

Wow.

That was such a different way of looking at it. I’d been thinking of Cadance’s powers in moral and existential terms. The way Luna presented them, it sounded like Cadance believed she had…what? Killed me and brought me back? It wasn’t a perfect comparison, but it was close. To Cadance, I was Twilight iff I had Twilight’s emotional attachments.

What was I supposed to do with that? Just how traumatized was Cadance over this? Over something she hadn’t even done?

Very, obviously. I’d seen just how horribly lost she’d been – and still was – firsthoof.

“Luna…” The question died on my lips.

“Yes, Twilight?”

I dared to look Luna in her eyes and ended up trapped. They said so much for her. I had to ask the question.

“Are we – are we bad ponies?”

Luna sighed.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “This isn’t how I wanted to spend the solstice with you.”

“I know, Twilight. But we can still have fun after we finish this. To answer your question, disregarding recent events, do you believe we are evil or in the wrong?”

“No.” That much I was sure of. I’d had to perform some somewhat morally questionable acts, but I hadn’t had much of a choice, considering how much time was at my disposal. And nopony ever got hurt. And ultimately, I’d even helped a bunch of ponies, too!

“Good. Now I assume you’ve played chess before–”

“No. Chess is stupid. It’s all about who can memorize the most board positions.”

Luna suppressed a laugh and said, “Oh dear, somepony here is a sore loser, I believe.”

“It’s true!” Luna did not appear convinced. Sighing, I conceded, “I know how to play the game.”

“Then you know what a forced move is, correct?”

I nodded. I probably knew where Luna was going with this, but I wasn’t sure how to feel about it as an argument.

“The thing about forced moves, Twilight, is that you have to make them if you want to keep playing. You made some mistakes today which led us into a few forced moves, and we chose to continue the game. Think of it this way: if we did not, you would be dead right now.”

“But you said Celestia–”

“Yes, but you would be out of the game and stuck mortal. I won’t go so far as to say mortals are all already dead – something doesn’t have to last forever to have meaning – but you would die. Or do you believe my sister would ever agree to let you ascend?”

That was a simple question that needed no answer.

“Better to let your dear foalsitter have a finite depression – no matter how long – than for you to give up eternity. She will forgive and forget eventually, and she will be ecstatic that you are with her when she does.”

Something about that sounded – eyes widening, I asked “Does that mean you will – eventually – forgive–”

Luna’s scowl could’ve curdled milk.

“Yes, Twilight. You will, too. But the keyword is eventually.” With a snort of pure anger – or perhaps pure frustration – Luna readopted a smile. It was a small thing, but it was a smile. “Would you mind if we moved on?”

“No, that’s – that’s fine. So Cadance did her thing, and now Pupa is a perfect substitute for me.” And was going through an identity crisis. “After that, Pupa and I were swapped back.

“Next, I think Cadance and Celestia shared information with each other. Or maybe it was before. I don’t know for sure, and it didn’t seem important enough to ask about. I slept for a while, woke up, talked about what happened a bit, and then went back to sleep. Nothing important, really.”

Now, had anything important happened between then and when I next woke up?

Hmm… Not that I knew of. That may have been when Cadance ‘volunteered’ to help Shining recover, but that would be better discussed when I found out, rather than when it occurred.

“I next woke up to Cadance and Celestia.”

“Just to be clear,” Luna began, “you mean they were in the room together with you?”

I nodded, although I didn’t really get why that mattered.

“Please keep that to an absolute minimum. Pass that advice on to Pupa as well.”

“Um…sorry if this is a stupid question, but why?”

“I’m unsure of the exact details of how my niece interacts with her domain, but the more often you are in the same room as my sister, the more likely she will be to notice that you know me on a very personal level.”

“Oh,” I said flatly. “Yes, I’ll do that. That sounds very important.”

“It is. You might be able to pass it off as pining for somepony to defeat my sister for you–”

Especially if only gullible old Cadance were involved.

“–but that is, of course, a last resort.”

No doubt. Cadance was gullible, but even she was only willing to believe so much. Although it was a great desperation plan. There were plenty of stories of ponies falling in love with perfect, idealized versions of other ponies they’d built up in their imagination. It was hard to believe, but not impossible.

The worst part was I wasn’t even sure if it was easier or more difficult to believe that of somepony like myself. I did tend to get caught up in my imagination. Oh well.

“I’ll tell Pupa that, too,” I said. “But after I woke up, Cadance left the room posthaste. Once she was gone, the interrogation began. Celestia had found out I’ve been using dark magic from my medical examination. I guess Queen Chrysalis either didn’t know about it, had an incomplete examination to tell Cadance, was pressed for time–”

Seeing Luna’s recently very familiar ‘get on with it’ face, I said, “Ehem. Queen Chrysalis didn’t manage to intercept that information for me. That questioning ended with Shining – and Cadance to some degree – becoming my parole officer. More or less. With the promise of some future conversation after Shining heals…

“I don’t envy Pupa my life.”

Ignoring the snickering, I continued, “After that, and in the context of Trixie, Celestia asked me how much I knew about…you.”

After a terrible silence, one far longer than Luna had ever stopped to think before, she finally said, “Interesting…”

“You’re not mad?”

“I am annoyed that my sister was reminded that you know about me. You will need to be careful to see that she isn’t spying on you in the coming weeks before you depart Equus. Still, that, at least, is not your fault. Rather, I’m far more interested in what exactly Trixie knows.”

“If anything anymore,” I commented.

It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that Celestia would let Trixie stay in the know, but it seemed unlikely. She probably only let me go free because she’d have to erase over a year of my memory, and because Cadance certainly wouldn’t be happy about that.

“Quite,” Luna mumbled. “But if she does know part of my sister’s plans now, we have quite an opportunity laid before us.”

“I’ll get right on it!”

After all, Trixie was in the castle. I was in the castle. Why, it would be simply improbable if we didn’t bump into each other and have a heart-to-heart conversation after everything that had happened. Unbelievable even.

So long as Celestia hadn’t told Trixie to stay away from me, that was. That could prove problematic, although I could claim ignorance of such a command.

“And by right on it, I meant after I wake up.”

Nodding, Luna asked, “So was that everything important?”

“Except for one thing, yes. At some point, Cadance decided to take the entire blame upon herself, which I understand why more now. She’s effectively being sent back to – well, she never actually attended it before, being a former pegasus and all. She’s basically being sent to magic kindergarten. Among other things.”

“Oh my,” Luna said, eyes wide. “And at her age. How embarrassing.”

“I know, right?” It was my fault, but I still couldn’t help but laugh. “It sounds like a nightmare.”

Luna dramatically looked from side to side and sidled up to me. “I heard her parents were neglectful,” she whispered.

I gasped. “No way! You’re saying–”

“They never taught her unicorn magic.”

“Oh, the scandal! What kind of world do we live in these days where fillies are so uneducated?”

“A truly terrible one. Why if I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d never had the chance to learn how to preen.”

Oh, stars. That had certainly been one of our more intimate moments. Luna had caught me in the midst of a dream about flying, and one thing had led to another. Preening had turned out to be a really personal act.

Chuckling at my embarrassment, Luna said, “Well, it is true that she needs to learn more non-pegasus, non-alicorn magic.”

“It must be pretty embarrassing being a goddess without knowing how to smite ponies,” I said, recovering enough to keep the joke going.

“Not that somepony of her temperament has much smiting to get in.”

“To be fair, she’s known to make ponies smitten on occasion.”

“I thought the only pony she’d smote was herself with your brother.”

“Hey! That conjugation doesn’t work!”

“Oh? I say it does.”

“Does not!”

“And just who is the authority figure here?”

I suppressed a laugh as I watched Luna fall to the ground, now filly-sized and looking absolutely ridiculous.

“I believe that would be me,” I answered. “It is my dream, after all.”

Luna rose to her hooves with a grunt. “I think you’re looking to be smote yourself.”

“Maaaaaybe, but” – I teleported directly in front of Luna and bopped her on the nose – “you’ll have to catch me first. You’re it.”

Jumping into the air, I materialized a pair of wings for myself and flew off.

After a few seconds, I turned my head back to see how closely Luna was following; she was by far my senior in flying. I slowed down when I found her missing. And then grunted when I bumped into her.

“You’re it,” Luna said, her voice barely recognizable as a filly. She promptly disappeared in a flash of magic.

“Wha…” It took a half-second for what had happened to click in my mind. “Lunaaaaa! Teleporting is cheating!”

I heard a giggle from…nowhere. Or maybe it was everywhere. “Apparently not. It is your dream, after all.”

Rolling my eyes, I changed my dream’s logic to disallow unicorn magic. It only took me a second to spot Luna flailing around above me and to my right. It would seem I’d just knocked her out of an interesting spell that I’d have to ask about later.

I dashed toward her before she could recover.

And ran into a dark gray storm cloud.

As I coughed up water and struggled out of the cloud, Luna bucked it back out of existence, thus sending me tumbling downward, still soaked.

“You’ve got a lot to learn about pegasus magic, Twilight.”

I spread my wings and pulled out of a nosedive with more stress than I would’ve liked. My wings probably weren’t big enough for the really crazy tricks, but that meant Luna’s weren’t either. Then again, she had infinitely more experience than me.

This might be difficult.

Luna wasn’t even bothering to fly anymore as I pursued her. Instead, she hopped from cloud to cloud, each one forming at her hooves at the base of her jump. It was definitely slower than flying.

“And more maneuverable,” I grumbled as I flew right past Luna. She had simply stopped fleeing and, very casually, had sidestepped me, evading my outstretched hoof by the tiniest distance.

I turned back around and found Luna lazing around on a particularly large cloud, feigning disinterest. I made a beeline toward her, but kept my speed slow enough so I’d be able to make a sharp turn this time.

And as I suspected, when I got close enough, Luna let herself fall into the cloud. The last time she had disappeared, it had been to my right, so I gambled on her doing that again and veered right and down. A moment later, I got lucky and ran straight into Luna. Well, maybe it was a bit unlucky; we bumped heads and wings, which sent us spinning off through the air in a tangled mess.

We landed on a cloud – Luna must have made it – and tumbled head over tail once or twice.

Dazed, I mumbled, “You’re it.”

A hoof gently nudged me; Luna had recovered annoyingly quickly.

“You’re it.”

I lifted my head to find Luna. She wasn’t very far away. I could probably reach out and touch her, although she’d likely just dodge. Collapsing back onto the cloud, my breathing ragged, I said, “You win.”

“Ah ha! And with that I score a double victory!”

“‘Had smote’ is still incorrect.”

Tickling me with her wings, Luna asked, “What was that?”

“‘H-had s-smote’ is s-still wr-wr–”

I lost it as Luna redoubled her efforts to tickle me into submission. And it worked.

“I give! I give!”

As I struggled to catch my breath, Luna said, “As it should be! Try again in a couple centuries, and maybe you’ll have a chance.”

“Well, sorry,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I didn’t – didn’t know you spent so much time practicing tag.”

Luna smirked and stretched out her wings again menacingly.

“Wait, wait! I’m sorry! Just let me – let me catch my breath first.”

Giggling herself, Luna said, “Very well. I shall grant you your reprieve.” Sighing, she continued, “Oh, how long has it been since I last played tag? I must have been less than two centuries old. That was so long ago. Perhaps we should make something of a tradition of the game in place of the Summer Sun Festival.”

Sitting up – just barely – I asked, “How so? Alicorns against Equestria?”

“Or maybe Equestria against Alicorns. It’d be a lot fairer for us if we didn’t have to hunt down every last Equestrian to win.”

“But it’s not really fair to them if we just make a one AU jump off-planet.”

“Well, perhaps we could have some sort of strange abstract concept thing that limits what actions are available to us. But what ever could we possibly call that mysterious phenomenon of self-restriction?”

“Blegh,” I said, collapsing again. I was done with that conversation.

“Still, you surprised me, Twilight. I didn’t know you had such an energetic side to you.”

“I guess.” It’d just felt like it’d be fun. And it had been. Maybe I was subconsciously just trying to forget my problems and move on for the moment, but whatever. I was in too good of a mood to wax melancholic right now.

“But I don’t think I’d make this an everyday kind of thing. Sparring is already more than enough exercise for me, even if it’s all just in my mind.”

“Oh, Twilight,” Luna said. “You’re so lazy.”

“Humph! I prefer the term ‘sedentary’.”

“Heh. I don’t believe that’s any more flattering a word.”

“Wanna bet?” I asked, instantly regretting my words. I’d just invited round two upon myself.

Luna flew past me, tagging me with her hoof.

“You’re it.”

Chapter Eleven - The Longest Night - Part Four

Yet again, I stepped aside as a doctor barreled past me through the castle hallways. This was, unfortunately, an alarmingly frequent occurrence as I wandered about, looking for wherever Trixie had disappeared to.

As I explored, it because increasingly clear that the entire castle had been converted into a hospital – excepting the archives, kitchen, and dining hall – and that there were thousands of ponies who had lost everything. Cadance had told me that the crown would reimburse everypony, but a stack of bits wouldn’t be a good replacement for home.

Paradoxically, it seemed that the ponies not caught up in the disaster were alternately ecstatic about the sudden rise in property values – from the increased scarcity – and worried that public perception of danger might cause them to crash.

“Ponies,” I mumbled.

Feeling a pair of eyes on me, I turned around quickly, nearly throwing Spike off my back. Nopony was there, but Spike was giggling from the brief excitement. Maybe I was just being paranoid, but I would swear somepony had been watching me for at least a half-hour now. It could be one of Celestia’s goons, but it didn’t feel like that kind of stalking.

Sighing, I directed my gaze out a window as I walked by. The sky was practically littered with pegasi working round-the-clock to bring summer to Canterlot. As much as ponies emotionally needed a regular Hearth’s Warming right now, Canterlot as a whole needed warm temperatures more with the mass influx of homeless ponies.

I paused a moment to watch one strange pegasus flitter about, leaving a rainbow colored contrail in its wake. It was a vaguely entertaining singular spectacle. Luna was right, as always; I had a lot to learn about pegasus magic. The Wonderbolts did their little lightning cloud thing, but I’d had no clue pegasi could trail rainbows.

Oh well. There’d be time for that in the future; I’d have to be at least passingly familiar with pegasus magic to ascend.

A few minutes later, that feeling of being watched resurfaced. It was time to consider my options.

I could simply scry behind me. If there was anypony there, I’d be able to find them without any problem. Unless they were warded. If they were, it’d have to be a changeling or one of Celestia’s spies. I could live with the former seeing me use complex magic, but not the latter.

Sure, I could always erase a memory, but so long as Celestia wasn’t a gibbering idiot – which she wasn’t – she’d check for memory loss when her spy reported back.

Ugh. I couldn’t take the risk.

On the other hoof, maybe I could make this work to my advantage. If I were watched while talking to Trixie, I could potentially make it seem like I knew less than I did. Then again, if this persisted beyond my stay in Canterlot Castle, I’d need to deal with my stalker on a more permanent basis.

I heard a clatter behind me. It could have been some of the other many ponies walking past bumping into each other, or something, but I hadn’t seen anypony carrying anything that would make such a racket. It had to be the stalker, then, and clearly it was probably not a professional.

Spinning around, I found a butterscotch colored pegasus mare buried under a small pile of medical…stuff.

“Hello?” I hazarded.

No response. Whoever this was, she didn’t seem interested in talking. Or meeting my eyes. Or looking at anything, really; she had her wings and forehooves covering her face.

This was like Twinkleshine all over again, but multiplied a hundred times over. Did I want to deal with this? No, not at all. Did I have time to deal with this? Nope. Could I resist my curiosity? Unfortunately, also no.

Using my magic, I quickly stacked the spilled implements off to the side. “Hello,” I repeated, hoping to get any kind of response out of the pegasus.

There was none; however, when Spike echoed my greeting, the pegasus’s head snapped up. I took a half-step back, and her head moved with me – no, with Spike. Her eyes were focused on him; it was as if I weren’t even here.

“Oh my. You can talk already? But you’re so young. My name’s Fluttershy. What’s yours?”

And like that, I had lost interest. Still, at least this Fluttershy was interested in Spike the dragon instead of the dragon, Spike. Hopefully she wouldn’t tell me to put him on a leash, send him away, or otherwise treat him as a feral animal.

Even if he did bite in his sleep.

“Spike!” Spike answered.

“Hello?” I said yet again, once more getting no response.

Completely ignoring me, Fluttershy asked, “How old are you, Spike?”

After some embarrassingly long time – not fair, Twilight, he was one, maybe two, in pony years – Spike replied, “Four!”

Sighing, I turned so that Spike was completely out of Fluttershy’s line of sight and tried one last time. If this didn’t work, I was just going to walk away.

“Hello, Fluttershy,” I said. “What do you want?”

Fluttershy moved backward in a flurry of wings and hooves, crashing into the wall and getting a few scowls from ponies she had nearly bumped into.

“H-h-hi,” she replied, barely audible over the noise of the hallway. Rolling my eyes, I cast a quick spell to improve my hearing. I’d like to amend my previous statement. This was nothing like Twinkleshine; she had at least talked to ponies before I got her to open up.

Smiling this time, I asked, “You didn’t get hurt when you fell, did you?”

“No,” she whispered.

“That’s good. Would you like to play with Spike some more?”

In what was definitely not a whisper, Fluttershy said, “More than anything.” Blushing and turning away, she added, “If – if you don’t mind, that is.”

“It’s fine with me. Spike, would you like to play with Fluttershy?”

Happy giggling meant yes. Then the only question was should I ditch Spike now or tell Fluttershy to come back later? I was kind of hoping to use him as a buffer between Trixie and myself, but I would only be fooling myself if I said I expected that to help.

I should probably just let Spike have his fun. But then again, Fluttershy was probably in the midst of…

Ha! No. I had felt somepony – probably Fluttershy the whole time – watching me for a good while now; whatever purpose Fluttershy had for those miscellaneous medical supplies was likely over and done with long ago. Nothing in the pile looked terribly important, so hopefully she hadn’t caused anypony any real trouble.

Speaking of which, was there really such a labor shortage that random civilians were being recruited? Fluttershy looked about the same age as Pinkie Pie – maybe older – but I couldn’t see her as a doctor or nurse at her age, her temperament ignored.

“Well, Fluttershy, if you want, I can leave you and Spike with my parents. I have somepony I have to find right now.”

“Oh, yes. That would be wonderful.”

“Alright, follow me, then.” As we walked, I asked, “So, do you live” – maybe lived, now – “in Canterlot? Fluttershy?” I turned my head back and found Spike and Fluttershy making faces at each other.

Sighing, I slowed my pace to bring myself abreast of Fluttershy. I wasn’t sure if I should be surprised that she didn’t notice.

“Fluttershy,” I tried again. This time I got a response.

“Oh, um, I’m terribly sorry. Did you say something?”

My eye not so much as twitching, I said, “I just asked if you were from Canterlot or not.”

“Oh. Oh, no. I live in Cloudsdale with my family right now.”

“Right now?”

“I, uh, didn’t mean right now, right now” – facing forward away from Fluttershy, I rolled my eyes for good measure – “but I usually do, for, um, for now. Not that they’re pressuring me to move out; they’re such nice ponies to have raised me and everything, and I wish I could’ve been a pony they could be proud of.” Whispering lower than normal hearing could pick up, she added, “I’m only graduating this spring.”

Oh, goody. I’d gotten myself involved with an idiot.

Sigh. That wasn’t fair. For all I knew, Fluttershy had gone through some horrible illness which magic couldn’t cure or something. She certainly fit the part: lanky, apparently behind in her education, shy as if she had spent a lot of time alone in a hospital, et cetera.

“So what brings you to Canterlot?” I couldn’t imagine somepony as shy as Fluttershy voluntarily rushing here to help ponies, but apparently dragons were a-okay. Not that there were any other dragons in Equestria outside of the migration routes.

“I’m here to help…” Fluttershy’s eyes widened. It was sort of impressive that it took her this long to realize she’d abandoned her post, whatever it was. “Oh dear, oh dear. I’m supposed to be helping my dad.”

Her dad, eh? Odd. Considering she lived in Cloudsdale, he was probably a pegasus.

Then again, pegasus doctors weren’t unheard of, but medicine was a pretty heavily unicorn dominated field for good reason. Zebras were, of course, second in number with their potions, but even they accounted for at most ten percent.

In the end, the probability of him being a unicorn given doctor and Cloudsdale was probably higher than him being a pegasus.

Shaking my head free of that triviality, I said, “You’re free to go back to what you were doing, if you wish.”

“Oh, but I – well, maybe – I should, but – but Spike, and…oh dear. I’m so sorry. Could I – could I come back later?”

So much for letting Spike have his fun right away.

“That’s fine. Just ask the guards to direct you to Twilight Sparkle. They all know me.”

Ear twitching, I giggled like a madmare to myself. Finally, finally, I had found Trixie. I’d had to tear apart practically the entire castle to do it, but here she was in a secluded corner of the archives of all places. This was almost literally the last place I’d expected to find her.

Okay, Twilight, pull yourself together. It wasn’t like Trixie had intentionally forced me to walk the entire castle from top to bottom and get lost a dozen times in the castle’s foul geometry that didn’t obey the rules. Deep breaths, Twilight. Deep breaths. In, and out.

Right then. Spike still on my back, I made my approach.

“Hello again, Trixie.”

Trixie’s head shot up from the table, her face the perfect picture of shock and…guilt? What?

“I – uh – hello, Twilight. Hey, Spike.” Trixie smiled, her previous mood all but forgotten. There was still the tiniest downward curve at the ends of her mouth, but nothing more. At this point, I made sure I wasn’t in a dream.

Spike, completely oblivious, hopped off my back and ran over to Trixie. Now that I got a better look at her as she hugged Spike, her eyes were well-past bloodshot. That was something she couldn’t hide. Not without magic, at least, and she hadn’t used any.

A sad Trixie, now that made sense. I didn’t exactly take the revelation that I was a replacement well, and I didn’t even like Celestia. Trixie probably took it much worse, assuming Luna’s and my guesses were right.

But I knew Trixie felt guilty. Her eyes had widened for an instant after the initial surprise had worn off; she refused to meet my eyes, even as she looked at me; and if I hadn’t misheard, she’d aborted a soft gasp when I’d first spoken.

The only thing I could think of for Trixie to feel guilty about was being my replacement, but that was almost an incomprehensible idea to me. I would probably feel a little guilty if I had taken somepony’s place – if I weren’t the better choice – but I would mostly be absorbed in my own sense of inadequacy.

And Trixie, I knew how ponies like her worked; it had been one of Luna’s classic examples. Trixie craved attention. She would push herself to be the best and pretend she was, even if she weren’t. She should be very upset with me, or at the very least, she should be trying to prove herself the better pony, even if she didn’t consciously realize that was what she was doing.

Something wasn’t adding up.

“Trixie, would you be willing to talk?”

“Of – of course. Trixie is always willing to talk to intelligent ponies.”

Oddly enough, I couldn’t tell if Trixie’s heart was in her words. The flattery aside – which weakly implied she had learned a great deal about me in addition to whatever else – it sounded as if she weren’t sure if she wanted to talk to me or not. Not that I would accept no as an answer.

“Thank you,” I said, seating myself directly across from Trixie. “Given…the given, I take it you learned what you wanted to know?”

“I… Yes. I did.”

I waited, hoping Trixie would say something without prompting, but it seemed she had fallen into her own little world. It sounded like she still had her memories – whatever they consisted of – but I wasn’t sure yet. Still, I did have to stop myself from leaning forward in anticipation.

And either way, Spike was the one to move the conversation along, literally shaking Trixie out of her rumination.

“I–” Trixie shouted. She calmed herself down quickly enough, but she had briefly shown me that guilty face again. “What is it, Spike?”

“Don’t be sad,” he said, hugging her.

On a completely unrelated note, Spike was adorable. He was high-maintenance, troublesome, and expensive to feed – usually – but adopting him was definitely the right choice. Even now, he managed to bring an inappropriate smile to my face.

“Trixie is not sad,” asserted Trixie.

I raised an eyebrow suggestively. Luna had said a raised eyebrow could say more than most speeches, and I was inclined to agree.

Still refusing to meet my gaze, Trixie asked, “What did you want to talk about, Twilight?”

“I was hoping you’d tell me what you found out.”

“I… I’m not supposed to talk about it. Sorry.”

I sighed dramatically. “That’s troubling, because I don’t know how much you know.”

Trixie finally looked me in the eye.

“But you know I at least know there’s a secret,” I continued, “and I know you at least know there’s a secret. That’s really all that matters. We are, after all, intelligent ponies. I was hoping we might share information with each other. And keep the exchange secret, if we can. Cadance and Celestia were not happy when they thought I’d fed you information.”

Holding my gaze for some time, Trixie finally asked, “Why?”

I said with my best wistful smile, “Would it make sense to you if I said I wanted closure?” Trixie nodded. “Great. I’ve found my own little slice of happiness, and I want to put the past behind me, starting with learning exactly what it is I’ve lost.”

It wasn’t a lie. I did want to ‘put the past behind me’. The only catch was the process of doing so ended rather unpleasantly for Celestia.

“I – I’m not supposed to,” Trixie mumbled. I briefly considered the possibility of her being under a geas but discarded the idea when she continued. “Do you… How should I put it? Do you know what’s wrong with the royal family?”

“It’s missing an alicorn,” I answered immediately. “Do you know her name?”

Head cocked to the side, Trixie said, “Nightmare Moon. But…”

I smiled. It appeared Trixie was smart after all, or at least smart enough to sniff out hidden meanings in questions. “Her real name is Luna.”

Nodding, Trixie asked, “What does S.S. stand for?”

“Sunset Shimmer. Do you know what a Flare is?”

“Yes,” Trixie answered, looking away from me completely. Not even bothering to phrase it cryptically, she asked, “Do you know about the Elements of Harmony?”

“I do. I think we both have enough base knowledge to talk freely. Do you agree?”

“Yes, I – oh. What about Spike?”

Both of us looked over to him. He had gotten bored and had taken to playing with books as if they were building blocks.

“He’s young.” It was answer enough for both of us as we turned back to each other.

“So,” Trixie began, “you said Nightmare Moon’s real name is Luna?”

I sighed inwardly. Apparently I would be giving information first. How irritating.

“Luna is the Alicorn of the Night. I could tell you about the histories I’ve uncovered, but I honestly don’t think you’d find them all that interesting.”

“Agreed.”

“There’s really not much more to say other than that she’s Celestia’s little sister.”

Both points were only technically true.

The first was true because no matter how much Trixie disliked Celestia right now – if at all – deep down I had little doubt she still loved her mentor. There was practically nothing relevant I could say about Luna that wouldn’t make Celestia look bad.

The second was true in a chronological sense only. In terms of conscious hours, however, Luna was much older than Celestia; Luna was always conscious.

“Although, I suppose it also bears mentioning that Luna was never a monster and never ate foals.”

“Of course not. Trixie is not a fool. That whole cannibalism shtick is obviously just an old mares’ tale.” Sighing, Trixie asked, “Do you hate Princess Celestia?”

Choosing my words carefully, I said, “I have little reason to love her, unlike you.”

“You’re right,” Trixie said, a frown winning out over a smile on her face. “I can’t bring myself to so much as dislike her, even if she wouldn’t have given me the time of day back when we were eight if she didn’t need me to use the elements for her.”

Oh, how I wanted to pounce on that admission and to drag every last piece of information Trixie had screaming out of her immediately, but that just wouldn’t do. It would never do again. This time I would think before I acted.

Celestia needed Trixie to use the elements. Why? Did that mean Celestia was unable to use them, or was it just more convenient to have Trixie wield them? Honestly, from the information she had, Celestia didn’t even need the elements to win. She had Cadance on her side, after all. She only needed them to banish Luna for another thousand years.

Trixie could be a reserve plan on the extremely unlikely chance Celestia didn’t plan to banish Luna again, but I couldn’t think of any reason why she would trouble herself with subduing Luna another way when the elements worked so well.

So the main plan had to be Trixie banishing Luna. That was an incomprehensible decision if Celestia could wield them herself. Trixie was so weak and fragile in comparison to her. It would be so easy to simply kill Trixie, but there wouldn’t be much of a point with our plans. Not that Luna or I would stoop to that; we weren’t Celestia. Even if we found another artifact for me to ascend off of, I’d still try to hunt down the elements first.

But even Cadance would have to be a better choice. Yeah, she was bad at magic, but surely in the approximately two decades she will have been an alicorn, she could learn to wield the elements.

It wasn’t as if Luna and I had never considered the possibility of Trixie wielding the elements before, but the idea was just so confusing. And when something was confusing, as Luna had told me time and time again, it usually meant something else I believed was wrong.

The simple answer was Celestia had lied to Trixie. However, that didn’t seem consistent with the other facts, particularly the fact that Trixie was Celestia’s apprentice at all. Celestia could still have lied, but why would she? She could easily have come up with something more believable if she had some reason to lie to Trixie.

What if she had lied to get Trixie to feed me false information? Would that imply she knew I was Luna’s apprentice? Probably, but then why wouldn’t she just deal with me directly? To make Luna overconfident? Was Celestia that twisty?

No. No, that was ridiculous. That was the kind of gambit you ran when you were bored, desperate, or insane – usually in conjunction with dozens of other ones. The former was possible, but not probable, of Celestia, and the middle was simply not the case for her. The latter wasn’t something I had any evidence for, so I had no reason to believe it.

Was Trixie lying to me? Not unless she was a Luna-class actor. As far as I could tell, she’d only spoken the truth. I didn’t see any reason for her not to, either.

“Twilight,” Trixie said, poking me with her magic. “Are you alright?”

Horseapples. “Oh…um…yeah. Sorry.” I really needed to learn how to think and talk at the same time.

“No, I’m sorry. I should have put that better. But as you put it, that’s what you lost: the chance to fight an insane goddess with Equestria at stake.”

I ignored the prickle of annoyance at Luna being called insane. “No, it’s alright. I just – I didn’t expect it to be something so important. Can Celestia not wield the elements herself?”

“That’s what she said…”

Good to know for sure. But that still left the ‘why not Cadance?’ question. I doubted Trixie knew the answer, but – “Why can’t Cadance wield the elements?”

Trixie shrugged.

“Oh well. I’m sure there’s some reason.”

We fell into a silence broken only by the sound of Spike playing with books, neither of us wanting to speak.

“Heh,” Trixie said sometime later.

I looked toward Trixie and silently asked her to elaborate on what she found funny.

“What a pair we make, Twilight. We’re just…” Trixie paused to gnaw on her lip, trying to find the right words. “You know what the real joke of all this is?”

I shook my head. “But there’s a lot of irony we could pick through, I’m sure.”

That pulled a rather sardonic smile out of Trixie. “Absolutely. But no, it’s something Princess Cadance told me. Sunset Shimmer is still alive. Apparently, Princess Celestia can still feel her tugging on the sun somehow every on rare occasions. She could just waltz back in and render both of us moot.”

“That’s…”

Not letting me dwell on that, Trixie continued, “You know, Princess Celestia and Princess Cadance are always telling me to make a few more friends.”

A snort escaped me. Smiling, I interjected, “Cadance gets on my case about that on occasion, too.”

“She’s such a busybody, isn’t she?”

“You have no idea.”

“Heh. Maybe not. Still, do you want to be friends?”

I cocked my head to the side. “Sure, why not? It’d be nice to have somepony my age that I could talk about magic with.”

It would make life harder for Pupa, but being Trixie’s friend was too good of an opportunity to pass up given that she was supposed to wield the elements; it opened up some options we hadn’t been available to us before, such as talking Trixie around to our side. Or at least confusing her long enough to steal the elements and ascend if I failed to recover them.

And if it really became too much – say, if Celestia became too watchful – Pupa could just break the friendship or let it wane out of existence.

“So,” I began, after a long, awkward silence, “what now?”

“Yeah, I…don’t know. The only thing I ever do with Moondancer is homework.”

Cooperation on homework? At a level that Moondancer could actually help?

What exactly was Celestia teaching Trixie? Trixie should be years ahead of her peers with a breadth of knowledge none of them could match. I’d never talked to Moondancer much, but from what Twinkleshine had told me, she wasn’t smart enough or self-motivated enough to keep pace, even if she was the best in her year.

“Is she actually any help? I mean, there’s an accelerated program, and then there’s being Celestia’s student.”

“Well…she’s not a detriment to Trixie. But what does that make the self-taught Twilight Sparkle?” Trixie’s eyes widened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean–”

“It’s fine, Trixie. Anyway, I only get to learn the theory” – I still shivered every time I thought of that; Twilight the earth pony was no joke – “so I’m probably way ahead of you.”

Well, it was true that I did mostly book reading when I was awake. It also helped a lot that my days were half again longer than anypony else’s.

“Ha! You dare challenge the Great and Powerful Trixie, Twilight Sparkle?”

“Well,” I began, suppressing a laugh at Trixie’s posing, “my magic is unrestricted for the next day or so, but I really shouldn’t.”

“Oh. Right.” Trixie fell back onto her chair with a heavy thump. “I’m sorry.”

“Trixie, it’s fine. You don’t have to walk on eggshells around me. You’re not acting like the Great and Powerful Trixie everypony knows at all.”

“Sorry…”

Sighing weakly, I asked, “Do you want to talk about it, Trixie? I can keep secrets, and I know enough about everything for you to speak freely. And I’m not Cadance or Celestia.”

“No, I…” Trixie began, biting her lip. “No. Trixie’s problems are her own. I’m sorry, Twilight.”

I couldn’t put my hoof on what exactly, but something in Trixie’s voice sounded a lot more sincere in that last apology. It felt like it meant something more.

“Anyway,” Trixie continued, veering the topic wildly away, “I heard you managed to turn Moondancer’s below average roommate into an A-plus student. How did that happen?”

“I didn’t do anything special. A good tutor makes a world of difference is all.”

“Pfft. Boring. You don’t secretly do her homework, do you?”

I rolled my eyes. “If I did, how would you explain her test scores?”

“Steal ‘em in advance, secret agent style.”

“Trixie, I know neither of us actually attends that school, but I’m sure we both know their tests are mostly one on one and specific to the pony.”

“Oh, come on. For a Flare, you have no sense of flair, Twilight.”

Oh, ha ha.

“Magic isn’t magic unless you make it magic. Get it?”

“Trixie, theater is your shtick, not mine. What do you want me to do, run around shouting, ‘I’ll show them. I’ll show them all,’ and laughing maniacally?”

Humming to herself, Trixie looked me up and down. “That’s not exactly what Trixie would recommend, but it could work. Have you tried it yet?”

“No.”

“Dear Celestia, you have!”

Curse my capillaries!

“Once. I did it once. Once!”

Trixie just smirked at me.

“It’s true! And I only did it because I got the idea from a book!”

“Oh? What book?”

“It’s…not important which one. Laughter has proven stress relieving effects.”

“Whatever lets you sleep at night.”

“Ugh! Fine!” I slumped to the table. “I don’t care anymore. Think what you will.”

After an extended silence, I looked back up at Trixie. She was waiting patiently for…something. Cocking my head to the side, I silently asked, “What?”

“Trixie is still waiting for you to say, ‘But I’ll show you,’ or something to that effect.”

I let my head slam back onto the table.

“Ow…”

I never found out what Trixie’s problem was nor why she had to be the pony to wield the elements. The former I could live with. The latter…well, I could also live with it, but it seemed like an important mystery to deduce the answer to. I suspected Trixie didn’t know herself, and I certainly wasn’t going to ask Cadance or Celestia. Hopefully, Luna would know when I saw her tonight; my sleep schedule was in chaos from all the extra naps I’d gotten recently.

In unrelated news, I’d found out why Spike liked Trixie. Underneath the illeisms, the drama, the arrogance, the sheer hamminess, and the extroversion – stars above, when she got going, she couldn’t shut up – Trixie was actually fairly interesting and intelligent. She and I had a lot in common once she stopped being annoying.

Trixie had, as she had said, a flair for magic which I could admit to liking and which Spike adored. She could easily be a fantastic stage magician, and if Celestia taught her properly, she could bend her talent to just about anything. It all came so naturally to her that I found myself a little bit jealous on occasion. Not that I’d ever give up my talent for hers.

Anyway, I was nearly back to Shining’s room when I came up behind a pair of pegasi, one of whom was familiar.

“Come on. You want to talk to this Spike, right?”

Fluttershy nodded weakly, but she gave no ground. Literally. Her…friend, perhaps…was trying to push her forward to no effect.

“Then just go on in there and talk to him and get this over with.”

“B-b-but, Dash, there’s g-guards. And there’s a p-princess in there. I couldn’t–”

“Sounds pretty cool to me. Now stop being a foal and get in there, Flutters.”

“No!” Fluttershy whispered.

“Yeeeees,” grunted the pony who was probably Dash as she redoubled her efforts to marginal success. That was the name Fluttershy had used, if I hadn’t misheard.

Alright, it was time to interrupt this comedy act.

“Hello again,” I said, a few hooves behind the pair.

Fluttershy unsurprisingly eeped, but Dash turned around like a normal pony who didn’t have any kind of social dysfunction. How strange.

“Heya,” Dash said, looking me up and down and paying special attention to Spike. “You must be Twilight Sparkle.” Flying over to get a better look, she continued, “And this must be Spike. Never thought I’d get to meet a dragon up close like this and live to tell the tale.”

I strained my neck to get a better view of Dash talking to Spike on my back.

“Hey…what do you call a baby dragon? Whatever. Hey, Kid. Name’s Rainbow Dash. Fastest pegasus in the world.”

Lifting Spike off my back and into my waiting hooves, I asked, “You do realize the superlative implies there is literally nopony faster than you, right?”

“What, you think I’m lying or something?”

“It’s more likely you’re exaggerating than not.” Said the most powerful unicorn. I silently chuckled to myself over the irony.

“Ha! As if. I’ll have you know there’s not a single pony that comes close to my speed. Why when I was just your age, I was already breaking the sound barrier with the legendary sonic rainboom.”

My eye twitched before I could help it. Here was the pony who had set off my first flare. I didn’t know if I should buck her in the head or…ehem…buck her in gratitude.

Neither, probably. She hadn’t made me flare on purpose, and I would’ve been discovered as a Flare eventually regardless. Possibly under worse circumstances…

“Anyway, I take it you two are friends?”

Dash flew to Fluttershy and flew her over, one foreleg holding her around the barrel. That was actually pretty impressive. Fluttershy was significantly taller – and heavier – than Dash, and the positioning seemed all around awkward for flight.

“Totally. Me and Fluttershy go way back. I’m sure you’ve noticed she needs some looking after.”

I had, but I wasn’t going to comment. It seemed Fluttershy didn’t intend to defend herself either.

“Right, so why don’t we find somewhere more private?” I asked, looking suggestively toward Fluttershy.

“What, and not meet the princess? Cause that’d be super uncool, Twilight.”

And how is it that you somehow felt entitled to meet Cadance? It wasn’t like she wouldn’t say hi to anypony, but I didn’t like it when ponies put promises in my mouth.

“Dash, we shouldn’t–” Fluttershy whispered.

“Fluttershy, you told me you were too scared to meet a princess–”

“That’s not exactly what I said…”

“–and now I’m all psyched up to meet a princess myself.”

Facehoofing, I said, “Ugh. Look, why don’t we just head to Cadance’s room and pass the time until she comes looking for me? You can meet her then. I’m supposed to be in bed anyway.”

The things I put up with for Spike.

I sat on the edge of a spare bed that had been set up for me in Cadance’s room. While I would have preferred Cadance’s bed, it was made of clouds, and I wasn’t going to publicly cast a cloud walking spell.

Fluttershy and Spike were playing together and not interacting with anypony else in the slightest bit. I might have just told the guard outside to not let her leave with Spike and have taken a nap, if it weren’t for the other pony in the room.

Rainbow ‘Danger’ Dash, as she had reintroduced herself to me, rather than Spike, had grown bored with ‘the totally cool dragon’ and was backstroking lazily through the air above me. That – that just blew my mind. Luna had told me I needed to learn more about pegasus magic; I had told myself I needed to learn more about pegasus magic.

But this – this was just plain breaking the rules. Pegasus magic shouldn’t be able to do that!

It even looked like Dash was pushing air upward! That should have sent her barreling into the floor!

And the worst part, the absolutely most irritating aspect, was that Dash didn’t even know how she was doing it.

“Yeah, so I totally blew through school. There was no keeping a pony as awesome as me back. Skipped a few grades with my sheer awesomeness and stayed my senior year to help out Flutters.”

Argh! Deep breaths, Twilight. Deep breaths. Dash wasn’t immortal enough to survive everything she deserved.

“I pulled all-nighters before the exams to ace the theory stuff and flushed it all outta my head right after.”

Easy, Twilight. No amount of ingenuity, or cleverness, or luck will get you out of destroying Canterlot Castle as collateral damage for your first outrageously justified act of smiting. Your divine retribution would have to come later.

Easing up on grinding my teeth and forcing a smile, I asked, “So what are you going to do after spring? You’re graduating rather early to strike out on your own.”

It was a safe question. I didn’t see how Dash could possibly find an answer which would dig herself deeper into her hole; she’d already tunneled straight into Diamondia.

Dash performed a backflip and hovered a bit above and in front of me. She positioned herself as if she were lying on a bed, or a cloud, or anything flat. I swallowed another urge to scream in exasperation. It was official. Dash didn’t obey physics.

“I figured I’d hang out with Fluttershy for a few years. Help her get used to wherever she finds work, maybe join the local weather team, practice my flying. You know, that kind of stuff. Then when I’m old enough, I’m gonna join the Wonderbolts.”

I wondered if it were really possible to burst a blood vessel from sheer anger. I could barely believe Dash had managed to find a response so…so…so awful. All that raw magical talent, and she wanted to waste it on being a Wonderbolt. Even Trixie wanted to be more than just a performer, and she behaved like she was born to be one.

Argh! It sickened me to admit it, but this was like watching myself aspiring to be a mere librarian, but with wings instead of a horn.

This time I’d change the topic away from Dash completely. Surely she couldn’t mess that up. “So then what’s Fluttershy going to do?”

“Ah, Flutters wants to find herself someplace nice, quiet, and boring on the ground to work with animals.”

My ears perked up at the first non-irritating thing Dash had said all afternoon. I turned my head to get a full-on look at Fluttershy playing with Spike, both clearly enjoying themselves. An idea took shape in my head, a wonderfully, beautifully idiotic idea.

“Exactly what kind of job does she want?” I asked.

“Huh? Anything with animals, really. Like, literally anything. Why?”

“Well, if she just wants a job with animals somewhere she wouldn’t have to talk to many ponies, I know of the perfect opportunity.”

“Really?” Dash asked, floating directly in front of my face and invading my personal space. “You’re not just trying to pull one over on ole Fluttershy, are you?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Cool,” Dash said, flying to face Fluttershy. “Hey, Flutters.” When no response came, Dash flew over to Fluttershy and tapped her on the withers, causing her to shriek, take to the air, and then clumsily fall back to the ground.

Was Fluttershy unable to fly? That would certainly explain wanting to find a job on the ground. Oh well. I didn’t need her to be capable of flight in space.

Once Dash had dragged Fluttershy back over – not literally this time – Fluttershy said, “Um…Dash said you might know of a job for me. I mean, I wouldn’t want to impose or anything, but I have been looking…unsuccessfully…and I could really use some help, if it isn’t too much bother, that is.”

I was about to automatically reply yes when I remembered something I’d said to Twinkleshine. The ponies I took with me would become like family. I’d met Twinkleshine when she was still young and moldable, but Fluttershy was probably going to be this shy her entire life. She even seemed uncomfortable around Dash to some extent. Was I willing to put up with that?

Probably not. But then again, I could always just ignore her. There’d be somepony, Spike if nopony else, to keep her company, and I doubted she’d be offended or miserable if I didn’t talk to her often. Yes, this could work out just fine.

“Yeah, I–” A knock came on the door, and I quickly finished, “Come find me in Ponyville in a week or so, and I’ll introduce you to the job.”

“Twilight,” Cadance began, opening the door, “Hearth’s Warming Dinner is almost ready. Are you awa–” Gasping and backpedaling, Cadance asked, “Were you making friends?”

I sighed and chose to ignore her question. “This is Fluttershy and Rain–”

Somehow, the mare in question was already hovering right in front of Cadance. “Name’s Rainbow Dash.” She might have made the slightest of head nods in substitution for a bow. Then, extending a hoof, she added, “Nice to meet you, Princess.”

Cadance took the time to flash a grin toward me before turning her attention back to Dash. After bumping hooves, she said, “Hello, Rainbow Dash. It’s always a pleasant surprise to meet a friend of Twilight’s. And where did Fluttershy disappear to?”

I gestured behind my bed, and Cadance crossed the room to look at Fluttershy trembling behind it.

“Hello there, Fluttershy. I’m Princess Cadance. It’s very nice to…meet you… Hmm… Twilight? Is she…”

Shrugging, I said, “As far as I can tell, she has equinophobia and xenophilia.”

“Oh. That’s rather unfortunate.” Falling to the floor, Cadance stared straight at Fluttershy’s forehooves, which were covering her eyes.

And that was my cue to stop paying attention. Instead, I went to fetch Spike from the walk-in closet he’d wandered off into. Fortunately – very fortunately – he hadn’t set fire to anything. The only chaos he’d brought down upon Cadance’s rather extensive collection of clothing was getting caught in a sweater large enough for…Shining…

Huh. I’d never really noticed it before, but Cadance was still growing. How long would it take her to reach Luna’s height? Based on her age when she’d ascended, she likely had been fully grown as a normal pony. How much had she grown since I’d met her? A decimeter at most, I’d guess. That still left her with a long way to go.

Oh no. How long would it take me? I’d been having growing pains on occasion recently, and I did not look forward to having an extra four decades or more of them. Worse, Mom was short, which meant I’d probably be short. Would that make me take even longer?

Sigh… Well, as Luna had said, a finite pain in exchange for eternity was still a good deal, even if that pain would be incredibly annoying.

“Come on, Spike.” I said, spinning a giggling Spike out of the tangled mess he’d trapped himself in. “It’s supper time.”

“Again! Again!”

I sat Spike down on my back. As I left, I said, “No, Spike. Supper.”

“Supper? Diamonds?”

“If you behave, I’ll make you one later.” Diamonds were surprisingly easy for me to make. I’d once entertained the idea of crashing the gem market, but Luna had intervened and told me in no uncertain terms that I should not.

“Kay!”

I left the closet, and to my great surprise, found Cadance chatting with Dash and Fluttershy like it was the most normal thing in the world. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve accused her of cheating by using her connection to love.

Waving me over, Cadance said, “Fluttershy has something she wants to tell you, Twilight.”

“Oh – um, yes. I, uh, thank you. For helping me, that is. You really didn’t have to, but–”

“You’re welcome,” I said, preempting the otherwise inevitable drivel that would’ve followed. I really didn’t want to listen to it again.

“Come on, Flutters,” Dash said, hovering in the air as always. Didn’t she ever get tired? “Let’s go find our parents. I’ve heard this Hearth’s Warming dinner thing is supposed to be amazing.”

“I wouldn’t say amazing,” Cadance said, “but the kitchen staff did work hard to make dinner for thousands. If you see any of them, please give them your thanks.”

“Will do,” Dash called back as she left the room with Fluttershy.

As soon as they were out of sight, Cadance’s smile sagged. What little smile I had myself disappeared.

“Hey,” called Dash, flying back into the room alone. “Really, Twi, thanks for your help. Fluttershy’s a real mess and needs a hoof or two to lead her with some stuff. So just, you know, thanks a lot.”

“I, uh…” Wow, was I knocked off balance. There was no way I could’ve expected Dash to say something like that, especially not so sincerely. “It’s – it’s no problem. Really.”

“Still, thanks again. And it was cool meeting you, too, Princess Cadance.”

Cadance smiled and waved a hoof as she watched Dash fly back out of the room. Still not looking at me, she said, “That was a very nice thing you did, Twilight. I’m proud of you.”

Sighing, I said, “It really wasn’t. It cost me nothing to tell her about the job.”

Indeed, it cost me nothing, and hopefully it would net me an animal specialist. An animal specialist who also happened to have some basic medical knowledge. Quite a catch, really. It was just my own needs incidentally making other ponies better off in the process.

“Perhaps,” Cadance said, “but it still wasn’t very dark of you.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a small smirk on Cadance’s face. A comment like that deserved my full attention.

“Ehem.” Cadance and I turned toward each other, and I let the usual dark flames flow from my eyes. “It really was nothing. You see, my summoned Tartarian demons get all testy when my virgin sacrifices turn out to be missing one of the prerequisites, and I figured that Fluttershy would be good to have around, just in case.”

“Oh dear. You know, Twilight, I don’t think sacrificing ponies is technically illegal. I can’t imagine Princess Celestia sitting down with her council and saying, ‘Hey, we need to outlaw sacrificing ponies to demons.’ It should sort of go without saying that you shouldn’t.”

“Hey, I always keep my sacrifices in pairs. If they really didn’t want to be sacrificed, all they have to do is…um…” Oh, this was awkward. Shining had walked in – well, limped in on three legs, supporting himself with his magic in place of the fourth – through the open door while I hadn’t been paying attention. I still couldn’t bring myself to properly look at the bandages covering Shining’s stub.

For her part, Cadance had shot Shining a concerned and reprimanding look before bursting into laughter. I could see how this would be funny from her perspective, but personally, I was more of a fan of situational humor when I wasn’t in the situation.

Shining started to facehoof, only to think better of it before his hoof had even reached his withers. He tried to hide it, but I saw his legs bending in the telltale sign of losing his balance, and I noticed a grimace flash through his face.

“Please tell me this isn’t going to be a regular topic of discussion in the future,” Shining said. “And please tell me dark magic doesn’t involve sacrifices of any kind.”

“It doesn’t,” I answered, remembering to turn off the dark fire I had going while Cadance continued to laugh.

“Well that’s good, I guess…” Shining sighed slowly and quite obviously deliberately. “Now if you’d be so kind as to lift whatever curse you’ve placed on Cadance, we should get to supper.”

I let my withers sag and worked up a sad filly pout. “I didn’t do anything to Cadance, Big Brother.” Pretending to wipe a tear out of my eye, I continued over Cadance’s redoubled laughter, “How could you even think something like that? Don’t you trust me? Don’t you love me anymore?”

“Wha – Twily, I didn’t mean – I know you didn’t – I – I’m sorry.”

Once I had gotten my own laugh in, I said, “I know, Shining. I’m just teasing.”

It was nice that we could pretend everything was normal like this. I had no clue what we were going to do to make things be normal again – hopefully it wouldn’t involve any yelling, passive aggressiveness, or fear of me and or Cadance – but this was good enough for now.

Not that we would be able to do that during the imminent dinner. Everypony who had no place to go was going to attend to eat, drink, and be merry, but only until the end. When it was over, Cadance was going to publicly take the blame and apologize for what I had done. Annoying and troubling, but there was nothing I could do about it; Cadance was dead set on this, and some kind of explanation was necessary for the public.

I sighed. At least it would be over and done with soon. Then the three of us could run off to Ponyville to spend time alone together. Smiling faintly, I couldn’t help but look forward to it.

Chapter Twelve - A Full Crew

I sighed as I stared at my reflection in the mirror across the room. Slouched over on my bed, I idly played with my new magic suppressor. I couldn’t figure out why, exactly, but when I put this one on, it didn’t give me the same sense of horror and desperation as the last one.

That wasn’t to say it wasn’t awful; I still felt a bit like I was dead inside when it was on. It just…wasn’t that scary anymore for some reason. Maybe it was because I had enough power now to lift it on and off gently with just my magic, but that explanation didn’t sound right. It lacked that ring of truth that it should have had.

On a side note, I’d discovered that I could, in fact, cast a warming enchantment with a suppressor on. I’d gotten a small laugh out of that.

In other news, I was happy to find that my story about dark magic held water. Almost my entire repertoire of dark magic was available for my use, with only the strongest spells I knew lying out of reach.

And this time I had decided to do the smart thing and not destroy the suppressor. What I hadn’t decided on was whether or not to leave it behind. Pupa would certainly find it useful, but as much as I hated to admit it, so would I. There was a room on the Nebulous specifically designed to contain my flares, but after the incident at Canterlot, I knew I couldn’t possibly take too many safety precautions.

A very forceful knock came at the front door downstairs, catching me completely by surprise; I’d had to take all of my spells on the house down permanently with Cadance and Shining formally moving here in a couple weeks. Regrettable, but at the same time, I probably wouldn’t be coming back on any long-term scale after my trip to Mona, anyway.

First taking a deep breath, I affixed my suppressor over my horn and buried myself under my covers.

Eventually, Mom called out, “Twilight, some friends of yours are here!”

Friends, eh? I didn’t think I was up for friendly friend time right now. I squeezed out a very short-range scry through my suppressor and moaned.

“Fluttershy just had to pick now to visit, didn’t she?”

Dash was with her, too, and she would undoubtedly be just oodles of fun.

Ugh, whatever. It would probably be fine to swap the suppressor for a fake, but I was a little too lethargic to do so right now. I rolled lazily out of bed. Not bothering to fix my mane or tail, I trudged out the door, down the hallway, and stopped at the stairs. One deep breath later and I had a faker smile on my face than Celestia.

As I approached the living room, I could hear some small talk.

“What kind do you have?” Dash said.

“Just chocolate right now,” Mom answered. She must have been talking about the cookies she’d made earlier today.

“Sweet! A whole plateful would be awesome. Or do you want two, Fluttershy?”

A short silence passed. Presumably it was filled with Fluttershy-grade mumbling.

I walked in just as Mom was leaving. “Hello, you two. It’s good to see you again.”

“Hey, Twi. Get this. I had to drag Fluttershy halfway here when she found out Ponyville is next to the Everfree.”

I turned my head slightly to look at Fluttershy, but she didn’t say anything. She just stared straight at the ground.

“Fluttershy, the Everfree isn’t dangerous on the edges; why would we live here if it were?” Aside from silly reasons that made volcano fortresses cool. Seeing that my reassurances had done nothing, I sighed and said, “Well, the job offer is literally as far away from the Everfree as it can be, so try not to worry.”

Fluttershy mumbled something I couldn’t quite hear.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

After another bout of ineffectively mumbling, I turned to Dash who shrugged.

“Maybe we should relocate. There’s actually two job offers for you. One moment.”

I left the living room to the sound of a very quiet gasp and set about gathering the few belongings I might need. Removing my suppressor for the moment, I teleported various objects from around the house to me, starting with my saddlebags.

Stepping into the kitchen, I asked, “Hey, Mom, can we get those cookies to go?”

I grunted as I shoved open a door in town hall with my hooves. I never thought I’d be doing that again, but here I was. Oh well. There was no telling how many of Celestia’s agents were in town now – if any yet – and I wasn’t going to take any dumb risks just to make my life more convenient for a few weeks.

Fluttershy and Dash walked in right behind me. Well, Dash flew in, but that was the same thing for her.

Approaching the mayor’s secretary’s desk, I said, “Hello again. I brought the mare I told you about last time.”

“The animal specialist?”

I nodded and gestured toward Fluttershy, who looked a bit like she wanted to run away crying.

After taking the time to frown slightly, the secretary said to Fluttershy, “Go right on in. Mayor Mare’s free right now.”

“Dash,” I said, stopping her before she could enter the mayor’s office.

“Hmm? What is it?”

“Interviews are generally conducted alone. It won’t look good if you hold her hoof through the entire thing.”

“What? Are you serious?” Dash looked behind me, presumably at the secretary, and touched down on the ground for once.

“Besides, I need to talk to you,” I said, closing the office door myself. “Follow me.”

I took off down a hallway, looking back with a scrying spell. Dash hesitated for a moment, turning between the door and me, but eventually she took to the air again and flew my way. I led her back outside and a short ways through town, somewhat envious that her own magic kept her warm without any effort on her part.

Eventually, I slowed from a trot to a gentle walk, and I asked, “Can you keep a secret, Dash?”

“Huh? Of course I can,” Dash replied, somewhat aggressively. “I’d never sell out a friend or anything like that. That’d be super uncool.”

Shaking my head, I said, “It’s not a personal secret, Dash. It’s a state secret.”

“Oh. My. Gosh. That is so awesome! Are you one of those secret agents trained from birth to be the best of the best? Is that why you know Princess Cadance?”

I stopped walking for a second to look up at Dash. “Um…as far as I know, there’s not an elite corps of foal soldiers. I guess I have no evidence to the contrary, but you need to present evidence for…”

Seeing that what I was going to say would go in one ear and out the other, I turned back and continued walking.

“No, there’s no such ponies, Dash. Although…I suppose I am about as close you’ll get.”

I heard a squeal I would have expected more from Fluttershy than from Dash. I had probably just scored an impressive number of ‘awesome points’.

“Anyway, this is top secret, even from Cadance, so you cannot discuss it with anypony.” After another squeal, I added, “Especially from Cadance, actually. She has too many troubles to deal with right now as it stands. Understood?”

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t tell anypony. I got it. So what’s the secret?”

“The job Fluttershy is interviewing for is a cover.” For certain definitions of interviewing. I certainly wasn’t going to let Fluttershy not get the job. Not that I thought she didn’t have the skills required; she just didn’t have the prerequisite social skills to leave a good impression. I had kept my interference to a minimum, though. “The real–”

“Whoa, whoa. Wait up,” Dash said, flying in front of me. “You want to make Fluttershy a secret agent? That’s a horrible idea. She’s scared of her own shadow half the time.”

I rolled my eyes. “And who would be a better choice? You?”

“Well,” Dash said, poorly pretending to be aloof, “now that you mention it.”

Well, here it was: the point of no return. Not actually, I could always erase memories, but it was the point of no return in spirit. I’d thought it over, weighed the pros and cons, talked to Luna, and now it was time to make a final decision.

Should I take Dash with or should I just have her be Fluttershy’s contact on Equus?

Taking her with would make it easier to recruit Fluttershy, no doubt. Peer pressure worked wonders. And I wouldn’t have to find a weather manager. And Dash was admittedly a very impressive specimen, like a bizarre pegasus version of myself. And she was more than capable of doing the job. And she would probably be a valuable ally in the future; she was obviously the kind of talent you didn’t let go when possible.

All it would cost me was putting up with her.

I sighed. The choice was obvious.

“We need Fluttershy’s knowledge and skills, so we can’t take you in place of her. However, if you’re interested–”

“Yes!”

I walked around Dash. We were about halfway done with our lap of Ponyville, and I wanted to finish that lap sometime today.

“You really shouldn’t agree like that, Dash. You have no idea what you’re getting into.”

“Psh. I can manage whatever you’ve got for me.”

“It’s not that,” I said. I had no doubts about Dash’s ability to manage weather. “This is an entirely different career track than the Wonderbolts.”

“What, can I not quit once I’m old enough to join the Wonderbolt Academy?”

I bit my tongue to keep myself quiet. Dash could do whatever she wanted with her life. It wasn’t my business.

“Yes, you can. But not right away. There is a minimum length of service.”

Humming, Dash asked, “How long?”

“Until a little after the thousandth Summer Sun Celebration. After then, you’d be free to stay or go.”

“Is that all? And here you had me thinking it’d be a for life kinda thing. I’m sure having ‘former secret agent’ on my resume will more than suffice for applying a couple years late.”

Okay, that was worth a real giggle. Putting ‘secret’ agent on a resume was sort of a contradiction in terms.

“Just so you know, the work won’t actually be that exciting until the last year or so. Mostly it’ll consist of low-stress weather work and a lot of relaxation time.”

“So…pretty much what I planned to do anyway?”

“More or less, but in an exotic locale and with the opportunity to gain the favor of the crown.”

“Wait, do you mean like, favor, or favor.”

I turned to look at Dash flying sideways and raised an eyebrow.

“Do you not watch movies or something?”

I held my gaze as we walked. “No, not really.”

But now that you mentioned it, stocking up on movies and a projector or two seemed like a very good idea. Records were probably a good thing to collect as well. I owned a few myself, but I had a sneaking suspicion that nopony would share my taste in music.

“Wow, we need to get you a life, Twi. You could be the second awesomest pony in the world, and it wouldn’t mean anything if you don’t stop to enjoy life once in a while.”

And you understood the meaning of the word stop? Still, at least we found each other’s passions mutually uninteresting.

“So anyway,” Dash began, “what’s the job exactly?”

“We need to–” I shook my head. I could do much better than plain Equestrian here. “We’re leaving on a quest to recover a frighteningly powerful set of magical artifacts.”

“Nice! Are there going to be giant monsters, and dragons, and stuff to fight?”

“No. Not at all. I wouldn’t invite Fluttershy along if there were.”

Dash snorted. “Fair. I guess.”

“Like I said, it’s going to be low-stress. The hardest part of the trip will be keeping ourselves from driving each other mad.” Talking through Dash’s laughter, I continued, “I’m serious, actually. You’ve heard of cabin fever, right?”

“What, are we going to sail around the world for six years or something?”

“Or something. I’ll explain in more detail later. I need to go pick up a number of other ponies on the team tonight, and I’ll take you and Fluttershy with to meet them. If you want, that is.”

Dash flew a half-somersault in front of me and addressed me upside down. It irked me more than it should that I still hadn’t figured out how she did that with just pegasus magic. Even Luna was left scratching her head. “Like I’d ever miss a chance to meet real life secret agents.”

Sigh. Twinkleshine was already going sci-fi on me, and now I had Dash heading down the dark road of action novels.

“I’m afraid none of us really think of ourselves the way you are.” Interrupting Dash before she could say anything to the effect of ‘lame’, I said, “Except for Queen Chrysalis.”

“Queen? What’s up with that? Are we dealing with foreign royalty now or something? Or is she going with a ‘queen of espionage’ kind of thing?”

“Both, actually.”

We walked in silence for a moment before Dash rolled over and landed. Walking beside me, she said, “Huh. I honestly wasn’t expecting that.”

“Yes, that’s just how she likes it. You probably won’t be able to meet her until we actually leave, though. She’s busy, and we had a bit of a…falling out recently.”

Dash was polite enough to give me a moment alone with my thoughts. Although, right now, in this particular instance, I wasn’t sure if I considered that a good thing.

“Anyway. Her daughter–”

Well, all the changelings were Queen Chrysalis’s foals. Or something. Luna was a bit unclear on that, and I’d never had a chance to ask for clarification. However changeling reproduction worked, Pupa was Queen Chrysalis’s heir, and the two had a very pony-like mother–daughter relationship.

“–is staying nearby. I’m sure you two would get along wonderfully.”

That was probably true. I hadn’t spent much time with her yet, but Pupa seemed a lot like how I used to imagine Celestia: kind, gentle, altruistic, and above all, patient.

Arriving back at town hall, we stopped just outside the door.

“Is she a spy, too?” Dash asked.

“More a princess of spies, but yes, she is also quite proficient in the field.”

“Sweet! So are we going in or what?”

“No, I have somepony else to meet today now that you two are here.”

I’d found another prospective crew member. Again, peer pressure worked wonders, and Dash would no doubt lay the peer pressure on with reckless abandon, a fact I intended to exploit for all it was worth. Although from what I’d heard and seen, I didn’t think it’d be necessary with the new prospect.

“I’ll meet you back at my house afterward,” I finished.

Dash turned to look toward the outskirts of Ponyville. “What about the Everfree? Flutters was practically scared to death.”

Oh, right. I’d forgotten about that. Summoning a piece of paper and some ink from my saddlebags, I drew a non-scale map of Ponyville along with directions and an address. Hoofing it over to Dash, I said, “Here is where Queen Chrysalis’s daughter is staying. Her name is Pupa. Just tell her I sent you. I’ll meet you there.”

I knocked on the Cherry family’s barn door before stepping inside. Well, Cherry Berry’s mother had referred to it as a barn, but Berry Punch had told me a lot about my potential recruit. Apparently despite her former…situation, Berry Punch was actually acquainted with most ponies in town.

That really shouldn’t have actually been surprising when one considered that Ponyville was a small, close-knit town, but it had been nonetheless.

Anyway, Berry Punch had said that the youngest of the Cherry family, Cherry Berry – it was going to be so confusing having three Berrys on the ship – knew what she was doing ‘well enough’ to help. She’d returned to town recently after being abroad for well over a season, so I now had my chance to approach her. More importantly, I allegedly only needed to mention a single word to get her to agree to hop on board.

I’d doubted that at first, but it’d only taken me about ten minutes of investigating before I’d called it quits. Berry Punch had been right, so ridiculously, outrageously right.

And here before me was a virtual sky dock stuck inside a barn that confirmed absolutely everything I’d heard about the mare.

“Hello?” I called out to the barn at large.

“Over here,” a voice, presumably Cherry Berry’s, called back. I looked in the vague direction of her voice. “No, no. Up here.”

I looked up and saw Cherry Berry’s head poking up out of the basket of a hot air balloon, aviator goggles and all. For some reason, she had a slew of black spots on her coat. If I had to guess, I’d say they were soot, but grease was a solid second choice.

Pushing up her goggles, Cherry Berry asked, “So what’s up, little filly? Are you here to hear stories of my epic journeys around the world?”

I smiled. There was an earth pony of real character in Ponyville; apparently, I just hadn’t looked hard enough.

“No, but I might take you up on your offer some other time. I have something important to–”

Cherry Berry hopped out of her basket, shrugged off the landing, and cantered up to me in all her pink-coated, yellow-maned glory. Eyes practically sparkling, she asked, “Did that jerk Daring Do finally own up that I was the pony who recovered the Sapphire Stone?”

I raised an eyebrow. Daring Do was real?

“Er… Heh, heh. Um, would you please forget what I just said?”

“I suppose so. But why did you ask?”

“Bah! Don’t even get me started? That mare can’t stand to talk to anypony that couldn’t be described as her nemesis. She usually finds some foal to deliver her messages for her. Trust issues or something. And then she goes and publishes a fiction book claiming all the credit! I didn’t even get a supporting role! So while she’s sitting all nice and cozy in her private train car on her next big adventure, I’m stuck operating out of Ponyville with my parents’ help. That was supposed to be my big break! That was supposed to make my name! Not some disgraced archeologist’s!”

I fought the urge to whistle. Berry Punch had said it would be easy to convince Cherry Berry to come with, but she really had vastly underestimated how easy this would be. Rather than Dash peer pressuring her, it might actually work out the other way around.

“And she even had the nerve to leave out Princess Celestia’s part in the story!” Cherry Berry continued. “I mean, I guess there could be some sort of – I don’t know – marketing problem otherwise, but still. Ugh! She just – just – sometimes I just want to scream!”

Her breathing ragged, I gave Cherry Berry a comforting pat on the shoulder. My situation with Trixie was nowhere near the same; she and I were friends after some fashion. But I could empathize just a little bit. If Trixie somehow found her way to Mona after I arrived and stole the elements from me, I’d be able to understand completely.

“Sorry for blowing off steam on you…”

“Twilight Sparkle, but just Twilight is fine.”

“Sorry, Twilight. I’m just really frustrated.” Rubbing one forehoof along her other foreleg, Cherry Berry blushed and said, “And I may have threatened to expose Daring Do in a heated argument recently. Kind of hoping she doesn’t take that seriously…”

After nervously shuffling around a bit, Cherry Berry said, “Seriously though, please keep the whole Daring Do is real thing a secret. She really doesn’t like publicity–” Muttering under her breath, Cherry Berry said, “ironically,” before continuing. “–and I try to be the bigger pony about the whole thing.”

Awkwardly shuffling on her hooves again, Cherry Berry added, “Well, usually I do.”

Giggling, I said, “Don’t worry. I know how to keep secrets. I promise I won’t say anything except under exceptional circumstances.”

Cherry Berry breathed a sigh of relief. “So what brings you here, Twilight? You mentioned something important?”

“Indeed!” I said, posing dramatically with my hoof raised. “I’m actually here to see if you want to join me in an adventure into the great unknown!”

“Oho! I see. Following in my hoofsteps and wanting to learn from the master, eh?”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. I hadn’t expected Cherry Berry to take me seriously, but that didn’t make her response any less annoying.

“Seriously, Cherry Berry,” I said, lowering my hoof, “this is the kind of adventure that doesn’t make your name, but puts it in history books.”

Sighing and then smiling again, Cherry Berry said, her voice terribly serious, “I’d like that very much. Lead on, Twilight, and let us face the unknown together!”

I nodded and headed back outside. I chuckled quietly enough that Cherry Berry wouldn’t be able to hear. I could just imagine her reaction when she saw for herself where we were heading. Hopefully Dash and Fluttershy would already be waiting at Pupa’s when we arrived.

“Oh,” Cherry Berry said, “just so you know, I’d like to get back before sunset. My parents managed to find some sunflowers, and they’re my favorite flower. Sweet, sweet roasted sunflowers. Mmm…”

I didn’t bother suppressing my laughter this time. “Yes, my fearless companion. I’ll make sure you get home in time for dinner.”

There was only one inn in Ponyville. It was all the town had ever needed; visitors usually stayed with family or friends. It was much to my surprise when Pupa had told me a few days ago that it was run by changelings. In fact, a distressingly large number of inns, motels, hotels, et cetera, were run by changelings. And not just in Equestria, but all around the world.

It made some sense, and it wasn’t like they were planning some sort of hostile takeover, but it was a bit frightening all the same. Apparently they had managed to keep this up for centuries without ever being exposed. Sure there was the odd memory spell here and there, but it was impressive nonetheless.

And it didn’t stop with hotels. They had their hooves in plenty of other businesses, too, including talent agencies. Pupa had said they didn’t dare take the spotlight in Los Pegasus themselves, and that was about as far as she had gotten before Queen Chrysalis had effectively told her to shut up.

I stopped just outside of Pupa’s room with Cherry Berry in tow, and I knocked on the door.

“Come in!” Pupa called back, the door swinging open with her voice.

I led the two of us into the hotel equivalent of a living room and immediately facehoofed.

Appearing beside the two of us, Dash said, “Heya, Twi. You’ve got some pretty neat friends. Anyway, you’re supposed to guess which one is the real Fluttershy.”

I sighed and removed my suppressor, tucking it away in my saddlebags.

Next to me, I heard Cherry Berry whisper, “They’re not twins? Did those two get involved with some cursed artifacts or something?”

“No,” I answered for Dash. Casting a detection spell on the left Fluttershy, who was awkwardly standing in front of me and trying to make herself look small, I said, “The one on the right is Pupa, who is very good at magic.”

With a burst of green fire, Pupa reverted to her regular pastel-green unicorn disguise.

“Detection spells go against the spirit of the game, Twilight.”

I rolled my eyes at Pupa as she crossed the distance to give me a hug. Of the unintentional consequences of my actions, this was perhaps the most…not awkward, but strange. Among the many emotional bonds Cadance had ‘restored’ to Pupa was her self-love, her love for Twilight Sparkle.

Fortunately, Pupa had said she’d recovered her own sense of self-worth quickly enough. Cadance hadn’t done anything worse than making Pupa feel ambivalent about herself for a short time.

“Pupa, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m kind of in the middle of something.”

“Oh, yes, yes,” Pupa said, breaking the hug. “I’ll see to it that nopony misses any of you. Have fun.”

Once Pupa had left, Cherry Berry asked, “So…what just happened?”

“Pupa knows some crazy awesome magic that lets her change shape!” Dash shouted. “She can do anypony and anything! Even random things like giant bug ponies and chimeras.”

I mentally sighed. That was as good a way as any to introduce ponies to changelings, I supposed. Pupa had probably made my job easier, too. In certain circles, one incredibly powerful magician’s words and actions, such as my own, carried a lot of weight.

However, none of my potential recruits were really part of those circles. Cherry might be a little bit with her interest in adventure, but even she would no doubt look for more regular social proofs and appeals to authority. The more competent, grownup ponies like Pupa on my team I showed off, the better off I would be. Not that I expected to have much trouble with these three.

Cherry Berry hummed to herself, idly scratching her jaw. “That sounds sort of familiar, but I can’t put my hoof on why. Something I saw in some ruin somewhere maybe? Oh well. But who is…Pupa, was it? Who is she exactly? In my experience, powerful mages hanging around is always bad news. Back when Sunset Shimmer was around, she was pretty much a harbinger of doom.”

Answering before Dash could say anything, I said, “Pupa is one of my assoc – friends and is going to ‘hold down the fort’ for me while I’m gone, so to speak. But you can talk to her yourself later, if you want.” Turning mostly toward Fluttershy, I asked, “For the moment, does anypony get motion sickness?”

“Of course not,” Dash said.

“Nooooo…” Cherry Berry said, obviously not sure why I was asking.

Fluttershy gave a small shake of her head. That was a bit unexpected, but if she had trouble flying like I suspected, she probably had to use alternative travel most of the time.

“Excellent. We’re going to make a quick stop in Germaneigh to pick up a lot of furniture, but after that we’ll head out to the future starting line of our adventure. If anypony starts to feel queasy, let me know right away.”

I lit up my horn as Cherry Berry said, “When you say Germaneigh–”

It wasn’t very far to Germaneigh, only a few minutes by teleport. While we were mid-transit, I moved the air with us so we could talk.

And by talk, I meant Fluttershy could futilely squeeze her eyes closed in a panic, Dash could be quiet for once in her life, and Cherry Berry could flip out and be the only pony saying anything. Whether or not Cherry Berry actually said anything worth listening to, however, was an entirely different story.

My last teleport left the four of us in a warehouse where one of my many orders was waiting for me to pick it up. As requested, everything was stored in giant wooden crates to make transportation slightly simpler. But even boxed up as they were, it wouldn’t be difficult to find and remove a few select pieces.

“Would anypony like a chair?”

“So,” I began, “I know you have a lot of questions, but let’s try to keep them to one at a time on this attempt.”

A lot of questions was a massive understatement; it’d taken five minutes before Dash and Cherry Berry stopped trying to talk over one another, so I’d taken the opportunity to ignore them and get us on a stable route away from Equus.

I also had resuscitated Fluttershy from her fainting and had explained to her that there was no possible way she could fall out here. What had really sealed the deal was my description of space as ‘swimming in ground’. It wasn’t a perfect analogy, but it had worked for Fluttershy.

Dash and Cherry Berry looked to each other, and Dash won their little silent exchange.

“Let me first just say, so awesome! But after that” – Dash paused for effect – “Twi, what the buck!”

I raised an eyebrow. “I believe I made it very clear to you that we had a six year travel time. If we just needed to go pick something up on Equus, you could do it in a fortnight. What exactly were you expecting? Certainly not an archaeological dig based on our earlier conversation.”

“I – I guess?” Dash frowned and sat on her haunches, looking thoughtful.

I hated to admit it, but that expression simply didn’t work for her.

“Okay, okay,” Cherry Berry said, taking over. “I think I get it. We teleported a bunch – pretty sure – and there was that…that…Pupa mare before with her whole illusion thing. How old are you really?”

“Young enough that it’s both irritating to work around and embarrassing.”

I giggled at Cherry Berry’s confusion. There were probably but four mares in the world that actually enjoyed growing older – maybe only three if Cadance hadn’t been taken out of a normal pony’s mindset yet.”

“To answer your question directly, I’m twelve and a half.”

“You don’t honestly expect me to believe that, do you?”

I shrugged. “You can think of me as whatever age you want. It really doesn’t matter. I don’t behave much like a filly, after all.”

“Right, right. I totally get the whole prodigy thing–”

Well, at least Dash and I had that in common. Maybe we could bond over talking about how other ponies took ten times longer to do everything. Maybe.

“–but where on Equus are we going?”

“Not exactly the best choice of words,” I said, eliciting an eye roll from Dash. “Anyway, did you mean ‘where are you taking us?’ or ‘where would we be going if we left with you?’”

“Uh…both, I suppose.”

“The ultimate destination is the comet Mona, hopefully by way of the moon. Right now we’re just going to my spaceship, the Nebulous. We have about a half-hour of travel time before we arrive.”

It was Cherry Berry’s turn to look thoughtful. If I were to guess, I’d imagine she’d realized that this was her chance to reach for the honor and glory she wanted, and perhaps even more than she’d ever dreamed possible.

“Why that particular comet?” Cherry Berry asked.

Answering for me, Dash said, “Twi mentioned something about a doomsday device.”

“I believe I used the term ‘frighteningly powerful magical artifact,’” I said before Cherry Berry could interject, “not ‘doomsday device’. I’m also reasonably confident that what I’m after can’t be directly used for destruction at all.”

“And what are you after?” Cherry Berry’s voice was practically dripping with suspicion, but her eyes betrayed her. I may have been ‘bad news’ as a powerful mage, in her words, but she was already too invested in this trip, whatever the reason for it.

“The exact details surrounding the purpose of this trip are classified until after we leave.” As an afterthought, I added, “Sorry. State secrets and stuff.”

Frowning, Cherry Berry asked, “Alright, fine, I guess. So what do you need us for?”

“I need you three, and two others already on board, to provide food. And company so I don’t go crazy from the extended solitude” – in case Luna couldn’t reach my dreams at some point – “but I really only need one pony for that.

“Anyway, Fluttershy would be in charge of animals for eggs, milk, butter, pollinating, and stuff like that.” Turning to address Fluttershy directly, I said, “We have a couple pets coming along, too, so if you agree to come, I’d like you to look after them as well. And Spike is coming, too, of course.”

After a weak nod of understanding, definitely not of agreement, from Fluttershy, I continued, “Dash, you would be in charge of weather. Well, ‘weather’. The job should be pretty challenging in climate diversity and space constraints, so you might actually enjoy the work. Like I said to you before, it’ll be a low-stress job with plenty of downtime to do whatever.”

“Twi, you had me at secret agent. Then you added fame and glory and space. I think you can count me in.”

I smiled and nodded to Dash. It was obvious to me that her real answer would actually be the same as Fluttershy’s, but it was good to know she was strongly in favor of coming with.

Next, I turned to Cherry Berry. “I know you’re not primarily a farmer, but you came on recommendation for your ability and for your interest in adventure. You wouldn’t be responsible for growing everything yourself, but you’d have one of the more labor intensive jobs.”

Cherry Berry sighed. “You completely missed the point of my question.”

What?

“I knew what you want me and…uh…”

“Dash. Rainbow Dash,” Dash said, introducing herself properly. “Middle name Danger.”

“Right…” Cherry Berry shook her head slightly. “Anyway, I got what you want us to do. And I get the whole animal thing now; that hadn’t occurred to me. What I don’t get is why. I know a bit about unicorn magic – comes with the field – but I don’t get why you don’t just leave for a week with some snacks and cool beverages.”

It took my brain a few seconds to restart, and I had to try hard not to stare vacantly at Cherry Berry while it was recovering. I hadn’t expected her to know anything about unicorn magic. Not that it wasn’t a pleasant surprise. Still, that was the kind of question I’d expect Twinkleshine to ask, and I was still waiting for her to actually do so.

Continuing, Cherry Berry said, “I mean, there’s no way I’m going to say no. My biggest fear is that I’ll fall in love, get knocked up – maybe not even in that order – and settle down on the farm, maybe going ballooning once in a while to pretend my life had played out otherwise. And that I’ll be happy with that.”

Cherry Berry sighed and continued, “Don’t get me wrong. I’m certainly grateful that you’re throwing perhaps the best opportunity ever at my hooves. I just don’t get why you need us at all. I don’t want fame that I didn’t really earn.”

“I…uh…wow. Okay, yeah. Do you want the long answer, or are you fine with me just saying that the issue is a problem of scaling and safety?”

“Please not the long answer,” Dash complained.

“No,” Cherry Berry began, “I’d like to know the details. Well, maybe not the fine details, but an overview would be great.” She left it unsaid, but the way she looked at me said, “And I’d like to know how smart and cautious you are because you’re a foal dragging me into space,” for her.

I cleared my throat and took a quick breath. “Alright, so in theory, if I reduced the mass I have to bring with to a few buckets of water and a pile of snacks – roughly a decrease by three orders of magnitude – I could get to the comet in less than a week. In theory.

“Practically, this is not possible. I take it you know that telekinesis scales linearly with force, correct?”

Cherry Berry nodded.

“And you know that it spreads that force over an area, not a volume, right?”

Again, Cherry Berry nodded.

“Dash, you should know what happens when you undergo a large acceleration. Would you care to enlighten her?”

“Huh? Oh. Fine,” Dash grunted. She’d barely been paying attention. “My pegasus magic mostly protects me, but it’s sorta like…like waiting for your insides to catch up to you. I only ever realized it was a problem when I cornered during a sonic rainboom. It can hurt, and badly.”

“Not just hurt,” I interrupted, “it can kill. I’m counteracting the effects of accelerating us right now so that you won’t have to constantly feel it, but unlike telekinesis, it is not a magic efficient spell; it increases linearly with volume and acceleration, not force, and has a large coefficient. I might be able to invent something less…less…” I waved my hoof in the air, searching for the right word.

“Primitive?” Cherry Berry offered.

“No, it’s more…hacked together, I guess. It’s a working solution, but it’s inelegant. I could probably come up with a specialized spell, but I have no idea how long it would take, and this mission has a non-negotiable deadline. Anyway, the point is, while it’s all well and good to make the mass smaller and the acceleration larger for telekinesis, I either wouldn’t have enough magic to make the trip in a week or I would kill myself.”

I held up a hoof, interrupting Cherry Berry before she could protest. “No, the volume is not made smaller in exchange. Not significantly, at least. I’m casting the spell very sloppily right now, but on the actual ship, I’ve been busy weaving a very complex spell matrix to only affect the volumes I absolutely need to.

“And yes, I have stress tested my ship, and yes I have checked that plants do, in fact, grow normally under constant horizontal accelerations. Oddly enough, I found a research paper on that topic. Some ponies find the weirdest things interesting in science.” Not that I was one to talk.

First pausing only briefly to let Cherry Berry process what I’d said, I continued, “Of course, that all doesn’t completely dismiss your objections. I would still be able to make the trip in a few seasons at lower accelerations. I have the magic for that. What I don’t have is stability.

“I will spare you the details, but I have too much magic for a unicorn. Sometimes I lose control. If I did that on a space voyage unprotected, I would die. There is no question about it. Nor is there any doubt that I will lose control at some point during the trip. To keep myself – and anypony else coming along – safe, I have to bring a specially designed room to contain me until I regain control.

“Now this room was heavy enough that it dramatically increased the length of the trip to the point that food, water, and solitude became serious concerns. Adding on requirement after requirement, it eventually reached the point where the longer, slower trip actually became the faster journey. So I built what amounts to a small space colony which can survive indefinitely with enough unicorn, pegasus, and earth pony magic.”

I stopped to take a deep breath, then asked, “Does that answer satisfy you?”

Getting a nod from Cherry Berry, I let myself relax. I seemed to have put more tension in my withers than I’d thought.

“How bad?”

It took me a few seconds to realize that I had just heard somepony talk, and that the pony in question was Fluttershy. As I turned to look at her, she turned away.

“What did you say?” I said, asking as gently as I could. Knowing Fluttershy, she’d probably think I was offended by whatever she had said otherwise.

“I – uh,” Fluttershy began, barely speaking above a whisper, “you said you lose control. How badly?”

That wasn’t an unexpected question, nor was it one I didn’t intend to answer, but I had hoped I could at least wait until Twinkleshine and Berry Punch were around. When I’d first seen Twinkleshine after, she’d already deduced that Cadance had taken the blame for me and was asking if I were alright before I’d even opened my mouth.

Berry Punch, on the other hoof, had empathized with me on a very deep level. We’d spent hours talking while she had me replanting trees. It had been…nice. Yes, nice.

Sighing, I said, “I’m going to be completely honest with you three. When I lose control, I am beyond simply dangerous. Cadance took the blame for me, but everything that happened in Canterlot recently was entirely my fault.”

Fluttershy was quiet. She probably had already made the connection when she’d spoken. Dash and Cherry Berry, on the other hoof, were far more expressive.

“What the buck, Twi?”

“Are we safe right now?”

Drowning out Cherry Berry, Dash shouted, “How did that happen? You’re friends with the princesses! Shouldn’t they, like, have you on a shorter leash or something?”

Sighing, I addressed Cherry Berry’s concern first. “Yes, you’re safe with me. The probability of you dying or otherwise suffering injury right now is so small as to be considered zero.” I turned to Dash and continued, “They usually do. There’s a reason why I live in Ponyville with a giant backyard. The circumstances of what happened in Canterlot were, while entirely my fault, extremely unusual. I will not let them occur again.”

A moment of dramatic silence passed without Dash or Cherry Berry interrupting. My intentionally dramatic stance and expression may have had a large part in achieving that silence. Regardless, we were approaching our destination.

“I need to concentrate to slow us down properly, but I’ll try to form coherent answers to any questions you have.”

Spotting Twinkleshine easily enough, I teleported all four of us into the Nebulous’s library not too far from her. She didn’t even bother to look up right away; she’d gotten so used to me teleporting around that it no longer surprised her. The crates of furniture I dumped on the currently unoccupied bridge.

“Hello, Twinkleshine,” I said, walking over to her.

That finally got her to look up from whatever she was working on. She even got up to give me a hug.

“Is this the rest of the crew, then?”

“Hopefully.” Turning back to to the trio I’d brought with, I said, “Everypony, this is Twinkleshine, the navigator on this expedition.”

Dash gave her a grumpy greeting, Cherry Berry was polite enough, and Fluttershy squeaked as expected.

“Twinkleshine elected to move up here early with another crew member a little while ago, but we won’t be leaving until the first harvest is halfway ready in a season or two. Now Twinkleshine, on the left, we have Fluttershy, the animal expert. She’s shyer than you used to be–”

“I can tell,” Twinkleshine interjected as Fluttershy tried her best to stare a hole into the floor, which would, of course, kill everypony here if I weren’t around should she succeed.

“–so play nice. In the middle is Rainbow ‘Danger’ Dash.”

The mare in question nodded approvingly, satisfied with my use of her middle name. Not that I fully believed that her name actually had a ‘Danger’ in it.

“She’s…well, more a pegasus magic expert” – only in hooves-on magic, no theory – “but she knows more than enough about weather.”

“Darn right I do.”

“Right, well, anyway, on the right we have Cherry Berry. I’ve been told she grew up learning about farming, so she can help out. However she’s primarily a…professional adventurer?”

“Not quite yet,” Cherry Berry replied, her voice betraying her bitterness, “but I might as well be.”

“Right, so that covers introductions for now. Would you three like–”

Popping up out of nowhere, Pinkie Pie said, “Don’t forget about me, silly.”

“–a tour…” I sighed. “This is Pinkie Pie, our chef, and with some instruction and practice, perhaps somepony who will help out in the greenhouse on occasion. She’s the other pony already living up here.” As an afterthought, I added, “She also keeps an eye on Twinkleshine to make sure she eats.”

“Hey!”

“And I’m sure she’ll be doing the same for me when I don’t have my parents around to act as a clock.”

“Better,” Twinkleshine muttered.

“Speaking of which,” Pinkie Pie began, pulling a platter out of her mane, “does anypony want a snack? I made muffins.”

Okay, disregarding how she managed to pull anything out of her mane and how she managed to bake without an oven – that was in today’s shipment – I quickly snatched up the blueberry muffin and one of the poppyseed muffins for myself. Whatever else Pinkie Pie was, she was a fantastic cook. She made the kind of food ponies would camp out overnight in lines to get.

Or join in on an adventure to get.

Through a mouth full of muffin, I said, “Thanks, Pinkie Pie. Great as always.”

Surprisingly, Fluttershy was the next pony to take a muffin. Well, Twinkleshine pulled one off with her magic at more or less the same time, but she didn’t count. As Fluttershy bit into the chocolatest muffin I’d ever seen – seriously, there might not have even been a muffin underneath all that chocolate – an actual tear came to her eye.

“Whoa!” Pinkie Pie said, sidling up next to Fluttershy. “Are you okay? You’re not allergic to almonds, are you?”

“N-no. I just – my granny used to make something like this when I was a filly.”

“Oooooh. Well if that’s the case, I could make the quadruple chocolate, almond surprise muffin for you all the time. I made sure we’ve got plenty of cocoa and sugar.”

As Dash and Cherry Berry sampled a muffin each – obviously to their delight, judging by their eyes – Fluttershy said, “I’d… I think I… Yes, I’d like that.”

I took an extra large bite of muffin to hide my smile. As soon as I brought everything we’d need up here, I could finally get back to full time studying with Luna. Recruitment was over.

Maybe Luna would finally explain what that ice cream spell really did instead of just telling me to figure it out.

Anyway, Pinkie Pie had dragged our three new recruits off for the guided tour, having left Twinkleshine and I to our own business. I kept an eye on the group with a scrying spell; I didn’t think it would happen, but there was a chance that Pinkie Pie’s energy would scare off Fluttershy if I didn’t intervene, and she would inevitably drag Dash away with her. I was sure she would tell Dash to come with even if she refused, but I was also sure Dash wouldn’t.

About five minutes later, both Twinkleshine and I could hear Cherry Berry shout, “Berry Punch?”

I made a note to myself to add soundproofing to the doors.

Chapter Thirteen - From the Early Log of Captain Sparkle

[Spring 91, 993 – Day 1]

At the insanely constant insistence of Twinkleshine, I find myself with the responsibility of–

*thunk*

Wow, I need to turn down the sensitivity on this spell.

Wait, stop recording this.

How do I erase things?

Where did I toss that box?

*stomp*

Let’s see… We’re excited you’ve purchased the navigator’s black box two point oh. Ha, ha. Very funny. It comes in a black box. Anyway, where is…

Are – are they serious? I can’t… Fine. Whatever. I’ll just cast a–

Great, now I have another cut off sentence in here.

You know what? It doesn’t matter.

Today we set off. It was all pretty anticlimactic, but you certainly wouldn’t know it from the party Pinkie Pie and Twinkleshine put together. Dash had a hoof in it, too, I’d imagine.

Nothing further of interest to report.

[Spring 92, 993 – Day 2]

Not recording why Dash asked us to turn around. Too stupid to contemplate. Funny, though. Besides, I gave her advice and redirected her to Chrysalis and a few books. She seemed satisfied with that.

I talked to everypony after that, and they took the whole long lost princess thing well. Twinkleshine and I talked further after that. Incidentally, I discovered an even stupider reason while we talked to turn around than the one Dash had. No comment on what it was.

Nothing further of interest to report.

[Spring 93, 993 – Day 3]

Twinkleshine said she’ll give me – and anypony who wants to listen – a rundown on how we’ll make a stop at the moon in a couple weeks. She wants to collect real flare-rate data before she commits to her plan.

Nothing further of interest to report.

[Spring 94, 993 – Day 4]

Nothing of interest to report.

I don’t know why I’m even bothering.

Twilight, can you help – is that the log? Oh my gosh! You’re actually keeping up with it! Can I see? Can I?

I guess? Go ahead.

Let’s see… Twilight, this is horrible.

Well what were you expecting? You’re the navigator. Isn’t this your job anyway?

No, no, no, no, no. I make log entries to keep track of where we are and where we’re going so we don’t get lost. That kind of stuff. I especially keep accurate recordings of the positions of the compasses pointing to the elements so I can check my math for consistency.

Well what exactly do you want? I’m not going to take very much time out of my nights for this. It’s just not that interesting for me.

Fine. Maybe I can help once in a while, but I know you can do better than this, Twilight. You’re just being lazy. How do we start a–

Oh, well I guess that works.

Yeah. This whole thing is kind of sketchy. I mean, word processing is all well and good, but this spell isn’t doing much beyond matching frequency patterns. It doesn’t really process; it just transforms sound to text. I still don't get why you won't let me just write normally.

Because that wouldn’t be in the right spirit.

Right… Well, the punctuation is good at least.

It is! So how would I go about saying–

Congratulations, you now have a useless entry.

Oh. Um…sorry. That’s kind of annoying. Well anyway, let’s have you try day one and two again. You can do our departure better justice than that.

*sigh*

Fine. But there are some parts that you won’t be allowed to read. I’ll alter the spell to encrypt those, all right?

I…guess that’s better than nothing. But I’ll still want to see what you’ve written later.

Yes, yes. That’s fine. What was it that you wanted anyway?

Nothing that can’t wait. I’ll come back later.

[Spring 91, 993 – Day 1, Take Two]

We were all prepared to leave at the end of spring. I’d spent most of the intervening time…

I’d spent most of the intervening time since Fluttershy, Dash, and Cherry Berry had signed on with Pupa, Twinkleshine, Spike, and the latter two’s replacements. We’d mostly chatted, read, played games, watched movies, and so on in an attempt to make us all like each other. As I’d previously noted to myself, Cadance was such a pain in the flank to work around.

We’d tested the waters, so to speak, and Cadance hadn’t objected when we swapped out Spike and his replacement. There had been an eye rub, but nothing more. Luna had been confident that Cadance would dismiss the changes as the random emotions of a newborn, and she had been proven right.

In Owlowiscious’s case, we’d simply decided that he ‘had flown away’ when I took him up to the Nebulous. We’d never actually put him in a cage or anything, so it wasn’t all that unlikely. I was actually a bit surprised that he’d stayed all this time, but that just showed what domestication did to animals. I’d put on a show of sadness, but nothing too dramatic.

Then when we’d replaced Twinkleshine, Cadance hadn’t so much as blinked. To be fair to her, though, she’d never spent much time with Twinkleshine, and we’d only given her a quick glance at the replacement.

Anyway, things had worked out as planned, and we were finally set to leave. I’d had my teary farewell with my parents – even though I’d still be able to talk to them through Queen Chrysalis and Pupa – and had left, leaving my new suppressor behind. It had taken the better part of a season, but one of Luna’s allies – somepony named Quartz, apparently – had managed to find another one for me to take with. Where he’d found it and how he’d obtained it without being arrested, I didn’t want to know. I shuddered at the mere thought that there was a viable market for them anywhere in the world.

Anyway, I teleported into an anonymous part of the Everfree just past the outskirts with Pupa. Queen Chrysalis was already waiting for us.

“Hello, Mother.” Pupa walked forward for a hug, melting the frown plastered on Queen Chrysalis’s face. They were never really apart, but changelings enjoyed physical affection just as much as ponies, and perhaps even more so.

Interrupting the awkwardly long hug, I asked, “May I assume you are the real Queen Chrysalis?”

“Yes,” was all Queen Chrysalis said.

Sighing, Pupa broke her hug. “Will you two stop all this silly nonsense. You can’t expect Twilight to feed you if you’re always holding her at a distance” – Pupa turned from Queen Chrysalis to me – “and you can’t expect to feed her if you’re all stiff and formal.”

Well…being casual was fine with me if Queen Chrysalis were willing. But it did seem she objected; the two of them were completely silent as they discussed something over the hive mind. I was so utterly jealous that I couldn’t communicate like that. It’d make life so much better, although I would want to have a mute button. Pupa had told me mental privacy was a privilege for changelings, not the norm.

Without warning, Queen Chrysalis half-shouted, “I am not calling her Princess Twilight!”

Princess Twilight? That was not going to happen. I’d seen the kind of stuff Cadance had put up with as just a…a lowercase p princess, and I wanted no part of it. Sure, I would help Luna with whatever she needed, but I’d much prefer the title ‘doctor’ over ‘princess’. Not that I couldn’t have both, I supposed, but there really wasn’t a point if I was going to seclude myself in a lab most of the year.

Now that I thought of it, I knew that except in certain contexts, the higher ranked title was used, but what about equally ranked titles? If I got multiple PhD’s – which I obviously would eventually – did the doctor titles stack? Sure it would sound ridiculous, but why would I not want to be called ‘Doctor Doctor Sparkle’? Well, besides the giggling.

Wait, giggling?

The source of the sound, Pupa, said, “If you’re not going to call her Princess Twilight, then I expect you to be fine with her not calling you Queen Chrysalis.”

After a few seconds of silence, Queen Chrysalis grumbled, “Fine.”

“Great!” After one last nuzzle, Pupa took my form. “Well then, I have a play date with my foalsitter. I’ll talk to you two later,” before teleporting away in a burst of raspberry flame with just the slightest hint of green mixed in.

Once I was sure Pupa wasn’t going to come back – I wouldn’t put it past her – I ventured to say, “I see you two have been getting along well again.”

“Ha.” Que – Chrysalis turned herself into light-gray unicorn mare. “My dear Pupa has the biggest heart of anyone ever – changeling, pony, or otherwise. She can be friends with anyone.”

“Yes, I can tell. She really… Oh.” In all my experience, I knew this was exactly the worst moment to apologize, so I kept my mouth shut before I put my hoof in it.

“Just keep your promises.”

A silence fell, and it took me some effort to break it. “Right… Well, are you ready to leave? Any last minute things you want to take with?”

“Let us be away from this place.” Chrysalis spaced out for a moment. By now I could recognize when a changeling was talking over the hive mind – at least when they weren’t trying to hide it – and that was definitely what Chrysalis was doing. “Let’s go.”

I giggled as I cast our first teleport. I just couldn’t help it. Chrysalis had probably just gotten another scolding from her daughter.

Chrysalis and I appeared on the bridge where there was a celebration of sorts already underway. Somehow even Fluttershy had been pulled away from her animals for it, and she wasn’t even trying to sneak away.

Pulling up on the needle of the phonograph, I cut the music. It took a minute or two for everypony to quiet down, and there were a scattered few greetings.

I cleared my throat and said, “I’m sure you all have already figured it out, but this is Chrysalis, Pupa’s mother and our connection back to Equus. If you want to find out what’s going on back at home, or anything else we’ve already discussed, talk to her.”

“Don’t you mean talk through her?” Dash asked, spilling much of whatever she was drinking. Judging by the flush in her face, I’d guess that she was half-drunk. Cherry Berry looked to be in a similar state, and even Fluttershy was unsteady on her hooves.

Berry Pinch and Spike were off playing together with some blocks far away from whatever drinks Berry Punch had been coerced into serving. Not that there was really any problem with Spike drinking alcohol; his stomach incinerated all alcohols and nearly every other toxin before they could get to his blood stream.

I sighed. “Yes, yes, Dash. Very funny. Oh, and if you ever feel a little weird around her” – I ignored Chrysalis’s glare – “tell her to ease up on the magic; it’s harmless in small doses.” As I could personally attest to from feeding Pupa for nearly two seasons.

I pulled Twinkleshine away as the music restarted and Dash began her line of questioning as to what magic Chrysalis should ease up on. Judging by Dash’s first guesses, she’d probably assumed I meant ‘if you feel aroused’ when I said ‘if you feel a little weird’. Although at the same time, I was sure Chrysalis knew plenty of seduction spells and other empathy magic, so perhaps that warning was justified as well.

“Before we get started,” I said to Twinkleshine, “I have to ask. You’re not drunk, right?”

“Wha – Twilight, I’m barely fourteen.”

I glanced back toward Dash, who was barely halfway between fifteen and sixteen. It only took Twinkleshine a couple seconds to figure out what I meant.

“I’m not like her!” whispered Twinkleshine.

“You should have seen Berry Punch before she signed on; she was a wreck. I mean, I don’t really care if you drink when you’re off duty – the only law out here is what we impose upon ourselves – just make sure you don’t hurt yourself.

“Or you can head over to the library and see if we have any alcohol related spells documented somewhere. Actually, I’m sure we do. I can’t imagine that they’re not listed in a book of medical spells somewhere. Chrysalis might know some her–”

Twinkleshine put a hoof on my withers. “Twilight, you’re rambling.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“It’s fine. It’s cute.”

Ugh. I was tired of being cute. Cute got no respect.

A memory flashed through my mind. Being called cute – or adorkable, or whatever – wasn’t so bad when Luna was the one saying it. Still, cute was suboptimal.

Ignoring Twinkleshine’s comment and most definitely not blushing at all, I said, “Anyway, we need to actually leave. You’re ready to take the wheel, right?”

I said, ‘take the wheel,’ but that didn’t accurately describe the situation. Creating a three dimensional steering wheel had proved awkward. Twinkleshine and I made one, but it was horribly unwieldy, even with telekinesis. As it stood, the ‘wheel’ for the ship was completely abstracted out into my enchantments. As such, only Twinkleshine and I, and probably Chrysalis, could interact with it.

“Well, I’m still a bit nervous. I mean, if we get lost, it’ll all be my fault. But yes, I’m about as ready as I’ll ever be.”

I nodded and gave Twinkleshine a smile. “You’ll do just fine. Give me a minute to switch the power source from Equus to me, and then feel free to set our course.”

First, I cast a simple illusion on my horn to prevent me from turning into a raspberry colored night light. Nopony would want my horn shining constantly whenever I was awake, least of all myself.

Next, I took a deep breath and took a firm stance. To minimize the amount of mental effort I needed to expend on this trip, every spell on the ship was a permanent enchantment that would run so long as it was fed enough magic. Then at the magical core of the ship, which was only accessible via teleport, there was a filtering enchantment that distributed magic to every other spell.

Being completely honest, I had no idea how that spell worked. Luna had directed me to an ancient research paper in Old Equestrian. From the sound of it, the only other places the spell was used was in Canterlot Castle and in the old castle, the intention being that Luna or Celestia would use it to power a ridiculous number of defensive wards when actually necessary.

It was kind of a shame nopony had found the spell interesting enough to translate and improve upon, but I could see why it wasn’t necessary in general practice. It was thousands of times easier to just let every enchantment be independently powered by the ambient magic of Equus, and spells that needed an alicorn to power them were few and far between in mundane life.

“We’re ready,” I whispered. It was going to take a while to get used to using this much magic constantly, although it should get a lot easier as I got older.

A short flash of panic swept through me as I felt my magic surge, but the surge quieted quickly enough when I pulled back on it; an outside source constantly siphoning my magic acted much like a suppressor. I allowed myself a quick sigh of relief while Twinkleshine was absorbed in her own spellwork and not paying attention.

Luna had drilled how to precisely control how much magic I used into me in my early education, but she never got around to teaching me anything about how to control my flares. It was pointless if I was going to ascend, after all. I’d always had a little luck with it, shockingly, but I suspected I’d be learning a lot about that on this trip from pure hooves-on experience.

“Aaaaand…we’re on our way,” Twinkleshine said as the ship did not lurch at all, just as usual. She levitated a nearby notebook and quill over to her and recorded our heading, the time, our acceleration, et cetera. Snapping the notebook shut, she said, “So?”

I paused to think for a few seconds, but my mind came up blank. “So what?”

“Ugh! Twilight, you promised to tell me…us what we’re going after once we left.”

“Oh. Well, I would, but…” I turned back toward the ongoing party. Berry Punch and Chrysalis were probably the only sober ponies at the moment, and Fluttershy and Dash were currently engaged in a rather passionate make out session. I briefly wondered how they were going to react to that once they sobered up; hopefully, it would be amusing.

“How about tomorrow morning over dinner slash breakfast?” I suggested.

My sleep schedule was still tied to Luna, but I was interested to see what would happen to everypony else. In a year or so, the sun wouldn’t be able to provide a reference point for their internal clocks, so there was no telling when they’d be sleeping.

Twinkleshine, rather than explicitly objecting, puffed out her cheeks and hummed angrily.

For my revenge, I said, “That’s cute.”

I fell over onto my chair in the library. It had taken me forever, but I’d finally found some useful information about the ice cream summoning spell Luna had taught me so long ago. And I’d found it completely by accident in an old book about zebra magic of all places. It was just a tiny little footnote, but it explained so much.

“‘Zebrican potion making is also commonly referred to as alchemy, which is not to be mistaken with the long disused field of unicorn magic known as alchemy despite their inherent similarities.’”

Now that I knew what I was looking at, it was actually pretty obvious Luna had taught me an alchemy spell. I could make sense of all of the subparts of the spell now, even if I still couldn’t understand them. That was why she’d needed to be outside. It wasn’t a summoning spell. It wasn’t a spell of creation. It just worked with what was already there and rearranged it.

“Oh stars. No wonder the spell is so complex. Yikes. I can understand why the field died out. There’d maybe be…a couple dozen unicorns that could do something that complex per generation, and that’s an optimistic guess. And the zebras could do effectively the same things with a tiny fraction of the magical and mental effort; it was only a matter of time before everypony lost interest.”

I closed the book with a sigh. Luna might have snuck a few books about unicorn alchemy into the gigantic list we had gathered, but it’d be a hundred times faster to just tell her I’d figured the spell out. She’d direct me to the right books if I had any.

A small smile found its way to my face despite my protestations. Based on the roundabout way she’d introduced the field to me, Luna was probably testing the limits of her patience while waiting to teach me alchemy. It had been far too advanced for me at the time – and probably still was – but I’d guess she’d introduced it anyway to sate her desire to teach it. She was probably betting on me taking long enough to discover alchemy for me to have all the prerequisite knowledge.

Well, I’d shown her!

It took a couple seconds for my brain to accept what I’d just thought, and the only proper response was to let my head slam on the library table. I’d never live it down if Trixie ever found out about that thought.

Veering away from that topic entirely, I set my mind to the task of figuring out what alchemy could do. There was the legend about the philosopher’s stone in zebra alchemy, and unicorn alchemy probably shared it, but if it were true, there’d be enough philosopher’s stones to pave the roads of Equestria. Nopony would be stupid enough to ignore a known immortality tool.

Maybe there’d be a lot of medical uses for unicorn alchemy as there was in zebra potion making. Then again, there were plenty of other specialized spells for healing, so that seemed a little unnecessary. Maybe healing spells weren’t as good as–

My eyes widened, and I went full bolt upright in my chair. Was the polymorph spell an alchemy spell? I had no idea; there were no extant unicorn shape shifters, at least none that I knew of. I certainly hoped it was. Stars, I wanted to learn the polymorph spell. Disregarding the thousands of other interesting uses for it, I really wanted to get used to having wings in the waking world.

I was broken from my glee when I heard the sound of hooves approaching. Twinkleshine must’ve woken up and come to make me tell her about the elements. I turned around in my chair, and to my great surprise, found myself looking at Dash, who was both in a library and not flying.

“What brings you here?” I asked.

“Nothing. Just – just looking for a certain book. You know, to kill some time with while everypony else wakes up.”

I raised an eyebrow. On a scale of Cadance to Celestia, Dash appeared to be a Cadance when it came to lying.

“What? It’s true!”

“Okay. Sure. What book are you looking for? I can probably find it right away for you.”

“Er… That’s okay, Twi. I – I’ve got this.”

“Whatever you say.” I gestured with a hoof at the cabinet Dash had passed by. “The index is in there. Just say the name of the book, and if we have it, the index card will pop out.” Instructions you wouldn’t have needed if you’d ever been to a library before.

“Right, right. Cool.” Dash walked over to the cabinet, and leaning in, whispered something.

I sighed. “You have to open it first, Dash.”

“I knew that.”

Now with the cabinet open, Dash whispered to it again. I resisted the temptation to cast a spell to listen in. When an index card came up, Dash shoved it back into the cabinet with her wings and slammed the door closed with her hooves.

“Heh. Heh, heh.” Dash spun around, leaning on the cabinet, her face bright red. “Turns out you don’t have it, Twi. We should turn around to go pick it up before we leave again.”

“Dash, are you regretting leave–”

“No, no, no!” Dash flew over to me in a blue blur. “Not at all! There’s just…something we forgot to bring. A book. Yeah. We forgot to bring my favorite book, and I’ll go stir crazy without it. You like books, right?”

I gave her my best ‘I didn’t believe a word you just said’ face. It wasn’t very hard to do. It mostly consisted of fancy eyebrow work and a smirk. The only part of that I did believe was that Dash had, not forgotten, but found out she hadn’t brought something she wanted.

“Sorry, but we’re not going to turn around without a good reason. If you want to actually tell me what it is you failed to think of after two seasons of packing, I might consider it.”

Dash just squirmed on her hooves.

“Well?”

“There are…certain…”

Okay, I somehow managed to pass from annoyed all the way around to curious. Just what was it that Dash wanted?

“You know how there are, well, only mares on this ship?”

“Spike,” I corrected Dash, holding back another smile. I’d already figured out what she wanted. Oh, this was going to be fun.

“Okay, sure. But he’s like, two or something.”

“Chrysalis, then. She can be whatever and whoever she wants.” I was reasonably sure that Dash knew that Chrysalis’s transformations weren’t superficial.

“I guess… But–”

“I’ve been thinking about learning a similar spell myself.”

“No, that’s not–” Dash sighed. “Look, a grown mare has certain needs.”

I finally let my smirk show. “Oh. You want to master–”

Dash flew forward and covered my mouth with her forehooves. “No.” When I was done laughing through her hooves, she let go and stepped back. “Look, it’s not like that. It’s…well, Fluttershy and I…”

“Oooooh, I see. So you and Fluttershy are going to take your friendship beyond drunken kissing?”

Her face first flashing through nearly the entire gamut of emotions, Dash finally said, “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. But, I think I want to, and – you know – be prepared.”

“As much as I admire the sentiment, and I know you probably don’t want to take advice from somepony my age, you don’t need any props for sex. Just push her down onto a bed and do what comes naturally. You’ll both get better with practice.”

Dash looked unconvinced.

“If you want, I know we have at least one entire book on the subject.” I paused just long enough to let Dash realize what was coming. “But I’m sure you know that, too.” After laughing at Dash groaning in frustration, I eased up and said, “In all seriousness, we don’t need to turn around for this. Try without first, and then go to Chrysalis.”

Looking up and locking eyes with me, Dash asked, “Chrysalis? Really? Isn’t she, like, a queen?”

“Yes, but I wouldn’t be surprised. If she can’t help you, come back to me, and I’ll see what I can do for you. The unicorn part of the Kama Sutra is quite interesting, and it has nearly fifty pages just listing relevant spells.”

Dash’s jaw threatened to fall off as she futilely tried to form a coherent response. “Are – are you serious?”

“Oh yes. Quite serious. You know how ponies are. There’s nothing they won’t try to sexualize at some point, including magic. Anyway, you should definitely give the pegasus section a glance; I’d imagine you’ll be in for a few surprises.”

I got up and walked past Dash. It took a little bit of magical assistance, but I managed to run my tail along the tip of her muzzle as I walked past. The look on her face was priceless.

“Quick tip, Dashie.”

I giggled as she went from flummoxed to fuming, although that mood didn’t last long, either. I whispered in her ear with magic and faked a quick nibble on the same ear with telekinesis. It was hard not to laugh again when she started and blushed.

“It’s the little things that count most,” I continued, barely loud enough for Dash to hear. “Anypony can have sex, but only close friends can make love. Don’t neglect the emotional component of the act for the physical one.”

Sidling up to her, I leaned into her as she took a step back. A tremor ran through her as I slowly nuzzled her and held her forehoof with the lightest of touches in mine.

After a couple seconds, I whispered into Dash’s ear, “Now imagine if I were Fluttershy.”

Hearing the telltale sound of a tail rising, I abruptly broke away. Dash let out a small gasp, holding her neglected forehoof up to reach out to me before setting it back down slowly.

Before she could say anything, I said, “At least, that’s my understanding of it. Your results may vary. Again, I’d recommend talking to Chrysalis if you really want to learn.”

Dash gulped. “I-I-I n-need to go!” she whispered in an impressive impersonation of Fluttershy before bolting out of the library.

Once she was definitely out of earshot, I burst into giggles. That had been every bit as fun as I’d imagined it would be. I – I yawned. I was getting pretty hungry. Leaving my books where they were, I too left the library, heading toward the kitchen. Hopefully, Pinkie Pie would be awake.

I was halfway through my dinner when Dash finally dragged Fluttershy to the table for their breakfast. Fluttershy’s coat did absolutely nothing to hide her blush, and it seemed it wasn’t going to depart anytime soon. For her own part, Dash met my eyes for a moment and nodded slightly. I returned the gesture with a small smile.

Once both of them had taken their seats, Twinkleshine said, her tone betraying her impatience, “Okay, we’re all here now, Twilight. You’re going to tell us everything now, right?”

“Well, not everything–”

“Oh, come on!” Twinkleshine shouted practically into my ear from right next to me.

“–but most everything important,” I finished. I sent a quick glance Chrysalis’s way, and she rolled her eyes in return; I’d be having no untoward interruptions from her, it seemed.

“Alright, so I could just tell you what artifacts we’re recovering, but it wouldn’t mean anything to anypony but Chrysalis and myself. So without too many complaints, I think we need a history lesson.” I looked at Dash and got another eye roll for my trouble. “So can anypony tell me why Celestia rules Equestria?”

Right away, Pinkie Pie answered, “Because she’s the princess, silly.”

“That’s a tautology, Pinkie,” Twinkleshine said. “That’s like saying a beach is sandy because it has sand.” She turned to me and asked, “Right?”

I smiled and nodded.

“Then is it because she’s an alicorn?” asked Berry Punch.

“No,” I replied, “that’s a contributing factor, but it’s not the reason she rules.”

After a painfully, but not unexpectedly, long time, Cherry Berry suggested, “Because she defeated Discord?”

“More or less, yes. To be more precise, the feat allowed her to lead the rebuilding efforts of – well, there’s no nice way to put it – the cesspool of a civilization the world was left with. She wasn’t any better off herself in the knowledge and culture department, but having a constant guiding hoof through the ages does wonders for the march of progress.”

Celestia certainly was nothing if not an effective ruler. Whatever problems there were with her character, she could keep a civilization galloping forward. A couple thousand years of experience will make a pony good at anything, after all.

“So then, what would be the logical question to ask?”

Nearly in perfect unison, Twinkleshine and Cherry Berry said, “How did she do it?” The two looked at each other for a moment before Twinkleshine continued, “Defeat Discord, that is. He shouldn’t have had time to do so much damage if he were easily dealt with.”

I waited a moment for that to sink in for everypony, including Dash. “Exactly right, you two. I’m not sure what Discord is, but he’s stronger than both of Equestria’s diarchs put together.”

Stunned silence. Perfect.

The first to find her voice, Dash said, “Er…Twi, I think you’ve lost us.”

“I – um…” Fluttershy began, gently pulling on Dash’s wing, “I think that maybe she’s talking about Princess Cadance. Maybe.”

Leaning onto the table and whispering like there was somepony else around who could overhear us, Pinkie Pie said, “Do you mean Princess Cadenza? She’s only, like, twenty or something. Unless…” Pinkie Pie paused, drawing everypony but Chrysalis and I toward the edge of their seat. “Unless she’s a time traveler! What if she went back in time to help Princess Celestia defeat Discord and stuck around in some sort of stable time loop?”

“At the risk of my next meal,” Chrysalis interrupted. I wasn’t sure if that was actually directed at me or not. “Time travel magic is essentially impossible.”

Essentially? Chrysalis and I were going to have a chat later over a no doubt lovely breakfast and dinner.

“The restrictions on time travel spells render them effectively useless. At best, they are a ‘get out of death free’ card that can only be played once, to use a modern expression.”

As much as I liked what I’d just heard, this conversation was getting off track fast, and Chrysalis had just given Pinkie Pie an opportunity to break out her board games and permanently derail it.

Speaking above everypony else’s sidetalk, I said, “Cadance is a princess in the same sense that Blueblood is a prince. Well, more so, but she’s not a diarch. But before we get to that” – Twinkleshine nudged me with a hoof, nearly knocking me off my chair – “I’m sure you’ve all guessed, but we’re going to retrieve the set of artifacts that were used by both diarchs to defeat Discord: the Elements of Harmony.”

“So what do they do?” Dash asked, cutting right to the point.

“Well…not a whole lot, actually. As far as I know, they’re mostly used to imprison ponies in some form or another.”

“That doesn’t sound very harmonious,” Berry Punch commented.

“Kind of a misnomer,” added Dash, impressing me with her vocabulary for once.

Cherry Berry laughed dryly. “Better than some of the names other artifacts have: no ‘doom’ in the name or anything.”

I simply shrugged off the comments. “Anyway, disregarding the quality of the naming sense, when used against Discord, it resulted in his petrification. Later, against…well, you probably won’t recognize the name, but against Sombra, it was banishment. Admittedly, he wasn’t strong enough to warrant the use of the elements, but there were extenuating circumstances.”

“Just asking,” Cherry Berry began, “but there’s not a prophecy about Discord returning or something, right?”

“Well actually…” I trailed off suggestively, smiling.

The response to my teasing could kindly be referred to as negative. It mostly involved everypony but Fluttershy, Chrysalis, and myself trying to shout over each other. I casually took another bite of my dinner and enjoyed a silent chuckle.

Holding up my hooves after the panic no longer amused me, I said, “Okay, okay, I was just joking. You know, mostly. Discord is not looming ominously over Equus or anything like that, but there is a pony returning on the first day of the thousandth year. She unfortunately got in the line of fire of the elements, which is why Celestia put them out-of-the-way on the comet Mona for safe keeping.”

And that was probably more or less true for some interpretation of my words, even if it skipped a few logical steps.

“So are you talking about that other diarch you mentioned?” Twinkleshine asked.

Nodding, I said, “Yes. Princess Luna, Alicorn of the Night, Diarch of Equestria, Mistress of Dreams, et cetera, et cetera is Celestia’s sister and the other pony who was responsible for Discord’s defeat, although history has seen fit to forget her in her near-thousand year absence, among many other things.”

Pinkie Pie, crying overly dramatically in the same way she expressed every emotion, said, “That’s so sad! I’d hate to be separated from my sisters for a thousand years!”

Berry Punch scooted her chair away from Pinkie Pie to avoid getting wet. Sometimes I felt like Pinkie Pie needed to be put in a cage and studied for all the weird behavior she exhibited, not to mention her disregard for the laws of magic and physics. Now was a perfect example. Tears weren’t supposed to actually fly from her eyes; that was comic book stuff. The only thing that kept me from freaking out around her was my utter dearth of knowledge concerning earth pony magic.

Anyway, Fluttershy was the next to speak, barely above a whisper as usual. “Why hasn’t Princess Celestia kept Princess Luna’s memory alive? If – if you don’t mind me asking, that is. I’m sure the princess has a good reason and all.”

I kept myself from sighing or frowning. “I’m sorry, Fluttershy, but I can’t answer that question right now. It’s a–”

“State secret,” Dash finished for me. “What isn’t with you?”

Cherry Berry put a hoof over Pinkie Pie’s mouth and held it there while she said, “So before somepony leads us off topic, I need to ask. Are we on an epic quest to reimprison this Princess Luna?”

Deep breath, Twilight. In, and out. “No,” I said calmly. We were on a quest to do the exact opposite, but excepting Chrysalis, we weren’t close enough yet for me to tell them that and to expect any good to come of it. “Luna is my dear mentor and my closest friend.”

I barely caught it underneath Pinkie Pie saying, “Aw, sounds like somepony’s got a crush on her teacher,” but I did hear Twinkleshine’s quiet inhale of breath.

Whoops. I turned to her and quickly whispered, “We need to talk in private after this.”

Twinkleshine nodded – a very small gesture that probably only indicated she’d heard me – but her eyes were distant and unfocused.

Sighing inwardly, I turned back to the rest of the table, torn between dropping the conversation and running off with Twinkleshine and finishing it. In the end, my professionalism got the upper hoof, and I fully returned my attention to the briefing.

Snickering, Dash said, “You know, Twi, Princess Luna is just gonna end up back in jail if you put those moves you showed me on her.”

Laughter, choking, and spit takes were the response to that statement, with Chrysalis and Pinkie Pie in Dash’s laughing camp.

“Dash!” Berry Punch shouted. “That is – I’m sure she’d never–”

Veering the topic at a complete right angle, Cherry Berry hastily asked, “So how are you Princess Luna’s student if she’s…”

“Banished,” I finished, helping Cherry Berry out.

Interrupting as usual, Pinkie Pie said, “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Are you a time traveler from the past? I mean, we’re all time travelers from the past, but are you from the past past, because that’d be super duper amazing! What was life like back then? Do you know the lost recipe for the fourth flavor?”

“Er…words to the effect of no,” I answered. “I mentioned that Luna is the ‘mistress of dreams’. She’s able to communicate with ponies while they’re sleeping.”

“Huh,” Cherry Berry said. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Can I meet her?” Pinkie Pie asked. Gasping, she added, “Has she even had a party in the last thousand years?”

“Probably…not,” I ventured to say.

“Not even birthday parties?”

“Maybe? It’d just be a party of two. I mean, she and I have had a few small celebrations, but she’s old enough that birthdays aren’t really that important to her anymore.”

“Not important?” Pinkie Pie shouted. “This needs to be corrected pronto!” She vanished in a blur of pink out the door at a speed Dash would’ve been proud of. What she intended to do, I didn’t want to know. I silently promised to apologize to Luna later.

After a long silence in which I, at least, if not everypony else, had to focus on not contemplating the dread Pinkie Pie, Cherry Berry said, “Disregarding… Hmm… Anyway, I’d like to meet Princess Luna, too.”

“Me three,” Dash said. “Princess Cadance was cool and all, but meeting somepony like Princess Celestia would be amazing.”

“I’d like to be added to the list,” Berry Punch said. “I take it she’s the sponsor of this trip, and I’d like to say my thanks.”

Nodding, I asked, “Anypony else?”

Twinkleshine silently raised her hoof.

“Alright, I’ll pass along your requests when I go to bed, but I will tell you this in advance. Luna is not like Celestia at all, and you’ll hurt her if you go in expecting a carbon copy of her sister.” I looked to Dash in particular, but it didn’t look like she noticed.

“Anyway,” I continued, rising from my chair, “I’m getting a bit tired, so Twinkleshine and I need to be about our duties before I go to bed.”

Departing the table, I sent a small nod toward Chrysalis, who returned the gesture. She’d be in charge of sustaining the life support spells while I slept. While we wouldn’t die if they were disabled for eight hours a day, it was far better not to take any unnecessary risks, and Chrysalis had more than enough magic to take up the rather light burden. The shields in particular were important; if we ran into any space dust, it’d tear a hole straight through the ship without shielding.

Once I’d reached the door, Twinkleshine finally arose from her chair and trotted over to catch up with me, falling into step silently at my side.

On the bridge, Twinkleshine and I had quickly finished the few measurements we needed to take, including the precise time that I stopped accelerating the ship. While she could, to frighteningly fine precision, calculate our location based on the positions of the stars, Twinkleshine felt far more comfortable having a secondary set of information to check against, which was something I highly approved of.

What I didn’t approve of was the stifling silence hanging between us.

“Twinkleshine–”

“Twilight–”

I held out a hoof, gesturing for her to go first.

Gulping, Twinkleshine nodded. “Twilight, are you and Princess Luna planning to overthrow Princess Celestia?”

After a second of complete silence, I felt my head mechanically tilt to the left as if it were the second hand of a clock.

“Sorry! It’s just, I know you’re not on good terms with the princess, and we’re going to retrieve the…the Elements of Harmony, which you said can banish alicorns for a thousand years. And you’ve made it clear to me at least that the princess doesn’t know about this” – Twinkleshine gestured to the ship with a hoof – “so I thought…you know.”

Regaining my ability to think properly, I said, “No. No, that’s fine. I just – I was expecting a completely different question. Okay, wow. So to answer your question as posed, yes. Can you accept that?”

“I…I don’t know.” Twinkleshine looked away, unable to meet my gaze. “Nopony deserves a thousand years of banishment, no matter what they’ve done.”

“We agree.”

Twinkleshine’s eyes widened for a moment as she looked up and met mine, but the surprise was soon replaced by confusion.

“Then why are we going to Mona?”

“To break the elements. It’s funny, really. Celestia could make this trip in a couple hours. The hard part for her isn’t the distance, or anything even remotely related to it. For her, the hard part is finding the exact position of Mona. I can just imagine the look on her face when she comes to retrieve the elements and finds out she can’t use them to banish Luna again.”

“Then she really…”

I nodded.

“How could she do that? To her own sister even. She always seemed so nice and gentle when she visited the school. She’d even talk to anypony who talked to her. That’s… I – I really don’t know what to say.”

I left Twinkleshine to her own thoughts for seven seconds short of five minutes by the clock. While I was sure I could talk her into just about anything, the need wasn’t there. Her own words had already all but condemned Celestia.

“Twilight,” Twinkleshine began, her voice barely a whisper, “what do you two plan to do with the princess?”

“Nothing too bad; we certainly have no interest in creating a mad goddess to complement Discord by imposing a thousand years of solitude upon her. Luna and I are not so cruel, even if Celestia intended to do as such to Luna.”

I sighed at the bite in my voice. Despite how true it was, I hadn’t planned for that to come out quite so harsh. Twinkleshine didn’t appear off-put by it. In fact, there was a small smile on her face, one that I returned with little effort.

“Disregarding other precautions we have to take, we intend to put her into a magically induced sleep for…an indeterminately long time.”

Not that we could actually do much more than that without crippling ourselves, but Twinkleshine didn’t need to know that. Celestia was as unkillable as any other alicorn, and the magic required for a banishment spell scaled roughly linearly with the magic of what you were banishing. Banishing Celestia would effectively reduce one of us to unicorn levels of magic or both of us to half Cadance’s strength, since the spell would need to be recast over and over again, and neither were acceptable options.

And honestly, we really weren’t that cruel, no matter how much Celestia deserved it.

Now it was Twinkleshine’s turn to sigh. Fortunately, it was a sigh of relief. “What about Princess Cadance? I know I’ve only met her a few times, but she seemed really nice. What happens to her?”

“Nothing. I love Cadance, and Luna has nothing against her.” As an afterthought, I added, “And my brother would never forgive me if I ever let anything happen to her.”

Giggling, Twinkleshine said, “He wasn’t very subtle when I saw them together, was he?”

“Heh. No, he wasn’t. He still thinks it’s a secret, though. He really turns into a big idiot around Cadance. To be fair to both of them, they tone it way down in public. Still, I’d have to have my nose in a book every waking moment not to notice.”

“Don’t you?” Twinkleshine smiled and gently bumped me on the shoulder with a hoof.

“Pft, I wish.” Once our giggling had died down, I asked, “So are you okay with this?”

“Well…no. And yes. I’d rather everypony be happy, but I guess I understand it, at least.”

“That’s good enough,” I said, stepping forward to nuzzle Twinkleshine. “Thank you for understanding. You’ll keep this a secret for now, right?”

Returning my nuzzle, Twinkleshine said, “Of course, Twilight. I’ll always keep your secrets.”

I took a deep breath, idly noticing that Twinkleshine smelled nicer than I remembered. “I don’t know what I’d do without you on this trip. I think the rest of our little family here would drive me insane.”

“Glad to be of help.”

Breaking away, I said, “See you tomorr…” A horrible thought struck me. “Oh, horseapples.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Did we bring enough shampoo?”

Twinkleshine’s eyes widened.

“No, this is ridiculous. We’re not turning around for shampoo. I – I need to go to bed, but first thing in the afternoon, we need to scour the library for instructions on how to make it.”

“I’ll get started right now,” Twinkleshine offered.

“Great! It would be humiliating to have to ask Luna or Chrysalis to find out how to make shampoo – magically or otherwise – for me if there’s any way at all we can avoid it.”

“Understood, Captain Sparkle.”

As Twinkleshine cantered off, I called out, “And make sure this stays secret!”

Nothing further of interest to report.

Author's Note

Fun with color!

Now featuring a named prereader – Starlight Nova

Chapter Fourteen - Darker Matters - Part One

[Summer 15, 993 – Day 25]

Luna finally got around to meeting Twinkleshine tonight, which makes her the fourth and last pony to do so. I now have three concurring opinions that Luna should visit a dentist. Pinkie Pie being the dissenter – naturally – who thinks Luna looks like an alligator.

I still don’t know what madness possessed that mare to get an alligator for a pet.

I suppose it also bears mentioning that Dash thinks Luna’s teeth look cool. However, for what was probably the first time in her life, she agreed that functionality is more important than awesomeness in this case – or radness, or whatever. I can’t remember what word she used exactly.

Anyway, I’m glad it went over so well. Pinkie Pie and Dash can be more than a little rude, and they live life completely at their own pace. On the other hoof, Luna can be a bit intimidating when she’s in full regalia, although she’s been forgoing most of it in the past few seasons.

Huh. Now that I point it out to myself, I think that last time I saw her all dressed up was…

*hmm*

I think it was a couple weeks before…er…Hearth’s Warming.

*cough*

Odd.

Nothing further of interest to report.

As soon as she came into view, I ran up to Luna and nuzzled her. I was just barely up to her chest in height now, so it wasn’t nearly as awkward for either of us as it used to be. Well, I was if I leaned into her while standing on two hooves.

It still counted.

“So how did you find Twinkleshine?” I asked.

“Vicious and predatory.”

Jumping back, I shrieked, “What?” Looking up, Luna was silently laughing as if she’d just told a joke, but she certainly hadn’t sounded like it. “What did she do?”

“Mostly she sat and listened as I told her stories of the stars long forgotten, but she had a few questions as well.”

When Luna didn’t continue, I asked, “And?”

“Hmm? And what?”

“Luna, what did Twinkleshine do to you? Was she rude, or mean, or – or what?”

Chuckling, Luna said, “No, she was a very sweet filly. My niece did well to introduce the two of you.”

“But – but you said you found…” The precise wording I’d used finally clicked, and I stomped my hoof. “I am not amused.”

“Perhaps,” Luna replied, dragging the word out teasingly, “but you are adorable when you’re frustrated.”

Blushing, I turned away from Luna. The eye contact wasn’t helping me stop being adorable in the least.

“So what was she dreaming about?”

“Oh, nothing too important.”

“Really? You can tell me.”

“Twilight,” Luna began, placing a hoof on my muzzle to guide me back to her eyes, “dreams are private matters, and I will not reveal them without permission. Well, except when–”

“–there is a serious need to,” I finished for her, my flat tone relaying my opinion for me.

A wicked grin grew on Luna’s face, showing off her teeth. “I suppose in such circumstances as well, but I was going to say except when I can use it to tease my friends.”

Gasping, I said, “You wouldn’t.” My mind was already replaying several mortifying dreams I’d had that I knew Luna had seen before interrupting them.

Luna just sat there, staring at me while smiling and silently laughing.

“Please, Luna, don’t.” I really didn’t like how that came out as borderline begging.

“I make no promises.”

Ugh. I needed to distract her quickly before she got any bad ideas. Remembering my idle thoughts from before I’d gone to bed, I asked, “Luna, why are you only wearing your tiara?”

“Huh?”

“I just realized that you haven’t worn your full regalia in a while, but Twinkleshine told me you’d had it all on.”

I caught the slightest hesitation in Luna’s answer, one most ponies wouldn’t have noticed. “Is there something wrong with that?”

“Well, no. I was just–”

Looking herself over, Luna interrupted, “I’d be quite embarrassed if it’s been covering up something strange that I haven’t noticed. It wasn’t, was it?”

“No! You’re beautiful, Luna! I was just–” My brain caught up to what I’d said. Blushing once again, I finished, “I was just wondering why.”

“Hmm. I don’t really have any particular reason. Just letting my mane down, I suppose. I must admit I’ve never had much room in my heart for horseshoes or greaves, nor for any clothing, to be honest.” Pulling off her tiara with a hoof, Luna added, “Even this little thing can be quite tiring.”

Luna threw her crown off into the distance, and I watched it dissolve into nothing; it was, after all, just a figment of Luna’s imagination. When I looked back to her, the tiara was already back atop her head.

“I completely understand,” I said. I’d never understood why anypony wore clothing, let alone liked it. Mare’s clothing was especially bad. Dresses were horribly uncomfortable, not to mention that accommodating our tails had a horrible tendency to make us look ridiculous.

Cutting off my train of thought, Luna said, “You understand nothing.”

I jumped back in surprise. Luna’s words somehow sounded frighteningly loud, but she hadn’t so much as raised her voice.

“You have not faced the true horrors of having a half-dozen mares obsessing over your appearance and throwing a fit at the mere suggestion of having a single eyelash out of place. At the worst of times, they wouldn’t even let me preen myself.”

A dangerous glint entered Luna’s eye, and I took a step back.

“You once said you wanted to know everything…”

I gulped. “When I said everything, I didn’t mean everything everything. There are some things in this world that are better off left mysteries.”

“Oh, come now,” Luna said, her horn glowing ominously. I felt her magic washing over me, refusing to be denied its purpose despite my resistance. “That’s not like my little Twilight Sparkle. Let us…learn.”

Some horrible time later – I still couldn’t tell time in a dream, but I was sure it’d been at least an hour – I sat in Luna’s hooves, her magic working a brush through my mane far more gently than the rest of the process had been. The only thing that had made the experience bearable was Luna talking about alchemy though…well, not through most of it, but during some of the slower periods.

I had an admittedly nice cross between a dress and a cloak on – the last in a long line of options Luna had seen fit to dress me up in. I was in no mood to admit it to her face, but she had a decent sense of fashion, or at least I thought she did. Light blue matched my coat well, and the silver trim highlighted the entire ensemble well without descending into frilliness.

“You were right,” I mumbled.

“Hmm? Right about what?”

“About…that. I really didn’t understand.”

“I’m glad I could help.” I could practically hear Luna’s smirk. “Now you can’t say I never warned you about how terrible the life of a princess can be.”

“Luna, do I…” Asking the question somehow felt wrong, like returning a bad Hearth’s Warming present given in earnest.

Momentarily halting her ministrations mid-stroke, Luna asked, “What is it?”

“I – do I really have to be a – a princess?” There, I’d said it. With any luck, Luna wouldn’t be too upset.

We were both perfectly silent for a moment, and then Luna returned to brushing my mane.

“Do you not want to be an alicorn?”

Immediately, I shouted, “No, of course not! There’s almost nothing I’d give that up for!”

“Almost nothing? And what would you give up your ascension for?”

“Oh, um, nothing in particular comes to mind – just ill-defined outlier cases.”

“I see.”

I silently sighed to myself, glad that Luna didn’t follow up on her question. I didn’t really want to put to words all of the horrible potential futures my very creative imagination could come up with, even less so to the pony whose terrible fate played a central role in nearly all of them.

“So then,” Luna began, “what’s the problem? Is ‘princess’ too much of a downgrade from ‘goddess’?”

“What? No, I–”

“Canst thee not bringest thyself to consort amongst the mortals in thy future station, o divine one?”

“Luna, stop teasing me.” I tried to turn to face her, but Luna wasn’t having it; I was stuck firmly within her hooves while she continued to brush my mane. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

“Perhaps so, but it’s just too easy. You can consider it a lesson, if you want. Everything you say will be subjected to intense scrutiny as a princess.”

“Is that a yes, then?” I asked.

Sighing, Luna said, “Twilight, let me share something with you. Even at its worst, to Equestria, I was still its princess. Of course, I was the evil princess of darkness seeking to corrupt my shining sister who could do no wrong, but I was still their princess. It doesn’t matter whether or not you accept a title, or wear a crown, or anything else. The very moment you ascend is the moment the world stops seeing Twilight Sparkle the pony in favor of Princess Twilight Sparkle the goddess.”

So I didn’t have a choice in the matter. Great. I could always disguise myself as a regular old unicorn if I needed to, but I found the idea distasteful. I shouldn’t have to hide who I was to be treated as who I was.

And I sort of really liked wings.

With a muted thump, I felt something drop onto my head, and the brushing stopped. I tried looking up, but Luna’s hoof held my head level as she adjusted whatever she’d put on me.

“There. You look like a proper little princess now.”

“Wonderful,” I said, rolling my eyes and casting a scrying spell to look at my head. Luna had placed a smaller replica of her own tiara on me, except mine was silver – platinum, maybe – instead of dark blue. “And it only took most of the night.”

“Well, professionals are faster…” Luna said, trailing off to suggest she shared my opinion.

“Isn’t there, like, an instant makeover spell or something?”

Luna shrugged. “I’m afraid I spent more time avoiding makeovers than trying to optimize them. Something which…became much easier over the centuries.”

I spun in place and latched onto Luna in a hug. Luna brought a hoof to rest on my mane. She probably would have rubbed it if she hadn’t just spent ten minutes brushing it to perfection.

Eventually, Luna asked, “Twilight, what are you going to do on my moon?”

“Um…nothing, I guess. I hadn’t really thought about it much.”

The plan was to retrieve the elements as late as possible, and delaying our departure wasn’t really a good idea. Stopping at the moon was a good way to burn the extra travel time, whatever other personal sentiments it held for me.

“Are there any interesting sights to see?” I asked.

“Twilight, are you expecting tourist traps on the moon?”

“No, not at all.” That’d be like expecting an attraction in the badlands back on Equus. Well, there was Mizyl Rock, but that was a naturally forming magical curiosity.

“That’s a shame,” Luna lamented. “They could really use the tourism. The moon has zero incoming revenue these days. Quite unfortunate, really.”

“Okay, okay. I can take a hint. What should I visit while I’m there?”

“Well, there are two or three craters that have a sort of raw, natural beauty you might appreciate–”

I was skeptical of that. I’ve seen and made a lot of craters in my day, and if you’ve seen one crater, you’ve seen them all.

“–but there’s also a few interesting magical sites you would enjoy.”

“There’s magic on the moon?”

“There’s a lot of magic on the moon, Twilight – more than on Equus, actually.” I unconsciously pulled myself closer to Luna, and before I noticed what I was doing, Luna half-whispered, “That magic isn’t there because of my banishment. Don’t let it bother you.”

Releasing my vice-like grip on her, I settled for simply leaning into Luna again. “Sorry.”

I still couldn’t help but wonder how much of the magic on the moon was literally Luna in her banished state. I barely suppressed a shudder at the thought of using Luna like a sacrifice to cast a spell. It was a whole new level of creepy which I’d prefer to never think about again.

The subject forgotten, Luna said, “But there is one other place… How long were you planning to stay on the moon?”

After a second for my brain to catch up and to realize I’d been asked a question, I said, “As close to exactly one day as possible.”

“Hmm. In that case, you should seek shelter at my vacation home after you’re done sightseeing.”

What? I awkwardly broke away from Luna and fell backward onto my haunches to stare up at her. Her face was completely serious. “You have a vacation home on the moon?” At Luna’s nod, I asked, “You’re not just teasing me?”

“No, Twilight. I’m afraid it’ll lack many of the modern conveniences you enjoy back on Equus, and even on the Nebulous, but so long as your Old Equestrian hasn’t gotten rusty, you’ll find the servants accommodating enough to make your stay quite pleasant.”

After working to pull up my jaw, I asked, “There are ponies living on the moon? Moon ponies?”

“Yes. Unfortunately, I was never good enough with golems to make the Lunar Palace self-sustaining. That was one of my bitter failures.”

“No, no, no. That’s completely missing the…golems? That sounds – no, I’m not getting distracted. There are ponies on the moon?”

Nodding, Luna said, “Their population is fairly stable at approximately two-hundred, plus or minus a dozen or so. I never told my sister about my home away from home, so the original generation was stranded there. It was, perhaps, a stroke of luck, as it allowed the subspecies of lunar pegasi to endure.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Are you talking about bat ponies? They’re real?”

“Well, that is one of their many names. Thestrals would be one of the more morbid options, but I assure you that they can be seen without watching somepony die, nor are they animated skeletons, and they certainly won’t feast on your blood. Other than the cosmetic differences, they are exactly the same as any other pegasus; everything else is just superstition.”

“I…I see.” Slightly embarrassed by the terseness of my response, I forced myself to ask, “What happened? Did Celestia genocide them?”

“No, the disappearance of lunar pegasi is one of the few things my sister has not had a hoof in. They are, in theory, still around on Equus, but I don’t believe any full blooded ones have been born in eight- to nine-hundred years; their genes are all recessive, and bringing together all of the ones necessary to get a proper lunar pegasus almost never happens.”

“So they just evolved into near extinction?” I couldn’t figure out if that was sad or not. If that were the case, it wasn’t like they were gone, just…different.

Nodding, Luna said, “It really is a shame. There’s something wonderfully exotic about them that I find fascinating.”

Note to self: Luna finds bat ponies appealing. I was about to ask for more details when a thought struck me. Letting my curiosity rule me, I asked the almost positively rude question, “Are your eyes natural?”

“Ah…” Luna sighed, and a frown found its way onto her face. “No, they’re not. I’ve always wished they were, though.”

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. “And the teeth?”

This time it was Luna’s turn to blush and turn away. “I…may have a gem addiction.”

“You have a…gem…addiction? I – I don’t understand.” There were too many questions competing for my attention, each demanding to be answered immediately. “Just – just how?”

“Well, you see, alicorns can use any type of magic.” Luna blew a short burst of cyan dragonfire to prove her point. “My sister and I generally downplayed that fact to make us seem less…alien to ponies, and at first to make us seem less like Discord in our ability to do just about anything.”

“And that includes the magical digestion of dragons?” I asked, to which Luna nodded. “Do alicorns have some sort of expanded diet? Do you have to eat gems like dragons do?”

“No, we don’t actually have to eat at all. It’s…recreational. And again, it makes us seem less alien if we do.”

Huh. Well, it wasn’t like I was much one for food anyway. I’d probably starve to death as a unicorn if I didn’t have somepony feeding me, and that was really embarrassing when I could just go outside and graze in the worst case. Okay, maybe I wouldn’t starve to death, but I’d almost certainly be malnourished.

“So…” I began, torn between addressing the elephant in the room and leaving it alone. As usual, I asked the question. “How did you…you know?”

Luna took a deep breath and then answered, “Never challenge a dragon to an eating contest.”

“Oh.”

We sat there in an awkward silence for some while before I asked, “So what do they taste like? Gems, that is, not dragons.”

I got a small laugh from Luna. “They vary wildly depending on the crystal structure, as well as the material it’s made of. Impurities are like spices. The quartz family is what I like the most – citrine and amethyst in particular. They’re a lot like rock candy, but a thousand times better.”

Luna’s horn lit up as she licked her lips. An amethyst the size of my hoof popped into existence. I watched her stick the gem into her mouth whole and saw her bite it in half with all the difficulty of eating bread. It was, in its own weird way, fascinating to watch a pony eat a gem.

Then again, maybe it was just that Luna was older and had table manners, rather than that she was a pony; Spike tended toward gnawing on his food, or failing that, to melt it as he sucked on it, which while entertaining, was often a pain to clean up.

“Oh my gosh!” Luna said through her full mouth. “It’s. So. Good!” Swallowing, she continued, “I’d say you should try some, but you really shouldn’t.”

“Is this why Spike gets really upset if I try to take a gem away from him?” I asked, alarm creeping into my voice as I realized exactly what I was implying. “Am I feeding him drugs?”

“Oh, no. He needs gems in his diet, especially if he’s not getting meat.”

I shivered a bit a the reminder that Spike was an omnivore. I’d filled the Nebulous’s rainwater lake with fish before we’d left to feed to Spike, but Fluttershy was having qualms about it, and she’d reinfected me with them, too. Watching Spike tear flesh from bone was a little scary, and the first time I’d watched him do it was nearly traumatizing.

“Anyway,” Luna said, putting a hoof on my withers, “dragons have an instinctual urge to hoard; they hate it when you try to take anything away from them. Just keep doing what you are, and I’m sure he’ll grow up into a wonderful, and reasonable, young drake.”

“Thanks, Luna,” I said, stepping forward to nuzzle her.

Luna diverted my affection with a hoof. “After all that work earlier, you want to ruin it by rubbing your face all over me?”

“Oh. Right.”

“Unless, of course, you want to go through the entire process again?”

“N-no! I’m good! Thanks, but no thanks!”

Giggling, Luna said, “Oh well. Now I do believe we’ve gotten way off topic. Do you remember where we left off earlier?”

“Um… I think it was transmutation. Specifically, state changes and why I shouldn’t make…um…”

“Plasmas?” Luna suggested.

“Right. I shouldn’t make those because I’ll probably ‘vaporize myself’.”

“More or less, yes. They seem to be responsive to magnetic fields, but being sublimated is never a pleasant experience, alicorn or otherwise, so I’d suggest avoiding them altogether.”

[Summer 16, 993 – Day 26]

Okay, quick note. I’d never noticed it before, but Fluttershy has tiny little fangs among her teeth. Apparently she has bat…er, lunar pegasus ancestry. Or at least a fair number of their genes.

Nothing further of interest to report.

[Summer 20, 993 – Day 30]

After some delays, Twinkleshine finally got around to giving her presentation detailing our trip. I’m sure she’s going to badger me into recording it despite it clearly being within her purview, so here we go.

Cherry Berry and Fluttershy came to listen to Twinkleshine. Chrysalis was busy dealing with something back on Equus, so she asked for a summarized version later. In my opinion, I think she was just looking for an excuse to politely decline. I think Dash and Pinkie Pie were in a prank war at the time, so they declined. Not that either of them were particularly interested to begin with, especially the former. Berry Punch, the only pony with a real excuse, was looking after the foals.

Anyway, we’d found ourselves a nice, cozy spot in the library.

“I was kind of hoping for a better turnout than this…”

“Don’t take it personally, Twinkleshine,” said Cherry Berry. “Berry Punch is legitimately preoccupied, and Chrysalis is…”

“Making herself busy so she doesn’t have to sit through this,” I finished for Cherry Berry. “She’s just grumpy, though. She’ll become friendlier eventually” – not that I was one to talk – “or else she’ll suffer the dread and terrible wrath of her daughter.”

“And what would that be?” asked Twinkleshine.

“Probably the silent treatment.” Which compared to a regular pony, was doubly hard for a changeling to pull off at all, and infinitely more effective when Pupa brought that most fearsome weapon to bear against Chrysalis. It had taken but ten minutes before Chrysalis had cracked the last time I’d witnessed it.

Rolling her eyes, Twinkleshine said, “How scary.”

Well, if I were in constant telepathic contact with somepony, and they suddenly went silent, I’d be pretty edgy and worried, too, even if I knew they were alright. Or at least I imagined I would be.

“Right. The point is,” began Cherry Berry, “two of them are busy in their own way, and the other two are the completely wrong target audience for this kind of stuff. I’d be surprised if Dash could stay awake through this and even more surprised if Pinkie could sit still that long.”

“Excuse me,” Fluttershy whispered, “but Dash can too stay awake.” When Cherry Berry turned toward her, Fluttershy continued, “Er… That is, she always could in school. Sort of. Not that she paid attention…but she didn’t fall asleep.”

Cherry Berry blew a lock mane out of her eyes with far more force than necessary, but didn’t say anything. I knew she and Dash were butting heads a lot recently over the whole amateur versus professional adventurer thing, but I hadn’t realized they’d moved past shouting and onto passive aggressiveness.

“Why don’t we just move on to the actual presentation?” I suggested.

Twinkleshine looked straight at the floor. “Um…sure. So the moon. Yes, the moon. That’s, uh, where we’re going.”

Sighing, I got up from my cushion to hug Twinkleshine. I took her a while, but eventually her knees stopped shaking. “You’re just talking to friends, Twinkleshine. It’s not really public speaking, and there’s no ill will here.” Breaking apart, I said, “Remember, you’re not giving a speech. You’re just sharing your notes. Okay?”

Twinkleshine took a slow, deep breath. “Okay. I – I think I’m good.”

I took a moment to give Twinkleshine a smile before turning and retaking my seat.

“Okay, okay. So…the moon. It’s not that far away, but there’s a big obstacle we have to avoid, so we’re going to act like a comet and go whoosh” – Twinkleshine nearly fell over using her forehooves for emphasis – “right by it…and that’ll make it easier to chart a course to Mona, too, since we’ll be be mostly following the same path. Questions?”

Cherry Berry coughed.

“Um…Twinkleshine? Do you think you could…expand on that just a little bit?” Oh, why did Twinkleshine have to make that sad face? I was just trying to help. “Maybe you could start by explaining why we’re taking a detour on our detour? Remember, you’re talking to two layponies and a hobbyist.”

“R-right. So…the universe is a paraboloid of revolution–”

Sigh. It seemed I still needed to work on Twinkleshine’s communication skills.

“–and we’re near the bottom where all the–”

“Excuse me,” Fluttershy whispered. Twinkleshine cringed a little, but she stopped and waited for Fluttershy to speak. “I”m sorry – it’s probably my fault for being terrible in school – but what’s a parabloid of revolution?”

A look of recognition flashed through Twinkleshine’s eyes. “Oh! Uh, it’s paraboloid, by the way, although they don’t sound that different.”

“Sorry.”

“I didn’t mean–”

Interjecting myself into the conversation, I said, “We’re all learning here, you two. Questions and mistakes are nothing to be ashamed of or to get worked up over. Just…you know…relax.”

“Sor–”

I cut Fluttershy off with a look.

Meanwhile, I could hear Cherry Berry sigh, apparently finding this as frustrating as I did. “You were saying?” she said.

“Um…so paraboloids of revolution are what you get when you spin a parabola about its ver – er, about the lowest point of the parabola, which is called the vertex. You all know what a parabola is, right?”

All three of us nodded our heads.

“Great. So it’s like a cone but less pointy. In it, there’s a point called the focus, and–”

“Quick question,” Cherry Berry interrupted. “You said we were near the bottom earlier. Are we… I guess what I want to ask is, is there an edge to the universe?”

“Yes! Yes, there is. Equus is actually really close to it. We’re near the bottom of the universe, but there doesn’t seem to be any end to space above us – at least none that we can observe. Oh, and when we look at really old stuff, there’s this weird disconnect where everything just goes crazy and seems to do whatever it feels like for no reason.”

My breath caught, I barely managed to ask normally, “Twinkleshine, when did that happen?” Her answer was going to confirm or deny one of my biggest fears.

“Um… If I remember correctly…it starts approximately fifteen-hundred years ago and ends about four-thousand years ago. It’s hard to be exact though since we have to look at stars way far away from Equus to see the ripple effects of whatever happened. Why do you…”

Even as Twinkleshine’s eyes lit up, I had to suppress a sigh of relief. If the stars were still moving fifteen-hundred years ago, that almost certainly meant that Luna had only been banished once.

Gasping, Twinkleshine asked, “Twilight, can Princess Luna move the stars?”

“Yes, but let’s save that discussion for another time, alright?”

After going through her usual motions of humming and pouting to no effect, Twinkleshine said, “Fine.”

Seeing her falter as she struggled to remember what she’d been discussing, I said, “You were telling us about Polaris?”

“Oh, right. So Polaris, the Southern Star – typically called the North Star for non-cosmographical, historical reasons – the brightest star in the sky, et cetera, isn’t actually a star. Just like the moon and sun, you can see it from anywhere on Equus, and the further south you go, the bigger it gets. And now I remember that I haven’t explained what a focus is.”

“I know what it is,” Fluttershy said. “At least, I do if it’s the same as in a parabola.”

Agreeing, Cherry Berry said, “I’d assume so. We’re basically just dealing with a…continuous parabola? Gosh, it’s been so long since my last math class.”

“Questionable abuse of vocabulary aside,” I commented, “the only important part you need to know is a lot of light goes through Polaris, but almost all of it doesn’t reach Equus.”

“How much is ‘a lot’?”

“Enough to melt us at a radius orders of magnitudes larger than danger zone of the sun,” answered Twinkleshine.

Twinkleshine cast a simple illusion of something vaguely representing our ship melting at the relevant distances for the sun and for Polaris. The utility of the visual aid was questionable, in my opinion, and her oral explosion sound effects weren’t making it any better.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Fluttershy petrified with her eyes stuck open.

“Naturally,” I began, “we’re taking the long way around. Starting in a few weeks, it’ll be bright all the time, and the same will be true after we leave the moon for a season or two.”

“Yep,” agreed Twinkleshine. “We’re going to slingshot around the moon like a comet but with a small enough eccentricity that we don’t burn up along the way. I’m pretty sure none of us actually want to be a comet.”

Using magic to whisper into Twinkleshine’s ear, I said, “Remember to keep the vocab down, and please try to stop scaring Fluttershy unintentionally.”

Looking bashful, Twinkleshine made a small, “Oh,” before elaborating. “So the idea is we take a large berth around Polaris at a reasonably slow speed so that when we come back on the other side, we still have a large berth and don’t have to desperately try to steer ourselves away from…certain… Sorry.”

Sighing, I picked up one of Pinkie Pie’s fantastic butterscotch cookies – even if she didn’t want to come, Pinkie Pie had still catered the event – and ate half of it in one bite. I made it through four cookies before Cherry Berry had calmed Fluttershy down enough for us to continue.

“Sorry, Fluttershy,” Twinkleshine said.

“It’s – it’s okay.”

“No, really, I’m sorry. I just get wrapped up in…stuff sometimes.”

I rolled my eyes at that. For some reason, the novelty of space had never worn off for Twinkleshine. It was cool and all, but after being up here for so long, it really should just be normal for her. Oh well.

Not interested in yet another Fluttershy–Twinkleshine apology match, I said, “Fun fact: because our universe is only locally Euclidean everywhere, when we get to the moon, you’ll be able to see all of Equus at the same time with a telescope.”

“Are you serious?” Cherry Berry asked.

“She is!” Twinkleshine answered for me. “It’s going to be so cool! If you look outside right now, you can actually see Equus warping a little bit already. Well, you could in other parts of the ship. The floor isn’t see-through in the library.”

I heard Fluttershy mumble something, but I didn’t know what. She probably said something to the effect of, “I’m glad.” Even now, she had trouble walking through the all-glass corridors. It’d been awhile since I’d paid attention in detail, but I suspected she still closed her eyes when traveling between rooms.

“Well, I guess we’re far enough away that you’d need a telescope by now, but it’s the thought that counts.” Turning to me in particular, Twinkleshine said, “Maybe we can do a little planetgazing later.”

“I don’t see why not.” I would’ve asked Cherry Berry and Fluttershy if they wanted to join us, but I was pretty sure Twinkleshine was trying to ‘subtly’ ask me out on a date without actually asking.

Now that I thought of it, Twinkleshine had been spending a lot of time with Chrysalis lately, which probably meant she was spending a lot of time with Pupa, too. I really hoped they weren’t planning anything silly like getting Twinkleshine to try and seduce me. I wouldn’t be surprised if those two changelings would egg Twinkleshine on for their own entertainment.

Sometime soon…ish, I really needed to sit down with Twinkleshine and have a long talk with her.

Anyway, the other two declined the planetgazing invitation, and Cherry Berry asked, “There’s something that’s bothering me. It’s not really all that relevant, but how does Equus not get dragged into Polaris by the sun’s and the moon’s gravity? They’re huge, right?”

“Yes,” Twinkleshine replied, “but the answer goes back to what Twilight said. Basically, straight lines in our universe don’t look straight on the astronomical scale. I don’t really understand the math, but what happens is Equus is in a very small volume that’s in stable equilibrium with the movement of…

“Okay, so backing up. Stable equilibrium basically means small changes are negated. In the end, the net effect the sun and moon have on Equus ends up being zero, or approximately zero, anyway. There’s a whole slew of theories on how we got here, but nopony really knows. The explanations we do have are mostly…mostly…hmm… Ah! They’re more or less what you’d call conspiracy theories. They usually center around either Princess Celestia or Discord seriously messing with a more ‘natural’ system, producing what we see today, but there’s no evidence for any of them.”

And this was the point where Dash would say, “Of course there isn’t,” if she were here. Still, it was an interesting question to ask, and Twinkleshine and I had asked it long ago. Luna herself didn’t know, so the real answer was probably lost to time, sadly.

“Anyway, getting back on track…”

Picking up on my cue, Twinkleshine said, “Okay, so we’ve covered our flight path, so that just leaves our timing and our visiting plans. We’re timing our arrival for as near Hearth’s Warming Eve as we can get.”

Cherry Berry asked, “Why? Isn’t that sort of…awkward? Why then?”

“Because that’s when the sun and moon are furthest apart at their apexes, which means we have the largest error margin.” Her eyes darting to Fluttershy, Twinkleshine hastily added, “Not that we need a larger error margin. Just, better safe than sorry.”

“To clarify,” I began, “by apexes, Twinkleshine means the closest the sun and the moon come to Polaris. It changes depending on the season. In the winter, the moon comes closer, and in the summer, the sun comes closer.”

Nodding, Twinkleshine continued, “When we arrive, we’ll spend exactly a day on the moon and then leave to catch up with the Nebulous. Chrysalis elected to stay behind to keep the shields running so we don’t come back and find the greenhouse depressurized and all the plants dead.”

“Prudent,” was all Cherry Berry said to that.

“Does she have to?” Fluttershy asked. “I mean, it sounds kind of lonely. And…well, it’s the moon. It’d be a shame to miss it.”

“Chrysalis volunteered the moment she heard we were stopping at the moon,” I answered.

Volunteered was perhaps a bit misleading, but it captured the spirit of her words in the eyes of an optimist. A pessimist, however, would say she just didn’t want to spend time with us and found the moon as boring as the badlands back on Equus, which I could understand a bit. In the end, the moon was just a giant rock in space with a lot of magic.

“Anyway, we’ll spend a full day on the moon. I’m a bit concerned about what’ll happen to us during the day, since I have no idea what happens to the moon other than ‘it disappears’, quote Stargazer’s On the Workings of the Universe, but I assume Princess Luna would know if we’d have any problems.”

Twinkleshine sent a suggestive glance my way.

“Luna told me the moon leaves this side of the universe but never elaborated on that. We’ll just have to wait and see, I suppose.”

“Er, no offense to the princess,” Cherry Berry began, “but are you sure that’s safe? Has she ever tested it? Maybe with, you know, mortals?”

I nodded. “It’s perfectly safe. Luna’s offered to let us stay at the Lunar Palace when we’re done sightseeing, and the ponies that live there have never had any problems. I’d imagine we’ll be able to celebrate an old style Winter Moon Festival, rather than Hearth’s Warming, but…uh… Twinkleshine, why are you looking at me like that?”

“Twilight, did you just say ‘moon ponies’?”

Horseapples! “Not…in those exact words.”

Twinkleshine’s grin grew to frightening levels.

Nothing further of interest to report.

[Fall 73, 994 – Day 183]

I shut myself and Spike up in my room during the night to have a small, somber party all to ourselves. It took a lot of doing, and I depended heavily on Spike not really knowing what was going on due to his age, but we made it through the entire thing without Pinkie Pie butting in. It also helped that she was…probably…asleep

Anyway, Shining finally recovered from my stupidity. He still has physical therapy to go through, but he can finally walk properly again. Yay.

*sigh*

I really can’t get into this right now.

[Fall 85, 994 – Day 195]

*sigh*

It seems all I’m doing is sighing these days, and Pinkie Pie’s constant attempts to make me smile have been having anything but the intended effect. I’m sure it’s just a passing melancholy, but that doesn’t make me feel any better.

While I was asleep – sometime around noon, I believe – the date was set for Pupa to meet with Celestia in my place. She goes in on the first of winter. I’ve heard she’s gone through great pains to make sure Celestia won’t be able to casually see through her magic. Well, I say ‘casually’, but I mean ‘intense inspection’ by normal standards. Changelings are rather good at hiding themselves when they know they’re being pursued, but Celestia is very old and powerful. Feathers crossed.

On the same topic, Chrysalis, Pupa, and I have all been practicing faking my integration into the hive mind. Pupa is very good at pretending to be me, but we don’t want to chance the odd slip up in Celestia’s presence.

Anyway, the mechanics of the whole process basically amounts to putting a perfect illusion on me of Chrysalis’s experience of what Pupa sees and hears and having her relay my reactions back to Pupa. It’s a rather complex piece of illusion magic, but one well-tested over changeling history. And in all honesty, I’d expect nothing less from them.

Here’s hoping my stubborn pride last Hearth’s Warming won’t come back to bite us.

Nothing further of interest to report.

Okay, that’s not actually fair to myself. What was I supposed to say to Celestia? Oh, I had no idea what I was doing. Thanks for pointing that out. I’ll just give up the only magic I have left to me with a smile on my face. Like she would have believed that for a second. It’s just another consequence of me being stupid, not of my pride.

[Winter 1, 994 – Day 211]

I have no idea how well I’m going to remember the rest of today; I’ve never had an almost literal out-of-body experience before. However, I do know that pony memory is much stronger for personally experienced events, myself being no exception. As such I’ve decided to record today’s events in real time in case I find myself wishing to refer to it later.

Setting the scene, my family plus Pupa and Cadance arrived in Canterlot the day before. Celestia first spoke with Cadance and Shining – both individually – about ‘my’ progress in the dark arts, and then Pupa was finally called in.

“Twilight Sparkle?” a guard asked. Pupa looked up to get a better view of the stallion, and by consequence, I looked up as well. Never before had I been so thankful that I didn’t get motion sickness; I was absolutely positive I’d have vomited multiple times before this was over if I did.

Pupa took a long, deep breath. “Is it time?”

“Yes, the princess will see you now. Please follow me.”

The guard held open the door to Cadance’s room to allow Pupa to walk out. As soon as she’d left, the door closed almost without a sound. The guard nodded to Pupa and took the lead through the halls.

“Remember, Pupa,” I began, Chrysalis relaying my words for me, “you’re a wunderkind pretending to be a genius pretending to be a desperate cripple.”

Chrysalis snorted back on the Nebulous, but I paid her no mind. I certainly couldn’t claim all the credit for my immense talent and knowledge, but that didn’t make them any less real or any less mine.

“Don’t worry, Twilight,” Pupa said.“I certainly understand the desperate cripple part. Living without magic has been eye opening, to say the least.”

“Wait, have you not been cheating? Can’t you at least fake earth pony magic without anypony noticing?”

“I can, normally, but this infernal ring manages to block that, too.”

“Perfect!” I shouted, unintentionally jumping to my hooves.“That’s the spirit! I think I used that exact description once. Just remember that you need to let bitterness and anger simmer underneath everything you say, but it needs to be clearly under control – use just the lightest tinge. Celestia can crush you like a bug, and you both respect and fear that.”

“An apt simile,” Pupa joked, although I could tell Chrysalis had not appreciated it herself.

Our conversation lulled as Pupa was led through a particularly dense crowd of ponies, but it picked up again soon enough.

“A fair warning, Twilight. I do not have much practical experience displaying anger. I’ve never really been in such a position for real nor when pretending to be someone else.”

“I’ll give you cues when you need them,” I said, resisting the urge to panic.“Just try to do your best. Celestia is probably the only pony that could possibly notice you acting out of character, but she and I have only met two – three – four? We’ve only met in person a few times, so you shouldn’t have any real problems.”

“What about Cadance?”

“She doesn’t seem to be able to detect moods, at least not passively, so if she’s hanging around, don’t worry about her. Speaking of which, in public, it’s Princess Cadance, or Princess Cadenza if you’re talking to really uptight ponies. Same for Princess Celestia. Everywhere else, it’s Cadance and Celestia, except it’s still Princess Celestia to her face.”

“Simple enough. Is there any chance you’ve thought of a reason for us to cave to Celestia’s request to stop using dark magic?”

I sighed. “No, nothing that wouldn’t draw undue suspicion. Honestly, our goal right now is just to avoid a medical exam.”

“I’m reasonably confident I could fool the tests.”

“If you had your magic and if Celestia isn’t that one doing or overseeing them.”

“Well…yes. So long as she’s not in the room, it should be okay.”

“Still not something we want to risk.”

“Indeed,” Chrysalis interjected. “Just remember not to raise a big fuss about it.”

“Yes, Mother, I know.”

“And if you do get caught, Twilight is your friend and foolishly asked you to come in her place.”

I rolled my eyes at Chrysalis’s none-too-subtle jab at me.

“Yes, I–” Pupa began, only to be cut off by Chrysalis again.

“Then if she still insists on meeting Twilight, you reluctantly admit that you do not know where she is. She offered you her life and left.”

“Ye–”

“And if you are forced to admit you do know more, Twilight is holding me hostage.”

“Yes, Mother, I know,” Pupa said forcefully. “You’ve taught me well, you know, and we’ve already covered this. You don’t have to treat me like a nymph anymore.”

“Ehem.” A rather awkward interruption on my part, but it certainly got Pupa and Chrysalis to stop the mother–daughter stuff. “Do either of you know where that guard is leading us?”

A few seconds passed before Pupa replied, “Flint and Chzix agree that I’m probably headed toward the throne room.”

“Are you serious?” I asked, although the answer was obvious. “Why is Celestia doing this in public? Is she deliberately trying to drag me through the mud? I don’t understand why she’d do that. If she publicly disgraces me, she makes Cadance look bad, which makes her look bad.” And more importantly, me being seen in public with Luna later would make ruling harder for her.

“Oh?” Chrysalis said. “Are you suddenly ashamed of your inner darkness, you moldy, stale–”

“Mother!”

“Urgh. Fine. Sorry.” It was obvious Chrysalis’s heart wasn’t in that apology. “My point still stands.”

I sighed. “Look, there’s nothing wrong with using dark magic so long as the caster is mentally stable. Ponies like Sombra – ponies that were already insane or psychotic – are the kind of ponies that are remembered because they’re evil and do terrible things. And when you ask why they did what they did, it’s easier to just say, ‘Oh look, he used dark magic,’ then it is to actually contemplate the inner workings of a madpony.

“And as much as I hate to admit it, I guarantee you that only Celestia will actually understand and accept that argument, if only because she can use dark magic, too. Everypony else will just think me, er, Pupa already insane from the dark magic if she tried to reason with them.”

“Perhaps we should save your whining for some other time,” suggested Chrysalis.

Grumbling, I acquiesced – for now. As it was, Pupa had arrived at the doors to court. They were already spread wide open. Inside, a slew of ponies stood waiting off to the sides. I imagined they were the standard set of courtiers, but I’d never had enough interest – that is, I had zero interest – in Day Court politics to really know.

It wasn’t like they really mattered anyway. Everypony knew that the only pony with real power in the room was siting on the throne at the far end of the hall. Sure everypony else performed useful functions in mundane matters, but as far as this meeting was concerned, they were little more than wallpaper.

Fortunately, neither Cadance nor Shining were present, so that comment didn’t apply to them.

Not that it wouldn’t still be true…

A herald announced the arrival of Twilight Sparkle as Pupa approached the base of Celestia’s throne. I couldn’t help but notice that it had been timed rather poorly, which made me suspect that foals – and other ponies with short legs – didn’t often visit court. The awkward silence would’ve been funny if it were under other circumstances.

What wasn’t funny in any circumstance was when Pupa made eye contact with Celestia and actually snorted.

“No! Too much! Way too much!”

“Sorry, Twilight, but you have some strong feelings, and Celestia’s… Nevermind, I’m sure you don’t want to know.”

“Twilight Sparkle,” Celestia boomed from way atop her throne at the summit of her ridiculously large dais.

“Know what?”

In that same voice not quite at the Royal Canterlot level, Celestia continued, “You come before this court as a practitioner of dark magic” – from the sound of it, if not all, then nearly all of the assembly gasped – “in former violation of the regulations placed upon the field.”

Deflecting my question, Chrysalis said, “It doesn’t matter right now. We’ll tell you later.”

I was positive that Chrysalis had a little asterisk on the end of that which read, “If you don’t forget.”

“Considering your age and your circumstances, the charges made against you were dropped. However, as you refused to cease and desist, an overseer was tasked with determining your competence, both magical and mental.”

“See?” I began. “There’s indirect agreement with my point from the pony who tried to stamp out dark magic herself. If you’re mentally competent, there’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Whatever you say,” Chrysalis said.

“Before we begin, is there anything you would like to say for yourself?”

Pupa let out a curt, “No,” eliciting a few whispers from the wallpaper.

That hadn’t been the best response exactly, but I certainly wasn’t going to blame Pupa for getting ruffled. Celestia could have at least made it sound like she was an impartial arbitrator of law. Chrysalis worked to calm Pupa down, leaving me to simmer on my own.

Celestia’s pause was long and rather terrifying, her gaze filled with some hidden meaning. Pupa hadn’t needed my cue to start fidgeting on her hooves and to look away. I wasn’t even really there, and I still felt as if there had been some magic afflicting both of us.

Eventually, Celestia slowly said, “Very well.” Levitating a stack of papers to her, Celestia continued, “Lieutenant Armor has kept a log of your activities over the past three seasons. In it, he has detailed what spells you have used, as well as what spells you claim to also know. There are a few troubling entries which are blatantly illegal, including, but not limited to, placing a geas upon your parents for extra dessert.”

“Is – is she smiling?” I asked. It was hard to tell from Pupa’s distance, but it looked an awful lot like the corners of Celestia’s frown were fighting upward.

Chrysalis answered, “Canterlot’s worst kept secret is that Celestia has an outrageous sweet tooth.”

I found myself chuckling at the imagery that evoked despite my objections. Everypony else in the throne room chose some manner of gasp or outrage for their response, forcing Celestia to calm them all down.

Once the hall was quiet once more, Celestia said, “However, since observations began, you have at worst straddled the line between legal and illegal. I would like to believe this is because you have matured morally and ethically–”

Liar.

“–but there is something else which concerns me. I spoke with Princess Cadenza, and she told me something which Lieutenant Armor agreed with when prompted. She said that your personality has been, and I quote, a little bit erratic and changing–”

“Sorry,” Pupa said before I could say anything.

“–sometimes being kinder than usual and sometimes being meaner than usual.”

“It’s not entirely your fault,” I replied. “I’ve had some bad days at home while I was still back on Equus.”

“Do you have any explanation?” Celestia finished.

I flushed, immediately thinking of a really dumb and kind of embarrassing answer. It was the only thing I could think of in the very small amount of time we had to think of a response, and I passed it on to Pupa.

Pupa, now blushing herself, whispered, “I’ve been known to…”

“Please speak up,” said Celestia.

“It’s…um… You see, I’ve been known to get…moody…when I’m going through…estrus.” Pupa made the last word barely audible over the background noise in the hallway, but there was no doubt that everypony had heard it.

Oh stars, I couldn’t believe I’d just told Pupa to say that, and in court of all places. That was the stupidest, oldest excuse in the book. As the only pony in the room that hadn’t so much as flinched, Celestia herself didn’t look impressed with that answer either.

“I asked as much myself,” Celestia began. “However, Princess Cadenza and Lieutenant Armor said your behavioral changes were not so predictable as an estrus cycle. Unless you have any other explanation–”

Celestia waited a few seconds for an answer that none of us had. I’d honestly expected that excuse to work, or at least to buy us enough time to think of something better.

Seriously, I could barely believe Celestia had actually asked about that in advance. Why would it even cross her mind? I’d never spoken to anypony but Luna before about that annoying aspect of my biology, much less Celestia of all ponies.

“–then I am forced to conclude that you cannot recognize these behavioral shifts yourself, which in turn makes me suspect you do not have the mental fortitude required for long term use of dark magic. As such, before irrevocable damage is done to your mind and before you hurt somepony, unintentionally or otherwise, I am afraid I must order you to desist immediately in accordance with article seven of magical law four-thousand-six-hundred-three, which pertains to the regulation of dark magic in ponies of uncertain mental stability.”

Celestia took a moment to breathe after that mouthful. “This is your first and only warning. Regardless of your circumstances, the penalty for breaking this order is petrification or banishment.”

Pupa and I were both stunned into silence by the cold and distant way Celestia had spoken, and the throne room was just as quiet. Chrysalis mentally nudged both of us, me with magic and Pupa with the hive mind, waking us from our stupor.

Unfortunately, that only freed me up to think about how to respond. It took me all of a second before I started crying for my imaginary me, placed in a situation where Celestia had taken the last hoofhold she had in magic.

“Leave,” I whispered.

Pupa responded immediately, turning in place and galloping out of the hall in an ungraceful mess of hooves before anypony could stop her. Fortunately, nopony had bothered to close the huge double doors that she’d come in through. She made her way back to Cadance’s room mostly unmolested, slipping past the wingful of guards that got in her way.

“Are you really alright?” Pupa asked as she continued to provide me with a very lovely view of one of Cadance’s pillows.

“Yes, I’m just fine. Really.” I sighed. “I didn’t really expect anything else from our meeting. Celestia’s regulation of dark magic was clearly malicious in its implementation to begin with. And honestly, given the evidence she was presented with, I can’t really blame her for the decision. We did take a little longer than was wise to perfect your impersonation of me.”

“Twilight, I can hear your voice cracking on this side of the conversation, too, you know.”

Both of us fell into silence. Thankfully, Chrysalis felt no need to interrupt us.

“It’s not like any real harm has been done, right?” I suggested. “I’m not in Equestria anymore, after all.”

“I suppose…”

“I’m sorry you had to deal with that for me…and for what comes after. I’m sure Cadance will try, but I doubt she’ll be able to keep much out of the papers anymore after such a public dressing-down.”

“Twilight, please stop dancing around the real issue.”

Having chosen silence as my response, Pupa sighed soon after.

“I’ll do the best I can to repair your reputation. I’m sure Princess Luna would be just as disappointed as you if she couldn’t appear in public with you.”

A tiny thankful smile formed on my face. Regime changes rarely went smoothly, especially when the old princess has an approximately one-hundred percent approval rating. Taking the reins of Equestria would be a nightmare for Luna if a mare disgraced and scorned by said princess were at her side, regardless of whether that mare were an alicorn or not.

Of course, that brought up the question of why Celestia made our meeting public to begin with. Now Cadance was going to have problems, too, and surely Celestia wouldn’t want that.

Right?

I shook away those thoughts. There had to be some ulterior motive that didn’t involve Celestia trying to drag Cadance down. And Celestia herself had acted so…cold at the end. I suspected that she had never sounded like that in public before. Ever.

A muffled shout came from the other side of the door to Cadance’s room. It sounded like Cadance, but it was too quiet to hear properly. A few seconds later, it became clear that it was Cadance, and she was yelling at Celestia.

Finally Pupa, Chrysalis and I could make out what Cadance was saying, although we couldn’t hear Celestia’s responses.

“–ridiculous! Why on Equus would you say, ‘It was efficacious?’”

“I never said that!”

“No! You’re not going to talk to her! I won’t allow it! Not after–”

“You’re going to what?”

“Are you insane? You can’t ask her to teach her!”

A long silence stretched before Cadance shouted again.

“Hey! We’re not–”

The door to Cadance’s room opened without so much as a knock. Celestia trotted in with Cadance right behind her, still fuming, her cheeks flushed in anger. Both of their horns were glowing brilliantly to no noticeable effect. It almost looked like Cadance was trying to overpower Celestia, but with Pupa’s magic suppressed, she couldn’t find out for sure.

Seemingly giving up, Cadance’s horn dimmed and she flew across the room to Pupa, providing a pony shield against the still advancing Celestia.

“Stop it,” Cadance said, nearly growling. “Just go away. You’ve done enough to Twilight today. Aren’t you happy yet? Haven’t you taken enough from her? I’ll – I’ll take responsibility for her. We’ll… We’ll go find an island somewhere! Somewhere with just us! I-I know I can keep her safe from herself!”

From behind Cadance, the only useful thing I could see was her tiara, glowing with her own magic, being carelessly tossed away onto the ground somewhere in a clatter.

Turning around, Cadance wrapped Pupa in a full hug, stroking her mane gently.

The moment passed without Celestia saying a word, only for the silence to be broken by a wail from Chrysalis.

The illusion spell placed on me changed to random flashes of colors before failing entirely, leaving me with nothing to look at but a wide eyed Chrysalis.

Author's Note

Prereader – Starlight Nova

For those that desire it, here's a link to a diagram depicting what Twinkleshine was describing, complete with annotations below it.

Chapter Fifteen - Darker Matters - Part Two

Chrysalis had been flat out ignoring me and everything else in the room for a long time now. She hadn’t even reacted when I’d thrown a pillow in her face. Whatever had happened must have been bad enough that even getting upset with me was thrown to the side in favor of dealing with the problem.

Then even when she finally stopped frowning, trading her expression in for what I could only describe as a look of unadulterated relief, she still ignored me as if I didn’t exist.

Suddenly, I felt Chrysalis building up power for a familiar spell. Sighing as it took effect, I found myself once more seeing the world through Pupa’s eyes. Cadance and Celestia were in the room and chatting with each other surprisingly peacefully after what I’d just seen from Cadance. If nothing else good came from this, at least I’d finally learned how Cadance behaves when she was mad – a very petty victory.

And I’d learned that Cadance cared enough to go against Celestia for me. I doubted she would switch sides at the big confrontation in five-and-a-half-ish years, but it was still just about the nicest, most flattering thing she could have done.

The next thing I noticed ruined that good feeling. I’d suspected, but I’d hoped I was wrong. In the corner of the room was a pile of unmoving changelings. At the very bottom of her vision, I could see Pupa’s own black chitin as well.

She was exposed.

I took a few deep breaths exactly as Cadance had taught me. They were doubly effective this time, as they brought back some of the warm fuzzies I got from knowing Cadance would stick up for me.

“Okay,” I began, “considering Chrysalis hasn’t tried to rip my head off…yet…I assume you’re fine, right?”

“Ye–”

“You better thank your lucky stars she’s alright.”

“Mother!” Pupa sighed. “Yes, I’m fine, Twilight, at least so far. I can tell Cadance is still furious with me, and Celestia is still wary despite how…relatively nice she’s been.”

“What about them?” I asked, gesturing futilely with my head toward the changelings some astronomical number of kilometers away, or toward Chrysalis’s bookshelf back on the ship.

“They’re fine, too,” Pupa answered, a clear fondness in her voice. “Very stupid for teleporting in here alone, but also very brave. Mother didn’t even have time to give them an order before they responded.”

“Which crippled my ability to rescue you quickly,” interjected Chrysalis.

“Perhaps,” Pupa said hesitantly, “but I still disagree with reprimanding them.”

Humming angrily, Chrysalis said, “We’ll discuss this later. For now, just fill us in on what happened.”

“Alright. When Celestia came in, she knocked out my disguise and severed my connection to the hive mind.”

Pupa sat on Cadance’s bed, oblivious to the world. Her severing from the hive mind had been swift and merciless, leaving her, for the very first time in her life, alone with her thoughts.

Screaming was not the right response. Her instincts told her not to for some reason.

Crying…yes. Crying was appropriate.

Pupa fell over onto her side, still staring at nothing. Even the intrusion of the pillow she had been holding into one of the holes in her legs did not bother her the way it should have.

Finally, she snapped back to reality as a surge of golden magic set her upright. That very same magic turned dark purple and boiled as the terrifyingly inexpressive goddess of the sun spoke.

“Answer my questions with the truth.”

Something latched onto Pupa’s mind, and it took her only an instant to realize she had just had a geas placed on her.

Celestia visibly grit her teeth, seeming to struggle with what she wanted to ask. Pupa took her brief respite to glance about the rest of the room. Cadance was nearby glaring daggers at both her and Celestia, but mostly at her. Piled up in a corner were several undisguised, possibly dead, changelings.

“Is Twilight Sparkle alive and well?” Celestia finally asked.

Answering almost automatically, Pupa said, “Yes.” It was the strangest, most horrifying feeling she had ever experienced. It hardly even felt like the geas was forcing her to reply, almost as if she herself wanted to answer more than anything.

“When did you replace her?”

Pupa was about to say, “At the end of Spring,” but her memories supplied her with a different answer. “Last Hearth’s Warming.”

Brows furling, Celestia mumbled, “That explains much.” Turning to Cadance, she said, “I trust you realize this means Twilight was cooperating with these changelings.”

Cadance tried to protest, but she ended up nodding weakly instead. She almost looked defeated as she slumped onto the ground.

Turning back, Celestia asked, “Was her flare last Hearth’s Warming engineered for you to replace her?”

“No. It was an accident we capitalized on.”

Pupa could practically feel Celestia’s eyes poring over her. She had long since lost the thin look of an active and light-eating changeling, having molted several times from the sheer volume of love she had consumed.

“Why did Twilight Sparkle offer you her life?”

Somehow finding the strength to overcome the urge to tell Celestia more than she had asked for, Pupa said, “She wanted to leave, but she couldn’t because of Cadance.” Out of the corner of her eye, Pupa could see Cadance bristle at the casual form of address. Then again, perhaps it was because Twilight had deceived her. It would be hard enough to tell normally, but Cadance’s expressions were changing wildly, making it essentially impossible.

“Where is she?”

“Somewhere in the universe.”

Pupa fought to not hold her breath, watching Celestia closely for any sign that the deeper meaning in her automatic answer was understood. It was unfortunate the answer had not come out as ‘I don’t know’, but ‘somewhere in the universe’ was almost as good.

“One last question,” Celestia began, her face expressionless. “Are you, Twilight, or anypony you know in any way associated with Nightmare Moon?”

“No,” Pupa replied immediately before her mind could consciously complete the connection between Nightmare Moon and Princess Luna.

A moment passed, and then the corners of Celestia’s lips crept up again as her horn glowed. The surprisingly weak compulsion for Pupa to correct herself diminished further and then quickly disappeared altogether. Without the geas stabilizing her, Pupa’s mind locked up again, still recoiling from the loneliness and unable to process the words and expressions that had just been exchanged. For all that she could tell at the moment, she might have told Celestia everything as easily as she might have revealed no new information.

Completely ignoring Celestia, Cadance stepped directly in front of Pupa and locked eyes with her.

“Why?” whispered Cadance. “Why did she leave? Why did you let her? Why did you help her! She’s a helpless little filly!”

Celestia put a hoof on Cadance’s shoulder and opened her mouth.

Immediately, Cadance whirled on Celestia, swatting away the hoof. “You! This is all your fault!”

“Cadance,” Celestia began, her voice annoyingly calm and soothing even now, “Twilight Sparkle has long since demonstrated that she can keep herself safe.” Looking at Pupa’s horn, she added, “With or without her suppressor. As long as she stays outside, she should remain unharmed until–”

“Until she kills herself!”

“Cadance, please calm down. She shall be easy to find when–”

“Out!” Cadance shrieked, pointing her hoof toward the door.

“Cadance–”

“Get out now!”

A pillow flew across the room toward Celestia, leaving a deafening boom in its wake. It stopped a few hooves short of impact, golden magic gently placing it on the floor and extinguishing it.

“I cannot leave you alone with her.” Celestia did not say it, but her expression heavily implied, “Do not do something you will regret.”

Growling with teeth bared and wings flared, Cadance glared at Celestia, her horn glowing ominously. Even through the suppressor, Pupa could feel the immense, raw power Cadance had at her disposal.

“Unless you wish to finish what Twilight started, I suggest you stop.”

Cadance’s eyes widened, and she reeled backwards as if struck, falling to her haunches. The light of her horn blinked out.

“Auntie, I – I didn’t – I didn’t mean…” Barely audibly, Cadance turned away and whispered, “Sorry.”

Crossing the gap between them, Celestia lowered herself to her knees and wrapped Cadance in a gentle hug with her wings.

“You have nothing to apologize for. I understand how horrible it is to lose a little sister.” After an extended hug, Celestia stepped back and raised Cadance’s muzzle with the tip of her wing. Smiling, she said, “Unlike mine, yours is merely misplaced, exactly like I’ve misplaced Sunset. We shall find her. I promise.”

Sniffing, Cadance rubbed her nose with a hoof. “She’s not actually my sister yet, you know.” The two of them shared a smile for a brief moment before Cadance shoved Celestia away, shouting, “No, no, no! I’m still mad at you! I’m not letting you get within so much as the same city as Twilight.”

“Please,” Celestia began on the verge of being on the verge of begging, “please calm down, Cadance. I” – Celestia hesitated for a split second – “promise I shall not do anything to Twilight Sparkle without your consent.”

“Do – do you really mean that?”

“Yes, I do. May I assume I have your permission to find her?”

First ruminating for several seconds with her head pointed squarely at the floor, Cadance slowly nodded once.

“Thank you for trusting me.” Turning to Pupa, Celestia continued, “Now then, I believe we both have some more questions we would like to ask our guest. Would you – oh, please accept my apologies.”

As Celestia’s horn glowed, everyone came back. The entire hive was buzzing in Pupa’s mind again, and before she could even put a single word to how relieved she was, Chrysalis was already assaulting her with affections and questions.

“And that’s what happened. It may not be word for word, but I’m sure the meanings are all right.”

“Cadance…” I whispered to nopony. I’d known she liked me, but I’d always assumed I was ‘Shining’s little sister’ to her: a friend, but not family. It wasn’t like Cadance didn’t have…

I sighed to myself. It’d been a long time since I’d thought about Cadance’s past in any detail, and even then I’d mostly been interested in hearing about defeating Prismia and Cadance’s subsequent ascension. She’d been formally adopted into the royal family by virtue of being an alicorn, but if she wanted to be part of mine, I’d welcome her with open hooves.

But that sadly would have to wait until I returned to Equus. Hopefully, we’d have a better long-term relationship than Luna and Celestia.

Anyway, the other thing of interest in that conversation was when Celestia asked about Luna. I didn’t know if I should be glad Celestia now wrongly assumed I had nothing to do with Luna or terrified that she’d asked at all.

What exactly she’d suspected was the most worrying part. If she thought I was part of a cult or something, that wasn’t a problem, but–

Actually, that sort of was a problem; I didn’t want Celestia making Cadance think I was crazy or something. But that was a small, personal problem. If Celestia somehow found one of Luna’s faithful subjects and got her to reveal that Luna could dreamwalk in her banishment, that could turn into a huge problem.

“Pupa, I’m ready to continue whenever you two are. If possible, I’d like to find out why Celestia asked you about Luna. And I’d like to know what Cadance and Celestia were arguing about when they first came in.”

“I’ll see what I can do, but I’m not really in a position to make demands; Celestia has her under control right now, but Cadance is more or less ready to – to use your own words – rip my head off if she thinks it’ll help her find you.”

“Um… That’s sweet?” I definitely appreciated the sentiment, at least.

“Frankly, I think it’s a pretty unnerving to see her act this way. I know you think she’s bad at magic, but–”

“She is bad at magic.”

“Okay, from a mechanical standpoint, she is bad at magic, but I don’t think you’ve ever felt an alicorn on the verge of fighting. She could have crushed me into a tiny black hole with all that power with just telekinesis.”

“Actually, I don’t think you have enough mass to form a black hole. I’d have to ask Twinkleshine.”

I flinched away as Pupa’s hoof connected with her face, for all the good that it did.

Coughing to fill the awkward silence, I then proceeded to say, “I’ve sparred with Luna a lot in my dreams where we both have unlimited magic. I know what you’re talking about. All you have to do is sever a few key nerves to knock her out; Cadance doesn’t know how to properly defend herself from a magical attack.”

“Twilight, that’s–”

“Efficacious and painless. I suppose Celestia might get mad at you, but I doubt she’d kill you for acting in self-defense. And it’s not like she can do anything worse than make you a black hole, right?”

“She could torture me first.”

“Or erase all her memories,” Chrysalis interjected.

“Or do that and hijack my body with a geas, bending me completely to her will as her faithful slave.”

“And have Cadance meddle with her mind further to make her love every moment of it,” Chrysalis added.

“It’s just like killing me, but using the leftovers for–”

“Okay, okay! I get it! If you’re completely immoral, you can do horrible, horrible things to a pony. Celestia is a bad pony and a worse sister, but she’s not evil. Probably. I mean, I don’t have any proof that she’s never done something like that, but I’m still me.”

“Probably,” Chrysalis said.

“You’re not helping,” I said, stomping my hoof.

Sighing, Pupa suggested, “Perhaps we should move on.”

“Sounds good,” I said at the same time Chrysalis said, “Indeed.”

Almost immediately after Pupa first stirred, Celestia turned to face her.

“So,” began Celestia, “should we be expecting an army on our doorstep?” It was hard to tell, but it sounded like a joke.

“No, Princess Celestia.” Pupa started to rise from Cadance’s bed, but Celestia held up a hoof, gesturing for her to stay seated. “I’m terribly sorry for what my subjects did. If you could find it in your heart to forgive them, I would be very grateful.”

Smiling, Celestia said, “There is nothing to forgive. I treated you quite roughly, after all.”

“Thank you, Princess.”

“Not going to ask her to let them go?” I asked.

“No. I don’t want to make the situation awk – more awkward. I wouldn’t be surprised if she thought the only reason I was still here was because of them.”

“Think nothing of it. Cadance and I were hoping you would answer a few of our questions, though.”

“Of course, Princess. Although I’m quite curious how you figured out I wasn’t Twilight.”

Pupa tried not to look at Cadance bristling at the use of my name, but her eyes refused to stay focused on Celestia.

“You walked straight into my throne room; no amount of magic could have hidden you completely from me in there. However” – Celestia paused – “you are also sitting on a cloud bed.”

Everypony was silent for a moment.

Facehoofing and sighing, Pupa said, “That’s fair. Twilight and I weren’t expecting such a public meeting, either.” With that said, she fiddled with the suppressor on her horn to get it off. She let out a sigh of relief once it had.

Meanwhile, Celestia held up a hoof, cutting Cadance off. Mouth wide open ready to shout, it took Cadance a few seconds to settle down, exhaling as she slumped back into her seat.

“Before we continue, would you care to introduce yourself and explain how a young changeling queen and Twilight Sparkle met?”

“Thoughts?” Pupa asked as she said, “My name is Pupa, heir of Queen Chrysalis.”

“Just go with what we had planned before. I don’t see any problems with it.”

“Besides exposing one of our primary means of collecting love,” Chrysalis said.

Meanwhile, Pupa continued her introduction. “Twilight and I met two summers ago on the outskirts of the Everfree Forest in her backyard.”

“It’s not that big of a deal,” I said. “No matter how this turns out, you’ll end up fed or genocided; there’s not really an in-between.”

“I’d left home to gain practical experience in love collection. It’s our tradition that the queen should be at least passingly familiar with all the main aspects of our way of life.”

“Is that true?” I asked.

“Yes, but Pupa finished that long ago. Normally she would have left home permanently a decade ago.”

“I’d looked through Ponyville for a good food source that I could enjoy spending time with, but no one really caught my fancy. Except when I was about to move on to the next village, I ran into Twilight.”

“Afraid to let your daughter grow up?”

“She chooses to stay. Although, I suppose I am glad she does.”

“I almost dismissed her out of hoof, but–” Pupa’s eyes widened, and she gasped, pretending to have said something she shouldn’t have.

Cadance’s eyes widened with Pupa’s. She opened her mouth once, but nothing came out. On the second try, she whispered, “Why?”

“She–” Pupa stopped to mull over her words, pointedly not looking at Cadance and instead observing the pillow she was fidgeting with.

“Tell me!” Cadance barked. Celestia shot her a look.

“It’s – she made me sick to my stomach just being somewhat near her. She was so miserable. Ponies like that usually have their days numbered without drastic intervention.”

“No! No, no, no!” Cadance launched from her chair, only to be held back by Celestia’s magic. “You’re lying! You have to be! Twilight would never…never…” Cadance descended into incoherent blubbering.

I silently whispered my apologies to Cadance, simultaneously wishing I could take Celestia’s place for their hug. Not that Cadance even noticed it happening. But there was something else weighing on my mind.

“Pupa…I – I was like that before I met Luna for…a long time. Do you think I would have–”

“Twilight, I don’t know. Everyone changes so much as they grow up. I didn’t know you back then, so I can’t say. However, I don’t think the current you would ever consider it.”

I sighed. It wasn’t so much an answer as a non-answer, but Pupa had a point. I’d rather be told the truth than a pleasant lie, even if the truth were useless.

“Thanks, I guess.”

Faking a cough, Pupa said, “If I may continue…” Celestia nodded, but Cadance’s ears didn’t even twitch. “Anyway, I was going to leave, but underneath all of the rancid emotions, she smelled awfully sweet.” Pupa licked her lips for emphasis. “I was awfully curious, so I decided to stay, at least for a little while. I don’t know if I should say that was a mistake or not; it only took a week before Twilight figured out I wasn’t a regular owl.”

At that, Cadance’s ears did pick up. She pushed Celestia off her and asked, “You were Owlowiscious?”

“I was, but only until Hearth’s Warming. Speaking of which, would you mind if you…toned down a few of Twilight’s feelings for me? It would make it easier to be polite.”

Cadance paled instantly, and her jaw fell. “I – I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize – I mean…” Gulping, Cadance finished, “Which ones?”

“Just the one,” Pupa replied. Out of the corner of Pupa’s vision, I could see Celestia struggling with a frown or a scowl. Was it really that hard for her to accept that not everypony loved her? “It’d help if you could take it down to friendly sympathy levels.”

Nodding, Cadance’s horn lit up, and it only took a fraction of second before Pupa let out a huge sigh.

“Thank you,” Pupa said as Cadance turned her head away. “Anyway, as I was saying, Twilight figured me out quickly. I erred and acted far too domesticated, not realising how attentive she was to details. One night, she took me outside with her and told me about all of her problems as though she were talking to herself. When she finished, she took her suppressor off and essentially told me to start talking. A little mundane, I suppose, but that was how we met. Despite the rough start, we became friends rather quickly. She really needed someone she could talk openly with.”

Cadance began in a whisper, quickly building up into a shout. “You’re her friend. You’re her friend, and you let her run away! She’s barely a teenager!”

“Physically, but I’m sure–”

“Pupa,” I interrupted, “don’t try to reason with her like this. Cadance isn’t really listening right now. Just tell her the hive is keeping an eye on me.”

“–you realize she’s mentally very mature. She can be very foalish, yes, but half the time she acts like a mare thirty years her senior.” After I finished, Pupa asked me, “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

No, but I wanted to be able to talk to Cadance again before I returned. “How about I check in with the hive, then? Maybe I visit a city every week or so to talk and catch up on my life.”

“That doesn’t matter, you – you bug! If you haven’t noticed, she doesn’t eat unless somepony feeds her, and that’s not even the worst of her problems!”

I coughed awkwardly. I didn’t catch as much of what Cadance had said as I wanted – I’d never understand how changelings managed to keep up with multiple conversations – but I was pretty sure she said something embarrassingly true about my eating habits.

“She took Spike with her. She promised me she’ll keep him fed, and I’m sure she’ll eat with him.” At the same time, Pupa said to me, “What if Celestia can track you through the hive mind?”

I frowned, not having thought of that. Luna hadn’t said she herself could, but neither had she said she couldn’t. Then again, Celestia also had an extra thousand years to learn how, if it were possible.

“I suppose you’re right…”

Before Cadance could respond to Pupa, Celestia said, “That makes this much easier. We can send a letter to Spike and track its destination.”

Cadance’s brief expression of glee was crushed as Pupa said, “Actually, Twilight blocked Spike’s dragonfire mail…thing. She is determined not to be found.”

“Mail thing? Seriously?”

“Well you never used it and never explained how it works. All I know is that it’s a thing dragons can do.”

I rolled my eyes ineffectually. Then again, maybe Pupa could see me through Chrysalis.

“Let me get this straight,” Cadance said, her voice cracking. “You decided it was a good idea to let a filly wander off on her own with her adopted baby dragon. What is wrong with you!”

Shouting in response, Pupa asked, “Do you want to be the one to tell Twilight to come home and give up her magic again? All of it, this time?”

Cadance winced and fell silent.

“That was kind of mean…”

“I’m sorry,” Pupa said, probably to both me and Cadance. “That was unfair.”

“And technically I wouldn’t have to give up dark magic, since the reason for that odd behavior is obvious now.”

“No,” Chrysalis said, “you still would have to. Celestia would have no excuse to retract her decision without revealing changelings that wouldn’t sound like an excuse.”

“There is another option,” Celestia said.

“No!” Cadance shouted. “You’re not–” A glow from Celestia’s horn left her shouting soundlessly into the room. Her eyes blazed with fury when she realized what was happening.

“Before we discuss that, I would like to ask if Twilight Sparkle is listening.”

I was so glad I wasn’t Pupa right now. I could probably get through that question, but wow that was a lot of pressure.

“It’s possible,” answered Pupa. “Not every changeling is accounted for at all times; we don’t have a buddy system or anything like that. Twilight could, in theory, find a member of my hive and geas her to listen in without letting Mother or me know, although they all have standing instructions to contact Twilight on sight. However…”

“However what?” Celestia asked.

“Well, she is quite good at illusions, and she knows how to teleport.”

I got to see a very gratifying widening of Celestia’s eyes before she substituted them for a raised eyebrow. Honestly, I would’ve liked to have waited to let her know exactly how talented I was until the last minute when the sheer weight of her foolishness fell upon her, but that didn’t make this moment any less satisfying.

“Did you make sure she learned the proper safety precautions for teleportation?” Celestia asked.

Nodding, Pupa said, “I honestly don’t think she’ll accidentally kill herself or Spike. But you mentioned another option? It’s possible I could talk Twilight into coming home if I knew what it was.”

“I do not believe anypony would willing subject herself to this, but we–”

Cadance, having finally gotten a counterspell to work, shouted, “You are not petrifying Twilight ever!”

It took what seemed like an hour for me to process that.

“Pupa…” I began, not really sure what to say.

Really, what could a pony say to that? Petrification was a horrible, nasty ailment. In some ways, it was worse than banishment. The only upside was that if you were placed somewhere with other ponies, you might not go insane. I could probably make it if somepony read books to me, being a very inactive pony, but somepony like Dash would be broken afterward.

“I…I have to side with Cadance on this one,” Pupa said. I didn’t think she registered that I’d said anything, not that I’d said anything useful. “I’ve had a run in with a cockatrice before, and I certainly won’t be the one to lure Twilight back to be petrified.”

Celestia looked Pupa straight in the eyes. “Even if the alternative is death?” Pupa flinched away under Celestia’s gaze as she continued, “She is presently a danger to herself and others, and you expressed concerns about her mental and emotional state earlier. Do you not believe she would regress if we forced her to return home? Something must be done.”

“Pupa, we need…I want more information. Just say, ‘probably,’ or something.”

Pupa turned to Cadance, who was quietly biting her lip and who looked ready to decide whether Pupa was a good person or not based on her answer.

“I…would be willing to try talking Twilight into coming home if” – Pupa pointed to Cadance – “it were for her to become her teach – well, her protector while Twilight taught herself. I know that didn’t exactly work out last time–”

That wasn’t fair at all. I was attacking Cadance last time, not letting her try to help me.

“–but I suppose it couldn’t be any worse than Twilight being on her own. I don’t think she’ll go for it, though. Part of the reason she left and learned to teleport was because she felt guilty about how dangerous she is.”

“But I’m immortal! Twilight proved that well enough when she threw me off of the Canterhorn.”

Oh…oh no. Did I really – oooooh, of course I did. “Nooooo,” I moaned.

Chrysalis must have repeated my moan, because Pupa said, “I wouldn’t mention that to her, if I were you. That will just make her feel worse.”

“That is exactly why we have not told her,” Celestia said, apparently caring about my feelings for once. “However, you two are missing the key issue. Teaching flares requires specialized knowledge and skill, as well as a great deal of time. If you do it wrong, you merely end up with a magical bomb waiting to destroy what remains of Canterlot.”

Celestia paused just long enough to glance out a window toward the city. “Twilight Sparkle has become a lit fuse, and she must be extinguished before she kills herself and potentially tens of thousands of others, if not more.”

Oh my. That wasn’t ominous. Nope, not at all.

I gulped. Note to self: if I fail in my mission, stay lost in space forever, or else Celestia will probably just kill you and end the problem you pose once and for all.

“Sorry if this sounds like a dumb question, but why didn’t you just take Twilight on as your student when she was…”

“Eight,” I said. “If you want to know, you could have just asked me, you know.”

“When she was eight?” asked Pupa, then turning her attention to me. “I suppose, but I’m interested in hearing it straight from Celestia.”

Shrugging, I said, “Whatever.”

“Has Twilight not told you?” Celestia asked. “I would have assumed she already knew.”

“She mentioned the imminent return of Princess Luna–”

“No! Wrong! Nightmare Moon!”

“–and that your current student, Trixie Lulamoon, needed to be the one to use the Elements of Harmony against your sister, but she either didn’t know the details or neglected to tell me them.”

“If you already know that much,” began Celestia, seeming to fight off a sigh, “I suppose there is no harm in answering your question directly. As you no doubt know, nearly one-thousand years ago, I wielded the elements against my sister when she became Nightmare Moon. The end result was her banishment, but that was not what I had intended.”

What?

“I had meant to purify her, to return her to the sister I knew and loved.”

Wait…

“However, I found myself unable to wield the full power of the elements myself; they never were meant to be used by a single pony, or even by two alicorns. They are meant to be wielded by six ponies.”

No, no, no. Time out. She wanted to what?

“The sixth element, Magic, is the most troubling. I had planned for my previous student, Sunset Shimmer, to wield it, but she…disappeared.”

No, she couldn’t–

“Unfortunately, her timing could not have been worse. With so few years left before Nightmare Moon’s return, I would not have had time to prepare Twilight Sparkle to face her. At best, my sister would have been banished again. At worst, she would simply kill the element bearers and proceed to terrorize the world from the shadows.”

She was serious. Celestia wanted to delete Luna from her body now that she wasn’t so willing to put up with abuse and replace her with some fake version that would just sit there and be obedient. That was even worse than banishing her again!

I never really thought I’d say this, but I’d given Celestia too much credit. She was a monster.

My eyes widened as that thought sunk in. If I failed, I’d never see Luna again no matter how long I lived.

“I see,” Pupa began, “but that leaves the question of why you can’t be the one to bear the Element of Magic.”

Before Celestia could respond, Cadance snapped, “It’s because dear Auntie Celestia is a horrible pony who goes around petrifying ponies to solve her problems.”

Celestia turned to Cadance, giving her a disappointed look. “That is not why, but the spirit is right. Unfortunately, I cannot use the elements anymore, and I shall leave it at that.”

Ha! It seemed the Elements of Harmony knew who was in the right in this conflict; maybe that was why they didn’t let Celestia use them to kill Luna a thousand years ago. In the worst case, then, if I killed Trixie, I could save Luna’s life, or at least delay her execution until Celestia trained another bearer. Good to know.

“Right… So I guess I understand why you couldn’t teach Twilight at the time, but what does petrifying her accomplish that…well…that killing her wouldn’t?”

“It’s physical effects are reversible,” Cadance hissed, “and it would keep Twilight physically young until after Nightmare Moon has been dealt with.”

Before Pupa could ask the question, I said, “Flares need to learn control from a young age so our mind develops around the concept. It’s sort of like why adults have trouble learning languages when foals can learn several without a conscious effort. Luna’s not bothering with that for me, having offered ascension as a permanent solution.”

“Thanks, Twilight.” Pupa looked from Cadance back to Celestia and asked, “And why would this be helpful? Would you be teaching Twilight? I can tell you right now, she will never accept that unless you force her.”

Sighing – actually sighing – Celestia said, “No, I realize that ship set sail long before I even made port. My sister, however, I suspect she would accept.”

Pupa was laughing uproariously over the hive mind as she responded. I just rolled my eyes.

“I could see that working, but” – Cadance suspended her glare – “I still have to side with Cadance. I can’t imagine Twilight coming out of a multi-year petrification mentally whole.”

Oh stars, this was going to turn into one long, circular debate, wasn’t it?

As if sensing my distress, Pupa said, “Twilight, you can go talk to Princess Luna if you want. I don’t think anything useful is going to happen for a while. If there’s a good opportunity to find out why Celestia asked about her, I’ll take it, but I don’t imagine that happening anytime soon.”

“I – sure. Thanks.” I really didn’t want to sit around and listen to them argue the same points over and over. “Chrysalis, would you keep the recording spell running?”

“Yes, yes. I can take care of it. Just let me know when I need to take over the shields as usual.”

“Luna!” I called out to my dream world, rather excited to share everything I’d learned today.

“No need to shout, Twilight.” Luna appeared just behind me and wrapped me in a hug. “I take it Pupa’s meeting with my sister is over.”

“Um, no, not exactly. I left when it was about to devolve into an argument over what to do with me if they ever found me on Equus, which of course they can’t.”

Luna sighed. “So Pupa was revealed, then. That’s unfortunate.”

“Well, yes, but as a result, Pupa testified under a geas that nopony she knew was associated with Nightmare Moon, so whatever suspicions Celestia had been entertaining have been dropped.” As an afterthought, I added, “And Cadance is acting fri – somewhat friendly toward Pupa, which is great news. I mean, Cadance was incredibly upset with her, but they seemed to bond a little bit in their disapproval of Celestia’s plan for me.”

“She has a plan for you?” Luna asked incredulously. Her voice almost oozed with doubt.

“Yeah. It would be funny if it weren’t so horrifying. She wants you to teach me.”

Setting me down in front of her, Luna gazed intently at my face, her eyebrows fighting to both scrunch together and rise. I’d never seen Luna look so utterly and completely floored before. Not that I could blame her. I wouldn’t have believed it either if I hadn’t heard it first – well, essentially firsthoof.

“I – I don’t understand.” Luna pulled back, no doubt having decided I was telling the truth. “How does she expect that to work?”

“Well, that’s where it becomes horrifying. First, she plans to petrify me for a decade or so.”

Luna fell to her haunches and resorted to rubbing her temples with her hooves. “I…suppose that would work in theory, but…” Luna shook her head. “Did she really say that?”

I nodded.

“Okay. Sure.” Luna seemed to be having trouble wrapping her head around the idea. “You wouldn’t be the first pony she’s petrified, I guess. Why not? And how does she expect to get me to cooperate? I can’t exactly teach in banishment, so far as she knows.”

First taking a deep breath, I replied, “She wants to kill you.”

“She wants to what?” Luna bellowed at the traditional royal level, leaving me deafened. Her eyes were literally glowing with unbridled magical power. I could feel her magic washing over me without even using my horn. I took a step back as it lashed out at my own magic, burning it in an undefinable, abstract sense.

I cast a quick healing spell on my ears and steadied myself in front of Luna. “She wants to use the elements to ‘purify’ you and turn you into a fake, submissive, pushover version of yourself, philosophically killing you. I don’t even know if the elements would use you as a base for your body’s new personality.”

The sheer pressure of Luna’s raging magic slowly shoved me backward away from her. I hadn’t been lying when I’d told Pupa that I’d felt the raw power of an alicorn before, but I’d never seen magic this…raw and untempered. Even my flares had some structure, producing random magical effects. This – this was just pure magic.

“She dares to make a slave of me? To destroy everything that I am?”

Unable to withstand Luna’s magic, I tampered with my dream, removing myself from the effects of Luna’s rage.

“So be it! I shall see to it that the night lasts forever by virtue of the simple lack of anything else. I shall extinguish her precious star ponies call the sun. I shall drag her kicking and screaming from the æther and reduce her to a mere mortal. I shall destroy everything she ever cared for and force her to watch.”

Luna bore a distressing smile as she gazed upward at nothing. Then she did something that made me sure that she needed help: she laughed.

“Ha ha. Ha ha ha. Aha ha ha ha ha!

“And then when I am bored with her, I may see fit to banish her for a thousand years in some anonymous corner of space. Then when she returns, she will slowly die of starvation. Oh, but then, then I will offer her a choice at the very end of her life, because I am kind to my dear sister. She can die, or she can suffer what she had planned for me. Oh, how–”

“Please don’t stoop to her level,” I whispered, tightly hugging Luna. Celestia certainly deserved all that, but it wasn’t worth it if Luna became a monster herself in the process.

I waited with my face buried in her coat. I couldn’t bear to look at her right now for fear of what I might see. Luna had every right to be mad, but somewhere deep inside myself, I was scared I’d broken her, that this was the last in a long line of abuses which had finally pushed her over the edge.

I waited, tightening my hug as our silence stretched on. The storm of Luna’s magic raged on in the separate plane of existence I’d tucked it into. If anything, it was only stronger for my words.

I waited. If my lip weren’t bleeding yet, it would be soon. As far as I could tell, Luna hadn’t so much as twitched since I’d spoken.

With a thump, I fell onto the ground, my muzzle colliding ungracefully as I landed face first in what amounted to a bellyflop sans water.

Jumping to my hooves, I looked around. I was standing where Luna had been but was no longer. Neither was she anywhere around me.

Then it happened. I could sense that instinctual feeling of a regular lucid dream. Luna wasn’t around to stabilize my consciousness anymore.

“Luna, come ba–”

I woke up in my usual bed and tried to roll over. The familiar weight of Spike curled up next to my belly, unfortunately, kept me stuck in place. Somepony must have put him to bed for me while I was busy sleeping outside my usual schedule.

Oh well, it wasn’t really that important. I was already comfy and warm enough to enjoy my blissful, sleepy haze.

I needed to remember to thank whoever put Spike to bed at some point. It was probably Berry Punch. Spike spent most days when I was busy playing with Berry Pinch.

Speaking of whom, Cherry Berry said something about…something recently. I think it had something to do with Pinkie Pie. Maybe Berry Pinch’s birthday was coming up.

That made sense. Pinkie Pie was trying to hide it, but I knew she’d been planning a few parties recently. My half-birthday was coming up soon, too. I’d have to make sure Pinkie Pie made butterscotch cookies this time instead of oatmeal raisin like during my last birthday. Those were the worst. I thought I’d be getting a delicious oatmeal chocolate chip cookie, but then suddenly raisins.

Mmm. I could go for some oatmeal pancakes right now.

Eh, but then I’d have to get out of bed. It wasn’t worth it.

I guess I could send a message to Pinkie Pie and ask for breakfast in bed. No, that was too much effort, too. And I’d still have to leave the snuggly warmth of my blankets.

There really was nothing like warm blankets. Changelings had some sort of cocoon thing that they could make for…ah, I couldn’t remember right now, but I was sure even that had nothing on blankets.

Then again, blankets could probably be improved. Spike was so warm himself, but he was so small. If I had somepony the size of Luna to snuggle with, everything would be bet–

My eyes popped open. Luna left! She’d just left and hadn’t come back! No, no, no. That was unacceptable.

I promptly cast a sleep spell on myself, falling unconscious before I’d even felt it take hold on me.

I woke up in my usual bed and rolled over. Much better. I’d felt a little uncomfortable before.

My stomach growled, but I paid it no mind. It was far too soon after waking to be thinking of anything in particular.

Now that I’d realized I’d been uncomfortable – wait, how long ago was that? Oh well. Anyway, Spike seemed to be missing, or at least I thought so. I was guessing purely on how much colder the bed was compared to usual. Dragons were so warm.

It was such a terrible trap. I usually only used my room to sleep, so I kept it cold so I could have more blankets. But then I’d have too many blankets, and I’d be too hot, so I’d need to make it colder again, thus necessitating another blanket.

Hmm… For all that her magic kept her warm – or cold, I guess – Dash and I got into fights over blankets pretty often. Maybe we should have brought some cotton plants. We’ve got some spare fabric and needle and thread in storage somewhere for patching rips – not that we’d ever needed them yet – but not enough to make more blankets.

Did leaves make good blankets? I could ask Berry Punch to save a bunch, and I could dig up a preservation enchantment.

Hmm, but then those blankets would be edible. What would happen if I ate one? It’d probably just come out the other end whole. But then I’d have to have strong enough teeth to eat through the spell preserving them. Unless the spell didn’t do that. I’d never needed a preservation spell before. I should probably look into them, or at least the ones used on books.

What was I thinking about? Oh yeah, teeth. If I had teeth like Luna’s, I could probably eat through–

Luna! She didn’t show up!

I cast another sleep spell on myself. This time Luna would come meet me. I just knew it.

I woke up in my usual bed. Somepony was saying something, but I couldn’t really make out what; my ears weren’t working properly yet.

That was something I always found interesting. I got that some ponies were light sleepers, but I didn’t understand why. My hearing literally didn’t work until I properly woke up or until I deliberately tried to hear things. Sometimes I would get stuck somewhere in-between – like right now – but that was the exception, not the rule.

My sense of touch, on the other hoof, didn’t like to turn off. If somepony wanted to wake me up, they just had to keep poking me – something whoever was nearby was apparently well aware of.

I lit up my horn and cast a sleep spell on the interloper. A little mean, perhaps, but it solved my problem. Besides, one should never wake a sleeping unicorn. Or was it a dragon? Wait, didn’t it have something to do with tickling? Tickling either a dragon or a unicorn was pretty dangerous.

I shoved whomever had fallen on top of me off to the side with a hoof and curled up into a ball.

There was something that I needed to do…but I couldn’t quite remember what. Maybe it had something to do with Berry Pinch? What did I need to do for her? She was still too young for magic lessons, and she’d be lost if I tried to teach her math or science.

How many scientists did we have on this ship? There was me and Twinkleshine. Oh, I needed to get her lessons started at some point. Summer break was over forever ago. Um…I think that was all of our scientists. That wasn’t nearly enough. I’d have to see to it that Berry Pinch and Spike grew up to study…eh, chemistry or something. Something sciencey.

Spike would look great in a lab coat. He’d get all the mares. Or…whatever female dragons were called. Drakeias? No, that sounded dumb. I didn’t remember bringing any books on dragon culture, and I didn’t relish trying to hunt the word down in a dictionary. But I did bring dragon anatomy books, though, so that should work.

I could always just ask Chrysalis or Luna. I was sure they’d both know. Maybe next–

Oh, no. Luna didn’t show up again…

Next time for sure.

I cast a sleep spell on myself.

I woke up in my usual bed. Spike felt bigger than usual. And more hoovey. And softer.

Eh, whatever. He was even better this way, and I fit nicely in-between his legs against his coat. What did Dash call that? Something about a spoon? That didn’t make any sense.

Speaking of spoons, though, I was pretty hungry. It wasn’t so bad as those times when I had to be dragged kicking and screaming from my books, but I was seriously considering getting out of bed. I was pretty thirsty, too, now that I thought of it. I licked my lips to little effect; my mouth was pretty dry.

Ugh… Speaking of bodily functions, I really needed the bathroom.

Sighing, I teleported myself out of bed to go about my afternoon routine on autopilot. Relieve the pressure in my bladder, get a drink, brush my teeth, shower…some other time. I wasn’t really in the mood right now.

Yawning, I trudged back into my bedroom, idly brushing my mane and tail with my magic. I looked over to my very tempting bed. Oh, how I wanted to crawl back under the covers and snuggle back up against Twinkleshine.

I cocked my head to the side. That was new. Twinkleshine and I didn’t share a bed, although I doubted either of us would object. Why was she here? Did somepony manage to talk me into drinking last morning to the point that I couldn’t remember?

No. No, that didn’t sound right. Somepony had been…trying to wake me up? That – yes, that was what had happened. And then I’d reflexively put her to sleep. Whoops. Oh well, no harm done. We’ll just have to move at a less lazy acceleration toward the moon today to make up for the–

Horseapples! Luna still hadn’t shown up!

I clambered back under my blankets and cast a sleep spell on myself.

I woke up to vigorous shaking, my eyes opening right away. I was floating in midair in front of Chrysalis just above my usual bed. Twinkleshine was standing sheepishly behind her and trying to look small.

“I stayed awake all this time because I assumed you had something important to talk to Luna about, not so you could get laid. I am going to bed right after this and will be relieving myself of my shield duty. Unless you want to risk traveling defenseless, I suggest you get up and stay up this time.”

“Um…Chrysalis, we didn’t–” Twinkleshine began, only be be cut off.

“I know very well you didn’t. You don’t smell like it at all.” Chrysalis dropped me in an ungraceful flump back onto my bed – above my sheets no less – and stomped out the door, shouting back a curt, “Good night!”

First righting myself, I looked for the edge of my blankets. Finding it, I pulled with my magic and pulled them tight back over me. Luna still hadn’t shown up yet.

“Twilight,” Twinkleshine said. I tried to ignore her. “You can’t sleep right now. Chrysalis meant what she said, and she’s really cranky right now. We need you to get up and power the ship.”

“Later. I need to be there for Luna right now if she needs me.”

“No!” Twinkleshine shouted, knocking my horn with her own telekinesis and interrupting my sleep spell. “Twi – Captain Sparkle, your crew needs you now, so get up.”

“But–”

“No buts! You can go spend all the time you want with your best friend later, but it’s time for us right now.”

I raised myself to my haunches and looked at Twinkleshine. I knew that there was jealousy in what she’d just said, but I couldn’t tell if she’d meant there to be or if she’d even noticed. Her face didn’t reveal anything important, nor did her stance. She just looked like she was scolding a lazy foal.

Luna needed me right now. That much I knew was true. If only she hadn’t left, I could’ve been there for her.

But she had, and I had no way to get to her; Luna had to come to me, and she could only do that if I were asleep.

Of course, being asleep required me to be alive. This close to the moon and sun, the chance of running into space debris was non-trivial over a long period of time.

Ugh. I could provide a large surge of power to the Nebulous for a minute and then take a five minute power nap, repeating that over and over until Chrysalis woke up.

But what if Luna came to me while I was awake. There’d be a one-sixth chance of that, and she might not come back if I missed her.

This was the worst.

I felt the power to the shields drop and quickly took up the slack myself. I could geas Chrysalis to stay up, but she’d never talk to me again after that. She might even ignore Pupa and her own well-being completely and betray us.

Biting my lip, I slowly got out of bed.

I really hoped that was the right decision.

Author's Note

Prereader – Starlight Nova

Chapter Sixteen - The Moon - Part One

[Winter 48, 994 – Day 258]

We leave for the moon as soon as I wake up. Not that I really need the extra sleep to make the journey. I’m still pretty well rested.

*cough*

Anyway, everypony but Twinkleshine will be sleeping through the journey. I told her I planned to study through the final leg, but she insisted on staying up with me anyway.

Still no sign of Luna, but I thought of something today! Luna doesn’t like Hearth’s Warming. Well, rather she gets moody around it; she likes it as much as any other holiday, if not more. I know we spent most of the last one together, but that was the exception, not the norm. Luna just needed some more space this year after hearing Celestia wanted to kill her. That’s definitely why she hasn’t come back yet.

I hope she doesn’t chew me out for slacking off with all that extra sleep instead of studying.

“The moon!” Twinkleshine shouted to our little bubble of air. “We’re on the moon! I’m on the moon! The moon! My hooves have moon dust on them! Twilight, can you turn off the gravity magic? Please?” Twinkleshine looked up at me with cute little puppy dog eyes, which really didn’t work since she was normally taller than me.

“No,” I said, “you’ll die.”

Well, she probably wouldn’t die right away – even the sun wasn’t big enough to kill a pony instantly with its gravity – but I could easily see her breaking a few bones within a second. Dash and maybe Fluttershy might be able to handle their own weight on the moon, but us two frail unicorns would snap like a twig.

The earth ponies in our group might be able to handle their weight, too, but it certainly wouldn’t be pleasant for them. Of course, that came with an asterisk; I was sure Pinkie Pie would be fine. She already casually cheated physics everyday with her usual insanity, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she shrugged off gravity several dozen times Equus’s.

To be fair, I suspected Pinkie Pie was a time mage, and the effects of living with non-linear causality had broken her mentally. I wasn’t sure if I found her more or less annoying after that revelation. On the one hoof, she wasn’t such a mystery anymore – probably – with the discovery. On the other hoof, I still had no idea how she did any of it.

Speaking of whom, Pinkie Pie jumped onto my back in a hug, and ignoring my protesting grunt, she said, “Don’t be a grumpy pants, Twilight. You promised all of us that you’ll have as much fun as you can today. Or is it tonight? I mean, we’re on the moon, so it’s night back home, but it’s pretty bright here. Does that make it always daytime on the moon? Maybe it’s always nighttime. Ooh, or maybe it’s always twilight since it’s not all that bright or dark.”

Okay, I drew the line at bad puns. Ducking down, I dropped Pinkie Pie back on her own hooves and crawled out from underneath her. To Spike’s delight, I picked him up and placed him on my back, thus preventing any further pouncing from Pinkie Pie.

“So anyway,” Cherry Berry began, “where are we headed first? Bare, cratered, pale gray rock is only entertaining for so long.” She glanced to the side where Berry Punch was trying to catch Berry Pinch and stop her from rolling around in the moon dust. “For some of us, at least.”

“I…um…” I looked to Twinkleshine, hoping she might know of a few interesting places to visit on the moon.

After a prolonged silence, Fluttershy whispered, “Are we lost?”

“I–”

“You have got to be kidding me!” Dash shouted, facehoofing. “We’ve been here, what, five minutes?”

“We’re not lost,” I said as calmly as I could. “I know the general direction to head in to get to Luna’s palace, or close enough at least to find it. Just…not anywhere else. We were supposed to have a tour guide.”

After an awkward nudge from Fluttershy, Dash said, “I didn’t mean… Sorry, Twi.”

“It’s fine. I had to tell her something she really didn’t want to know. She just needs some space.” For half a season…

I had to fight back a sigh that threatened to turn into a sniffle. If only Luna would saddle me with her problems instead of running off to deal with them herself. She always helped me feel better whenever I was down; I’d love it if I could do the same for her.

“Anyway,” I began, “does anypony want to go see…um…a scenic crater?”

Dash facehoofed for me. Twinkleshine alone looked enthused, but I could probably show her a pebble and have it make her happy right now.

I sighed. “Maybe we should just go to the palace.”

“No objections there,” Cherry Berry said with barely suppressed enthusiasm. Much like Twinkleshine, she was overeager to meet the ‘moon ponies’, having talked about all of the priceless historical knowledge she could gain from them – and probably several book deals – for weeks on end. Really, Cherry Berry had looked so happy about the whole trip that I hadn’t had the heart to tell her that there had probably been a significant amount of cultural contamination. Equus and the moon weren’t completely without contact; Luna did talk to her subjects, after all. Then again, Luna had said they still spoke Old Equestrian, so maybe they weren’t too affected.

“All right. First teleport in three, two, one–”

With one last flash of teleportation, we arrived…approximately at our destination. We were within a couple dozen kilometers of the southern – if you could say any one direction was really south when there was no magnetic field – side of the Hornburg, the moon’s tallest mountain. Unless I’d messed up horribly, the palace should be somewhere around here, built into the cliff face.

The only problem was actually locating it.

“Any chance you can feel any spellwork around?” I asked Twinkleshine. I didn’t really expect her to reply positively, but a mare could hope.

“Huh?” Twinkleshine tore her eyes away from the mountain just long enough to look at me and to say, “Oh. No.”

“Does anypony happen to see a castle anywhere? Maybe some foliage on the ground?” I held out hope that I was blind or that Pinkie Pie could randomly tell us for just a little bit longer before giving in. “No? Great…” Hope was for the hopeless.

My first solution would be to teleport around until we stumbled into the castle, but I didn’t know what kind of defenses Luna had put up all those centuries ago. Even if there were no hostile wards, it could be very difficult – possibly impossible – to blindly stumble in.

For instance, we might be subtly teleported a bit out of the way when we would have successfully entered the palace, and it’d be incredibly hard to notice. Distances were insanely difficult to judge on the moon; earlier when we were approaching the Hornburg, I thought we’d get here twice as fast, but the mountain was secretly much taller than I’d thought. Well, not secretly. In my experience, mountains generally didn’t keep secrets. It’d be better to say it was deceptively taller.

Anyway, I already knew what I’d have to do with no Luna to guide me, so I should just get to it. I was going to have to dig through the background magic everywhere near the mountain to find the castle. This was going to be a long night…

“Alright, since nopony knows where the castle is, I guess I’m going to have to find it. I’ll be back every so often to make sure the spells are holding up.”

Just as I was starting my teleport, Pinkie Pie said, “That’s not true, silly.”

“What’s not?” I asked, bracing myself for a dose of Pinkie Logic. It usually made sense, if only in the insulting ‘moon logic’ sense, but it was rarely useful.

“There are plenty of ponies who know where the castle is.”

“Yeah,” Dash began, “inside the castle where we can’t find them to ask them where the castle is.”

“Well yeah, it’d be pretty silly if we asked them where the castle was, because they’d just tell us it’s right there,” Pinkie said, gesturing vaguely toward the mountain. “So we should just ask them to show us where the castle is so that we can all see it ourselves.”

“Same problem, Pinkie Pie,” I said. “They’re… Oh.”

“Oh what?” Cherry Berry and Dash asked at the same time.

“Weeeeell,” Pinkie Pie began, “if we can’t bring the party to them, why not have them bring the party to us?”

“Pinkie, that’s brilliant!” Dash shouted, bumping hooves with Pinkie Pie.

I wouldn’t really say brilliant, but it was a much better idea than brute force. Even if they weren’t expecting us, they’d certainly investigate a large, obvious, magical disturbance on the moon. The only question was whether or not they were actually able to leave the castle. Since the spells protecting the castle would’ve needed maintenance over the years, I would assume they had at least one unicorn with enough magical knowhow to come find us.

While the rest of the group engaged in conversation, I set about casting a gigantic illusion in the sky above us. It wasn’t anything fancy, just an enormous, colorful sign saying, “We’re lost,” with a large arrow pointing down to us and ending just a few hooves above the tallest of us, Berry Punch.

“Hooves crossed that nopony is looking at us with a telescope,” I mumbled to nopony. That would be a very dumb way to have my cover blown. I didn’t think the illusion was that big, but even non-professional telescopes would be able to notice the splotch of color on the moon if they just happened to be looking at the Hornburg from the right angle.

And now we just had to wait. I pulled my notes on alchemy out of my saddlebags and picked up where I’d left off earlier tonight. I was so behind on my lessons, and these infernally complex alchemy spells still weren’t clicking in my head. Luna would be so disappointed with me if she came back and I didn’t even have a basic grasp on the actual spellwork implementations.

Sigh. That wasn’t fair to me. I could use the odd alchemy spell well enough to fake understanding, but that was far below my standards for myself. Luna had shown me how to put the big pieces together to do simple tasks like performing a few chemical reactions, but I was far away from what would usually be referred to as the ‘useful’ stuff.

Although, what would be called useful would vary wildly from pony to pony. There’s actually thousands – if not millions – of uses for forcing specific chemical reactions to proceed. As interesting as that was – and it was fascinating – I was more interested in the creation of complex objects: cells, food, phonographs, unstable elements, even wings. There was so much potential in alchemy. A mare could get lost in her imagination for days at a time.

Speaking of which, Fluttershy gave me a soft nudge with a hoof; I almost didn’t notice. Looking up, I saw everypony was staring off into the distance, and Twinkleshine was squealing in delight while bouncing on her hooves. Shifting my own gaze the same way, I noticed some small, colorful specks against the backdrop of the mountain.

Well, not that colorful, actually. I think they were dark grays and browns specks, plus one bright orange one that was hard to pick out against the backdrop of the moon. With a quick scry, I confirmed the colors. We had one orange unicorn headed our way with three lunar pegasi in tow, or rather towing him in a chariot which looked big enough for…most of us. How awkward. One had a nearly black coat, another had a dark gray coat, and the last one had a dark brown coat.

Anyway, there was no sense in making them fly all the way to us. I canceled my illusion and fired up a teleport. We weren’t too far away from them, so we could make the trip in roughly a dozen short jumps very quickly.

I didn’t know if I should make anything of it, but I was a little disappointed when none of our four guides started when we suddenly appeared in front of them, teleporting one last time straight to the ground after I said a quick hello. Maybe Dash and Pinkie Pie were rubbing off on me just a tiny bit with all of their prank wars.

Within seconds, the chariot above us turned and started its descent, gradually slowing down all the while.

“All right, everypony, before they land, I want to say something.” As I continued, I met Twinkleshine’s and Pinkie Pie’s eyes in particular. “Whatever you do later, I expect you to behave civilly for the moment. That means no flying tackle hugs, no treating them like a specimen, no anything along those lines. And preferably no staring.”

I was about to comment on Twinkleshine’s pout,when, from the center of our group, a voice said, “Greetings, Princess Twilight Sparkle, Harbinger of the Night and Mistress of Magic.”

What? I turned around until I found our guides with their hooves on the ground and bowing to me. It seemed Luna had been wrong; ponies were going to treat me like a princess with or without wings. I’d hoped that I could have put that off a few years longer, but apparently Luna had ruined any chance of that.

Still, it was just for one night, and nopony but myself would understand a word the locals would say.

Oh, stars. Except for the adventurer slash archaeologist who could read and write ancient languages and who could probably–

“Princess?” Cherry Berry echoed.

Immediately, I cast a quick spell to mute her, using another to whisper into her ear, “I’ll explain later. Please keep quiet.”

“So, what?” Dash began. “Is one of them a princess or something?”

Berry Punch asked, “Are we supposed to be bowing, too?”

“Everypony’s supposed to bow to princesses,” Berry Pinch unhelpfully added.

“No, I don’t think bowing is a cultural thing,” I replied. “Probably not, anyway. I’m…well…kind of a big deal as Princess Luna’s apprentice.” Afterward, I mumbled, “Apparently,” to myself.

Turning my attention back to the ponies who were still bowing, I cast my own ventriloquism spell to converse with them. Emulating all of Luna’s usual poise and sophistication, I straightened my back, held my head level, and hoped my accent wasn’t really as bad as Luna had told me it was.

“Please rise.” Instant compliance. I bit back my irritation at being obeyed, which was competing with my elation at not being bowed to. “I would much prefer it if you would treat me like…”

Huh. I was going to say treat me like a normal pony, but I was pretty sure how well that would go over. I’d spend half the night futilely trying to get past all the formalities until I’d get so tired and frustrated that I’d learn to accept my place or something, and then Pinkie Pie would sing some song about how good life is, and at that point, I’d have missed the festival completely.

Yeah, I’d just skip that.

“Please behave informally in the presence of my companions.” I added a wink for effect. Hopefully they’d take the hint that there was a reason they shouldn’t call me ‘princess’, and Cherry Berry wouldn’t.

The older, dark-gray lunar pegasus didn’t so much as blink, but the other three betrayed my meaning for a moment in their own time. That probably meant I was going to have to use the standard lame excuse: Shining was almost certainly going to marry Cadance and make me part of the extended royal family.

Sigh. While true, it was so technically incorrect of an excuse that it made me cringe.

The elder pegasus, the one who was either quick witted or didn’t understand subtext, spoke in time with the voice that was projected from behind me. He said, “As you wish, Lady Twilight. Please permit me to introduce myself. I am Crescent, and I am privileged to be the voice of the princess amongst those who call the moon their home.”

“I see.” Ignoring Twinkleshine nudging me, I began, “Has she…” I took a deep breath to calm myself, turning it into a fake yawn. I could ask about Luna later; I had few doubts that I was going to be disappointed by the answer. “I’m terribly sorry. I’m afraid the final leg of our journey to the moon has taken much out of me.”

“Shall we then repair to the city?” I nodded, and he continued, “Very well. How would you like to arrange our departure? I regret to say, the chariot we brought is not quite large enough for all of you.”

“If we were to follow you by…” I mashed my lips together, searching my vocabulary. I really only had conversational level knowledge of Old Equestrian. Turning to Cherry Berry, I asked, “What’s the word for teleportation?”

“Huh?” Cherry Berry said, apparently taken by surprise. “I don’t think there is one, but there is a related word. It refers to when Princess Celestia – and I guess Princess Luna, too – would disappear and reappear elsewhere.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“‘Manifestus’.” At my odd look, Cherry Berry added, “It’s a loanword from another dead language. Don’t try conjugating it.” Switching over to Old Equestrian, Cherry Berry said, “However, it has a distinctly divine connotation that you may or may not want to use, Princess.”

As I sighed, Crescent said, “Excuse me, Lady Twilight, but if I may interject.”

I turned around to give him my attention.

“Any means by which you follow us would be acceptable. The magical defenses placed upon the city were dispelled centuries ago. As hard working as our few spell casters are, we have not been able to maintain more than the bare minimum of the original enchantments. The princess’s spellwork was too far beyond us, I’m afraid.”

Containing my squeal of delight at having a chance to examine some of Luna’s real world work, I said, “If you would like, I would be happy to meet the current generation of spell casters and perhaps give a few pointers.”

“If you wish,” Crescent replied with a knowing smirk. “Shall we depart, then?”

“Of course.”

We didn’t have far to go, although we traveled at the speed of flight instead of at my usual teleportation pace. We only had to travel a little bit around the mountain before I could pick out Luna’s magic in the distance. Luna’s magic! Her real magic, not just her magic in a dream! It felt subtlety different, and dozens of other ponies’ magic were mixed in, but it was definitely hers at the core.

I certainly wasn’t alone in my eagerness. Twinkleshine and Pinkie Pie were still just as excitable as ever, each for their own reasons. Cherry Berry hid it well, but her bearing betrayed her. Dash was an open book for anypony to read, but surprisingly, even Fluttershy was restless in anticipation.

Well, it was probably in anticipation. She could be thinking about bolting, but I rather doubted it.

“Twilight,” Twinkleshine whined, “how much longer?”

“We’re almost there. Maybe another minute or two.”

“Ugh. Can’t you just teleport us all the way there right now?”

“No, Twinkleshine. It’d be rude to leave Crescent and the others behind after they were nice enough to come fetch us.”

“Oh, come on, Twilight. Pleeeeease? The wait is killing me.”

I cast another teleport to put us below our guides once more as they continued flying forward.

“Just be patient.”

“I don’t wanna!”

I wanted to tell Twinkleshine to stop acting like a foal, but I knew it wouldn’t do anything. She was, after all, literally living one of her dreams right now. Several of us were, actually, and I certainly didn’t want to be the one to put a damper on all the excitement.

“Hey,” I began, “why don’t you go ask Cherry Berry to teach you some key phrases?” Like I should have done. Hmm…

“I guess…” Twinkleshine said.

I turned to Cherry Berry with a hopeful look. She let out a silent laugh and smirked before responding.

“I suppose I could take her off your hooves for a little while. I might as well teach everypony while I’m at it. Come gather round.”

Tuning out the rest of the group, I simply enjoyed being in the presence of Luna’s magic again. It’d been so long since I’d seen her; I’d worried that I wouldn’t be able to recognize her magic anymore. Obviously, I’d been wrong, but that didn’t make the feeling any less satisfying.

“Mama?”

“Hmm?” I said through my emotional haze. “Yes, Spike?”

“Is Auntie Luna here?”

Sighing and lifting Spike off my back, I said, “It’s complicated.”

“But we’re on the moon.”

“Yes. Yes, we are. It’s… It’s complicated, Spike. I’m sorry she hasn’t been around for so long after you just met her, but she’s been busy. Auntie Luna is a very important pony. She has to take care of all of Equestria at night.”

“All of it?” Spike asked, eyes wide. “But – but that’s like hundreds of ponies.”

I resisted the urge to correct Spike. Equestria’s population was more toward the hundred millions. Instead, I said, “Yep. Sometimes she gets so busy that she just doesn’t have time for us. Auntie Luna is here, but she won’t be able to spend any time with us tonight.” Lifting Spike’s sad face with a hoof, I added, “Just try not to have any bad dreams. You don’t want to make even more work for her, do you?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Good. Now, would you like to spend tonight with Berry Pinch?”

Spike stopped to consider the idea, no doubt stuck between wanting to follow me around and wanting to go play.

“You’ll probably get bored hanging out with me tonight. I think I’m going to be stuck with the old ponies tonight. It’ll just be a whole bunch of talking.”

“Bleh.”

Giggling, I said, “I’ll ask Berry Punch to look after you.”

I looked up to locate a destination for our next teleport, when I noticed that our guides had disappeared. My eyes widened when I realized where we were: the edge of the illusion. With one more teleport, I relocated us inside the spellwork, and I lost my breath.

I’d expected a little chunk of Ponyville on the moon with a fancy castle nearby, but not this. This was like walking into a painting, with the hinterland spreading out before us, the village splayed across the base of the mountain, and the palace – it was definitely a palace, not a castle – looming over everything.

“Is – is that a river?” Cherry Berry asked.

I let our protection spells go, as we didn’t need them anymore.

“Oh my!” Fluttershy whispered.

I noticed a small flock of birds in the air of a species which I was fairly sure was extinct. Near those birds was a smaller flock of lunar pegasi engaged in some sky-based sporty thing.

“Hey, Twi, I’m not gonna die if I leave, am I?”

“Huh? No, you–”

“Great! See ya, everypony!” Dash shouted back to us as she flew off into the sky in her usual rainbow blur.

“What? Wait! Dash–”

I didn’t have time to say anything else before a pink blur speed past me on the ground. Already far away, Pinkie Pie was headed toward a curvy part of the river where dozens and dozens of lunar pegasi were dancing, and playing music, and eating, and in general, reveling and making merry. In Pinkie Pie terms, they were having a party.

Worse, Berry Pinch had somehow managed to latch onto Pinkie Pie’s tail and flailed wildly as she was carried away. It only took a moment before Berry Punch realized what was happening and ran off after her daughter.

Sighing, I forced my eyes away from the, quite frankly, very architecturally pleasing palace in the distance and the three fillies that had just bolted like… Well, the standard Hearth’s Warming present simile really didn’t apply here, since it was Hearth’s Warming. Sometimes I felt like a mother with too many foals to look after.

“Cherry Berry,” I began, “I don’t mean to rain on your own adventure, but could you look after them once in a while tonight? The ones on the ground, at least?”

“Yeah, no problem.”

“Also, would you mind taking Spike with you until I’m free to wander about?”

“Sure thing.” Cherry Berry smirked again. “Try not to let all the royal affairs ruin your solstice.”

Ignoring her, I gave Spike a hug goodbye and teleported the two of them some ways ahead of Pinkie Pie. I doubted their lead would last long.

“At this point, you might as well go see what they have in the royal menagerie here,” I suggested to Fluttershy. I’d already lost control of the situation, so I might as well just roll with it and pretend it had been my idea all along.

“I…um…I think I’ll stay with you, if you don’t mind.”

“That’s fine. I’ll make sure Dash gets back to you at some point tonight.”

Ignoring Fluttershy’s quiet thanks, I turned to Twinkleshine, only to find her already talking up a storm a little way behind us with Crescent and the other three – well actually, just the other two lunar pegasi. That much was expected. What I didn’t expect was all four of the locals – the unicorn included – seemed to be just as interested in Twinkleshine, although none of them could understand each other.

I wasn’t sure if this meant Twinkleshine was going to stick to me like glue or if she was going to get distracted and let me mope and hug a moon rock all night by myself.

Wow. Even I had to admit I sounded depressing.

As I took a step toward Twinkleshine and her new friends – written as specimens – the locals seemed to suddenly remember I was here. They all stood a little straighter and tried very hard to pretend like what I’d just seen hadn’t happened.

Addressing Crescent, I said, “You know, I did request you act informally around my friends. I will not think any less of anypony that is as excited about our visit as Twinkleshine here is, nor would I expect Luna to.”

The mare in question seemed unperturbed by the change in mood as she pulled out one of the pegasus’s wings to examine. I doubt she noticed his blush, either. At least he wasn’t upset or offended.

Crescent cleared his throat. “Well, yes. Anyway, it is my pleasure to welcome you to the lunar palace, Luminance, home to the last of the fengari.”

I was just going to assume that last word meant lunar pegasi, or moon ponies, or bat ponies, or whatever.

“Seeing as your group has dispersed–”

“My apologies,” I mumbled.

“Think nothing of it, Lady Twilight. You are our guests, and you are free to do as you wish while you are here. That said, would the three of you care for an escort anywhere?”

Ah, there it was. ‘You are free to do as you wish so long as we can hang out with you and get into the next goddess’s good graces.’

Sigh, maybe I was being too paranoid. Crescent wasn’t even a real politician like the kind Cadance complained about or like the ones loyal to Luna whom I’d briefly talked to on occasion back on Equus. Not everypony wanted something, and he had looked genuinely interested in us when he’d let his guard down. Besides, I had few doubts that Luna doted on her little ‘moon ponies’ as much as possible, so it wasn’t like any of them really needed anything from me.

“Twinkleshine?” I said, drawing her attention away from her…mingling. “Fluttershy? Is there anywhere in particular you’d like to visit?”

Shortly before I finished asking, Twinkleshine replied, “The castle! And each and everypony inside it! And I want to look out over the moon from the highest turret! And eat whatever local foods they have! And – and everything!”

Giggling, I turned to Fluttershy and asked, “How about you? Any preferences on what part of everything we visit first?”

“Oh, anything would be fine. I’m sure whatever you want to do would be wonderful.”

“Alright, then.” Turning back to Crescent, I asked, “Would you care to show us to the–”

I shuddered as I felt a faint, mildly familiar magic fill the air, but if anypony noticed – the magic or my reaction – they didn’t comment on it. I’d known it was coming, but I’d managed to lose track of the time while we were traveling.

Midnight had arrived, and with it had come Celestia’s magic.

“–palace?” I finished lamely.

“It would be my pleasure.”

The chariot ride to the palace was nice, even if we managed to draw every local’s attention when we got anywhere near them despite the rest of the crew already having occupied their attention. Lunar pegasi, as it turned out, could fly a lot smoother and quieter than regular pegasi, but not quietly enough for my tastes.

I’d asked the unicorn hitching a ride with us – his name was Astral – about the differences between the subspecies almost immediately after I’d noticed the first one, but it quickly became obvious he had no idea. In hindsight, that should have been obvious. The only way to get a regular pegasus here would be from the unicorns and earth ponies reproducing and getting a pegasus child, and even then, they’d come out with mixed traits like Fluttershy, although probably far more pronounced. Based on what little I knew about genetics and the fact that the moon wasn’t littered with regular pegasi, I’d guess that there were some mating guidelines in effect.

Well, even outside of the need to have a few unicorns and earth ponies hanging around, there would probably need to be mating guidelines anyway with such a small current population, disregarding whatever they started out with. The griffin royals – and the pony nobles, unfortunately – have historically had fertility issues due to all the inbreeding, and such problems would be amplified here.

Anyway, I’d only caught a glimpse of one or two foals on the trip, so while I probably should assume the worst until informed otherwise, Luna had said their population was stable. Consequently, I was going to be optimistic and assume that there was instead some grand scheme in effect which involved long gaps between generations.

Lost in thought as I idly translated for Twinkleshine and Astral, I started when we touched back down on the ground in the palace courtyard. That wasn’t to say the landing wasn’t smooth, or gentle, or any other positive quality of landings. I was just too busy letting my thoughts wander aimlessly, which in hindsight, was sort of a contradiction in terms.

Ugh. Anyway, I hopped off the chariot and took stock of my new surroundings. Up close, as so many things did, the palace lost much of its stunning beauty. It looked nice – not that I had the best eye for these kind of things – but it wasn’t anything to write home about. And just looking at it, something felt…off, somehow.

I couldn’t put my hoof quite on what was wrong, though; this place wasn’t all that different in spirit from Canterlot Castle. Obsidian stone walls, check. Miscellaneous flora and the odd fauna, check – although I only recognized one or two of the trees. A fountain, check. The wingful of statues, check. Enchantments which probably only I noticed, check. Scattered guards, not check – probably not necessary.

Hmm, what else was there? There were nice, paved walkways through the courtyard, and the plants were blooming. The latter was a bit odd considering it was winter, but the seasons could be whatever the residents wanted on the moon. Really, we could make the seasons whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted on Equus, too, with or without Luna’s or Celestia’s help, but we kept them around. Presumably there were valid reasons for doing so.

Maybe I was approaching this wrong. What was missing? There were the previously mentioned guards, but I didn’t think that was it. There weren’t any flags or tapestries. That was odd, but I didn’t really see the point of them here, especially when the locals had more limited resources at their–

That was it! Well, not exactly, but it was the same spirit. There were no festivities here at all, not even a plate of muffins or mug of hot chocolate. Actually, they might not have chocolate here; I wasn’t sure when chocolate had been invented, but it was probably after Luna had been banished. Stranger still, the entire palace didn’t have the usual wear and tear I’d expect to see in a castle. Obsidian showed imperfections like no other rock, and while Luna could have enchanted it to be effectively indestructible, everything that Luna wouldn’t have had a chance to enchant looked pristine as well.

Was the palace simply not used? With space being a very valuable resource, I couldn’t think of any reason why they wouldn’t.

“Crescent,” I began, turning around, “is there any reason the palace isn’t used?”

All of Crescent’s surprise at my question showed on his face for a few seconds before he mastered his expression.

“Well, the three caretakers live up here, so it is not completely vacant, but everypony else finds the flight up here too inconvenient for regular use.”

“Ah…” What a horribly mundane explanation. And here I thought Luna might have a whole palace full of interesting things she didn’t want ponies putting their hooves all over. Oh well. “Would you mind terribly if the three of us simply wandered by ourselves for a while?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Crescent replied, “Of course not, Princess. Whatever you wish. I trust you will be able to make it to the festival on your own, should you desire.”

I nodded and then turned to Twinkleshine and Fluttershy. “Alright, you two. We have free reign of the palace alone, so let’s go explore it to our hearts’ content.”

“What! Twilight,” Twinkleshine whined, “what about the moon ponies!”

“We might run into one inside,” I said, although honestly I’d rather just be by myself while I did this. I’d been given a chance to look into Luna’s past firsthoof, and I wanted it to be a private affair. “You’re free to do what you want, of course, if you’d rather do something else. Especially you, Fluttershy.”

“M-me? I – I don’t…”

Sighing, I said, “Fluttershy, your eyes dart toward some rustle in a bush made by an animal every other second. Just go enjoy yourself.”

“I…um…” Fluttershy pawed the ground with her eyes looking straight at the floor. “Okay. Thank you.”

I didn’t stay to watch Fluttershy wander off; like me, she loved her privacy. I wandered off through what I presumed were the front gates of the palace, Twinkleshine following just behind me. My first real look at the inside of the palace left me secretly wishing I were Luna’s art student. And naturally, this beautiful moment was interrupted by Twinkleshine running right into me. At least we didn’t fall over…

“Sorry,” Twinkleshine said automatically, her eyes not even looking toward me for a moment.

I turned my attention back to the walls of the hall myself. Just from our arrival, I knew that Luna obviously had an artistic gift in landscaping and architecture, but her painting was somehow even better. The entire hallway was one big canvas, and if what I had seen and could see of the rest of the palace were any indication, Luna had probably painted everything. And it wasn’t just one big picture either; the subject matter clearly changed as it went along, but it was so seamlessly done, I couldn’t point to any spot and say, ‘This is new material.’

And then I actually noticed the windows. They were stained glass windows, and Luna had managed to incorporate them into the canvas, too. They weren’t distracting holes in the wall; they were accents, and the soft moonlight they radiated was gorgeous.

Twinkleshine gasped and galloped a little ways down the hall, not even bothering to look where she was going as she watched the walls go by. In no rush myself, I followed at a slow canter. I’d never imagined I’d actually find myself captivated by art, but well…here I was. It helped my pride a little bit that it was Luna’s art.

As I approached Twinkleshine, I idly said, “This is amazing. How long do you think this took?”

“Centuries!” Twinkleshine half-shouted, her voice echoing through the palace. “Don’t you see what this is?”

I shook my head and looked back at the halls. Nothing in particular jumped out at me, but I could easily imagine it would take centuries to paint an entire palace while ruling a country.

“Twilight, this is the history of – of the world! Well, at least the princesses’ histories. I think it starts back there with Discord and just sort of…sprawls out from there.”

Twinkleshine grabbed one of my hooves and pulled me back the way we came. We went a short ways down one of the hallways we’d skipped, and she spun me to look at the wall.

“It’s not just one story either. The main hallway was showing us the founding of Equestria, but this one shoots off on a…a…a side story. All of the hallways did! I think this one is a love story between Princess Celestia and this pegasus stallion! And that one over there.”

I noticed Twinkleshine’s intentions early this time and cantered along with her instead of being pulled along, but not before taking one last look at the wall. Celestia looked…young…in these paintings. She was shorter, and her pure pink hair was a huge image change, but there was no doubt it was her.

“This is Princess Luna’s love story!”

With a lunar pegasus, of course. No surprise there; I did more or less understand the attraction after I’d seen some myself. The far more interesting thing was Luna’s appearance. I hadn’t recognized her at first, but the similarities were obvious when I knew what I was looking at. Where Luna now was stunning and beautiful, this Luna was adorable and cute. And it wasn’t like that one time when I’d turned her into a filly. She’d just looked ridiculous then. I had to admit, the lack of stars in her light blue mane left a lot to be desired, but she was still pretty. Her dark blue coat might actually go better with the stars, but I’d have to see her in pony with it to know for sure.

More importantly, if this was Luna as a filly – well, in a somewhat filly-like body; she was probably pretty old already – I wondered what she looked like fully grown. If this was a history of Equestria like Twinkleshine said, then I should be able to find out if I…

“What happens when the hallway splits?” I asked, half to myself and half to Twinkleshine. “More subplots? What about when it rejoins other, larger hallways? Are there no loops in here?”

I knew Luna was a good story teller, but would she really be able to weave together potentially thousands of little stories into each other at arbitrary points? That was unbelievable. I had to see it for myself.

Twinkleshine and I took our first step forward at the same time. The easiest way to answer my questions would be to just wander the palace. I might even get answers to hundreds of other historical questions I’d always wanted to ask Luna but never had the time to. A small hop came into my step just thinking about it, and I barely paid attention to the little love story going on around me. I was kind of regretting sending Crescent away; he could have given us the guided tour.

Then again, he mentioned that there were some caretakers that lived here. Maybe they were still around, considering that everypony here apparently knew we were going to come visiting.

“Hey, Twinkleshine, why don’t we split up? Crescent said” – I turned my head to look at Twinkleshine, but she didn’t turn to me and was biting her lip – “there were some ponies who lived here. We could maybe find them for a guide, and…” I bit my own lip for a moment and then asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“That is the most obvious lie I’ve heard that didn’t come out of Dash’s or Cadance’s mouth.”

I stopped walking, but Twinkleshine didn’t bother to stop with me.

“Twinkleshine, please tell me what’s wrong.”

Finally, Twinkleshine stopped. “I said it’s nothing! Just – go follow the main hall, and I’ll check the side passages, okay?”

Okay or not, Twinkleshine didn’t wait for an answer and started off on her own. As responsible as it would’ve been to have followed her, I turned around and went back the way we’d come. I had to admit, when I said I wanted my look into Luna’s past to be a private affair, that I wanted to be alone, I had meant it. And now I had the chance. All it cost me was not cheering up my friend after…whatever it was that upset her.

I…guess I needed to apologize – probably definitely. Eventually.

Walking through the main hall wasn’t as exciting as I’d have liked it to be. Anypony who could get her hooves on a changeling history of Equestria wouldn’t find it particularly enlightening. It was just all the major events of Equestrian history: wars, treaties, important ponies, new nations, et cetera. There were no shortage of hallways I was tempted to go down, including a particularly interesting looking account of Sombra, but for now, I resisted their call.

I climbed a set of stairs and found myself at the entrance to the throne room. I suspected a small part of me was expecting to see two thrones, but there was only one at the far end. Luna had said she’d never told Celestia about this place, but they did used to be on good terms. I could see Luna building an extra throne just in case.

Anyway, it looked like the main story continued on through the throne room and out the doorways in the back, so I made my way across. If I had to guess, I’d say I was a few centuries off from Luna’s banishment. I was pretty sure the ceiling was depicting the battle of Horseshoe Bay, but it could have been one of the battles at the future site of Manehattan.

By this point, Luna was probably as fully grown as she was going to get; she hadn’t changed in a century or two in the paintings. She looked so… If I’d met this version of her first, I’d probably think the current one was weird, but since it was the other way around, she looked so…so…unbalanced? No, that wasn’t the right word. She was still gorgeous. She was surprisingly much shorter, but that wasn’t what was bothering me.

Ugh, I didn’t know how to put it. It was like if somepony came into my room and moved everything a few centimeters in a random direction. It wasn’t all that different, but the minor changes would trip me up over and over again for no good reason.

I did really like her navy blue coat, though. Maybe not more than her black coat, but it was a great look for her.

Continuing out the back of the throne room, I pursued the main history. Just after I passed what I was certain was the signing of the Equestrian–Draconian peace treaty, I noticed an odd door. There was nothing strange about it as far as doors went, but it was the first and the only door that I’d seen in the palace so far. Everywhere else just sort of went without doors or even doorframes. Then again, I hadn’t followed any of the side passages very far. Individual rooms probably had doors.

Frowning, I made a mental note to come back here after I’d reached the end of the main history. I was only about a century off from the end of what Luna could have painted, after all. I could be patient.

Not that there was much to be patient for. I followed the main hallway to the end of the painting, where it abruptly stopped. It wasn’t even a clean break. The parts that looked done would poke out of an imaginary line that marked the end of the canvas – or else there was just a lot of background not painted yet – but there were plenty of half-finished ponies and buildings.

This was it. This was the end. I wasn’t sure what to make of it that Luna hadn’t put any of her own personal feelings into the main history. At least she hadn’t so far as I could tell. The academic in me was delighted by her impartiality; the historian in me was divided, given that Luna was a rather important figure in history and that her thoughts and opinions had a direct effect on the course of history; and the student in me was worried about how much her teacher was bottling up, even in her own home.

Then again, perhaps that was what all the side passages were really for. They did detail her life, and maybe that was where she let the raw emotion out at. I had so much to see here, and I had only one night to do it.

And I had a door to start with.

Author's Note

Prereader – Starlight Nova

Chapter Seventeen - The Moon - Part Two

“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, owwwww…”

Note to self: never ever buck a door again just because it wouldn’t open. It wouldn’t help, and it would just give me another leg to nurse back to health.

Still, I was only more interested than ever to get past this door. There was no handle, no knob, it didn’t push open, magic wouldn’t budge it, I couldn’t teleport past it, I couldn’t scry past it, I couldn’t easily destroy it, and there was no telling what disenchanting it would do. This was the door. What all other doors aspired to be. I’d experimented with going through the walls, too, but even if that had worked, I didn’t think I could bring myself to damage Luna’s painting just to get past a door.

And even if I was crazy enough to try turning myself into a sentient gas for a little bit – Luna had given me a scolding when I’d said I wanted to try that after reading about it – it looked an awful lot like this door was also airtight. For all that it looked like simple carved wood with decorative crystals, this was probably the most enchanted door I’d ever seen, even more so than bank vaults.

A rather loud and obnoxious part of me was screaming that Luna didn’t want me in there and that I should just leave, but that was Past Luna. I was sure Present Luna wouldn’t mind if she were around to ask – probably. I could just be making excuses, but I only had tonight to get inside and look around, or else I’d have to wait three to six years.

Alright, so assuming this wasn’t some cruel joke and that there was actually something behind the door other than a wall, there was probably some sort of spell key set to open the door. A thousand years ago, the mere idea of cryptography would have barely existed, so this probably wasn’t an impossible task.

If it were just keyed to Luna’s magic, I could probably fool the door; I did have plenty of samples of her magic to work with within hooves reach. Then again, that was probably evidence for that being the wrong answer, since the door would probably accidentally open all the time that way. No, it had to be something else. That would be a backup idea.

If the trigger was tied to a specific spell, I wouldn’t be able to determine which it was without disabling the wards muddling my magical senses beyond the door, and that could prove disastrous. Now that I thought about it, opening the door at all could be a really bad idea. Crescent said that they were only able to maintain the minimum level of enchantments, so there was no telling what state the ones here were in. The smart thing to do would be to go find and ask one of the caretakers, but…well…that would be admitting defeat.

What if I looked at it another way? Assuming I could solve this problem at all – which was a big assumption, admittedly – what could I do that would be hard for anypony else to do? Okay, that was the wrong question; I could do a lot that other ponies would find hard to do. Rather, I should ask what would be difficult for somepony to replicate, even if they knew what they had to do. That was the best kind of lock, disregarding whatever other protection measures a pony took.

There was my flaring, or just my high magical power in general. It was barely within the realm of possibility that Luna had enchanted this door to require an alicorn’s raw magical power to open, but honestly, I’d expect that would just fry the spells and destroy the castle when somepony actually tried to open the door. And if she didn’t want to be able to enter through this door herself, she’d just have put a wall here instead, so that probably wasn’t it.

Alchemy spells were incredibly hard, but they weren’t really an appropriate answer to my question. If you already knew you had to use an alchemy spell, it was a simple as taking a weekend to learn one without understanding it. Well, maybe more than a weekend for ponies that weren’t me, but my point stood. I needed to think of something that might be literally impossible for some…

Was it really that simple?

I took a few steps back from the door and readied a ‘run for my life’ teleport spell, just in case. With a shield up to block any potential physical damage, I called upon my darker feelings and flung some raw, unrestrained dark magic at the door. Much to my delight, it only took a split second before the door responded. The crystals lit up brilliantly, and I had to avert my eyes. When the shining finally died down, I looked back. The door had completely vanished.

Inside was another hallway that led to yet another door, although this one had one of those really, really old ring handles that a pony would stick their hoof through to pull on. The walls were painted almost all the way to the end of the hallway, and for some reason, a few of the images seemed familiar at a glance.

I rushed through the doorway to get a better look. As soon as I passed through, I felt a small magical surge behind me. Spinning around, I found my life threatened by nothing more than the door that had returned.

Sighing in relief, I turned my attention back to the paintings. It took me all of one second to realize exactly why Luna had this hallway sealed up. This was private private stuff, the kind a pony only showed one or two other ponies closest to her, if any at all.

The art style hadn’t fundamentally changed so far as I could tell, but the color schemes certainly had, and all of the lines were rough, at times even jagged. And the expressions on the ponies here…they felt so much darker. This place was filled with anger, hate, and depression.

I hurried along as quietly as I could. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to be here anymore, but I had to know what was beyond the next door. I’d known Luna liked Celestia even less than I did, but this place was so…raw. It reminded me of me at my worst.

I tried not to look, but my curiosity drove me to take a glance at the wall every so often. This story was of all the insults, all the neglect, all the pain that led up to Luna’s banishment. I seriously doubted the story actually started in history where this hallway was located, considering how much pain was in the very first images, but maybe the beginning was unimportant. Maybe even Luna didn’t know when it began.

And I swore I’d see some of these images before. One of the earliest ones was especially driving me crazy as I walked. It had Luna and Celestia chasing the moon and sun respectively in a circle, and I just knew I’d seen it somewhere before. Maybe it’d had slightly different colors or something.

I stumbled as I passed another image that I just had to have seen somewhere. It was the first depiction of Luna I’d seen with her current appearance, and it was so familiar. It had her rearing up as if to strike something, or perhaps to strike somepony down. Without realizing it, I must have moved on to when Luna’s anger was flaring out of control.

Taking a deep breath, I turned away and continued down the hall. I was close enough to the end now that I opened the door with my magic. If I were in any mood to be pleasantly surprised that my magic had worked, I would have been.

I glanced at the last image in the hallway as I passed it by, only to freeze. The very first thing that bothered me was the art style; it was as different as night and day. The second much, much worse thing was the subject matter. There was no way in Tartarus that Luna had painted it.

Celestia was sitting on a cloud, looking up at the moon. And now that it was right in front of me, this was the first time I’d seen the mare in the moon on any of the paintings here. This was made after Luna had been banished!

My eyes widened.

I knew why this place was so familiar.

It was that book. The one Celestia had read to me.

Celestia had been here!

She had painted this!

I backed into something hard and screamed. In my panic, I bolted further down the hallway and into the room at the end instead of galloping away.

Looking around, I found only one very dumb place to hide, but I didn’t have any other options. I wanted to live.

I dove to the floor and squirmed under the bed and made myself as silent and as magically inactive as I could be.

Who was I fooling? I was so dead.

Any moment now.

I could only hold my breath so long before I passed out.

Okay, I didn’t want to complain about not being dead, but why wasn’t I? I felt a little bit insulted. Celestia had warded the Tree of Harmony back on Equus, why wouldn’t she have warded here?

Was she not the one who had painted that last image? I didn’t have any hard evidence it had been her, but who else could have? I seriously doubted any of the locals had ever been allowed in here, let alone that they would take it upon themselves to continue a tiny piece of Luna’s work. That just sounded horribly disrespectful, especially considering it was depicting their princess’s defeat.

It had to have been Celestia, but that didn’t make any sense! Ugh! She shouldn’t be this inscrutable! Why would she even leave this place standing? Why wouldn’t she kill everypony that lived here, or drag them back to Equus, or something? Did she even know anypony was living up here? She must have, but then somepony should have found out she’d been here, and then Luna should have found out. But if Luna knew, she would have told me and warned me away from coming here. So that must mean Celestia had never been here.

No, that couldn’t be right. It had to have been her. She could have just made herself extra invisible to the point where nopony here would be able to notice her in any way. She was an alicorn; she could do that.

She could be doing that right now! She could be looking at me right now, laughing at my helplessness. Hiding under the bed wasn’t going to do anything for me. Maybe I’d even seen her already, and she’d erased my memory of it just to enjoy watching me self-destruct.

Well I wasn’t going to let that happen! If I didn’t use any magic until I’d calmed down, I definitely wouldn’t flare. I just needed to calm down.

Maybe Celestia wasn’t here. Maybe I could talk my way out of…well, out of death. Luna would kill her if she killed me. Even Cadance would probably want to kill her. And it wasn’t like Cadance would really believe she’d found me on the moon if I didn’t admit to it.

Deep breaths, Twilight. Deep breaths. I wouldn’t give Celestia the satisfaction.

My heart wouldn’t slow down, but at least I’d gotten myself…barely calm enough to talk without breaking out in tears. I needed to say something, but what could I say? Threats were best saved for a last resort; they rarely worked against goddesses.

Wait, wait, wait. The moon was in the opposite direction of Mona. I was just running away to practice magic safely. I took a few friends with me to start a moon colony. Naturally we explored and stumbled upon this place while mountain climbing. And, um, we sent the colony we started into space because…because…we never landed the ship because I thought it’d be dangerous – no, that was dumb. We never landed because…we wanted to climb a mountain first as a – a symbol of our triumph. So we picked the largest one.

Maybe I’d even been here before, too. Maybe this was where I’d learned about Luna and dark magic. Yes, yes I could make that work. That worked even better, actually. It’d be exactly what Celestia would expect, hopefully. And that was why I didn’t land the ship; we didn’t need to. We already knew about this place. I only brought my friends along for company and because they wanted to come.

Perfect. Now I just desperately needed Celestia not to find anypony else from the Nebulous until I’d had a chance to talk to them. That meant I needed to run a distraction. I wouldn’t even mention the rest of the crew until I had to. I wouldn’t want to get them in trouble, too, after all. It wasn’t like there were any laws against coming to the moon or anything, but it did seem sort of rude for a pony to come here uninvited.

Okay, okay. One last deep breath. I could do this. This would work. I just needed to act like a filly with her hoof caught in…well, not in a cookie jar, but maybe in the treasury. That was easy enough.

“H-hello? P-Princess Celestia? Please d-don’t hurt me.” Getting no response, I continued, “I – I’m coming out. I’m sorry for barging into…”

Where was I? I looked around as I stuck my head out from under the bed. There wasn’t much in here. There were plenty of paint cans and brushes, although they were all probably useless after a thousand years of aging, even if there were spells keeping this room clean and or preserved. I had noticed there wasn’t any dust in here, not even under the bed.

There were a few bookshelves, too. All but one of them were completely filled with books. If I had to guess, then based on the materials and how the books were assembled, I’d say they were from several different centuries and arranged chronologically.

Opposite the bookshelves was a vanity with two doorways that sort of blended into the walls. Perhaps one lead to a closet and the other a bathroom, considering where I thought I was.

“Your sister’s bedroom,” I finished, not that I got a response. “Please – please don’t do this. Say something. Anything! Please!”

I waited with bated breath for anything to happen, but the room was devoid of any sound not of my own making.

“This isn’t funny, and – and I’m sure I could find something illegal about this. Unless you’re going to k-kill me, w-which I assure you would be a very b-bad idea, you should come out right – right now.”

I stood stock-still for what must have been several minutes, but still nothing happened. After a while, I broke into a nervous laughter.

Maybe Celestia really wasn’t here. Maybe I was just being paranoid. But even if I tried something crazy like creating a large explosion here, I wouldn’t be able to know for sure if Celestia were around.

Was that reasonable? Was it just the panic talking? Stars, I didn’t know.

But Luna would. Luna would be able to tell me if there were another pony in the room with me. Surely she would notice and be worried if there were. I could go to sleep now. I’d already said everything I needed to before Celestia did…whatever she wanted. It wasn’t like I could escape or fight back, anyway.

Hopping up onto Luna’s bed, I said, “I – I guess I’m just going to go ahead and nap until you decide to be civil. G-goodnight.”

It’d been a long time since I’d been here, but I’d never forget the sensation of being in a dream, not in a thousand years. Well, I didn’t actually have any experience with thousand-year-old memories yet, but that wasn’t really the point.

“Luna! Luna, where are you?”

I thought I heard a hoofstep, but I got no other response.

“Please don’t do this to me, Luna! I – if I did anything wrong, I’m sorry! You promised you wouldn’t leave me alone! I – I miss you so much! I don’t want to be alone anymore!”

Oh gosh, what was I saying? I couldn’t be guilt tripping Luna any harder if I were trying.

“Twilight,” Luna said, appearing right in front of me, “there’s–”

I knew it was rude, but I didn’t care. I pounced on Luna in a huge hug and knocked the wind out of her with my death grip.

“Luna, I’m so sorry!” I shouted into her coat. “I didn’t mean what I said. I mean, I did, but I didn’t, and – and sorry.”

I felt Luna’s hoof moving through my mane, and my distress vanished almost instantly.

“Twilight, there are a dozen things I want to say to you, but chief among them is how sorry I am for leaving like I did for so long. It – it was wrong of me, and I don’t know what I can do to make it up to you.”

Squeezing Luna extra tight, I said, “You don’t have to do anything. Just…maybe a warning before you’re going to vanish for a while. I was so worried about you.”

After a second of silence, Luna replied, “I’ll try. I – Twilight, I’m not a nice pony when I’m truly upset. And historically I’ve had issues…well, issues directing that anger when I can’t…” Luna sighed and paused her ministrations for a moment. “When I can’t simply smite the source of my wrath.”

Oh, that reminded me of why I was here to begin with. “Luna, I don’t really want to interrupt, but this is important. Was there anypony near me back in the waking world?”

“Hmm? No, not at all. You’re the only pony on the moon capable of barging her way into my bedroom.”

“Oh, um, sorry,” I mumbled, reluctantly releasing Luna and backing off a bit. Apparently, I was safe, but I still didn’t understand why.

Luna giggled. Oh, how I missed that. “It’s fine.” Taking a more somber tone, she continued, “You’ve already seen me headed straight toward my worst; there’s no harm in letting you see some of the things I’ve done in my darker moods. You weren’t…” Luna actually looked bashful for once as she tried to find the right words.

This called for another hug, but not a desperate, clingy hug.

“Other than reminding me of my own issues, your art was beautiful.”

“Thank you, but that’s two red flags now, Twilight. What has you so worried?”

I bit my lip; this could go over very poorly if I did it wrong. I needed more tact then the last time I’d had bad news for Luna.

“There was a picture that…well, you couldn’t have painted it.”

“Somepony modified my masterpiece?” Luna hissed. “Where?” Taking a deep breath first, Luna asked again, “Where?”

Looking up at Luna, I asked, “Do you promise not to run away?”

“Yes, I do. Twilight, I really am sorry for what I did before. It’s no excuse, but I never expected my sister would actually stoop to such levels. It was a shock, to say the least.”

No surprise there. I could barely believe it myself, and I had none of the sisterly expectations Luna had of Celestia.

“Alright,” I began, “so, nopony modified your work, but somepony added to it. Just outside your bedroom, actually.”

Luna’s eyes narrowed. “Do you mean past the door?”

I nodded. The list of ponies that could open the door was probably a lot bigger a thousand years ago, but I imagined that probably didn’t include any moon residents. Luna’s list of suspects probably only had one pony on it.

“The addition showed Celestia looking up at the moon.” As an afterthought, I added, “The moon with the mare in the moon on it.” That detail was very important for establishing the time of painting. And now that I thought about it, none of the ponies on the moon would know what the mare in the moon looked like – not really, anyway. They could have the dark spots mapped for some reason.

Almost snarling, Luna said, “I cannot believe this. Why would she take the time to find Luminance just to rub salt in my wound? It’s not like she could even expect me to find out about it. I simply cannot fathom why…why… What’s the mare in the moon?”

“Huh?” I knew there were more important things to discuss – both business and personal affairs – but maybe this was just as important. “Has nopony ever told you? There’s this sort of unicorn – actually, I’ll just show you.”

I turned to the side and made a simple illusion of the moon in front of me; Luna didn’t so much as breathe.

“This is what the moon looks like from Equus without a telescope. There’s these dark spots that don’t produce much light. We don’t really know why, but from what you painted, I assume they showed up after–”

When I looked to Luna, I found her crying silently without so much as a sniffle. I opened my mouth to ask what was wrong, but Luna spoke first, almost in a monotone.

“Twilight, how much do you know about banishment spells?”

Awkwardly putting a hoof on Luna’s foreleg in a way I really hoped was comforting, I said, “Very little. What’s wrong?” I hated to admit it, but I found myself a little happy about Luna’s distress. I had a chance to help her this time, and I wasn’t going to miss it.

“When something or somepony is banished, a mark is left behind. It’s size and shape depends on the who and what, as well as how much power it took. For Sombra and the Crystal Empire, it was a small crystalline shape the size of a marble. For me…”

Oh my. I turned back to look at my illusion with wide eyes. It would’ve been obvious if I hadn’t grown up with the mare in the moon existing as far back as living mortal memory could recall.

Luna spoke barely above a whisper. “She didn’t even have the decency to turn my moon around.”

Turning the moon around wouldn’t actually be all that helpful. Luna would still be on public display, but a pony would at least need a telescope to see the mare in the moon then. Not that I felt this was an appropriate time to mention that.

“If,” I began. I wasn’t exactly sure if this was the right thing to say. “If it helps, I don’t think anypony knows what it means anymore.” Getting a sigh in response, I continued, “And if you ignore what it means, it actually looks kind of nice. I mean, you look beautiful anyway, and you did in the past, too, but – no, I mean, it’s not just my bias. Twinkleshine–”

Luna put a hoof over my mouth and wore a rather weak, fake smile. “Twilight, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but you’re too young to tell me I look good in chains.”

As soon as my brain had processed what Luna was saying, I turned away in embarrassment, my cheeks burning. I really hadn’t meant to say it that way at all. Not that Luna wouldn’t look good in chains; she looked good in anything. Oh stars, what was I even thinking? Okay, it was time for a new topic.

“I think Celestia plagiarized some of your art, too.” It wasn’t the best choice for a new topic, but at least it wasn’t – nope, not thinking about it.

Following one of the longest sighs I’d ever heard, Luna said, “I don’t think I even want to know. Would you mind if we did something else? Something fun?”

“But what about–” I began, only to shut my mouth before I stuck my hoof in it. “You’ll really be here tomorrow? And the day after, and the day after that, and the–”

“Yes, Twilight. I really will be.”

“Okay.” It couldn’t hurt to wait to talk for another day or two. “So what do you want to do?”

There was a rather pregnant silence before Luna spoke. “I don’t know. Something I’ve never done before. Something new. But not too long. I wouldn’t want you to miss the Winter Moon Festival completely for me.”

I suspected that last part was code for ‘I want to be alone’, but she didn’t just take off like last time, so that was something.

“Alright, um, I guess I recently learned a card game. I think I remember enough of the cards to put together a few decks we could play with, although personally, I find the most fun is in building the decks.”

“Recently?” Luna asked. “If you learned it on the moon, I probably already know it.”

I shook my head. “I actually learned it from Dash. It’s her ‘deepest darkest secret’” – I added air quotes for effect – “and apparently only I and Fluttershy know of ‘her shameful addiction’.” I resisted the very strong temptation to roll my eyes as I continued. “And I guess you, too, now. Fluttershy knows because she was the one who first got Dash hooked, and I know because I stumbled onto them playing it one night. Not that that’s really important, but you asked, and–”

I got the ‘you’re rambling’ look from Luna.

“Right, anyway, Dash brought an entire crate of trading cards with her. I don’t know how, but she managed to slip it into the supplies without me noticing.”

If I had a checklist, that wouldn’t have – no, bad thoughts, Twilight. Worse than imagining Luna in – no!

Trying really, really hard to suppress my blush, I said, “Alright, so this game is pretty complicated in the details, but the basics are simple. First we both need a sixty card deck.”

I woke up feeling refreshed with warm fuzzies inside. I’d needed the nap a little bit, and seeing Luna again was just so wonderful. And I might admit that curb stomping her in a game she barely knew was a bit of a delight. Luna won non-chance-based games we played together at an absurdly high rate, and even when I won, it was almost always a hard-won victory. That may have been a little mean spirited, but whatever; it wasn’t every day a pony could say she thoroughly beat Luna at a game of strategy.

Anyway, after an epic struggle against my urge to snuggle further into Luna’s bed and to enjoy the blissful feeling of being half-awake, I rolled out from underneath the covers of the princess-sized bed.

Rubbing my eyes, I mumbled, “How long was I out for?”

I looked around until I found an old grandfather clock, but it had stopped working. If I wasn’t mistaken, it looked like a mechanical clock instead of an enchanted one, oddly enough. Maybe it held some sort of special significance for Luna.

Shrugging to myself, I tried pulling on one of the chains and was excited to find that it still worked, although I wasn’t exactly a fan of mechanical clocks. The incessant ticking that accompanied all mechanical, non-silenced clocks started right away. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard one of these, but it was just as annoying as before.

Hmm… I was sort of regretting restarting this clock now, but I had no clue how to turn it off, and I didn’t want to mess with it magically, so I just let it be. I did reset it to read four twenty, which is what time it felt like to me for whatever reason. Instead, I turned my attention to the bookshelves. There must have been a couple hundred books for me to go through, which was a little distressing. I should have asked Luna what they were about while I was with her, but oh well.

I pulled what I assumed was the very first book – if Luna had organized these in any sane manner – off the shelf and cracked it open, only to sigh. I really shouldn’t have been surprised; everything in it was hoofwritten in a language even older than Old Equestrian. Cherry Berry could probably read it, but I didn’t think it would be a good idea to show her without Luna’s permission.

Replacing the book, I pulled off what I assumed was the last book. This one I could read. Like the first, this book was hoofwritten, although I got the impression from the hoofwriting that the author was not in a good mood.

I have begun to think Tia is not as innocent in all this as she professes, the book began. But then I believe somewhere deep inside of me, I always knew it was only a matter of time before she grew bored with her games amongst the mortals and desired to test her skills against me.

Ah, this was Luna’s work. A diary, maybe? Perhaps I shouldn’t – oh, who was I fooling? There was no way I wasn’t going to read this unless Luna explicitly told me not to, which she hadn’t. I jumped back onto the bed and made myself comfortable.

If she had simply asked for a competition of some sort, mayhaps I would have consented, but I cannot forgive her machinations against me by merely knowing their purpose. I shall simply have to wrest an apology from her in her own game and devise a suitable punishment for when I have won.

I hope nopony but I ever needs must lay hooves on this book, for I would hate to rip out so little as a single page, but I must be honest with myself here, if nowhere else. I fear myself too late; I fear Tia already the victor to some unknown end. Even without her head start potentially decades in the making, I find myself distressed over my prospects. Tia is, and always has been, the politician and schemer of the two of us. We never could have defeated Discord without those talents, and now I find they are turned against me. I confess it has been hard to sleep in the mornings, and I have taken to sleeping in Luminance instead of at Castle Everfree.

As distressing as my situation is, I shall always make time for my artistic dalliances, for I find them incredibly soothing. As the preface suggests, this book shall detail the meanings depicted in my paintings of the struggle between Tia and myself. I have already completed the first in this new branch and have found it to be one of the most relaxing I have made yet, despite the fire in my blood when I created it.

Oh, I got it now. All of these books were basically author’s – or in this case artist’s – notes to accompany the paintings for the artistically incompetent like myself. Well actually, the preface more suggested they were just a way for Luna to record her memories and vent, but they could also function as a series of history books, too.

Maybe I should start with another book. I already knew a little bit about this, and I’d met Celestia. Then again, maybe that was a reason for reading this book instead of against. Everything else would be so impersonal and disconnected for me. And I really only had time to read one – maybe two – of these books, and only if I decided to skip the festival entirely.

Yeah, there was nothing wrong with reading this one.

Speaking of, the tale is quite old already, but I felt it best to begin with at least one of the earlier events in our battle. I did not think too much of it then, but time casts a new light on many things. Two business ponies, one Diamond Charmer and one Emerald Shimmer, had come to petition my evening court to settle a dispute, and I ruled in favor of the less inane of the two.

The affair was all rather, oh what was that new expression, par for the course? Yes, I believe that is correct. I must try this ‘golf’ sometime soon. I believe the Zebrican ambassador expressed an interest in the game; mayhaps for the next meeting I have with her, we shall make an outing of the event. I vaguely remember one of my petitioners recommending the new course in Trottingham.

Anyway, Diamond Charmer was one of those ponies who could not simply accept a royal decree, and he attempted to petition the morning court with the same problem. There are no shortage of ponies who try this, of course, but this case was unusual in that it was accepted and brought forth before Tia.

Naturally, such errors do occur from time to time; the ponies who review all the petitions to our courts before Tia and I see them do make mistakes. Oftentimes, Tia or I will recognize the petition from when we complain to each other of the frivolities of our little ponies and simply dismiss the petition, but not always.

However, it is the rare case that we do not discover a re-petitioning to the opposite court before judgment is passed. In fact, I suspect that it has never happened in a dispute between two ponies, for they know a re-petitioning can only be made to the same court unless they – well, if whoever is reading this actually cares, she can consult those atrocious law books herself. In essence, Tia overturned my decision illegally and allegedly unknowingly, even though Emerald Shimmer would no doubt have spoken up and would have had the petition thrown out.

I did not think much of the case at the time, for I thought it a singular incident. When I discovered the error after the fact, I brought it up with Tia. We were going to revoke her ruling, but after discussing the petition at length, I yielded to her judgment and let her decision stand instead.

That was the biggest mistake of my life, although it took me years to notice the effects it had. We – or at least I – had unknowingly given ponies the idea that such actions were acceptable. I find it difficult to believe Tia would not have foreseen what would come, whether she sought to destroy me then or not.

Of course, that alone would not have been enough to–

Okay, on second thought, I really didn’t want to slog through a bunch of stories of politics; one was quite enough, and I didn’t think Luna would be offended if I quit now. I overturned the book and started flipping through from the back, which was blank. In fact, I found that a good chunk of the book was empty as I flipped through.

Eventually, I reached a page that had actual text, but it was stuck to several other pages. The very end just read, If they desire a nightmare, I shall oblige. Actually, when I examined the nearby pages in detail, I discovered that a lot of them were stuck to each other in pairs, threes, and sometimes fours, and they were all tear stained. At that point, I snapped the book shut and replaced it on the shelf; I wasn’t going to read something that Luna had literally cried her heart out into without explicit permission.

It was surprising that Luna hadn’t taken better care of the book, though. Even if she didn’t do it right away, I would have expected her to have cleaned it up, considering how much effort and passion she had obviously put into everything here.

Oh well. I’d just have to give her another hug later. But the question now was ‘what should I do?’ Twinkleshine was probably worried and looking for me, and there was a big party outside the palace that she’d probably want to go to.

Hmm… Maaaaaybe just one more book first. Just a little bit of one. I didn’t have to read the whole thing.

If I remembered what time the clock was at when I started it correctly, it was about half an hour later when I heard a pair of voices echoing into Luna’s bedroom, both mares.

“Do you really think she’s in there?” the first voice said.

“We searched everywhere else in the castle. She isn’t in town or down at the river, so where else could she be?”

Sighing to myself, I put my book away and jumped off the bed.

“But only the princess is supposed to be able to open this door,” the first voice protested.

“Crescent said the princess is grooming her to be a goddess. If anypony else could open this door, it’s her.”

“I guess. But then couldn’t she be anywhere?”

“Oh, just quit it. The new princess isn’t going to bite your head off or anything. Just knock already.”

“That’s easy for you to–”

Before the first mare could protest further, I opened the door for them. The first mare screamed in surprise while the second merely bowed to me and backed out of the way as I exited into the main hallway.

Both mares were lunar pegasi, and both possessed dark gray coats, but that was where the similarities ended. Where one was panicky, the other was confident. Where one looked like she would trip over her own hooves, the other had well-toned muscles that obviously saw a lot of use.

The one not trying to pull her wits together into a bow herself rose and spoke. “Greetings, Princess Twilight. My name is Chamomile. It is an honor to meet you.”

When I found the strength to pull myself away from those wonderful green eyes, I managed, “L-likewise.” Oh stars. This was almost as bad as that Big Macintosh back in Ponyville. I’d thought I understood why Luna thought lunar pegasi attractive before, but I’d known nothing. The way her nearly-black blue mane bounced about her eyes was almost hypnotic, and that muscle tone managed to blend into her curves in the best of both the masculine and feminine worlds.

“Ah, I’m Bookkeeper, Your Highness,” the other mare said at rapid-fire. “I’ve always known I’ve been blessed to be born into the generation that will be able to welcome the princess back, that is Princess Luna, but I never expected I’d be able to meet another princess, too, let alone Princess Luna’s apprentice, and I–”

Chamomile nudged Bookkeeper who promptly stopped rambling and went back into a bow, asking for my forgiveness.

Sighing, I asked Chamomile, “You two were looking for me?”

“Yes, Your Highness. Dame Twinkleshine–”

“We’re sorry if we messed up her name,” interrupted Bookkeeper.

I felt the urge to facehoof growing stronger by the moment. “If you’re talking about a unicorn mare roughly my age, then yes, her name is Twinkleshine. Has something happened to her?”

“No, not at all,” Chamomile said before Bookkeeper could speak. “She asked for a ride to the festival a couple hours ago. She also expressed a desire for us to locate you, presumably to ask you to join the celebration.”

Nodding, I said, “Thank you for helping her at the expense of your own free time. Please pass along our appreciation to whoever carried Twinkleshine down the mountain as well.”

“It was no problem. We are forever at our princesses’ beck and call, as well as their companions’.” Finally, Chamomile asked, “Will you be desiring an escort to the riverside yourself?”

“No thank you,” I said as I fired off a scrying spell to find somewhere safe to teleport to. “I can make my own way there.”

After selecting a nice, quiet location just on the outskirts of the festival, I fired off a teleportation spell. I wouldn’t normally be adverse to teleporting straight into the middle of the festival wherever Twinkleshine was, but what Cherry Berry had said earlier was stuck in my mind. If I did something as goddess-like to these ponies as appearing out of nowhere, I could see myself derailing the celebration in ten seconds flat, as Dash would say.

With a population of two-hundred or so, it wasn’t hard to pick out Twinkleshine among the crowd, especially since everypony but the few I’d brought with me from Equus felt compelled to bow as I walked past. Although naturally, I was pretty sure I spotted Cherry Berry bowing, too, no doubt to annoy me.

Anyway, Twinkleshine and Pinkie Pie were hanging out with a small band that instantly stopped when they noticed me approaching. Pinkie Pie had a saxophone – one of the many, many instruments she could play, although for the life of me I couldn’t figure out where she’d gotten it from or how she manged to play it without unicorn magic – in one hoof as she poked Twinkleshine with the other. After that Pinkie Pie pointed toward me, and Twinkleshine turned around to face me.

Only to promptly blush and whirl back toward Pinkie Pie. I thought about eavesdropping but decided against it. Twinkleshine was likely still mad at me for earlier, probably just for leaving her alone now that I’d thought about it and was less distracted; I didn’t need to give her any other reasons to be mad at me.

“Twinkleshine,” I began, “I’m–”

“Shut up!” Twinkleshine screeched, whirling back toward me with a huge blush. “I mean – just – just wait there and be quiet!”

I raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. It took at least a minute of talking to Pinkie Pie, but eventually, Twinkleshine turned toward me and whispered something to her.

That was when the music started. It sounded unpracticed, but at the same time, it was still very familiar. If I could just substitute an instrument or two, I could probably name the song. I think it might be missing a piano and maybe…a flute? Ugh, what was it? I could almost put my hoof on it. At its heart, the only thing that was missing was lyrics, and it looked an awful lot like Twinkleshine was going to provide them.

“Fly me to the moon.

“Let me play among the stars.”

Oh my. Of course that was what it was going to be. I could feel my face burning up already.

“Let me see what spring is like

“On a – Jupiter and Mars.”

I could hear Twinkleshine stumble over those two mythological planets, but she kept powering through the song, her voice growing stronger and less shaky as she went.

“In other words, hold my hoof.

“In other words, filly, kiss me.”

I would, but I wouldn’t want to miss the rest of the song.

“Fill my heart with song,

“And let me sing forever more.

“You are all I long for,

“All I worship, and adore.”

Twinkleshine was actually pretty good at this. Not great, but she was definitely good. Did she used to be in a choir or something?

“In other words, please be true.

“In other words, I love you.”

Oh, Twinkleshine. You were pretty cute when you had nothing to do but blush and stare at your hooves. I would say you should have picked a song without an instrumental section, but there really wasn’t a better choice than this.

“Fill my heart with song.

“Let me sing forever more.

“You are all I long for,

“All I worship, and adore.”

I hoped she didn’t mean that line literally. That would be awkward. No, bad Twilight. You were ruining the moment.

“In other words, please be true.

“In other words~”

Twinkleshine walked toward the edge of the impromptu stage.

“In other words~”

Her voice wobbled as she jumped the short distance to the ground.

“I~”

She stopped just in front of me.

“Love~”

She put a hoof on my cheek and stared into my eyes, her face beet red. I didn’t even have to suppress a cringe as a few instruments substituted poorly for the missing piano.

“You.”

Author's Note

Prereader – Starlight Nova

Chapter Eighteen - The Moon - Part Three

I sat down at a table with Twinkleshine after the most intense kiss of my entire life. It was also the only kiss of my entire life, but that hardly mattered. A local blend of fruit salad was served to us in mere seconds, making me suspect we took some other ponies’ orders. This wasn’t really the time to complain about preferential treatment, though.

“So…um…I’ve been…no…”

“Was I really good enough to leave you speechless?” asked Twinkleshine.

I faked a cough so poorly, I didn’t think anypony would’ve been fooled by it. “Kissing is more of a team effort.”

“Well I enjoyed it.” Twinkleshine ate an orange slice in a rather suggestive way.

“Um…okay, so first off, there’s a time and a place for…this” – I waved my forehooves at Twinkleshine – “but I much prefer Twinkleshine to this sort of…Dash–Twinkleshine hybrid. You don’t have to act like this to get my attention.”

“But back at the castle you–”

Holding up a hoof, I cut Twinkleshine off. “I think both of us know I’ve been…distracted. I’m really sorry for leaving you alone, but this winter has been rough on me. Not that that’s a good excuse for moping around, but I’ll try harder not to get like that in the future.”

Twinkleshine narrowed her eyes. “Is that really all it was? Twilight, we were alone in what was effectively an art museum on Hearth’s Warming Eve–”

“Hearth’s Warming Day, technically…”

“Whatever,” Twinkleshine replied, rolling her eyes before continuing. “–on the moon after flying all the way through space to get here, and you got rid of everypony except me right before that, even if some of them just sort of bolted on their own. It sort of gets a filly’s hopes up, don’t you think?”

“Right…” I said, rubbing the back of my head, my ears wilting. “I’m sorry. I’m usually better about that kind of stuff, but…” Sighing, I simply said, “I’m sorry.”

“Fine, but you better make it up to me.”

“I will, but only if you act like yourself.”

“I…guess that’s reasonable,” Twinkleshine conceded. “But you never really noticed me before tonight. I–”

“Twinkleshine, you’ve been in love with me – or at least infatuated – since approximately a season before I asked you to join the Nebulous, and you only realized what you were feeling after living aboard the ship with me for a few weeks.”

It seemed Twinkleshine had been left speechless.

“Trust me; I pay attention to you. The only reason I wasn’t the one to push you down is because I promised I wouldn’t do anything sexual until I got a little older, although I don’t think anypony will be too upset if it’s just kissing for now.”

“You – y-you knew?” Twinkleshine stuttered, blushing much more like her old self.

“That is the essence of what I just said.” I cringed as I ate something really, really sour. “Sorry, that wasn’t about you, just a new fruit I ate is all. Anyway, I’m happy to be the pony who flew you to the moon.”

Twinkleshine buried her head in her hooves on the table, moaning in embarrassment. “I can’t believe I really did that!”

“You were pretty good, if you think you can trust my biased opinion on the matter. Were you in a choir as a filly or something?”

I got a muffled, “Three years,” as a response.

I enjoyed a little giggle at Twinkleshine’s expense as I continued my meal alone. It’d likely be a few minutes before Twinkleshine was much for conversation again. I was about halfway through my fruit salad and on my second glass of some kind of fruit punch that had no business being as delicious as it was when Twinkleshine came back to life.

Taking a deep breath first, Twinkleshine said all at once, “So are we fillyfriends now?”

Alright, Twilight, sighing was a bad idea right now, so keep that little reflex under control.

“Twinkleshine, I’ve been meaning to have this conversation with you for several seasons now, but I’ve just kept putting it off for reasons that I think will become clear.”

“Is that a no?” whispered Twinkleshine. I thought I saw a tear in her eye, but it could have just been a trick of the light.

“It’s more a ‘yes but no’. And you’ll have to decide if you’re willing to put up with me.”

Head cocked to the side, Twinkleshine asked, “What do you mean?”

Resisting the urge to sigh and the urge to run away and put this off even longer, I said, “I’m a polyamorous pansexual.”

“A…what?”

“Hmm…” What was the best way to put this that didn’t end with me getting completely rejected and slapped? “Alright, this is going to require explanation, so please don’t freak out and run away until we’re done.”

“Wha – Twilight, I would never do that to you!”

“I’ll hold you to that.” I felt like I should have smirked there but didn’t. “Anyway, we might as well begin with the basic definitions. Pansexual comes from the root word pan, meaning all or every, and sexual, which of course means relating to sex in some manner. In simplistic terms, it basically means I’m willing to sleep with anypony.”

Twinkleshine shot me a confused, mildly disgusted look.

“Wait, wait, wait!” I said very quickly. “That came out wrong! Let me rephrase that. It means that whom I’m attracted to doesn’t depend on things like species or gender, although I certainly do have certain archetypes that I’m more likely to find attractive than others, and there’s other factors at work, too. For example, due to the current Equestrian culture, unicorn mares tend to be the most magically inclined, which is a trait I find appealing in a mate, which in turn leads me to find more unicorn mares attractive than I otherwise would in a sort of blank culture, whatever that means.”

“Um…okay,” Twinkleshine began. “I think I get it. So you would, say, find Chrysalis attractive? She’s magically talented”

“If you repeat this to her, I’ll deny it, but no. Her daughter, on the other hoof, is really sweet, and I could see myself spending some of my nights with her if she asked.”

Idly poking at the last piece of mango, I continued, “Honestly, it’s mostly about personality for me, but looks do play a part. Like, if personality were P, and looks were L, and we had some sort of objective scale with an attractiveness threshold A, then I would find somepony attractive if P cubed times L is at least A.”

“Twilight, I – I don’t think you’re explaining this right. We are still talking about…love? I’m not even sure anymore.”

Okay, maybe abstract mathematics weren’t really the right way to explain how I view sex and love to Twinkleshine.

“Essentially, it’s like…like…ah. Essentially a pony with a horrible personality would need to be the most beautiful pony in the world for me to find her attractive, but a pony with a great personality only needs to be mildly pleasing to me physically for me to find her attractive. Does that make sense?”

“Mhm,” Twinkleshine hummed, nodding. “Should I be asking if I have more…um…P or L?”

“That’s…kind of a loaded question.”

“Oh, come on,” Twinkleshine said in a rather dangerous tone. “I promise not to get mad.”

I bit my lip as I took Twinkleshine’s pleading stare full on. It proved too much to resist at the moment.

“You’re sort of a low medium L. You’re not beautiful, but I wouldn’t call you average or ugly. In my particular case, your white coat is really working against you, not that I think you should dye it or anything. I – I’m just digging my own grave over here, aren’t I?”

Twinkleshine giggled. “No, that just means I have a wonderful personality, right?”

“Well, more or less, yes. I really like how much of yourself you put into what you love to do. It’s not everypony who would take on the job I asked of you at your age successfully.”

“Says the filly who brought me to the moon,” Twinkleshine said, visibly deflating.

“It was a team effort. Besides, I’m not really a pony anypony should compare herself to.” For many reasons, but in particular because I had to make myself into an outlier among outliers in order to ascend. “I’ve had a lot of advantages that only a few other ponies have ever had.”

“Like a princess for a teacher.”

After polishing off a third glass of that mystery fruit punch, I exclaimed, “Exactly! Anyway, moving on, we have the word polyamorous next. Poly means many, and amorous is an adjective essentially meaning ‘possessing romantic love’, so at its core, polyamorous means ‘having many loves’.”

“Oh,” Twinkleshine deadpanned.

Well at least she hadn’t outright rejected me, philosophically or personally.

“So, I’ve never given this talk before – I’ve only had it given to me – but I’ll try to explain it as best I can in general terms, because everypony that would refer to herself as polyamorous sort of has her own code of conduct.”

Frowning, Twinkleshine asked, “This isn’t one of those herd things, is it? My mom said that’s just when a handsome stallion or beautiful mare tricks a bunch of ponies.”

“No,” I said as strongly as I could put it. “I’m not going to deny that kind of stuff happens, but that’s just domestic abuse as you described it. It’s no more common among non-monogamous relationships than it is in monogamous ones. I know I can be manipulative–”

“And beautiful,” Twinkleshine interjected.

Okay, flirting was good, even if it was the annoyed kind of flirting.

“–but I hope I have good enough taste to like ponies who are strong enough to tell me when I’m doing something wrong. I mean, not that the victims are at fault, if you have any family that has–”

Twinkleshine interrupted me with a cough.

“Right…” I mumbled, playing a bit with my fork. I wasn’t very good at this. “Anyway, so a herd is more of one big relationship. I mean, not everypony necessarily likes everypony else, but the relationship dynamic is more or less a single unit that makes its decisions as a whole. On the other hoof, polyamory is a more general set of pairwise relationships with varying levels of association. You could describe it as a graph, or more appropriately as a sort of flow network with the vertices being relationships and the edge weights being the level of asso… I’ve lost you again, haven’t I?”

“Pretty much,” Twinkleshine said through a half-full mouth of something green and purple. “Do you always think about love in mathy terms?”

“Well, when I’m thinking about the philosophy of love, it’s a rather succinct way to speak. But when I’m thinking about particular ponies I like, usually no.”

“Usually?” Twinkleshine tried to raise an eyebrow the way I did, but she clearly lacked the dedicated muscle training to make it work. It ended up as simply hilarious and cute as she struggled to get her face to work the way she wanted it to.

“What can I say?” I said through my giggles. “I love math. I use it a lot in spellcasting, after all.”

Facehoofing, Twinkleshine said, “Please promise me I’ll never find you making out with a textbook.”

“Well, I mean, ponies like Pupa could turn into a…” Getting an ‘are you serious’ glare from Twinkleshine, I got the message. It wasn’t like it was much of a concession. “Okay, I won’t ever let you see me making out with any sort of printed word medium, textbooks included.”

“I – I’m just going to pretend you just made a really romantic promise to me so we can move on.”

“That may be wise…” The conversation was descending into a horribly awkward place.

Getting up from her chair, Twinkleshine said, “I’ll go get us some of that funny looking pie.”

I probably should have gotten up to help her, but it was pretty amusing to watch Twinkleshine pantomime her way through a conversation. Honestly, whether or not Twinkleshine actually communicated anything with her gestures was up in the air, but there’s really only one thing a pony could ask of a pie distributer. It wasn’t long before she returned with two slices of pie.

“I think these are called mona coffyns,” Twinkleshine said, a rather conspicuously large chunk already missing from her own slice.

“How appropriate,” I said through a mouthful of my desert. It was pretty good, tasting a bit like a strawberry tart with the consistency of a cherry one. And there was something else in it that I couldn’t quite identify, something sweet and crunchy. It was definitely a positive addition.

“Why? What does it mean?”

“Essentially ‘moon pie’.”

“Well,” Twinkleshine began, stopping dead as she searched for words to put after that. “I guess it’s no less creative than Equestrian bread.”

Hmm… Maybe we needed some sort of naming regulatory committee in Equestria. They’d be in charge of maintaining a minimum threshold of creativity in names in all things, but particularly in foods. Well actually, that was kind of a bad idea. At some point they’d wind up trying to regulate the sciences, and then instead of simple theorem names that everypony could easily refer to, we’d get a big mess. Yeah, on second thought, that was a bad idea.

“I had something else earlier that had mona in the name,” Twinkleshine said. “I suppose that means it was a moon cake, then.”

“Maybe. I think we actually have those back on Equus. They’re a griffin food, if I remember correctly.”

“Huh.”

I couldn’t help but feel Twinkleshine and I were just trying to distract ourselves with pointless conversation. As much as I’d like to keep putting this off, I really needed to get back on topic, if for no other reason than because Twinkleshine deserved it.

“I’m screwing this up, aren’t I?” I asked.

Twinkleshine hesitated to answer, which I took as a yes.

“Well anyway,” I began, hoping that I didn’t make this any worse, “there’s sort of three basic ideas that polyamorists all accept, although there’s a lot of overlap of derived ideas. The first one that sort of gets the ball rolling is fairly straightforward. Basically, jealousy and possessiveness are undesirable and manageable.

“I’ve grown up in the culture–” At Twinkleshine’s none too subtle cough, I corrected myself, “Er, I’m still growing up in the culture, I guess, but I do understand and experience those feelings. When I say that they’re undesirable, I don’t mean that you should bottle them up or avoid them; that would destroy a pony eventually. The point is that you’re supposed to confront them and find out what’s really causing them.”

Not that it was always easy for ponies to do. It sounded really great on paper, but sometimes emotional problems ran really, really deep. Of course, resolving those problems was always for the best, no matter what the reasons for doing so were, but that was easier said than done.

“The core idea here is that other loves are a gain for your lover, not a threat to you. The love between you and your lover is independent and grows or dies separately, at least in general. There are certainly cases were that’s not true, like a ménage à trois, which I probably mispronounced.”

Twinkleshine rolled her eyes. “Twilight, I’m not really concerned with your pronunciation of a language I don’t speak right now.”

“Well you should be,” I huffed, taking an extra large helping of pie in protest. When I finally managed to swallow it all, I continued, “That said, there are, naturally, theoretical upper bounds on the number of meaningful… To be fair, that was more social science than mathematics.”

“Whatever you say, Twilight.” Twinkleshine was clearly unimpressed by my rebuttal to her unvoiced complaint.

“Anyway, my point was going to be that ponies rarely find enough love to actually be a strain on their other relationships. You can sort of think of friendships as an analogue. Ponies don’t naturally make so many friends that they become less…friends… That sounds really awkward, and now I want to establish some sort of friend level function.”

I didn’t even bother to glance at Twinkleshine’s no doubt disapproving look as I sighed.

“Do you at least understand what I’m trying to say?”

Twinkleshine nodded and chewed a little faster. After swallowing, she said, “Yeah, more or less. There’s an old quote that goes something like, ‘If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it was yours; if not, it never was.’ I guess that’s what you’re trying to get at, but it comes back with company instead.”

“Yes, that’s exactly it! Okay, so now we should talk about what fidelity means, since that ties in well here, and since there’s not that much to it. This is the number two sort of universal idea, although even here there’s a lot of wiggle room for nuances.

“As I’m sure you can imagine, trust is a big part of polyamory, and at its core, fidelity is about honoring your agreements with your lovers. I know it sounds like something you should do anyway, but it’s a big part of monogamous fidelity, too. The primary difference between the two is that sexual exclusivity is modified or dropped entirely, as is the expectation of exclusive romantic love.”

“That was sort of implied when we began this conversation,” Twinkleshine commented.

It still bore mentioning, though. “Anyway, what agreements ponies make vary wildly, but it’s important you talk about them before you actually enter into the relationship, which is why we’re having this conversation now. If you don’t, the relationship is usually a powder keg waiting for a spark. Some ponies might agree not to have sex with anypony new without first discussing it with their current lovers. Some ponies might agree that growing old together is what’s important.”

Not that I could actually do that for Twinkleshine. I would be all for pushing her to ascend, if only her special talent didn’t overlap with Luna’s. As much as I wanted to know what would happen, I wouldn’t want Luna to be my experimental subject.

“And I expect almost everypony would agree that being able to depend on a lover’s care and presence is important.”

“I, at least, agree,” said Twinkleshine. “I – ooh, is that a lemon cobbler? Be right back!”

Huh. I wasn’t sure if I should be taking Twinkleshine’s appetite as a good or bad sign. She never showed any signs of an eating disorder, so I doubted she was eating her problems away right now. Not that it precluded the concept of comfort food. She could be simply trying to distract herself with literally anything else, and food was the nearest and easiest choice that made it look like she was really paying attention.

Then again, maybe I was going on at length about something she didn’t really have a problem with and was just bored, wanting to go participate in the festival. I kind of wanted to go, too…

No, I couldn’t put this off any longer. We’d talk until we were done or until Twinkleshine said she needed time to think.

Twinkleshine sat back down and placed two plates down, the lemon-cobbler-like dish for her, and–

“Oh my gosh!” I shouted through a double mouthful of butterscotch… Well, I didn’t know what it was, but it was butterscotch. “I didn’t know–”

“Please don’t talk with that in your mouth, Twilight. It’s really, really gross.”

Swallowing, I said, “Sorry. But I had no idea they had this here! Luna must have given them the recipe in advance!”

It only took me a couple minutes to polish off my plate. I had to make sure that Pinkie Pie got that recipe before we left. And I needed a few more plates of this stuff, but later. If I just started eating it right now, I’d probably eat it all and get a stomach ache.

I finally properly looked back up at Twinkleshine to find her watching me with a smirk.

“What? You know this stuff is like catnip for me.”

“Yes, yes I do. Anyway, you were saying?”

“Oh, right.” I resisted the temptation to lick my plate, although it did draw my eyes on occasion. “So the last big idea is that honesty and respect are fundamentally important. Polyamory is incredibly difficult to make work if the ponies involved can’t trust their lovers to be open and honest with them, that they won’t attempt to undermine other relationships, that they will be preemptively honest, et cetera.”

Hmm, that didn’t come out exactly as I wanted it to.

“The honesty and openness is mostly concerning feelings, both within a relationship and in regards to other relationships, new or old. There’s still plenty of room for personal and state secrets; you don’t have to be an open book, although the basis of most good relationships is sharing yourself with your lover. To sum up a really complicated issue in a sentence, it’s basically about having good intra-relationship communication skills and inter-relationship respect.”

I only hesitated for a moment before I continued; I doubted Twinkleshine noticed.

“And on the topic, now might be a good time for you to…I guess monologue at me about how you feel about this, and then we can discuss it together. And be honest; don’t just tell me what I want to hear.”

Twinkleshine took a very deep breath. “Are you sure? I – I’m not sure if I’ll be able to stop once I get started. I’ve been holding a lot of things in for a while now…”

“Well, there’s never a better time than the present,” I said, deliberately not cringing. My theory that Twinkleshine was bored had almost certainly just flown out the window. “Like I said, communication and honesty are important.”

After another deep breath, Twinkleshine began.

“I’m not at all happy about this! I don’t want to share you with anypony, not even our friends. I know that’s unreasonable, and I’ve been trying to work on it, but you spend so little time with others that it’s hard not to be jealous. You’re so solitary, and you barely ever pay attention to anyone. I – Twilight, I don’t know if somepony like you can really understand, but you completely turned my life around. You turned me into an honor student and a space pioneer.”

Second space pioneer, technically. Luna and Celestia were out here first, after all, and Discord probably had been, too. Not that I was going to mention that.

“And look at us now. You’ve brought me to the moon, Twilight. The moon! You could beat me and treat me like dirt, and I’d still never be able to get you out of my head!”

I – I didn’t know what to say to that.

“I know you’ll probably say that I helped, but I know you’re a lot smarter than me; you could have gotten here by yourself just fine if you really put your mind to it. I hate feeling like I’m just here to keep you entertained, but the truth is, you’re so introverted that I know you don’t even need me for that, especially with” – Twinkleshine stopped dead for a second, biting her tongue – “her supporting you.”

I couldn’t say I didn’t see this coming…

“I thought I could make you look at me instead of her; I really, really did. She’s a princess, and you’re just a little filly. I thought I could do it.” Twinkleshine rubbed her nose with a hoof and tried to sniff silently. “And then I saw what you were like without her, and I got desperate. This – that song wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. I asked Pinkie to help me weeks ago.”

Twinkleshine was openly crying at this point, although she managed to keep herself to sniffles so she could talk. “It was terrible of me, but I thought this was my chance. You’ve been so vulnerable. And – and the worst part is that you just told me that there’s no way I can ever take Princess Luna’s place in your heart. I-I know you’ll s-say they’re in – inde – independent, but that doesn’t mean you won’t like her more than me. I’m s-so tired of playing second fiddle, and I hate that I want to tear you away from somepony who’s done so much for you, but I do. I really, really, really do. I know now more than ever that you’re going to hate me for it, but it’s true.”

Pausing for only a moment to catch her breath, Twinkleshine continued, “I wish I were stronger, like you, but I’m not. Whatever you make of me, I’m still just the old, fragile Twinkleshine inside. Inside, I’m like…like glass, ready to break under pressure, and – and I just realized you’ve been spending years trying to build my self-confidence. I’d never ever have been able to get up in front of everypony and sing alone like that when we first met, much less plan to do it, but even then, I only could because it was for you.”

I passed a much needed cloth napkin over to Twinkleshine, her own already in need of a good washing. She really wasn’t being fair to herself; she had really made leaps and bounds in the self-confidence and self-worth departments in the past couple years. In all honesty, I suspected she didn’t really mean even half of what she was saying, but I wasn’t going to stop her venting now.

“Just…why? Why do you even put up with me? I’m not pretty like you; you’re educating me; I’m greedy and jealous; you have to hold my hoof for more than half the amazing things you let me do; I’ve even yelled at the princess.”

Huh? That was news to me. As far as I knew of, Twinkleshine had only spoken to Luna that one time. Luna hadn’t said anything…specifically on the subject. She did mention…something about Twinkleshine being…something. Not that it mattered too much in this context. And what was that about me being the pretty one?

Descending into no more than a whisper, Twinkleshine continued, “I – I’m not – I’m not the stuff of legends, Twilight. You are, and the princesses are, but I’m not. It’s so hard loving you, like trying to woo a star in the sky, but I can’t stop. You’re so bright that I can’t see anything else. Sometimes not even myself…”

Twinkleshine collapsed onto the table. “I – I’m done. You can make me feel better now; you always do.”

Wow. Just…wow. Those were some high expectations to live up to.

And even though I suspected she was being harsher on herself than normal, I’d probably accidentally made Twinkleshine a little…no, I couldn’t try to downplay this like that. I’d made Twinkleshine emotionally dependent on me. Unintentionally, sure, but in trying to help her be a better mare, I’d taken too big of a role in her life.

I’d have to fix that, but…how did I go about helping Twinkleshine detach herself from me more? I needed to get more involved to get less involved? That was a contradiction in terms.

Ugh. Well, first things first.

“Twinkleshine,” I began, “before I say anything else, I want to say I really appreciate your honesty. I know that some of that – well actually, most of what you said must have been hard to say. That said” – I spared a side glace at the area around us – “would you like to take this somewhere more private?”

We did sort of have at least half of the lunar population pretending not to be watching us intently. I was honestly surprised we didn’t have everypony asking if I needed any help. But then again, I wasn’t the one crying; maybe this was one of those things where ponies stood at a respectful distance while they let their princess take care of it.

Oh stars, I just referred to myself as a princess. Sigh…

Whatever. I had more important things to do right now.

“Twinkleshine?” I repeated myself, not having gotten an answer yet.

“No,” Twinkleshine said into the table, barely audible over the background noise of the festival. “No, you’re just going to let me down gently then where I won’t make a scene.”

“That’s not true, and you already have made a scene. Not that I care about that. If you want to stay here, that’s perfectly fine,” I said, levitating myself and my chair to sit next to Twinkleshine.

I suspected the right thing to do for Twinkleshine right now was to push her to make selfish decisions for her own happiness, even if it were for petty things like staying in the middle of a crowd.

Putting one hoof across Twinkleshine’s withers and another on her shoulder, I continued, “I have no intention to let you down if you don’t want me to, gently or otherwise. If you want me to back off, I will. If you want me to get closer, I will. If – if you want me to push you away so you can find yourself without me, I…will. It’s your decision if you want us to pursue this relationship.”

Twinkleshine didn’t say anything, but she did lean into me.

I spent a minute trying to think of something to say that would fix everything, but I came up empty. I really wasn’t trained for comforting or therapy, nor did I have much practical experience. All I really had to offer was advice.

“Twinkleshine, I can’t think of anything to say or do right now that will make you feel better. All I can give you is a healthier perspective.”

I thought about making a joke about not being perfect because of that, but I wanted to drag Twinkleshine up, not myself down. That was far healthier in the long run.

“Honestly, yes, I could probably do your job if I had the time for it. I know it looks like I do nothing but study and teach everyday–”

“That is all you do,” Twinkleshine interrupted.

“Yes, but that’s my job. Deposing a goddess is, to use your words, the stuff of legends, and it’s very time consuming. However, you’re looking at this the wrong way. I’m not going to try to tell you I’m not amazing, because I am. Your problem is you’re looking at a pony with a skill set that has a lot of applications in other fields, and you think, ‘She can do my job, so my job must be simple,’ but that’s an easy mistake to make. I know I help you on occasion, but I’m ultimately just providing the ship’s power.”

I stopped for a brief moment to catch my breath. I really needed to slow down; rushing would only make it seem like I was trying to cheer her up instead of stating facts.

“Think about it, Twinkleshine. Whether or not I could have gotten here myself, you did the work. We got to the moon. We even got here on the first try; we didn’t have to turn around and try again or anything. That is impressive. Even just going from Equus to the Nebulous, I messed up all the time. Even if you don’t think you’re ‘the stuff of legends’, you at least have a big part in them.”

“I guess…” Twinkleshine didn’t really look or sound like she believed it.

Of course, I wasn’t expecting Twinkleshine to instantly cheer up or anything; ponies really didn’t work that way. Maybe after a few weeks of thinking about it with a lot of small, positive reinforcement, she’d start to really feel better. Honestly, what she needed was an important project, preferably something I couldn’t do.

Then again, that wouldn’t really help if I were the one to give it to her. Maybe Luna could? Hmm, that might work; it did fit the ‘quest’ archetype to get a task from a princess. I’d probably still need to keep my hooves out of the project design, though, or Twinkleshine might notice my influence.

Or, maybe, just maybe, I could make the reasonable choice, and in a week or two, I could ask if Twinkleshine would be willing to visit a therapist for her personal issues. Luna could probably track down somepony trustworthy and good, and Chrysalis should be willing to let Twinkleshine use the hive mind. That was so reasonable. And if that didn’t help her, we could try other methods.

Although on the whole issue of sharing me…well, Twinkleshine did seem to have some problems to work out there, too. She and I would need to talk about it together, perhaps with a mediator. Some of that hadn’t sounded…healthy. Not that she hadn’t pointed out some of my own issues, too.

“Twilight–”

Oh, horseapples. I’d spaced out on Twinkleshine just now.

“–thank you for trying.”

Twinkleshine let her head rest on me as if she were going to fall asleep sitting up in my hooves, which would be very awkward and uncomfortable for both of us.

I hesitated for only a moment before replying. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help much.”

“It’s okay. Will you stay with me the rest of the night?”

“If that’s what you want,” I began, looking straight up, “I’d love to. I’m not sure how much night is left, though; the moon is starting to get pretty big in the sky.”

From this side of the moon, dawn was rather fascinating to watch, and no doubt a little horrifying if you didn’t know the moon wasn’t going to crash into itself. The moon set in its own sky in almost the same way as it did on Equus, but it also grew larger at the same time, finally reaching a one-to-one scale as it crossed over the edge of the universe. It was sort of as if the sky were one big mirror.

We’d be traveling way too fast for us to get a good look, but in theory, we’d be able to see ourselves in the moments just before moonset. And then – then we’d get to see what was on the other side! Even under the unexpected circumstances, I was really looking forward to finding out; Luna hadn’t told me before she disappeared or after she’d come back. The latter might have been my fault for not asking, but I suspected she would’ve just told me to wait and see before.

“Hey, wait a second,” I said, my mind catching up to what I’d just promised Twinkleshine. “Night never really ends on the moon, does it?”

“Ah, you caught me.” Twinkleshine’s laugh was weak, but it was a step in the right direction.

I rolled my eyes. “I suppose I can stick to you like glue while we’re here.”

“Thank you,” Twinkleshine mumbled.

The moon hung ominously over the horizon, filling nearly half the sky. Honestly, it was a little terrifying, although neither I nor Twinkleshine would ever admit it openly. The only reason I knew Twinkleshine found it scary was the the subtle shaking of her legs as we sat together on the balcony of the highest turret in Luminance.

Other than that little detail, the view really was stunning. The landscape wasn’t as beautiful looking out as it was looking in, but it still looked lovely. I hadn’t noticed it before, but there was a little lake hidden behind a hill at the end of the river. Strangely enough, the start of the river just came straight out of another small hill.

Magical landscaping was weird.

A knock came on the door behind us. “May I enter?” Chamomile asked, her voice muffled through the wood.

“Please come in!” I called back.

Turning my head a little to the side, I saw Chamomile enter pushing a cart – which must have been a huge pain to carry up the staircase – bearing tea and small snacks with her forehooves. The teacakes I recognized, but the rest of the snacks were beyond me.

“Thanks for doing this for us,” I said. “You really didn’t have to.”

Hearing one of the words Cherry Berry had taught her, Twinkleshine echoed in Old Equestrian, “Thanks.”

“Oh, trust me, Your Highness, it was no trouble. I rarely have an excuse to practice my special talent, even during the Winter Moon Festival.”

My smile turned to a frown nearly instantly. “I know the feeling. It’s horrible.” A shiver ran through my body; even after all these years, I still wasn’t completely over those first several weeks of horror after my first flare.

“Well, I do find a chance every now and then, although mostly just for myself; nopony else here particularly cares for tea.”

“I’ll be honest,” I began, taking a plate of teacakes in my magic, “I don’t like tea too much either, but I do love caffeine. Still, that must be unpleasant, especially right after when you got your cutie mark.”

Chamomile let out an exasperated sigh and had to set her tea pot down for a moment. “It was. ‘Chamomile, find something useful to do.’ ‘You want to be a maid? The castle cleans itself.’ ‘You want to be the librarian? Bookkeeper already does that. No, she’s the chronicler, too.’ ‘No, you can’t just make tea and grow tea plants.’ ‘Why would we need a hero? A guard is no different.’”

Eyes widening, Chamomile stopped short of another mocking quote. It was a shame, too; she did a pretty funny old stallion voice.

With a bow, Chamomile said, “My apologies, I–”

“Don’t bother,” I interrupted. “I much prefer not being treated like a princess.” After thinking for a moment, I continued, “Well, at least in conversation. I am liking that everypony gives me what I want, no questions asked.”

Seeing that Chamomile didn’t get it, I smirked to emphasize that it was a joke. Her eyes lit up in recognition a moment later, and she smiled back. Honestly though, it was a nice change of pace. Everything was so much work back on Equus and even on the Nebulous.

“But in all seriousness,” I began, “you don’t need to walk on eggshells around me. Please just call me Twilight.”

Clearly flustered, Chamomile said, “I – um – th-thank you, Your – er, I mean, of course, T-Twilight. I – do – would you like anything else?”

I wanted to raise an eyebrow at this, but it might endanger the fact that my request had actually worked. Well, sort of. The words ‘super effective’ came to mind. At least Chamomile had used my name instead of a title.

“No thank you–”

Twinkleshine yawned. That wasn’t terribly unexpected; she had been up for quite a while and under a lot of stress. She didn’t even have the benefit of a nap like I did.

“Um, I guess if it’s not too much trouble, maybe stick around somewhere nearby. Twinkleshine could really use a bed after moonset, and I don’t really want to put her in Luna’s.”

“Of course! I’ll just be waiting at the bottom of the stairs whenever you’re ready. I – um – I’ll just leave this here,” Chamomile said quickly, gesturing to her tea cart, “if you decide you want any more. I’ll – I’ll see you soon.”

Chamomile excused herself with a quick bow that was probably aborted halfway through. Moments after the door closed behind her, an excited cry echoed back up into the room.

Snickering, I said to Twinkleshine, “I wonder if she knows the turret echoes.”

Whatever Twinkleshine said in response, it was completely indecipherable through her mouth stuffed with food.

“How much have you eaten tonight?” I asked, poking Twinkleshine’s belly. As unflattering as it was to comment on it, her stomach was actually bulging a bit.

Swallowing, Twinkleshine replied, “Enough that I’m going to regret it in the afternoon.”

I rolled my eyes at her goofy, crumb encrusted smile. I sort of thought when Twinkleshine had said she wanted to eat ‘whatever local foods they have’, that she hadn’t meant all of them.

“How are you not regretting it now?”

“I think one of my grandparents was a cow.”

I was pretty sure genetics did not work like that, even in the extraordinarily unlikely event that Twinkleshine was part cow.

“I think when we get back to Equus, I’m going to send you to the Apple family for lunch,” I said, more to myself than to Twinkleshine.

Opening her mouth for a moment, Twinkleshine closed it again and scrunched her eyebrows together. Just before I was going to ask what was wrong, she said, “I would rather not test my theory, or at least that’s my hunch.”

“Huh? Twinkleshine, is something wrong?” Besides those other things we were just sort of forgetting about for the night.

“No, not at all. I just thought my phrasing was strong.”

Oh stars, she wasn’t. “Are you serious?”

“Perhaps. My motives are mysterious.”

I looked Twinkleshine dead in the eyes. “I like oranges.”

“Um… Um… You’re…borenges?”

I was a little ashamed to admit I stuffed a cookie in her mouth, but Twinkleshine deserved it. I was more ashamed to admit I actually laughed. Once. Twinkleshine, on the other hoof, seemed to be enjoying herself, although it was probably more from my reaction.

Mid-sip of tea, I felt her magic again.

“It’s happening,” I said as quickly as I could.

“Really?”

“Uh-huh,” I hummed in answer. Apparently I was right in thinking that I was the only pony who could notice.

The entire moon was covered in the faint sensation of Celestia’s magic, and the moon was getting noticeably larger in the sky over fractions of seconds. I felt a little off, but that was almost certainly Celestia’s magic doing it’s job to shunt us across the edge of the universe.

“Don’t flinch,” I said, probably to myself, but I could always pretend I’d been talking to Twinkleshine. We may have been squeezing each other a bit, but it was definitely not because we were nervous.

Secretly, I was really, really glad that the Hornburg wasn’t going to be the first point to pass through the boundary, but it was very close. We were going too fast to actually experience the mortal terror of that moment just before potentially splatting on the edge, crushed beneath ourselves and the moon behind us, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t imagine it, especially with the moon filling almost the entire sky now.

At least if we died here, it would be spectacular and instan–

Oh. Well that was disappointing.

Author's Note

Prereader – Starlight Nova

Chapter Nineteen - The Moon - Part Four

“We really should have seen this coming,” I said to Twinkleshine, my eyes not straying from the sky.

“It was kind of obvious, wasn’t it?”

The two of us looked up at the now moonless, and consequently empty, sky. We hadn’t noticed it before, because we had been facing away from the stars in the other half of the universe in a regular Euclidean sense, so intuitively, it made sense that we hadn’t seen them. However, we really should have seen at least the brightest stars from the moon.

It only took a tiny, blue pinprick of light that we’d almost missed in the this sky to make us realize that.

“The moon is pretty bright, isn’t it, Twilight?”

Twinkleshine sounded even more annoyed than I was. There was obviously something out there, but the moon was too busy generating light to let us see it.

“Why don’t you try some of your magic?” I suggested. “Maybe we’ll be able to see something.”

Nodding, Twinkleshine lit up her horn for one of her simpler telescope spells. By the standards she and I now measured her, it was rather crude, but it required less magic, so she’d be able to send it out further away from the moon.

And we wouldn’t need any protection from high-energy light with this spell, but that was more of a side benefit. Somepony in the course of history wisely decided to modify the standard beginner’s illusion spells to only produce light in the visible spectrum. No small number of mysterious deaths in early Equestrian history were thought to have been due to otherwise benign illusions.

Anyway, if we were lucky we’d see something other than–

“Ack!” Twinkleshine and I shouted in unison as we looked away from her illusion.

Note to self: I needed to teach Twinkleshine how to put a maximum level of brightness into an illusion, which unfortunately was not a thing that anypony had put into the standard beginner’s illusion spells, and – argh, my eyes still burned! Why had my flares never damaged my eyes before! I could just heal them if I’d ever had cause to learn the spell!

“Twilight, soak these with water and cool them!”

My head snapped in the direction of whatever it was Twinkleshine was talking about, for all the good it did. I could feel her magic levitating two things nearby, but it hurt just to open my eyes. I wasn’t going to try a scrying spell for vision on the off chance it induced phantom pains, so I worked purely off of my magical senses.

I summoned a large chunk of water blindly in the air, letting it crash to the ground and soak everything on the floor. Immediately after, I froze the water remaining in the air.

Twinkleshine let out a tiny squeak. “Too cold, Twilight,” she said, as a block of ice bumped into my eyes. “Thaw them.”

What was going on clicked in my head, and I brought the wet napkins – that was probably what Twinkleshine had used – back just slightly above zero degrees. It was with much relief that I breathed out and relaxed as my eyes were cooled.

Breathing easy again herself, Twinkleshine said, “I’m so sorry, Twilight. I – I made a mistake with the coordinates.”

Sleepy and stressed, that didn’t surprise me. I really should have just sent Twinkleshine to bed.

“It’s fine. Accidents happen. Again, apparently, based on your reaction.”

“Yeah… I sort of screwed up a few times when you first started helping me. How bad do your eyes feel? Were you looking straight at the spell? Can you still see?”

“My eyes feel like they’re on fire, but they’re working.”

First sighing in relief, Twinkleshine said, “Great. You should be okay in a few minutes or so.”

A few minutes? How bad could it have been? Hours? Days? Years? No, probably not years if Twinkleshine had done this to herself more than once. More importantly–

“What about you?” I asked.

“About the same, I think. An hour at the most…”

Just then, the door burst open to the sound of ragged breathing and shouting.

“Your Highness! Are you! Alright!” Chamomile asked between breaths.

“Not really,” I said, using the wrong Equestrian before repeating myself. “But we will be.”

“Whew,” Chamomile said, collapsing to her knees and then to her belly when that wasn’t enough. “I’m sorry. I just. Need a moment.”

Wow. Chamomile was obviously in shape just by looking at her. Just how fast did she have to move to put herself in this state?

Putting on what I suspected was going to quickly become my princess smile, I said, “Don’t worry about it. Thank you for your concern, though.”

“H-happy to serve.”

Turning…well, turning my attention, if not my nonexistent line of sight, back to Twinkleshine, I asked, “Where did you put your lens?”

“Huh? Oh, I – I think I accidentally inverted the sign on the relative coordinates…”

Inverted the coordinates? That would mean looking in the vaguely opposite direction of that blue pinprick of light, with the lens placed on the other side of the moon. The viewing direction must have been flipped, too, pointing away from the moon, because the moon was nowhere near that bright. I mean, the moon sort of hurt to look at directly when you were on the surface, but it wasn’t blindingly bright like that.

“I think that was moonlight,” Twinkleshine said.

I hesitated a moment before I said anything, not wanting to flat out tell Twinkleshine she was wrong, especially since she was probably right. The color of light the illusion had produced was burned into my eyes, and it had been the pale white color the moon gave off.

Still, it made no sense. The moon was no brighter near the surface than staring at a normal illumination spell from a couple centimeters away. Twinkleshine’s spell would have reduced the intensity by at most half, so while it would still have hurt to look at, it shouldn’t have been so painful. Unless the spell ended up inside the moon. It should be very bright there, although still not burning bright.

“So if that was moonlight,” I began, “do you have any ideas on why it was so bright?”

“A few. I’ve been thinking about this ever since I heard there was another half of the universe. I think the universe is made up of two paraboloids of revolution. If we put their axis of rotational symmetry along z-axis, then we’d be in the negative z’s now.”

“Or the positive z’s,” I commented dryly. “There’s no sense in being too hasty. Maybe this half of the universe is the better half.”

I could almost hear Twinkleshine rolling her eyes in her tone of voice. “Anyway, if I’m right, I think what happened is the moonlight focused a bit stronger than normal, and since it’s so close to the edge, the moon reflected its own light – probably more than once – which resulted in us looking at a blindingly bright moon.”

That…sounded an awful lot like an excuse. That would get us maybe a factor of two, and that was really stretching it. I generally didn’t think of moon rock as reflective, and a lot of the energy should have spread out anyway.

But then moon rock was white, and – no, I wasn’t even going to go there. I either needed to brush up on my astronomical scale physics, or I needed to leave this to Twinkleshine. On second thought, I’d just leave this to Twinkleshine; she didn’t need me encroaching on her territory any more than I already had.

“Also,” Twinkleshine started hesitantly, “it didn’t help that my lens also took a large sample for a small image, preserving power, not intensity.” It sounded like Twinkleshine was fiddling with her hooves as she whispered, “It’s usually a good idea.”

Ah, so that was the real problem. Twinkleshine didn’t really need to try to deflect the blame to the universe, but I wasn’t going to call her on that. I didn’t really care. It was just an accident.

Sighing, I squinted my eyes extra hard as I removed the napkin. Very slowly, I cracked them back open, wincing once they were open enough to actually see anything. It took some time and a lot of blinking, but eventually, my eyes readjusted to the ambient light in the room.

“Well, I feel less like tearing my eyes out now.”

“Sorry…” Twinkleshine said, her dejection crystal clear in her tone.

“Twinkleshine, I didn’t mean anything by that. I was just trying to say I feel better.”

Getting no response, I gnawed on my lip. I had a feeling that this was one of those moments where anything I said was just going to make things worse.

“Why don’t we find you a bed to sleep this off in?” I suggested.

Twinkleshine nodded, and we left the turret with Chamomile leading the way. Despite her objections and her pouting, I carried Twinkleshine down the stairs with my magic. The last thing we needed was her tripping while I was distracted and breaking her horn, or neck, or anything else.

I sighed as Twinkleshine finally fell asleep. Getting her to put off investigating the universe until after a good morning’s rest had been nearly impossible, requiring a promise that I would wait for her and several reassurances that the universe would also wait for her.

Anyway, as much as I’d love to snuggle into some blankets myself, I still had some things to do. The rest of my crew were as much my responsibility as Twinkleshine was, and with only one translator among them, they probably could use some help. If nothing else, I’d make sure they all found somewhere to sleep that was as cozy as the palace room Chamomile had provided for Twinkleshine.

As I headed for the door, I caught sight of my reflection in a mirror. Double checking that the door was closed and that Twinkleshine was asleep, I took a moment to look myself over.

“Pretty, eh?”

That wasn’t something I heard everyday. I was a little overweight for my age, although that would probably disappear as I grew taller. I didn’t exactly pay much attention to my appearance in any other way, either. Even my mane and tail I just cut in a straight line when they got too long.

Well, it wasn’t as if I really cared too much, but the flattery was nice. Besides, even if it was generalizing from only three data points, I’d probably grow up into a beauty as an alicorn.

Right then. I spun around toward the door, opened it, and marched straight out. Chamomile was still waiting for me.

“Is there anything else you need, Your High…”

I gave Chamomile a small, sad frown.

“Er, T-Twilight.”

Switching to a smile, I said, “You’ll get it eventually.”

I’d probably spend a lot of time up here in the future digging through history, and Chamomile seemed like decent enough company, if perhaps surprisingly easy to fluster with informality.

Ooh! Maybe I’d even get to watch Luna try to paint the past thousand years.

Actually, yikes. A thousand years was a long time; painting them would be quite a task, now that I thought about it, a true labor of love. And Luna probably only had second hoof information for a lot of it, too. Maybe she wouldn’t even continue it…

“Anyway,” I began, “I’m going to need another six beds for my friends and myself. And breakfast when we get up, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Of course. I’ll tell Pumpkin to bring breakfast up to the castle. Would you care for anything in particular?”

“Hmm… Do you know what pancakes are?” Getting a nod, I added, “With blueberries and orange juice?”

A momentary frown flashed through Chamomile’s face before she spoke. “I believe we might be out of blueberries after tonight, but I’ll make the request.”

How unfortunate. Blueberry pancakes were pretty great. Spike really liked them, too, especially with chunks of – oh.

“If you could bring me a pile of carbon as well, I’d appreciate it. Spike gets a bit testy when he doesn’t get any gems.”

“Carbon?” Chamomile asked, clearly confused. Carbon was one of the oldest known elements, so that wasn’t the problem.

Clarifying myself, I said, “I’ll make a diamond for him with it.”

“Ah,” Chamomile said, her face lighting up in recognition. “I heard there was a dragon here, but I never saw one. Are – are they not bigger than houses?”

I couldn’t help snickering at that. Sure, Spike would be a dozen meters tall in a century or two, but he’d be shorter than me for decades to come. Honestly, I had a hard time picturing Spike as a giant, hungry dragon. Well actually, the hungry part was pretty easy to see.

“Spike is just a baby dragon,” I said. “He’s not even my height yet; it’s very easy to miss him in a crowd of ponies.”

“Oh,” Chamomile said, faintly blushing. “I see. Sorry for presuming that…never mind. I’ll go prepare those bedrooms and await your return in the courtyard.”

As I watched her go, I idly thought about how I could thank Chamomile. She’d been really helpful, far more than so than anypony at Canterlot Castle had ever been. Then again, that could be the difference between being a princess and being a princess’s friend at work.

Oh well. I’d ask Luna what a good gift idea would be for a moon pony later. Right now, I had to deal with Cherry Berry. Hopefully Crescent had warned everypony not to feed her information before she got to them.

“You’re a goddess?” Cherry Berry half-shouted at me in Old Equestrian. Berry Punch, Berry Pinch, and Spike were with us, too, as we wandered about looking for the rest of our merry band; Cherry Berry at least had the decency to do this in private. Oddly enough, her tone was some weird mixture of fear, excitement, and annoyance, as if she couldn’t make up her mind on how she wanted to approach me and decided to try everything.

“More like a filly goddess,” I said. I was pretty sure that Cherry Berry wouldn’t buy the extended family argument anymore. I wouldn’t have erased her memories anyway, but if I did, it would leave a rather gapping, obvious hole in her memory that would make her suspicious. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention that to anypony.”

“No, no, no. You’re a goddess!”

“Well, again, more like a filly goddess. I’m still not a proper alicorn yet.”

If I were, I’d have just been to Mona and back as a pleasant morning teleport. Not that I was going to put that into Cherry Berry’s head if I could help it.

“No. Just – princess, sure. But goddess?”

Frowning, I said, “You’re acting like you weren’t alive when Ca – when Princess Mi Amore Cadenza appeared out of nowhere. Where did you think goddesses came from? The æther?”

I might as well have thrown a brick in her face for how stunned Cherry Berry looked.

“Look, I wouldn’t mind if you told anypony if ponies didn’t react exactly like you are right now.” And also if they couldn’t spread the information back on Equus, but Cherry Berry didn’t need to know that. “I’d like to live the rest of my unicorn years in peace, if you would be so kind as to let me.”

“But… But… But…” Cherry Berry was really impressing me with her vocabulary.

This was really dumb, but it’d probably snap her out of her stupor. “You can write my biography, if you want.”

“What? Really? Wait. Hang on. That’s not important right now.”

Drat.

Sighing, I stopped walking, drawing Cherry Berry’s gaze to myself. Locking eyes, I said, “Look, you knowing won’t change my behavioral patterns toward you or anypony else. I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“Well of course you wouldn’t. When you find out somepony is a goddess, you just go, ‘Welcome to the club.’”

Heh. ‘Welcome to the club’. I could imagine it now. The next time a pony ascended unsupervised like Cadance, I would just walk up to her, give her an unimpressed look, and then throw out that line along with a gift basket before walking away. Stars, that would be hilarious.

Sort of. Okay, so it wasn’t actually that funny. And it would probably take years to move past the horrible first impression. And it was just a little mean spirited in general.

Hmm… Alright, maybe I shouldn’t.

I sighed as Cherry Berry continued rambling about how this changed everything, only listening to every other word. Eventually, I spotted Fluttershy and Dash sitting together at a table that had obviously been moved away from the others.

“Not very subtle, Fluttershy,” I mumbled to myself.

The two of them were busy eating…something cold and soft looking with the oddest shade of green, so they didn’t notice our approach. It also didn’t help them that they were pretty distracted with each other.

“I hope we’re not interrupting,” I said. Fluttershy flushed immediately, but it wasn’t until I spoke again that Dash joined her. “You realize you’ve got each other’s feathers in your manes, right?”

Part of me wondered what they’d have to have been up to for that to have happened, but most of me was just wondering where they’d gotten up to it at. I didn’t want to have to go apologizing to a random local for having their house broken into and their bed used.

Somehow less beet red than Dash, Fluttershy managed to whisper, “It’s a pegasus thing…”

Hmm… They were sort of ordered, and there were only a few.

“Right, well anyway,” I began, “I’m not here to tease you until you stop being embarrassed right now. I’m rounding everypony up to get them to a bed in the palace. I asked for six beds, but do we only need five?”

“Twi!” Dash moaned. “Please stop.”

Please? Oh my, I might have broken Dash.

“Alright.” There’d be plenty of time for that later. “Seriously though, if you’re getting tired, you can come with us, and I’ll take you to our bedrooms. Or you two can fly up to the palace courtyard later and wait for a pony named Chamomile.”

“That was the name!” Cherry Berry exclaimed, still in Old Equestrian.

“What do you think, Flutters?” Dash asked. “You up for a small flight?”

“Um… I think I would prefer to teleport, if you don’t mind.”

“Yeah, that’s fine.” Turning from Fluttershy to me, Dash said, “Give us a couple minutes to polish this off. Then we’ll catch up to you.”

Alright, that was two more down. All we were missing now was Pinkie Pie, and she should be easy to find. All we had to do was follow the noise. We’d barely taken two steps before Cherry Berry started up again.

“That was driving me crazy. Trying to remember her name, that is. I was more caught up in the fact that you have a cniht of all things. There hasn’t been a cniht in Equestria in centuries. I’d bet Princess Celestia doesn’t even remember how to make them.”

“Sorry, that word isn’t in my vocabulary. What’s a cniht?”

“You know,” Cherry Berry said, switching languages for a moment, “a knight.”

“I have a what?”

“A cniht! A protector! Somepony who dedicates their life to your defense specifically. Most often found in–”

“I know what a knight is,” I interrupted. “What I want to know is why you think I have a subject of four and a half centuries of romantic literature in my…service?”

“Because you do!”

Wait, if I remembered correctly… “You’re not talking about Twinkleshine, are you? Chamomile referred to her as ‘Dame Twinkleshine’ before. It’s probably just a misunderstanding.”

“No.” Cherry Berry stomped her hoof with the word. “Everypony I talked to was very clear that it was a pony named Chamomile. She’s some sort of hybrid assassin slash lady’s companion.”

Oh please, those were two entirely different skill sets. That just made the idea even more ridiculous.

“Why on Equus would somepony want a maid for an assassin?” I asked. “I mean, sure, the first self-defense assassination…” Had I really just said that? “Um… It would be a huge surprise, but after that, nopony in Equestria wouldn’t know about her.”

“A lady’s companion isn’t a maid,” replied Cherry Berry, as if I’d just said a fireball spell was the same as a light spell. “They’re more like paid friends or extended family.”

That definitely deserved an eyebrow raise. I was probably confusing a lady’s companion with a lady’s maid – apparently – but the idea was so weird. Why not just be friends?

“The whole concept is really archaic,” Cherry Berry continued, reading my mind, “from when – wait, that’s not important! How could you not know you have a knight? You had to have accepted her vows.”

I sighed. “Okay, look. If you won’t believe me, why don’t we just go ask Chamomile herself? She’s not my knight, and I don’t want her to be. I’m sure she’ll agree.”

Trotting in front of me, Cherry Berry turned and looked me in the eyes. “Don’t do that. There’s an old story about Princess Celestia dismissing Aurora Shield – one of her knights, of course – who committed suicide a few days later.”

Wha–

“The knight position was taken very seriously, Twilight.”

I stood still with my mouth half-open. I did not want somepony’s suicide on my conscience, even if it really wouldn’t be my fault. Maybe it was time to take Cherry Berry seriously.

Okay, so I didn’t have a knight, or at least not in the way Cherry Berry had put it. I certainly hadn’t accepted anypony’s knightly vows – whatever they were – but there must have been something going on. If Dash or Pinkie Pie were the one telling me, I would have dismissed it as a prank, but that wasn’t Cherry Berry’s shtick.

What were the possibilities, then? Cherry Berry could be misunderstanding something. Maybe Chamomile was Luna’s knight. That would make a lot of sense. Luna had mentioned a few years ago that she was re-forming the night guard. Then again, maybe Luna had accepted Chamomile’s service on my behalf, considering I was a minor.

No, that couldn’t be it. This sounded an awful lot like something that ignored the age of majority laws. But then Luna was also a diarch, and I wasn’t actually a legally recognized princess, or at least I probably wasn’t. She could just do whatever she wanted, although she’d have to be willing to eschew tradition and not ask me first or tell me anything about Chamomile. Luna wouldn’t do that.

Unless, of course, she’d planned to but had gotten distracted halfway…

Suddenly, my eyes were assaulted with a pink hoof waving widely in front of them.

“Moon to Twilight,” Cherry Berry said.

“Sorry, I got distracted. But seriously, Chamomile isn’t my knight to the best of my knowledge. I’ll talk to Luna, but asking me–”

Cherry Berry gasped. “Princess Luna returned?”

I couldn’t help but smile like a giddy schoolfilly.

“Yes, she has. Speaking of whom, Luna has something up in the palace I bet you’d love to see. Asking me about Chamomile won’t do you any good, so if you’ve still got this much energy to burn off, I’d suggest that as a distraction.”

Hesitating for a second, Cherry Berry finally asked, “What is it?”

“Find out for yourself,” I said, teleporting her into the castle’s entryway. Despite her initial protestations to bring her back, it only took her a moment or two to get distracted by Luna’s art, exactly as planned. I cut off my scrying spells and briefly explained to Berry Punch what had just happened.

As a bonus, Cherry Berry had completely forgot to keep pestering me about being a princess or goddess, too. I’d have to thank Luna for the diversion later.

I jumped on Luna the moment she appeared. It wasn’t much to compensate, but it was a small step toward recovering from a dearth of Luna’s hugs and nuzzles.

“Happy Solstice, Luna!”

“I missed you, too, Twilight.” After we finally broke apart, Luna asked, “I take it you enjoyed the Winter Moon Festival?”

That was sort of an unfair question. There was a whole lot of distracting background noise to really say. There was my totally justified panic attack, Twinkleshine’s song, and Cherry Berry’s nonsense. I hadn’t had much time to enjoy or hate the actual festival just for itself.

The music had been nice, and the food had been great. All the ponies were friendly, but they had also treated me like a princess, which looking back on it, was really a mixed blessing. I’d only been half-joking when I’d told Chamomile that I liked ponies doing things for me. It was really convenient. Twinkleshine was nice and helpful, but I really did need an assistant from time to time.

“Was it really that bad?” Luna asked. She was making an obviously fake sad face.

I shook my head. “Sorry, I was preoccupied by other things that happened. Moon food is pretty great, though!” Exercising my control over my dream, I conjured up some of that butterscotch thing Twinkleshine had brought me. “And they made this…thing! Did you give them the recipe? It was amazing!”

With an absolutely disgusted look, Luna prodded my imaginary treat with a forehoof.

“I did…but please tell me you didn’t eat this much butterscotch toffee.”

I nodded through a mouthful of the stuff. Its siren call was too strong to resist.

“Ugh. Even a filly your age should get sick after eating this. I can eat whatever I want, and I bet I’d still be unable to keep this down.”

Rolling my eyes, I swallowed and then said, “On the topic of you telling the moon ponies things, I think I need to lodge a complaint or two.”

“Oh? And whatever could they be, my little princess?”

“That’s one of them,” I grumbled.

While Luna was constructing an elaborate illusion, she said, “Of course it is. I do know you quite well, but it was for the best. Better your first experience with princesshood is in a warm and welcoming environment with ponies who respect and adore you.”

Finished with her spell, I found myself standing atop a throne with hundreds of ponies looking up at me expectantly.

Everything paused for a moment while Luna asked, “They did respect and adore you, right?”

Bookkeeper had acted pretty scared and jittery, but other than that, the phrase was pretty accurate. I nodded, and everypony returned to life.

Nopony in the room looked quite like they knew what to make of me. A wingful looked contemplative, and a few were openly hostile, but the majority had the kind of single minded focus that was practically a prerequisite to joining the royal guard. I had this ominous feeling that I was going to be judged entirely by the next thing I did.

“It’s a big difference, isn’t it?” Luna asked quietly.

I managed a weak, “Uh-huh.”

“This is one of my earliest memories; it’s from just after I formally ascended to the throne. All it was supposed to be was a little meet and greet.” Luna paused for a sigh. “It turned into a complete disaster. I was too young and too unversed in the ruling arts. I was suited for the field of battle then and little else.”

“What happened?” I asked, only for Luna to wince.

Before I could apologize, Luna said, “It suffices to say that nopony showed up to the night court for some time, myself included. When you spend the first several decades of your life either terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought or fighting for your life, peace is a difficult change. If you want to know the full story, go down the fourth hallway on the left from the main entrance of the castle.”

With a flash of her horn, Luna banished her illusion. In a few moments, it was replaced with an impressive vista of a frozen forest from atop a tower. We were on a balcony without any railing – which wasn’t really an issue in a dream – and behind us was a small room. Judging by the contents, it was a bedroom, but it was hard to be sure. The longer I looked, the harder it was to focus on any particular object inside.

“I’m afraid I don’t really remember what my bedroom looked like.”

I nearly jumped when Luna spoke and broke my concentration.

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget the view from it, though. Winter in the Everfree was a gorgeous sight.”

That was what it was! We were above the Everfree Forest, and those were the Macintosh Hills off in the distance. Things really had changed a lot in a thousand years. The Everfree actually looked bright and cheery right now. Without the fog and the incredibly dense canopy, it actually managed to be inviting.

Turning to Luna, I asked, “Is this really accurate? I mean, it’s a huge change from the modern version.”

“Well, it might be a bit idealized, but it should be reasonably close.”

“Huh. I never expected the Everfree could be so nice.”

“Sooooo…” Luna trailed off expectantly, poking me with a wing.

I rolled my eyes; this was about as subtle as a hungry dragon. “Fine, being a princess wasn’t so bad. I didn’t have any real responsibilities, though.”

“Perhaps, but it’s still nice to hear.”

It wasn’t like I was going to give up my ascension over a few negative perks. Not that I couldn’t appreciate what it meant for things to be said aloud instead of merely understood.

“Tea?” Luna asked, pulling both the drinks and an extra large cushion out of nowhere.

I cocked my head to the side as Luna sat down. There was obviously plenty of room next to her for me, so I wasn’t going to say no, but Luna had never been the tea type, and I wasn’t either. And this was more of a hot chocolate moment, too.

Although the tea did remind me of my other complaint. It was almost as if–

“Wait a second,” I said, tripping over my own hooves as I tried to jump to them. Cushions were officially being listed under hazardous terrain. Just before I face planted, Luna caught me with her magic and sat me back down.

“Thanks,” I mumbled. “But this is chamomile tea, isn’t it?”

Nodding, Luna added, “Laced with honey for sweet toothed ponies.”

Well…that actually sounded pretty good. Not that I was going to be distracted when I practically had my other complaint put up on a billboard right in front of me, which meant Luna was expecting it.

Oh stars. It finally clicked that if Luna was expecting this, then Chamomile really was my knight. Maybe not in those exact terms, but there was something going on. How badly would Luna be offended if I said I didn’t want or need her? They were probably friends if Luna asked her specifically to protect me.

Wait, if they were friends, maybe I should think about this first. Luna hadn’t introduced me to any of her friends on Equus, if she even had any there, but I certainly wanted to meet them. I’d already met Chamomile, and I supposed I’d like to get to know her better, but I still–

“You know,” Luna began, interrupting my train of thought, “the first time somepony told me the story of Princess Frost and Sir Arrow, I nearly had a conniption. To think that somepony could reduce knighthood to some silly love affair. It was perhaps the biggest insult anypony could have thrown at many of my truest and loyalest friends, many of whom laid down their lives for me.”

Luna paused for a rather long sip of tea, long enough that she actually emptied her cup in one go.

“A week later when I’d calmed down, I was so embarrassed when I realized it was all my fault. I made quite a habit of sleeping with my knights.”

Or better put, spending nights with her knights.

Okay, that was awful. I was so glad I hadn’t said that aloud.

Anyway, what Luna said likely wasn’t completely accurate based on what Cherry Berry and Luna had already said on the subject. She didn’t sleep with her knights; she made knights of ponies she was already willing to sleep with. Not that I thought the reverse implication was true, either. I was sure there were plenty of ponies Luna had been intimate with that weren’t her knights and vice versa.

But I thought I knew what Luna was getting at.

“So what you’re trying to say,” I began, “is that you trusted your knights enough to be at your most vulnerable around them.”

“Partially. As an alicorn, you will need no protection. The only ponies who could truly aid you when you would be unable to aid yourself are other alicorns. Why then do we have a guard?”

“To deal with the rabble,” I said automatically, the answer obvious. “We only get one second per second like everypony else, even if we get more of them in the end. We don’t have time to deal with every little brawl, riot, invasion, or whatever.”

As much as Shining liked to say that his duty was to protect Celestia, it was fairly obvious that his real duty was to keep order around her. Anything strong enough to be an actual threat to her would require her direct attention.

As an afterthought, I added, “Actually, if we study Pinkie Pie, we might be able to figure out how to make that a moot point.”

“Oh, yes. That’s actually near the middle of my list of things to do when I’m free, although it would still be rather tedious to deal with everything personally.”

I looked up at Luna properly and asked, “What’s more important than time magic? I mean, besides the obvious immediate concerns.”

“Well, I primarily planned to start with a culture binge. I’ve tried to stay in touch with the world’s developments, but I mainly have only second hoof experience. I thought I’d start with popcorn and movies.”

“Wait, so you just want to lay around for a few weeks doing nothing but that?”

“I doubt it would be nothing but movies, but yes. It shall be glorious fun.” The inflection in Luna’s voice when she said the word glorious was nothing short of laughable, but I managed to keep my chuckling down. “I’d love it if you’d join me.”

A few weeks relaxing with Luna? “Of course!”

Luna took a moment to smile at me before returning to the topic at hoof.

“Knights, as you said, are trustworthy. You can be at ease around them, but that means more than you said. Yes, you can trust them with your secrets, your hurts, your desires. But they are also the ponies that let us sleep peacefully. They are the ponies that allow us to enjoy life without constantly glancing toward the shadows or preparing for what lurks around a corner.”

“But they aren’t any stronger than any other guard,” I protested. “Even if they’re specifically guarding only you, why would that matter?”

“Actually, although this is not terribly important in this context, when somepony becomes a knight for an alicorn, the knight is typically granted a small blessing of power. Do you remember how I promised to give you my blessing to raise the moon?”

I merely gave Luna a look that said everything for me.

“I meant that figuratively then, as you should be an alicorn by the time I could do so, but here I mean it literally. As the Alicorn of Magic, I suspect you will be able to give particularly useful blessings aside from any additional enchantments you choose to cast.”

Huh. Some of the strange things in the oldest knightly romances suddenly made a lot more sense. In the story Luna mentioned in particular – which was a classic, even if it was an offensive classic – Sir Arrow did a lot of things that should have been impossible for an earth pony. I’d just assumed artistic license was in effect at the time, and maybe a little bit of wish fulfillment on the author’s part as well.

“Anyway, if you get a knight, I would not encourage you to abandon all of your own wards and defenses, but neither should you be overly paranoid while they watch over you. Nearly all true threats to you – such as sleeping spells – can be negated by a few seconds of early warning. The job of a knight is to provide that warning, whether or not they are themselves also capable of dealing with whoever is threatening you.”

“But what about all those stories of questing?”

Luna faked a cough. “Well…they vow to obey you in all things, including in epic quests for fetching snacks. Also, if you’re feeling too lazy to lead a campaign into battle because you stayed up all morning reading a book. Or if it’s one of those days when getting out of bed–”

“I get it,” I interrupted. “You’re sort of breaking a lot of illusions I had right now.”

Luna giggling wasn’t helping me get over the minor emotional trauma of hearing dramatic historical and literary moments condensed into ‘because I was tired’ and ‘because I just couldn’t be bothered’.

After a prolonged lull in the conversation, I finally recovered enough from my daze to speak.

“You said if. Cherry Berry said Chamomile is or is supposed to be my knight. And that she’s an assassin maid, but…what’s so funny?”

“No, it’s just, I think I’ll be referring to Chamomile as an assassin maid from now on. The title certainly suits her. I should decree that her work uniform should be a maid outfit, regardless of the impracticality.”

Sighing first, I asked, “Are you going to explain?”

“Yes, yes. Where to begin… Do you know that her special talent is tea making?”

I nodded. She was pretty good at it, too, despite her earlier complaining of never getting put it into practice.

Luna held her own tea forward and gestured toward it. “By the way, this is one of her creations.” After taking another drink she continued, “Anyway, Chamomile expressed interest in what I needed at the time, namely a sparring partner, and she was an agreeable young mare. Seeing that she was struggling to find a job on the moon she would enjoy, I offered her the position. Officially, she was called my lady’s companion, which is no doubt where the maid confusion is coming from.”

“Wouldn’t she have been better called a page?” I asked. That fit the job description much better. She performed small tasks for Luna and helped Luna with combat training, which was effectively what a page did.

Luna merely shrugged at my question. “If you ever decide to spar with her, watch out for small cuts. She is very good with her poisons.”

Ah. So that was where the assassin part came from.

“Oh, and if she ever suggests you enjoy a soothing cup of post-spar ednorog tea, politely decline. It’s unicorn bane, which is unpleasant even for alicorns to drink.”

“Wow, what a dirty trick.” Pretty fitting for an assassin, though.

“Heh. Quite. But I paid her back for it tenfold later. Anyway, about three years ago, I gave her the captaincy of the night guard, however small it is right now. It wasn’t until a little over a year ago that I played with the idea of asking if she would be willing to be your knight.” Chuckling, Luna added, “She actually swooned when I brought it up.”

“Wait, so she is my knight?”

“No, not at all. I merely asked if she would be open to the idea, which obviously, she was. The decision is entirely up to you, although I wouldn’t suggest making it anytime soon. As much as I will recommend her and as much as it would let me sleep better knowing she’s looking after you, I want to stress that the decision is completely in your and her hooves. If you don’t like each other, if you can’t trust each other, the arrangement would be a disaster.”

“But you think we will,” I commented. Luna wouldn’t have even mentioned it if she hadn’t. Chamomile had been really nice so far, but it was impossible to tell if that was how she normally acted or if she was just trying to make a good impression.

“Yes, I imagine you two will get along very well, although I should warn you that she reads purely for entertainment, not to learn.”

What a deal breaker. It wasn’t like I put up with a pegasus that simply hated reading on a daily basis.

“Well, if I can get Cherry Berry to calm down properly, I don’t see any fundamental problems with it, I suppose. We have enough food to feed her.”

“Hmm?”

“Not that I’m saying I want a knight, but…I could consider it.”

It would probably appease Cherry Berry, too, if we took a living part of the moon with us, and Twinkleshine would be thrilled. And Chamomile might be able to help turn some of Dash’s energy away from pranks and toward…flying competitions or something. Anything other than making a mess in my library would be great.

“I didn’t mean for you to take her with,” Luna said. “You’re welcome to ask her, of course, but I intended for you to put the decision off for another six to seven years. After all, you don’t really need a space knight.”

No, I certainly did not. The ship was so overprotected against accidents that the only really bad thing that could happen would be Celestia appearing out of nowhere.

“But,” Luna continued, “whether or not you accept her as a knight, if you took her with, Chamomile would have a chance to be immersed in modern culture before she first arrives on Equus. It would also give her the opportunity to learn Modern Equestrian as well, a task I was not looking forward to performing. You don’t have to, but if she’s willing, I think it would be good for everypony if you took her with.”

Well, like I’d said, we had enough food. As long as Chamomile didn’t expect anything beyond the invitation, it would work out fine. Finding space for her was actually the biggest problem. I didn’t expect her to have too much luggage, but we’d have to make a new bed, and somepony would have to share their room.

We could always shove Dash and Fluttershy into the same space; they share a room often enough already. Now wasn’t really an appropriate time to invite Twinkleshine into mine, although I could share with Chamomile. I spent most of my time in the library after all. But then I already shared a room with Spike. But his bed was small, and he crawled into mine more often than not.

Pinkie Pie wouldn’t mind sharing at all, but that was a surefire way to make Chamomile regret leaving the moon. Then again, we could always commandeer some of the open space on the bridge for a new room, or I could melt off some of the outer glass on the Nebulous and simply make a new room. It shouldn’t compromise the hull anywhere if I take evenly from everywhere.

“I’m sure I could make it work,” I began. “We don’t really need the help, but I guess it would let the others take days off more often with an extra set of hooves and wings around.”

Well, sort of. Chamomile could do manual labor and pegasus work, which unfortunately meant Dash could procrastinate even more than ever. Sigh. Whatever. As long as the work got done and I had food, it didn’t really matter to me who did it.

But then again, I was sort of wishing for an assistant lately. Chamomile could fill that role nicely. Even if she’d just keep the library organized for me, that would be enough. Still, that was a matter for later.

I hopped off the cushion and walked in front of Luna. Seeing as I didn’t have anything else to complain about, it was time for a change of pace.

“Want to reenact the Battle of Crystal Plains?” I asked, although I was using the word ‘reenact’ rather loosely. The fine details of the actual battle were lost to time. We didn’t even know who won or why they were fighting. All we really knew for sure was it was one of the largest scale military engagements just prior to the founding of Equestria.

“Wouldn’t you rather have a nice, quiet solstice? We can do that again tomorrow.”

“Well…we could.” But then I might not have a chance to use the excellent cheap move that popped into my mind a few minutes ago.

Actually wavering under the pressure of my frown and fake tears, Luna begrudgingly said, “All right.”

“Yes!” My sad face was getting better!

“But only if I get the combined forces of Earth and Pegasopolis,” Luna added. “I’m not in the mood to micromanage hundreds of unicorns right now.”

I sent a quick questioning glance Luna’s way but didn’t comment. Luna usually took Unicornia because she greatly preferred their tactical flexibility. And because it forced me to work with and learn earth pony and pegasus magic, but mostly because of the former.

“I’ll get started on the landscape,” I said. “Would you build the structures?”

“Of course.”

Anyway, if Luna didn’t want to force me to play with unfamiliar abilities, so much the better. All I had to do was bide my time to launch a surprise attack when Luna was distracted. At the opportune moment, when Luna had dropped her guard, assured in her victory, I’d tell her that Twinkleshine had kissed me. Then my victory would be assured.

I woke up with Spike snoring in my hooves, still pretty disappointed that my trick hadn’t worked. Luna had just smirked as her forces rolled over mine. Sigh. Maybe I should reread The Art of War. Ooh, actually, I should talk to that Bookkeeper mare and ask for books on military strategy. I’d probably be able to find more here than back in modern Equestria. Maybe.

Oh well. I could just lay here for hours; this was an exceptionally good cloud bed. Dash, for all her other prodigious talents and as ironic as it was, was terrible at making soft clouds. For some unimaginable reason, she liked hard beds, and that was all she could really make. And Fluttershy…didn’t really do pegasus magic. Maybe I should ask Chamomile to come along solely for whatever bed-making prowess she possessed.

Heh. Chamomile the bed knight. Eh, the dream knight? No! The pillow knight! ‘I vow to defend the pillow fort from the dread advances of the evil Princess Cadance at the behest of Princess Twilight.’ Perfect. The next time I had a pillow fight with Cadance, I’d have proper backup instead of that two-faced brother of mine. Betraying me for his marefriend at the end. What a jerk.

The door slammed open and Spike jumped awake, nearly cutting me with his claws. I really needed to remember to file the points off of those sometime soon.

“Twilight! It’s morning! Er, it’s afternoon! It’s time to look at the stars before it’s too late!”

I groaned before I could help myself.

“Oh, um, sorry. Were you not awake?”

“No!” shouted Spike.

Giggling to myself first, I said, “Yes, but not for long enough. Go ahead and set up. I’ll just cocoon myself in a blanket.” With Spike diving back under the covers and holding tight to my barrel, I added, “Spike, too.”

“Alright,” Twinkleshine replied, much more subdued than earlier. “I’ll have everything ready in a minute or so. I’ll let you know when it’s safe to look this time.”

Casting my voice with a spell so I didn’t have to shout through my cocoon, I said, “You really don’t have anything to apologize for, you know.”

Twinkleshine made no response, so I poked a scrying spell outside my blankets. She had this unpleasantly neutral frown, but at least she wasn’t crying or anything. I really wished I had a magical instant fix for everything, but that was life, I supposed.

“Twilight, yesterday, I – I didn’t mean everything I said. I wanted to…apologize.”

Ugh, that last word was rather reluctantly given life.

When Twinkleshine didn’t continue, I said, “I’m still pretty new at this, so please bear with me. First, I forgave you after every word for what little was necessary to. It’s obvious you needed to say each and every last word that came out of your mouth yesterday.” At this point, I managed to stick my head out of the bottom side of my blanket. “And by the way, that song still was really sweet.”

“T-thanks,” Twinkleshine stammered, her blush obvious against her coat.

“Second, I really appreciate this and that you’re trying, but please don’t sweep our problems under the rug. I really should have talked with you sooner, but I kept putting it off.” I felt like I should have had more to say, but all I managed to come up with was a simple, “Sorry.”

After a short whimper, Twinkleshine asked, “You’re really not going to let me take the easy way out, are you?”

“Uh-uh.” I slipped my head back under the covers and tried to properly snuggle back in with Spike, who had somehow managed to get back to sleep already. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

“It’ll only take a second or two. I just need to – that can’t be right. Hang on, let me just try again with a better spell.”

“Take your time,” I said through a yawn.

Some time later, I finally felt Twinkleshine finish her casting, the only flow of magic leaving her coming from her continued hold on the spell.

“Um…Twilight? Did Princess Luna ever tell you what we should expect to see?”

“No. Why?” I asked, struggling back out from under my blankets.

“Because we’re really close to a whole lot of things I don’t want to be close to.”

Oh my. Twinkleshine’s spell had just about everything spacey in it. There were several nebulas, all with distinct shapes, and there were at least hundreds of thousands of visible stars, but I could be off by an order of magnitude or two. I thought I could even see a quasar, but surely that wasn’t possible. Right?

“How close did you say we were?”

“Too close,” Twinkleshine squeaked.

“Huh. Well, unless we’re astronomically unlucky, nothing terrible is going to happen in a single night.” Twinkleshine didn’t say anything until after I added, “By the way, lovingly rendered as usual. Good work.”

“Right. Thanks. I – I guess you’re right.”

Hmm… Looking at the image again, the configuration it depicted really shouldn’t be a natural formation. Gravitational forces should have ripped this arrangement of stars and dust to pieces a long time ago, so this was probably some of Luna’s recent – er, astronomically recent work, but it didn’t really have any apparent rhyme or reason. It was all just sort of clumped together, like looking at…

“Twinkleshine, we might be looking at Luna’s doodles. Or rough drafts or something. Stellar engineering probably isn’t as easy as simply putting stars somewhere and sending them on their merry way.”

“Oh. Oh! Wow! I – it’s one thing when you told me she can move the stars, but I guess it never really sunk in.” Twinkleshine took a step toward her illusion and gazed at it with a newfound awe. “You don’t think this is a stable system, do you?”

I gave a quick once-over over the nearby universe, picking out all of the large chunks that I might call subsystems. I stopped once I’d reached the double digits, since there really wasn’t a point in counting higher.

“If Luna solved the general n-body problem a thousand years ago, she needs, like, a weekly celebration of her unrivaled genius.”

A moment of silence passed as the obvious occurred to both of us.

“Twilight, isn’t the first day of the week named after Princess Luna?”

“No, no, no. That etymology is totally unrelated.”

Seriously, it was. Luna’s name just happened to mean ‘moon’ in the language the calender was originally developed in. It was just a coincidence.

Twinkleshine’s horn lit up, and a giant pile of paper flew over to her from inside her saddlebags she’d left by the doorway. It only took her a few seconds to get a spell going on a quill to copy down her illusion onto the paper. I really needed to dig up a book on camera magic for Twinkleshine at some point, because this was an awfully slow and sloppy spell. It got the job done, but not much more than that.

“Hey, has Princess Luna named any of these things yet?” Twinkleshine asked. She had the same half-mad smile she’d had when I’d told her about the moon ponies.

“Not to my knowledge. Feel free to name your name into history–”

Yelling dangerously close to the level required to wake Spike, Twinkleshine jumped into the air. “On it!”

“–unless told otherwise later.”

I wasn’t sure if Twinkleshine heard me or not. She was already on an endless ramble describing the cosmic formations in front of her. Every ten seconds or so, she’d write something down. Usually it was a name with some coordinates, but occasionally she’d make a longer note.

Yawning, I settled down into as comfortable a position as I could find with my head still poking out and mostly right-side up.

It was at least an hour later, maybe more. Even with a window, there was no moon in the sky – at least not one I could see with the naked eye – which made it incredibly difficult to tell time, but I had a feeling I was right. Considering it was winter back on Equus, we were probably only an hour or two off from moonrise, and Twinkleshine knew it. She’d given up naming literally everything in the sky a little while ago in favor of trying to make pictures of the entire sky instead.

Both were, in my opinion, rather ambitious and tedious tasks. Sure, there was a lot of spellcasting to be done, but it was repetitive spellcasting with the only variation being the part of the sky you got to see next. Twinkleshine fortunately hadn’t asked me for help after she’d stopped the naming phase of her efforts, for which I was eternally grateful.

“And then he met He – Heph – Hefa…”

“Hephaestus?” I finished for Spike.

“Yeah! Him! Orion met him! And there was a big battle! Whoosh!” Spike swung an imaginary sword.

If I wasn’t wrong, he was reenacting a battle against Hephaestus’s servant, Cedalion. It wasn’t exactly an accurate recounting of the myth of Orion, but it was always nice when Luna made time for Spike. Besides, the original version was pretty bloody and disturbing, which was far from appropriate for him.

I nudged Spike back onto the bed with my magic when he nearly fell off. He probably didn’t even notice, considering how involved with his performance he was.

“And then Orion went, ‘Roar! I’ve won!’”

Suppressing my fit of giggles, I said, “That was a pretty good battle cry, Spike. You can color me impressed.”

A knock came at the door as Spike reprised his performance. It was shortly followed by Chamomile asking permission to enter.

“Good afternoon, Chamomile,” I said.

“Good afternoon” – there was only the slightest hesitation before Chamomile continued – “Twilight. Breakfast is ready whenever you and your companions are.”

Nodding, I prodded Twinkleshine with my magic. She still hadn’t noticed that we had company.

“Huh? What is it, Twilight?”

“Breakfast?”

“Yes!” Spike answered for her. “I’m hungry.”

“Well, I suppose that’s that,” I said. “Are you coming with?”

“Um…” Twinkleshine looked between me, her current illusion, and her gigantic stack of parchment. I honestly thought she had enough to keep her preoccupied for a decade or more, but I could understand the compulsion for completeness.

“You can bring everything with you, you know.”

It took a while and a little coaxing, but Twinkleshine finally agreed to come eat. I couldn’t help noticing that she didn’t look like she was regretting how much she ate yesterday as she’d claimed she would. Hopefully she hadn’t left an unpleasant surprise in her room for whoever had to clean it.

“We’ll be along in a minute,” I said to Chamomile. “Could you wake up everypony else?”

“Of course. I’ll meet you right outside in the hallway with the rest of your companions.”

Chamomile excused herself with a small bow, leaving the three of us to prepare for the day. Spike, as annoying as it was, never had any morning problems to deal with, but my mane was still a mess. My tail wasn’t faring much better, and Twinkleshine looked like she hadn’t even tried taming her mess of hair before she’d left her room.

A frustratingly long process of unknotting my mane later and I was ready to go. I vaporized the hairs I lost, just in case: I didn’t want to come back here years later to find somepony thought they needed to be enshrined or something. I wanted to destroy the brush I’d borrowed, too, but that would have been pretty rude. It also might have been a historical artifact, considering how old it looked. I’d assume it were a royal brush if it were more elaborate and if Luna’s bedroom weren’t locked.

Anyway, I stepped out into the hallway where everypony except for Fluttershy and our heaviest sleeper, Dash, was waiting for us. Chamomile was missing, too. No doubt she was still busy trying to get Dash up.

“Good afternoon, everypony. How–”

I hadn’t noticed before, but Crescent was standing off to the side with the rest of the crew. After exchanging greetings amongst ourselves, I turned to Crescent and repeated my greeting.

“Good afternoon indeed, Lady Twilight. Have you found everything satisfactory during your stay so far?”

“I have. Chamomile has been very helpful. Is there anything in particular that you needed?”

Crescent nodded slowly. It might have been a bow until he remembered that I’d asked him not to do that.

“You mentioned before that you would be willing to provide a few tips to our enchanters. We would like to bring Luminance as close to its former glory as possible for Princess Luna’s return if you could find the time.”

“Oh, yes.”

I’d completely forgotten about that, although I had taken a look at the enchantments woven into the land here after Spike had fallen asleep. They were all rather embarrassingly patchwork, which wasn’t terribly surprising after several dozen generations of unicorns had all worked on them.

“I actually looked at what you have here already, and I can write up a list of suggestions over breakfast.”

Crescent’s jaw hung half-open for a second. “But there was no record of you entering – never mind. I should expect such proficiency from the Princess of Magic herself.”

Ooh, that sounded like there was a magical core to Luminance. I definitely needed to take a look at that before I left.

“Honestly,” I began, “your biggest problem is that you haven’t recast the enchantments. It should be a lot easier to work with a brand new spell than to keep the mess you have going. If you send…um…Astral, was it?” Getting a nod from Crescent, I continued, “If you send him to me later, I can give him a quick overview on what needs to happen. I could suggest some books, too, but my knowledge of the titles in your library here is pretty limited.”

“Bookkeeper knows the library by heart. If you merely provide a summary of what to look for, she should be able to locate a relevant title if we possess it.”

Very impressive if true, but I rather doubted she had every passage of every book memorized. Still, there was no harm in providing the references.

“As for the enchantments that have already faded,” I said, “I can probably write up instructions for them, but I won’t have the time to teach them or to cast a lasting version of the spells.”

“That’s more than enough. We truly appreciate your aid in this matter.”

Yeah, yeah, whatever. I wished I knew if he was asking for Luna’s sake or if it was just to impress Luna. But I wasn’t going to refuse to help even if it were the latter, so it didn’t really matter much.

Crescent made his excuses and went off to find Astral, wishing all of us a good breakfast.

And by all of us, I meant all of us. Chamomile had returned at some point with Fluttershy and Dash. With Chamomile leading, we made our way through the palace toward the dining room. I made note of several paintings I wanted to take a closer look at as we walked, including one that depicted the founding of Luminance.

Just as we arrived at our destination, I pulled Chamomile to the side and away from Cherry Berry in particular. I’d deal with her later, preferably after we’d left the moon.

“Can I have a word?”

“Of course,” Chamomile replied. “Is there anything you need?”

“Well…sort of.”

It was one thing to tell Luna I’d ask Chamomile to come with us, but it was pretty awkward to actually bring it up with the mare in question. If she were just some random pony I’d taken an interest in, it wouldn’t be a big deal. The whole knight issue, however, was unbearably troublesome.

I sighed. Might as well just get it over with.

“Chamomile, I – First, I want to be perfectly clear that I’m not promising anything else. When we leave tonight, do you want to come with?”

Chamomile’s squee managed to be of a high enough pitch to leave my ears ringing for a couple seconds. Maybe being a bat pony let her hit higher pitches. Maybe she could even use echo – wait, I needed to stay on topic.

“Assuming that’s a yes–”

“Yes, of course it’s a yes! Thank you! Thank you so much!”

I opened my mouth to try and clamp down on this outburst but ended up saying nothing. I’d already said that I wasn’t promising anything else, so Chamomile could react however she wanted.

Besides…it was a nice, fuzzy feeling being on the opposite side of this kind of happiness, and I didn’t want to let it go. Maybe this was how Luna felt right after she asked me to be her apprentice.

I crushed the idle thought that dared suggest being a princess would be worth it for just this. A few seconds of warm fuzzies – as nice as they were – every couple decades was not commensurate with the amount of tedium that occurred in-between. Not that there weren’t other benefits to balance out the bad. Just, this alone wasn’t worth it.

“Be packed and ready to go by midnight. Luna can carry messages here if she has to, but you won’t be back for years. Be sure to say your goodbyes.”

Chamomile’s eyes widened. “Oh, oh stars, you’re right. I need to go talk to–” Halfway to flying away, Chamomile touched back on the ground and asked, “Please excuse my – do you need me for anything? May I go–”

I gestured for Chamomile to leave with a hoof, adding, “We can take care of ourselves. You don’t have much time left here, so go make the best use of it that you can.”

“Thank you,” Chamomile called back as she flew through the halls. She probably should slow down, but then again, she grew up here. She likely knew the halls well enough to avoid face-planting into them.

Once Chamomile had disappeared around a corner and the faint sound of her wings had died down, I turned back toward the dining room. I likely had a long night ahead of me, and I knew I had a long flight back to the Nebulous in the near future. I was going to need a good breakfast before the day was done.

Author's Note

Prereader – Starlight Nova

Chapter Twenty - The Long Journey - Part One

[Winter 57, 994 – Day 267]

I asked Luna to spend some time with Twinkleshine once in a while last morning, hopefully to defuse some of the tension between Twinkleshine and me. Given that Twinkleshine didn’t blow up at me after she woke up, I’m going to call this a success until further notice.

In other news, Chamomile has settled in well. She tries to make herself useful to everypony, but the language barrier pretty much restricts her to working with Cherry Berry, myself, and, surprisingly, Chrysalis. I’m not going to question why she knows Old Equestrian. She probably has a changeling translating for her on the fly. But I am intrigued by how quickly she’s taken to Chamomile. Perhaps it’s a rare species thing, or maybe it’s that they both have fangs.

Hmm… Chrysalis does get along reasonably well with Flutter – no, that’s silly. Fangs do not a friendship make.

Finally, we’ve at last managed to turn around completely, and we’re headed mostly in the right direction to reach Mona now. We’ll probably be making little adjustments the entire trip, but it’s smooth sailing from here on out. The pace isn’t as relaxing as the moon leg was, but I’m managing well enough. We have five-and-a-half years before Luna’s banishment ends, so there’s plenty of time to rest when I need it.

Nothing further of interest to report.

[Spring 12, 994 – Day 322]

I swear, I don’t even know what to do with Twinkleshine right now. Have her get to know Luna to help us? A flawless plan. Tell Luna she should ask about Twinkleshine’s project? An instant success. Tell Twinkleshine to go to bed after working for two days straight? I had to remind her that she could get input from Luna.

Try to get her to come to class? Impossible, the little truant. She’s acting almost half as bad as Cherry Berry. Why just the other day, Twinkleshine actually showed up to class while I was teaching Berry Pinch just to ask me to make another ream of paper for her to use, and she got mad at me when I told her no.

And don’t even get me started on Cherry Berry. She’s nearly constantly pestering me for information about the past, present, and future. I’ve been mostly successful in diverting her attention with Chamomile, but that doesn’t always work.

Seriously, they’re working so hard it’s like they think they’re going to run out of ti–

Well…it’s not my job to make everypony else immortal.

I wonder if I can find a solution in forty years or less. Maybe thirty… But then age spells are a thing, even if they…

*sigh*

Right. Let’s get off this morbid note. Mom and Dad aren’t leaving me anytime soon, and neither is anypony else.

*ehem*

Anyway, Twinkleshine is getting totally obsessed! I know this is, like, a dream come true for her, but this is the third dream come true she’s gotten. Or is it the fourth? There’s space, the moon, the new stars, and I guess the moon ponies count as a separate one. You’d think she’d adjust after so much, but she hasn’t.

*grumble*

I suppose I can be just as bad at times. They’ll both calm down eventually. I just have to wait them out. Besides, Twinkleshine is enjoying herself. So long as she doesn’t drive herself into a rut or something, I’m glad she’s having fun.

Nothing further of–

*crash*

Dash! How many times do I have to tell you? No stunt flying in the library!

Chamomile, can you clean that up please?

Yes. Simply.

I think you meant – Dash, get back here!

[Summer 8, 994 – Day 418]

I think Spike is wandering somewhere around nearby instead of – in bed, like he’s supposed to be! – so I’ll keep this short. First, I am never going to dance ever again ever, especially not at my own birthday party. Maybe after a hundred years of practicing ballroom dancing with Luna in space in the other half of the universe, but not a moment sooner.

Second, I approximately kept one of my old promises to Luna, plus or minus some kissing with Twinkleshine. I already can’t wait until I’m sixteen, because wow, she was completely right.

Nothing further of interest to report.

[Winter 1, 995 – Day 611]

Today…has not been a good day. I have hopes that things will be better in a few weeks, but – well, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Just after noon today, Chrysalis woke me up and patched me into the hive mind without so much as a warning.

“What on Equus is going on?” I asked Pupa and Chrysalis.

Seriously, Chrysalis better have a very good reason to wake me up several hours early while I was in the middle of a magic lesson, or I was going to send her into deep space. Well, further into deep space. Away from the ship. Whatever, I was tired.

“Cadance is looking for you,” Pupa replied, giving me a full view of the mare in question.

Cadance was sitting on her bed, looking very relaxed. If her eyes weren’t half-open, I’d have guessed she was asleep.

“This is a joke, right? I don’t get it, and I’m going back to bed.”

As I built up power for a teleport, Pupa said, “No, wait. Listen. Cadance has been taking her studies seriously for awhile now.”

That was sort of the point of her punishment when she took the blame for my flare two Hearth’s Warmings ago. She was supposed to be studying to better use and control her magic. But if Celestia hadn’t found me yet, there was no way Cadance would either.

“So what’s your point?” I asked. “Are you going to tell me Cadance has somehow surpassed Celestia?”

“Twilight Sparkle!” Chrysalis bellowed.“Pay attention!”

Alright, deep breath.

“Can we do this later? Cadance isn’t about to ruin everything, is she?” She certainly didn’t look like it.

“We don’t know,” Chrysalis said quickly. “That’s the entire problem. We don’t know how long she’s been at this, and she’s not very talkative right now. All we got out of her was what she was doing. She’s looking for you as the Alicorn of Love. She’s, and I quote, ‘searching the world’s love’ for you.”

Oh. Oh no. Oh no, oh no. That was Bad with a capital b. That sounded exactly like how Luna found ponies by searching for their dreams.

How long did Luna say she’d searched for Sunset Shimmer before giving up? How many ponies did she check before she found me? Would Cadance have to purposefully look in space to stumble upon me? A dozen questions were all competing for my attention as my brain fired into action.

“Okay,” I said, shoving my ever increasing number of questions to one side,“so Luna is probably waiting for me to come back; the obvious first step is to ask her opinion on this.”

“That is a big part of why we woke you up early,” Chrysalis commented.

Oh. Right, of course it was. This was why I never did anything until an hour after waking up.

“Wake me up in fifteen minutes or when something important happens,” I said before knocking myself out with a spell.

I reappeared in my dream world with a bemused Luna in front of me.

“What was that about? Did a dragon bite you in your sleep?”

That hadn’t happened in seasons. All I’d had to do was use a little more scented shampoo to get the smell of pony off of me.

“No, we might have a huge problem,” I said, waving my forelegs off to both sides for emphasis. “Cadance is looking for me with some sort of long-distance, alicorn love-sight magic.”

Luna’s eyes narrowed as she spoke. “How long has she been searching?”

“We don’t know yet, but no more than a year, of course. Pupa just found out today. She’s still pretending to be me, so she’s usually not awake right now, which might be why. Maybe she’s not supposed to know!” Chrysalis would kill me if anything happened to Pupa!

Well, maybe not kill me, since she would still need to get back to Equus. But she could probably barter passage back off of Celestia. But then if Cadance found out–

“I’ve been worried about this since Pupa was discovered,” Luna began, bringing both of us out of our thoughts. “Ordinarily, I would suggest we fake your death, but that leaves us with two major problems: my niece might be able to see through the ruse, but even if she does not, Pupa’s position puts you in just as much danger.”

The second line of reasoning was obvious; Chrysalis would betray us at the drop of a hat to save her daughter. There was no telling what Cadance might find reason to do if she thought I’d died because Pupa let me leave.

“Why would Cadance in particular be able to see through a fake death?” I asked. “Alicorn shenanigans?” She was the Alicorn of Love, and she could actually ‘see’ relationships somehow. Maybe a relationship died when one of the ponies died or something.

“Not quite the word I would have used, but yes. I unfortunately know even less about my niece’s abilities than she does. My best educated guess would say she will not find you within the next four-and-a-half years.”

“But…” I said. Luna always had a but at times like this.

“But we need more information than my guesswork to rest comfortably, and unfortunately, my niece is the only one who can provide it, inaccurate though it will be.”

Well that explained why Luna hadn’t brought it up sooner. We didn’t want to put the idea of searching for me with alicorn magic into Cadance’s head ourselves, and Pupa was already watching Cadance for us. One thing was still bothering me, though.

“Are alicorns really so different from each other that you can’t know for sure if Cadance can find me?”

“To put it in terms you would use,” Luna began, “I only have two-and-a-half data points to work with. Everything I say about alicorns in general is merely an assumption that what we do have in common is constant across our species.”

Well, that was pretty fair. There was only so much you could learn from two alicorns, and from what Luna had told me before, it wasn’t as if nopony had ever tried to ascend before…

“Luna,” I began, my words caught in my throat. This was one of the scariest questions I’d ever asked, and indeed could be the one of the scariest questions I ever would ask. “Why are there only three alicorns right now?” There should be dozens flying around, even at the terribly slow rate of one appearing every thousand years or so.

Luna’s frown only deepened at my question. “I don’t know. If there were ever any histories concerning pre-Discordian alicorns, Discord destroyed them as well. There are scraps of religious records remaining, but the deities they describe and the powers ascribed to those deities are nothing like alicorns. I have several theories but no evidence for any of them.”

“Like what?”

“This really isn’t the time, Twilight.”

“But aren’t I just waiting for Chrysalis to wake me up right now?”

Luna had said we needed more information, so there wasn’t much I could do while asleep. I knew what questions we needed to ask; they were pretty straightforward. We wouldn’t have much time to plan for what to do in response to what Cadance’s answers were, so there wasn’t too much point in starting right now.

Now that I’d calmed down, it was easy to see we likely didn’t have to rush to make any decisions. The chances of Pupa walking in on Cadance only minutes before she found me were small enough as to be not worth considering.

“I suppose,” Luna finally said, the words reluctantly leaving her. “I want your promise that you will speak of this to nopony but myself.”

“What about Cadance?” She was an alicorn, too, and this sounded an awful lot like an alicorn conspiracy.

“I have not been impressed by her ability to keep secrets.”

Ah… “Alright, I promise.”

Luna nodded. “Remember, these are only possible explanations; I have no real evidence for any of them. And as far as anypony else is concerned, there never were any other alicorns.” After I’d nodded, Luna continued, “The worst possibility is that they were killed or otherwise ceased to be able to interact with the world.”

“Is that possible?” I shouted.

“My banishment is proof enough that the latter, at least, is possible.” Without missing a beat, Luna moved on. “Another possibility is that alicorns, as a general rule, eventually get bored and find another planet to go develop from the ground up.”

That…actually sounded fun, but maybe a bit tedious.

“Or perhaps there is another ascension alicorns can undergo to reach a yet higher plane of existence.”

Wasn’t that how a lot of characters were ‘killed off’ in the books Twinkleshine keeps having me read?

“It’s just barely possible that there were never any sufficiently powerful magical artifacts to power an ascension before Discord appeared, but I rather doubt it. Considering how we believe Star Swirl the Bearded died, it’s likely he was trying to ascend.”

Oh, wow, I’d almost forgotten about that. I certainly hoped there weren’t any special requirements to become an Alicorn of Magic. It was sort of difficult to believe that somepony of Star Swirl’s legendary talent wouldn’t make sure he had a powerful enough artifact to ascend off of.

“My most terrifying idea” – Luna actually shivered – “is that Discord created the universe a few thousand years ago. I think the universe is too orderly for it to be his creation, but Discord is unusually powerful, and it took an unusually powerful set of artifacts to defeat him, so I cannot completely discredit the idea.”

I – I really didn’t know what to say to that one.

“I suppose alicorns could have otherwise been discouraged from appearing, or somepony could have intentionally sabotaged ascensions, but I think the most likely idea is that there are more alicorns on Equus.”

“Wait, what? Wouldn’t they be fairly easy to find with how much magic alicorns have?”

Luna nodded. “What easy to find things are you looking for, Twilight?”

My mind locked up for a few seconds as I processed what Luna had said.

“You think the elements are an alicorn? Alicorns?”

“Six, specifically,” Luna added. “And Discord as well.”

My jaw ever so slowly fell as I tried to say, well, anything.

“As I said,” Luna continued, “both Discord and the elements are unusually powerful – far stronger than a single alicorn. Speaking only of the elements, they generate their own magic, which is a unique trait among magical artifacts. They also possess a sort of will as well, which is also unique among magical artifacts. I personally like to think the Element of Magic is Star Swirl, but that’s probably not the case.”

I lifted my jaw back up and tried to reconcile what I’d heard with what I’d thought earlier. I had thought Star Swirl would’ve been careful enough to ascend successfully. But wait. If Star Swirl was already the Alicorn of Magic, what would happen to me? Would it matter that he was an artifact? I knew Luna wouldn’t have the answers to any of the questions I was coming up with, but I wished she would. These questions could be of vital importance in both the near and distant future.

But then these were just Luna’s conjectures, and she’d said she had no idea what the truth was. I shouldn’t worry myself ragged over things we had little enough evidence for.

It would be pretty interesting if we could find a way to make remake a half-dozen alicorns out of the Elements of Harmony, though. But having two Alicorns of Magic was still a very worrying thought. That could end poorly.

“Luna, how likely do you think any of that is what happened to the old alicorns?”

Shrugging, Luna answered, “I have no idea. I know so very little about ancient history. It’s hard to put a probability on any of my ideas. Probability ratios I could attempt, but nothing more. Personally, I wouldn’t get too worked–”

My world went black and hazy, and I…what was I talking about just–

“Twilight,” Chrysalis said, shaking me with her magic, “it’s been fifteen minutes. Get up already.”

Fifteen…oh, right. I yawned and sat up slowly, rubbing my eyes with my magic out of habit.

“Luna said we should be okay, but she’s not very comfortable with that guess.”

A second or two passed in total silence.

“Is that it?” Chrysalis asked.

“Sorry. It’s all we have. Has Pupa been able to get anything out of Cadance?”

“Other than a whole lot of food, no.”

Wow, Cadance hadn’t even responded to being fed on? Weird. Pupa had said that Cadance had said the love eating process felt really weird. I’d never really noticed it when Pupa or Chrysalis fed on me, nor did anypony else on the Nebulous, so I’d always assumed that was an Alicorn of Love thing. Still, that should have ruffled her feathers enough to get her in a talking mood.

“Well, at any rate,” I began, “she’s not likely going to find me today, so I think I’m going to go back to bed. Wake me up again if anything interesting happens.”

I was shaken awake again, interrupting another interesting semi-historical lesson on ancient alicorns. As soon as I opened my eyes, I found myself already patched into the hive mind and staring at Celestia poking Cadance with her magic.

“Cadance, please stop,” Celestia said. “For Shining Armor, if not for me.”

Huh? “Chrysalis, what am I looking at?”

Finally blinking, Cadance turned to Celestia and simply said, “Why?”

“Well,” Chrysalis began, “we wanted to talk to Princess Cadance to find out what exactly she’s doing and how worried we should be, so the obvious action is to play the part of the curious, but concerned, friend and fetch Princess Celestia.”

Ah. That actually made quite a bit of sense. Celestia didn’t really have any reason to leave Pupa out of the ensuing discussion, given that Pupa was friends with Cadance. And Celestia hadn’t bothered to corrupt changeling histories, and she knew Pupa in particular already knew a lot about the current situation, so it wasn’t as if Pupa would learn anything fundamentally new.

“Cadance, dear, no matter how much you practice, finding a single pony is beyond your skill. Even my sister would have had trouble locating a pony with nothing to go on, and she had nearly a thousand years of experience. Nopony wishes to see you waste your youth on a futile quest.”

I breathed a small sigh of relief. Luna’s opinion was that only Cadance would be able to tell us how long it would take her to find me, but it was good to know that Celestia, who had more information at her disposal with which to make estimates, thought Cadance wouldn’t be able to find me either.

Cadance turned away from Celestia with a look that said the latter had used up her right to exist.

“It’s not futile,” Cadance said.

A silence descended as Celestia searched for some unutterable words which were clearly on the tip of her tongue.

Finally, Celestia sat down next to Cadance and draped a wing around her. “I know Twilight Sparkle meant” – Cadance’s eyes narrowed, although Celestia was in no position to notice – “a lot to you, but she would not want you to spend your time locked up in your room alone every morning.”

Ironically true in this case, but in general, I would prefer to think that Cadance cared enough to make an actual effort to find me if I were in trouble. I couldn’t help wondering if Celestia had actually tried to find Sunset Shimmer after she disappeared to…wherever she’d ended up.

“I don’t want to hear that from the pony who spent a thousand years plotting and scheming to–”

Clearing her throat first before Cadance could really get going, Pupa interrupted, “If I might put in my opinion as somepony who knows Twilight’s behavioral patterns well enough to fill her horseshoes, she wouldn’t want you looking for her right now. I doubt she could bring herself to run away a second time, nor could she live without her magic – or with the…alternatives.”

That at least managed to get a reaction out of Cadance, even if it was only a frown. I had no idea what she intended to do with me if she found me; I suspected Cadance herself didn’t know what to do with me, either.

“I hate to say this,” Celestia began, “to both of you, but my own spells have failed to find Twilight Sparkle in the past year; you both must consider the possibility that she is no longer alive.”

“She is!” Cadance shrieked. “I’d know if she weren’t!”

“What does she mean?” I asked.

“Oh, I forgot to mention that to you,” Pupa replied. “About a season ago, I made the obvious suggestion to Cadance to see if a pony’s death affects how she saw other ponies with relevant emotional bonds. I was getting a bit worried about her, and as both your friend and hers, I couldn’t avoid making the suggestion. Now that I think about it, that may have led to the current situation. Sorry about that.”

My voice faltered for a moment. “No, thank you for giving her the idea. I really don’t want her worrying herself to death over me. If knowing I’m alive can help her even a little bit, it was worth the risk.”

“Actually, the results were…inconclusive. None of the changes she saw couldn’t be explained in another way, such as a sharp decrease in love as an emotional coping mechanism, although I was not with her for all of her tests. That said, she is no less sure she can tell whether you’re alive or not.”

“Well, please don’t try to convince her otherwise in the name of good science,” I said, shuddering a bit reflexively. Fudging test results to make somepony happier would send me to science Tartarus.

Celestia breathed deeply as if to sigh. “Cadance, I would ask you to take a week long vacation. Feel free to take Lieutenant Armor along as your escort.”

“Is that an order?” Cadance grumbled.

“If it must be. Your search can wait another week for you to relax.”

Adding her own two bits, Pupa said, “Princess Celestia is right, Cadance, whether you continue searching for Twilight or not. You sound more than a little high strung; your search would likely go faster if you took your mind off of it once in a while.”

Throwing distractions at Cadance was great, but I was pretty sure we shouldn’t be telling her how to optimize searching for me. But then again, Cadance would likely be more accepting of additional distractions after the first one. Perhaps that was both Celestia’s and Pupa’s goal.

“Fine.” Cadance shuffled out from under Celestia’s wing and then rolled off her bed. Walking over to her closet, she continued, “I’ll leave after lunch.”

The sooner she left, the sooner she got back, no doubt. Somehow I got the feeling Cadance didn’t really understand the word ‘vacation’ at the moment.

As Pupa was halfway to her hooves, likely to head over to Cadance, Celestia said, “If I may have a word with you in private, Princess.” A silence fell for a moment, broken only by the sound of Cadance’s door unlocking. “Forgive me. Princess Pupa, if you would be so kind.”

Pupa took a short look back toward Cadance, who had already returned to packing. Sighing, she nodded, a burst of green fire changing her appearance back to mine.

After leaving and after Celestia and Pupa were out of earshot of the guards stationed in front of Cadance’s room, Celestia, with her usual calm voice, said, “I realize the two of us possess conflicting priorities in this, but I beg of you, if you have any means of contacting Twilight Sparkle, please avail yourself of it.”

Much to her credit, Pupa didn’t miss a step as she walked. I didn’t think I’d ever even heard of Celestia asking a pony for a personal favor, let alone beg – aside from what she’d indirectly asked Trixie to do to Luna.

“Princess Celestia, I’ve told both you and Cadance before that I don’t know where Twilight is or how to reach her. For all I know, she could have flared and teleported herself to the moon.”

I buried my face in my hooves, screaming wordlessly at Pupa.

Pupa turned her head to the side, finding Celestia a half-step behind her now. After a short laugh, she added, “It was just a joke, Princess. If I were to guess, I would assume Twilight is in Zebrica. A unicorn wouldn’t stand out too much there, and it’s rather far from Equestria.”

“Yes,” Celestia began, falling back into step, “that was my first thought as well. I cannot say I know Twilight Sparkle as well as you or my niece, but I believe I understand the manner in which she thinks very well. I was reluctant to break several ancient treaties to search for her, but I fear my niece may do something foolish if she is not found alive and well.”

“Several?” Pupa asked.

“During the year 561 in the old calender, the Alicorn Accord was brought into effect. In essence, it said I would not use my magic to interfere with other nations, even for something as simple and non-threatening as finding a stray Equestrian.”

Snickering, Pupa said, “One might observe that the sun and moon technically interfere with other nations.”

Pupa looked up to see a small smirk on Celestia’s face.

“Yes, well, in the worst, Equestria could manage fighting the entire world, but diplomacy and friendship are ever our first choices. Another unofficial agreement was made before I even ascended to the throne with the changelings.”

Out of the corner of Pupa’s vision, I could see Celestia was watching Pupa closely.

“Sorry, I’m not familiar with that.”

“Really?” I asked.

“It’s entirely possible we never recorded it, or perhaps it was only written in a diary kept by an ancient queen, or something similar,” Chrysalis offered. “If she’s not simply lying, that would be long before the world had recovered from Discord. Paper would have been a rare commodity worth its weight in gold, let alone ink.”

“The changelings asked to be left alone and forgotten,” Celestia said, adopting a lecturing undertone, “and in return, they would cease abducting ponies to drain their love, among other concessions.”

“Do you really do that?” I asked.

Pupa immediately replied, “Not often, and not at all since we met you.”

Well at least she was being honest about it.

“It’s not a sustainable source of food without drawing undue attention,” Chrysalis added. “Except in emergencies, the benefits are not commensurate with the costs.”

Well at least she was being practical about it.

“I do not ask if your species has broken our agreement” – Celestia’s voice somehow suddenly grew colder, yet still sounded warm and friendly – “but I would be very cross to discover it so now after allowing you to feed off the Alicorn of Love for so long.”

I could actually see Pupa’s vision shake as a shiver ran through her.

“We haven’t. Honestly. I swear we haven’t. I don’t even know how to make a cocoon.”

Even I gulped as the oppressive atmosphere Celestia had exuded lifted.

“My apologies, I was remembering a darker age.” A short silence fell before Celestia continued. “While I have been content to ignore you, to treat you as merely another friend of Cadance’s, I cannot do so any longer. I must find Twilight Sparkle if she is still alive, if for no more than an exchange of letters, and I can no longer overlook your connection with her.”

Pupa sighed. “Princess Celestia, I already said I don’t–”

“I am trying,” Celestia interrupted, each word slow and deliberate, “not to be upset with you, but you are making it difficult. I would not believe for even an instant that two mares as meticulous as yourself and Twilight Sparkle would not have an emergency means of communication in place.”

Celestia stopped there; her meaning was beyond clear, and no further words needed to be said.

After her first unsuccessful attempt to speak, Pupa stammered, “I – I can – I’ll – please don’t tell Cadance.”

“Of course. So long as Cadance is removed from the downward spiral she has entered, I shall not say a word.”

Celestia stopped walking just outside a door with two guards in front of it that looked awfully familiar, but there was no way the route she and Pupa had taken through the castle could have brought them there. As she opened the door, she spoke just loud enough to be heard inside the room, but quiet enough to seem like the room’s occupant would be eavesdropping if she overheard it.

“I hope that will be a good Hearth’s Warming present, but I fear I am too old to make such judgments these days.”

“That sounds an awful lot like a deadline,” I said, “with emphasis on the dead.”

Chrysalis gave a short huff, likely not repeating what I’d just said.

Once the door had opened far enough, Pupa looked inside to find Cadance talking with Shining. Well, talking probably wasn’t the right word; from the look of them, they were in a bit of a one-sided argument, briefly suspended at the opening of the door.

Okay, note to self: Celestia has some serious dimensional magic in place in Canterlot Castle. It had to be even easier to get lost in it than in Luminance Castle. The small part of me that was still a petty little filly felt vindicated for all those times I’d gotten lost in the castle, but the rest of me was glad I discovered that before we tried to storm the castle to find Celestia in the final battle. That could have potentially proved disastrous: not from a ‘permanently lost’ perspective, but from a ‘significant delay’ perspective.

“Anyway,” Celestia continued, not stepping back into Cadance’s room, “I have things I need to be getting back to.” Waving at Cadance and Shining, she added, “I hope you two have a wonderful vacation together.”

Just after the door closed, Shining asked, “Twily, what were you doing with the princess?”

“Oh, nothing important, Shining,” Pupa said. “She just wanted my advice about something for Trixie.”

“Really?” Shining asked, his skepticism obvious.

I sighed. It’d been too long since I’d had a chance to talk to Shining, even by proxy. This should have been a wonderful opportunity, but I just didn’t have the energy right now.

“I’m going to go start working on my alibi,” I said.

Just before teleporting myself back to my room, Chrysalis chuckled and broke my connection to the hive mind. “Remember how I said your scheme required too many things to go right?”

“Yes,” I said through gritted teeth. “And?”

“Oh, nothing. I had merely remembered the thought again and found it funny.”

I had to admit there was a certain touch of irony that the one pony who was guaranteed to jump ship if it went down was the doing the most to keep it afloat. Chrysalis had saved my flank an embarrassing number of times already.

“Th–” I sighed, waiting for my frustration to settle down. It would be silly to say this while frustrated normally, and utterly pointless to an emotivore. “Thank you for you help, Chrysalis. And for Pupa’s as well.”

Chrysalis smirked in that special way that said I’d completely missed the point.

Oh. “I’ll keep my alibi simple and devoid of information.”

“Please do,” Chrysalis said, not dropping the smirk.

“What?” I asked. “I’m tired, and I’m in trouble, and I’m not in the mood to riddle you out. What do you want?”

Chrysalis’s smile turned into a frown, and she said, “Nevermind. You are apparently too inexperienced to understand. Which brings me to my next point. You clearly need a tutor beyond Princess Luna to help you learn how to plot properly.”

“Huh?” That was far afield of what I’d have expected Chrysalis to say. “You want to teach me?”

“Yes, I might as well at this point. You may consider it an investment, if you wish.”

“An investment?”

“So that I have less danger in the future to defuse,” Chrysalis clarified.

I facehoofed before I even realized it.

“I don’t know how much time I can free up, but I’ll think about it, I guess.”

It was a good opportunity if Chrysalis was actually willing to offer me some pointers. And my pride would survive getting advice from somepony who was literally born and raised to outwit ponies by a hundred generations of changelings who had done the same.

Still, I had more important things to do right now. I needed to get ready to finally talk to Cadance again for the first time in forever.

Nothing further of interest to report.

[Winter 37, 995 – Day 647]

Well, today was the day I gave Cadance her ‘Hearth’s Warming present’. As usual, Pupa entered the castle disguised as me with a now fake inhibitor ring on her horn.

“Now isn’t really the best time, Pupa,” Cadance said the moment the door to her office closed. “What is it?”

“Have I ever mentioned–” Pupa cut herself off abruptly. Nopony had actually interrupted her, but it was part of the act.

Looking back up from her paperwork, Cadance asked, “Mentioned what? Pupa? Hello?”

Pupa sighed dramatically. “How willing are you to keep secrets from Princess Celestia?”

“Huh?” Cadance’s surprise at the question was written all over her face. “I mean, I certainly haven’t told her everything I’ve done with Shining–”

“No,” interrupted Pupa, “I meant important secrets.”

“Hey!”

Pupa and I both stifled a laugh together. It was almost cute that Cadance thought Celestia wouldn’t have already guessed, let alone her skewed sense of what qualified as an important secret.

After futilely waiting for an apology or something, Cadance finally said, “I don’t know. What kind of secret?”

“I have a changeling from another hive waiting with a member of my hive that wants to speak with you, but only on the express condition that not so much as a single word of your conversation or its circumstances reaches Princess Celestia.”

“I…I don’t know.” Cadance replaced her quill in its vial, bitting her lip and wrinkling her brows. “I don’t really have much independent political power. Aunt Celestia would be the better pony to talk to for anything important.”

“Please don’t deflect the question, Cadance,” Pupa said. “This may be a one-time offer.”

After what Celestia had said to Pupa, certainly not. Cadance didn’t need to know that, though.

“You might want to prod her with something more obvious,” I suggested. “She doesn’t really know how to play this kind of game, after all.”

“If I might offer my opinion,” began Pupa, “I can’t see how having the conversation would be worse than not having it. I will personally vouch that no malice is intended by who is on the other end.”

Cadance took a painfully long time to consider that, and finally said, “I suppose… Would we have to fly anywhere?”

Pupa shook her head. “The person who wishes to speak with you is talking to a second changeling from the second hive and wishes to remain outside Equestria.”

“You know, I’ve been thinking about it, and technically, I think space counts as part of Equestria, or at least as part of the diarchy‘s property.”

Pupa rolled her eyes, sending my own vision spinning. “Sorry, Cadance” she said. “That was directed to the nitpicker waiting to speak with you.”

A sudden light entered into Cadance’s eyes, and she half-jumped, half-flew over the top of her desk, knocking over half a dozen stacks of paper and a mug of coffee.

“Yes, yes, I promise I won’t say anything! Is that Twilight? Where is she? Is she okay? How is she–”

A hoof to the mouth silenced Cadance.

“Cadance, I’m going to repeat everything Twilight says as she says it, and I will do the same in reverse for you. Please just speak as if you were speaking to her. I’ll try to get her expressions right, too, but that’s a little hard to do inter-hive.” Pupa removed her hoof and asked, “Ready?”

Cadance nodded immediately and with the same eagerness she had displayed earlier.

“Alright, let me just make a few tiny adjustments,” Pupa said as she transformed into a more perfect copy of myself. And by more perfect, I meant a far less idealized version than the one she had taken to using.

At the same time, Chrysalis kicked me out of the hive mind and transformed herself into a copy of Cadance. We didn’t strictly speaking need to act out the half-truth we’d told Cadance, but hopefully, it would make it a bit more real for her.

“Hello, Ca–”

While I was probably the only pony on the Nebulous that didn’t feel awkward talking to Chrysalis mimicking another pony, even I found it a bit awkward for her to be hugging me with a vice-like grip. The fake tears weren’t helping, either.

At the very least, for what little it was worth, I’d established that the real Cadance had a stronger grip than Chrysalis. Or perhaps it was just because I was older and bigger now that Chrysalis felt like the weaker of the two. Either way, the common problem wasn’t going away.

“Cadance. Can’t breath.”

I tried squirming out of the bear hug, but that only seemed to make Cadance hold on stronger. I teleported out instead, Pupa presumably mirroring my spell as best she could, and placed myself a few hooves away from Cadance. It was hard, but I managed not to cough or wheeze afterward.

“Twilight, wait! Please don’t leave!”

After a few deep breaths to stretch out my barrel, I said, “I’m not going anywhere, Cadance. Just try not to kill me with love.”

“I – I’ll try.” Cadance summoned a handkerchief and blew her nose. “It’s really you, right? This isn’t some trick Auntie set up?”

“Feel free to ask me about something obscure. Pupa knows a lot about my life, but not everything.”

“What? Oh. Um… What can Shiny never beat you at?”

That got a small laugh out of me. “When I taught Pupa poker, I never imagined she’d be able to keep my record intact. I figured Shining would win from sheer dumb luck eventually. Anyway, that’s not a good enough question. Try to think of something that would have no effect on how I’d interact with other ponies.”

“Um… Oh, I know! What amazingly cute costume did I try to get you to wear on Nightmare Night?”

I groaned, recalling that monstrous abomination. “You tried to put me in a frilly pink and yellow dress that was not cute – urk!”

Cadance pulled me into another bone-crushing hug, and I teleported out immediately instead of waiting for my lungs to complain again. This time, though, I returned the hug immediately after at a much more bearable level.

“I’ve missed you, too, Cadance, but you still need to learn how to control that ridiculous earth pony strength you have.”

After a few failed attempts at speech, Cadance managed, “I’m working on it.”

Some unknowable time later, we finally broke apart.

“I’d suggest we go flying while we talk like we used to,” I began, “but I don’t think the changeling I’m with could support my weight.”

“Twilight, please come home. We can work something out. I promise. Just please, please come home.”

I sighed. I hadn’t honestly expected Cadance to start this conversation with anything else, but I had hoped.

“Sorry. I really, really am sorry, but no. I can’t come home.”

“Why not?” Cadance asked, her voice cracking. “I – I know I haven’t always – always been able to help you, but I promise I will this time. Please give me another chance.”

“Please don’t, Cadance. I…” This was a lot harder than I thought it’d be. “You haven’t always been the best big sister, but I haven’t been the perfect little sister, either.”

Even now, that managed to get a strong enough blush out of Cadance for me to see it through her pink coat.

“You – you heard about that?”

I nodded. “I’m sorry I didn’t realize sooner. I might have done things differently if I’d known, but I’ve burned too many bridges. I can’t undo some of the things I’ve done since we last saw each other.”

“Twilight, I’m a princess of Equestria. I can undo anything for you!”

“Even Celestia’s decisions?”

Even before I’d finished my question, Cadance winced.

“She had a reason to hold that in pub–”

I titled my head to the side and raised an eyebrow.

In a tiny voice, Cadance asked, “Pupa told you about that, too? Auntie promised she wouldn’t do it.”

Sighing, I tried to give Cadance a reassuring smile. “I’m sorry, but I can’t believe everything about her that you do. It’s… Even if she never found out about this conversation–”

In a rare flash of insight, Cadance said, “Twilight, you didn’t!”

“Cadance, please understand. I’m trying really hard not to be found. I’m just…borrowing two changelings so that I can’t be tracked. I won’t hurt them, and they’re only losing an hour or two of their day. Geases don’t inherently cause any harm.”

“Ugh.” Facehoofing, Cadance continued, “You’ve given Auntie all the legal excuse she needs to ignore my opinion.”

“Well, I won’t tell if you won’t. You did promise not to, after all.”

“I – I suppose I did.”

“Besides,” I said, picking up where I’d left off before Cadance had interrupted, “Celesta already could charge me with treason any time she felt like it.”

In no time at all, Cadance’s hoof was on her face again. “What did you do?”

Avoiding Cadance’s eyes, I said, “It might be possible that somepony ransacked the old castle for any notes Celestia might have left behind about Flares, and it might be possible that somepony made off with a few other select possessions of both diarchs.”

“Twilight!”

“To be fair, I’m not sure if it qualifies as treason. It might just be grand larceny.”

“That’s not any better!” Cadance screeched.

I faked a cough and then rather unsubtly changed the conversation. “Anyway, I found a bunch of Princess Luna’s writings, too, including a couple diaries. If – if the offer is still good later, I think I’d be willing to let her teach me.”

Cadance opened her mouth, but no words came out. She actually looked a bit hurt, probably since from her perspective she thought I thought a madmare was good enough to teach me but not her or whatever plan she might come up with for me.

“That is assuming I’m not permanently broken or dead by then,” I added, “but I’ve been doing alright so far, I think.”

“I… I see…” Cadance slumped to the ground, her eyes losing that spark of hope she’d had before. If I were to guess, I’d say she just realized there was no way she was going to convince me to come home. “Have – have you been eating well?”

I nodded. That much I could at least reassure Cadance of.

“I made some friends like you always kept bugging me to, and they’ve been making sure I eat. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve kind of gotten a little pudgy.”

“You did feel softer than I remembered.” Cadance managed a weak smile.

“And I’ve made sure Spike’s getting fed, too. He’s a lot easier and cheaper to feed when I can just make gemstones instead of having to buy them. Parenting is hard, but I think I’m doing alright there. I don’t know how effective it is as a measure of success, but his familial love for me is changeling approved.”

Cadance gasped, her eyes going wide. “I completely forgot about Spike! I didn’t even – I mean, I was so busy with you, and there used to be a nanny, and – I’m a terrible pony, aren’t I?”

“Maybe a bit,” I said, stepping forward to nuzzle Cadance.

“Thanks…”

“But you’re mostly a distracted one that I hurt terribly first. If anypony here should feel bad and should be asking for apologies, it’s me.”

“Twilight, you don’t have to–”

“I’m sorry I left without telling anypony,” I interrupted. “I’m sorry I didn’t realize how much it would hurt you in particular to find out I’d left. And most of all, I’m sorry for the trick Pupa and I played on you on Hearth’s Warming. I didn’t realize until later how you would take that and why.”

Cadance didn’t need any reminding to keep her hug light this time. “I don’t care about any of that. I just want you back safe and sound. I can’t lose you.” Mumbling, she added, “I can’t lose another sister.”

Ignoring that last part – whoever Cadance had been referring to – I said, “I’m sorry about that, too. And I’m sorry you had to keep Pupa a secret from everypony, but I really appreciate it.”

“Would you at least visit? Or let me visit you? In secret? Please?”

“No,” I finally said after a long, drawn out silence. “I – just talking is hard enough.” I was crying for real now, but not as badly as Cadance already had. “And you’d be easy for Celestia to track.”

“Could we at least talk? Or send letters, if you won’t do that?”

I’d known that question was coming, and I’d thought long and hard about it. I’d even asked Chrysalis for advice after Luna had said it was my decision to make.

On the cold and calculating side, even though Celestia already knew this conversation would be happening on a theoretical level, if we made this a regular thing, we might draw too much of her attention. It was also possible that I’d say something that gave away our plan which Chrysalis wouldn’t catch in time to not repeat, although that was very unlikely.

But at the same time, Cadance was a key piece in this struggle, and if we could so much as tempt her to indecisive inaction at the moment of truth, the risk would be worth it. And on an emotional level, I did really, really miss Cadance, but I couldn’t let that affect my judgment.

“We could talk once in a while,” I answered, “but only if you really promise not to leak anything to anypony. Not Celestia, or Shining, or Mom, or Dad, or even Twinkleshine, or Trixie. Nopony.”

“I promise,” Cadance said without even a single second of hesitation. “But I’m still going to try to convince you to come home.”

Smiling, I said, “I suppose that’s fair.”

“So what now?” Cadance asked. “Are you leaving? Why did you even contact me and Pupa? Are you in trouble?”

“Um, in the order you asked, no, I was a bit homesick, and no. I just wanted to find out how everypony was doing, but then Pupa told me about how you’d found out I was gone and about how you’ve been acting, and what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t leave my big sister like that.”

That brought a warm smile to Cadance’s face. “That’s going to take some getting used to.”

“I was under the impression you’d already married my brother, Sis.”

With a fierce blush, Cadance asked, “How long have you known?”

“Since I hit puberty, so about three years now. It’s kind of obvious.”

“Ah. Well. Yeah. I mean, he’s pretty hunky. And sweet. And caring. And–”

I interrupted with a laugh. “Yes, I know my brother is awesome. Why do you think he’s my BBBFF? Anyway, Pupa was a little vague on the details. Why don’t you fill me in on what’s been going on with our family?”

Cadance blushed extra hard at the word ‘our’.

Giggling nervously, Cadance said, “Well, a couple weeks ago, Celestia banished me to a tropical paradise.”

Nothing further of interest to report.

[Fall 22, 996 – Day 932]

I had an interesting conversation with Twinkleshine today. Well, interesting isn’t the right word. It was an important conversation for the two of us. Even if she was mostly kind of okay with sharing me with Luna at this point, we did have other issues to work out – in this particular case, the difference in our abilities.

Honestly, I imagine this is something most lovers have to work through at some level. An extreme example would be when a university professor gets together with a high school drop out. Sometimes, and no offense if you’re reading this Twinkleshine, sometimes I feel like that university professor, vainly trying to get intelligent conversation out of my lover.

Not that such pairings are unworkable or fundamentally bad, but it can certainly be a source of tension. With Luna, she has such a ridiculously larger amount of knowledge and experience that I don’t notice it, but Twinkleshine and I are close enough that I sometimes lose my patience with her.

And really, none of this is fair to Twinkleshine. She is smart. She did get into the best magic school in Equestria, after all. She just isn’t as smart as I am, which is no fault of her own.

Anyway, this conversation was mostly about our magical power – and some trust issues – not about who was given more opportunities to learn. I don’t know how much we actually resolved, but the first step is always identifying the issue. The two of us were in the middle of an exam of sorts…

I took a good, long look at the two Twinkleshines standing in front of me. They looked identical; I’d made several circles, and I couldn’t tell which one was the illusion and which one was real. Of course, what good was an illusion if it couldn’t stand up to intense scrutiny?

I walked around to the left Twinkleshine’s side and gave her a gentle shove on the shoulder. Teleporting to the other side, I then quickly did the same to the right Twinkleshine in the opposite direction before she had time to react. I was pleasantly surprised when this Twinkleshine reacted normally as well. She usually found it difficult to create proper tactile feedback on her illusions. Still, I had a sneaking suspicion the one on the right was the fake. Something about her just seemed off.

“I watched you form the spell earlier, and you did a good job as usual,” I said. “Better than the last time I tested you, actually. I couldn’t have done better myself”

“Really?” the left Twinkleshine asked.

I teleported directly in front of the left one and watched her reaction carefully. She reared back a little in surprise, but no doubt she’d expected the teleport. Still, Twinkleshine had a statistical tendency to speak with the real her when reacting to news, good or bad, thus increasing my suspicion that the left one was the real Twinkleshine. Still, it wouldn’t be fair to use outside statistics against her at this stage of her education.

A few steps back, just far enough to get a good look at both of them, and I was ready for the next test. Without any warning, I prodded both Twinkleshines in the cutie mark with a bit of telekinesis. I felt, or rather I didn’t feel the right one meet any immediate resistance for a fraction of a second.

It was a valiant effort, but Twinkleshine’s magic hadn’t fought mine quickly enough to simulate a real object. The left one, then, truly was the real Twinkleshine. Blushing and looking at the ground, Twinkleshine didn’t look up until after I’d mastered the tiny smirk that crept up onto my face.

Technically, Twinkleshine had already failed the test, since I’d managed to figure out which one was the illusion, but I wasn’t going to call the exam yet. I had a time limit to figure out which one was real, and I fully intended to see if Twinkleshine could hold this spell in place for the entire duration. This high level of an illusion was fairly taxing on Twinkleshine’s magical reserves.

I wasted the next five minutes with mostly useless tests, one of which managed to confirm once more that the left Twinkleshine was the real one. By this point, the magical strain was clearly evident on both Twinkleshines’ faces. It was a bit mean spirited, but I was going to force her to burn up even more magic.

I teleported myself to the greenhouse lake and froze a two pony long, half-pony wide and tall prism of water into ice. With a quick teleport back, I gently placed the ice on top of the the real and fake Twinkleshine.

“Oh, come on,” the illusion said, “that’s not fair!”

Despite her complaint, the ice didn’t fall – not immediately, anyway. There were three minutes left on the clock when the block of ice finally fell through the right Twinkleshine and promptly slid off the left one. The illusion broke as Twinkleshine stomped her forehoof in frustration.

“Ponyfeathers!”

“The right one was the fake,” I concluded.

“No duh, Twilight!”

“Well, better luck next time, I suppose. To be fair, you did a wonderful job. You’re getting very good with your illusions. It’s getting quite difficult to nitpick them.”

Twinkleshine let out a frustrated scream. “Even Princess Celestia’s school’s exams aren’t this difficult!”

“Of course they’re not. They’re designed to make sure you learn, not to make sure you excel.”

A twitch ran through one of Twinkleshine’s eyes. “Are you failing me on purpose?”

“Even if I were, it’s not like I’m sending you back a grade or not teaching you new material.”

“Dear Celestia, you are! You are doing this on purpose! I haven’t passed one of your exams in a year!” Twinkleshine gasped. “This isn’t one of your exams, is it? You’re not giving me tests Princess Luna expects you to pass, are you?”

There was no nice way to say, ‘No, this was the kind of stuff I could do when I was seven,’ so I answered a slightly different question instead.

“No, I don’t have exams. I used to have a…thing about them, so Luna abandoned the concept almost entirely.”

Honestly, I still had a thing with exams, but it was nowhere near as bad as it used to be. It was completely irrational to be so worked up over something so meaningless. Exams were only there to see if a pony had already learned what she was supposed to, which I always had; the actual grade didn’t matter in the slightest. Failing was only bad in normal schools because it was too time consuming to tailor difficulty to each individual student.

And yet, knowing all that, I still got twitchy. Sigh…

“Well, good for you,” Twinkleshine huffed.

This is were I would normally make the sarcastic suggestion that Twinkleshine could just quit; she certainly had enough knowledge to be considered a college drop out. Unfortunately, right now, Twinkleshine might take that suggestion seriously.

“Twinkleshine, I’ve never given you a test or a lesson I didn’t know you could complete.”

“How on Equus would you expect me to hold that slab of ice up for ten minutes straight!” Twinkleshine shrieked. She kicked the ice with a hoof far too hard and cried out in pain. Fortunately, I didn’t see any cracks on her hoof, so she should be fine.

“I didn’t actually.” I earned a glare for my honesty. “I’d already figured out the right one was the illusion. I just wanted to see how much your magic has grown in raw strength.”

Twinkleshine winced as she gently put her hoof back on the floor. I could tell she barely put any weight on it as she said, “Congratulations, then. You’ve found out that you’re still a thousand times more magical than me.”

It only took her a moment before Twinkleshine’s face crumbled. “Twilight, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean – I know being a Flare isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.”

“Heh. No, don’t worry about it. I’m not so vain that I think my problems are proportionally worse than my gifts compared to the average pony. If I were just a regular old pony back on Equus, I’m sure I’d want all the magical power of a Flare and the crazy lives we lead.”

I smiled, and Twinkleshine smiled back – for a little while.

“I don’t know,” Twinkleshine began. “I think I get enough crazy just from being near you, but… I feel… Even though they’re not Flares, Dash, Pinkie, Chamomile, and Chrysalis are all super magical and can do all sorts of amazing things.”

Especially Dash and Pinkie Pie. Dash was probably as close to a Flare as a pony could get without actually being one, and Pinkie Pie…was Pinkie Pie.

“I wish I could at least be like them.”

“You are,” I said, putting a hoof on Twinkleshine’s shoulder. “You may not have as much magic, but you’re smarter than all – well, Chrysalis might – sorry, I–”

Twinkleshine giggled.

“Okay, that might not have been the greatest pep talk ever…”

“It’s okay. You’re so cute when you do this.”

I fought off the urge to facehoof. “So you’re saying you like it when I’m insensitive?”

“Well, it’s more about how you get slightly flustered and try your best to hide it.”

“Ah.” I was pretty sure my blush was faint enough for my coat to hide it completely. “I think I need to stop hanging out with you if you’re beginning to notice my tells.”

Twinkleshine and I shared a smile, and then I took a deep breath before I said, “In all seriousness, Twinkleshine, I never set you up to fail. I – telling you why your tests are so hard could have a negative influence on your education. Knowing that, do you want me to?”

“Yes,” Twinkleshine replied immediately.

I gave her a glare, silently telling her to think before deciding.

Twinkleshine frowned, but she did listen to me. Thirty seconds or so later, she nodded, again saying, “Yes.”

“Alright,” I said, sighing. “I couldn’t care less whether or not you pass any of the tests I give you. I’m explicitly designing them so that there’s a non-trivial chance of you failing.”

“So you are setting me up to fail!” Twinkleshine stomped her bad hoof and soon found herself whimpering quietly.

“No, not at all, Twinkleshine. Answer me honestly. Do you think you ever had a chance of failing an exam back at Celestia’s school?” Just before Twinkleshine was almost certainly going to say, ‘Yes,’ I added, “After I started tutoring you.”

“Of course.”

I stared wordlessly at Twinkleshine.

“It’s true! I mean, they weren’t easy.”

I kept waiting for Twinkleshine to continue.

“That is, well, I had to try on all of them…”

“In other words, no,” I finished for Twinkleshine. Only getting a low groan in response, I added, “Celestia’s school is probably the best school – public or private – in Equestria, but it still has to process a lot of students. Their tests are designed to test a specific pony’s magic, but they all have the same difficulty level, and tests do get reused. They’re given to check if you’ve reached some minimum threshold of magical proficiency. They might be difficult, but they’re not challenging.”

Twinkleshine’s eyes widened ever so slightly, shining with the light of realization.

“I only have two students, both of whom I know quite well. I give tests to make sure I am staying in touch with you, not to make sure you’re staying in touch with the lessons. If you fail disastrously, I thought you were further ahead than you were, and if you succeed with minimal effort, you were further ahead than I thought. I’m sure you remember the disastrous first test I gave you?”

Frowning, Twinkleshine said, “It’s hard to forget an exam you failed in less than a second.”

“Right… Sorry again about that. Anyway, now that you know the secret, I can only trust that you actually know when you’re doing your best, rather than tricking your best out of you with cheap psychological tricks like tests.”

Twinkleshine opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out. I waited as Twinkleshine took on a contemplative look. Eventually, she said, “So what now?”

“You mean about your education?”

Twinkleshine nodded.

“We have a few options. As I said, I can simply trust that you’re truly doing your best, but I find that ponies tend not to without the proper motivation, even myself.”

“You don’t sound too confident about that, Twilight. What else is there?”

“Well, option two is pretty simple. I could try to find new ways to motivate you. I’m sure I could come up with something if I really thought about it.”

“Er…” Twinkleshine’s eyes flicked away from mine when they met. “Have you been digging through my films lately?”

I cocked my head to the side. “No, why?”

“Um… No reason. But maybe we could pick another option?”

“I guess? Another option, probably the best option, actually, is we could just pretend this conversation never happened. You could write a note to yourself, and then I could erase your memory of the past five minutes or so.”

Eyes widening, Twinkleshine stumbled over her words as she said, “I take it back. Option two is actually wonderful. Let’s go back to that.”

Sigh. I probably shouldn’t have even bothered to mention the sensible option. It wasn’t like memory wiping hurt, and it would be for a morally unambiguous cause this time, but I could certainly understand the strong desire to never forget anything – outside of the natural forgetting process for useless information.

“If you insist,” I said. “I’ll start thinking about the problem. However, do you have any ideas you’d like to share right now? Anything you think might work as a carrot and stick, so to speak?”

“Well… There’s… If…”

“If…what?”

“It’s – it’s not so much motivation…” Twinkleshine was staring directly at the floor and rubbing a foreleg with her opposite hoof. “I was wondering if…”

“If I could drop you in the lake?”

“What? No! I was wondering if you could just magic me more magical,” Twinkleshine said without hesitation, rising to the bait. “I mean, back when we were on Equus and I was reading about Flares, there were a lot of theories about how ponies become Flares, like the stars need to be aligned just right, or a terrible dark ritual is performed during a full moon soon after a pony is born, or that it’s a gift given in secret by Princess Celestia, or–”

“Stop.” I held a hoof up against Twinkleshine’s mouth. “For future reference, you can just ask me about this stuff. I really don’t mind. If I really don’t want to talk about something you ask about, I’ll say so after a momentary flinch of pain which I’d soon forget. The cost of asking is far less than the cost of not asking, understand?”

Twinkleshine nodded, and I said, “Great.” I hoped it stuck this time; it certainly wasn’t the first time I’d told her to be frank with me. “Now, what was it that you actually wanted to ask?”

“Is – is there anyway you can use your magic to make me stronger? Like you or the others?”

“N – well…no, not right now.”

After I ascended, the answer was probably yes, since there was apparently some sort of blessing thing I could give, but whether that counted as making Twinkleshine more magical was debatable, since it would still fundamentally be my magic, not hers.

Eyes sparkling, Twinkleshine asked, “So you can? Was one of those theories about Flares actually true?”

“Pft. No. Those theories were all ridiculous. Nopony really knows how ponies become Flares; it just sort of happens. And Flares don’t even know they’re Flares until their first flare, although they might suspect. There’s just not enough of us to gather meaningful data. I’m only the third Flare in the last one-hundred years, and even that is extremely rare. There’s usually only one, maybe two.”

“Wait. Are there still other Flares in Equestria? Couldn’t…”

I sighed and finished the question for Twinkleshine. “Couldn’t they have taught me instead of having Celestia suppress my magic?”

“Yeah,” Twinkleshine said in a small squeak.

“The flare before me, Sunset Shimmer, is missing, presumed dead. The flare before her, General Bronze, died in–”

“He was a flare?” Twinkleshine shouted. “The history books never said anything about that at all. Just that he was Princess Celestia’s… Oh.”

I grit my teeth for a moment before speaking calmly once more. “Celestia taught every Flare except me. I wouldn’t give up Luna for the world, but… Never mind. That I don’t want to talk about.”

“I – I understand,” Twinkleshine said, glancing away. “So, um, back to my original question. I’d rather not go through any…you know, just to be stronger.” I raised an eyebrow, and she clarified, “You know, dark rituals. I mean, there’s…nothing wrong with you using dark magic, but I don’t really…you know.”

“Twinkleshine, I’m going to crusade forever that dark magic isn’t inherently evil. Magic is magic. But no, that’s not what I had in mind. Dark magic is just efficacious and efficient; it doesn’t make you more magical. I can’t really explain my idea right now, but in four to five years, I could give you a real answer.”

“Huh? Okay, I guess, but why that specific – it’s Princess Luna, isn’t it? Can she do some weird alicorn thing to me?”

“Yes, actually, but that’s also not what I had in mind. It was a very good guess, though.”

“Well, what do you have in mind, then?”

“That,” I began with a smirk, knowing this was going to frustrate Twinkleshine endlessly, “is a state secret.”

“What? Twilight, that’s not an answer!”

I just shrugged. “Anyway, I need to go figure out how to continue teaching you. I’ll get back to you later.”

“Huh? Wait. Twilight, come back here.” Twinkleshine cantered after me.

Nothing further of interest to report.

Author's Note

In case anyone has forgotten, the new year starts on Summer 51 with the Summer Sun Celebration.

Prereader – Starlight Nova

Chapter Twenty One - The Long Journey - Part Two

[Summer 9, 996 – Day 1219]

There was no journal entry for yesterday, but we didn’t crash, or explode, or anything. My sixteenth birthday party was pretty exhausting in and of itself, and Twinkleshine gave me a particularly amazing, but tiring, gift for it after everypony else had fallen asleep.

Anyway, I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t get much done today or even in the morning with Luna; my thoughts kept straying back to last night. Fortunately, she didn’t object to an easy night of talking and gossiping instead of lessons.

I’d bet Twinkleshine had the same problem as me. She’d barely said two words to me today, and she was way too embarrassed to look me in the eyes. That was something we were going to have to work on.

While I’m on the topic, I’m not looking forward to my next conversation with Cadance. There’s no doubt that she’ll somehow know I’ve slept with somepony, and she’s not going to stop pestering me until she gets every last detail.

It’s not that I really mind talking about it, but Cadance can get a little…obsessive about this kind of stuff. I wish I could give her the same treatment in return, but I don’t actually want to hear about what she’s getting up to with my brother, as much as I tease her about it.

As far as other events go, the only other notable thing that happened is Pinkie Pie roped me into preparations for Spike’s birthday party a couple weeks early this year. And she told me I couldn’t give him a book as a present this time, which is completely ridiculous! I mean, does she know how much effort it takes me to find the time to write a book!

Bah. I guess I can come up with something else and give him the story I wrote as a Hearth’s Warming present instead. Sigh…

Nothing further of interest to report.

[Fall 97, 997 – Day 1407]

Today has been another reminder of how much I simultaneously hate and respect Dash. She’s like a…an animal, working purely off of instinct. If she’d just sit down with a book once in a while, she’d probably be the best pegasus spell caster that ever lived.

*sigh*

I’m just getting myself worked up over nothing. She’s annoying at ti – often, but there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with her. She’s frustrating but fascinating? Yes, I think that’s a better way to put it. I’d say I should ask her to help me learn pegasus magic in a couple years, but her learning style – and presumably her teaching style, if she can even teach – is more or less incompatible with mine.

Oh, and if you’re reading this Fluttershy, no offense meant about the animals and instincts thing. Although maybe that’s why you like her so much.

*snerk*

Since writing doesn’t preserve my tone of voice, I should probably mention that I’m only joking. Well, mostly.

Anyway, as usual, my day started off in the library.

“Hey, Twi!” Dash shouted. “I need your–”

It was an automatic response at this point. I glued Dash to the floor with my magic, ensuring that she didn’t knock over any bookshelves, scatter any piles of paper, or crash into me when she went flying around. I swore that all of those past incidents had to have been malicious despite Dash’s claims to the contrary. She was too good of a flier.

Grunting first as she slammed to the floor, Dash said, “You really need to stop doing that Twi; you put a crack into my left forehoof last time.”

And maybe you should stop flying in the library. That didn’t use to be rule number one, but it’d quickly risen up through the ranks over the years faster than even my brother.

“I already apologized for that, Dash. My magic just flared a little that time, and besides, both Fluttershy and I looked at your hoof, and we both agreed it was just superficial damage that you could have gotten from jamming it in a door. And I researched how to fix it for you anyway when it would have simply grown out in a couple days.”

“So what’s your point?”

Sighing in exasperation, I felt like yelling at Dash to not fly in the library, but the message never stuck no matter how I tried asking. Even Fluttershy couldn’t get Dash to remember for more than five minutes.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“Oh, right. I need you to cast a lightning proofing spell on me.”

After a brief pause, I sighed, placed a bookmark, and shut my book. Turning on my chair to look Dash straight in the eyes, I asked, “And just why do you need a lightning shield?” She had the magic to survive unharmed just about any sane voltage put into a lightning bolt. Anything more might start melting holes in my ship.

“Well, I was like, ‘Chamomile is the head of the night guard, right?’”

For now, at least. I still wasn’t sure if I wanted to poach her as a knight or not. She was certainly nice, and helpful, and a solid fighter with an excellent knowledge of chemistry, but… Well, those were all excellent reasons to make her my knight, but I was still uncomfortable with the idea.

“So she must be good at fighting,” Dash continued. “I asked her to show me her moves, but she said that unless I wanted to die, get really hurt, or get really, really sick, she couldn’t.”

Who would have guessed the assassin specialized in killing, nearly killing, and crippling injury? What a surprise.

“But I kept the pressure up and asked her again anyway, and she told me about how she can shoot lightning at ponies.”

“No,” I interrupted. “You’re not doing that inside my ship.”

“Oh, come on, Twi,” whined Dash. “You’ve got that heavy duty room separated from the rest of the ship that we never use.”

I facehoofed. I just couldn’t help it. “Dash, that’s the room I go to when I’m about to kill everypony with a flare. It’s not a playground.”

“Come on.”

“No.”

“Let us use it.”

“No,” I said, deliberately turning away from Dash and reopening my book.

“Why not?”

“It’s complicated. It’s not a nice place to be.”

“Chamomile and I are tougher than you.”

“Physically.”

“Come ooooon.”

I slammed my head into my book, barely missing another pile of books with my horn.

After a very brief blessed silence, Dash said, “Please?” She shortly followed it with, “You can join us,” nudging me with a knee.

“How long are you going to keep this up?”

“‘Till I get bored.”

Which could be a very long time when it came to shooting lightning at ponies. I hadn’t forgotten how long Dash had pestered me to drink my first, and only, glass of alcohol. Decreasing my IQ was the exact opposite of what I wanted, and I’d almost destroyed the ship in the process.

Fortunately, I was less stupid than Dash, and had Twinkleshine on hoof after making absolutely sure she could cast a sobering spell. In the future, when I taught other Flares, I’d have to remember that alcohol mixes very poorly with them.

Sigh. At least this time the whole ship wasn’t in any danger from Dash’s fun.

“Meet me on the bridge in an hour with Chamomile,” I said into my book. “I have to disable–”

I was cut off by a hug which knocked the wind out of me and pulled me up into the air.

“Thanks, Twi! You’re the best!”

Dash, Chamomile, and I appeared inside my isolation chamber with a small popping sound. I’d turned off most of the spells designed to suppress magical effects, so being here only made my horn tingle in protest a little bit.

The very first thing I did immediately after that was to teleport the magic suppressor stored nearby to me. I had no idea if it was still strong enough to stop one of my flares or if it would just break, but better safe than sorry. It would, at the very least, stall a flare long enough for me to turn the other protection spells back on.

Setting down a cushy chair I’d brought with us, I said, “You two have fun. I’ll make sure you don’t kill each other or melt my precious ship.”

Dash flew over and swept me up in her hooves as I tried to sit down. I had no idea how she managed to carry my weight without the slightest bit of strain, but the flight was as smooth as it was brief.

“Oh, come on, Twi,” Dash said, setting me down in-between herself and Chamomile, the latter of whom looked half-scandalized. After all, this was no way to treat a princess. “I know you can do this, too. I saw that time you used one of my thunderclouds to–”

Glaring at Dash, I magically whispered into her ear, “One more word, and I’ll ground you for an entire week.”

It was a bluff. Dash usually managed to overpower my grounding spells pretty quickly unless I went out of my way to keep them in effect – which I wouldn’t waste a week of my time on – but she didn’t need to know that.

“Not cool, Twi.” The two of us had a stare down until Dash randomly gave up and moved on. “You should totally join us, though. I want to see what a princess’s apprentice is made of.”

“Not happening,” I said. The next moment, I was relaxing comfortably in my chair after a teleport, a book already on its way to joining me. Unfortunately, Dash was back hovering over me a second later.

“Why not? You do this kind of stuff all the time with the princess, don’t you? It’s fun.”

“Dash,” I began, opening my book, “I spar with Luna in an environment where both of us have equal resources at our disposal, where I’m not responsible for making sure nopony dies, where I don’t have to constantly fear using too much magic” – that finally got a frown out of Dash – “and where I can let loose and have fun with it.”

To make my point final, I snuggled even further into my chair and wrapped a blanket around myself. “I won’t be joining you.”

I didn’t even bother to look up. Either Dash would leave or I’d put up a shield next time to keep her out.

I’d gotten through half a page when Dash finally mumbled, “Fine,” and flew away. “Alright, Chamomile, show me you moves!”

Sometime later, Chamomile called out, “Twilight! Is it okay if I damage some of the ground?”

Answering magically, I said, “Just try to avoid hitting me. It’s distracting.” I seriously doubted Chamomile could actually damage anything in here with lightning bolts, but it’d be easy enough to fix even if she did.

The thunderous crackle that soon followed left my ears ringing, having forgotten to protect them from the inevitable thunderclaps. How I wished I had pegasus magic already; I wouldn’t even need to worry about this kind of nonsense.

Mid-spell, a small pebble hit me on the horn out of nowhere. It didn’t really hurt, but it’d been annoying. After I fixed my ears and placed a protection spell on them, I glanced up at what was going on. There were still little sparks gently floating to the ground around Dash and Chamomile. Judging by the rocky ground below her – which Chamomile hadn’t damaged, just lightly scorched – Chamomile had just built up a massive charge and let is dissipate beneath her.

I watched Dash attempt to do the same but to far less impressive results. Her own scorch mark was barely even visible and nowhere near the size of Chamomile’s. The floor was rock a long way down for no other reason than to take abuse, but it was still rock. Dash wasn’t going to damage it with anything less than her best.

At least the cleanup would be easier than cleaning up after my flares. I cast a shield spell around myself in case of more wayward pebbles and returned to my book.

Pegasus-generated lightning had a tendency to go where its user intended it to go. This was as opposed to where it should go if it were to behave like normal electricity, namely nowhere interesting. The pegasus version of lightning was inherently magical until it hit something, in laypony terms.

And by hit something, I meant until it got close enough to something that it thought it’d had its fun ionizing air and wouldn’t it be a lark if it discharged into whatever caught it’s fancy. Books were pretty eye-catching, as were ponies reading them.

“Princess!” Chamomile shouted, reverting to Old Equestrian in her panic. Even with her being a lunar pegasi, the beating of her wings was easy to hear.

I just stared awkwardly in silence. My mane, and tail, and coat, and eyelashes, and nasal hairs all felt a little stiff, and I was pretty sure my book was emitting a small cloud of black smoke. But my chair wasn’t on fire, so that was something.

Chamomile scooped me up before I could react and laid me flat on the ground. She immediately follow it up by putting an ear to my barrel right above my heart.

“Ah…” I began listlessly. Despite how much fiction liked to portray it otherwise, CPR was not a pleasant experience, and I had no interest in going through it, no matter how stunningly beautiful Chamomile was. “I’m alright.”

At hearing me speak, Chamomile sighed and fell on top of me, which was not exactly helping. I gently lifted her off of me and levitated her to the side.

“Dear Luna, I’d never forgive myself if I lost you like this,” Chamomile panted. She wasn’t as fast as Dash, but she’d managed to reach me before I’d even blinked earlier. “And Princess Luna would have my legs torn off and the rest of me fed alive to a dragon if I’d lost you like this.”

Dash chose this moment to join us. “Sorry, Twi, my bad. You okay?”

“Yeah… Yeah, just – just wasn’t ready for that big of a surge in my magical output and a lightning bolt to the face.” I was a little worse off than I’d have hoped, but flaring was the worst that could have happened. “Just shocked. Nothing to worry about.”

“Pft. If you can make bad puns like that, you’re fine. Let’s get back to it, Chamomile. We’re not leaving here until I hit you at least once.”

Bad puns? What was – oh, I got it. No, that hadn’t been on purpose. Maybe I should have said I was dazed.

Seeing that Chamomile hadn’t so much as moved her wings, I said, “You can go. I’ll be fine. I’m sure I’ll get revenge at some future point.”

I might commission Pinkie Pie to do the deed for me. I probably wouldn’t even need to bribe her; she was behind in her and Dash’s endless prank war.

“Are you sure, Pri – Twilight? Dash put far too much magic into that bolt.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll be fine.”

I rolled over to my hooves to prove my point, casting a quick spell to unsinge myself. It wasn’t the first time I’d been burnt, although it was the first time it was from electrical burns. I was just glad it wasn’t dragonfire this time; that had been ridiculously difficult to fix, and I’d still lost half my tail.

The next time I looked to Chamomile – who still hadn’t moved – she looked almost more worried than before.

“May I ask an impertinent question?”

“Huh? Of course, but I really am fine, you know.”

“No, it’s…not that.”

“Hey!” Dash shouted. “What’s keeping you?”

I briefly replied, “Give her a minute, Dash.” Turning my attention back to Chamomile, I asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Well, I mean no disrespect to her. Dash is fun and enjoyable to be around.”

On rare occasions and in small doses.

“But… I once asked her what she does, and she said she was just a weather mare. However, she is too good for a weather mare. No disrespect to the profession, either, but she is far too overqualified.”

You could say that again.

“She never spoke with anypony on Equus through Queen Chrysalis, so I just ignored it. I know this is silly, but it’s my job to worry over these things. She’s learning from me too quickly, and in my professional opinion, looking back, there was always a bit of a…how should I put it…military discipline in her underneath everything else.”

Really? Discipline wasn’t usually a word I’d associate with Dash. Still, I thought I knew the source of Chamomile’s confusion.

“So you think she’s a spy?” I asked just to be sure that was where Chamomile was going with this.

“More mildly worried than think, but yes. I’m concerned that she has some means of ruining everything at the last minute, although I do not know what reason she or the sun princess would have to delay.”

I waited a moment to see if Chamomile was going to add anything else and then nodded when I was sure she was done.

“Alright, warning received. Honestly, though, if Dash is a spy, she’s hidden it so well that I’d be more concerned about being a spy myself. Long before we left Equus, we did a background check, and I made sure there were no unpleasant spells placed on her. Luna took a peek into her dreams as well, and even Chrysalis had no objections. So far as it’s possible for us to know, she has had no contact with Celestia or her agents in pony or by proxy.”

I may have also used some more underhooved spells to make absolutely sure.

“However, she did use to go on and on about joining the Wonderbolts when we first left.”

“Er…the Wonderbolts?” Chamomile asked.

“They’re a quasi-military organization of stunt fliers attached to the public relations division of the Equestrian military. They’re sort of part of the chain of command, but not really.”

And if I could have put that any more inelegantly, I would have won a trophy.

“She spent most of her life idolizing them and preparing to join them,” I added, “for whatever reason. What you’re seeing is probably an aftereffect of that.”

“Hmm… Yes, that makes sense. I’m sorry for wasting–”

“Nope,” I interrupted, “not listening to that. I’d rather have a thousand false alarms than miss a single problem as large as what you were concerned with. On the topic, the only pony here you could possibly need to worry about is Chrysalis, but her loyalty is not in doubt.”

Of course her loyalty which was certainly not in doubt was to the winner of this struggle. I couldn’t really blame her for that, but I did like knowing that Pupa, at least, liked me enough not to throw me under a coach intentionally.

“Anyway, keep up the good work,” I finished, giving Chamomile an appreciative pat on the withers. “And go have fun.”

“Thank you! I will!”

“And I suppose I wouldn’t mind if you roughed Dash up a bit to pay her back for her attempted assassination.”

Chamomile bowed, although I couldn’t tell if it was a genuine bow or a jesting one. “Your will be done, Your Highness. She certainly has been asking for it.”

I watched Chamomile fly off for a second or two before returning to my book and chair. Fortunately, there was only minor damage done to the book, so I was once again comfortable and reading within moments. I was having a hard time keeping my mind from wandering, though.

Dash had stopped talking about the Wonderbolts. I’d noticed, but I’d never noticed. I knew her pretty well by this point, I presumed, and I was almost certain that she wasn’t the kind of pony who would simply grow out of her dreams. I hadn’t prodded her away from the Wonderbolts, and I didn’t remember anypony else saying anything related, either. Strange, that.

Not that it was any of my business. Still, maybe I could talk Dash into sticking with me and reaching her full potential, whatever that turned out to be.

Heh. If I got one knight out of Chamomile, I might as well ask if Dash would be my second. If she agreed, the trap would be set. I could force her to do research into pegasus magic with me. Not the conventional use of a knight, sure, but certainly an effective one.

Ah, well, that would just lead to the quickest betrayal of knightly vows in history, but it would still be funny.

Still, what had made Dash stop talking about the Wonderbolts? Distance? That could certainly be a factor. Disillusionment, maybe? She was more talented then all of them, in my opinion; maybe she’d finally realized that.

Oh, actually, Fluttershy. If I remembered correctly, the Wonderbolts had almost yearlong performances all around Equestria. That didn’t leave much time for friends outside the group, and even less time for ground-bound ponies like Fluttershy. And forget about relationships.

Would Dash really give up her dreams for Fluttershy? Yes, of course she would. We were talking about a mare who graduated two years early just to stay with Fluttershy.

Hmm… Underneath all the annoying, Dash was a pretty good friend. A pony really could depend on her when it actually counted.

Not that I wasn’t going to rant about her later in my log to let out stress. Seriously, who hits ponies with a lightning bolt by accident? And she’d made me feel all the horrible nonsense she’d done with her magic while she was learning just minutes ago. If poor technique and sloppy, brute force execution could make me sick, I wouldn’t be able to eat lunch for a week.

Honestly, I was a bit surprised that Dash hadn’t blown herself up. She’d pretty much been casting semi-random arrangements of magic as spells until she’d gotten them right, which almost never ended well.

Oh well. She’d made it to nineteen years old without dying; she must have known what she was doing well enough to make it to twenty, too.

Nothing further of interest to report.

[Spring 46, 997 – Day 1556]

Chrysalis said the strangest thing today. We were nearing the end of dinner when she just started laughing for no reason. Like, uncontrollably laughing and pounding her hoof on the table, shouting, ‘I was right!’ over and over again.

Eventually she petered out, ending with, ‘Of course she wouldn’t leave it up to chance. Decisive action. No negotiation.’ I think I also heard her mumble, ‘I might be in over my head,’ but I could have misheard.

I managed to extract a tiny explanation out of her once we were alone, but it was no less bizarre and cryptic. She said, and I think these were her exact words, ‘Some advice, Twilight. When you know there is at least one plotter involved and it seems like there are too many coincidences, then the situation was almost certainly engineered. I’ve had my hive looking for a particular little orphan, and we finally found her. And if I want to keep my head, I think that’s about all I can say.’

Yeah. Weird. I’m going to ask Luna if she knows what Chrysalis was talking about after I head to bed. I’m really hoping she can leave me less confused.

Nothing further of interest to report.

[Spring 47, 997 – Day 1557]

Not much happened today other than Dash clipping a wing on a particularly strong bolt of lightning. I know she and Chamomile have really grown to enjoy sparring with each other, but I really need to tell them to tone it down. Just two days before it was a severe case of frostbite on Chamomile’s right wing. One of these days they’re going to do something I can’t fix for them.

Anyway, I did talk to Luna about Chrysalis’s strange behavior yesterday. When I asked her about it, her eyes actually widened in horror. She tried to dismiss it as nothing, but in the end, I pressured her to the point where she actually said she didn’t want anypony to know about the filly Chrysalis had found, not even me.

I don’t really know how to feel about that, but I guess we’re all entitled to our own secrets…

At any rate, Luna confessed that she just wanted the mystery filly to live a happy, ignored life and that it would be best for everypony if nopony went and bothered her. And that was that.

My guess is Chrysalis found one of Luna’s descendants, probably one from a particularly well-loved suitor. It doesn’t really fully explain the rest of Chrysalis’s comment, especially the part about keeping her head, but I don’t really see why Luna would be so bothered by a random filly she’d never even talked to before otherwise.

*hmm*

Oh, maybe Luna had her original foal in secret, or something, and Celestia only recently – in the past two decades or so – managed to track down this descendant. That’s entirely possible, and it would explain both Luna’s and Chrysalis’s reactions if Celestia had tried to do something horrible to her. Luna must have pulled off something spectacular to get the filly out of trouble.

Oh well. Unless Luna asks for my help, I’ll let the matter drop. She made her wishes on the subject pretty clear, after all, and it’s not like there’s much I personally can do from the middle of nowhere, space.

Nothing further of interest to report.

Dear Luna,

It’s only been two days, but I’m missing you already. I knew this was coming, of course, but I don’t think I’d honestly understood and processed that Chrysalis’s hive mind would outrange your connection to dreams while banished.

Spike misses you, too, although he’s acting tough. I don’t even understand where he’s getting that from. It has to be from books, or at least I hope it is; the only masculine role model on the ship would be Dash, and she does not set a good example for foals, colts or fillies. Her actions and decisions are too complex to really explain to Spike at his age.

I mean, I wouldn’t want him taking Fluttershy, the opposite extreme, as a role model, either, but I do wish he wasn’t going to go through this whole ‘feelings are lame’ phase.

Well anyway, obviously I received your letter, and I found the books you asked me to read. I’m halfway through Pony Genetics, although I think I’m unfortunately going to have to read it twice to get a real understanding of it. Biology hasn’t exactly been a focus of my studies, but I think I can manage something this technical.

Speaking of Dash and Fluttershy, I’ve been meaning to ask your advice about something. A few weeks ago, Dash asked if that old – well, not old for you, but she asked if captains really could marry ponies. She never said why she asked, but only she would consider the reason anything but obvious.

The answer to her question was ‘No, of course not,’ but I answered her real question and said, ‘Both Chrysalis and I have the authority to marry ponies, but so far as I know, it’s not because of any captaincies we hold.’ I was assuming I do have that authority, being a princess; feel free to correct me if I’m wrong or if you never officially saddled me with that. I’m curious if Chamomile does, too, being a high ranking military officer, but that’s not really all that important.

Anyway, what I wanted to ask was if I should marry them if Dash asks. On the one hoof, I’m philosophically opposed to the idea, but on the other hoof, I don’t really want to say no to either of them over something like this just to make a point. Especially when they could just ask Chrysalis instead; I doubt she would refuse them, Fluttershy in particular, even if I asked her to.

In happier news, Berry Pinch cast her first successful real spell today. I know I was hesitant when you said I should try to teach her every field – yes, I know that’s a bit hypocritical – until we found something that stuck, but you were right, as always. It really was worth it. You should have seen the smile on her face when she flew around with butterfly wings, or the completely baffled look she had when they vanished and she fell flat on her barrel. She’s not a prodigy, but we got our hooves on her when she was young enough to make something great of her.

Really, the spell only lasted a few seconds, but she was so infectiously happy about it. Berry Punch might have been even happier. I mean, it was obvious to her that her daughter was learning under my tutelage, or she would have just tried to teach Berry Pinch herself, but the fake wings spell is the first big, fancy, impressive spell I’d taught Berry Pinch, not just another cantrip.

Of course, there was another reason for both of them to be happy, too. Berry Pinch finally got her cutie mark when she cast the spell! It was a golden horseshoe. I have no idea what it’s supposed to mean, but we had a party anyway. I still don’t know how Pinkie Pie manages to set them up so quickly, but she did.

Anyway, I suppose I’ll leave it here. I wouldn’t want to overburden my parents with memorizing my letters.

Twilight

Dear Twilight,

I cannot say I much appreciate letter based communication either. I know the post serves most ponies well enough, but it does little good for those of us capable of long-range telepathy or teleportation.

Unfortunately, I have little recent experience with parenting, so I will have to direct you to your own fantastic, wonderful, understanding parents who miss you everyday and whom you now have an excuse to talk to more often for advice.

In my experience, it is pointless to argue against marriage to those who are engaged in a happy one or who are about to propose. It strikes a sense of loyalty, which to reevaluate or revise, most would feel would be a betrayal and thus will hear you but not listen.

All things considered, marriage is not such a terrible fate in the present day, although the reasoning ponies give for pursuing it continues to baffle me. Divorce is not uncommon in Equestria ever since the fool in charge finally legalized it, although the frequency has ‘mysteriously’ dropped a significant fraction in the last decade or so since a certain pink alicorn appeared. In any case, ponies have a tendency to die before their feelings are strained beyond the breaking point.

Unless, of course, somepony involved happens to know enough alchemy magic for an age spell, which has been known to turn very ugly. I once kept the company of a handsome earth pony stallion for well over a hundred years – in secret, unfortunately. I was not yet quite old enough for ponies to overlook my actions as the whim of an ancient alicorn whenever I did something unusual.

The problem with age spells is twofold. First, they do not work forever; eventually, a pony loses their magic and dies. Second, a pony who should otherwise have already died becomes dependent on the pony casting the spell. I trust you can think of how unpleasant that can make an intimate relationship. Although the spell is naturally permanent unless additional effort is expended, as with all alchemy spells, it doesn’t eliminate the fundamental problem of aging. However, I have digressed from your primary concern.

It is certainly well within your rights and powers to marry whomsoever you choose. Since your friends are likely to marry in either case, I see no reason for you to refuse and darken their lives, however little, but the choice is yours.

As for Berry Pinch and her mother, it has been a long time since I have helped an ordinary pony with an ordinary problem, even if only by proxy through you. I could not say I wish to do so often or have the time to, but…it is not a bad feeling.

Princess Luna

P.S. Try teaching Berry Pinch the breezie transformation spell. It should be somewhere in a book called Faerie Culture. I suspect you have an alchemist on your hooves; she will need a lot of guidance from you if so. When you return to Equus, there is a pony named Quartz who she should meet to further her studies; he was the pony who gave you the replacement suppressor.

Currently, he lives in Manehattan, which is not very close to Ponyville, so you may wish to discuss the idea with Berry Punch sooner rather than later.

That said, as far as I know, Quartz is the only unicorn alchemist on Equus. He is rather crotchety, even for a two-hundred-year-old stallion, but he makes for good conversation, and I know he has always wanted an apprentice for himself. I owe him a rather large favor, and sending Berry Pinch his way would be the perfect opportunity to repay it.

[Fall 72, 998 – Day 1782]

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Today was the day. Today was the day I’d finally try to use real alchemy on myself instead of those ridiculous specialized spells that turned ponies into breezies and apples into oranges. Seriously, whoever thought a spell that specifically turned apples into oranges was important enough to invent was crazy.

No, I couldn’t lose focus now. This was too important. This was a moment I wanted to remember forever. This was a culmination of half a decade of studying and hard work.

A little bit of power here, a careful inscription there, and my magic danced before me as I wove together my spell. Directing the spell toward myself, I felt the effects wash over me, tugging at every part of me as the spell did its work.

I had no idea how changelings managed to transform so easily, although I was sure I’d learn after ascending. For now, I directed the second target of my spell toward a feather I’d borrowed from Fluttershy. If I did this exactly right, I’d find myself with a lovely pair of purple wings without any of Fluttershy’s other features, like an inconvenient lack of a horn.

With a final burst of magic, I added the finishing touches to make the changes all temporary. No matter what, I’d still have only unicorn magic, so I’d be able to get myself back to normal, but it would be hard without a horn as a focus. There was always the possibility that I’d messed up the spell in other ways, too; I could get really sick and maybe even die if I had and if I made the changes permanent.

My eyes closed, I performed an initial check of my body. I could still feel my horn. That was a good sign. I hadn’t accidentally lost all of my mane or tail or coat so far as I could tell. That was even better. I could still feel my legs, and I was breathing normally. My sides felt a little heavier than normal, and my back felt a little weird. I could tell I was moving something, and I dearly hoped that something was a pair of wings.

I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. I turned my head around to gaze at my back, and my eyes fell upon a pair of yellow wings attached to a yellow coat just in front of the strangest mix of colors I’d ever seen on a pony’s tail before, as if somepony had dumped a few of their favorite eye-searing paints into it and mixed them all around.

But never mind that horrible yellow and pink and red and purple monstrosity. I had wings! Real wings that I could move! I flapped them once just to prove to myself that I could. Sure, this hadn’t been a complete success, and my lack of pegasus magic meant I couldn’t leave the ground, but – but wings!

A thought struck me. I might not be too heavy to glide! I teleported myself straight up into the air in the middle of my library, and I gave myself a little telekinetic push to get me going. Pegasi gliding broke all kinds of physics rules, especially when Dash did it, but I could still try to fly like a regular bird.

That was the idea, at least. I was falling fast – not fast enough or from high up enough to be scared, but still fast. And naturally, being focused on the ground, I swerved right into a bookcase headfirst and fell to the floor with a thud, landing on one of my previously unblemished new wings.

I winced as I hobbled to my hooves. At least I hadn’t broken any of the bones in my wing. I just needed to preen a bit…and maybe wait a few more minutes for my wing to stop throbbing, and then I could try again outside the library. I really didn’t know what I’d been thinking. No flying in the library was the number one rule to begin with, and I was the one that had made it.

Actually, thinking about that reminded me of something. As counter intuitive as it was, I should probably go ask Dash for help. I’d learned to fly in a dream with pegasus magic – or how I dreamt pegasus magic worked – by watching Luna and using alicorn-sized wings. For all I knew, I’d been doing everything wrong in ways Luna hadn’t been able to notice or correct.

I scryed across the ship and quickly found Dash tucked away in Twinkleshine’s room with Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Chamomile, and, of course, Twinkleshine. It looked like they were watching an old Appleloosan flick, but I had no idea which one. At any rate, I teleported directly into the room with them and stopped the film projector on arrival.

“Hey!” Dash said, only to cut off when she got a good look at me.

“Fluttershy?” Twinkleshine asked, only for the real one to quietly nudge her with her muzzle. “Um… Chrysalis? What’s going on?”

“And who are you disguised as?” Pinkie Pie asked. “I love what you’ve done with your mane and tail! It’s like a bunch of cotton candy types all mixed together into one super swirl of sugary deliciousness.”

Before I could get a word in edgewise, Twinkleshine said, “She sort of looks familiar. I think I saw a picture of somepony like this back at Princess Celestia’s school, but the mane and tail were different. I think hers was…red, maybe? And her cutie mark wasn’t…Twilight?”

“Yes,” I said, sparing a quick glance back at my haunch. Apparently my cutie mark hadn’t changed to Fluttershy’s – not that it was an impossible change to make, despite popular opinion to the contrary.

It was, however, impossible to change a pony’s special talent. Well, probably. Kind of. A special talent was a laypony’s way to describe the magic that came naturally to a pony, and there were a lot of factors at play in determining what those magics were. It might not be impossible to change somepony’s special talent, but so far as I knew, nopony could. Maybe if you really injured your magic…

At any rate, the cutie mark was just an expression of a pony’s own magic on their body. In other words, it was a personal magic at work, not some grand magic of destiny enforcing its will upon a pony. Ponies, in theory, caused their own cutie marks to appear when they used their magic to the limit, whatever that meant for each pony.

That was why there were so many different cutie marks for the same special talent and why there were so many similar – or even identical – cutie marks for different special talent. Ponies grew up with certain expectations of what cutie marks should look like and what they meant, and only rarely would ponies get something fundamentally new, like a bowling ball, which was a relatively new sport in history.

As another example, my own cutie mark was a star burst. The usual cutie marks – in our current culture – for special talents in magic involved either the stars or the sun. In…in all honestly, I was kind of surprised I hadn’t ended up with a sun of some kind. It would’ve made a lot more sense than stars when on considered my filly years.

But I’d take a half-dozen stars on my flank over a sun any day!

“Hey, Twiliiiiight,” Pinkie Pie called out. “You in there?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. I just wanted to borrow Dash. I’m trying to make these things” – I ruffled my wings – “actually work.”

Slipping back into Old Equestrian, hopefully on purpose, Chamomile asked, “Have you managed to ascend already?” Her face showed a shock that hadn’t been there earlier, and all but one other pony shared it. I didn’t think they’d really processed that I had wings right now, considering how much of an eyesore I was otherwise.

At the same time, Pinkie Pie said, “Oh my gosh, this calls for a ‘my friend is an alicorn now’ party!”

“You’re an alicorn now?” Twinkleshine shouted.

“Wait. Quiet!” After the rabble died down, I continued, “This is just a spell. I’m still just a unicorn with just unicorn magic. These wings don’t even work properly without pegasus magic. I just want some help to figure out how to glide right now so I can feel the wind on my feathers and get that rush of laughing at the ground that thought it could tame me.”

Dash was openly laughing, and Twinkleshine and Chamomile were both snickering. I slowly put my raised hoof down and folded my wings back to my sides, ending my unintentionally dramatic pose.

Pinkie Pie, on the other hoof, was already in my face, asking, “Can you cast that spell on me, too? I love flying, and I had to leave my helicopter on Equus since there’s nowhere to use it on the Nebulous, but this would be a lot of fun, too, and much easier on my legs since I wouldn’t have to pedal.”

“Um… You left your what?” I asked, only to decide better of it immediately after. “Never mind. I guess I can cast it on you, but I’m still working out the bugs.”

“Is that why you look like Flutters after losing a fight with a rainbow?”

I sighed. “Yes, very funny, Dash. I used one of Fluttershy’s feathers as the base for my spell to build my wings from, and I didn’t manage to successfully filter out all of her other physical features.”

Fluttershy made a small little, “Oh,” from next to Dash.

“Ehem. Might I suggest you ask somepony else to teach you,” Chamomile said. “Dash can be a bit…”

“Hey!” Dash shouted, flying herself to land right in front of Chamomile. “What do you think I was gonna do, kick her off a cloud and tell her to flap?”

“The thought had occurred to me, and a big part of my job is protecting her.”

“A little fall never hurt anypony.”

Fluttershy tried to say something, but she was drowned out by Dash.

“It’s not like she’s going to break her neck or anything.”

“Just because she can heal herself doesn’t mean it’s okay for Twilight to get hurt.”

“Oh come on, it’s not like I’d actually let her hit the ground. I’d totally catch her.”

Chamomile just looked at Dash skeptically.

Why was everypony just assuming I’d hit the ground? I wasn’t a natural like Dash, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t a good flier. I just needed a few real life tips.

“Are you trying to say something?” Dash asked.

“No,” Chamomile replied calmly. I’d never found out if she was just hard to rile up or if she acted calm on purpose to make Dash lose her temper even more. “It’s just that you have a higher accident rate than I would like.”

Dash’s hooves crackled with lightning where she stood. I really wished she would stop doing that; it wasn’t hard to fix the damage she caused, but it was annoying.

“Come on, you and me,” Dash said, tapping her chest and Chamomile’s with a hoof.

“Must we? We were watching a movie.”

“Yes! I’m going to crush you this time for sure.”

Sighing, Chamomile turned to me and said, “If you would, Twilight.”

“Wait, but…I still want to fly, or at least glide.”

“Huh?” Dash turned to look at me like I was crazy. It was kind of scary how quickly Dash could forget what she was originally arguing about. “Oh. Don’t.” As I opened my mouth to protest, Dash added, “You’re too heavy without magic. Even I can’t make that work.”

“Wha? If that’s all, I can just make myself lighter…” Even as the words came out, I knew that wasn’t what I really wanted. “I mean, I could just levitate myself…but I’d have wings!”

I tried just that to see if it felt any different with wings, but it didn’t. It really didn’t.

Dash rolled her eyes, and Chamomile gave me a sympathetic look. I turned my gaze away from them as my hooves touched back down on the floor, only for it to fall upon Pinkie Pie eating popcorn. Typical.

“Hey, Twilight, are you okay?” Twinkleshine asked.

“No, not really. I was looking forward to flying.”

“I think she means your magic,” Chamomile added. “It was light-blue instead of raspberry.”

Nodding Twinkleshine added, “I know your magic changes when you…you know.”

“Dark magic is not evil magic,” I said. I’d tried to explain that to everypony on the ship for years now, but the only pony who had really listened – and learned – was Chamomile.

“Anyway,” I continued, “I doubt you want to hear about how normal magic auras get their color, but it’s not all that hard to change it. My parents once told me that my own aura changed from a light pink to a dark pink when I was… Um… Stars, I can’t remember, but I must have been really young. Three, maybe? Two? It’s not all that unusual for growing unicorns.”

“So if Fluttershy were a unicorn, she’d have light-blue magic?” Pinkie Pie asked. Even before I shrugged, she asked, “Can you do me? What color magic would I have?”

“Maybe later, Pinkie Pie. I’d have to figure out how to mess up the spell in just the right way to keep my horn but take on most of the rest of your features, which could take a while, given that I designed the spell to give me wings.”

What would it even mean to turn myself into an earth pony with a horn with only unicorn magic? That pretty much was the definition of a unicorn. Maybe I would have more muscle?

“Seriously, Twi,” Dash said, interrupting my thoughts, “don’t try flying with those things. You’ll just fall.”

I sighed, the wind completely taken out of my sails by this point. “Whatever. I don’t care anymore. Maybe I can use these things to write or something.” I experimentally tried fiddling with the tiny joints at the ends of my wings and successfully managed to move a few feathers.

“Pft, good luck,” Dash said. She reached into Pinkie Pie’s bowl with a wing and grabbed a single kernel of popcorn as if it were the most natural thing in the world, following it up by tossing the kernel into her mouth. “Three words, Twi. Years. Of. Practice.”

I turned to Fluttershy, silently asking for her opinion.

After biting her lip, Fluttershy said, “It is hard.”

“Great…”

I canceled my spell and reverted myself to my normal unicorn form. I fully intended to properly learn how to use my wings, but I wanted them to be my wings, which meant I needed to perfect the spell first.

“Well anyway, do you two still want to go at each other?”

“Oh. Yeah!” Dash said, smirking this time instead of snarling. “Let’s do this!”

I turned to Chamomile, and she said, “I’m fine with it.”

Nodding, I cast the necessary spells on the two of them and teleported them to what had long since become their sparring arena, rather than my flaring room. I kept a scrying spell up so I could keep an eye on them, although I wasn’t paying too much attention.

“No offense, Fluttershy,” Twinkleshine said, getting to her hooves. As she crossed the short distance between us, she added, “But Twilight is much cuter like this.”

I leaned into the kiss Twinkleshine gave me. For once, I knew Twinkleshine wasn’t just flattering me; I really had been an eyesore.

When we finally broke apart, I asked, “So what movie were you watching?”

“Blazing Saddles,” Pinkie Pie said through a mouthful of popcorn. “You wanna watch?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Are – are there saddles on fire?”

Fighting back her laughter at my expense, Twinkleshine said, “No, that’s not what it’s about at all. It’s a comedy. I think you’d like it.”

“Eh, I think I’ll pass. I need to be getting back to work.”

“But that’s what you always say,” Twinkleshine said, looking at me with a pout and big, sad eyes, her lower lip quivering every so slightly, and–

“Okay, fine. I suppose I can work and watch.”

“Yay!”

Twinkleshine immediately busied herself with rewinding the tape reels while I took a seat next to Fluttershy.

“Thanks for the feather, by the way.”

“Oh, it was no trouble, Twilight. I was happy to help. They just fall out, anyway. The only other things they’re good for are quills and pillows.

Twinkleshine plopped down next to me as the movie started. She leaned into me, and we shared a brief nuzzle before settling into a comfortable position. This was the perfect pick-me-up after messing up my polymorph spell today.

I sighed contentedly as I leaned further into Twinkleshine.

There’s not much more to say about today. I managed to find the mistake I’d made in the spell after supper, and I have a wonderful new pair of lavender wings now. I wish I had one of Cadance’s feathers so I could make alicorn-sized wings, but normal pegasus wings are still great.

They’re really soft and warm, too.

Wha? Twinkleshine, what are you doing up this early?

I got cold.

I…

Nothing further of interest to report.

[Spring 85, 998 – Day 1995]

Nope, too tired to write a real log today. We had to make a huge course correction, and I am magically exhausted. Flaring twice certainly didn’t help. From now on, Twinkleshine doesn’t get to use less than six significant figures. Chrysalis is in charge for the next couple…couple…

[Winter 70, 999 – Day 2280]

She found it! She actually found it! I won’t go into detail of what we did after Twinkleshine showed me an image of Mona, but we’re almost there. I’ve seen it! It’s a real thing I’ll be able to touch with my hooves! Just – just – stars, I’m so excited! I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep until we’re there; I can barely stand still. I’m like Pinkie Pie after eating a cake meant for a hundred ponies.

Okay, okay, be cool, Twilight. You can manage this. Don’t trip at the finish line just because it’s so exciting! I’m finally going to ascend! I won’t even have to worry about being discovered and executed anymore! This is such a big change! Luna once said that adjusting to peace is hard, but I’m so ready!

Alright, in and out. In and out.

*whew*

Much better. Seriously though, as much as I want to leave everypony behind and teleport myself to Mona immediately over the next hour or two, we need to make a slow, careful approach. I need to make sure we don’t stumble into any magical traps or wards. I’d ordinarily say that there’s no way there could be any all the way out here without an enormous source of magic to warn Celestia back on Equus, but she could always visit Mona every few weeks, or far more likely, the Elements of Harmony could provide the magic themselves.

Honestly, I doubt that anypony who could make it this far would be unable to detect and dismantle any wards or traps, so in theory there would be no sense in placing them, but that itself could be the real trap. Just one little ward placed at the end of the journey to ruin years of work. It wasn’t like it would cost Celestia much to do so.

We did find out why Mona burned green when it passed by the sun, though. It turns out that Mona is not a real comet, but a giant lump of rock, dirt, and a few metals, copper in particular. Now that I thought about it, it seemed obvious in hindsight. It wasn’t that a comet without a period just so happened to fly by for Celestia to place the elements on. No, she took a lake-sized chunk of Equus into space with the elements and tossed it as hard as she could.

Well, maybe not as hard as she could, but certainly with far more than an escape velocity.

We have a little under half a year left before Luna’s banishment ends, and unless Twinkleshine begs me to write more, I think this is going to be my last journal entry. If she’ll have it, I want to put this log with the books Luna wrote about history back on the moon. I suppose that’s a lot like putting a crayon picture on a refrigerator in comparison to her art, but it would still mean a lot to me.

To whoever is reading this, may you have something of interest to report.

Author's Note

Sorry for the long wait for these two chapters; I had to reread all of [url=hpmor.com]Methods of Rationality to be ready in time for the final exam, among other things

Anyway, I had intended these two chapters to be a single chapter, but I vastly underestimated how much time it would take to cover all of the material, even cutting two scenes down to simple log entries and removing a few other scenes entirely. Three arcs still remain.

I also may be taking a massive – and much needed – editing pass through the early chapters for grammar and structure in the near future as well.

Prereader – Starlight Nova

Chapter Twenty Two - The Elements - Mona

It had been a terribly long journey, and we had undershot several times, but it was time. We had arrived.

Despite literally everypony’s near-constant whining, which I’d almost caved into on more than one occasion, I was finally satisfied that we wouldn’t set off any magical traps if we brought the Nebulous up next to Mona, or as I’d taken to calling it privately, Saddle Comet. I didn’t know if Mona was actually the chunk of Equus which belonged where Ponyville’s Saddle Lake was, but it was about the right size. And I didn’t know any other lakes by name.

Anyway, Twinkleshine and I brought the Nebulous in at a snail’s pace compared to how quickly we’d been approaching before and eventually slowed the ship’s velocity to zero relative to the comet. The gravitational forces were practically nonexistent, so we let the Nebulous come within a couple dozen meters, just far enough away to get a good view of the surface.

We’d noticed before when we were still far off, but up close, it was obvious that passing by the sun had done a lot of damage. The very top level of the comet had managed to retain enough water to have a slight frost, but underneath that, the rock had obviously melted. The core – where the elements likely were – was probably unchanged by the heat, but even if the entire comet had vaporized, I suspected the elements would’ve emerged unharmed out the other end. Magical artifacts, especially the powerful ones, had a tendency to be hard to destroy.

“Now? Pleeeeease?” Twinkleshine begged.

“Argh! Just wait a little longer! You’re all driving me crazy!” I had noticed that some of my mane was out of place, and that was a bad sign. If they kept pushing, I was tempted to let myself burst into flames and start raining fire down upon them. “I’m casting the spells, so everypony just back off.”

“Yes!” Twinkleshine chorused with Dash, high-hoofing each other.

“How much longer?” Cherry Berry asked, apparently not understanding what ‘back off’ meant.

I managed to see another strand of my mane pop up in the reflection off my ship’s nice, polished, undemanding floor.

“Are you all foals?” I shouted.

Spike and Berry Pinch linked arm and leg, together replying, “We are!”

“Argh!” I teleported myself into my flaring chamber and quickly put up a teleport ward. I doubted that Chrysalis would be cruel enough to actually teleport everypony in after me, but for my sanity’s sake, it was better to be safe than sorry.

I finished casting the spells that would let us walk on the comet in peace: a gravity spell which was directed toward the center of the comet at some maximum range, a personal bubble of air for everypony, a ventriloquism spell between everypony, some air conditioning to make sure they didn’t overheat, and a similar protection to make sure the comet didn’t freeze their hooves. Same old, same old. Dash had flown – for certain definitions of flying – through space often enough that I had that all down pat.

Of course, I didn’t know if there were any wards in place inside the comet, so I had to jump through a few hoops for the gravity spells. I couldn’t just fix a point in space relative to the comet with magic; that might be able to be detected. Instead, I fixed the reference point to the Nebulous and made the direction of the acceleration vector a function of distance to the comet.

Upon reflection, it wasn’t surprising how much of a pain it was to rob an alicorn safely. We were parked next to a comet many, many AU from Equus, after all.

I took a few extra minutes to relax and calm down. I’d sat through far too much foalish pestering to trust myself not to blow up at everypony if I went back right away. I also teleported a little bit of the extremely small supply of chocolate we had from the kitchen. I didn’t really feel guilty about it, either; I totally deserved a treat at this point, and if everything went well, we’d be heading home soon. Besides, the cocoa trees were about to bear fruit again, anyway, if Pinkie Pie’s report were to be trusted.

Alright. I gave myself a quick slap on the face and took one last deep breath. With a teleport, I threw myself back to the rabble.

Before anypony could start up, I said, “Okay, we’re ready to go. Two things to mention before we do.”

I preemptively silenced the usual suspects with magic as they all started to protest at once.

“First, if you can fly, don’t fly too far from the comet, or you’ll lose your artificial gravity. Because of how I put the spell together, you’ll notice it pulling you in a strange direction before you get too far away. If you ignore this warning anyway” – I glanced at Dash – “you still shouldn’t go too far away. I doubt you’ll get lost, but I don’t want to spend an hour searching space for you in a desperate attempt to save your life before your air supply runs out.”

Dash rolled her eyes, but the other three fliers in our group were taking me seriously, even Chrysalis. I ruffled my own wings briefly before continuing.

“Second, everything we know about comets is technically theoretical. Although Twinkleshine and I have come up with no reasons you will need to be careful – beyond self-injury on hard slash sharp rock – if you find a cave or something, don’t fling yourself headlong into it. I’d hate to find you dead in a pool of magma or underneath a cave-in, however unlikely that is. If you find anything interesting that you want to explore, be sure to take Chrysalis or myself with you. Understood?”

I got mostly nods, a couple uh-huhs, and one eye roll.

First teleporting in front of Dash, I said, “Dash, I’m not joking here. I really don’t want to find you as a corpse, so don’t be reckless.”

Dash and I engaged in a staring contest, and I won, as usual.

After I released my hold on Dash’s ability to speak, she said, “Fine, Twi. I’ll be careful.”

“Great.”

Dash’s death would be doubly problematic, beyond the simple fact that she would have died at the very end of the journey under my care. Fluttershy would be inconsolable, too, even if I hadn’t married the two of them a year ago. Still, I wouldn’t be so worried about environmental hazards if Mona were a natural comet. Even if I didn’t find any spells as I dug toward the elements, Celestia could have set physical traps that were cold and heat resistant.

I wouldn’t just tell Dash that, though; there was a time and a place to tell everypony exactly who we were working for and why, and that wasn’t five minutes before an archaeological expedition with no preparation.

To be honest, I was less worried about traps than I probably should be. It wasn’t just that I was eager to get my magic on the elements. I just couldn’t see myself bothering if I had been in Celestia’s position, especially considering the time period – and the technological level – she had launched this comet in.

“I need to go fetch a few items from storage, but I’ll be joining all of you shortly.” I teleported everypony except myself and Spike outside the Nebulous to the surface of the comet. “Spike, be careful out there, and stick with Berry Pinch, okay?”

“Can’t I come with you?” Spike asked.

“I would like to say yes. In fact, I probably could, but I’m just going to be digging very slowly. It’s going to be boring and tedious, and it’s going to require all of my attention to make sure I don’t accidentally hurt myself or others. I don’t want to risk your safety.”

Spike sighed. “Alright, but we can do something later, right?”

“Maybe…” I said, biting my lip. “If everything goes well, I might be very busy for quite some time, but I promise we can spend a lot of time together after this is all over. I can relax my focus on my studies especially. Okay?”

“Okay,” Spike agreed, but it didn’t stop his face from drooping.

Hugging Spike, I said, “Try to have fun for me.” I then teleported him down to the surface and separately teleported myself to storage.

Right, now where did those spare compasses end up? I should have a set of six small ones stored in…one of these crates. Urgh… Okay, there were only a hundred crates or so, and half of them were half empty. Most of the magical equipment, like Twinkleshine’s film projector, should have been removed from them. I just had to look for enchantments to find the compasses.

A quick scan revealed magic…pretty much in every crate. Sigh. I really should have done this ahead of time.

Aha! Finally! I stuffed the contents of crate 47-B – I will never let Twinkleshine help pack ever again – back into it minus the six small, spare compasses for the elements. All of them were pointing toward the comet in vaguely the same direction.

I teleported back up to the bridge to check the two sets of compasses against each other, just to make sure the small set wasn’t defective. Magic matched up properly, and although that was plenty enough to say they were all working, I double checked the other elements as well, partially to sextuple-check them, but also to keep me moving slowly. I had weeks upon weeks to dig up the elements if I for some reason needed it; there was no need to rush.

Satisfied that everything was working perfectly, I gently set all of the compasses but Magic’s on the ground. There was no need to bring more than one with at a time and risk breaking more than one, and what better element to retrieve first was there?

I teleported outside the Nebulous and then to several other locations around the comet, making note of the direction the compass pointed each time. As I had suspected, the elements – or the Element of Magic, at least – were somewhere near the center of the comet.

It wasn’t strictly necessary, but I set up a few dummy spells around a circumference of the comet. Having them as reference points would help me dig straight, although I probably didn’t need them to dig straight down. I would say it was foolish to dig straight down, but the comet had no real gravity of its own to speak of, so there was little difference in which direction I dug. As far as it was concerned, every direction was down.

I teleported to an arbitrary location on the surface, nearly ready to start.

One more deep breath. In and out. There was no need to rush. I needed to keep my emotions in check.

Right. I dusted off my memories of the earth shaping spell and gave an experimental nudge to the ground below me. It yielded under the effects of my spell as I had suspected it would. It was nice to have things start off on the right hoof.

Canceling my gravity spell – there was no sense floating myself down the hole against the force of my own magic – I finally began digging. The plan was no different from the old one I’d used so many years ago to reach the Tree of Harmony: I’d dig a short ways and check for magic.

Oddly enough, the Elements of Harmony didn’t have the overwhelming magical aura that I’d expected of them. In fact, I couldn’t even feel them, which made me suspicious that I wasn’t going to be able to find any magical traps, that Celestia had managed to hide them incredibly well. But at the same time, the tracking spell wasn’t fooled, so there could be something else at work here.

Still, I could only do my best and work as carefully and slowly as possible. Well, not as slowly as possible, I did have a lot of extra time, but I would go mad if I spent two seasons or so digging one- to two-hundred meters. I merely went slow enough that I shouldn’t miss anything that it was possible for me to detect.

Dig, dig, dig. It was every bit as boring and tedious as I’d expected, and doubly so, even. Knowing the elements waited for me at the end of my task just made me want to go faster and faster, but I had to tell myself over and over to go slower. This was practically self-imposed torture.

My stomach growled at some point. A quick scry to the Nebulous’s kitchens and a teleport fixed that. Apples weren’t exactly the most filling, but they were good enough.

I checked on the rest of the crew every once in a while as well. While I had no reason to expect the spells on them to fail, and while I knew Chrysalis could deal with any emergencies, I had an obligation to make sure they were safe.

I saw more than half the group sitting on a picnic blanket once, so Chrysalis must have been ferrying supplies and providing bathroom breaks like I’d asked.

I was thinking about taking a break myself when it finally happened: the compass for Magic moved, and drastically. I’d just moved the element! It was somewhere in the section of stone I’d just moved out of the way!

My tunnel wasn’t very wide or tall, but I recklessly launched myself forward, kicking off the walls. With my magic, I brought myself to a halt the moment my compass pointed straight into a wall. I rotated myself so that my hooves pointed toward Magic.

Finding something that wasn’t stone inside of stone was simple. The easy trick was to shape all of the earth Magic could possible be in into cubes smaller than Magic should be. If the elements turned out to be tiny, I could always refine my search with even smaller cubes.

I lit my horn. My breath caught in my throat. This was it.

This was it!

As the stone beneath me formed into cubes, two large, gray spheres refused to change shape, and I immediately plucked them out of the pile with my magic. Magic’s compass reacted to the first sphere I’d picked up.

I couldn’t help frowning. The elements were supposed to be brightly colored gems. The spheres must’ve been protective shells of some kind. Perhaps they were why I couldn’t sense the elements.

My frown only deepened. If I broke the shells, it was entirely possible that would send a warning signal to Celestia. I’d have to be very careful about how I went about extracting the elements. I needed to send a letter to Luna, too. She should have some advice for me; whatever protections Celestia had placed on the elements were likely a thousand years old, so they shouldn’t have any magical secrets Luna couldn’t know about.

Hopefully.

I noticed that on one sphere – the one that wasn’t Magic – there was a generic crystal shape engraved deeply into it. Magic itself had a similar engraving, but it wasn’t a generic crystal shape; it was a six-pointed star.

My hoof slowly reached out and traced the outline of the engraving before I even realized what I was doing.

I shook my head and filed the fact away to be processed later, even as I dredged up old memories of the exact same symbol being on the Tree of Harmony. Six-pointed stars had symbolized magic even before Discord; Star Swirl himself was said to have worn a hat and cape with six-pointed stars all over it.

It was far too easy to fall into the trap of putting the consequences before the causes when you discovered them in reverse order. This shell had a six-pointed star on it because Celestia saw that the Tree of Harmony had one on it, and the Tree of Harmony had one on it because whoever created it saw that six-pointed stars were ‘magical’, which was the exact same reason I had such stars for my cutie mark.

And then a very important thought finally occurred to me: I might want to test if I really hadn’t set off any alarms so far. We’d set it up in advance for Pupa to be in Canterlot Castle today for a reason, after all. Luna and my parents were on standby with a changeling I’d never met for letter exchanges as well.

I located Chrysalis with a scrying spell within a couple minutes and projected my voice to her.

“Chrysalis, I just picked up one, probably two of the elements. Can you ask Pupa if Celestia has disappeared?” As a second thought, I added, “Or Cadance.”

After a few seconds’ pause, Chrysalis replied, “She reports no significant changes, but it is entirely possible she has been tricked somehow or was geased without myself or my hive noticing. La – Amethyst Star says she can still see Cadance in her office from outside the castle, but again, it is entirely possible that she has been tricked and so on.”

I nodded – to myself, since Chrysalis wasn’t nearby – and said, “Thanks. I’m going to move these two elements off the comet in approximately twenty seconds, so keep those two on standby. Actually, belay that. I’m going to find the other four elements first” – or at least one more; three should be enough for me to ascend – “in case that sets off an alarm.”

I picked up Chrysalis snickering on the other end. “Can do, Captain Sparkle.”

Oh, stars. I’d just used nautical slang, hadn’t I? Even at this moment, I found time to facehoof. It was entirely Twinkleshine’s fault that I’d just used that word.

Sighing, I brought up another scrying spell to locate the Nebulous’s bridge, an easy enough task. I exchanged the compass for Magic with the one for Honesty.

I left Magic and the second element where I’d found them. There was little enough reason to believe that removing the elements to the bridge of Nebulous would be problematic, but there was no reason to risk it immediately. And besides, unless I needed a lot of time and effort to open the shells – which I would want to do in a comfortable environment to maximize efficiency – I didn’t actually have to move the elements to the Nebulous.

In the exact same manner that I had found Magic, I repeated the process of triangulating Honesty. Unsurprisingly, the data I obtained suggested Honesty was also near the middle of the comet. Working from the tunnel I’d already dug out, it only took me a few minutes to find it, and I reported my success to Chrysalis immediately after this time.

Still with no response from Celestia or Cadance, I repeated the process for the three remaining elements. As it happened, the element that I had found next to Magic was Loyalty. Quite ironic, really.

Once I’d found all the elements, I widened the tunnel at the very end and shaped a crude stone chair. I then summoned one of the several pillows from my room back on the Nebulous that I’d made from my own feathers. There really was nothing quite like a pillow made from your own plumage.

“Chrysalis,” I said, reestablishing contact yet again. “I need you to send a letter to Luna. It’s probably going to be a lot of back and forth letters, actually.”

“Very well. You may begin dictating.”

I tried, I really did, but the dam broke. “Luna, I’ve done it! I have the Elements of Harmony in my hooves! But there’s still one problem left. There are these strange stone-like shells surrounding the elements with a single crystal engraving on each. I haven’t been able to feel the kind of raw magical power from them that a set of artifacts as strong as the elements should have. The shell itself doesn’t even appear to be magical, either, but I haven’t risked poking it with spells too deeply yet in case it’s a trap. Any information you have would be helpful, because I want to crack these things open right now.”

That letter didn’t have the fine details, but for an initial report, it was good enough. If Luna needed more information, I could send that to her later.

I told Chrysalis to go ahead and send what I had, and then I waited. And waited. And waited. Talking to Luna through letters was the worst thing ever. There was so much overhead, and the delays were ridiculous.

Finally, after what must have been days inside my little hole in the ground, Chrysalis spoke up again. “Are you ready? This is a long response.”

“Go ahead.”

“Twilight,” Chrysalis began after the tiniest delay, “I don’t take the time to say this often enough, but I am unbelievably proud of you. I” – Chrysalis paused for a moment – “always knew you could reach the elements, but it’s another thing entirely to hear that you have them in front of you.”

Oh my. I – I just – oh my.

“Before I say anything else, I want to make sure you still have a copy of the ritual hidden away; you might need it at a moment’s notice. I shall assume you do unless told otherwise.”

I silently nodded to myself. The ‘ascension kick start ritual’ had been safely stored inside Twinkleshine’s bed’s mattress ever since Luna had felt her connection to my dreams weakening, but I knew it by heart at this point. I would have put it in my own bed, but I switched over to clouds the moment Chamomile had joined the crew. Dash liked hard cloud beds and couldn’t make anything else, and Fluttershy…just didn’t like clouds, but Chamomile could make a great bed.

“Now then, I have had centuries to brood over the Elements of Harmony and what little I know about them. I can only think of three plausible reasons for the state you have encountered them in. As you briefly touched on, it is possible the elements are encased by a protective shell to ensure nothing untoward happens to them during their residence in Mona with some unknown magic placed upon them. However, knowing the elements, I rather doubt it.”

That didn’t sound good…

“Next, it is possible you are too far from the Tree of Harmony, leaving the elements in some manner of dormant state. Again, I rather doubt this as well, but it bears mentioning. If this is the case, you have but two options: abandon the elements and flee, or attempt to return to Equus yourself at great risk. I…I would rather see you run, if so.”

My brain glitched for a moment. The thought of coming all the way out here for nothing was almost too horrible to contemplate, nevermind whatever fate Luna would be abandoning herself to for my sake.

“But now I come to what I suspect is the truth of the matter. It is very likely that the elements are…broken, you might say.”

Broken? But if they were already broken…

“However, this is unlikely to be a new development. I would be willing to bet Equestria that the elements have been this way for a thousand years.”

Wait, but Celestia wanted Trixie to–

“Trixie – and Sunset Shimmer before her – is being raised to bear the Element of Magic, so–”

“So there must be a way to reactivate them!” I said at the exact same time as Chrysalis.

“If you have any ideas,” Chrysalis continued, “do feel free to try them first, but I believe I know how to reawaken the elements. However, I must ask your postal ser – is she serious?”

I chuckled at Chrysalis’s expense, but didn’t say anything.

“Argh. Whatever. She says I have to agree in advance to have a geas placed upon me, to have my memory of the plan erased, and to have my hive not reveal it to me before she’ll say anything.”

Hmm? That was unusual. There wasn’t very much sensitive information that I knew about which I could see being a problem if Chrysalis found out. She already knew pretty much everything relevant.

Sighing, Chrysalis continued, “I suppose I haven’t come all this way for nothing.”

“You’re agreeing?” I asked, eyes wide. Even if Chrysalis had warmed up to me over the years, she was even more paranoid protective of her memory and volition than I was.

“Yes, I already sent out the good news,” Chrysalis said dryly. “I believe I’ve already figured out her plan, and I can understand why it would be important that I know nothing and cannot be allowed to rededuce the plan.”

“Really?”

I had no idea what Luna’s plan was. Maybe I could figure it out if I thought about it for awhile, but was it really obvious enough to be able to figure it out from scratch in mere seconds?

“Indeed,” Chrysalis said in that smug tone of hers which I’d long since come to recognize as her ‘you’re an idiot’ voice. “Try thinking about the problem in reverse.”

Reverse? Um… So the problem was the elements were inert, Luna had some plan to awaken the elements, and the plan involved information Chrysalis wasn’t allowed to – no, information Chrysalis couldn’t know, if her words were to be trusted, for the plan to work. So the reverse of that was…if Chrysalis knew about the plan, the elements wouldn’t awaken?

That seemed wrong. Awakening the elements shouldn’t be dependent on changelings specifically in any way. Perhaps then it was necessary that Chrysalis not know, but not sufficient?

And like that, it was obvious.

“Chrysalis, I think I figured it out. Well, probably. It makes sense with what I know about the elements, at least.”

“Well, you’ll have to check your answer against Princess Luna’s. I already have her response ready.”

Author's Note

Prereader – Starlight Nova

Chapter Twenty Three - The Elements - Ascension

I threw the elements into the floor with a scream that might as well have been a battle cry. I’d like to think it was the scream that sent them flying fast enough to cower in the new dents in the floor, but I’d just thrown them way too hard. Each element produced a distinct thud and a couple clattering sounds. Even as upset as I was, I turned to where the elements had landed to make sure I hadn’t damaged the Nebulous in some way potentially fatal to myself.

Everything looked fine – I didn’t even see what had made the clattering noise – but just in case, I lifted the elements up and scryed beneath them to check if the bridge was in danger of depressurizing. The floor looked intact, if not unharmed. Out of curiosity, I turned my scrying spell to glance up at the elements. I hadn’t expected anything else at this point, but their shells weren’t even scratched.

It’d been five weeks – five weeks! – and I still had nothing! Every single plan Luna or I had come up with to awaken the elements had failed. Even Chrysalis had lent a hoof and hadn’t come up with anything that worked.

Luna was starting to get worried that I wouldn’t be able to get the elements up and running in time to ascend and properly break them. We were well into spring by this point, and there was no telling when Celestia would come to tear the elements from my hooves. Luna had once even suggested I give up and run, but for once in my life, I simply would not listen to her. There was no way I was going to abandon Luna to Celestia’s ‘mercy’.

Although, somewhere in the darkest part of my heart, I really, really wanted to. I hadn’t slept properly in days. Without Luna around to suppress my nightmares… I could only hope that today was also not the day Celestia would appear on my ship.

I – one time I really had given up. It’d taken the combined efforts of Twinkleshine, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie to cheer me up enough to continue working.

I never told Luna.

Still, everything was beginning to look hopeless again. Or rather it’d never stopped looking hopeless. I’d only buried my fears under frivolities and hugs.

I heard the door open behind me, and a weak voice called out, “Twilight?”

First taking a deep breath, which might have been a sigh, I turned around. “What is it, Twinkleshine? I’m busy.”

“I was just coming to tell you that Pinkie has supper…” Twinkleshine stopped a few meters short of me. “Have you not slept, or have you been up here crying the whole time?”

Quickly, before Twinkleshine could notice, I cast an illusion spell over my eyes which apparently had decided to betray me.

“I’m fine. I just – just had a little dust in my eyes.”

Twinkleshine looked over at where the elements lay, once more embedded into the floor where I’d let them fall.

“Come on, Twilight.” Twinkleshine lifted my hoof with hers. “Pinkie made a soufflé for everypony for dessert. You should eat with us tonight.”

“I…” I wasn’t getting anything done. I wasn’t getting anywhere with these stupid elements. “Okay…”

I allowed Twinkleshine to lead me by the hoof out of the bridge and down the halls of the Nebulous, my head barely high enough to make sure I wasn’t going to step on her hooves.

“You know, Twilight, I don’t think any of us would mind taking the long way home. If you can’t get the elements working to magic us back, we’ll all understand.”

I managed a weak smile and a token thank you. There was no going back for me if I couldn’t get the elements to work. Space would be safer, and I had everything and everypony I needed to continue surviving. Maybe we could even start a proper space colony, a new world. We’d just drift endlessly through space going wherever gravity took us.

How long would the ship be able to last before nopony could produce offspring anymore? A dozen generations? More? I could make the first generation last a couple centuries, and maybe my own foals could take my place after I was gone.

No, I couldn’t do that to everypony. Twinkleshine might stay with me, and Chamomile would have nowhere else to go anyway, but everypony else I could take back to Equus. Chrysalis would likely need to lay low, but everypony else was safe. Spike… We’d have to make the ship bigger for him. A lot bigger.

“If,” Twinkleshine whispered, “you don’t get them to work, we can always wait for Luna to give us a ride home. Even a Flare isn’t a worth much in a fight between alicorns, right? And the elements already don’t work.”

I sighed the slowest sigh of my life. “They’re not broken, Twinkleshine. They can still be used. Eventually, Celestia is going to show up and take them, whether I have them in my possession or not.”

“Can’t you just smash them?”

“If they can be smashed, it’s not by any power I possess.”

That probably wouldn’t render them useless, either. The Elements of Harmony were just a conduit for the Tree of Harmony’s power…probably. Smashing the ones I had might not do anything, or in the worst case, it would cause the tree to ‘grow’ new ones back on Equus.

And who knew, maybe Luna was wrong. Maybe the elements were just too far from the tree to function, and I was simply doomed.

“This…is probably not the safest idea, but maybe you could make a small black hole or a miniature sun and toss them in?”

Those weren’t the worst ideas ever, but they had a fundamental flaw. “If that doesn’t work, I have no way of checking, and Celestia can probably extract the elements from either.”

“Well…maybe Pinkie’s cooking will cheer you up. I know it always does for me! I heard she and Dash were planning Berry Pinch’s birthday party together this year! Her birthday is in five days. They’ll probably want to use the bridge again for it, if that’s okay.”

I nodded just enough to answer.

“Great! I’ll see if I can get on the planning committee this time. Maybe I can get them to have more stuff you like to do this time.”

“Thanks for trying…” I mumbled. It was hard not to feel like a miserable failure when I couldn’t do the one thing I was practically born and raised to do.

Well, I couldn’t say I was in a better mood, but at least I wasn’t feeling any worse. Supper had been good, and nopony had pestered me too much beyond Pinkie Pie.

Maybe I needed a little pestering right now, though. Twinkleshine was trying so hard to help, but I was in too deep for her to pick me back up. I got a small smile when Spike asked if I wanted his dessert, but ice cream topped with gemstone sprinkles wasn’t really my idea of fine cuisine.

Sigh… I rolled the dice to a trivial little board game Twinkleshine and Spike had brought out to take my mind off of everything, but it wasn’t helping. Perhaps a more complicated game that would require actual thought would have, but whatever.

I’d tried everything I, Chrysalis, and Luna combined could think of, but nothing had worked. And the only real ideas I had left were worthless variations on old ideas.

I rolled the dice again, seeing that it was probably my turn. Twinkleshine hadn’t moved her pieces in a while, and neither had Spike.

“Twilight, you’ve already won…”

“Oh.” I looked back up from the board to Twinkleshine. “I’m sorry. I really appreciate what you two are trying to do, but it’s not working.”

I tried not to look at Spike, but I couldn’t help it. He looked about ready to cry himself. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t manage to hold a smile for him.

“Spike, do you think I could get a hug?”

There was only a moment’s hesitation before he jumped into my hooves. I’d grown so much, and he’d grown so little. Hugging him was like snuggling with a very warm teddy bear. It was nice, but it didn’t help much. Still, I could pretend it did.

“Thanks, Spike. I think I’ll make it through another night now.” Twinkleshine looked at me skeptically, a look I returned with a shrug as I rose. “I’ll be fine. I promise. I need to get back to work, though; I’m running out of time.”

“I was thinking of heading to bed soon,” Twinkleshine said. “Do you want to join me at all?”

My eye twitched and my legs wobbled, but I managed to stay on all four hooves.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Twinkleshine asked, her magic already extended to help keep me upright.

I didn’t smile. “Yes, I’m perfectly alright. I just remembered something silly. Anyway, I’m going to go say goodnight to everypony who’s still awake, and then I’m going to head back to the bridge to keep working. Sweet dreams, you two.”

I walked out the door without a skip in my step after Twinkleshine and Spike had said their good nights as well. Immediately after, I made my usual rounds at night. I wished everypony a good night’s rest and told them where I’d likely be in case of an emergency. Tonight, as it had been for the past several weeks, I was going to be sequestered up in the bridge.

Finally reaching the bridge in question, most of my worries left behind me, I finally allowed a little bounce into my step. The situation wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t nearly as bad at night when there were only two ponies awake.

“Alright, did any of the plans work today?”

I rather doubted it. Today had been pretty unproductive, but it was possible. Maybe Generosity would think Spike’s heroic sacrifice of his dessert to cheer me up was generous enough for a dragon his age. Actually, that was pretty generous for a dragon of any age. Spike was such a little sweetheart compared to the dragons in the stories Luna had told the two of us.

Trotting over to where I’d abandoned the elements, I was both unsurprised and disappointed to find myself with four stone spheres and two golden necklaces.

“You know,” I began, talking to Generosity, “you should be really impressed with Spike. He has an instinctive urge to never give anything up, especially treasure. I, at least, am immensely proud of how he’s grown up. It’s not how much somepony can afford to give that counts, it’s about how hard they try. No, it’s even more fundamental than that. It’s about the altruistic impulse to give, something Spike has ingrained in his heart.”

Generosity just floated in my magic.

“Don’t give me that look. You know perfectly well that Spike is an exemplar of Generosity. He may prioritize me, but that’s to be expected. I’m his mother. But even then, he’s no less giving with others.”

Generosity just floated in my magic.

“Fine, you’re no good for conversation, anyway.”

I let Generosity fall back down to the floor to rest along with the other elements. I was still pretty irked that Kindness had awakened for Fluttershy. I mean, Laughter for Pinkie Pie made plenty of sense, although I could see Kindness for her, too. Anyway, Fluttershy was a dear, but Twinkleshine has been nothing but kind, and caring, and supportive ever since I’d recovered the elements from the comet floating next to us.

Oh well. The elements appeared to operate on a first come, first serve basis, so it wasn’t as if Kindness had rejected Twinkleshine. And either way, in the end, it was hard to argue with the pink, butterfly-shaped gem affixed at the base of the necklace. The elements did what they wanted, and I had no control over them.

And then there was Magic. I felt like kicking the stupid element around like a ball again. I’d all but given up on getting the blasted thing to awaken, despite how easy it should have been. The only reason I hadn’t tossed it out into deep space in frustration was that it might require all of the other elements to be working before it could do anything. It was the big, important element that made everything else function, after all. From an engineering perspective, there was no reason for it to work without the supporting elements working first.

It was at this point that Chrysalis finally joined me. Her own geas – which prevented her from thinking about our real plan, from detecting the geas, and from noticing the elements awakening – had expired when I’d said good night to her, just like the same one on myself had worn off when Twinkleshine had decided to go to sleep. Fortunately, the ‘we’re doomed, end the geas, run for your lives’ emergency clause which would break the two geases hadn’t activated on either of us yet.

“Any troubles to report?” I asked. I asked this to a geased Chrysalis everyday, too, but it was always good to see if she came up with anything new at night.

“Nothing important, just internal hive squabbles. Any changes with the elements?”

“No,” I answered automatically. Even if I had a lot more hope than my daytime self, every day that passed without a third element awakening still hurt. “Laughter and Kindness are still the only two awake. I really cannot fathom why Loyalty hasn’t responded to somepony yet; this ship is filled to the brim with ponies that have an unusually strong sense of loyalty.”

“And I cannot fathom why you won’t just knight Chamomile.”

I bit my lip and averted my gaze. Chrysalis had been getting more and more insistent about this as the weeks came and went.

“I…wouldn’t normally do that, and–”

“‘And Luna was adamant that we not try to fool the elements under any circumstances, hence the geases to make the two of us behave normally during the day’,” Chrysalis interrupted, reciting the same excuse I’d given every single time. “That’s not your real reason – not anymore, at least – and you know it.”

Urgh… That didn’t mean it wasn’t a good excuse anyway. We could nudge events the way we wanted them to go, we could make situations where the crew would be inclined to show exemplary character traits, but we couldn’t force anypony to act out of character: the elements wouldn’t be fooled.

Stupid proto-will. The elements weren’t even sentient. They had no business judging us.

“You’re just worried it won’t work,” Chrysalis continued, “and that Chamomile will follow you to her death.”

I cringed in anticipation of what I knew Chrysalis was going to say next.

“Well, guess what. She’s going to follow you and Princess Luna to her death anyway, so you might as well–”

Chrysalis caught the element I threw at her with her magic.

“Oh, look at that,” I began, “you’ve just awakened the Element of Brutal Honesty.”

“Oh?” A terrible smirk grew on Chrysalis’s face. “So you’re admitting I’m right?”

My shoulders slumped along with my head. “If we don’t have a third element by the end of the week, I’ll ask her. And if that doesn’t work…”

I turned toward the two awakened elements sitting next to me. Luna thought I was at the point where the elements would simply ascend me if I got near them if I had enough of them awakened. Two elements might be enough if I kick-started my ascension, but I’d rather not try it if I had any other choice.

The problem was we were really pushing the limits of how long we could stay here. I was beginning to share the worry and panic of my daytime self, but eight more days should be safe, and maybe another week after that would be, too.

“I’ll start making preparations for protecting you all from a Twilight-sized explosion and, as best I can, from Celestia’s wrath. If we don’t get another element by the fiftieth, I’ll try to ascend with the two we have. If Celestia notices, or if I don’t return within a couple hours, you’ll need to take over for me.”

“Have you taught Twinkleshine how to cast shields?”

There was no nice way to answer that, unfortunately. “I tried, but she’s terrible with them. If Celestia strands you on the ship, you’ll have to manage all the life support and safety spells. Sorry.”

“Fantastic,” Chrysalis muttered.

“I once read a book that said sleeping in short power naps is actually better–”

Chrysalis’s glare cut me off. I hadn’t thought that was going to work, but it’d been worth a try. Still, maybe she would get used to sleeping for fifteen minutes at a time in-between refreshing the life support spells. Maybe.

“Anyway,” I began, “we still have plenty of time to try other plans. Have you had any other ‘strokes of genius’? Letting me fall into depression did work out, after all.”

Chuckling first, Chrysalis said, “Yes, yes it did. I thought it would, but a big part of me was just satisfied with revenge for all the trouble you’ve put me to.”

“What a wonderful friend you are.” Why couldn’t Chrysalis just keep her mouth shut once in a while? “What’s next? Are you going to try to kill me and see if somepony is loyal enough to throw herself into the line of fire?”

Chrysalis tapped a hoof to her cheek and wore an obviously fake contemplative look.

I sighed in exasperation.

“In all seriousness,” Chrysalis said, “I did not come up with anything particularly interesting during the day by chance, but we have all night to toss ideas back and forth. There is one thing that I might do to distract Celestia, though.”

“Oh?” I said, eyebrow raised. “Do share.”

“It’s nothing too important. I just thought she might be interested in locating Sunset Shimmer.”

A second passed as I stared at Chrysalis’s smirk, my jaw hanging wide open.

“You found Sunset Shimmer?” I shouted. “How? Luna and Celestia both couldn’t find her!”

“I’m afraid that would be telling.”

Chrysalis’s smile only grew when I stomped my hoof.

“You’re insufferable. You know that, right?”

“My daughter has told me that on occasion, but I had always assumed she was lying.”

Ugh. I facehoofed. “Will you at least tell me where she is? That seems like the kind of thing that might save my life at some point.”

“Oh, indeed, but I will be keeping that information to myself. It is my last resort to save my hive, although I suppose it would cost me little to ask for your life as well.”

“Gee, thanks. I feel so well-loved. So what are you going to tell Celestia? ‘I know where your previous student is, but I don’t feel like saying.’ I know exactly how well that will go over.”

“I haven’t decided yet. It’s a rather difficult problem to give away enough information to keep her interest without giving her enough to immediately discover the solution, but I’m sure I can come up with a reasonable clue. But this is something I’ve been working on during the daytime and will continue to work on then. For now, let’s speak of the elements.”

“I…suppose that’s a fair point. That is more of a task for daytime us. Anyway” – I picked up Generosity and held it between the two of us – “I think I still want to try giving Spike Generosity. In theory, as a dragon and as a foal, he should have a lower requirement to awaken it, hopefully low enough that it can, you know, actually work.”

“In theory,” Chrysalis echoed. “Still, it is a point well raised. There are few enough opportunities to demonstrate generosity on this ship. All any of us really have to give each other is our time.”

“You could give me a break once in a while.”

Chrysalis rolled her eyes but otherwise ignored my comment. “Did you have any particular plan in mind?”

“Well, yes, but I feel kind of bad about it. I can see a dozen ways it could go wrong and hurt Spike.”

“Hurt him worse than losing his mother?”

I liked to think the answer to that was no, but that didn’t mean I was okay with hurting Spike less. I didn’t want him to be hurt period.

Sighing first, I said, “Feel free to critique this, but I think it’s a reasonable idea. You know how close Berry Pinch and Spike are, right?”

“Obviously.”

“Well, a few years ago, I gave Spike a Hearth’s Warming gift that, well, Berry Pinch has had her eye on it for different reasons. I think if I–”

“Stop.” Chrysalis pulled my head with her magic to lock me into eye contact. “What gift did you give him?”

“Before you freak out–”

“You gave him a fire ruby!” Chrysalis interrupted again. “What were you thinking? Fire rubies explode if they’re not carefully looked after. They’re practically giant magical bombs!”

“That’s nothing I don’t know. I gave him the original crystal cores to grow under the express conditions that he would only do so under my supervision and that he wouldn’t try to do anything with one until it was fully grown and stabilized.”

Chrysalis released me, but her scowl didn’t fade. “You at least placed shields around them, right?”

“Of course. I’m not stupid.”

“Fine. Are there any other dangerous items aboard this ship I should be aware of.”

“Well,” I began, still rubbing my neck to ease the minor pain Chrysalis had caused, “there’s me, naturally. And then there’s the elements. And half the stuff Chamomile brought aboard, I’m sure.”

“So no.”

I shrugged. Those were all very dangerous things aboard the ship, each in their own way.

“I suppose, then,” Chrysalis began, “that one of those fire rubies has finished growing, and Spike is waiting for a special occasion to eat it.”

I nodded.

“And I might venture to guess that a certain little filly thinks it’s pretty.”

I nodded again.

“And I might dare to suggest that she would even appreciate some jewelry as a gift from her beau.”

“That’s the thought. I just hope she hasn’t reached puberty yet and that it really is just a foalish crush on her friend. Spike is a long way off from thinking about fillies that way, regardless of the whole dragon and unicorn issue.”

“Which really isn’t an issue,” Chrysalis added, gesturing to my wings.

“Well, yes. But I’m not going to dump Spike into a teenage pony’s body filled with hormones he doesn’t understand how to deal with. The other way around doesn’t really help either; it’d just cut off the hormones for Berry Pinch.”

“Ah, what tragic star-crossed lovers,” Chrysalis lamented, her tone at odds with her licking her lips.

“I forbid you from encouraging anything which could break Spike’s heart.”

Well, maybe that wasn’t the right way to phrase that. Spike wouldn’t be able to go through life without ever putting himself in an emotionally vulnerable position. But still, I didn’t quite trust Chrysalis where her food was concerned. She had once claimed to be a connoisseur of love, which boded poorly for anypony foolish enough to go to her for advice about it.

“Tch. Anyway, I thought of another idea, although it is a tab bit tasteless.”

Tasteless for Chrysalis, the Queen of Practicality? Now this I had to hear.

“We could move Fluttershy to another’s bed and wait to see what happens.”

“Let me guess, Loyalty for Dash, or maybe Fluttershy?” As Luna and Celestia had proven, there was no reason why one pony couldn’t have more than one element.

Shrugging, Chrysalis added, “Or perhaps Honesty, depending on how the situation developed. Who knows what the elements might find suitable in a bearer.”

“You’re right. That is rather crass.” After a sigh, I added, “Though I can’t find it in me to say it’s actually a bad idea. Still, we should probably shuffle that back until late next week.”

“Agreed. It could create a lot of drama and interfere with other plans.”

That wasn’t quite the reason I would’ve given to delay implementing a fake tryst, but it was a solid enough argument all on its own. Of course, it was also entirely possible that Dash would just think it was a prank, which would make the whole idea fail spectacularly as she set off revenge pranks.

After approximately a minute of silence, I said, “I wish I could think of something useful to do with Cherry Berry. She knows – in some vague terms – I’m supposed to ascend, and I can’t help but think there should be something we could do with that. But aside from continuing to keep the secret from the crew not in the know, I don’t see how we could set her up to awaken Loyalty. And she’s already been doing that, and Loyalty hasn’t responded. Generosity doesn’t make sense, either, but surely there’s some way to awaken Honesty with secrets. It doesn’t even have to be Cherry Berry; there are plenty of secrets on this ship.”

“We’ve wasted our time on Honesty too often,” Chrysalis said, shaking her head. “Princess Luna agreed that Honesty is a tricky element.”

I sighed. “I suppose you’re right. It’d be nice if Honesty could just see that I have a deep-seated desire to report the truth when I do science.”

“I’m far more concerned that you’ve been unable to awaken Magic. That is rather distressing.”

I certainly didn’t need to be reminded of that. It was grating to think Celestia might have abandoned me because I actually wasn’t good enough, unlikely though it was. I must have been doing something wrong, but whatever it was, Luna wouldn’t tell me – either because she didn’t know or because my knowing would make awakening Magic impossible, even with memory spells.

Well, anyway, what else hadn’t we tried? As much as I hated to admit it, we were really starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel for ideas. We’d gone through well over a hundred already, although I’d guess we’d only had six or seven actually good ideas so far.

Nopony on this ship was particularly attached to Celestia as a ruler, so maybe we could implement some sort of loyalty test if I told everypony why we were really here.

Hmm… No, that didn’t sound like the kind of thing that would awaken Loyalty. When it came down to it, the choice they would be making would just be between two heads of state, between the status quo and the princess they knew firsthoof. That might be hard, but whatever choice everypony made, it wouldn’t really be exemplary of loyalty.

Really, just in general, situations that involved a conflict of loyalties didn’t seem like the right approach, nor had we had any success with such plans. Perhaps if we had an independent external threat, awakening Loyalty might be easy. But the only one we could summon would be Celestia, which would be a bad, awful, horrible, disastrous plan to enact.

Well actually, we had a comet – no, that was silly. If everypony woke up one day to find the comet ‘mysteriously’ heading right for us, they’d just ask me to solve the problem and get on with their lives. The comet wouldn’t be able to pass as a credible danger, especially not when everypony on the Nebulous has had at least one picnic on it by this point.

“What is it?” Chrysalis asked over my giggling.

“No, it’s dumb and silly. I was just thinking about Mona growing angry with our picnics and trying to kill us out of revenge.”

Clearly choosing each word very carefully, Chrysalis replied, “I am concerned you are not taking this seriously.”

“I am, I am. But I need to get my laughs while I can; daytime is pretty brutal for me.”

“Fair.”

So, if Loyalty was out, I should focus my attention on… Hmm… There was actually one pony we could provide an external threat for, but I had no clue how I could do it without it counting as fooling the elements. The way putting a bandage on a filly you’d kicked into the ground didn’t count as kindness, if we had Chrysalis set up a threat to her own hive, or even if she just knowingly relayed a request to do so from me to Luna, nothing she did would really count as loyalty.

It was times like this that I wish Luna and I had a secret code of some kind. Sadly, encryption was pointless when she and I were alone in my dreams, and there was no way anypony, especially my parents, would be able to memorize a random string of thousands of characters on a daily basis. Let alone how annoying it would be for Luna to decrypt by hoof.

Maybe Luna would realize she could set up such a plan herself. Actually, maybe she already had and was merely waiting until we were nearly out of time to implement it. There was no need to risk Chrysalis’s ire unless we had no other choice, after all.

I nodded to myself. If I’d thought of the idea, then of course Luna would have, too.

Right then. So Loyalty was probably the second most difficult element to awaken of the three non-Magic ones left. That meant I should turn most of my attention toward Generosity. Looking back on it now, the Spike plan still seemed solid, but I wasn’t going to put all my eggs in that basket.

This was going to be another long night.

I awoke with a strange headache again, but the feeling went away quickly enough. Still, the brief pain had disrupted the blissful half-awake state I usually had when waking up. It was probably time to go see if Fluttershy knew what the cause was, but not right now.

Right now, I saw Spike fiddling with something shiny nearby. My vision was still too blurry to figure out exactly what.

“Ugh, good afternoon, Spike,” I moaned. After I managed to rise zombie-like to my rump, I unfolded my wings and began my daily preening, a nearly automatic action by this point.

“Good afternoon, Mom. I was wondering if – if you’d help me with something.”

I pulled my muzzle out from under my wing and glanced in Spike’s direction. After I’d blinked enough to get my vision to focus, I found out what the shiny thing Spike had was.

“Spike,” I began, “you know you’re not supposed to touch your fire rubies without my supervision.”

“I know, but you said this one was finished growing.”

“Yes, it is, and that’s why I’m not as mad as I should be. If you want to eat it, go put it back in containment and save it for dessert.”

I returned to my preening, but when it became clear that Spike wasn’t going to say anything or leave, I looked back up again. He was staring at his feet, still fiddling with the fire ruby in his claws. It was at that point that my sleep addled mind remembered that Spike had asked for help.

“Did you have something else in mind for that?” I asked.

Mumbling to the floor, Spike said “I was wondering if…”

“I didn’t hear that. What–”

“Would you turn this into a necklace!” Spike thrust his fire ruby toward me and held it in the palms of his claws.

“Hmm? Unless you’re giving it to Chrysalis or Luna, that gem is way too big for a necklace. Maybe you could make it into a manepin, although even then we’d have to do a considerable amount of cutting. I should be able to do that safely for you, but I might break it into tiny pieces.” Before I went off on a huge tangent, lecturing on all of the implementation details, I remembered to ask, “Why do you ask?”

“Well, you said I should make a birthday present for Pinch, and she likes this kind of fillyish stuff.”

Spike’s blush only deepened when I said, “Aww.” I’d completely forgotten I’d mentioned that to him yesterday, but that wasn’t too surprising; I’d written a note to myself the night before yesterday to make sure I actually remembered to do that. Giggling, I added, “Are you sure you want to do this though? No regrets even if I accidentally break your gift?”

Just for a moment, Spike hesitated and licked his lips, but in the end, he nodded.

“Alright then, but I did mean it when I said that’s too big for a necklace, especially for Berry Pinch. Do you want to make a bunch of smaller things, or do you want to make one really big manepin?”

“Um…maybe a manepin? I don’t know what they look like, though.”

Ah, that was a good point. I couldn’t really expect Spike to know much about the design of jewelery, nor was I a good reference. Chrysalis should know, but she and I had too much work to do right now. Maybe…

One teleport later, and I stood next to Twinkleshine in the library. She didn’t even jump at my sudden appearance, having grown far too used to my teleports.

“Good afternoon, Twilight.”

“Good afternoon. Would you be willing to help Spike with a little arts and crafts project?”

“Arts and crafts? I don’t see why not, although I still think you need to take a long break from the elements. Why don’t you help him instead? It’ll be good for you.”

I sighed. Barely out of bed and I was already having this argument again. Just because the situation looked hopeless didn’t mean it was okay to give up…again. Well, there was an easy way to subvert the argument this time. “For your information, I will be helping him with it, but he’ll need your advice for the arty part.”

Twinkleshine looked at me skeptically. “Really?”

“Yes, I really will be helping. Anyway, the sooner he gets started, the better. Are you free now?”

“Yeah, sure.”

After Twinkleshine had placed a bookmark and closed her book, I teleported the two of us back to my room.

“Alright, you two,” I began. “I have other things to do today, but I’ll start making a lump of silver from the comet. I think I need to extract some copper, too. Silver is supposed to be easily malleable if not alloyed with another metal; I think copper works, but I’ll have to consult a reference book.”

“Can’t I use gold?” Spike asked, bringing my attention back to why I was here. “It’d match Pinch’s cutie mark that way.”

“Wait, what? Silver? Gold?”

“In a moment, Twinkleshine,” I said. “Please stick to silver, Spike. The only way I know how to make gold right now requires a lot of additional processing to make sure none of it’s radioactive. Er, that is, the gold I can make will make Berry Pinch really sick, so please stick with silver, okay?”

Spike and I engaged in a brief battle of wills, but his puppy dog eyes were no match for me. He had used them far too often, and I’d built up quite the immunity.

“Okay?” I repeated myself, putting more emphasis into the question.

Shoulders sagging in defeat, Spike said, “Okay…”

“Great.” To be fair, making silver was going to be a huge pain, too, but I could actually finish producing guaranteed safe – and stable – silver in the three days before the party with enough time left to work with it. “Now, I’ll leave you in the capable hooves of Twinkleshine. Be sure to explain to her exactly what it is you want to do.”

“Alright. Should I just draw what I want?”

I shrugged. “Anything that is sufficiently detailed is fine. I think Pinkie Pie has the art supplies right now. I can send her your way, if you want.”

“Hmm… Yeah, that’d work.”

Nodding, I teleported to the kitchen, which was the most likely place to find Pinkie Pie. And if not there – which looking around, I found she was not – then the site of her next party was a good second choice. Today, that meant the bridge. I teleported straight there, feeling useful for the first time in weeks.

“Do you think she’ll like it?” Spike asked, putting the finishing touches on the ridiculously over-elaborate bow on his gift to Berry Pinch.

“Well, she is a foal,” I said offhoofedly. “I would say she’ll like anything you give her, but that’s not true at all. That said, I’m sure she’ll love your gift.”

“Mom, are you all right?”

No, I wasn’t all right. I still hadn’t gotten anywhere with the elements, and now everypony but Chrysalis was dragging me to a party. Even if it wasn’t my party, I still hadn’t earned a party. If I could get just one of those stupid rocks to give me an Element of Harmony, maybe then I wouldn’t mind wasting time and letting myself have some fun.

“Yes, I’m fine,” I lied. “I’m just tired. Anyway, it’s time for one last review. What are the three enchantments I put on that manepin?”

“Um… One, it’ll remember the last way it was used, to make using it easier.”

I resisted rubbing my forehead at the reminder of the book I’d had to read to learn that spell.

“Two,” Spike continued, “it stops her from getting wet or building up static charge.”

Well, that was what it did, but at its core, the enchantment was designed to prevent the wearer’s mane from frizzing.

“Three, it can only be removed by whoever is wearing it, so she doesn’t have to worry about it being stolen.”

Now that was an actually interesting enchantment. Luna had said she’d first discovered it from reverse engineering some artifact called the Alicorn Amulet.

“And the magic to power the enchantments comes from?” I asked.

“Am…amb…ambient magic?”

I nodded. “Except there is no ambient magic out here, so until she returns to Equus” – or the moon – “she’ll have to provide the magic herself.” Which left the third enchantment of questionable utility at the moment. Pretty much anypony on the Nebulous could overpower her and take her manepin, although I was sure nopony actually would.

“Alright,” I began, levitating Spike up onto my back, “let’s head up to the bridge. I heard Pinkie Pie made a quadruple chocolate cake, and I could really use some comfort food right now.”

“Whoa, that sounds tasty!”

Ah, how comparatively easy it was to be a parent to a dragon. There was literally no need to worry about what he ate so long as he didn’t put anything sentient into his mouth.

“Just don’t eat all of it. It’s Berry Pinch’s birthday, so between you, me, and especially Pinkie Pie, she’ll still expect to get a slice.” I turned my head back toward him to give him a grin, and I got a laugh for my trouble.

As I stepped through the second door that led onto the bridge, the usual blare of music courtesy of Pinkie Pie came at us. For whatever reason, she’d chosen a swing album this time. Pinkie Pie herself had pulled out her saxophone and was playing along atop a table, somehow vibrating up and down. I watched her for a moment longer as she repeated the action several seconds later. Maybe it was some kind of Pinkie Sense?

“Ah, Twinkleshine said she’d try to get on board with the party planning,” I whispered to myself, my hooves tapping to the beat. “That explains the atmosphere.”

I really should learn how to play an instrument. If I lived past the summer solstice, Pinkie Pie and I could start a jazz band. That could be a lot of fun. Maybe I could play the drums. No, if my dancing skills were any indication, my rhythm was probably abysmal. The trumpet was probably relatively easy to pick up. There were only three buttons to press, after all. Twinkleshine could sing, and maybe Luna would even join us. And Cadance played the bass. Or was it the cello?

I shook my head as Spike hopped off my back. As amusing of a diversion as that could be in the future, there was a whole lot of stuff to do between then and now – too much stuff, even. What was I doing at a party? I should–

“Hey, Twilight!” Twinkleshine shouted. “Hey, Spike. You can put your present over there on the table with the others.” Gesturing to the opposite side of the room, she added, “The cake and punch is over there.”

I turned my gaze to where Twinkleshine was pointing and, immediately after, levitated a rather large slice of cake over to myself. I took a large bite out of it, everything Luna had ever taught me about table manners forgotten.

“Well?” Twinkleshine asked, smiling and slapping me on the back. “What do you think?”

“You’ve done well. I’m pretty sure I can guess where your influence is at work.” I sighed as I caught sight of the elements tucked away in a corner. “Still, I’m not sure how long I’m going to stay. I have stuff to do, and I’ll just bring the party down around me.”

“Will you at least stay for a game of cards? Berry Pinch said she wanted to play with you, Spike, and Berry Punch.”

“What game?” I asked hesitantly. This felt like a trap.

“She asked for Spades.”

Hmm, that wasn’t the longest card game played on the Nebulous. Perhaps it wasn’t a trap, then.

“Alright, I’ll oblige the birthday filly for one game, but I think I’m going to leave after that. I assume my partner is Spike.”

“Nope! It’s Berry Punch.”

I raised an eyebrow. It wouldn’t hurt too much to go easy on the foals, I supposed.

“Maybe I should have gone easier on them,” I mused.

Spike and Berry Pinch had been pretty upset after getting not quite curb stomped, but something pretty close to that. Honestly, they’d actually played pretty well, even though they were still learning. I’d known she and Spike had started playing cards together often, but their teamwork was incredible enough to make up for what they were lacking in skill.

Oh well. I was sure that when Spike finally got around to giving Berry Pinch her present, she’d forget all about it. Or at least get over it enough to plot how she would win a revenge game later.

I looked back down at the notebook I was reading. It was filled with failed idea after failed idea. I really didn’t know what I hadn’t tried yet to awaken the elements. It really felt like there was a good idea just waiting for me to put into words, but every time I tried, it eluded me like trying to catch the wind.

I’d checked on the off chance that Chrysalis was intentionally sabotaging us, but I couldn’t find any untoward spells on me that would prevent me from…what? Thinking of good ideas? Spells – at least no known spells had the kind of processing power necessary to determine if something was a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ idea.

Maybe a geas could prevent somepony from thinking about something specific, but I couldn’t find one on me. And I was positive I was casting the detection spells right, so I was just utterly failing to do the one thing Luna had ever asked of me all on my own.

Sigh. Maybe I should just shoot a bolt of lightning at the elements, or throw some raw magic at them. That was certainly something I hadn’t tried, although I couldn’t think of any reason why that would work or even make sense. I was getting desperate enough to try some of the more exotic ideas about magic that a pony could find in fiction written by authors that didn’t understand how it worked.

Like virgin sacrifices. What even was the reasoning there? Magic didn’t care if you’d ever had sex or not. There wasn’t some fundamental change that occurred in ponies when reproductive organs got within a certain radius. Even in the realm of fiction, that was a ridiculous idea which would need an even more outrageous premise to make sense contextually.

And then there were those stories where reading a book could drive a pony insane. If the information was actually so shocking that it was impossible to cope with it, the obvious solution was to just forget the last hour or so. Or if there were a magical curse of some kind on the book, then the obvious answer was to dispel the curse. If that were impossible, just throw the book into a volcano, and the whole problem would sort itself out.

Well, whatever. If ponies liked those stories, they were welcome to them. Maybe I just had an innate distaste for high fantasy.

And I’d gotten horribly off topic. So the elements–

An overwhelming burst of magic flew across the room, a thousand million billion times more intense than the last occasion I’d felt anything remotely familiar, all the way back on the day I’d earned my cutie mark.

I toppled out of my chair.

“No, not now!”

I could feel a flare coming. Whatever disaster had just happened, it would have to wait.

I teleported into my flaring chamber, pleasantly surprised to find that the enchantments were still working.

I spotted my…my…my memories came back. The geas lifted. This was an emergency if anything ever qualified.

What had just happened? It had to have involved the Elements of Harmony. There was nopony on the ship who could generate that much magic, and it hadn’t felt like Celestia’s, or Luna’s, or Cadance’s magic.

A horrible, gut wrenching feeling grew inside of me. While it was just barely possible the elements had misfired, there was an awful, terrible alternative explanation: somepony had ascended.

Somepony with familiar magic had ascended. Geased Me had thought the magic had felt just the tiniest bit familiar underneath the sheer raw power.

The momentary flash of pride I had for Spike was drowned out completely as my coat turned white and my mane and tail burst into flames. I gritted my teeth painfully hard, trying to stay just the slightest bit in control of my righteous fury. My entire life’s work had just been ruined.

In my head, I chanted over and over to myself, “Remember what happened to Luna.” The last time she had grown overwhelmingly angry was the moment she’d been banished. I couldn’t afford to repeat her mistake. Luna would be disappointed if I repeated her mistake. Untempered fury was a handicap, not a strength.

My suppressor, I had to get to it. I needed to end this flare now. If there was anything I could do to salvage this situation, anything at all, it wasn’t going to happen mid-flare.

Even through the magic searing my horn, even while I tried to stay calm, the words escaped me.

“Dash! I am going to throw you into the sun!”

Author's Note

Prereader – Starlight Nova

Chapter Twenty Four - The Elements - Magic

If I were in any fit state to be screaming coherently, I was sure the air would have been filled with obscenities beyond measure. In addition to my generic anger at what had happened and my flare flinging rubble at me and my flare creating another large gash in my hide, the most recent explosion of my unprocessed magic knocked my suppressor out of my hooves and into a pile of sand. That would normally be annoying enough, but the sand was molten in random locations, not all of which, I was sure, were visible.

I leapt right into the sandpit, doing nothing more than wincing when I felt my left hindhoof burn. Time was too precious right now to be careful. I didn’t know exactly how long that magical pulse would take to reach Equus, but Celestia likely already knew what had happened. Luna had said a successful ascension – and that had been far too much magic to be anything but – would take a new alicorn straight to the Æthereal Realm, which apparently any alicorn would notice happening.

Luna had been rather sparse on the details of what the Æthereal Realm was; she’d only said to follow the memories when I got here.

I had an hour, maybe two if Celestia was sloppy.

A scream escaped me as my magic flung me randomly through the air before stopping me dead midair and then throwing me to the ground. Throughout the ride, I just barely managed to keep my eyes on where my suppressor had landed. I might not have been able to find it again if I hadn’t, camouflaged as it were against the sandy backdrop.

Wasting no time, I rose to my hooves and galloped as fast as I could across the treacherous terrain. Before my magic could do anything else to me, I dove onto a patch of molten sand right next to my suppressor, shoving my head down into the sand and sliding my horn through the ring.

I drew blood as I bit my lip to keep myself from screaming. Adrenaline could only do so much, and my everything was in pain as I collapsed. With the last of my physical strength, I rolled over onto my back onto a patch of non-scalding sand, breathing deeply as the suppressor did its work.

Fortunately or otherwise, this left me time to think properly.

And think I would. Losing control to anger now was quite possibly the worst idea imaginable.

My situation looked…pretty terrible. Spike had awoken Generosity – or somepony had awoken something – and Dash had wandered too close to the elements.

Stars, I felt so stupid! This was so easily preventable!

Ascending was deceptively hard, but ascension was easy. It only had two steps. That was one of the very first things Luna had taught me. Be talented enough and have a giant pool of magic to power the ascension. That was it. And Luna and Celestia hadn’t even known how ascension worked when they did it, or even that it existed, so somepony else could accidentally stumble into it, too, just like Cadance had.

I knew that. I’d known that.

And Luna and Celestia had ascended together, so three Elements of Harmony was enough. When I wasn’t working with them, I should have kept the elements in pairs at most and far away from each other. I should have geased myself to do that, even if the elements wouldn’t have liked it. It was only prudent.

It was so obvious in hindsight, for all that it came out of nowhere from the perspective of Pre-disaster Me.

And Dash.

No. I pulled back as hard as I possibly could on my urge to lash out. This was a time for thought. Another of Luna’s very first lessons was how to control anger. If I lost it completely now, I’d be walking into the same trap that had happened to Luna a thousand years ago. I wouldn’t lose my temper now when everything was at stake. I’d learned my lesson about planning ahead long ago, and I was going to think. Think, not rage.

Dash. Even when I’d only first met her on Hearth’s Warming, it’d been obvious that she was extraordinarily talented and dedicated. Even the phrase I’d used to describe her magical abilities was something along the lines of ‘breaking all the rules’.

But Dash’s goals were so alien to me that I hadn’t truly processed that fact or any of the others. The grudging respect I had for her, her quick learning speed, her ability to impress not just me but the very talented pegasus Chamomile as well over and over again, her magical stamina to fly everywhere, the quote legendary sonic rainboom unquote when she was still a prepubescent filly, it all added up to one thing: Dash was my peer, and she shouldn’t have been let anywhere near the elements ever.

I should have paid more attention to her. I shouldn’t have treated her like a side character, like just a friend of my friends.

So what if she was essentially my exact opposite? If anypony alive besides me had mastered her special talent enough to earn ascension, Dash was such a pony. She’d spent her entire life doing her own thing, just like I had, and I would have known I knew that if I’d allowed myself just to notice her, to judge her fairly and without bias.

Stars! The rainboom alone should have been a big, obvious danger sign for me. She’d had enough magic in her as a little filly to send a magical pulse across Equestria, one strong enough to go from Cloudsdale to Canterlot and still set off one of my flares.

What even was she now? The Alicorn of Going Really Fast? I swore, if she became the Alicorn of Pegasus Magic…

I took one last deep breath as my flare finally sputtered out. I was still a fiery maned, white coated fake alicorn, but I didn’t think that spell effect was going to end on its own like normal anytime soon, nor should it. The only question was who I should be most angry with.

Dash, for ruining everything? No. As much as I tended to think otherwise, the world didn’t revolve around me, or Luna, or Celestia, or even Cadance. I was still going to throw Dash into the sun if I could, but she was an innocent bystander caught up in all this during her own story. What had happened had been just as unexpected for her as it had been for me: a miracle for her, and a cruel quirk of fate for me.

If I had a lesson to take away from this, it would be to give ponies the respect they deserved, to never underestimate others again.

So should I be angry with Chrysalis for missing the same information I had? No. She knew a lot about alicorns, but we horded our secrets as much as possible. It wasn’t reasonable, fair, or productive to pin the blame on her.

What about Luna for not warning me? No, not her either. She didn’t know Dash all that well, and I hadn’t talked about Dash much either, because guess what? Half the time I didn’t care to acknowledge her existence outside of my venting in my journal entries. If Luna had seen this disastrous possibility and hadn’t warned me of it…I didn’t even know. I would have words with her for sure. And if she told me ‘it was obvious’, I’d have even more words with her.

Wait. Maybe it didn’t matter where the elements were stored. Maybe to be close enough to be awakened, they also had to be in range to fuel an ascension. No, but then I could’ve just had the unawakened ones kept nearby, which was what an intelligent pony would have done.

In fact, maybe that was why almost all of our plans had failed. They’d failed because the elements and the ponies involved were too far apart. Considering the requirements, I didn’t know how I could ever test that.

But then what was the maximum range of ascension? If I’d stored the elements separately, would they have ascended somepony anyway?

Just based on what I knew of magic, I had a feeling the answer to that last question was yes if they were all on the ship, which was where they’d been convenient to keep. If so, it actually made some sense to store the elements together. If the ascension process didn’t pick the closest pony to the average position of where the power source came from, I had no idea which pony it’d pick. It could be completely random.

But figuring out who the closest pony on the Nebulous to that average position at any given time was grueling and ensuring that it was always me was a far more difficult problem than just anchoring them to one point, even if I’d lugged the elements around all day every day.

And fixing that point on the bridge was actually probably the best location to put the elements, now that I’d thought about the problem for more than five angry seconds. My bedroom was the closest to the bridge, followed directly by Twinkleshine’s. And besides the two of us, nopony ever went to the bridge unless a party was being held there or somepony needed me for something. And Twinkleshine had absolutely no reason to go to the bridge alone, anymore. Our trip was over. If we wanted to go home, all we had to do was travel toward the sun and moon.

And – there were so many ands – I’d spent nearly all my time, both day and night, on the bridge being the closest pony to the elements anyway, so even if I had received an explicit warning, my actions wouldn’t have changed. Daytime Twilight, who knew nothing about what was going on, wouldn’t have understood the importance of moving the elements during parties as a matter of principle, and she certainly wouldn’t have slept with them.

Worse, Daytime Me had already been suspicious that she was under the effects of a geas; any more clues, such as moving the inert elements for no reason or waking up with them for no reason, and she would have done everything in her power to dispel the geas every time I placed it on her.

I breathed out a terribly long sigh as another thought occurred to me.

After spending over a decade under her tutelage starting from my filly years, I behaved a lot like Luna, which was another way of saying Luna behaved a lot like me. I didn’t really notice other ponies; that much was obvious now. Cadance had had to badger me for years before I’d made a single friend.

When Luna gave me the sex talk, she’d said she hadn’t slept with anypony in a long time, and for her and I, that was a matter of pure trust and friendship. How badly had Celestia’s actions a thousand years ago damaged Luna’s ability to trust ponies? Besides myself, did Luna even have friends? She had ponies she talked to, of course, but they were all subjects to her. Would she have even noticed Dash’s abilities herself?

Make note of them, sure. Figure out ways they could be used, sure. But would she have ever placed Dash on equal hoofing with me?

I’d known the answer to that even before I’d put the question into words. No. No, not ever. I couldn’t imagine it. Maybe Luna didn’t even respect Cadance enough to do that for her, and she’d already ascended. I – I knew there were times when I didn’t. Lots of times…

This…was a problem with myself that I needed to fix, a problem I needed to fix badly. This kind of disaster was going to happen all over again if I didn’t. I could see it coming already.

So no, I definitely couldn’t blame Luna. She had the same flaws in her temperament that I had.

And even worse, I was Luna’s friend. I was competent. I was trustworthy. Every single last word she sent to me had to be memorized and repeated exactly and without error by my parents, and the same was true in reverse. The cost of speaking at all was high, and the longer the message, the more quickly the cost grew. Why waste thousands of words asking a friend questions you were sure would result in an ‘I know’, when you could instead use them for a hello, a joke, a reassuring word, an interesting thought?

That just left myself to blame. I might find it in me to yell at Luna later after my emotions had settled down, but the fault was ultimately my own. I was the one who’d authorized a party on the bridge. Instead of going back to Twinkleshine, or to Dash and Pinkie Pie, after the geas on me had lifted for the night and telling her to have a beach party in the greenhouse, I’d gone along with it again without thinking.

It’d been an honest mistake, an honest mistake I hadn’t given the slightest thought to.

And now that I was pointing out problems to myself, it didn’t even have to be Dash who ascended. Chrysalis, Pinkie Pie, Dash, maybe even Twinkleshine – all of them had been potential threats to my ascension, especially Pinkie Pie. Exactly like Dash and I, Pinkie Pie had lived her life following her special talent; more literally in her case, given her Pinkie Sense.

Stars, how blind was I? There were so many extraordinary ponies on this ship. How did that even happen? How did I not notice? I searched for ponies with enough talent to do their jobs, but I never searched beyond Pony…

Chrysalis, I’d deliberately flushed out of the shadows. Even though it was her condition that she came along on the Nebulous, I was the one that had made that happen. I didn’t know if she could ascend, but I didn’t want to find out the hard way.

If I were counting her, I’d plucked Twinkleshine from Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns and set her to work on doing exactly what her special talent was. And she’d even seen the other side of the universe, which was overflowing with all sorts of things she’d taken pictures of to chart out and to develop her gifts with even further. She didn’t have the same kind of endless determination that Dash, Pinkie Pie, and I had, but she was still very skilled.

Pinkie Pie had found me by literally following the whims of Time. I’d always thought of her as half-insane, and I wasn’t sure exactly what her special talent was, but she was very good at it.

Dash was the odd pony out of the three. She was the extremely talented pony that tagged along with Fluttershy, who I’d met purely by chance. I would love to say that was no more than coincidence, but Time – whatever force was leading Pinkie Pie around and giving her limited knowledge of the future had taken some kind of interest in this quest.

Was it dumb luck that Dash had gotten near the elements first? Did Pinkie Pie chose to steer clear of them with her Pinkie Sense? Did another whim of Time demand that she steer clear of them, maybe even shove Dash into them? Was this supposed to happen to me? To Dash? Were we all just stuck in some cosmic game–

No, I didn’t have the luxury of extra time to travel any further down the mad road of time magic, nor did I trust myself to have the emotional restraint to not lash out at others right now if I talked myself in circles.

If Pinkie Pie didn’t want to ascend for some unimaginable reason, that was her problem. If Time didn’t want her to, that was fine for now, too. And whatever the truth was, Dash was the one that had triggered the ascension, and that was that. Maybe if everything turned out all right, I’d ask Pinkie Pie if she wanted to ascend after the elements recovered. I didn’t see why she would refuse, but I supposed it would be a little rude to make somepony a goddess without asking first.

In fact, now that I’d thought about all this, it was time to apply the lessons I’d told myself I was supposed to learn. It was time to treat others with respect.

There had to be a lot of highly talented ponies in the world, ponies older than I who have been just as focused as myself in their lives. They might be rare or maybe even just uncommon, but they certainly existed. The bottleneck on ascension had to be the power source. If powerful magical artifacts were more commonplace, we would have a lot more alicorns.

Ah. That sounded a little important. If there were plenty of other talented ponies, why bother with raising me up to become one of them? Luna could have just made a deal with somepony already talented, like that Quartz fellow she’d mentioned. He was over two-hundred and thus a talented alchemist.

No, that was a silly question. As Luna, if I were deliberately picking somepony to spend eternity with, I’d want two important character traits in the new alicorn: loyalty and compatibility. I’d start with a young filly, then, and I’d mold her to be extremely loyal and interesting.

Well even if that were the case, and it probably was, I didn’t mind. Luna has been nothing but wonderful to me from the day I’d met her. And it meant I was very interesting to Luna, too. Even now, having lost the three awake Elements of Harmony and fighting down the urge to do horrible things to Dash, that thought managed to bring a smile to my face.

Anyway, did that technically count as murder? That is, did withholding the information needed to ascend from the general population count as killing potential alicorns?

I pondered the thought for a moment as I stared out at the stars. This wasn’t really the appropriate time for this question, but it felt important somehow, like there was some big revelation I was overlooking, even if this was all just educated guesswork.

“No,” I finally decided. No, perhaps it was a kindness.

Once that information was unleashed, it would never be contained. Luna had told me there had been dozens and dozens of potential ascensions during her banishment, and those were only the ones she knew about. If everypony went and tried to ascend off of the nearest magical artifact, all we’d have would be a lot of suicides, not more alicorns.

Cadance herself had been extraordinarily lucky, although she’d likely been initially just as confused and surprised as Dash surely was currently. Whatever…Prismia, was it? Whatever she had really been up to had resulted in an incredibly powerful artifact. I didn’t buy that she was stealing love out of simple jealousy.

But back on topic, this was about more than just not letting the secret out. Back when the elements had still worked, Luna and Celestia could have hoofpicked ponies to ascend and still have kept the secret.

But they hadn’t. Ponies would have caught on eventually. If an alicorn or two appeared once every thousand or so years after emerging victorious from some great battle or grand adventure, that was destiny. That was fate, kismet. That was meant to be.

But if two alicorns appeared every decade like clockwork? Ponies would notice. They’d figure it out.

Sure, you could tell the world that it was still fate, but the smart ponies wouldn’t believe it. And eventually, the secret would be discovered. Ponies would know what to do, and they’d try.

And – and some would succeed. My eyes widened as I connected a couple dots. Luna wanted to ascend somepony she could trust absolutely. Potential selfish reasons aside, there was a good reason for that which trumped all others.

Ponies rightfully respected alicorns, but at the same time, they feared them. Stars, Luna could move the stars all by herself and not even feel winded! Luna and Celestia were sisters. They’d been friends and kept each other happy and peaceful. They should have been able to trust each other.

But they’d fought. They’d fought once for dominance, not to the death, and the modern, dangerous, twisted Everfree Forest had been the result. They could have fought anywhere. They could have fought each other in space and not bothered anypony, but they hadn’t. They were both too stubborn to leave. After all, if one left first, why should the other follow and not lay traps and wards instead?

If there were more alicorns, they would fight. It would happen eventually. And…and ponies would pick sides. Alicorns would pick sides.

A shiver ran through me, and I winced when it reached my barrel. That reminded me, I really needed to heal myself before I lost anymore blood. I was already nearly hysterical from current events, and the blood I’d already lost was making it harder to think straight.

Despite my magical exhaustion, I levitated the suppressor off my horn. Removing the sand from my wounds first was a new painful experience post-flare, but nothing I couldn’t endure. The cuts, gashes, and first degree burns littering my hide were commonplace enough for my flares and required little effort to heal, and I’d picked up how to regrow feathers already.

My body felt numb all over from the healing magic. As I cast a spell to restore my blood, I felt some of the growing madness lift from my mind. Things…still looked pretty terrible, both impending events and future ones, but I was ready for my second shot at divining a solution.

As the world stood now, there was a low enough concentration of sufficiently talented ponies and of sufficiently powerful artifacts that the two species only came into contact every fifty years or so. A good way to put it would be a chemical reaction. The inputs were magic and a pony, and the output was either an alicorn or a dead pony, and the reaction rate was thankfully minuscule for both outputs.

Anyway, the problem of too many alicorns needed to be solved, but that was for after my life wasn’t in danger.

A memory jumped into my mind, and I tried to push it away, but it wouldn’t leave. There was another time there might have been too many alicorns.

Luna had said it was possible that Discord and the elements were a bunch of alicorns. I found that far more plausible now. The previous alicorns probably hadn’t gotten peace and conflict right, and they’d likely done something stupid. Maybe not ‘become Discord’ stupid, but something just as bad. Discord might have just been the punctuation mark to end a long story of foolishness.

I took a deep breath. In and out. This…was important. I knew I was likely overreacting, but it was still important. More important than revenge or who ruled Equestria. Celestia was horrible and needed to be dealt with, but for the right reasons, not for Luna’s or mine. We were…in the wrong too, but we were far less in the wrong. It was only poor judgment for us to storm Canterlot Castle and fight Celestia on Equus for Equestria, our freedom, and our revenge. Luna might know that. In fact, she probably did, but it would be easy to forget when as emotionally wounded as she was.

A second passed in which I managed to think absolutely nothing for once in my life.

I couldn’t explain why, but I felt like crying. It wasn’t because I’d said I was behaving wrongly or even that Luna was. That was a matter of practicality, not morality. It was something else. Something…

There’d be another time for soul searching. This was a time for thought, a time for saving lives and avoiding mistakes.

As long as I was blaming myself for my stupidity and trying to improve, what other big, important, obvious things have I missed in my life? Things that could be important to the immediate future? What could I figure out right here, right now? What were big events in my life that I’d never examined too closely?

There was my first flare, caused by Dash’s sonic rainboom. It was quite the coincidence that my first flare was on my examination day. But then again, maybe there was some correlating factor in Dash’s life. I’d only ever bothered to get the overview of that day from her – her storytelling skills needed less ‘awesome’ and more structure – but maybe that race she was in was actually a national examination held on the same day as all other national exams. Maybe. I wouldn’t know otherwise.

What else was there? Something unlikely to occur but with an obvious explanation I’d missed. Something I’d never thought too deeply about, possibly because of emotional scars.

Ah. When I’d found the book about the elements in the Canterlot Archives, Celestia had walked in on me. That had to have been more than coincidence. Maybe the book had a spell on it to let her know when somepony took it off the shelves.

My eyes narrowed as I recalled the next chain of events in that story.

When I later found the Tree of Harmony and told Luna where the elements where, she…if I remembered correctly, she never explicitly said she hadn’t known the elements were in space. I vaguely remember her saying she didn’t know where the elements went, but that sentence had enough flexibility to be stretched beyond the natural meaning.

And Luna had come up with the idea for the Nebulous awfully fast. And she had a lot of implementation ideas ‘off the top of her head’, as if she’d thought about the problem for a thousand years. I would have completely missed the need to block out cosmic radiation with shields. I hadn’t even known that existed before Luna had pointed it out. Twinkleshine probably would have caught the mistake, but only after I’d drilled enough sense into her to ask those kinds of questions, which would’ve been long after the damage would’ve been done.

Wait. It was too easy to just start heaping suspicious facts onto the fire. Luna had built Luminance on the moon, so she would have had at least some idea already for how to protect the Nebulous. That didn’t invalidate the rest of my reasoning, but…maybe I needed to rethink some of what Luna had told me. She always said that lies were dangerous but sometimes had their uses.

Luna had said she didn’t know what had happened to Sunset Shimmer, but Chrysalis had found out. I would say that made it obvious Luna had lied, but that train of logic worked for Celestia as well. If Chrysalis could find her, then wouldn’t Luna be able to, too? Similarly for Celestia, and with far more resources at her disposal.

So did Chrysalis then have access to some resource alicorns did not?

I shook my head. Other than a hive mind, nothing directly came to mind. The only advantage Chrysalis had over Celestia in this case was her fuller knowledge of what was occurring in Equestria, and the only advantage she had over Luna was her non-banishment. One or both of those factors must have been fundamentally important in the search.

If both of those factors were important, or if only the former were important, that implied Luna – or perhaps just ponies on her side – had arranged for Sunset Shimmer to disappear. If the former weren’t important, then that negated the advantage Chrysalis had over Celestia, which meant Celestia should know, too. And if only the latter factor were important, then by the same reasoning, Celestia was the pony who had arranged for something to happen to Sunset Shimmer. One side had to know what had happened, but which one?

If it were Celestia, all I could do with that information was claim that I’d set it up to be released if I died, which wasn’t a particularly useful threat. Celestia could just deny it, after all, and even if she didn’t, it wouldn’t hurt her position much to say she disposed of an unwanted apprentice.

But Celestia being behind Sunset Shimmer’s disappearance didn’t fit with what Celestia’s plans were. Or at least what we thought her plans were. Why toss aside the star student you’d raised to bear the Element of Magic?

I couldn’t think of any good reason besides Sunset Shimmer betraying Celestia, but she could fix that with a few well placed memory spells and an ‘accident’ that resulted in amnesia.

So Luna had done it. It was just barely possible that her allies had arranged the matter without her permission and had never told her, but that was a tiny, insignificant probability. Luna had done it, and she’d lied to me about it.

Just…why? Why would Luna lie about Sunset Shimmer’s disappearance? Chrysalis had made it sound like Sunset Shimmer was still alive, so Luna hadn’t had her assassinated. If Luna were straight up lying instead of evading the truth, she must have had an important reason to do so. Maybe Luna made a deal with Sunset Shimmer and promised to never reveal her location, or maybe Luna had to do something she thought would reflect badly on my impression of her.

No, I couldn’t imagine what Luna would have been forced to do that would make me think less of her, even when I was a filly. Sunset Shimmer had been a terrible threat to Luna’s freedom, and even though she hadn’t know it at the time, Sunset Shimmer had been a threat to her life. I wouldn’t have batted an eye if Luna had killed Sunset Shimmer herself right in front of me in cold blood.

Wait. There was that orphan filly that Chrysalis had mentioned. Could she be Sunset Shimmer, memory wiped and reverted to her filly years?

No, that couldn’t be it. It sounded right, as if I’d stumbled onto the wrong answer for the right reasons. Sunset Shimmer would still be a Flare, and that would attract Celestia’s attention. Finding a fourth Flare within a century would strain Celestia’s suspension of disbelief too much.

But if that were true, I had to admit that was a little scary. What was the right way to put this? That was how a pony could effectively kill an alicorn. It was very bad when alicorns themselves used that tactic, even against non-alicorns.

Ponies in general would do everything in their power to not die when somepony tried to kill them. If you put alicorns back into that mindset, fearing that every lost battle could be their last… I couldn’t conjure up the right words to describe how bad that would be. There might not even be an Equus afterward, let alone non-alicorn species. And – and Luna was backed into that corner by her sister right now.

Stars, this was not good. Whatever it took, I had to live through tonight long enough to fix everything, even if whatever plan I came up with wouldn’t allow me to ascend.

Struggling to my half-numb hooves, I took a deep breath to calm myself again. Afterward, I started pacing to stretch my legs. If I wanted to do anything useful, I had to get my body fully functioning again.

As I paced, I noticed that my coat had finally returned to purple, and no part of me was on fire anymore, which honestly, was probably for the best; I didn’t like how much I looked like Celestia when I was white and flaming.

I supposed that meant my blind rage toward Dash had been subdued by dread. Well, mostly. Throwing Dash into the sun still sounded extremely appealing. And wouldn’t it just be a shame if Dash reappeared after finishing her ascension in the middle of space with nopony to look after her with unicorn magic as her body died of asphyxiation over and over. Luna and Celestia had ascended on a mostly stationary Equus, after all, and the Nebulous was anything but stationary. Who knew where Dash would first remanifest her body at?

No. Stop. Bad Twilight. This wasn’t the time for that. I was not going to fly into a rage and do something stupid, even if Dash reappeared right next to me. If I was going to hurt Dash at all, I’d do it much later after making a conscious decision to do so, not on impulse.

I stomped on a small little thought that had crept up into my mind. Throwing Dash into the sun wouldn’t hurt her even the slightest bit. It was too quick a death for it to hurt, and she’d be fine afterward. And as much as I loved the creative part of my mind and needed its help right now, that wasn’t helping. I needed to think clearly, not emotionally.

I needed a short break to breathe and focus on nothing but making myself levelheaded.

Alright, I felt…slightly better. I guess. Now back to work.

What constraints did I have on keeping myself alive?

Luna wasn’t on standby with my parents, so I couldn’t send her a letter and expect a reply. Celestia would know we were out here now, so even throwing away the elements and making a run for it wouldn’t work: she would hunt us down. Even if I abandoned everypony to run away myself, I would almost certainly flare and die of asphyxiation myself along the way to either the moon or Equus.

I stopped myself. I was going about this wrong. I was answering the wrong question. What I could do to not lose wasn’t enough right now. What could I do to win?

If Dash returned before Celestia arrived and if she returned to the Nebulous, I might have time to teach her how to supply magic to me. I could burn out my horn and send us rocketing away as fast as possible.

Stars, I hadn’t learned my lesson at all. If I had time to teach Dash how to supply magic to me, I’d be better off teaching her telekinesis to move the ship herself. Let her save us. I didn’t have to be the center of attention. I could manage the gravity spells to keep everypony from splattering against the ship. She could do the pushing.

No, that was too many ifs. If I had time. If Dash could learn. If my horn could take it. If we wouldn’t be followed. Far, far too many ifs. Chrysalis would disown me as a student if she thought I thought that was a good plan – which I didn’t – let alone what Luna would say.

Okay, I needed to take a step back and approach the problem more carefully. Before I did anything else, what resources did I have available, keeping in mind the lesson I was supposed to learn? Other ponies on the ship counted as resources when relevant.

I had a magically exhausted Flare, myself. I still had the strength to cast pretty much any spell, even after the flare, but I wouldn’t be able to overwhelm any of Celestia’s spells with raw power.

I had a vague series of educated guesswork and an even vaguer fledgling philosophy that said it was a really bad idea to set the precedent for killing alicorns, not that Celestia hadn’t effectively already done so. If I were lucky, Celestia might respect me as if I were an alicorn already the same way Luna did.

I was reasonably confident Luna knew where Sunset Shimmer was, but I didn’t. Unfortunately, Chrysalis knew, too, and she was on the ship. Celestia could easily pry the information out of her instead of having to make a deal with me for it.

There were at least three awakened – but drained – Elements of Harmony on the bridge, belonging to Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and probably Spike. I’d scry the bridge to find out for sure, but then I’d feel obligated to sort out the panic I was sure I’d find there. Out of sight, out of mind; I needed to think clearly right now.

Speaking of Pinkie Pie, I had a pony that granted me limited knowledge of the future for specific events, but the only exploitable trigger sequences – such as a door slamming open – gave but a few seconds of foreknowledge.

But on the subject of time magic, I had the time travel spell I’d picked up years ago. The past couldn’t be changed, and I could only use the spell once, but I could pre-commit now to traveling back in time and giving myself any information I needed – within the brief ten second window the spell lasted. Luna had said she’d been terribly disappointed with the spell when she’d first encountered it and tried it herself. Information could spontaneously be created, but Time liked to keep itself as simple as possible.

I summoned a clock from my bedroom and took note of the time. After five seconds of hopeful waiting, I’d concluded that no future version of myself was going to appear and solve all my problems for me. So either I’d solved this problem myself in the future and didn’t need to waste my only chance at time travel or I’d failed completely.

Another way to look at it was whatever solution – if any – there was that would get me out of this mess, it was either insanely difficult or fairly simple. The time travel spell could send me back at least a week, and Luna hadn’t known what the maximum jump length could be. That was a lot of extra thinking time, and if I couldn’t solve the problem in a week, it was likely impossible. And if it were easy, I was going to solve the problem soon and wouldn’t need to time travel.

That was…reassuring.

Alright, what other resources did I have? I should get all of the other pony related resources out of the way, not just Pinkie Pie.

If Dash finished her ascension before Celestia arrived, I had an alicorn. That probably wouldn’t happen, though, since Dash had no idea what to do in the Æthereal Realm to finish ascending and get out of it. She could be wandering in there for days before Celestia picked her up.

Or Cadance. Cadance could be with Dash right now, actually. Hmm…

Anyway, I had Chrysalis, of course, which also meant I had access to a huge network of changelings on Equus, as well as access to the ponies loyal to Luna.

Ah… Chrysalis was probably busy trying to salvage some mess on Equus. Celestia was almost certainly on her way here, but first she’d likely capture Pupa to make sure Chrysalis and Pupa couldn’t simply disappear. It’d cost her little enough time. As a side note, we needed to get everypony that could be a hostage out of harm’s way.

What about Twinkleshine? And I had to respect her and everypony else when I asked this question. Did she have any relevant skills?

No, not that I could see. Astronomy wasn’t terribly useful at the moment. Her illusions in general were solid, but nothing I couldn’t do myself. There was no need to draw undue attention to her by asking her to help.

Fluttershy? No, I didn’t need an animal handler, as well-trained as she was, nor did I need a medic. Wait…I remembered Dash mentioning…something unusual about her… Something magical… Bah, it wasn’t coming to mind. This whole respect thing was a very hard learned lesson indeed. I’d have to ask Fluttershy directly later.

Spike? He was highly resistant to magic, but I wasn’t going to throw him into the line of fire to soak up damage. His flame breath burnt through most spells, but again, I wasn’t going to let him be in harm’s way. If he were fully grown, I’d be far more willing to let him fight beside me.

Berry Pinch? No, she had nothing to offer that I couldn’t bring to the table except her younger age. Celestia wouldn’t kill a foal unless she had no other choice, just as she hadn’t touched me.

Hmm… Well, if I wanted the element of surprise later, it wouldn’t hurt to look like a filly again, particularly one that didn’t look like me. Heh, I would make myself look like a young Sunset Shimmer, except that plan would almost certainly backfire on me spectacularly. Still, I’d keep the idea in the back of my mind.

Berry Punch? No, but that reminded me that, as an earth pony, Pinkie Pie was also strong and not just a time mage. Pinkie Pie could probably get a cheap shot off on even Celestia herself, which could prove to be a critical distraction. However, it would be difficult to get Pinkie Pie to agree to do so and to get her to do it at the right time.

Cherry Berry? Her talents lay in puzzle solving and exploring – and defying family tradition. While she could help plan if she knew the full situation, it would cost too much time to explain everything to her.

And then there was Chamomile. I tried not to flinch away from the thought, but I couldn’t help it. She’d die for me if I asked her to. She was even more stubborn about her job than Shining was. Chrysalis had made it abundantly clear to me that I knew that. I – thinking about it right now, the reason that bothered me so much was probably because I knew I wouldn’t do the same for her. I liked her, but she wasn’t…she wasn’t a friend.

No. No, no, no. I wasn’t going to say ponies were only friends if they’d die for each other. Not ever. That was too much to ask of anypony. Far too much.

Chamomile and I were friends. Just – I just – I hadn’t held up my end of the friendship well enough.

I sighed, stopping my pacing once again. First fluttering to my haunches with my wings, I let myself fall over onto my back.

Chamomile and I weren’t friends. She was my friend, but I wasn’t her friend. I was Luna’s friend. I was Cadance’s friend. I was Spike’s…well, usually I was his mother, not his friend. I was Twinkleshine’s friend. But I wasn’t anypony else’s friend. I hadn’t even spoken to my BBBFF through Pupa in forever. It wouldn’t have made any difference to him, but it would have for me.

Fantastic. I was the one who’d said everypony on the Nebulous was supposed to grow to be like family, and I was the only pony who hadn’t done that. Whenever somepony wanted to do something with me, they always had to fight for it. Sure I always had a good excuse, and I was pretty introverted, but I’d never once said, ‘Yes, Fluttershy, I’d love to hear your choir perform,’ or, ‘Sure, I’ll try to learn how to cook a snack with you, Pinkie Pie.’

Okay, time to face more unpleasant truths. Everypony was friends with the grumpy me who didn’t notice anypony. They probably thought I was cute but needed help.

It wasn’t necessarily bad that I didn’t really reciprocate their affections – there really was a small upper limit on the number of ponies a mare like myself could keep a meaningful relationship with – but I needed to ask myself if I wanted to return the affection. If I didn’t figure this out now and know exactly who was risking what and why, I might do something stupid in the near future and end up getting everypony hurt.

I took a deep breath to prepare myself. Pretty much everypony on this ship drove me some level of crazy, and I knew I was still furious at Dash, even if I’d managed to put that aside for the moment in the name of self-preservation. This could just be the worst possible time to be figuring out who I wanted to be friends with. Not that I had much of a choice.

Alright, easy one first. Berry Pinch. I’d taught her because I’d promised I would, but I would say and had said I enjoyed it. It might be I just enjoyed teaching, but I didn’t think I would enjoy teaching nearly as much if my student were less capable. Berry Pinch wasn’t a prodigy, not even close, but she tried hard and made an actual effort. Maybe that was just because there wasn’t a whole classroom of other foals around to distract her, but I could say I liked her as she was.

What about Berry Punch? Well, as far as motherhood went, she was a good role model for me in a way my own mom could never be: a mother to a child of a different species. Even when she’d kept herself drunk all day, she’d done well enough that nopony in Ponyville thought it prudent to separate her and her daughter. I’d gone to her for advice on more than one occasion and hadn’t regretted it. On an unrelated note, she played a mean game of cards, too. I didn’t know if I wanted to be her friend exactly, but I did look up to her, surprisingly.

Cherry Berry didn’t like to talk about her filly years, but her cutie mark story had traveled down the grapevine to me. She’d been reading a very old foreign mythology story about gods and goddesses, and naturally, she’d gotten a cherry on her flank. I remembered laughing when I first heard. Apparently, there was some cultural significance to cherries that I didn’t quite understand, and Cherry Berry certainly hadn’t either at that age. She’d just thought it was the curse of being in the Cherry family.

Still, she’d done everything she could to make a name for herself as an adventurer. She’d even taught herself how to build and operate a hot air balloon. She hadn’t even been able to explain where the idea had come from. Heh. If I’d only ever left Canterlot at my current age and stumbled onto a balloonist in Ponyville, I’d have been outright confused instead of seeing somepony useful and interesting.

Anyway, I didn’t share Cherry Berry’s passion for ancient history, probably because I’ve always expected to live long enough to be ancient history, but her spirit was admirable and reminded me a bit of myself. My own adventure when I was a filly into the Everfree…well, it was still terrifying and the ending was still a bit scaring, even if I had managed to reach the elements, but I could see myself going on another adventure with company.

Although, sending me along was a lot like using a volcano to destroy an unwanted piece of parchment. Oh well. It could still be fun.

Fluttershy, I wasn’t sure if I had the patience for her. She’d opened up a little bit around everypony, but she still defined timid. I could see why she and Dash were good for each other as a unit – although I would never understand how they manage to not fray at the seams around the other – but what they really needed to do was meet in the middle.

But at the same time, Fluttershy was almost unbearably nice. I supposed that was sort of obvious, given that the Element of Kindness had awoken for her. Anyway, if I needed a second busybody older sister, she’d be a perfect choice. There was quite a bit of debate on whether I needed one, let alone two, but I did like Cadance an awful lot. If I had a bit more patience, maybe Fluttershy wouldn’t be so bad.

Being friends with Chrysalis would be hard. She had a very different set of priorities than I did, although if Luna was going to stick me with a job in politics, I’d probably grow to understand her more. I was fairly sure I’d grown on her, and as frustrating as she could be, Chrysalis had a way of telling me exactly what I needed to hear. Not that I’d always listened to her, even though I should have; she had a way of phrasing everything in the best way to get under my hide.

Of the mother–daughter pair, I thought I liked Pupa more, but that might not be fair. Pupa was easier to get along with, not necessarily somepony I would like more, although I was fairly sure I did like her. She was like the caring older sister everypony dreamed of having.

On the other hoof, Chrysalis was rough around the edges, being both blunt and often terse, yet she brought the kind of raw intelligence to a conversation that few ponies could. And I liked that. Chrysalis was prickly, but she was a good kind of prickly.

Now Chamomile, she was going to be harder; there were a lot of complicating factors between the two of us. Luna was technically her employer, but Luna was also her combat instructor slash sparring partner. And of course, Luna was a princess, too, and so was I. How much of Chamomile’s attention and dedication was muddled with duty? I knew her well enough to know she genuinely cared, but it was hard to judge how much I saw of her was Chamomile and how much was the guard captain.

But maybe I was approaching this wrong. We all wore masks for other ponies in a sense. If Chamomile always wore the mask of a guard captain around me as my friend, then so long as she behaved sincerely and naturally in that role, maybe that wasn’t a problem. It wasn’t like she’d like it if I fired her.

So did I like Captain Chamomile of the night guard? There was certainly physical attraction; she was not unhandsome. But at her core, she was a tea maker who, by a quirk of where she was born, grew up to be a chemist specializing in poisons. She wasn’t Dash-level good with pegasus magic, but she was book smart enough to hold a conversation and was merely hesitant to tell me – a princess to her – when I was wrong. We didn’t have much overlap in our pleasure reading, but there was overlap.

Yes, I could easily see myself as her friend. I kind of wished I hadn’t offloaded most of her Modern Equestrian lessons onto Cherry Berry. That could have been fun.

And that brought me to the…extroverts. The word felt like poison even in my thoughts. To be fair, there were other extroverts on the ship, but these were the hard core extroverts: Pinkie Pie and Dash. I wasn’t going to stop disliking noisy ponies anytime soon, but I could at least imagine myself imagining trying to get along with those two, so I might as well give it a go, even if there were reasons I avoided ponies like them.

Pinkie Pie… It couldn’t all be time magic that made her…her. It was time to admit I didn’t understand her at all, but maybe I could guess from her actions. She behaved like she had a five second attention span, but I knew she planned far into the future, if only for more parties and holidays. I’d seen her do so over and over again. And it was possible to hold a conversation with her or to get her to sit still and watch a movie, or to read a book, or anything else a pony asked of her.

Ugh, I’d probably figured out what the problem was. It wasn’t that Pinkie Pie had a short attention span, because I knew she didn’t. It was that the way she enjoyed living made it look like she did. I’d taken the completely wrong approach in my interactions with Pinkie Pie. Either that, or I would never be able to get along with her ever.

If regular ponies were a sunny day or a light shower, she’d be a tornado. She appeared, did her thing, and then left. That was the heart of Pinkie Pie’s behavior – probably. She enjoyed friendships on a touch and go basis on the scale of minutes, where she might strike up a conversation and move on when it finished.

On the other hoof, I enjoyed longer interactions, less frequently, and more along the lines of ‘let’s sit down and play a game for an entire day’. I doubted I’d ever understand why ponies could enjoy living like Pinkie Pie. It felt so shallow to me. But I could understand how they lived. So far as I could tell right now, this difference in scale was the core difficulty limiting our interactions. If I wanted to do anything with her at all, I’d have to be more willing to face the storm.

Hmm… Maybe it could work. Trixie wasn’t a terribly good parallel – she liked to think and get things done with focus – but she was just as talkative as Pinkie Pie. I had found myself enjoying Trixie’s company when I’d properly met her, as short lasting as my time with her had been. Nightmare Night didn’t count. It’d taken some effort to not walk out on her at first, even with other goals forcing me to stay, but it’d been worth it in the end. Maybe it could work with Pinkie Pie, too.

And then came the pony I didn’t want to think about: Dash. This night was going to scar any attempts I made with talking to her for years, maybe decades. I knew myself well enough to know a developing grudge when I saw one. Even if I made it through this alive, ascended, and everything turned out perfect somehow, tonight was going to hurt. That was no fault of Dash’s or my own. It was just going to happen.

But for just this brief moment, I could pretend everything was alright. Or at least I’d try. Dash was hotheaded, didn’t think before she opened her mouth, infuriated me on nearly every level–

Okay, that was entirely enough of that already. I’d already beaten myself up over not noticing Dash. I didn’t need to test the limits of my emotional control over this as well. I took a slow, deep breath to calm myself back down as well as I could.

Dash was my antithesis in every way that mattered to me. She wasn’t my dark mirror or anything like that – although the term had appeal right now – but if the two of us were locked in a room together, bad things would happen. I might not drive Dash insane, but she’d drive me insane for sure. On my part, I’d probably bore her to death.

No, Dash and I would never be friends, at least not friends in the way I meant the word. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t have something else. When I said I had grudging respect for her, I’d meant it. Now that I’d had the problem shoved in my face, now that I’d recognized it, now that I’d dissected it, I could point out, well, not quite what was happening, but rather what could happen.

Dash and I wouldn’t be friends, but it was taking the entirely wrong approach to try. I’d read enough fiction to know what I was staring at. We weren’t rivals, not yet, but we could be. I knew it would be frustrating and annoying, and it’d only make me like Dash less as a friend, but I could see the appeal.

A huge part of why I’d never talked to anypony as a filly was simply because there was nopony who could compete with me or, failing that, keep pace with me. There were other reasons after my entrance examination, of course, but even before then, I’d never really talked to ponies who weren’t at least a decade older than myself.

But I’d been forced to recognize Dash as my peer tonight, and I was going to take that hard-learned lesson to heart.

So in the end, no, I wasn’t friends with most of the crew. But – I took a deep breath – I’d like to try to be.

The universe seemed to stop for a moment, although I couldn’t see anything moving but me to begin with. For the second time today, it felt like something had unknotted inside of me.

“Alright,” I said, rolling over and then rising to my hooves. I’d been getting a little cramped lying on my back.

So in conclusion if I risked anypony’s life to save us all, I was going to have to do it very carefully. I’d be less sad about losing potential friends than Spike or Twinkleshine, but it was still important to recognize my vulnerabilities for what they were. And as much as I’d like to go…make friends, I had an angry alicorn headed my way, so it was back to facts and logic.

And now I realized I should have written down all of the resources I’d already generated. I summoned some paper from my room along with a vial of ink and a quill. My memory was still fresh enough to write down everything I’d already thought of.

After I finished recording everything, I added Cadance to the list of things at my disposal. She would be very grumpy if she found out I’d died or been harmed in any way. As a subpoint, I added her love magic. I didn’t want to ask her to use it on anypony, but sometimes desperate times called for desperate measures.

What else was there?

The Nebulous itself was available for use as well. I could throw it at Celestia or something.

Oh, Spike had a bunch of partially grown fire rubies left. Those would prove annoying to block with magic if I destabilized them. At least, a magical explosion in the face always ruined my day.

I had a gigantic library stuffed with pretty much every reference I could ask for.

I had the affections of my brother, Captain Shining Armor. I couldn’t expect the entire royal guard to turn against their princess, but maybe there was something I could make happen there. A lot of them knew and liked me from back when I’d spend my time in the archives.

And that was about it. There were plenty of small, little things aboard the ship, too, but nothing terribly important came to mind. It wasn’t like I could just challenge Celestia to a card game, or ask her to watch a movie with me, or share a cup of tea.

No, brain, your creativity was great, but asking Celestia to tea wasn’t a solution, even if she was on record as being a connoisseur. No, Chamomile wouldn’t be able to brew up anything so good, it would make Celestia take off her tiara and put it on my head, regardless of what I thought of Chamomile’s skills.

Anyway, how could I win with these resources? What did it mean to win?

My long-term goals were to free Luna, to ascend, and to defeat Celestia. My short-term goals were to survive and to keep the crew – to keep my friends alive.

Right… Well, the long-term goals were of relatively low priority at the moment, but they generated a few more short-term goals that I had to satisfy now. The first one, freeing Luna, required the Elements of Harmony to be non-functional, or at least mostly non-functional.

We also needed at least the same number of alicorns as Celestia, or she would simply overpower Luna. That was more of a requirement to achieving the third long-term goal rather than a short-term goal itself, but it was still important. It wasn’t impossible for Luna to win two versus one or even three versus one with enough guile and skill, but that was playing a very dangerous game. If Luna messed up once, she’d go down and stay down.

Celestia wouldn’t even have to use the elements if she kept Luna subdued and slowly erased Luna’s memories over time. She’d have to do it very slowly and very carefully, though, or else the new Luna would come out broken and potentially insane on the other end. Large-scale memory tampering was always dangerous work, and the last thing anypony needed was an insane alicorn on the loose.

Also for the first long-term goal, it would be wise to find out where Luna would reappear when her banishment ended. If there were magical traps there or an ambush, I’d need to deal with those before the summer solstice.

But the upside of Dash ascending – some might say the only upside – was the elements were already drained. And even if they still had enough power to one-hit kill, at least three of them were bound to ponies who knew Luna personally but not Celestia. I suspected the elements wouldn’t work under anypony else’s control, so unless Celestia forced them to use the elements, Luna should be safe. And if they weren’t using the elements willingly, the elements would likely not work then either.

But then what would happen if Celestia outright killed the three bearers we had? Would that allow the elements to find new bearers?

Ponyfeathers! That probably was the case. Pinkie Pie could lie to Celestia and convince her she intended to help kill Luna by simply being too confusing to understand. I was fairly sure of that, but Fluttershy and Spike? No, that would never happen. So then in addition to keeping my friends alive, I had the additional constraint that bearers were in extra danger. Wonderful.

Still, one objective down, plenty to go.

Now surviving… How could I go about doing that? There were several general approaches that came to mind.

A huge enough problem could force Celestia to return to Equus – if she found out about it. If Celestia never found us to begin with, that would work. If I had a good enough threat or vital enough information to withhold, I could force Celestia to stay her hoof. Celestia could prove possible to fool, but any attempt would have to be carefully crafted. A surprise attack could prevail in theory, but I’d have to catch Celestia completely by surprise. It’d taken a flare and a little surprise to overpower Cadance on Hearth’s Warming, and she was a civilian for all intents and purposes.

What were the chances I could catch Celestia off guard? Probably zero. She didn’t even have to show up on the ship if she didn’t want to. She could cast spells from out of my range to recover the elements and then blow us up if she felt like it.

Urgh. This would be so much easier if destroying Celestia’s body did anything useful. Anything I did had to temporarily incapacitate her and had to be reapplied constantly, or else she would just regenerate through it.

Hmm, it’s possible that if I could get Celestia onto the ship to begin with, I could ask Chamomile to come up with a colorless, odorless, tasteless inhalant poison to knock her out. It would have to be very fast acting, and Celestia would have to disable any spells she had providing her air.

Well, in the realm of offensive actions, Celestia had once said the elements didn’t like her anymore. Maybe if I threw them at her, they’d burn her or something. If I ignited the fire rubies, too, maybe that would be enough to disrupt any spells protecting her lungs.

But that still required her to be on the ship to begin with. An inhalant poison needed to be in a constrained area to work. And once the magic started flying there was no way I was going to be able to get her to stop to talk before I hit the floor, so I should try some other avenue to victory first.

Wait, no, would that even work? Luna had demonstrated to me that she could use dragon magic, and dragons were insanely resistant to poisons. Horseapples! That wouldn’t work at all. Celestia would just shrug off poisons…except for – what was it Luna had mentioned – ah, unicorn bane. I’d have to ask Chamomile if she had any of that and what it did. Luna had said it was unpleasant; maybe it would be enough for me to break Celestia’s defensive spells.

Now as for finding a way to go unnoticed by Celestia. That wasn’t going to happen. I’d already noted that if I threw away the elements, Celestia would still hunt us down. If we ditched enough of the ship to get away fast enough to not be found, my flares would almost certainly kill us. Any plan with a chance of working would be better than running away, unfortunately. Besides, if we ran away, Dash would be left behind, and then Celestia would have three alicorns on her side.

Similarly, creating a huge mess on Equus wouldn’t work. Celestia would find out about it after she showed up here and defeated us, so that wouldn’t work and would only make her extra upset with me. But then the threat of having something huge happen could stay her hoof if she got close enough for me to give it.

I knew I could give a credible enough delivery of such a threat, but at the same time, I knew I’d never go through with it. Celestia would know it, too; she’d seen and heard about how I acted after…after half of Canterlot fell. She wouldn’t fall for it. If I made such a threat at all, I’d have to offload responsibility for it completely onto Chrysalis or Luna.

No, I couldn’t do that. It went against my morals too much to hold innocents hostage like that. However…the idea had another application. I could set myself up as the villain on the Nebulous. Celestia would likely buy that I’d geased everypony on the ship into helping; that was the plan with Chrysalis, after all. It would let everypony else survive, even if I…didn’t.

It couldn’t be an outright obviously evil geas, like a straight up obey me command: everypony would still have their memories after it was dispelled, so they’d need to be legitimately uncertain if they’d agreed to come with to help me out of their own will or if there were darker magics at work. Something simple was needed, but at the same time, it had to be something non-trivial in case Celestia could somehow figure out what a geas did.

Well…something along the lines of ‘we’re close friends’ would work.

Of course, that was assuming Celestia didn’t indiscriminately blow everypony up, which brought me to the key aspect of any plan I came up with.

How could I get Celestia on the ship to talk – or do something equally immediately non-threatening on the ship?

Well, I could stay on theme. Twinkleshine would tell me to put up a giant illusion in all directions of the word ‘parley’. It was kind of really dumb, but it was very possible Celestia would agree to talk. It was a given that she was going to be furious, but she always behaved civilly, if scarily, and she was intelligent. Talking wouldn’t necessarily get her on the ship, but she likely would stop to listen before slinging spells. It was easier to talk and then fight than to fight and then talk, after all.

And no, interrogation wasn’t the same as talking.

Now if I had anything useful to negotiate with, it had to be something that Celestia couldn’t just take or pry out of me with a geas. It had to be something that I could offer conditional upon my good health.

But before that, were there any other ways to get Celestia talking? Or rather, what circumstances would put her in a talking mood?

I’d already covered a civil parley, and only two options came to mind: diplomacy and intimidation.

The intimidation option was to somehow scare Celestia into not fighting. Well, scare wasn’t the right word. Rather we would want to make fighting an unappealing option for her.

For all that I visually looked like an alicorn, I didn’t have the magical strength to back up any such boast. If Dash returned in time, the two of us might be able to win a high-stakes bluff. Though the problem with that was Celestia likely had a passing familiarity with Dash, given the rainboom in Cloudsdale. It was over a decade ago, but it would be disastrous if she remembered Dash was born a pegasus and thus consequently was not in any position at all to fight an alicorn in space.

A trick of some kind could be a third option. I’d toyed with the idea of making myself look like Sunset Shimmer before. Celestia would almost certainly want to talk to her, but those two had spent a lot of time together. Celestia would figure out I was a fake very quickly, and then she’d be even more upset.

I’d have to ask Chrysalis if it were possible to get into contact with Sunset Shimmer and have her talk to Celestia on our behalf. That sounded unlikely to happen, but it cost little to ask.

Urgh. The more I let them stew in my mind, the more the two non-diplomacy options sounded like really bad ideas.

Alright, so back to diplomacy. Putting aside contacting Sunset Shimmer for the moment, what things did I have that were conditional upon my good health, noting that keeping all of my memories was part of good health?

I had Luna’s affections, of course.

I knew how to find Sunset Shimmer, and I dearly hoped Chrysalis had set it up so she didn’t know where Sunset Shimmer was but could find the mare conditional on her continued good health. It sounded like a thing she would do, considering she said she’d use the information as a last chance effort to save her hive. Presumably, that meant she had a way to hide the information from Celestia.

I could set it up so that ascension instructions became public knowledge if I died. That was a threat I could credibly deliver on. I was a scientist at heart, after all. Sharing knowledge was what I did, even if in this one rare exception I probably wouldn’t.

I could leave instructions for Cadance to learn what happened here should I not intervene otherwise. But then Celestia could just erase Cadance’s memory. If Celestia were feeling particularly ruthless, she could just erase all of Cadance’s memories between now and when I first met Cadance and claim some terrible alicorn disease had caused the damage.

Hmm, it would still be good to make sure Cadance learned of what happened here, but it would have to be done in secret; she had few enough ways to protect herself and her memories, unfortunately.

And…ponyfeathers. I didn’t really have anything else that Celestia couldn’t just take. I really, really hoped that what little I did have would be enough. Or that Sunset Shimmer would talk Celestia down. Or that Celestia wouldn’t risk ascension information becoming public knowledge. Or that I would manage to do the impossible and knockout Celestia…

But even if all four plans failed, Celestia could kill me anytime she wanted; she wouldn’t have to do it right away. I didn’t want to be a hostage, but suggesting it might keep me alive, and another day alive meant another chance to escape. Luna would be hard for Celestia to deal with without the elements, even with two or three alicorns on her side. Celestia would want me kept alive to use, right? Right?

“Oh, Luna. I – I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

“Are you really, really, absolutely sure you can’t contact Sunset Shimmer?” I asked Chrysalis.

After scrying the bridge for less than a second, I’d quickly discovered everypony had scattered and searched the ship for me. I’d have to gather everypony up for a short magic session soon to keep them safe, but I had to applaud whoever was sensible enough to relocate everypony away from anything that might have caused what must have looked like Dash exploding. Chrysalis had been in her room the whole time, so it hadn’t been her.

But for now, talking to Chrysalis took higher priority; she only had so much time to convey orders to Equus unobstructed.

“Yes,” was all Chrysalis said. I had no clue how many conversations she was holding right now, but it was probably in the double digits. “My hive is stretched thin disappearing with potential hostages.”

“But it would just take one pony, wouldn’t it?” I pleaded. Chrysalis said she knew exactly where Sunset Shimmer was, so that information was already lost if Celestia decided she wanted it. There was no reason not to contact Sunset Shimmer.

“Argh!” Chrysalis’s gaze focused on me for the moment. “Listen. I’m working on everything else you asked for. I’d already started on some of it. If you must, say, ‘If I die, Sunset Shimmer dies with me.’ If forced to give a reason, say, ‘It’s been arranged that way.’ I won’t tell you the who, the how, or the why, but it has been, and not by me.”

I immediately stopped my brain from trying to answer those three questions automatically. If Chrysalis thought I shouldn’t know right now, then she was probably right. Even guessing could be a bad idea; potentially being forced to tell the truth, even just truthful guesses, about anything was so unfair in negotiations.

For the same reasoning, I didn’t tell Chrysalis I’d already cast the necessary geases and short memory wipes to protect her. She would know, of course, but she wouldn’t know. Nor would she try to find out.

As for my knowing my intentions in casting the geas and the details of what it commanded…I’d just have to hope Celestia didn’t pry too deeply into the matter. There was no way for me to avoid knowing. If I didn’t know, I’d try to cast a geas again as per my agreement with Chrysalis, only to discover I’d already placed multiple.

“Is – is there anything else you have for me?” ‘I don’t want to die,’ I didn’t add.

“No.” That was it. Short, crisp, definite.

“I…see… Thank you.”

Just before I’d shuffled out the door – not teleporting, since I was already magically exhausted and didn’t need to make the situation any worse – Chrysalis said, “Don’t die.”

I bit my lip. Turning my head back, I gave a small nod, and then departed. Once I was back in the hallways proper, I stopped my knees from buckling and dropping me to the ground. I wasn’t necessarily going to die, but I didn’t like my odds at all. Anything less than perfect certainty of living was a bad gamble in my book, and this was a gamble even by regular pony standards.

“Twilight–”

I did not scream. I was merely…startled.

“I’ve been looking all over the ship for you,” Pinkie Pie continued, completely unfazed by my reaction. She still had that weird vibration thing going on that she’d had back at the party. Whatever she was predicting hadn’t happened yet. “Fluttershy has been in tears ever since the hum and the blinding light and the kaboom” – Pinkie Pie added some unhelpful gestures with her forelegs – “interrupted Dash’s new trick with the ice and wind and snow, and I haven’t been able to get her to cheer up and laugh or anything, even when I told her Dash was okay, but she didn’t believe me, and I thought she might listen to you since you know so much about magic stuff.”

Okay, Twilight, this was your chance to prove you’d learned your lesson about respect. That might have approximated Pinkie Pie’s usual inane chatter, but that didn’t mean it was all unimportant.

“How do you know Dash is okay?” I asked, trying to sound like I didn’t also know myself.

Pinkie Pie’s smile and general bounciness faded as she said, “Well, my hooves weren’t feeling itchy, so she must be alive.”

There was a Pinkie Sense for ponies dying? Now the socially responsible thing to do was to not pry into whatever death she’d found this out from in the name of science. Instead, I could ask something sensible.

“Are your hooves itchy now?” I asked. I didn’t know how much forewarning Pinkie Pie would have for a death, but it wouldn’t hurt to ask.

“Nope! So Dash must really be okay, right?”

I didn’t really want to bring Pinkie Pie’s mood back down, but the question had to be asked. “Say somepony lost all of their memories. Would your hooves itch before that? That’s a death of self, if not the body.”

“Um… I don’t know. Maybe? Is that what happened to Dash? Is she–”

“No,” I interrupted.

That was not at all the answer I’d wanted to hear, not that I could blame Pinkie Pie; she was a mystery onto herself. Who knew if her hooves would even itch if Celestia took me really far away from Pinkie Pie to do the deed or if there was just too much time between now and the final blow. Then again, Pinkie Pie crossed Equestria to find me, following her Pinkie Sense, so her range was non-trivial on some events.

Still, Pinkie Pie had given me a little comfort in saying that I probably wouldn’t immediately die. I could be optimistic about that.

“Dash is fine for now,” I clarified, “but I’m in a lot of trouble. We all are, actually. Would you mind holding still for a moment?”

I quickly noticed that holding still didn’t include not talking. I did listen to Pinkie Pie ramble as I did my work, but she hadn’t said anything particularly interesting or insightful.

“–and…what was I saying again?” Pinkie Pie asked, just after I finished erasing her memory of the geas I’d just cast. I was kind of surprised Pinkie Pie was even capable of asking herself that question. And it was thoughts like those that I needed to work on weeding out if I wanted to be nice.

“Nothing too important, Pinkie Pie. Could you tell me what’s up with your” – I waved a forehoof up and down – “vibrating thing?”

“Oh, a doozy is about to happen.” At my raised eyebrow, Pinkie Pie continued, “You know, a doozy. Something crazy huge! Something nopony expected, and everypony will go, ‘Whoa!’ and then we’ll all be amazed at what happened. I love doozies! They’re always great surprises, and you know I’m a mare who loves her surprises.”

Well if it was always a surprise, then there was no sense in asking if Pinkie Pie knew what the ‘doozy’ was. “If I told you what I think the surprise was, would you know if I’m right?”

“Nah uh. I gotta see the doozy with my own eyes before the vibrations stop.” Pinkie Pie sidled up to me and whispered, “Honestly, just between you and me, I kind of hope it happens soon. And not just because I like surprises. My bones are kind of starting to hurt.”

Awkward. It would be rather unfortunate if her Pinkie Sense actually killed her. Still, from what little I knew about Pinkie Pie’s magic, that meant Pinkie Pie would actually get to see her big surprise. That was weak evidence for at least her surviving this or evidence for Dash returning before Celestia arrived. Good news either way, if not great news.

“I’m sorry, Pinkie Pie. If I can later, I’ll see if I can find a spell of some kind to help you out in the future. There are plenty of ponies in Equestria with hooves that won’t stop shaking; I’m sure I can dig up something relevant.”

“Nah, don’t let it bother you, Twilight. I’m usually not kept waiting this long. It’s been, like, hours and hours.”

Now that she’d pointed that out, that did sound extremely uncomfortable, not just mildly painful.

“Anyway, could I ask you to do me a favor?” Before Pinkie Pie could really get rolling in her response, I continued, “I need to talk to everypony, so if you could gather everypony at the bri – at the greenhouse, that’d be very helpful.” Bringing everypony back to the bridge was a recipe for disaster. Even if I told them it was safe, they’d still be uneasy.

“Sure thing, Twilight. I’ll track down everypony faster than you can teleport to the greenhouse.”

Oh, now that was just straight up false. I shook my head. “Anyway, leave Chrysalis to herself, though, and I’ll take care of Chamomile.”

“Can do, Captain Sparkle!” Pinkie Pie saluted me before bouncing and vibrating away.

“Well,” I said to myself, “that wasn’t so bad.” Having some insight into Pinkie Pie’s behavioral patterns had certainly helped me stay in control and not annoyed around her. I’d leave the yay or nay on if I definitely wanted to be her friend until I’d had a chance to talk to her more, but this had been a good first step.

But there was another pony who needed addressing right now.

“Chamomile, I know you’re very good at hiding in shadows, but now isn’t really the time.”

The mare in question stepped out of nowhere, or rather out of the shadows around me. It’d taken a lot of work, but Luna and I had finally managed to teach Chamomile the basics of dark magic. She’d turned out to be particularly adept at shadow spells, but she had to struggle to learn anything else just as most ponies would with new magic.

“My apologies, Princess,” Chamomile said, bowing low and unable to look me in the eyes. “I can only assume you missed your chance to become a true alicorn. I was there, and I could not stop what happened, even as I saw the Elements of Harmony responding. I–”

Before Chamomile could go any further, I said, “Stop,” and then I stopped myself. I’d already concluded this was my fault; I didn’t need somepony to succeed in talking me out of that, or it’d be hard to restrain myself. But at the same time, it was entirely possible I was missing some important detail, or cultural aspect, or something else that I could talk about with Chamomile later.

“Look,” I continued, “I don’t really care if any of this is your fault.”

Chamomile winced.

Okay, how did I mess up this time? Whether she was assigned fault or not, it didn’t change what had happened or what needed to happen. All that changed was…oh. I’d basically told her I didn’t think she could be responsible for anything. For a guard captain – and even worse, for a pony who wanted to be a knight but would never ask – that had to hurt. Whoops.

“Let me rephrase that. At the moment, I just want to survive. We can all play the blame game later.” And I could come with a stacked deck.

As my mind went back to the geases I had to put on Chamomile, I realized that she was in an awfully bad position. I had no clue why Celestia left Luminance alone, but Chamomile had no excuse to be here. Celestia would know for sure that she was on Luna’s and my side.

And then Celestia would go back to the moon and do whatever she felt like, because she’d know everypony there was loyal to Luna. Maybe they’d be hostages. Maybe they’d be prisoners. Maybe they’d just be dead. And the absolute worst part was I couldn’t do anything about that.

Well…the upside of them having nowhere to go was that they were a low priority target. Maybe they would have enough time before Celestia arrived to hide and wait for Luna to rescue them.

But more importantly here and now, what was I going to do with Chamomile? There was no disguising that she was here of her own free will specifically to help overthrow Celestia and free Luna.

Wait. Chamomile had no excuse to be here. That was what I’d said. If I interpreted that more literally, she didn’t have to be here; Celestia would have no idea she was ever here. We could stuff her room with food and water, enough to wait until Luna’s banishment ended, and send it off on its own. I’d have to make sure I expelled absolutely everything from the rest of the ship that mentioned her, but it was possible. The Nebulous hadn’t been originally built to hold her, so her presence here could be concealed.

And Berry Pinch – no, it was a matter of public record that Berry Punch had a daughter. Celestia would look for her, and Celestia didn’t hurt foals.

Oh, ponyfeathers. Chamomile wouldn’t be easy to find. That was just as true for Luna as it would be for Celestia. She could die a long, slow death of thirst or starvation before Luna could find her. It would be easy to find her when starting from the Nebulous – the search radius wasn’t that big – but finding the Nebulous to begin with without the elements on board anymore, that could prove…difficult.

“Princess? Twilight?”

I snapped out of my thoughts when I heard my name. “Sorry. You have a choice to make. Either…”

And that was when I realized Chamomile didn’t have a choice. She wasn’t going to leave, even if it increased her chance of survival. Stars, I shouldn’t have to fight the ponies I was trying to save in order to save them. This was hard enough all by itself without internal complications.

“Nevermind,” I said as I cast a sleeping spell. “I’m sorry for this.”

Chamomile didn’t even flinch as she resisted my spell, which wasn’t terribly surprising. She’d been trained to resist these kinds of spells even without a unicorn’s help, and I was exhausted; she never would have been made captain of the night guard if she couldn’t. So much for making this easy on both of us.

I took a deep breath. “Alright. Chamomile, I’m ordering you to abandon ship for your own safety. I assume you’ve guessed the situation.”

“No disrespect, Princess, but it’s my duty to protect you, even should we face impossible odds. And if you happen to be exhausted and terrified, then so much more the need for me to be here.”

Chamomile, how I hated you right now. You were just as bad as Shining.

“I’m not terrified,” I protested, no comment about exhaustion.

A moment passed as Chamomile sunk into thought, apparently considering her next words carefully.

“Princess, your legs, your eyes, your wings, your tail, they’re all twitching. Everything about your stance screams that you want to jump at anything that so much as surprises you. I saw what you nearly did to Pinkie Pie. She should have known better.”

“No!” I shouted. I had to stop and deliberately recompose myself. “No, I won’t have anypony dying or getting hurt because of me if I can help it.” And I wouldn’t have anypony dying with me either. “I’m not just marching off to my end. I…have plans. I might come out of this alive, if not as the winner. Which reminds me, do you happen to have any unicorn bane? And what does it do exactly?”

Chamomile smiled – not much, but enough to tell that she was, in fact, smiling. “No, I regret to say I do not; I did not think it necessary to bring any. However, it would be the poison of choice when fighting an alicorn. Unicorn bane attacks a pony’s magic as it is formed into spells, which is particularly unpleasant for unicorns and alicorns.”

Ponyfeathers!

“And yet even if I did possess it,” Chamomile continued, “I do not believe you are in any fit mental state for me to entrust it to your possession, nor to leave you to your own devices. With all due respect, of course.”

Argh! Why couldn’t you stay like when I first met you! You would have just listened to me instead of snarking at me behind politeness.

And I needed to calm down. I made it through Pinkie Pie; I didn’t want to lose to Chamomile’s stubbornness.

“Please don’t make me have to knock you out,” I said.

“It is my own evaluation of the situation that you would waste too much of what magic remains to you should I be forced to protect you from yourself.”

And that was when the screaming began.

I didn’t need to be protected, especially not from myself! I was already screwed! My dreams had been stolen from right under my nose! My life could literally only get worse right now by dying, and Chamomile couldn’t protect me from that.

I didn’t remember a word of what I said. My mind blanked as my frustration returned my anger to the forefront of my mind. I didn’t know what I said, but I knew it was all horrible, and hurtful, and not worth repeating ever. Anything I could say to get Chamomile to leave, I probably had. A lot of it might have just been venting at the situation I was in and not aimed at her at all, maybe not even relevant to the conversation.

What I knew absolutely for sure was where I was when it ended: trying not to cry with Chamomile’s wings wrapped around me in a gentle, but firm, grip.

“Chamomile” – I sniffed – “there’s really not much you can do here. If a fight breaks out at all, we’ve already lost. I’ll try to win. I’ll try as hard as I possibly can. But nopony would bet on me, not even if zero bits paid out a thousand. Please just leave.”

“Hiding behind my princess is not why I agreed to join the night guard.”

Stars, curse you, Chamomile, you stupid, stupid mare! That – that was exactly what Shining would say. It’d taken me years to talk any sense into him. What chance did I have with you in minutes?

None at all. What did I ever do to deserve Chamomile? Or even everypony on this ship? Or anypony at all?

My mind answered my rhetorical question before I could stop it, despite how much I knew I’d only asked it to hurt myself. I’d technically fulfilled several dreams and wishes of the ponies here, but none of that counted. I hadn’t done that for them; I’d done that to recruit them, or at best, it was just something that had incidentally occurred, like visiting the moon.

And now everypony’s life was in real danger, not just generic space danger or danger from me. And Chamomile was just standing there comforting me, all but saying, ‘No, I didn’t want my life anyway. Go ahead and use it however you need it.’

“Are you feeling any better?” Chamomile asked.

“No.” I was going to tell Chamomile how stupid she was being, but the words came out as, “But it helped.”

It had, honestly. Having somepony who wasn’t me to yell at had helped so much. I could actually feel the twitching Chamomile had pointed out now. That had to be a good sign.

“Chamomile,” I began, knowing I was going to regret asking this already, “are you really choosing to di – to risk dying tonight?” Just because Pinkie Pie said nopony was going to die didn’t mean there weren’t ways to cheat her Pinkie Sense. It had rules, and rules could always be circumvented.

Removing her wings and stepping back, Chamomile gave me a funny look. “Have you not read the night guard’s oath? Or the day guard’s?”

I had, or the modern royal guard version, at least. Just as I knew the look on my face gave away my answer.

“Then you know I am, Princess. But I will do everything in my power to ensure that you survive.”

Fine. If Chamomile wasn’t going to listen, I could at least do one definitely intentionally nice thing for her. This might be my only chance.

“I, um… I don’t know if there’s a proper way to do this. Luna said she didn’t mean for me to ask this until later, so she never got around to explaining it to me. Wait, no, that’s not what I wanted to say.”

Knighting ponies was supposed to be a very personal thing. I could at least have the social grace to figure out I shouldn’t say I was just doing this because Luna said it was a good idea.

“Luna suggested this to me, and you specifically as a good choice, but she didn’t tell me to do it. Just that it was an option. And – just, do you want to be my knight?”

“Yes!” Chamomile half-shouted through barely suppressed excitement, no more than an instant after I’d finished my question.

And this was the point where I’d usually try to find out if she said yes simply because she wanted to be a knight or for me – or both – but it didn’t really matter at this, the point of no return. Besides, I was sure Luna wouldn’t stick me with a pony like that, and I trusted Chamomile well enough.

“Ahem, I mean I would be honored to accept.”

Before Chamomile could say anything else, I said, “Sorry we don’t have time for anything more formal. Celestia is on her way here. Chrysalis said she left Equus only minutes after Dash triggered her ascension, so we have little time remaining to prepare. We do not want this to come to a fight, but if it does, this would be the time to put all of your sparring practice against Luna and Dash to work. If you have any means of subduing – not killing – Celestia, this is the time to use it.”

“I…have a few dirty tricks that might work, but I wouldn’t count on them. Princess Luna almost always handicapped herself during training. And I can create a couple poisons quickly that might prove to be strong enough to afflict an alicorn temporarily.”

Well, that was a small comfort. And now that the word ‘handicap’ came up, I realized Celestia was probably out of practice after a thousand years of relative peace – another small comfort. “Just don’t try to do anything in melee range if it comes to a fight; I’m going to create an explosion of raw magic in Celestia’s face, and you won’t want to be near it. It might disrupt Celestia’s defenses long enough for us to do something productive.”

Chamomile paused for a moment but then nodded. “What’s the signal for attack?”

“Well, if we’re under attack, feel free to go at it. Otherwise the word ‘nor’ in any context will work. Or if I can’t talk, then I’ll drop my ears to my forehead. Okay?”

After a quick repetition to make sure she had the signals memorized – and a repetition of my own – Chamomile made a small bow to depart.

“Give me five minutes, and with any luck, I’ll have everything ready.”

“Wait. Where should I meet you?” I didn’t want to be alone in case Celestia showed up earlier than expected.

“The kitchen. Please tell Pinkie Pie to keep out if you see her as well. I don’t need her interfering or complaining about dirtying her equipment.”

The best way to get Pinkie Pie not to do something was to let her remain ignorant to what you didn’t want her to do, but in this rare case, she’d probably listen. Still, if Chamomile was going to be in the kitchens, it wouldn’t hurt to be polite.

“If you have extra time,” I began, “would you prepare the best tea you can in a minute or two? And not poisoned.” I’d find a table and chairs, too. No, we didn’t have any chairs large enough for Celestia, and I wasn’t going to waste magic on making a chair bigger. Cushions would do just fine instead. At any rate, if we wanted to talk to Celestia, it wouldn’t hurt to be polite.

“I shall make the best tea of my life if you think it will help. I’ve had plenty of practice ever since I left the moon.”

Chamomile and I said our short goodbyes, and I briefly considered the problem at hoof.

The bridge would be a good place to set up everything. It was the most expendable location on the ship, its purpose already fulfilled. And it was big, too, so I could sort of hide the fire rubies in plain sight by bringing a bunch of other magical artifacts to the bridge with them. There was Twinkleshine’s projector, a few dozen miscellaneous items in the kitchen that wouldn’t be too out of place at the scene of a party, the elements themselves, the compasses, et cetera. The fire rubies would still stand out as particularly strong artifacts in comparison to everything but the elements, but Celestia probably wouldn’t call me on it this way.

But before any of that, I had a half-dozen ponies that needed geases and memory spells.

“So yes, Pinkie Pie was correct,” I finished explaining for the second time. Everypony had forgotten the first time since I’d explained briefly while geasing ponies, and those memories had needed to be deleted. “Dash is fine. Please wait here until somepony comes to get you so there are no further complications.”

I turned to leave and caught another look at Berry Pinch’s destroyed manepin. The metal part was still okay, but the gems had apparently crumbled to dust, or so she said. They must have been caught up in the ascension process. Honestly, I was a little surprised that nothing bad had happened at all other than that to anypony, but being a Flare biased me quite a bit when it came to lots of magic in one place. Ascension was an orderly process, no matter how much magic powered it.

Still, things could go wrong even with the most tried and true magics. And I’d liked that manepin. I’d put a lot of work into it, even if it was mostly Spike’s gift. It was pretty irking to find it half destroyed, even if what remained was still usable.

Oh well. It was probably for the best. It’d had my magic all over it before, but now it was just a bunch of inert silver and copper – much easier to explain as, say, a family heirloom, and not a gift from the evil Twilight Sparkle and her dread and terrible, but mostly innocent, son.

Leaving Spike there and not hugging him or saying goodbye or anything had been…unpleasant. But he was a foal, and it wasn’t his fault his mother was the enemy. Celestia wouldn’t hurt him, just as she hadn’t hurt me when I was young. I hoped.

But leave I did, and calmly. Chamomile had pointed out what I’d needed to suppress with magic to appear calm, and I’d done so. One sign of fear or worry, and at least Pinkie Pie would come sticking her muzzle in where she shouldn’t be.

Pinkie Pie would be okay, of course. She was always okay in the end. She might even be able to survive being stranded in space. But anypony else she dragged along with her would not be okay.

It might make the ‘I’m evil’ act more convincing if I forced everypony to attack Celestia for me, but at the same time, I was reasonably sure Celestia thought I was smart enough to not do something that pointless. It’d just make her more suspicious of everypony and more tempted to throw them in jail forever or have them executed.

As soon as I was out of sight of the greenhouse, I broke into a gallop through the hallways, stopping at every room but mine and Twinkleshine’s – I kept most of my stuff in the library, and Twinkleshine’s stuff was sort of everywhere but her room – and grabbing any and every magical device that wouldn’t be odd to have at a party. There were quite a few…things, for lack of a better word, in Pinkie Pie’s room next to the kitchen that I couldn’t identify from their strange prickling of my horn, but I took them nonetheless. Hopefully the Pinkie Sense wouldn’t force Pinkie Pie to come stop a thief.

Although to be fair, my horn still ached from the flare, and I was probably off my game when it came to magic right now. Magic was complicated and required concentration, and I was exhausted and twitchy. Every so often when I was galloping around, I thought I felt a magical disturbance, but it was faint and elusive.

Anyway, I was running later than I wanted to be when I finally retrieved the remaining seven fire rubies from where they were contained, murmuring my apologies to Spike. They were all more than half-grown, but none were what Spike would call ripe. But with any luck, they would be enough.

Rushing into the kitchen, I dumped the pile of miscellaneous magical objects onto the floor – but being careful with the fire rubies – and started pulling other items off of shelves and out of cabinets, doing my best to avoid interfering with Chamomile’s work.

“How is everything coming?” I asked.

After adding a very tiny amount of some green fluid into a pot, Chamomile replied, “Well enough for a rush order. I finished a vial of serpere-īs. It’s the slightly brown glass over there.”

It took a moment for the translation to click, even as I glanced at the liquid in question. “Isn’t that the fever medicine dragons use?” When they actually managed to catch an infection that could actually live inside a dragon.

“Probably. That’s what it said in the book back in Luminance. It supposedly also works on ponies with a few orders of magnitude less concentration.” Chamomile lifted the pot she was working with off and away from the stove. She swirled it for a moment before finally setting it down on a counter. “It might work as a sedative on alicorns. Just don’t drink it. It will kill you.”

Alright, so rule number one when Chamomile is in the kitchen: drink and eat nothing she doesn’t give you directly. Simple enough. I’d have to make sure nopony could reach anything that she’d used in this process either. We didn’t have time to clean up safely. The easiest way would probably be to just teleport everything outside.

“What’s that?” I said, gesturing to Chamomile’s latest work.

“If I did it right, it should be a very nasty acid; we don’t have the chemicals here I’d normally use, and you’re low on magic.”

True, unfortunately.

Chamomile continued, “Princess Luna once said ponies rarely ward against simply chemistry tricks, her sister in particular. It won’t kill Celestia or subdue her, but I have it on good authority that it’s very distracting.”

Huh, I wouldn’t have thought of that. A lot could change in a thousand years, but bad habits had a tendency to stick, especially when there’d never been a chance to practice the good version of the habit. Equestria was just too peaceful nowadays to stay in tip-top condition when it came to combat.

“I imagine it would be okay to play the scared tea server,” Chamomile continued. “If you want me to attack, I will ‘accidentally’ trip and spill the acid to begin with.” As I opened my mouth, she added, “And I should probably wear a dress of some kind to hide my figure. I’ve gotten a little squishy on this trip, but it’s kind of obvious I’m not a civilian.”

“Maybe just something with sleeves and something to draw attention away from your legs,” I suggested. “No need to make it obvious, or let Celestia think you might be hiding something underneath your clothes.”

“Fair enough. I’ll go see what everypony has that fits me. When the kettle is ready, please take it off the stove.”

Oh, right. Tea. Yes, I could do that. I made sure to stare intently at the kettle so I wouldn’t be surprised and trigger happy when it went off. While I waited for Chamomile to return, I set about casting a giant illusion of the word parley thousands of hooves in size all around the ship with the light traveling outward only so nopony inside could see it and get worried.

After that, I set about removing anything that looked potentially dangerous to idi – to ponies who liked to lick before thinking, like Pinkie Pie. There wasn’t much, only a few pans and glasses. I carried them over to the kitchen wall and teleported them into space where nopony but Chrysalis or I could retrieve them.

Well, Chamomile could, too, if she were feeling bold and crazy. She could jump into a shadow cast outside the ship, turn back into a pony, grab the pans, and then finally jump back into a shadow inside the ship. But why she might want to was beyond me.

I shook the thought from my head as Chamomile returned wearing one of Fluttershy’s sweaters that did not match Chamomile’s coat very well. It wasn’t so painful as to draw the eye to her, nor to move the eye away to her exposed legs, but…well, it was obviously knitted by hoof, so surely there was some sentimental reason for wearing it, or so I hoped Celestia would think. It left her very non-threatening cutie mark exposed, too, which was a plus.

When the tea was ready and we were at last fully prepared, Chamomile and I gave each other a small nod. Besides the greenhouse, the kitchen was about as far from the bridge as a pony could get on the Nebulous. Every step felt like a mile, but the journey itself was all too short.

And during the trip, I had the strangest nagging feeling in my horn that all the magical artifacts I was holding were getting grumpy just being together. It was as if their enchantments were feeding off one another and trying to break somehow, which was absolutely ridiculous. I was just jumpy and nervous, exactly like I had been before. I’d thought it was just the ship’s enchantments acting up a bit at first, but it wasn’t. I’d checked.

Yes, I was just nervous and seeing shadows around every corner.

And who wouldn’t be? I had a chance of living, but I might as well be marching to my doom. Why even Chamomile stiffened when–

“Pri – Twilight, do you feel that?”

That growing spike in magical energy? Yes. Yes, I felt it. I’d been feeling it since we’d walked past the library, and apparently it wasn’t a hallucination. And it was strong enough now that even Chamomile could feel it.

Celestia didn’t have to travel by teleporting. This was probably some alicorn trick or something from an immortal’s horde of lost knowledge. Luna was banished, so I’d never observed what it felt like magically for an alicorn to manifest somewhere.

It probably felt like this.

“Yes.” That was all I said. What else could I say? I’d hoped to get set up before Celestia arrived, but apparently–

“It’s – it’s happening again!” Chamomile’s eyes were wild with complete and utter joy as she backed off from me.

“What’s…” My mind shut down before it could dare think any further. There was only one magical event like this that Chamomile could say was happening again, and it was far too much to hope for, far to much to even dream of.

“Princess, we have but seconds,” Chamomile said, forcing me to think in Old Equestrian again. “What do you wish done?”

The sudden dramatic increase in magic right next to me and the dazzling light that accompanied it shocked me back into focus. I immediately scryed the bridge and searched as quickly as I could for the Elements of Harmony. They were approximately where I remembered them, but it took some effort to locate them quickly.

Two Elements of Harmony – two distinct artifacts, even if they were designed to work together – wasn’t enough to ascend with, but three was. Three separate artifacts, three Elements of Harmony had worked together to ascend Dash. No, it’d been at least four. Berry Pinch’s manepin was a magical artifact, too, and there were other small artifacts on the bridge that had contributed. My compasses were likely all broken now, although their glass shells would likely remain.

My heart stopped as I connected what I saw on the bridge to what was happening now.

There were three dull necklaces on the bridge. One for Fluttershy, one for Pinkie Pie, and a roughly cut purple gem which I could only assume was for Spike.

But there was only one stone sphere.

A very shiny necklace bearing Chamomile’s flower cutie mark lay with the other three, and for some reason, one of the elements had decided necklaces were overplayed and had chosen to become a tiara with a six-pointed star crowning it.

My six-pointed star. Mine. Me. It was mine. Whatever element it was, it thought I was good enough for it. Even in this moment when I should be planning ahead with every second I had, that was almost too good to be true. A wonderfully welcome pain blossomed in my chest. It was one thing to decide to try to be a better friend, but it was another thing entirely to get this kind of positive reinforcement with the decision.

All the elements were glowing with the same bright light that the artifacts next to me had, and I was just standing there fighting back tears like an idiot.

And yet my thoughts carried on. Besides the fire rubies, the artifacts I’d collected weren’t worth much individually, but together they might be worth a tiny fraction of an element. Two Elements of Harmony wasn’t enough. Three elements with a fully grown fire ruby had been. If approximately two point five elements was sufficient…

I dared to think happy thoughts of a bright and wonderful future again.

The magic all around me spiraling beyond control – but not out of control of itself – snapped me out of my intoxicating daydream. I had to deliver instructions to Chamomile as best as I could before the ascension process took me away.

“Chrysalis. Elements overboard. Run.”

My world was consumed in light, and I let magic beyond magic tear me apart.

As I was disappearing, my mind connected an idiom back on Equus that I would never be caught dead repeating aloud or even in my thoughts. The Elements of Harmony each represented a generally virtuous personality trait, but Magic was the odd element out. Magic wasn’t a personality trait. It didn’t even have anything to do with ponies, really. Magic would go on without ponies around to define it and give it meaning.

But I’d promised to be a better friend, and friendship was magic.

Before I left this realm behind, my disembodied voice cried out, “Oh, that is just stu–”

Author's Note

Author's Notes

Prereader – Starlight Nova

Chapter Twenty Six - The Æthereal Realm

A faint hum of music just on the other side of perception reached my ears. It was fleeting, elusive, always changing, and yet a welcoming constant. My ears perked up in anticipation of knowing that ghostly melody, but it was always moving to somewhere new, somewhere it could not be known.

Eyes, I had eyes. I could see if only they were open.

A flash of yellow disappeared the moment I had sight once more, leaving nothing behind but myself in its wake. Slowly, ever so slowly, the world around me grew into existence.

Blues of all colors, like great clouds emerged from the void, a stark contrast to the black nothing where they were not. And everywhere, one by one, small wisps of light faded into being. Some were impossibly far away as if they were stars, but others drifted nearby.

I reached out a hoof to touch a wisp that came within reach, but I found myself too far from it. Whether I moved or it moved, I didn’t know. I couldn’t know. There was no reference plane to judge by. There was simply nothing but the blues, the wisps, and the void.

“Hello?”

I jumped when my hooves connected with…nothing. But I felt something. Even now, I stood. I did not float, I stood. There was something approximating gravity, and there was something unseen I stood upon.

“Where am I?” escaped my lips. This place seemed so ephemeral, so æthereal, as if one wrong move could bring it all crashing down.

I blinked. My mind caught up with what I’d said. This was the Æthereal Realm. I – I did it! I was almost there. ‘Just follow the memories,’ Luna had said. I was so close to being an alicorn!

But…what memories? There was nothing here, nothing but those wisps of light. Were they memories?

Slowly, I put my right forehoof in front of the other. I would not walk off an invisible floor into a bottomless pit right now, even if the idea seemed a little preposterous.

As my hoof came down, dozens of the wisps raced to meet it. I froze for a second, waiting for anything else to happen. When nothing did, I tested my weight on the…ground. It seemed solid enough.

Another step forward, and a few dozen more wisps swarmed below it.

Freezing once more, I took a deep breath, and then strode forward. With each step, the little lights came forward to meet me, but they always waited for the last moment, as if it were a crime to move but not be beneath my hoof.

I stopped mid-step once, but no lights waited in anticipation of my hoof. I turned my head around and found the previous wisps still behind me. They resembled the short path I’d taken, but they’d taken to drifting once more.

“This place is so weir–”

Out of nowhere, I was seized by a blur of pink slightly larger than myself, knocking us both to the ground and tumbling head over hooves once. Throughout the roll, hundreds, if not thousands of wisps found their places beneath us. At the end of our tumble and after my vision had refocused, I found myself atop a pink alicorn who was intent on hugging me to death.

“It’s you this time! It’s really you!”

I tried doing what I always did in this situation, namely teleporting out of Cadance’s reach, but my horn was unresponsive. It wasn’t just injury, or lack of magic, I couldn’t even tell if I had magic. For all that it could do right now, my horn might as well be nothing more than a protruding bone.

Just before I defaulted to my backup plan – complaining of pain and the need for air – I realized that neither were a problem. It wasn’t that Cadance hadn’t gone as overboard as she usually did, because she had. Rather, I just didn’t seem to need to breathe. In fact, now that it was brought to my attention, I wasn’t breathing.

And yet I found myself able to speak. “It’s me, Cadance.” I knew I should be upset with that other pony Cadance had alluded to, but I just couldn’t work up the effort here and now. Locked in a hug, alicorn to alicorn, in the Æthereal Realm, it just seemed…unimportant.

Cadance pulled out of her nuzzle, sniffed, and then nodded. “When she told me she was with you – you don’t know how much this means to me, Twilight. I… I…”

“Let me guess,” I began, a smile creeping up onto my face. “You’ve never regretted becoming an alicorn, but you’ve always felt an impending sense of aloneness, that you’d have to face eternity without your family? Especially your little sister?”

Face going from smiles and tears to a pout at my teasing, Cadance said, “Not you specifically, my little ladybug.”

For a moment, Cadance stopped moving, but then her hooves started exploring the two appendages she didn’t know I already had.

“It’s a spell,” I clarified for her. “I made a couple changes to myself long before I triggered the ascension process. The wings didn’t let me fly, at least not without additional magical help, but they had other uses.”

“Twi…Twilight, you’re self-taught, aren’t you? Just – how? Pupa? Um…Ch…Chrysalis? Wait, you said you had a tutor a long time ago, and I never found out who. Was she a changeling? That would explain why you’d never told me. Wait, but Pupa said she met you after that. And then we started talking again after you’d run away, and I already knew about changelings then too, so you could have just told me.”

I squeezed Cadance a little tighter and whispered, “Please calm down, Cadance. I’m not going anywhere. Well, I do need to finish my ascension, but I can spare a little time for this, I think.”

“Sorry. I – I’m just – I’m so happy you’re here. How did this even happen?”

“The same way as any other ascension.” Smirking, I added, “Well, except I did it on purpose, unlike everypony else.”

“You what?”

Oh dear. Celestia had never explained how ascension worked to Cadance. Not that I couldn’t see why. Cadance was too careless with her words.

“So are you two going to make out or what?”

Ugh. I looked up from Cadance and spotted the second to last pony in the universe I wanted to see right now. I took one deep not-a-breath. I wished it’d helped more.

“Hello, Dash.”

When Dash took a step backward, I made a deliberate effort to reset my face to neutral. I was so happy but moments ago, and I wanted that back.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” Cadance said all at once.

I gave Cadance a kiss on the cheek.

“T-Twilight!”

Heh. I took the opportunity to escape Cadance while she was flustered and sputtering nonsense, giggling the whole time. There was nothing quite like teasing an older sister.

“For the record,” I said, turning my gaze toward Dash, “I know it wasn’t your fault that you ascended first, that you nearly got me killed and everypony on the Nebulous with me, but I am upset. I’m trying not to think about it right now, but please keep that in mind.”

“Wait, what? Time out, Twi.” Dash flapped her wings to no effect, grumbling to herself soon after. It was nice to see I wasn’t the only pony having trouble with her magic here. “What happened to everypony? Is Flutters okay?”

I bit down on my urge to start shouting accusations immediately; I’d had a lot of practice recently, but it wasn’t getting much easier.

“Cadance,” I began, “did you see Celestia before you came here?”

From the look on her face, the answer was yes, and instructions had been given.

Sighing, I continued, “Let me guess. She said to keep whoever you found here occupied for as long as possible?”

“What does that have–”

“Dash, for once in your life just listen and think,” I blurted out without thinking. I rubbed my forehead, my wings substituting for my magic. “Sorry. That wasn’t fair. Just – Cadance, Celestia is coming to pick us” – I gestured to Dash and myself – “up, right?”

Cadance nodded. “But you have to believe Auntie won’t hurt you, Twilight. I told you she promised–”

“I don’t care what she promised!” I interrupted. “If she’s headed in my direction, that’s all the reason I need to run away as fast as I can. Speaking of which, Dash, let’s go.”

I trotted off toward Dash, which must have been the direction she’d come from. I would have gone faster, but I didn’t quite trust my coordination enough to gallop – or even canter – on an invisible surface.

“Um…” Dash looked between me and Cadance. “Twi, are you sure we shouldn’t wait or anything? Isn’t Princess Celestia picking us up, like, the best protection we could have from whatever danger–”

“She is the danger, Dash.” I managed not to scream, but just barely. “Now let’s go. Cadance, if you want to talk – and I would like to – you’ll have to walk with us.”

I sighed to myself. I was already regretting every word I’d said. Well, not the words exactly, but how I’d said them.

Stopping right next to Dash, I pulled together as much inner peace as I could, which while not much considering the circumstances, was still better than zero. “I’m sorry, Dash.” I turned toward Cadance who’d returned to her hooves. “Same to you, but I really have to go, and I cannot afford to leave Dash here, even if I have to drag her out by hoof.”

“Pft. Please. You drag me? Never gonna happen, Egghead.”

Charming, Dash. Simply charming. So this is what I have to spend eternity with, eh? Maybe she’d mellow out with time.

Sigh. No, not likely. I needed to find an unused mountain to stick her under.

I shook my head free of that thought and then trotted off, calling back, “Are you two coming or not?”

“Yeah, wait up, Twi. I don’t want to get lost in this place.”

Oh, fantastic. Please, oh please, strange Æthereal Realm, don’t make me require a guide to get out of here quickly. I didn’t want to have to chastise Luna for not giving me real directions.

“Twilight,” Cadance said, cantering into step on my right. Maybe if I walked just so, I could let her lead without realizing it. “Auntie really won’t hurt you. Not – not when she can help it, at least.”

I was going to tell Cadance she should take some debate lessons; that was the absolutely worst reassuring argument I’d ever heard. But then I remembered that Celestia horded information, not even just secrets, and Cadance probably didn’t know where I’d been and what I’d done these past several years.

“Did Celestia tell you where I – we,” I corrected myself, “are back in the…real world?”

“Well, no. Um, Auntie calls it the Physical Realm. But why does it matter? You didn’t take over her old castle or something like that, did you?”

I sighed. Not because of anything Cadance had said, but because I was going to have to start telling her full truths if I wanted to keep this conversation going. And I did. Cadance deserved to have somepony tell her what’s been happening in Equestria, and I was tired of not being that pony. And it’d be better for everypony if I were the pony who told her, not Celestia.

Besides, even if Celestia hadn’t already figured out what was going on, she probably had a clear enough idea now that it wouldn’t matter if I fed her information through Cadance. She’d always known Luna would be coming after her, so it wasn’t like I would be giving away that Luna was only a season-and-a-half away from being free.

“Something like that,” I mumbled. Then more clearly, I added, “Cadance, I’ve told you a lot of half-truths, and I’ve kept a lot of secrets from you too. Some of them mine, some of them the diarchy’s. I’m really sorry for that, but I didn’t have much choice before now.”

Sighing again, I turned toward Dash. “I suppose I owe you a minor apology in the same category. It wasn’t supposed to affect you much; you were pretty much a civilian, and I’d intended to keep it that way for everypony on the Nebulous for their own safety. But now you’re about to become an alicorn, so there are some state secrets you’ll need to know.”

“What’s a nebulous?” Cadance asked.

“Ah, well,” I began before Dash could just blurt out the answer, “it was sort of a new – no, an emerging subgenre when I last checked, but Twinkleshine still brought hundreds of such books with her. Have you ever read a science fiction story set in space?”

After a very distinct silence, Cadance ventured a hesitant, “Yes.”

“It’s been a while since I’ve been on Equus.”

“Are you joking?” Cadance shouted.

“Nope,” Dash said, taking over and trotting backward in front of Cadance. “It’s pretty sweet, and flying in space is all kinds of awesome. Well, when Twi will let me. But you can do all kinds of crazy stuff you can’t back on Equus without gravity getting in your way and without worrying about crashing into something. And have you ever seen a blizzard frozen in place? It’s like…uh, what did she call it? Um…I can’t remember, but it had something to do with poetry! I made one of those for Flutters’s birthday last year.”

Cadance put a hoof very calmly on Dash’s mouth, stopping all three of us in our tracks, and said, “Yes, that’s very nice, Rainbow Dash, but please wait for a moment.” Then, ever so slowly, she turned toward me. “Are you out of your mind! What were you even thinking? How are you not dead? Did you at least talk to a grown – a professional about this? You risked not only your life, but Rainbow Dash’s, and Fluttershy’s, and who knows who else’s too. Just – just – argh! What were you thinking?”

“That I was a very careful and responsible filly with the best possible pony overseeing my work and a princess’s horde of resources and contacts at my disposal. And I had a very important reason to.”

Before Cadance could reply, Dash asked, “Hey, Twi, didn’t you say we weren’t supposed to tell Princess Cadance about this?”

“You remember that?” I said, taken completely by surprise.

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I? You said it was important. Probably should’ve remembered it sooner before I started talking though.”

A moment passed.

Huh. I needed to update how responsible I thought Dash could be. Granted she’d remembered it too late, but that she remembered it at all after years of it being moot was more than I’d expected.

“Oh no, not this time Twilight Sparkle.” I reflexively dodged Cadance’s attempt to grab my ear with her wings. “You’re going to explain exactly what you were thinking, and you’re going to do it right now.”

“I intend to, if you’ll just–” Well, asking her to calm down wasn’t really going to help. Of course, there was a roundabout way to do that. “Just breath, Cadance.” I gave her the same advice she’d given me so long ago with the accompanying gestures. “In and out. In and out.”

It took a while, but Cadance eventually joined me in the exercise. It wasn’t exactly effective in a place without air, but Cadance’s face suggested the familiar motions were soothing enough by mere conditioning.

“Feeling better?” I asked. I was barely tall enough to put a wing over her, but it worked.

Cadance mumbled, “A little.”

I nudged Cadance forward, and the three of us started walking again. It only took us a few steps before the wisps – for whatever reason – apparently got tired of just following our hoofsteps and made a wide walkway in front of us. I’d say it stretched off to infinity, but that was probably just a visual trick of this place. The Æthereal Realm was so strange, and I had a growing itch to run off and investigate everything. I really wished Luna had explained more of this place to me.

Still, Luna was probably right not to. Coming here for the first time with absolutely no idea what to expect was pretty interesting, and I was likely having a more ‘magical’ experience than I otherwise would have. It’d be nice if it were under better circumstances though. I could have spent days in here if I and the cr – my friends weren’t in trouble.

“So you want to know why I left Equus?” I asked, picking up the old thread of conversation. “Just to make sure you know I’m not just making stuff up on the spot, Dash, what was our goal?”

“Well, to retrieve The Elements of Harmony. Although I’m kinda thinking that wasn’t really it right now.”

Cadance took a few seconds to fumble for words before finally settling on something to say. “Did Auntie pressure you into doing this? No, of course she did. I – are you doing this to prove you’re…”

“Not useless?” I suggested.

“I would’ve said, ‘a better choice than Trixie,’” Cadance mumbled.

Dash asked, “Who’s Trixie?”

It wasn’t terribly surprising that Dash didn’t know her. I’d heard Trixie was becoming a bit of a celebrity back on Equus – not counting her fame as Celestia’s protégé – but there was no reason to expect Dash to know anything about her. Trixie mostly had only had local fame in Canterlot when we left, but rumor had it she was quite the stage performer. Pupa said she usually reenacted assignments Celestia had sent her on.

“Trixie is Celestia’s student.” Dash really only needed to hear the short version of this explanation right now. “I was originally supposed to be in her spot, but… Well, anyway, Trixie was supposed to bear the Element of Magic, but–”

Oh my. I – I couldn’t stop laughing. Now that I’d pointed it out, this was just about the best…the best… Well, it wasn’t dramatic irony, or a brick joke, and it wasn’t quite laypony irony either. At any rate, whatever it was, the Element of Magic was mine now, just as Celestia had originally intended.

Chrysalis always told me I needed to put more flexibility into my plans, because plans had a tendency to go astray, but this was just too much. Celestia had aborted her plan for me, and yet it’d happened anyway.

Well, mostly. I wasn’t going to banish or kill Luna anytime soon, which would be part two of Celestia’s plan, but that wouldn’t have been funny. And even if I wanted to or was forced to, the elements were broken, so I couldn’t.

Still, good times.

“Twilight, are you okay?” Cadance asked.

At the same time, Dash asked, “You okay, Twi?”

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” I managed to say. First recovering as best I could, I continued, “The Element of Magic ended up awakening for me, and if I get the chance, I really, really want to throw it at Celestia’s hooves and say, ‘There. Happy now?’”

Oh, I could just imagine it now. I’d imagined telling Celestia off as an alicorn before – not that I was foolish enough to let myself get that distracted when I was actually in front of her – but having the Element of Magic as a prop was a huge step up in the fantasy. Between that and natural alicorn wings, I didn’t know what could possibly make it any better.

Sigh. Oh well. Gloating in front of Celestia was probably one dream that wasn’t going to come true, but – well, actually, maybe I could find a way to dreamwalk like Luna, or Luna could link me into Celestia’s dream somehow. There I could talk and talk and talk all I wanted without worry.

“By the way, Cadance,” I said, “as its current bearer, I’m officially renaming the Element of Magic to the Element of Friendship. Seriously, that is the dumbest misnomer I’ve ever heard of, and it has to go. Please pass that on to Celestia for me.”

“I’ll – I’ll try to remember. But you didn’t really answer my question.” Cadance’s wing pushed mine off of her. She then pulled me into her with her wing. “Twilight, I’m happy you’re – ehem – happy about this–”

“More like laughing mad,” Dash snarked, only to receive a sharp look from Cadance.

“As I was saying, I’m happy everything seems to have worked out for you. I really am. I assume your ascension has something to do with your…trip, and that’s wonderful, but that doesn’t mean taking ponies off planet wasn’t incredibly irresponsible. You don’t have to prove anything to Auntie or anypony else.”

I sighed. This was quickly devolving into one of those conversations. “Cadance, I really don’t want to argue about responsibility and self-worth right now, so can we please put this conversation off?”

“I suppose so,” Cadance mumbled. “But how did you even do it? And why? What I really want to know is why.”

“It’s complicated, and – what is that?”

Along the edge of the path just a little way in front of us, two giant stained glass windows shimmered into existence out of nowhere, suspended by nothing and fixed in place. As I cantered forward to get a better look, another pair appeared a ways past the first, and when I finally arrived in front of the first two windows, a third pair appeared about the same distance away from the second as the second pair was from the first.

The latter windows could wait; the first pair were strange enough already. On my left was a painstakingly detailed replica of my first flare. No, if the opposing window were even the slightest bit relevant, it was depicting my cutie mark story, which just happened to involve my first flare. I was in the middle of the exam room, mid-flare, with Celestia bearing down on me. I just had to touch it, and–

I snapped my gaze away. Something about the window had felt…inviting. Like I could dive right into the story somehow. On the other window, there was a young Dash entering a sonic rainboom above Cloudsdale, the pulse of magic accompanying it spreading out in a ring behind her.

“Touch it,” Dash said from right next to me, causing me to jump and bump into Cadance. “Heh. You know you want to. Who wouldn’t want to, after all?”

“What is it?” I asked Cadance, not Dash.

“Ah, it’s a memory. Auntie said the first memories are always your cutie mark stories.”

Well, that explained what Luna meant when she said to follow the memories. And then I realized the really important question I should be asking that could change everything.

“If you lost any memories,” I began, “to magic, or to physical trauma, or just from simply forgetting them, would they show up here?”

Cadance’s frown fell even deeper. “I don’t know. I – after…certain events, I ended up back here and tried to recover a memory, but I couldn’t. Auntie told me later that this” – Cadance gestured to the window – “only happens once, during your ascension.”

Alright, this place just went from strange to completely random. Sure, there was probably some explanation for why ascension would open up all of our memories and put them on public display, but I didn’t see why. Thematically, I would guess that most of the memories were somehow relevant to the ascender’s growth in their special talent, but that didn’t answer why they were here to begin with.

I shook my head. I really wanted to investigate, but I had no time, no idea how to do anything in this realm, and no information to start from, since Luna hadn’t told me much of anything about this place. Hopefully when the next alicorn ascended, I’d be in a better position explore and poke things.

Still, there was one thing I could ask right now and expect an answer to. “What happens when I touch it?”

“Just do it,” Dash said, pushing me forward and into it. “It has to be experienced!”

I didn’t know why Dash was shouting, not until my muzzle bumped into the window and my senses failed me.

Heh. This was gonna be so easy. These two jerks would think twice before they messed with Fluttershy again after how badly I was gonna beat them. I’d show them who was the best flier here once and for all.

I snorted and turned my attention back toward Fluttershy. Nopony was ever gonna call me Rainbow Crash ever again either. I just needed to go a bit slower. Just a little bit.

Fluttershy raised the start flag, and I saw Dumb-Bell and Hoops take the same ready stance as myself out of the corner of my eye.

I narrowed my vision, focusing on nothing but the flag. I wasn’t gonna let these idiots get an early lead over some dumb distraction.

The flag dropped, and I shot forward, my opponents following closely in my wake, taking advantage of the lower pressure just to keep pace with me. I thought I heard a small squeak as we flew, but it was probably nothing important.

I flew through the first hoop of the track, angling just perfectly to maximize my speed toward the next hoop I had to fly through, my fore and hindlegs extended straight to minimize my air resistance. For some reason, I thought I saw a pink earth pony on a stray cloud as I went by, but I must have been seeing things. What kind of unicorn would cast a cloud walking spell on somepony and then put them on a cloud to drift helplessly?

The next hoop required a hairpin turn. I checked my flank to make sure I wouldn’t blast the jerks with my winds. I wanted to win this fair and square.

Finding everything clear, I pulled myself into the turn. The strain on my wings was amazing, and I was sure I looked awesome doing it too!

I heard a single muted crash behind me. Apparently somepony hadn’t made the turn himself. So much for all his boasting. What a loser.

The next several hoops were practically a straight line. I put on as much speed as possible, flapping my wings as hard as I could and putting all the magic I had into simply moving faster, and faster, and faster still. My rainbow contrail followed me in my wake, and I broke into a giant smile.

This. This was what life should be like: an open sky, a pony’s wings, the wind you couldn’t redirect in your mane, and a chance to push your magic to its limits.

And then out of nowhere, Hoops rammed into me and shoved me out of the way. All of air flow I’d had going broke and crashed into me, halving my speed at least and putting me miles behind that stupid cheater.

“Ha! Later, Rainbow Crash!”

“Hey!”

No way. He didn’t get to say that to me. Not now. Not like this.

I dove toward the last hoop placed near the ground in a nosedive. Faster and faster, wingbeat after wingbeat, my sweat chilling me at such speeds.

I blasted past Hoops, blowing him away with my winds. Ha! Served that jerk right for cheating first.

But now I had no competition. If I didn’t do something awesome, there was no point in winning.

How fast could I take the turn to avoid splatting on the ground?

Wait, what was I thinking? I was Rainbow Danger Dash. I’d just take a straight path and blast myself back skyward when I reached the hoop. I could totally do it!

I moved more and more air out of my way, more that I’d ever done before. I was in my groove, absolute perfection in every way with my form.

No, not absolute perfection. I could do better. I just needed to move less air out of the way. I needed to get the most out of my magic. I was wasting way too much effort on air I didn’t need to move.

A weird layer of what looked like water or ice or something grew in front of me. I had no idea what it was, but it helped me visualize what I needed to fix to go faster.

As the watery thing shrunk smaller and smaller, it got harder and harder to breathe, but who cared. I could hold my breath for a little while, even if I was getting light headed. Whatever.

And now I was at the hoop. This was it. I just needed a huge updraft.

I was in the hoop, moving at a dizzying speed. With all my might and with perfect timing, I put every last trick I knew into getting myself to change direction.

My vision returned to me. I wasn’t a pancake on the ground. That was good.

And I was going fast. That was great.

I turned to look behind me; something was strange.

A rainbow trailed all the way from me back to where I’d been near the ground, and a wave of pure rainbow – or something – was spreading out below me.

That. Was. Awesome!

I’d done a Sonic Rainboom! I was living the legend! I was the legend!

I tore through the finish line before I even knew it. Who could even care about some dumb race at a time like this?

Higher and higher I climbed, so high that frost developed on my coat. I blew it away with my magic, but I was still freezing.

Ha! As if a little cold would stop me. This was the best day of my life!

Why did my flank itch?

I blinked. Looking down, I made sure that I was still purple and not blue, which I was.

“So?” Dash said, poking me in the wing. “Was I awesome or what?”

I had no words to say. Was I happy to have lived as Dash for a few minutes? No. But the feelings, the sensations, they’d been so intense, so exhilarating. Just – wow.

“Speechless, I see,” Dash continued. “A lot of ponies get like that just being around The Dash, but you got to be me. Do you need a doctor?”

Facehoof, that was the only appropriate response. Although facehoofing Dash was also an appealing option.

The up side of this was I’d learned something new. Dash was faster than every other pegasus not because she had more thrust – although she did – but because she had good technique. She didn’t fly like anything approximating a bird the way normal pegasi did. Instead, while she did use her wings for thrust normally, she also made a strong wind and pulled the air out of the way before it ever hit her, vastly decreasing the drag she had to overcome. I begrudgingly had to admit that was pretty ingenious, even if Dash’s memory made it feel…easy? Natural?

But just how hard was it? If Dash had ever tried to tutor another pegasus, she’d probably failed horribly. Creating winds while flying was not standard flying procedure. It couldn’t be anywhere approaching easy if Dash was one of the few – if not only – pegasus doing that trick. Well, that’d be another bit of pegasus magic to put on the list of things I was going to have to learn. And I still had no idea how she flew upside down.

And another thought occurred to me. Ponies quite simply did not remember things as accurately as what I’d just experienced. We had difficulty just remembering a color, and that memory was rich in detail. It certainly fit to call it a memory given shape in the Æthereal Realm, but I doubted it was an accurate description.

Oh, ponyfeathers. “How long was I out?” I asked. That memory had lasted several minutes at least.

“Only a few seconds,” Cadance replied. “It’s just reliving a memory in your mind. Kind of like a movie or a book but…more.”

Wait. I had another idea, a grand, glorious idea. I had to learn how these memory window things worked. I could revolutionize education if I could figure it out. It wouldn’t do to simply dump a lifetime of knowledge into a filly’s head, but the applications were limitless. And it’d be a good way to recover lost memories too, if I could find some way to bind the memory…window…things to a book, or a necklace, or something.

Ah, and speaking of applications. “Cadance, I don’t think I’m going to answer your questions. I think my memories can do a better job than I ever could. I’ll try to find the relevant ones as we – wait, these windows do go on for a while, right? There’s not just three?”

“Well, yes,” Cadance said, frowning. “You’re not going to say none of them are relevant and sneak off at the end of your ascension, are you?”

I rolled my eyes, even if that did sound like the kind of trick I’d pull. “No, I won’t, Cadance. I promise. But how long does it take to walk to the end of this path?”

“Um… Well, I was sixteen and alone, and Auntie and I talked along the way while looking at my memories and poking things.” Turning to Dash, Cadance asked, “You’re older than Twi, right? Are you…twenty-two, maybe?”

“Twenty-one,” Dash corrected.

“Sorry.” Cadance sunk into thought, likely doing some simple math. “Well, I guess it’ll take us roughly a half-hour to walk all the way to the end.”

Ponyfeathers!

“You’re not lying, are you?” I asked. It wasn’t likely, but I still needed to know. If it was going to take that long walking, there was no way I could count on Celestia not finding at least the elements before I reached the end. Even galloping, and I was sure that would involve a lot of falling on my face, I probably wouldn’t reach the end quick enough to get out of here before Celestia reached the elements.

“Of course not,” Cadance half-shouted. Recovering her composure, she continued, “Twilight, I – I don’t think you should run away from Auntie, but I can at least understand why you want to. I won’t stand in the way of that and force you to run away from me right now, especially not if you run off and this is the last time I get to see you.”

I flexed my wings to point out the ridiculousness of that concern.

Blushing, Cadance said, “Oh, right. Immortal. You can’t get yourself killed. That’ll take some getting used to.”

Not as much for some ponies as others. But anyway, how long had it been between Dash’s ascension and mine? It had to have been at least fifty minutes by now, probably more. And if I made good time here and got out in, say, fifteen minutes, it would be wildly unrealistically optimistic to assume Celestia wouldn’t already be in pursuit of the Nebulous.

This was bad. We were supposed to have a lot of time to escape, a lot of time for me to get used to alicorn-level magic and teleport away without leaving a trace. Then we could have fled with Chrysalis powering the ship; Celestia wouldn’t be able to recognize any lingering remnants of Chrysalis’s magic for a tracking spell, which would help ensure our escape.

Well, that plan was out. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Dash, for this wonderfully difficult constraint added to this problem. It would be ridiculous to leave here without a plan for escaping from Celestia while she was nearby.

At least I had the element of surprise – sort of. Celestia wouldn’t know exactly when I would finish my ascension, but she probably knew where I’d reappear. There were only three locations that made sense, after all: the Nebulous; the absolute position of where I’d ascended; and wherever the elements currently were, plus or minus a little linear interpolation between them and the other minor artifacts that went into my ascension.

Yes, Celestia would be waiting for me. I could expect nothing else. And she’d have teleport wards placed for sure, and who knew what other traps.

Only three solutions came to mind. The first was to flee immediately and without hesitation. The element of surprise was powerful, and it might just get me away if I overcame the initial ambush. The second was to default back to one of the old plans. Since Celestia wouldn’t be able to flatten me instantly anymore, I could at least guarantee being able to deliver a request to talk.

And lastly, there was the third option to stall until Celestia finally decided to come here herself. I suspected she couldn’t do anything to me here, and if I were lucky, I could leave here and then run away before Celestia could leave as well.

Well, I’d give those ideas a little bit of thought and refine them while we walked. None of the options were mutually exclusive, so I could try them all sequentially.

In the meanwhile, I walked over to my own cutie mark story and touched it with a hoof, getting lost in the memory as I had with Dash’s.

And when I came back, I was shivering. I’d gotten used to pain and had forgotten just how much that first flare had hurt eight-year-old me. It ended long before I met Luna, so there was no point in subjecting Cadance to it.

“Should I be watching this memory?” Cadance asked from just behind me. When I turned around, her face was the picture of concern.

“No,” I whispered. Then more strongly, I continued, “No. This – it’s only painful. Flares hurt, Cadance.”

I turned away and trotted on toward the next pair of stained glass windows containing my next memories, saying nothing more. Cadance was nice enough to say nothing too.

“I think I’m gonna watch this one again,” Dash said, approaching the window with her own memory. I was pretty sure it was of her wedding. But so long as she stayed out of my way right now, I didn’t really care.

Now my next window had a picture of me lying in sand with molten blobs everywhere, staring up at the stars. That was probably a long memory, and I had no interest in reliving it. Nor would I subject Cadance to it. And even if most of what I’d been thinking about then was just guesswork, it might reveal secrets I’d promised Luna not to talk about with Cadance.

Next window it was then. And just like I’d feared, it was out of order with the previous two chronologically. It depicted when I’d first gotten my wings, and to my humiliation, it depicted the eyesore version of me.

“Who’s this?” Cadance asked, the distaste evident in her voice. “A friend?”

“Ugh. Just – I’ll take a look first.” I touched my hoof to the window, and when it was done replaying, I said, “Go ahead and watch it. It doesn’t explain much, but it’ll give you a look into my daily life – my real life. And please don’t laugh. Even I mess up spells sometimes.”

“Of course I won’t laugh. We all make mistakes.”

Cadance touched the window and zoned out completely. I didn’t know what I’d expected, but I was disappointed that nothing else happened while Cadance was experiencing my memory. There should have been some fancy illusions, or a feeling of power, or something, but apparently the Æthereal Realm only sometimes gave in to theatrics. When she was done, she stepped back and looked up at the window, scrutinizing it with a keen eye.

And then she snickered.

“Hey! You said you wouldn’t laugh.”

“Sorry, sorry. But did you really stay like that for the rest of day.”

“Yep,” Dash said from behind me. “She totally screwed it up again, like, a dozen times until she got it right. We’re kind of used to her doing crazy stuff though. It wasn’t that funny.”

The look Cadance directed toward Dash was the worst kind of understanding gaze. “Crazy stuff like taking you into space?”

“Pft, that’s the least of it. Did you know there are ponies on the moon?”

Cadance turned toward me. “Twilight, I’m trying very hard to be understanding here, but can you at least tell me how many times you’ve put yourself in danger?”

“Every waking moment of every day. I’m a Flare, Cadance. Using magic at all is dangerous. But I have dozens of safety nets set up, both for myself and for the Nebulous. Like I said, I had the best pony possible helping me with this.”

I preemptively held a wing up to stop Dash from answering Cadance’s next question.

“Who?”

“It’ll be a surprise. I’d bet we’ll stumble onto a memory of her soon. I have a lot of memories of my tutor, after all.”

“So I’m finally going to find out who your tutor is, eh? I’m pretty excited about that, at least.”

I wondered how long that would last. I really hoped the first memory of Luna we stumbled upon was a warm and cuddly one, not a bad one. I’d love to show Cadance my memory of Hearth’s Warming Eve on the moon with Luna. That would be the perfect way to introduce Cadance to her. Luna had been completely non-threatening in any possible misconstrued way that night and had behaved pretty much like a normal mare trying to forget her problems for a little while.

Of course, knowing my luck, we’d stumble upon the memory of when I’d told Luna exactly what Celestia’s plan was. Well, feathers crossed.

The next set of windows didn’t feature Dash on either one for some reason, not that I was complaining, but neither had Luna either. On the left…

Maybe it was better I didn’t watch that memory. I was only six; I didn’t know any better back then. The Summer Sun Celebration was fun and exciting for fillies. And I hadn’t known Celestia at all. That dawn had been inspirational at the time, but now I just wanted to forget it.

Anyway, on the right was…Celestia and Sunset Shimmer on a balcony watching the dawn? That was who that mare was, wasn’t it? Smallish build, yellow coat, red and yellow mane and tail, and curled up with Celestia. Yes, that had to be her. Why on Equus would I see any of Sunset Shimmer’s memories here? Unless…she was mid-ascension.

Gulping, I fruitlessly looked behind the window and everywhere else I could see. I didn’t really expect to see Sunset Shimmer anywhere, but I had to look. Was she lost in here? Did she fail to ascend and get locked in here somehow? Is that what happened to ponies in failed ascensions? Or did Sunset Shimmer just happen to ascend at the same time without anypony noticing? Was it timed to happen like this for some reason? Did we just get three new alicorns?

But then if the answer to any of these questions were yes, then how did Chrysalis find Sunset Shimmer? Or maybe, how did Chrysalis find out what had happened to her, if Sunset Shimmer was stuck here? And how was Luna involved?

Although, if Sunset Shimmer were ascending while I was or if she was trapped here, that would certainly would explain why Chrysalis couldn’t contact her when I’d asked.

“I’ll be back!” Cadance shouted after several seconds of perfect silence between us. She bolted off back in the direction we’d come from.

Well, Cadance would come back soon with or without Sunset Shimmer. Either way, it’d narrow down the number of possibilities considerably.

“Hey, Twi,” Dash began, holding a hoof toward the window. “Who is that?”

“That’s Sunset Shimmer. She was Celestia’s apprentice before Trixie Lulamoon. I suppose while Cadance is gone, I might as well tell you a secret.”

“Is it one of those bazillion state secrets you have? Does Princess Cadance know?”

I sighed inwardly, as much as I wanted to just sigh normally. I really didn’t want to deal with treating her like an equal for a while. Maybe I could convince Dash to hide her horn later and pretend she was just a pegasus. But then she’d probably give herself away with her earth pony magic, which never turned off without invasive measures.

Ugh, whatever. I’d just have to deal with it for now.

“Yes it is, but Cadance knows this one. You know how Luna commissioned our trip to Mona?”

Dash nodded.

“This isn’t the secret, although it is a secret, but the truth is, Celestia wasn’t in on that. She didn’t even know about it, because she’s our – that is, Luna’s and my – enemy.”

“Princess Celestia?” Dash asked, completely stupefied. “Her? Really?”

I nodded. “Celestia is a good ruler, but that doesn’t make her a good pony.” I pointed to Sunset Shimmer on the window. “It was supposed to be her job to kill Luna with The Elements of Harmony, or at least to banish Luna for another thousand years, but she disappeared, and the task was passed on to Trixie.”

“Are you serious? That is not cool.” Dash punctuated the last two words for even more emphasis that she’d already put on them. “Wait, what about Princess Cadance? Aren’t you two, like, sisters or something? Whose side is she on?”

“She’s been under the care of Celestia for half her life, and she’s never met Luna. It’s not her fault she believes Celestia is in the right. I’m hoping to correct that belief while we’re here, or at least to sow doubts.”

“Wait, wait. Hold up again.” A look of dawning horror came onto Dash’s face. “You two said Princess Celestia was coming for us.”

I didn’t want to have to clean up any other messes Dash made today, so I interjected before she could do anything stupid like run off to try and save Fluttershy from a foe she couldn’t possibly defeat.

“Dash, I already tried as best as I could to protect everypony on the Nebulous from Celestia. If that wasn’t enough, it will almost certainly be too late by the time we can leave here anyway, so we don’t need to rush. Not that we should delay unnecessarily either. Please” – I gave Dash a firm look – “do not run off without me, or you will get yourself and our friends into more trouble. Understand?”

Dash took a step back, gulped, and then nodded.

Satisfied that I’d successfully headed off trouble, I relaxed my stance back into something more neutral.

“Thank you. I know delicacy and discretion isn’t really your style. Anyway, the reason we went to retrieve the elements is, as you said a while ago, not to recover them. We went to break them so that they couldn’t be used against Luna. That is, of course, something Cadance doesn’t know. And no, they weren’t broken when we first picked them up; they were just…sleeping.”

“So did you?”

I was going to assume Dash was asking if I broke the elements, so I nodded.

“Well, that’s good,” Dash mumbled to herself, her ears folding down onto her head. Even quieter than before, she asked, “Is it my fault we’re in trouble?”

“Yes.” Then thinking better of that answer, I said, “Sort of. It’s not your fault, but you are the cause.”

“Oh. Sor–”

I slammed a hoof into Dash’s muzzle, cutting her off before she could finish that horrible word. It wasn’t quite a punch, but it might as well have been with how quickly I’d had to move to silence her without magic. If nothing else, it’d been hard enough to send Dash stumbling backward, flailing her wings and trying to balance herself.

“I don’t want to hear that word from you! You–”

No, I needed to stop. This wasn’t who I wanted to be. I didn’t want to lose it here.

I grit my teeth before deciding to just scream.

When I finally stopped, Dash complained, “What the buck was that for, Twi?”

I stood perfectly still as I worked my temper back down into something I could talk at.

“Dash, I told you I’m upset, and with you specifically. I’m trying to ignore that, but it’s not easy. You nearly took away all of my hopes and dreams forever and almost got me killed. And you did it by accident!”

My eye twitched. Bad news, but at least I noticed it.

“If the previous three ascensions weren’t also accidental, I – I don’t even know. I probably would’ve tried to kill you. Permanently. Not just tossing you into the sun. It’s not your fault, but if you dare try to apologize for it, you’re going to break the part of my brain that understands that.”

After a few seconds, Dash opened her mouth several times, but no words came out. Eventually, she just said, “Oh.”

“Wait for Cadance here,” I muttered, practically stomping off further along the path. “I’m going to go find a happy memory.”

As I walked down the path, I took note of a few windows that featured Luna. They appeared to feature only random magic lessons and conversations, nothing I’d want to introduce Cadance to Luna with – although they would be good for establishing Luna’s baseline personality – nor anything that would get me back into a good mood.

I couldn’t speak of the windows I glanced at from Dash or from Sunset Shimmer, but I couldn’t come up with a sane ordering for mine. They weren’t chronological or reverse chronological. They weren’t part of a common story like the Lunar Palace’s walls were. They weren’t even all that significant. A few memories I couldn’t even place the time and location until I’d watched them. And after each time, I’d thought something along the lines of, ‘Oh, right. I vaguely remember this event.’

It was like somepony had taken a random sampling of my life, shuffled the results around, moved one or two memories to the front of the line, and claimed that they’d created art. I wasn’t sure if I should be insulted, pitying, or just confused. Maybe Luna’s own ascension had inspired her to to better with her own art after she’d started building Luminance.

Oh. Oh my. Now this was a good memory. I hadn’t expected this kind of memory to appear here, but I wasn’t going to say no to reliving my first night in bed with Twinkleshine. I touched a hoof to the window.

And when I was done with the memory, I had the same blissful smile on my face that I’d had after the night in question. Maybe…maybe just one more time. I touched the window again.

Stars, I could get addicted to this. This might as well be a pleasure button.

Oh, ponyfeathers. I could feel saliva in my mouth, which meant I had at least one bodily fluid. The rest of my body was probably behaving normally too. I should stop before I really did get addicted – or started smelling. There may or may not be air here, but smell probably still worked. It would be just my luck.

Alright, was I in a good mood again? Well, the mere thought of Dash was still unpleasant, but I didn’t feel like lashing out again. I would call that a mission accomplished.

So then, should I go back and meet up with Dash and Cadance, or should I move on and look for the right introductory memory? Hmm…

I should head back. Even if Cadance didn’t figure out that Luna was my mentor – and she’d have to be pretty thick not to – from the memories she passed by, she would at least notice something wrong, comment on it, and Dash would spoil everything since I hadn’t left instructions otherwise.

Yes, I should head back. I made the trip much slower this time and actually paid attention to my surroundings properly. I stopped briefly at every window I knew was mine and reviewed the memory for later viewing. They were all fairly innocuous, although one contained a discussion of ascension. It would probably be wise not to show Cadance that one.

And as tempted as I was otherwise, I only glanced at Sunset Shimmer’s memories as I passed by them. If she really was here, it would be polite to ask permission first. It was possible she was on our side, after all, and I wouldn’t want to damage or break a potentially tenuous alliance with petty invasion of privacy.

Many of Dash’s memories I was at least vaguely familiar with. I usually couldn’t point to the exact event they depicted, but I often had a good guess. Fluttershy was, of course, the most common pony depicted in them other than Dash, but I was in a lot of them too.

And I passed no small number of stained glass windows which I simply could not tell who they belonged to; those I didn’t touch. When Dash and I appeared together, the viewpoint was usually obvious based on the context, but sometimes Dash and I were shown as roughly the same size, with roughly the same…what was the way to put it…presence? Maybe I should read up on art terminology later.

Well anyway, even if it was sometimes hard to tell Dash’s and my memories apparent, Sunset Shimmer’s were easy to spot. We were separated by a generation; I couldn’t recognize any of the ponies that appeared with her beyond Celestia.

Except for one.

I hadn’t noticed this image the first time I went by.

No, that was wrong. I had, but I hadn’t processed it. It wasn’t an obviously happy memory, so I hadn’t paid it any mind.

Unlike nearly every other window I’d seen, this one was completely abstract, and I had absolutely no idea what it was supposed to mean. On the left, Sunset Shimmer was depicted upside down, eyes closed, as if falling and asleep somehow. And on the right, there was a very young version of myself, upright, almost as if I were a biped, and with my eyes half-lidded, as if I were waking up.

The rest of the design was very minimal. The left side had reds, and oranges, and yellows, and the right side had dark blues, purples, and pinks, all of which faded seamlessly into each other. For what little shape the colors had, the design was fairly intricate and regular. If I inspected the window in more detail, I suspected I’d find a fractal.

All that remained of note was the very center of the window, where our two cutie marks merged together. Their union looked…wrong. It wasn’t a proper cutie mark. And yet somehow, the artist had managed to make them fit together naturally, both overlapping and bleeding into the other.

I stepped forward, hoof extended. It didn’t matter whose memory this was: Sunset Shimmer’s, mine, Dash’s, Cadance’s, or somepony else’s. I had to know what this was supposed to mean.

Author's Note

Prereader – Starlight Nova

Fan art by Tinker Tie - 'Sunset Twilight Stained Glass'

Chapter Twenty Seven - Sunset Shimmer

I looked up as I heard a pony – a light-gray unicorn mare, it seemed – other than the bartender approach my table. Not many ponies had the courage for that, especially while I was drunk. I glanced to the side just to make sure the world hadn’t flipped upside down, and I was unsurprised to find everypony casting furtive glances my way. While I was mildly curious, in this particular case, misery did not love company.

“Go away,” I slurred. I didn’t know what bottle of wine I was on anymore, but it had to be at least the seventh. I sort of remembered casting six sobering spells. Probably. I knew I was seeing double; maybe I was remembering double. Was that a thing?

Eh, whatever. I magicked some more wine into my mouth and swallowed.

Heedless of my warning, I heard the mare sit down across from me. Obvious solution: teleport her away.

Ugh. Whoever this was canceled my magic instead of accepting her fate like a good little filly.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Sunset,” the mare said. Her voice was clear and high; she could be a singer for sure. “I think you’re a little too drunk to risk using that much magic.”

“Shut up. What do you know?” I lifted my head from the table as my voice grew in strength. “I’ve mastered my magic. I can do whatever I want now. I’m not going to flare or nothing.”

“Oh dear, oh dear. You’re a little too far gone for conversation, aren’t you? Would you mind if I sobered you up?”

“I would. Now go awa–”

Before I knew it, there was a trash can in my face, and it appeared just in time to stop me from making a mess all over the table. It was held aloft in a pure white glow of magic, the same glow the mare across from me had at the tip of her horn.

Struggling to remain conscious, I moaned, “Go ahead, dammit.”

Ugh, as soon as I’d said those words, painful clarity returned to me. I went for the bottle immediately.

“Are you feeling any better?”

I finished an especially long drink. “Obviously not. Who are you anyway?”

“Ah yes, please forgive me for not introducing myself earlier, but you were a bit indisposed.” The mare fidgeted with her pale blue mane as she continued. “My name is Crystal. I’m a bit of a jeweler with an interest in famous gemstones.”

“Never heard of you. What do you even want? I’m kind of trying to work the good old brain beach magic.”

A faint smile arose on Crystal that attested to the pity behind it. I scowled in response.

“If your problem were that simple, you would have simply erased those memories with magic. But to answer your question, in my line of work, you have to take an interest in history. With that comes an awareness of a particular pattern. Princess Celestia’s apprentice is dangerous. Princess Celestia’s apprentice is bad news.”

I couldn’t deny there was a certain truth to Crystal’s words. “So what? That’s not news to anypony here. Do you want me out of Manehattan?”

“Oh stars, no! Please don’t misunderstand. I don’t believe danger follows you around. No, I believe you follow danger around. And for that, I am quite grateful.”

It took me a second to believe I’d heard Crystal correctly. I couldn’t remember the last time somepony had simply thanked me for what I do like that. Usually I had to save their life first, or put out a fire, or defeat some terrible beast from the Everfree or Tartarus.

“Thank you,” I mumbled.

“Thank you? Don’t you mean you’re welcome?”

“No.” My voice still wouldn’t rise above a whisper. “Thank you. Ah, but I’m still not sleeping with you.” Not even if she’d come up with the best pickup line possible.

Fighting her giggles, Crystal said, “Oh, is that what this was? I think I have some other approaches. Let’s see… Ah yes. You seem to be trying to drink yourself to death. If you don’t want that life, perhaps you might give it to me?”

“That was the worst pickup line I’ve ever heard.”

“Well if that didn’t work, what if I said I had a customer who’s looking for the greatest gem in history, and you are the crown jewel?”

Heh. “That’s pretty bad, but I don’t think it’s as bad.”

Crystal sighed dramatically, a hoof raised to her head in mock distress. “Oh, whatever will I do now? My heart burns with passion for thee, and no other can sate it.”

I just rolled my eyes.

“As regrettable as it is, I suppose it’s for the best you’ve rejected me. You’re a little too young for my tastes.”

“Too young?” That was absurd. Crystal couldn’t be more than twenty. She might not even be old enough to legally drink. I had to be at least a decade older than her. “Are you a grave robber?”

“No, no,” Crystal said with a dismissive wave of her hoof. “I’ve never taken well to adventure. The last – and only – one I went on must have been a hundred years ago. I almost died in the Fortress of Talacon, and I swore off adventures right after.”

A hundred years? “Sunbutt? Is that you?”

Crystal, who may or may not be Celestia, snickered, but she tried to hide it behind her pint of ale.

“I’d heard rumor that there was somepony who dared refer to Princess Celestia as ‘Sunbutt’, but I never imagined it would be true, let alone that it would be you, Sunbutt.”

“Hey! My sun represents magic, not, you know, the sun. It’s different!”

Humming, Crystal tilted her head to the side. “Maybe I didn’t get that sobering spell quite right.”

“I heard that, and I’ll have you know I’m painfully sober right now.”

“Ah, is that so? Then perhaps we should make sure there isn’t some sort of befuddling spell on you.”

“Alright, alright.” This joke of a conversation was running entirely too long. “If you’re not trying to get me to raise my tail, then what do you want?”

“Well, I must admit I could leave now and be happy just with having brought a smile back to your face.”

I was smiling? Oh, I was. No, I couldn’t be smiling; I was supposed to be brooding right now. I made an effort to frown again, but it wasn’t coming naturally anymore.

“But if you wish to know my initial intentions, they’re nothing nefarious. I walked into an anonymous bar in Manehattan, a city oh so far from Canterlot, and found Sunset Shimmer of all ponies. Anypony with half a brain would be curious what terrible fate you were busy protecting the city from. And then I thought I might offer whatever help a pony such as myself could, if you would have it.”

“Are you serious?”

And now that pitying smile was back again.

“You’re not very used to nice ponies, are you? If Canterlot is anything like Manehattan, I can understand that.”

I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t find it in me to say anything on the topic. Instead, I asked, “So what are your intentions now?”

Crystal’s smile fell. “Well, now I think your problem is personal. I would be willing to lend a sympathetic ear, if you wished. I wouldn’t mind if you erased my memory of the conversation after either, if you wanted to.”

“I…”

I wanted to reject the offer on principle alone. I’d made it this far in life with just Celestia; I could make it through this as well. But Celestia wasn’t here, and I’d been through enough of her lectures about facing your problems to know drinking wasn’t a real solution.

Well, there was one thing I could ask for. Call it…testing the waters, perhaps.

“You said you would help,” I began. “Would you be willing to do something for me?”

“I can’t promise you the moon myself” – Crystal’s smile came back – “but I would like to think my answer will be yes.”

“Would you be willing to lend me two-thousand bits?”

Crystal raised an eyebrow. “Princess Celestia didn’t…fire you, did she? Is that even the right word?”

“No, not exactly. I’m” – I searched for the right words, but they weren’t coming – “sort of, kind of running away right now. I usually just bill everything to the treasury, but I want to stay lost.”

“Are you sure you don’t need more?” Crystal asked, glancing at the numerous bottles scattered around me. “I’m pretty sure that isn’t cheap wine.”

“I opened a tab,” I whispered. “As you said, I’m Sunset Shimmer. I’m good for the money.” Or more specifically, Equestria was good for the money. So long as I never made Celestia really, really mad, she’d always be there for me financially.

Crystal opened her mouth to say something but seemed to think better of it, a good call on her part. She’d probably been about to invite me to stay with her. If she had, this conversation would’ve been over.

Instead, Crystal said, “If you’ve never been to Manehattan before, my friends usually recommend the Arabian Palace. It’s on Highland Avenue, not too far from Main Street.”

“I’ve been to Manehattan several times.”

“Well in that case” – Crystal downed the rest of her pint in one big gulp – “I’ll be right back. It’s only a few minutes walk to the bank from here.”

As soon as Crystal turned away to leave, I let myself smile again, silently whispering another thank you.

I walked into a small hotel far from the beaten paths of Manehattan tourism. If two bits could buy me a cherry, two-thousand could buy me all of two hours’ stay in the kind of places I usually patronized. At least here at the homely little Moonlit Inn, I could stretch that into two weeks with enough left over for food.

“One please,” I said to the stallion working the desk. “Duration unknown.”

“Of course, ma’am. It’ll be fifty bits a night. Is that okay?”

“Yes, yes. Just give me the room number.” I’d already scryed the layout of the building, and I just wanted to teleport into bed and die.

“If I could just get a name?”

“Sunset Shimmer,” I replied without thinking. I’d wasted a perfectly good opportunity to let this stallion continue not recognizing me, although who knew how long that would’ve lasted. Maybe it was better this way. They’d have no ‘legal’ grounds to kick me out for giving a false name.

“A-ah, yes. Um…here’s the key. It’s room three-oh-seven.”

And practically at the end of the hall on the top floor, safely out-of-sight, just like always. It happened far too often for it not to be deliberate. But really, who would want a pony who could blow up manticores with her mind sleeping next to them?

Bah! Nopony was skittish around the police or the Royal Guard. But they a pony could at least see coming, unlike me.

Whatever. I wasn’t in the mood to complain. I took the key and teleported into my room, landing on my back on the bed. Even the high-class places didn’t usually ward against teleports. I’d only taken the key at all in case I came back too drunk to work any magic, which after tonight, was an unpleasantly likely possibility.

I raised a hoof into the air and stared at it. Given that I could only see one, I must have done a good job casting a sobering spell after I’d left the bar.

My hoof crashed back onto the bed beside me as I sighed. Maybe I should just run away to Los Pegasus and get a job in special effects. I was far more than just a qualified illusion mistress. Everypony would be begging for me to work with them.

Heh. Yeah, right. They’d be begging whatever disguise I made for myself to work with them, not me, and then maybe not even that. Illusion specialists were usually pretty good at their jobs. They could give me a serious run for my money.

I levitated up the napkin with an address I’d taken from the bar.

“Crystal, eh?”

After the last one when I was still a teenager the press had had a field day with, I’d sworn off one-night stands completely, let alone the mess I’d stir up if I slept with a mare after establishing I liked stallions. Ugh. I never wanted to see a journalist or a press conference again.

Still, I really needed something right now. A lover, a friend, it didn’t matter. Anything would do. Maybe I should have gone home to Trottingham. It’d been a long time since I’d visited Mom and Dad.

Sigh. No, I couldn’t go home. That’d be the first place Celestia looked for me, if she came looking at all. I didn’t want to be there in either case. I’d have the same problem visiting Cadance or Blueblood.

And like that, the only pony I had left who was willing to listen was this Crystal mare. If she was trying to get a date, she’d certainly pulled all the right levers. Despite my better judgment, I might just agree if she asked.

Ha! What even would my home life be like?

‘Honey, I’m back!’

‘Sunny, you’re home! You’ve been gone for a week.’

‘Yes, well, this brute of a hydra ate a pony, and it took forever to track it down. Can you think of any uses for a three story hydra carcass? I have a few spare heads sitting outside. No? Oh well. I’ll just take them out with the trash.’

I sighed again. The day Sunset Shimmer found a husband was the day Sunbutt would forget to raise the sun in the morning. If I wanted love, I was going to have to run off somewhere with an alias.

And there was no way Crystal was actually interested in me that way anyway. There were plenty of other reasons to be interested in a pony with as much magic as I had and who had the…who had had the ear of Celestia.

But then Crystal had been right. I wasn’t used to nice ponies. Maybe she was just a nice pony. It wouldn’t hurt to give her a chance. Maybe she could even help me feel better. Celestia was always hounding me to play nice and make friends. Maybe I should finally listen.

I pulled the blankets out from beneath me and tucked myself in. Maybe tomorrow everything would be better.

I almost couldn’t believe I was doing this, even as my hoof knocked on the door. I was standing in front of Crystal’s house on Elm Street. It was kind of small and pretty far out of the way, which made me think she had another place within the city proper, but this was the address she’d written down for me to repay her at.

No answer came. Maybe I was too early in the day for this. Or maybe she’d intended for me to just leave the bits in her mailbox or something. Not that I had the money to repay her right now. I was just hoping she was still willing to listen to me complain.

Oh, or maybe she was barely ever here, and she’d thought I’d just give up repaying her eventually. She’d made it pretty clear when she’d come back to the bar that she didn’t care when I repaid her, if ever.

I was about to teleport away after waiting at least two minutes when the door finally opened.

“Oh, Sunset Shimmer,” Crystal began, “what a surprise! Are you going home already? I’d have thought you’d be out and about for a while longer.”

I opened my mouth to tell her why I’d come, but I just couldn’t. Talking about…feelings and stuff was the kind of thing I never did with anypony but Celestia, much less a casual acquaintance. But that was why I could. She was somepony I didn’t know, and when I was done, I’d never come back. It was like talking to a stuffed animal. Or at least, it should have been.

After that horribly long and awkward silence, one in which Crystal had waited very patiently, she asked, “Well, would you like to come in? I’m not quite ready for company yet, so you’ll have to excuse the mess.”

Mess? Oh. I stepped inside and found it littered with cardboard boxes. Just as the door closed, I asked, “Do you want me to come back later? If this is a bad time, that is.”

“Oh no, oh no. Don’t worry about a thing. I moved a season ago, and I’ve been unpacking as I need things. It’s not exactly the most efficient system, but it works.” Sneaking past stacks of boxes, Crystal continued, “If I don’t get lost in this jungle again, the couch should be somewhere in this general direction.”

I knew this was just a delaying tactic, but I asked, “Do you want any help unpacking? I do owe you a favor.”

“Ah, please don’t feel obligated to clean up my mess. I’m sure you’ll more than repay any debt you own me in the future, if not directly.”

To me at least, Crystal’s smile screamed ‘go home’. Or failing that, it at least expected me to go home at some point. I looked away and investigated the nearest box. It was filled with the miscellaneous knickknacks a pony collected during the course of their life.

“I’ve got nothing better to do. I spent the whole morning sitting in the park bored out of my mind, idly staring at the clouds.”

“Well, if you really want to, I suppose we could start in the kitchen.”

I nodded and followed Crystal through the labyrinth that was her home. Eventually, we came into the kitchen, and I only knew that was the case because we’d gone from carpet flooring to tiles. A firefighter would faint if she walked into this place.

“No offense,” I began, “but how is your house still standing?”

Crystal giggled with a hoof over her mouth. “Just some simple fire proofing spells. If you could find a box with the plates or pans or anything of the like, they all need a quick washing before being put into…well, any cabinet would be fine. Probably one close to the stove would be best.”

“Alright,” I said before setting about my task. It wasn’t difficult to find what I was looking for. A basic light spell and some scrying let me look inside of boxes without bothering to open them.

Then the sink was…somewhere. Oh. What a surprise. It was buried underneath a wall clock. How could I have expected anything else?

“What do you want done with this?”

“Oh, stars!” Crystal took the clock from my magic, blushing furiously. “Please pretend you didn’t see that. I wasn’t going to wash it or anything, and – just please forget about it.”

The clock disappeared in a teleport. From the amount of power put into it, I’d guess it only went upstairs or something. Just far enough for me to forget about, I supposed.

Shrugging, I set about the mindless task of washing dishes. The dish soap was, thankfully, already unpacked and nearby, so I didn’t have to hunt for it. Meanwhile, Crystal set about emptying another box of kitchen towels and various foodstuffs.

I was on my fifth bowl when my brain finally remembered to make conversation. And it only remembered because it was being left to think about whatever it wanted again.

“So did you go to Celestia’s school? Wait, no, you said you’ve never been to Canterlot, right?”

“Oh no,” Crystal replied, “I’ve been there one or two times, but I’ve never lived in Canterlot. Why do you ask?”

“Just curious, I suppose. It’s not often I meet ponies that are skilled enough with magic to teleport.” Or to stop me from teleporting them, if I was remembering yesterday correctly. Her cutie mark was an amethyst – or some other purple gem – so it was pretty unusual she could perform actually useful magic instead of just a small wingful of spells she was naturally good at.

“There’s nothing special about it, if that’s what you’re wondering. No tricks, or private schools, or anything. I’ve just got a lot of practice.”

“That can’t be the whole story,” I said. “If practice made perfect so easily, every unicorn would know how to teleport.”

“Well…I suppose I could admit I was a bit of a study nut when I was young. With an eye for the ‘cool and dangerous’ spells, I’m afraid.”

Ah, the teenage years. I did not remember them fondly. I had far too many self-injuries from flares that Celestia had needed to calm down, let alone all the other problems being her student caused me. At least none of my flares were ever as bad as the first. Celestia didn’t find me until after that one had run its course.

But she did ask me to be her student then, so it wasn’t the worst day ever. Or maybe it was both the best and the worst day ever.

“But you survived though, right?” I asked. Sometimes you never knew. “You’re not some kind of lich or zombie, are you?”

“Does this look like the face of a lich to you?”

I turned my head around to find Crystal doing what was likely her best impression of a sad puppy.

“Heh. No, I suppose not.”

“I did have help with the whole surviving thing though. Another talented spell caster took an interest in me, and she knocked some sense into the foolish youth that was myself, because, and I quote, she wanted somepony halfway intelligent to talk to.”

I snickered before I could stop myself.

“Would you believe that’s how she introduced herself to me?” Crystal added.

“Oh, no way. Are you serious?”

“It’s true! There I was, an impressionable young pony, and out of nowhere, this old hag comes along and just waltzes into my life, telling me I was just smart enough to not be a simpering idiot.”

I glanced in Crystal’s direction and found her with a pot on her head and a fierce look on her face. With an accent I couldn’t quite place, she said, “Come Crystal. Join me, and I can teach you the wonders of the lost magics you so desperately crave. In return, I ask only for loyalty and sanity.”

Wait, that couldn’t be. “Was that supposed to be a Middle Equestrian accent?”

“She sometimes spoke Middle Equestrian,” Crystal said, levitating the pot over to me along with a couple boxes of pots and pans. “In a word, she was a relic.”

Well, I supposed that was what happened to a pony who read up on old magic everypony else had forgotten. Not that I would know anything about that. Celestia never let me into the old and or restricted sections of the Canterlot Archives.

No, I wasn’t going to think about that. Instead, I said, “I’d love to meet this mare. Is she still…”

“Alive?” Crystal finished for me.

“Yes. That.”

“Pft. Yeah, she’s alive. You and I will die long before her, I’m sure. She’s definitely immortal.”

“Well, I wish she’d share her secret. I could go for a little immortality myself. And some more books on magic. And a better teach–” No. I snapped my mouth shut. Not talking about it. Not thinking about it.

Crystal’s hoof touched my withers. “Do you want to talk?”

“Yes.” The word escaped me. “Some other time, but…yes.” I turned on the facet again and pulled some of the water into my dry mouth. “I don’t… For now, could I just listen to you complain about your own teacher?”

“If that’s what you want,” Crystal said, her tone strangely sad. “I suppose I should begin by saying she wasn’t my teacher. She taught me one or two things, of course, but mostly she just wanted somepony to talk to…”

“I’ll be honest, Sunset, I’d never have guessed you knew how to cook.”

Crystal and I sat down at her considerably less messy dinning table with two bowls of my best spaghetti topped with the most unhealthy white sauce I could put together. It was a far cry from my usual recipe, but I didn’t have my usual ingredients.

“I never wanted to learn,” I said before taking my first bite. As I’d suspected, it was a success. “Celestia insisted I cook and clean for myself when I was young. It was supposed to be so I could practice using small, controlled amounts of magic, but I always got the feeling she had some other reason.”

“I can think of a few reasons. How young were you?”

“Young enough that she couldn’t have intended for me to cook for a lover.” I sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just being paranoid.”

“Nonsense,” Crystal said through a mouthful of food, her fork dramatically sweeping out an arc like a sword. “Perhaps there really isn’t anything more to it, but your feelings are real. And if you’re worried about it, you must have a reason to be.”

I sighed again. This was the moment. Good food, a homely atmosphere far removed from Canterlot posh, and even good, if new, company: I wasn’t going to find a better time to talk about my problems with anypony.

“Do you promise not to tell any of this to Celestia if she ever comes to ask you?”

“No promises about torture or magical compulsions” – I rolled my eyes – “but anything short of that, I do so promise.”

“I…” Alright, Sunset, this shouldn’t be this hard. Just say it already. And don’t cry. “I’ve… You see… It’s – it’s been nearly thirty years since Celestia made me her student. I’ve worked hard the whole time, I really have, but…”

Seeing me freeze up, Crystal guessed, “But it’s not what you want to do?”

I shook my head. “I love magic. I love what I do. I…love Celestia like my own mother.” I stopped fiddling with my meal and buried my muzzle in a forkful of noodles. Anything to not say the next words.

Crystal, for her part, hummed thoughtfully, no doubt attempting to divine what I wanted to say.

“Ah! You worked hard, but you never did your best? Is that it? You feel like she’s holding you back on purpose?”

I gulped, then nodded.

“To be honest, I think that’s a common problem among ponies that get too close to Princess Celestia.”

That’s not at all what I wanted to hear. Crystal might as well have told me I was being an wangsty teenager.

“Please don’t misunderstand,” Crystal said in a rush. “I don’t mean your problem isn’t real, just that it is not uncommon. Forgive me, I’m thinking of one of those friend of a friend stories, but would you mind if I made a few guesses from something similar?”

“Go ahead,” I finally whispered.

“Alright. Please stop me if I say something wrong.” Crystal stopped to take a drink before continuing. “You are the prized student of Princess Celestia, not quite her equal on paper or in public, but she listens to you, and you listen to her.” She paused a moment and pulled my gaze up to hers. “Except she’s a lot older than you, and ultimately, she has authority over you. You have to do what she says, and she always thinks she knows best. And maybe she does. But if she does, then she won’t explain herself to you, and that hurts.”

Not going to cry. Not going to cry.

“And the public certainly hasn’t made it any easier on you. If I were to summarize in two words what my friends think of you, it would be noble and terrifying. They know you as Equestria’s sword, not as a hurting scholar. Princess Celestia hears about something terrible happening, and soon after, you show up and the problem disappears.

“The real” – Crystal made a pair of air quotes – “newspapers don’t dare to say anything bad about you directly, but there’s always a crazy story out there. Maybe it’s your fault for not behaving like sunshine and rainbows in public to counteract the fierce warrior image you’ve developed, but it shouldn’t have to be your responsibility at all. You’re only helping, after all.”

Crystal bopped me on the nose with a spoon, drawing my gaze back up again. “Of course, PR isn’t really my thing; you’ll have to ask somepony else about that. My question then, is why Princess Celestia is underutilizing you, not how she justifies it. I think if you get that answer, you’ll feel a lot better. It might not stop you from feeling underappreciated by everypony, but it’d be a step in the right direction.”

I sniffed and nodded. I’d already tried that and failed, but at least I knew I wasn’t crazy for trying.

“But,” Crystal began, “you didn’t come here to listen to me play at being a psychologist, did you?”

No, no I hadn’t. Not at all.

“Why don’t you try just talking?” Crystal suggested. “Just talk and see what comes out.”

“I – I don’t know. Maybe. I…I remember rinsing off a teapot. Would you mind if I–”

“I’ll go start the kettle,” Crystal interrupted.

While I was alone, I cleaned myself up and then polished off what little remained of my meal. And then I downed my entire glass of milk for good measure. And then I noticed that my chair was a little tiny bit off balance. Wait, no, it was the floor. I fixed that with a little fancy telekinesis. I could really appreciate the millimeter of difference.

And now I was totally, completely ready to run away.

“I found a–”

“Eep!”

“Sunset,” Crystal began, her voice laced with patience, “if you don’t want to talk, that’s perfectly alright.”

“No! Uh, I mean, no, I want to. That’s why I came here. I just – this isn’t something I normally do. It’s hard.”

“Well of course it is.” Crystal settled into a gentle hug from behind me. “Talking about feelings is always hard, and you strike me as a loner, so double that.”

“Thank you,” I whispered. “But you should finish your supper before it gets cold. I can angst at you later.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. I’m supposed to be on a diet anyway.” Pulling me up from my seat by the hoof, Crystal continued, “Why don’t we find a more comfortable spot in the living room?”

I nodded, and just like that, we were off into the unknown maze again. It took us far too long, but eventually we stumbled upon the living room couch and coffee table, which naturally, were very far apart and had to be moved together. Once that was done, the two of us sat down facing each other, our backs supported by the arms of the couch.

“I don’t even know where I should start.” There were too many little things to put together into a coherent narrative. So many tiny slights and concerns that had built up over the years.

“If you want my opinion, I think you should start with whatever is most bothering you right now.”

I bit my lip for the longest time before I finally decided to speak. “You can’t tell anypony about this ever. Celestia would be furious if she ever found out I’d said anything. Are you…comfortable with that?”

“Not terribly, but I know how to keep a secret.”

“Alright.” I took a deep breath to prepare myself. This was just the latest in a long line of hurts, but it was by far the freshest. “Have you heard of Princess Mi Amore Cadenza?”

“Of course I have. She’s been all over the press for a whole season now.”

“Yes, yes she has. And all of it’s singing her praises…” No, this wasn’t the time to travel down that gloomy road. “Anyway, when I think of a princess – no, when I think of an alicorn, she’s…not it. She’s charmingly sweet, and her heart is big enough even for me. She’s only half my age, and sometimes I think she’s the only pony in Canterlot who pays attention to me. But she’s not it.”

“You’re jealous?” Crystal said, the skepticism in her voice palpable. “Aren’t you the kind of pony that just works twice as hard when somepony else has something you want?”

The flattery brought a small smile to my face. “I like to think so. But no, I’m not jealous, not exactly.”

No, I wasn’t jealous of Cadance. I was almost certain that alicorn…ism wasn’t in limited supply. Not unless Cadance had lied to me about what had happened to her and Celestia hadn’t given me the runaround. I wanted what Cadance had, but I didn’t want to take it from her any more than I wanted to take it from Celestia.

“Crystal, is it greedy to want ponies to smile at me for once? For them to do what I ask because I’m me, not because I’ll tell Celestia if they don’t? I know I can be kind of jerk, but I’m so tired of always being the bad pony, of always having to ‘know better’. Don’t I deserve something?”

A soft pressure of magic grew on my wither, and I realized I’d gotten to my hooves on the couch.

“Sorry,” I said, collapsing back onto my haunches.

“It’s perfectly alright, Sunset.” Crystal dabbed a hoofkerchief at my eyes, and I took it afterward to blow my nose. “So you asked Princess Celestia to make you an alicorn?”

“No…sort of. I asked her to tell me how I could make myself an alicorn. It’s different. I didn’t just demand to be made one. I was willing to work my horn off to get my wings if I had to.”

“I imagine she didn’t take that well.”

I shook my head. Celestia did not not take things well. I’d only seen her really mad once, and that hadn’t happened yet in the tale.

“She’s been doing the same thing to me for years,” I whispered. “Always I’m not ready yet, or we need to do this first. And when she f-finally agrees to something, there’s always some disaster I have to go stop for her. And t-then I get back two weeks later, and if I haven’t forgotten, she always finds some new excuse. I – I can’t figure out if she even – even cares for me anymore.”

While I tried to get my ragged breath to even out, Crystal said, “You said she’s like a mother to you. I don’t see how she couldn’t feel something in return, even if your relationship is strained at best.”

“I – I k-know. But I can’t feel it any – anymore. Something has come between us, and I can’t…” No, I’ve been down this train of thought far too often. I didn’t want to go down it again. “A-anyway, this time was no different. It was the same old you’re not ready speech, but with words like fate and destiny instead.”

“And then you ran away?”

“No. Not yet. It’s – it gets – no.” It got far worse before I left. “I tried asking again several times. I thought if I could find just the right argument…” Deep breath, Sunset, deep breath. You could do this. “Nothing worked. I got mad. I said things I regret. She got mad. S-stupid Sunbutt s-said things I can only hope she regrets. I – I don’t even know if I’m w-welcome at the castle any–”

I was interrupted by a hug, a nuzzle, and a much needed shoulder to cry on. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do this, but it was too late. I couldn’t even summon up the energy to teleport to some solitary corner of Manehattan.

“Shh… It’ll be alright,” Crystal whispered near my ear, rubbing my back. “I’m sure everything will work out.”

“Y-you d-don’t k-know that!” I whispered, my voice already hoarse.

“I do.” The sheer force Crystal put into those words almost made me believe her.

And then the kettle started whistling.

“Oh stars. Wait just a moment, and I’ll go take that off the stove.”

When Crystal was already halfway to the kitchen, I finally managed to ask, “Can – can I still have the tea?”

“Of course! Be right back.” A half-second later, she asked, “Oh, do you want milk, or sugar, or anything? The tea I have is pretty bitter. Not exactly what a mare would want to feel better after a good cry.”

“Lots – lots of milk, please.”

“Coming right up!”

It only took about a minute before Crystal came back with her tea set, although it felt like an hour. I was still silently sobbing and sniffing all the time when she got around to pouring my cup. I took hold of the milk carton and poured and poured until my tea was nearly white. If Celestia were here, she’d ask me if I wanted any tea with my milk.

But she wasn’t, and if I wanted milk, I’d have milk. I brought the cup to my lips and downed half of it before Crystal had even finished preparing her own. It wasn’t good manners, but at this point I didn’t care. After all, I’d probably already left my mucus on her. How much ruder could I–

“Urk.”

“Sunset?” Crystal’s eyes widened. “Sunset, what’s wrong?”

I collapsed half on the table, half on the couch, and half on nothing, breaking who knew what in the process and cutting myself on something sharp. I didn’t hold that tenuous position long, but Crystal caught me before I fell to the floor.

“Sunset, can you say something? Anything? Please?”

I tried, but only wheezing noises came out. I tried to summon my magic to do…I didn’t even know what, but something. But when I did, my head felt like it’d been split in half. My vision blacked out, and then I couldn’t hear Crystal anymore.

Somepony was shaking me.

“Twilight, honey, it’s time to get up. It’s a bright new day out.”

I opened my eyes. Momma was right there. She stopped shaking me.

“Glad to see you’re finally up, Sleepyhead. Miss Smartypants is happy, too.”

Miss Smartypants? Must be my doll. Of course it was. How could I forget?

“I’m making pancakes for breakfast. Go wash your hooves, and then you can come downstairs to eat.”

Wash my hooves? Why? How? Wait, no. I needed clean hooves to eat. Momma said so. And pancakes were delicious.

“Okay. I can do it.”

I stumbled out of bed with Momma helping. She saw me to the bathroom and then left. I stopped on the top of my step stool waiting for water to come. It occurred to me that wanting it wasn’t enough. I had to turn the knob by hoof.

One clumsy washing later, and I was ready to eat. I skipped downstairs and followed my nose into the kitchen. Daddy was waiting there, and Big Brother was already eating.

I licked my lips and hopped up onto my chair. I didn’t even have to get help! A pile of three delicious pancakes was waiting for me. I smiled.

Today was a good day.

I snapped out of the memory, left with the warm, contented feeling of pancakes with my family. My heart was still playing catch up with the panicked demands Sunset’s final moments had placed on it, but it was settling quickly. It didn’t need to do anything. And as my thoughts and emotions returned to my own control, one word occurred to me.

“Oh.”

Not, oh, I felt betrayed. Not, oh, that made sense. Not, oh, my life is a lie. Not even, oh, I could use this.

No, it was just an oh. Or maybe it was all of those ohs at once. I really didn’t know. At this point, in this place, right now, it was just one more burden on the heap.

I certainly didn’t remember that last day in that memory – the one I’d woken up for the very first time on – but I must have been at most two or three in the memory, so that wasn’t all that surprising. And the memory had to have been one single sequence of events. It’d followed exactly one pony around: me and Sunset Shimmer.

Whatever had happened to…the – the pony in-between us must have involved a lot of alchemy and memory magic. But she either had been unconscious through it all, or enough damage had been done that even the Æthereal Realm couldn’t summon up those memories. If I were guessing, I’d guess the former.

“Ugh,” I moaned. I could still feel the hole in Sunset’s heart in my own. I’d bet Cadance or Dash wouldn’t have nearly the same level of ache after witnessing that. Magically erased memories were gone, but that didn’t necessarily mean all their consequences were, too.

My brain must’ve run this pain through me for years when I – this body, that was – was still Sunset, and it’d apparently gotten really good at it, as it was now so wonderfully demonstrating. Who knew what effect having a pre-beaten, potentially decade long trail of misery and paranoia in the neurons of my brain had had on me?

Ponyfeathers. The last thing I needed right now was another pony’s depression. If Sun – Celestia. Yes, Celestia. Definitely Celestia. If Celestia had just said, ‘I’m holding you back so you don’t become talented enough to ascend so that you can use The Elements of Harmony to kill or banish my sister for me,’ everything would’ve worked out perfectly between her and Sunset. It’d been as simple as that.

But no, that stupid Su… Ugh, curse alliteration. Celestia had had to be as manipulative as always. She’d had to keep all the information to herself. If she’d just been open with Sunset the way Luna normally was with me, everything would’ve been fixed between them. They would’ve gotten along wonderfully and happily.

But she hadn’t, and then Quartz had come along. I was pretty sure that Crystal mare was him, considering her claimed age and her demonstrated magical abilities. Sunset hadn’t had a clue what he’d been talking about. I’d thought her thoughts. I knew she hadn’t.

I was still trying to process everything I’d heard, but I’d already counted at least three times when he’d brazenly slapped Sunset with the truth. If Celestia had just told her what was going on, Sunset would’ve understood and could’ve…saved herself, maybe? Well, not likely. But if she had, then I – I wouldn’t be…be…

Oh. Oh my. I descended into a fit of laughter, actually falling onto my barrel on the wisps below me and rolling around. ‘If I die, Sunset Shimmer dies with me.’ Chrysalis couldn’t have put it more literally. She must have been laughing her head off in the hive mind. That was too good. Oh wow, I needed to check my cheek, because I’d been slapped pretty hard myself.

I let the giggles run through me for all they were worth, knowing that Sunset’s depression was waiting for me after they finished. If nothing else good came from this, at least I wouldn’t feel bad if I poked into Sunset’s memories for information.

Heh. Heh heh! Speaking of information, my brain had kept going without me and had connected two obscure facts. I suspected I’d just figured out an old puzzle. I raised a hoof into the air the same way I’d seen Sunset do it. In the memory, it’d vaguely felt like something she’d done fairly often, but the gesture wasn’t all that appealing to me.

Anyway, the puzzle. Had I – stars, had Sunset left notes behind about Luna, or ascension, or something along those lines? If she had and if Celestia hadn’t found all of those notes, that would explain how Trixie had managed to ‘find out stuff she wasn’t supposed to’ on Hearth’s Warming Eve all those years ago.

I sighed as I gently lowered my hoof back down. For all that I had to be thankful for her death, and even if I wasn’t reliving her dull pain, sharpened and focused by my own feelings and knowledge, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Sunset.

She’d been Luna’s primary threat, both as a fully trained Flare and the future bearer of the Element of Friendship. It would’ve been foolish not to deal with her somehow. But she couldn’t be trusted. There was no way Luna could ever trust Sunset to not betray her. Sunset loved Celestia. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have been hurting.

And – and I still remembered Chrysalis’s words to me when we first met. Luna and I had been desperate. I’d denied it, but…but we had been. We hadn’t had many options, and twenty years earlier, Luna would’ve been alone and without any real hope. I – I knew exactly how that felt; Twilight Sparkle the earth pony had been a horrifyingly real experience. I would’ve done anything to escape that.

“Anything,” I whispered, my hooves reflexively wrapping around me as I shivered.

Luna wasn’t the kind of pony who’d leave a big gaping hole in her plans to escape, and later, to live. I should’ve known she’d lied to me about Sunset in some way when she’d told me she’d given up on finding Sunset. I would’ve if I’d been more thoughtful and caring. If Luna made mistakes, it was my job to catch them. I was the only pony close enough to her to do that.

But I hadn’t. I’d failed Luna. And she’d known and hadn’t said anything, because she couldn’t.

I curled up into a little ball, my tail naturally finding it’s way into my hooves. Luna must’ve been doubly disappointed with me that day. If only I’d given her an excuse to lecture me on that as well.

B-but I couldn’t change the past. All I could do was try to be better in the future. I wanted to be a better friend. I could be a better friend for Luna, too.

And – and even though I couldn’t be her friend – the two of us couldn’t exist together – I could at least understand Sunset’s pain, with or without any biological quirks I had. My own experiences with Celestia weren’t the same as hers, but I could at least wrap my mind around her feelings of abandonment.

And I had all the sympathy in the world for her, too. She’d been in pretty much the same position as Luna a thousand years ago: underappreciated and underloved. She’d even been undermined, too, if in a different way. And their jobs weren’t all that different either. They were both, as Quartz had put it, Equestria’s sword.

Okay, okay. Keep it together, Twilight. Keep it together. This wasn’t nearly as bad as staring death in the face or finding out you’d destroyed half a city. Before I did anything else, I needed to ask myself the all-important question. Did this matter?

It was sad Sunset had died. I probably would’ve gotten along well with her…if it were possible. But there was no way I’d ever go back in time to save her. I wasn’t suicidal. And I was still me. Even if I found I still had a bunch of Sunset’s mannerisms, I wasn’t her; that wouldn’t be any different then picking up habits from Mom or Dad.

Yes, that was a good way to look at it. Definitely. Sunset was something like a mother who’d died in giving birth to me. But unlike most foals who lost their mother in foaling, I had a chance to really get to know Sunset. I still loved Mom and Dad, and they were my parents, but I could at least carry the memory of Sunset for her. It was the least I could do for her.

But the question. I was certainly upset I had to find out about…all this here and now, but beyond that, no, this didn’t matter. I understood why Luna had Sunset assassinated. And even if it felt…weird being made of recycled pony, who was I to complain if Luna had used the leftovers?

Sunset couldn’t complain either. A corpse didn’t have wants or desires to trample on any further.

And it wasn’t like Luna could instead lie back and say, ‘Okay, go ahead and lock me away forever until I go mad and or you decide to kill me.’ That would be insane. Sunset had had to be dealt with. Celestia had already demonstrated she was willing to sentence ponies to extended solitary confinement at that point in Luna’s life. That was worse than just killing a pony; Luna had gotten lucky enough to avoid that torture. Who knew what more Celestia would be willing to do this time, or the next time, or the time after that?

So was I going to drop the matter completely? No, of course not; I’d still have to think about this, and maybe do some literal omphaloskepsis.

Did I have questions for Luna? Yes, I had plenty. The first would be, ‘Were you ever going to tell me?’ I’d be very put out with her if she’d never planned to, even after we’d beaten Celestia. It was kind of obvious this wasn’t one of those things she wanted me to discover myself.

And it wasn’t like I didn’t already know dozens of Luna’s secrets. If I got cornered and were forced to give them all up, it wouldn’t hurt her any more if my secret got out too. She could’ve just told me when I’d unknowingly brought the subject up years ago. She’d been honest and open with me about everything else.

I sighed before slowly clambering to my hooves. I supposed it wasn’t really my secret in the most literal sense. It was about me, but it was more Luna’s and Sunset’s secret than mine. At the heart of the matter, it wasn’t really any of my business. The only difference between my birth any anypony else’s was I didn’t come out of a womb.

How did you even go about telling a filly something like that? ‘Oh, hey, Twilight. I just thought you should know this pony died so you could live.’ I – I supposed that could’ve been really traumatic for filly me.

I just… I just wished Luna would’ve told me. I really, really wished she would’ve told me.

With measured steps, I started the long walk back toward Cadance and Dash.

Still, even though I really needed to talk with Luna, this didn’t change my overall goals at all. I still needed to help Luna; I still needed to escape Celestia with Dash; I still needed to talk to Cadance. I’d just traded a little bit of difficulty from the second for a lot in the last. That was all.

So yes, I was Twilight Sparkle; I had no looming identity crisis. Even Cadance recognized me as my own pony when she’d first met me.

I took a long breath as I stopped in front of the first of Sunset’s many memories on display. And naturally, given my luck, the window depicted a cozy, hilltop picnic. What I assumed must be Sunset’s parents were sitting side by side, an adorable filly Sunset tucked in-between them as they watched the sunset, a…a half-eaten butterscotch cookie hovering near Sunset’s mouth.

Unable to stop myself, I whimpered as I reached out with a hoof. This was going to hurt.

Author's Note

Prereader – Starlight Nova

Additional Acknowledgments to Strange Reasoning

Chapter Twenty Eight - Perpendicular Perspectives - Between Rivals

Ugh. Just – just ugh.

Sunset was painfully adorable. Little five-year-old Sunset had an even more uncontrollable appetite for butterscotch than I did. My mouth was still watering at the memory, but the aftertaste was gone. And I still didn’t know why Sunset and I liked it so much.

Well, besides the obvious reason. Butterscotch was scrumptious.

But a love of butterscotch wasn’t all I had in common with…with Mother.

A shiver ran through me. That… I didn’t think I could call Sunset that, at least not yet. M-maybe later. After I’d had time to…settle.

So…so Sunset and I. Sunset had been as magic crazy of a filly as I’d been at her age, just with a lot less raw magic to throw around. But what she’d lacked in pure power, she’d more than made up for in enthusiasm. Whatever had happened to her – my – our magic must not have been a proper reset.

Granted, Sunset had still been crazy strong for somepony who had literally just turned five. She’d been a huge wingful of trouble if the memory I’d just seen were a representative sample. But she’d only been stronger than her parents, not giving alicorns like Cadance trouble the way I had.

And all of that, I’d – I’d taken away. Sunset was gone. Her parents had never found out and had never had a chance to say goodbye, let alone a chance to protect her.

Luna hadn’t had a choice, but that – that was still so terrible for Sunset’s parents. I’d never forgive myself if I let Spike, or Shining, or Mom, or Dad, or Cadance die without even being there to try and stop it, let alone Luna or Twinkleshine.

I looked back up at the window one last time before departing, gazing at Sunset’s parents. My right wing came forward to brush a tear out of my eye. If they were still around, maybe they’d be interested in a grandfilly who took a lot after her mo…their daughter.

How old would they be now? Between this memory and Sunset’s death, there’d been roughly thirty years. Then if they’d had Sunset at twenty-five, they would’ve been around sixty when she died. Now twenty-ish years later, they’d be about eighty.

Well…maybe Sunset’s mother would still be alive. Mares tended to live longer and marry younger. I could cast a spell to make her young again, and then maybe I could…could…what? W-would she even want me around? I hadn’t exactly been involved in – in Sunset’s assassination, but…

I let up on the pressure on my lip and shook the thought away for some other time. I wasn’t even sure meeting Sunset’s parents could end in anything but pain on both sides. If the same thing happened to me and Spike, I probably wouldn’t want to get to know New Spike. It – it would hurt too much to see so much of my cute little dragon in the new one.

I took a deep breath to clear my thoughts. I wouldn’t lose Spike now, especially not just after ascending and gaining access to dragon magic as an alicorn. I could finally properly teach him how to use his magic. Just knowing the theory without any actual practice was kind of like asking a blind mare to describe an elephant.

But that wasn’t what I should be thinking about. I owed it to Sunset’s parents to at least give them the choice of having me around. One memory wasn’t much of a sample size, but Sunset’s family had as much love as mine; they deserved an explanation, if nothing else.

My brows scrunched together. ‘Family’, that word was setting off little warning bells, but my mind wasn’t telling me why. I loved Mom and Dad and Shining, and they loved me. None of us were the kind of ponies who’d go around saying adopted foals were less spec…ial…

I stopped, one hoof slowly rejoining the other as my thoughts slowed to a halt.

“I’m adopted,” I said, testing the words to make sure they still sounded right when spoken.

Okay, so I was adopted somewhere around or before the age of two. That was fine. But how had it happened?

One explanation was I’d gone through Equestria’s orphanages and had been placed with Mom and Dad. It wasn’t exactly normal to leave a two-year-old filly on an orphanage’s doorstep, but it was possible.

But no. There was no way that was what had happened. Disregarding that the memory I’d watched had jumped from Sunset to me in my bed at home – the adoption process was not that fast – that was too random, too chancy.

And even if Luna had a pony inside the system placing me, it’d leave a suspicious paper trail for a Flare to be a orphaned filly who had no idea who her parents were, one left on a doorstep after Sunset’s demise. Words Chrysalis had said to me on at least one occasion came back to me, if perhaps not her exact ones.

‘If a situation has too many coincidences, it was almost certainly engineered.’

Knowing everything I did now, the events of my life felt contrived at a mere glance, or at least the initial conditions leading to them did. But they hadn’t felt that way to me before – or to Celestia. Luna had seen to it that my existence had the appearance of a statistically unlikely event, rather than an unnatural event.

Beyond even that, if Luna had intended to use me at all, she would’ve made sure I ended up somewhere…somewhere meeting some specific set of criteria I didn’t know. But certainly I’d been placed with Mom and Dad non-randomly.

If Luna had let me go wherever chance took me, I could’ve ended up anywhere, like out in the countryside raised by a…a deer, or in a factory raised by a minotaur, or literally anywhere raised by anything but a unicorn. I’d have still had all the magic of a Flare, but I wouldn’t have known what to do with it.

And in the wrong environment, I might not have even developed an interest in magic at all; inheriting quirks and personality traits from Sunset would only do so much. And if I weren’t interested in magic, I wouldn’t have been able to learn everything necessary to get all the way to Mona and the Elements. Luna couldn’t afford to have that happen.

Although to be fair, being raised by a zebra wouldn’t have been so bad. Zebra magic was pretty interesting, even if I hadn’t picked up a book on it in years. There’d been too many other things I’d needed to study recently, especially dragon magic.

I spared a quick glance back at my cutie mark. I had the exact same special talent as Sunset, even if my cutie mark looked different. That couldn’t be coincidence.

As I’d guessed earlier, whatever had been done to my magic hadn’t been a proper reset to a newborn filly’s state. My magic hadn’t been reverted back to a blank state, ready to be molded by use and by Filly Me’s developing interests. I probably hadn’t had a chance to have any special talent but magic.

Not that I didn’t like magic. I loved it with all my heart! It was so fascinating, and it could do anything with enough hard work.

I stopped walking to stare at my cutie mark for a second or two. It was just…not having the capacity for choice in my special talent was…unpleasant. What if I’d really liked…cooking or something? I’d never ever have gotten it as my special talent.

Of course I hadn’t had an interest in anything but magic. But if I had, I should’ve at least been allowed the option to pursue that interest all the way to ascension. That hypothetical path in my life had been denied to me. The point was moot, but it was just – just unpleasant.

But that wasn’t the point! I’d ended up non-randomly as Twilight Sparkle, daughter of Night Light and Twilight Velvet. Why them? Why not just leave me with Quartz and take me to some forsaken tunnel in Diamondia, vanishing for all intents and purposes from the face of Equus?

It would’ve been easy. It would’ve been safe. Luna hadn’t had to give me a family.

So why had she? It’d be ridiculous to assume I just ‘got lost’. And no matter how bad Quartz was with foals, he could have made it work. Or if he didn’t want to, then somepony else loyal to Luna could have raised me in seclusion.

And even if she’d considered it a possibility, there was no way Luna would have planned for me to meet and grow to personally hate Celestia as a filly. That would’ve been an outrageously dangerous risk to introduce into her plans.

Ugh! This didn’t make any sense! This wasn’t like Luna at all. What could’ve been going through her head?

I was grateful, of course. I’d had a wonderful foalhood, and I couldn’t find a better family in Equestria.

But it was so strange. With the amount of work necessary alone just to explain away the appearance of a random filly in my family and to forge documents like my birth certificate, I wouldn’t be surprised if Luna had done the changeling thing and had replaced another pony with me.

It took moment for my head to wrap itself around that statement.

“Oh ponyfeathers,” I whispered, an uneasy feeling growing in my stomach.

That was Chrysalis’s mystery orphan. I could admit a tiny probability the orphan she’d been talking about was me, but between her and Luna’s reactions and words, the overwhelmingly more likely scenario was one in which I’d replaced another Twilight Sparkle.

Okay, okay, just take a deep breath, Twilight, even if there’s no air here. Everything was going to be okay.

Alright. Alright, so I’d taken another filly’s place. That wasn’t so bad. I only had two or three memories from that age, and other ponies would fare no better, including the other Twilight Sparkle. Where you were born was already randomized; rerolling after about two years wasn’t a big deal, given that there’d be few – if any – memories from before the reroll.

I’d…I’d feel better about it if the switch had been made when I was younger, but – but two wasn’t so bad.

And Luna had said the orphan – that Twilight Sparkle was happy. That was the important part. She probably had her own warm and loving family now, her own life, her own dreams, her own name.

I took one more deep not-breath and continued forward.

Luna had probably been right when she’d said the other Twilight Sparkle should be left alone. Unless Twilight Sparkle ascended too, the integral of all the happiness her original family could bring her over her lifetime was probably worth far less than all the baggage we’d – I bit my lip – I’d bring with.

I craned my neck back briefly to stare at the inky blackness above me. Maybe the other Twilight Sparkle would enjoy a second family with an estranged sister. Or maybe my entire family should just stay out of her life completely.

Sighing, I said, “I guess if I were her, I’d want the choice.”

But only if she already knew she was adopted. There was little sense in opening that can of worms if her parents had never bothered to be honest with her; they might have a good reason. I’d be the worst pony in the world if I just walked it, revealed that secret, and then ruined or soured her relationship with her parents forever.

Honestly, I didn’t understand why ponies sometimes made such a big deal of adoption. As Cadance would say, it was the bonds that mattered, not the blood. Everything that made a family, everything that mattered, wasn’t found in genetics. It was found in the time spent together and the resulting love and affection.

I stopped beside the next window bearing Sunset’s image and turned toward it. In a word, it looked like fluff: something that had been important to Sunset but not to anypony else. The window depicted her about my age in what looked like the Canterlot Archives reading a book, although no title or words were legible.

Briefly, I considered skipping this one, but I quickly reconsidered. It was these small day-to-day memories that would really show me what kind of mare Sunset was. Each memory only took a few seconds to watch anyway. I might as well take a look.

Perhaps… Perhaps it might even give me a dose of soothing normality – er, normality for an alicorn’s apprentice. I could really use that right now.

I touched my hoof to the window.

And then I took it off.

“Yep, fluff,” I concluded with a smile and a nod. The memory had been total and complete nonsense about a spell Sunset had learned and had gotten really excited about – one I’d learned much younger than her – but it’d been the good, happy kind of pointless nothing, the kind of productive afternoon of little regard that left a warm feeling of success and purpose in your barrel.

Honestly, it’d been so long since I’d had one of those days. Struggling with the elements for half a season had pretty much precluded them entirely.

I took a moment to enjoy the feeling and to hum the chorus of a catchy little song Pinkie Pie had taught me at some point. This was exactly what I needed right now. I’d be happy for Sunset’s happiness and enjoy all of my similar memories her happiness had evoked while I could.

I could picture it now: an evening sitting curled up next to Shining by a roaring fireplace home in Canterlot with a book about magic, Mom and Dad close by and sharing a story of their foalhood.

With something just short of a bounce in my step, I set off toward the next of Sunset’s memories. The next pair of windows had one from me and one from Dash, and the one after that had two of Dash’s. But the third one off, that pair had one of Sunset’s memories, if I remembered correctly.

No, I needed to stop referring to these windows as memories, because they weren’t. None of Sunset’s memories were mine anymore; they were gone forever. However it was conjuring these visions, the Æthereal Realm just couldn’t tell the two of us apart.

And besides, all of these windows had too much detail to be memories. They were more like…like…like glimpses into the past.

My jaw dropped as my eyes widened. Oh. My. Gosh! That might actually be it! I knew time magic existed, and I knew it could go backward into the past. Maybe that was what was going on here. Maybe this was another branch of time magic at work.

If so, that was even more exciting than just the prospect of revolutionizing education!

I was practically dancing as I strode forward. Time magic might as well be an entirely new field of magic, and I had the opportunity to pioneer it, writing my name into history alongside Star Swirl’s.

Oh. Oh! Oh wow! And if I managed to figure out this particular subset of time magic, I could make alicorns truly unkillable. I could set up a spell that would respond to ‘malfunctions’ in our memory to give back anything lost immediately. That was just – just – just wow!

Well, no, I shouldn’t get too ahead of myself. There were probably other, very complicated and ridiculously difficult ways to kill an alicorn, but it’d still be a huge step forward, a removal of a critical weakness.

But that was an exciting future problem to work on! It wasn’t something I could do right now, just something to look forward to.

And I supposed it also depended on my guess being correct, which might not be the case. That would be pretty disappointing…

Well anyway, for the time being, it was a little too inconvenient to call these windows portals into the past or anything similar. It was far too much of a mouthful. I could just keep calling them memories, I supposed. It was terribly inaccurate, but it was succinct. It’d do for now.

I passed the pair of windows just before the two with one of Sunset’s memories, discovering I’d remembered the ordering of memories correctly. I gave myself a little mental pat on the back.

Hmm… I wondered if there were a pattern to the memory selection. Not what memories, that was, but rather whose memories were placed in particular locations. As a rough estimate from the windows I’d seen already, I suspected there were approximately an equal number of memories from Dash and myself, and a little less of Sunset’s. But then Sunset’s memories were all much older than mine, so maybe they would be more common further…along…

Oh, stars. When Cadance had given me her guess on how long it’d take to walk to the end of this path, she hadn’t included all of my…um…baggage. It was going to take forever to get out of here.

No, no. I should think on the bright side. For once, this actually simplified my options without compromising them. I’d already decided not to rush through my ascension, and I didn’t expect that decision to change; Dash’s own ascension had ruined that option. But now I physically didn’t have the option, so I didn’t have to think about it anymore.

That was something. I needed to be optimistic about the little things, or I’d go mad today.

“Ah…” I came to a stop in front of the next of Sunset’s memories.

Well, this was probably going to crash the good mood I’d finally managed to regain again, but I wasn’t going to skip it. So far as I knew, I only had this one chance to get to know…Mother – the word didn’t feel so bad this time – and I wasn’t going to disrespect her by only watching her good memories.

Before touching the window, I whispered to myself, “Whatever happens isn’t real. I’m not injured. I probably can’t even bleed here. This won’t actually hurt.”

Oh, dear Celestia, why had I ever agreed to do this? I might as well be facing down a mad goddess with nothing but some broken trinkets.

I stood perfectly still, my eyes locked with two of my opponent’s – my opponent who was not a baby like the thrice-cursed report had said.

Seriously. Feed Cerberus? Sure, I could do that. Tartarus wasn’t dangerous so long as you didn’t try to take anypony out.

Talk to the sea serpents and ask them to ease up on the tidal waves? Why not? They were polite enough so long as you didn’t insult them.

Track down the current locations of the star beasts? Simple enough. They slept all day, every day, so it was easy enough to stay safe around them.

Stop a stray baby hydra from causing any more damage? No problem. Babies of any species were simple and easy to deal with, even if they were carnivores. And since I was me, I came with a number of enchantments cast on myself to protect me from mishaps like being hit in the face by a tail and being sent flying.

But this, this was not a baby. This was a fully grown hydra thirty times my height and thousands of times my weight with more than enough teeth to swallow me in what might be called one bite as easily as a dozen.

The hydra’s eyes narrowed, twenty-three eyes fixated on me and me alone. The twenty-fourth was swollen shut.

The snarl of the head that swollen eye belonged to sounded especially enraged, although that could just be the pure mortal terror talking. Ponies tended to do a lot of stupid things when terrified, like hearing things that weren’t really there, or trying to hide somewhere obvious, or freezing up instead of galloping away screaming.

Everypony else was doing it. Why couldn’t I? I just had to open my mouth, move my legs, and gallop faster than I’d ever galloped before.

A thunderous boom deafened me, and I managed to shriek and jump in place.

My hearing recovered from that terrible roar just enough for me to hear almost as well as I felt the thudding of the hydra’s claws as they beat against the ground, propelling the beast ever closer to me.

I couldn’t tell anymore if I was quivering or if I was just being shaken in time with the ground.

How? How did I beat something like this? Hydra magic primarily expressed itself as incredible regeneration. Even if I went so far as to chop off a head, it’d grow back in a second.

Thousands of white daggers flew at me, accompanied by the stench of flesh both rotting and – and not.

Oh, Celestia, I c-could still see short blue hairs stuck between it’s teeth, hairs I-I-I’d been too late to save.

No. No! No. No! I didn’t want to die!

My vision jumped as I teleported, changing from death to a view of the town around me, and then finally to the sky above as I lost my hoofing on the damaged roof I’d landed on.

The sound of wood snapping and splintering came. The building gave way beneath me, sending me crashing down as it crumbled above me.

Just before being crushed beneath stone, wood, and who knew what else, I teleported blindly to anywhere but here.

I landed roughly on my hooves, collapsing face-first into the ground as my left foreleg buckled beneath me.

Utterly failing to put pressure on my bad leg, I teleported again a short distance away, reorienting myself to stand on three legs.

And just in time, I averted my head from a veritable splash of dirt, grass, and rock. The hydra’s tail had crashed into the ground where I’d stood but moments ago.

Drawing air in with a deep gasping breath, I teleported once more to avoid another round of teeth. This time I moved myself much further away to ease up the pressure on me.

I wiped the dirt remaining on my face away with magic, getting a clear view of the bucking hydra hurtling toward me once more.

Twelve heads, twelve pairs of eyes, twelve brains: there was no way the hydra was going to lose track of me long enough for me to catch my breath.

At – at least not without leaving town. A-and th-then it’d just go back to e-eating other ponies.

I couldn’t leave until everypony else was far enough away!

Dammit! Bucking condemn this creature and all its kind to Tartarus!

I screamed some nonsense as I unleashed a burst of magic, my ears pinned to my head in a vain attempt not to hear the sounds that followed what I’d just done.

I teleported again to dodge whatever was surely coming for me in retaliation.

Upon arrival, I quickly found the hydra again. The head it’d lost had already grown back.

And it was far too close to me for comfort. My last teleport had put way too little distance betw–

My vision blackened as something crashed into me, hurling me first into the air and then straight into a building headfirst soon after.

When I came to, I found myself spinning in the air, a horrible pain near one of my hooves. I couldn’t tell which one.

For the briefest moment, I saw what was waiting for me below: teeth.

And – and I could barely feel my horn, let alone think.

This couldn’t be it. It wasn’t fair. It wouldn’t be right.

No, it wouldn’t be the end. Or if it was, I couldn’t go alone. The hydra would eat dozens more ponies if I didn’t stop it.

Everything I could muster in the time I had left, which was far from everything I had, I shoved out my horn and toward the hydra.

First, the world exploded in reds and pinks and browns and greens, and then it exploded in pain.

I was peppered with bits and pieces of hydra even as my magic flared out of control. In the back of my mind, I really, really hoped that didn’t do anything worse to the town and its residents than the hydra had.

And now I was left tumbling to the ground from far higher up than I ever wanted to fall.

I didn’t know what I actually sounded like, whether my words were coherent or not, but I cried, “Please land on my hooves.”

“Sunset.”

I heard somepony call my name from kilometers away, but my mind was elsewhere, as were my eyes, and my nose, and my tongue. All I could do was stare at the bloody mess I’d landed in, the bloody mess that was me.

The pieces of hydra that had managed to work their way into my mouth were especially dizzying. I’d never had meat before, not even at that meal I’d sat in on with the griffins. Every time I took a breath, a little bit more of it oozed down my throat.

“Sunset,” the voice called again, but this time it had a pair of white wings and hooves with it. The touch sent me back into panic, but no matter how hard I struggled and no matter what magic I tried, I couldn’t get away.

“Sunset, please calm down. Everything is over. You are safe.”

Safe. Safe. The word echoed back in my mind. Yes, I was safe – from the hydra, if not from infection and whatever held me. And everypony else was safe too. I’d – I’d killed it. Blown it up. Annihilated it. Torn it to shreds. Vaporized it. Disintegrated it.

I…I wasn’t even sure what I’d done. I-I just – just hadn’t wanted to die.

The terrible grip that held me grew stronger and more secure than ever, and I was left with no choice but to settle down.

“Sunset, can you hear me? Please give me some response.”

I nodded. Maybe if I did, whatever had me now would lose interest and let me go.

The creature sighed as if bored, perhaps making up its mind to stop playing with its food.

“Please forgive me. I would have been here sooner if I had known what awaited you. I should have been here sooner. I had kept my eye on you, but I…” The voice trailed off for a moment. “No, I have no excuse. I should have been here for you. I cannot believe I allowed a fully grown hydra to come so close to devouring you.”

This was it. A horrible pain shot through one of my legs. The sound of bone grinding and popping came with it. I’d just lost a leg for sure…although it didn’t hurt as much as I’d thought it would.

“Sunset? I know this must be hard for you, but I need you to talk to me so I can help you.” A second passed before the voice added, “Princess’s orders?”

At last, the voice clicked. My brain restarted, and I whispered the word, “S-Sunbutt?”

“Yes, Sunset, it’s me.”

“O-oh.” But she wasn’t mad. She always got mad when I called her that, or at least as mad as she ever got. Was it really her? “That – that report was wrong.”

“I know. I gave it to you without thinking to investigate myself first. I promise I shall never again let a mistake like this happen. You are far from ready to be facing such horrors.”

Far from ready? Did that mean I was going to be ready? Was I… “Am I going to – to kill things for you?”

I wanted to sniff, although I didn’t dare; the smell of blood around me was already overwhelming. But the silence that had fallen between Celestia and I was crushing. If she didn’t say something–

“Ow…”

“Apologies,” Celestia whispered, “my healing spells have gotten a little rusty. You need to see a real doctor after we finish here and clean you up.”

That didn’t answer my question at all. If the answer was no, she would have just said it.

She would have. She would have. She would have.

So…so that m-meant–

“My phoenix, Philomena,” Celestia began, off on one of her lecturing tangents, “has been a source of comfort and companionship for me for nearly nine-hundred years now. She is a cheeky little prankster, and I love her to death for it.”

Celestia hesitated before adding, “If perhaps for the wrong reasons.”

That subtle change of tone, I knew that and what it meant. I managed to look up at Celestia’s eyes for a moment before her magic coaxed my neck back straight. They had that horribly distant look again, seeing something only she could, something she wouldn’t ever share with me or anypony else.

“Please try not to move, Sunset. Healing spells have never been my forte, and I haven’t done this for anypony in centuries. I would hate to accidentally sever a nerve or cause any other subtle damage.”

Even in the circumstances, my mind tried to figure out who the last pony Celestia had done this for was. Other Flares in history, her other students, tended to get into lots of trouble, but it sounded like this was…more intimate…for Celestia. If they didn’t get this kind of attention, too, then who would? Why me?

Did Celestia see me as…a love interest? No. That didn’t feel right. She didn’t look at me like that, and our hugs and nuzzles never felt like that either.

So was I…family, perhaps? Maybe that was just wishful thinking. But then maybe that was literally true. Maybe Flares were alicorn descendants. I didn’t have one scrap of evidence for that, but–

No, that couldn’t be right either. Every other Flare would be her family, then. Maybe we could be related some other way. Or maybe she considered me more of a–

“Owwwww,” I whimpered.

“Apologies again. I pulled your soleus muscle a little too tightly.” Celestia’s magic pulled my hindleg uncomfortably straight for a few seconds before she released it.

“But as I was saying, Philomena is not a person. She is clever, she has a sense of humor, she can be trained from repeated stimuli, but she is not a person. She has magic, which gives her a weight no simple fish or insect could have, and there are ponies who would not see her die. Yet she does not know herself, she does not learn, she has no language, she cannot grow to be…more. Or less.”

“Like the hydra?” I asked.

“Yes.” I heard that slight annoyance in Celestia’s voice that popped up whenever I short circuited one of her carefully prepared lessons. “Sunset, my dear little pony, whatever else you take away from today, what you did was beyond doubt the right thing to do.”

What? “Y-you’re saying I should have just killed it and left? D-do you w-want me to – to – to–”

A hoof pressed gently against my muzzle.

“Sunset, please leave the future in the future for your own sake. How can you expect to be at peace thirty years from now if you cannot accept where you’ve been but thirty minutes ago?”

I supposed that made some kind of sense. And Celestia would know better than me how to treat trauma.

“Has it really been that long?”

“No, not quite. But I felt the parallelism appropriate.”

I grimaced to hide my expression. “How much longer until I can take a bath?” I asked quickly, but not too quickly. Celestia had just let slip something important, and I didn’t want to call her attention to it.

Note to self: find out what was going to happen in thirty years.

“The only thing I have left to heal is a few minor internal injuries,” Celestia replied. “They will take perhaps a minute or two. Then the two of us can go visit the royal hot springs in Tall Tale.”

A trip to the hot springs did sound nice, but I didn’t really deserve it after today.

“Sunset.” Celestia’s magic brought my muzzle up to look her in the eyes. “You did do a right thing today. If you had not acted, dozens, perhaps even hundreds of ponies would have died. The hydra would not have stopped to consider the moral ramifications of its choice in lunch.”

“But I could’ve done something! I could’ve done something differently. And I flared again! I thought I was past that.”

Glancing about, I wondered how much of the damage I saw was my fault.

Celestia waited to respond a little longer than usual. “Flares will be with you your entire life, Sunset. I told you that I expect you can reel them in now before they leave your control, but I should have explicitly mentioned how difficult the task remains, especially under stressful situations. And you are still years from attempting to utilize a flare for your own spellcasting.”

Oh…

Celestia’s magic for once formed into a spell I recognized: a simple ventriloquism spell.

“Sergeant Iron, please inform Captain Rune Armor I shall be leaving ahead of schedule with my student.”

And with that, Celestia’s horn then lit up brilliantly, summoning an enormous amount of magic at a breathtaking rate and funneling it all into a teleport.

My eyes slammed shut, though not in time to avoid the flash of white light accompanying the familiar yank of being dragged instantaneously from one place to another.

The horrible smells I’d been subjected to were replaced with the entirely new horrible smell of sulfur. And the general background noise of ponies and guards was replaced with the babbles and crashes of flowing and falling water.

The taste remained though.

When I finally managed to blink my vision back, I found myself in a hot spring just as Celestia had suggested. Or rather I was next to one and standing on my hooves, not actually in one.

“Where–”

I was cut off by an entire bathtub’s worth of hot water being dumped on me.

After giggling, Celestia said, “Sorry about that. Bad timing. But we need to get as much of this off of you first as possible. We don’t want to soak in it, after all.”

Before I could protest, a shower turned on and buried me under even more water. A split second after, Celestia’s magic took a brush of some kind to my coat, and unless I was mishearing, it was a soapy brush.

More than a little mortified, I tried and failed to wrest the brush from Celestia.

“I’m a grown mare, Sunbutt. I can wash myself.”

“Perhaps, but just enjoy the pampering.” The playful tone fell out of Celestia’s voice as she continued, “I know you probably feel like you do not deserve it, but you do.”

No, I didn’t. I had so much blood on my hooves. Literally still, too. Some of it had dried and needed to be scrubbed off. I didn’t feel like a hero, and it sounded like I was going to be doing this again…

“I said what you did was right, not that it was the best thing you could have done,” Celestia admitted, rather reluctantly. “You could have picked the hydra up and carried it away. It might have caused a flare depending on how much the hydra could strain your magic, but you would have made it outside the town first.”

Ugh… That was true…

“Or perhaps you could have trapped it in a large hole in the ground to deal with at your leisure.”

Nooooo. Just how stupid was I?

“Or if you want to subdue a hydra physically, bludgeoning damage is the orthodox method.”

I fought off the urge to bang my head against the ground. I should have figured that out. The hydra’s eye had swollen shut and had stayed swollen.

I should’ve been more observant. I should’ve. Everything was all my fault.

Celestia lectured on, saying, “If you could have spared it and kept everypony safe – yourself included – that would have been more right. If you want me to sit here and lecture you on all the things you could have done, it is within my power.”

A pair of wet, but still soft, white wings found their way around my muzzle.

With the utmost seriousness, Celestia said, “But nopony is perfect: not you, and especially not me. Things are ever so much clearer in hindsight than in the heat of the moment. Resolve to be a better pony in the future, but do not blame yourself for being anything less than perfection incarnate.”

I blinked against the force Celestia had put behind those words, unable to form proper thoughts. It sounded like they were just as much meant for her as they were for me, and the hard look behind her eyes only emphasized that.

“I’ll try,” I finally managed. Even if I succeeded – I glanced down at what remained of my blood-matted fur – the nightmares would come either way. “But you didn’t answer my question.”

Celestia smiled at me just a little bit, although it didn’t look much like a happy smile. She gently rubbed my cheek with a soapy hoof as she said, “It breaks my heart to see you like this, Sunset. I think we should find you something else to do, something less adventurous. Maybe someplace where you could finally make some real friends.”

“No!” Not this again. Why did Celestia have to avail herself of every opportunity to pitch the ‘friends and simple life’ bit? “I want to help you! I want to pay you back for – for everything! And I want to help Equestria, too.”

“The reins of Equestria are a terrible burden, and there are many other ways you can help others. Sunset, you should not feel obligated to take on the most difficult tasks yourself. There are plenty of–”

Hugging myself as tightly to Celestia as I could, I mumbled, “Uh-uh,” into her coat. “I want to help. I just – I just want to know if I…if I’ll have to k-kill. I-I’m not sure I can.”

Celestia pried me off of her just enough to lock eyes with me, probably staring straight into the core of my being. After one uncharacteristic false start, she mumbled, “As you wish,” before speaking clearly once more.

“Sunset, I will never ask you to kill anything or anypony.”

That horrible pit in my stomach grew even deeper. I knew how to spot a runaround after suffering nigh on two decades of them. She wouldn’t ask, but Celestia didn’t explicitly ask for a lot of things. So much of what she said to ponies was never put into actual words.

“So I will…”

I sniffed, and I regretted it instantly. I descended into a hacking fit until Celestia was kind enough to magic away whatever had gotten caught in my something or other.

“Thanks, Sunbutt” I mumbled. My nose felt a thousand times cleaner, and the smell of sulfur that I’d all but forgotten had redoubled in intensity.

“Ah, I think I heard some of your usual fire back in your voice,” Celestia teased, or at least I thought that was what she was doing: trying to lighten the mood and all that as she scrubbed away at one of my frogs. “But please refrain from referring to me as ‘Sunbutt’.”

Ignoring her request completely, I asked, “Am I right? Will I? Please, please just give me a straight answer.”

One of Celestia’s rare frowns appeared, and it was an astonishingly long five or so seconds before she found words to reply with.

“Sometimes, Sunset, we encounter situations in which there are no good options, where every decision leaves somepony worse off. As a ruler…”

I nearly gasped as Celestia stopped mid-sentence and started over.

“As a ruler, I sometimes have made hard decisions, and although I possess the unparalleled fortune to have had somepony else fight most of my wars for me, I have had to do things I would wish otherwise as the pony behind the crown. I still have nightmares from some things I’ve been forced to do. I – I’m afraid I am no more naturally suited to certain aspects of my role than I believe you will find yourself to be.”

Celestia paused a moment – both in her ministrations and her speech – for a breath and to turn her head upward and away from me, not quite staring at the noon sun, yet she had to be looking nearly directly at it.

“But with practice comes expertise and a sense of familiarity. You learn how to minimize the damage done by others, as well as the damage you cause. Sometimes. Sunset, I will never ask you to kill, but someday, to save yourself and others, you may find yourself with no other choice. I cannot promise you otherwise.”

Her eyes once more returning to mine, Celestia added, “If that day comes for you, I hope you can find the inner strength to make the best decision, not just a right decision. I sincerely hope the path you are choosing for yourself will not break you.”

I’d – I’d just stepped on a land mine, hadn’t I? What exactly was Celestia not telling me?

“Now then,” Celestia said, rising to her hooves and gently pushing me off her, “I think the two of us could use a proper bath now. A good soak and good company should do wonders. I know today has been horrible for you; I shall do everything I can to help you through it.”

Should I take that as, ‘Don’t ask about my past,’ or should I take it as, ‘You need some time to recover from your own emotional trauma before we talk about mine’?

Maybe it was supposed to be both… That wouldn’t surprise me at all. History was the only class Celestia never taught me herself. I didn’t think she liked history.

Or in other words, she didn’t like her past.

Dammit…

“Alright,” I finally agreed. I felt…pretty good physically for how bad of a shape I’d been in before. I was sore all over, but everything was functioning as it should. And as far as I could tell with a quick once-over, every last hint of what I’d done today had been removed from me.

I took Celestia’s extended hoof, and she lead me into the hot springs only a dozen steps away.

“Ah!” I jumped away from the memory in front of me as if I’d been struck. “What on Equus was that?”

Getting to know Sunset implicitly meant getting to know Sunbutt, too. I hadn’t really thought about it, but the vague, conceptual idea was something I’d already understood. That wasn’t what bothered me.

“How could she say those things with a straight face? Banishing or killing Luna – it doesn’t matter which – neither are the best decision or even just a right decision!”

Maybe Celestia could’ve been speaking of some other matter, but I couldn’t believe it. She – she had the nerve to…to…

Why was I even upset? No, that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t that I shouldn’t be upset, but rather that I shouldn’t be surprised. Of course Celestia would say those things. Even if she believed she was evil, she wouldn’t just come out and say it.

But maybe I was overreacting from that other part of the memory.

A shudder ran through me. The sensation of Celestia’s hooves and magic running all over me was still fresh in my memory.

It – it felt so wrong. So – so violating. It hadn’t been me she’d done it to, but I’d felt it all. And it just felt so…so awful.

And doubly so since Sunset had enjoyed it underneath the embarrassment, which meant I’d enjoyed it, too. The memory was trying its best to tell me that was nice, soothing, and relaxing, completely at odds with how I felt about it.

I sighed, frustrated, as I turned away from the memory. The next of Sunset’s memories was only two windows down and across the way. That would get my mind off of this.

Besides setting me off just a bit and, ugh, the touching, that last memory hadn’t been that bad. Sunset was a big old crybaby. Hydras weren’t people, as Sunbutt had said. It wasn’t nice to go around killing them, but, well, they didn’t have any moral weight. They were just brute beasts.

Well…the mere memory of Sunset’s condition after everything was horrifying. Just recalling it sent a shiver through me. Being bathed in blood was…not exactly a pleasant experience. And the smells…

Ergh. Okay. Maybe Sunset wasn’t a crybaby. She’d had a nice, comfortable life, much like my first eight – six years. After all that, eight-year-old me would’ve been crying and hiding under her blankets, begging her big brother to stand guard at her bedside. Sunset running off to Celestia for comfort was the same thing, in principle.

And, well, it was silly, but part of me couldn’t help but envy Sunset’s innocence and naivety, regardless of however jaded she’d become before the end. Being sheltered enough to actually care about a hydra that had eaten ponies must’ve been…nice. Not practical, but nice.

I let out a long, heavy sigh. Luna didn’t much believe in sheltering ponies. It was for the best, in the end, but the thought of being that innocent was a lovely daydrea–

“Ah!” I’d nearly bumped into Dash while I was lost in thought. This was definitely not where I’d left her earlier.

“Hey, Twi.”

Alright, Twilight, you could do this. You just had to play nice. You had plenty of distractions from Dash now. You could be civil. She didn’t even make fun of you for not paying attention to where you were walking.

“Hello, Dash. Has Cadance stopped by?”

“Nope. We haven’t bumped heads recently.”

I nearly bit my tongue as I clamped my mouth shut. I’d just pretend to laugh and move on.

But where was Cadance? I would’ve expected her to be back by now after failing to find Sunset. Unless I was missing something, there wasn’t that much ground to cover in the Æthereal Realm.

Oh well. We’d catch up to her soon enough. Certainly she wouldn’t have left; that’d go directly against her orders from Celestia.

But for the moment, there was something that needed to be said, unfortunately.

I took a deep breath to prepare myself. “Dash. I…apologize for how I acted earlier. I’m trying to deal with a lot of stuff right now with varying levels of success, but that is no excuse to have hit you, intentionally or otherwise.”

Much to my surprise, it hadn’t been as hard to say those words as I’d expected. That was…good.

“What, that? Psh. Don’t worry about it. It didn’t even faze me.” Dash stopped for a brief chuckle, although it didn’t really have her usual gusto. “I wonder if it’s this place or if you’re really just that weak.”

While I would usually make some quip in return or ignore her, Dash’s voice sounded just a little strained, like I’d interrupted her during something emotionally important. Her jab had come with less energy than usual.

This was the prefect chance to practice being friendly. If I could be friendly with Dash, I could be friendly with anypony. And if Dash’s problems distracted me from my own, well that was just a bonus.

“Alright, Dash, what’s wrong?”

“Wrong? Nothing’s wrong.”

I raised an eyebrow to that. Not being able to look me in the eye wasn’t helping her already flimsy case.

“Well, what about you?” Dash poked me in the chest with a hoof. “You stomped off all on your own after punching me. Are you done throwing a fit? Are we cool now?”

Oh, please, Dash. What world were you from that you thought that would distract me from my question?

“Not really,” I said. There was little point in denying the truth. “But I’ll try to be more…mature.”

Ugh, I couldn’t believe I’d just said that and mostly meant it. At the very least, alienating Dash in any way certainly would be immature and lacking in foresight right now.

“Speaking of which,” I continued, “thank you for not running off earlier. That was very mature, and I’ll try to think better of you in the future.”

Dash just looked at me like I’d just told her the world was ending. Finally, she asked, “Okay, where’s the real Twilight?”

“That would depend on what you mean by ‘real’.”

Oh, stars. The words fell out of my mouth before I even understood what I was saying.

“Huh?” Dash cocked her head to the side. “There’s only one you.”

Well, there were two Twilight Sparkles, there was Sun…Mother, and then there was Pupa pretending to be me. An argument could be made that the being known as Twilight Sparkle was more of a vague idea than a specific pony at this point.

How awkward.

“Equus to Egghead.”

I batted away the hoof Dash was waving in front of me. “Yes, there’s just me. Anyway, we were talking about you.”

“What, that again? Twi, you worry too much.”

That was a far better denial this time, Dash, but coming from you, usually it’d be laced with a jab.

“No. As today has shown, I obviously don’t worry enough.”

I had to be the responsible pony on the Nebulous; amongst our group of misfits, the only other person I could count on to be levelheaded was Chrysalis, and who knew what she got up to on the side.

“I’ve had enough of unattended stuff blowing up in my face. What’s wrong?”

“Whoa. Easy, Twi, easy. I’m totally fine. Really, it’s nothing.”

“It’s nothing? So there is something.”

Dash muttered something to herself.

“Well?” I pressed.

“Fine. I’m just worried about Flutters is all. Aren’t you worried about Spike and Twinkleshine?”

“I’ve already done the best I can for them. It will only hurt those two if I distract myself with worrying about them.”

Not that I wasn’t worried about them. I just tried not to think about it. My ability to worry and panic was already stretched to the breaking point.

And that was when I noticed the window behind Dash. It depicted her crying – no, sobbing on Fluttershy, who was locked in both Dash’s forehooves and wings. They both looked as young as they’d been in Dash’s memory I’d watched earlier, although they both had their cutie marks.

“What’s that about?” I asked, hoof pointed at the memory in question.

“N-nothing!”

Dash tried and failed to fly behind me. Instead, she rushed behind me on her hooves, and then pushed me forward and away from the memory, step by step.

Grunting under the effort of pushing me, Dash said, “We should be getting back to Princess Cadance, right? You were explaining…stuff, right? Let’s go.”

Oh, no, no, no. This was too good to ignore. After years of Dash poking fun at me for one thing or another, I’d finally found something Dash would be mortified for me to know. It was petty of me, sure, but it was a petty act of vengeance, and that was absolutely delicious.

Although at the same time, I didn’t actually want to watch whatever memory was held in that window. I’d had plenty enough mood swings already and had more to come without living through something bad enough to make Dash openly cry so hard.

Ugh… When I put it like that, maybe I shouldn’t pressure her about this. But then I did need to know if Dash was going to be a liability for reasons beyond the obvious in the coming hours, for Fluttershy’s sake if not Dash’s or mine.

I sighed to myself. This was the last thing I wanted to do right now, but I had to, ugh, comfort Dash.

“Alright,” I began, “we can walk and talk if you want.”

“Twi, it’s really no–”

“It’s not nothing, Dash,” I interrupted. “This is a critical moment in all our lives. Yours. Mine.” I turned around to look Dash in the eyes. “Fluttershy’s.”

For a moment, it looked like Dash wanted to say something, but she closed her mouth and looked away.

“I need as much relevant information as I can get to make decisions off of. What’s bothering you?”

Dash shrunk into herself. “Twilight, I – I really don’t… I…” Her voice falling to a whisper, Dash finished, “Okay. Just watch it. It’s short.”

And of course Dash wouldn’t just tell me what was wrong. She was going to make me find out from firsthoof experience. Wonderful.

I really didn’t want to do this, but I approached the window anyway. A wingful of different worst case scenarios ran through my head, but I couldn’t imagine anything worse happening to Dash than today had been for me already.

I swore, if I found out that Dash was my long-lost sister or if she were secretly Sunset’s love foal…

“Hey, Fluttershy!” I called out from a half-dozen clouds away.

The filly in question was quick to look up at me, although she remained firmly rooted on her cloud, as far from the edges as always.

When I finally landed next to her, Fluttershy gave a weak hello in her usual whisper.

“What gives?” I demanded. “Why did your mom tell me to stay away from you?”

“Oh. Um… I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“What?” I took to the air again, hovering just a couple hooves off the ground. “You don’t know! How can you not know?”

Hiding behind her mane, Fluttershy whispered, “I’m sorry, Dash. I just don’t.”

“Great. So I stick up for you since kindergarten, and your mom just tells me to get lost. What the buck!”

“I – I’m sure she didn’t mean it.”

“Ha! Please. The message was totally clear.”

Ugh. The mere memory of Fluttershy’s mom telling me to not get near her daughter just – just argh!

“I would still like to spend time together, Dash. If – if you want to.”

“What? Of course we should hang out.”

Who even listened to their parents’ advice on who to be friends with? If mine had their way, I’d be hanging out with the eggheads instead of cool people like Gilda and…well…nice ponies like Fluttershy.

Fluttershy sighed in relief. “Oh good. Oh, and congratulations on getting your cutie mark! And the Sonic Rainboom! It was beautiful.”

Beautiful? Beautiful! “Please, Fluttershy. It wasn’t beautiful. It was awesome! I’ve never gone that fast before. I don’t think anypony has ever gone that fast before!”

“But the Sonic Rainboom is a legend. I’m sure somepony has gone almost as fast before.”

Well, I supposed that made sense. But almost as fast wasn’t as fast. And I was going to figure out how to go even faster! I just had to figure out where to practice without getting another…um…what was it? A cease and detain order? No, that didn’t sound right.

Whatever. Those stupid noble ponies didn’t know what they were talking about. How could a Sonic Rainboom be anything be awesome?

“Well anyway,” I began, “what have you been up to?”

“Oh, nothing as exciting as you. I’ve just been trying to glide. Or, well, more work up the courage to try, I guess.”

“Seriously?” After Fluttershy nodded, I gave her a hearty slap on the back. “And about time, too. You and I can finally go flying together. We can work on all sorts of stunts. I suppose we can start you on the simple stuff, like barrel rolls. But we’ll get up to the cool stuff fast enough!”

“Um, I don’t think I’m ready for the kind of stuff you do, Dash. Just gliding is hard enough.”

“Oh, come on, Fluttershy. It’s easy. Here, look.”

I put on a little speed, just enough to do tricks with just gliding.

With the perfect angle on my wings, I redirected all my velocity straight up. At the peak of my ascent, I did a half backflip to point my muzzle straight down, and as I fell, I spun myself around like a top.

And finally just above the cloud bank, I pulled up at the last second. Leveling out and flapping my wings once to bring myself to a dead stop, I halted in front of Fluttershy, right side up and exactly where I’d started.

“See? Easy. That was all gliding after the first few flaps. I went up into a hammerhead turn, and then I just adjusted my wings to give me some torque. It’s like second grade stuff.”

“I know…”

Shoot. “I’m sorry, Fluttershy. I didn’t mean – well, I mean, not everypony can be a great flier.”

“It’s okay, Dash. I know I’m not meant to fly more than a hoof or two off the ground.”

I gave an exasperated sigh. How could any pegasus say that? There was seriously something wrong with Fluttershy. She fulfilled her weather magic requirements in school with fog of all things. Who even took those classes?

Oh well. I’d figure out how to get Fluttershy into the sky eventually.

“Speaking of which” – for once, Fluttershy’s voice was utterly clear and passionate – “I went to the surface a couple days ago, and it was heavenly. There are so many wonderful animals down there I’d never seen before. There were butterflies, and bunnies, and dozens of birds of all colors. And there were squirrels, and these strange green things that lived in the lake. Oh, and there was this adorable brown animal with a long flat tail and big buck teeth.”

“Er, yeah. Sounds fun.”

Whatever made her happy, I guess, and she did sound happy for once. I’d never understand what Fluttershy saw in birds and bugs, but there must be something.

“Oh, yes! It was the most fun I’ve ever had.” Fluttershy looked at me with one of the biggest smiles I’d ever seen on her. “I’d love it if you’d come with me sometime, and I’m sure all of my animal friends would love to get to know you.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said hesitantly. Spending all day on the surface with boring fuzzy animals didn’t really sound like my kind of thing, like, really didn’t sound like my kind of thing. “So is that why you’re working on gliding? To go down?”

“Mhm,” Fluttershy hummed with a nod. “Balloon tickets up to Cloudsdale are so expensive already, and my allowance isn’t that much. I could see my furry friends twice as often if I only had to pay one way.”

I’d say Fluttershy should have her parents fly her back up if I didn’t already know she’d be terrified of that. Honestly, I didn’t see much future in her gliding down either, but maybe she’d finally find a bit of courage. Celestia knows she had plenty enough fears she could use it for.

“Just take somepony with you if you try gliding down, Fluttershy.” Even if it had to be me. “I mean, better safe than sorry. Even pegasi wouldn’t want to fall from this high up.”

Fluttershy just smiled. “You don’t need to worry about me, Dash. I’m sure my butterfly friends would catch me again if I fell. But then I wouldn’t want to trouble them. Hmm… Maybe I should ask somepony to help, but I wouldn’t want to bother anypony else either.”

Something clicked in my head, and it was not. Cool.

“Fluttershy…what do you mean by again?”

“Oh, nothing much. I…well…you see…” Fluttershy wilted under my gaze and pawed at the clouds. “During your race, I sort of fell off the cloud I was on.”

“You – you fell off?”

“Uh-huh. It was my fault, really. I didn’t brace myself for how you fly.”

I could feel my face paling as my stomach threatened to return my lunch to me. I messed up my magic holding me aloft and fell to the clouds.

“Dash!” Fluttershy rushed over to me, her hooves running all over me, probably looking for injuries or sore spots. “Are you alright? Does anything hurt?”

“I-I’m fine. You – you said butterflies caught you? Like, those tiny little insects with colorful wings?”

I couldn’t see her head behind me, but Fluttershy probably nodded. “They were ever so kind to help me. I don’t know what I would’ve done without them.”

Oh dear Celestia! That eep I’d heard at the race starting line, that’d been me pushing Fluttershy off of Cloudsdale!

And – and Fluttershy could hardly fly. It was mean and only bullies actually said it aloud, but it was true.

And Fluttershy had been knocked off Cloudsdale into the open air where she’d be terrified.

And her wings always locked up when she was scared.

And once she got going fast, she wouldn’t be able to stop.

And that meant that I’d – I’d–

This time I really did throw up. I’d tried to hold it in, but this – this was too much. The thought was so dizzying, I couldn’t even keep my balance sitting on my rump.

“Dash! Oh no, oh no. Please speak to me! What should I do? What should I do?”

I reached out weakly with a forehoof and grabbed Fluttershy before she left. Any moment now, she’d run off to go find help.

“Fluttershy…” What did I say to my best friend I’d all but killed? “I-I… I – I’m so sorry.”

No. No, that wasn’t enough. The words were right, but they felt empty and made me want to throw up again.

“Please don’t worry about me.” Fluttershy hopped back in front of me, her voice still laced with worry and distress. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Fluttershy’s lower lip tucked in slightly, the same way it always did when she was about to try something she didn’t think she could do. She turned around, lowered herself onto her barrel, and then sank a little bit into the clouds.

“If you can, please climb on my back, Dash. I’ll carry you to a hospital as fast as I can.”

Oh my Celestia, Fluttershy, care about yourself for once in your life! I pushed you to your death! Why did that not matter to you?

No wonder her mom had told me to stay away! What – what had I done?

I did crawl onto Fluttershy, but only to give her the biggest hug of my life.

“Um… Dash, I can’t get up like this.”

“I’m so sorry, Fluttershy! I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”

“It’s really not your fault. But, I mean, if it means so much to you, I forgive you. Not that you need to be forgiven though.”

I drew in a huge, wheezing breath.

The only words I could find were more stupid apologies. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I won’t ever let it happen again. Never ever.”

I – I’d stick with Fluttershy for the rest of my life if that was what it took to keep her safe and happy. I owed her more than I could ever repay. I’d never let her be put in that kind of danger ever again.

Not ever.

“Oh, stars,” I said to myself, my hoof slowly, soundlessly sliding off of the window it’d rested on. This was not something to make fun of. “Dash, Fluttershy…she’ll be fine.”

“I know. No thanks to me.” Dash’s voice sounded a bit hollow. “You’ve gotten us this far, Twi. I trust you. You will get us out of this safely.”

Ugh. No wonder Dash hadn’t run off earlier. I didn’t remember my exact words, but I must’ve accidentally hurt her a lot earlier.

And that…didn’t feel as good as I’d thought it would, not in this context. I just felt sick to my stomach, like I’d taken Fluttershy hostage myself somehow.

I turned away from the window and back toward Dash. Unfortunately, I could only think of one thing that would make me feel better right now. Maybe she was enough like me…

“Dash,” I began, lifting the mare in question’s muzzle up with a hoof, “there’s a way that you might be able to help save everypony.”

Eyes widening, Dash asked, “Really?”

“Well, maybe.”

This wasn’t a real plan, but it was a marginal improvement to any plan I came up with. I found Dash’s learning style to be low-quality, but it could work here. If she could just sort of ‘feel’ her way to casting pegasus spells, then maybe if I described the feeling of casting a unicorn spell together, she’d be able to share her magic with me after we left the Æthereal Realm.

The biggest problem with that – besides how unlikely it was for Dash to succeed – was the fact that I was never on the needing more magic side of cooperative spellcasting. I didn’t have the feelings and sensations memorized as well as Dash would probably need.

“So when we finish our ascensions,” I began, “we’ll probably need to make a fighting retreat.”

“Are – are you sure?”

“Am I sure about what?” I asked.

“Well, it’s just…” Dash glanced around, and eventually her gaze fell onto the next window of – of Mother. One that had Celestia on it, too. “Is the princess really that bad? I mean, she always seemed really nice at big festivals like the Summer Sun Celebration and stuff. And when I’d go watch movies that had boring news reels, she didn’t seem all that bad in them.”

Sighing first, I replied, “Dash, I told you before. The ability to be a good ruler doesn’t make a pony good, especially when you want a stable eternal rule.”

“I know, I know, but she’s done a lot of good stuff for ponies. And she holds, like, open court or something. The thing where anypony can come in and make requests or bring up issues and stuff. I don’t think any other countries do that.”

“Well” – I fruitlessly tried to call upon my magic for visual aids – “not every governmental structure admits open court. The zebras are more tribal, which allows them something extremely similar, but dispersed. The griffins have this sort of honor duel thing. The minotaurs are big on the concept of a republic, in which a pony would bring their issues to the lowest level and let them work their way up – in theory. The deer are–”

“Twi, I don’t need a lecture on sociopolitics or whatever.”

I – I was pretty sure ‘sociopolitics’ wasn’t a word, but I didn’t know, so I couldn’t call Dash on it. Still, she was right that I’d wandered off topic.

“Okay, but the point is governments have to be responsive to the citizenry at some level. They fall apart otherwise. And open court has been a tradition of Equestria since the Everfree Castle was built.”

“The what now?”

Ugh. I had a lot of work cut out for me undoing all the damage Sun – Celestia had done to world history.

“Equestria’s capital used to be in the Everfree Forest before it became dangerous and wild.”

“Oh. Well, what about that private school for unicorns? I heard the princess runs herself ragged making sure it gives the best education to those that deserve it but can’t…”

It took me a few seconds to realize I’d sunk into a glare.

“Right, um, nevermind.” Dash looked away and continued, “But still, the princess doesn’t seem that bad.”

I sighed. I could see why this was so important to Dash. If Celestia turned out to be good, then Fluttershy wouldn’t be in any danger, and from Dash’s perspective, she wouldn’t have broken…that promise I’d just watched in her memory.

“Dash, Celestia tried to kill her sister in cold blood, and if we hadn’t interfered by draining the elements, she’d have succeeded this time for sure.”

And we weren’t even in the clear yet. It was still very possible for Celestia to win if we let our guard down, especially since I still had to escape from her after my ascension was finished. I still had no real plan for that beyond hope for the best…

Removing the pressure from her lip, Dash asked, “But what if she regrets what she’s done? What if… Um… What if maybe the princess just thinks she has to follow through?”

“And why would that be?” I asked. If Dash had some magical insight into Celestia’s character that both Luna and I had somehow missed, she should feel free to share it.

“I…don’t know. But maybe it was just an accident.”

Just barely, I reined in my urge to bite Dash’s head off before it showed on my face.

“I mean, I nearly” – Dash gulped – “I nearly killed my wife when we were fillies. St-stuff happens, you know?”

I shook my head, feeling my anger drain away. Dash was just trying to help in her own way, her thoughts colored by her past. I couldn't blame her for that at all.

Yes, sometimes ‘stuff happened’, but the probability of complex events occurring at random was for all purposes zero. The elements accidentally going off while Celestia just happened to be threatening Luna with them after Luna had finally broken and lost control of her anger, for example, was a hypothesis not even worth considering.

Trotting off down the path toward Cadance, I said, “Come on, Dash. We need to get going.”

“Yeah.” Then a second later, Dash said, “Yeah, alright.” Once Dash had caught up to me, she asked, “So how can I help?”

Oh right. I nearly forgot about that.

“Well, as I said, we’ll likely need to make a fighting retreat. When we get back, you’re going to have a lot of magic as an alicorn. Being an alicorn is going to be a lot different than being a pegasus. Part of that is having a horn.”

“You’re not going to try and turn me into an egghead, are you?”

I rolled my eyes and ignored that comment. Dash could probably learn unicorn magic the same way she learned pegasus magic, if with much more difficulty.

“I’m just going to try to describe how to share your magic with me. If you can make it work, we can cast spells together.”

“So I’ll be fighting with you side-by-side?”

Eh… I was going to be doing almost all the work, but Dash had a real grin again. I supposed it couldn’t hurt to say yes.

“I’m letting you know in advance this probably won’t work. But if it does, then yes.”

“Awesome!”

Dash leapt into the air, and promptly came crashing back to the ground, falling onto her barrel.

“Stupid no magic Æthereal Realm,” Dash grumbled.

Okay, now this, this was funny.

Author's Note

Prereaders – Starlight Nova, Strange Reasoning

Chapter Twenty Nine - Perpendicular Perspectives - Between Sisters

What in Tartarus? Was that – was that tongue? And apple turnovers? And how did he even reach…

“Argh!” I threw Bluey away from me, and more importantly, I got his muzzle away from mine. “What on Equus were you thinking, you stupid colt!”

“I was thinking how beautiful you are,” was the idiotic reply Bluey come up with.

“I don’t care,” I shouted, my magic amplifying my voice. Everypony in the castle could probably hear me; maybe even Princess Celestia could hear me all the way at her school. But I didn’t care. I could already feel the heat rolling off my smoldering mane and tail. “What possessed you to kiss me?”

“Well, because I like you, Sunset.”

“And you think that makes it okay!” I burst into proper flames, and my coat turned pure white.

Bluey winced once more under the force of my voice. As soon as his ears rose from his skull, he set about rubbing them with his hooves with all the dignity and poise expected of a young prince.

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting? I mean, maybe I could have asked you out better–”

“You think?”

Oh, bucking ponyfeathers. The sound of hoofsteps approaching echoed through the halls, and I could hear faint voices with them. The last thing I needed was the grapevine feeding the press rumors of me kissing a ten-year-old prince. Just being in the same room as Fancy Pants these days was bad enough without adding more scandal.

I picked up Bluey in my magic and teleported to the first – no, second place I could think of. My chambers were the exact wrong place to go, but the archives would do.

The two of us landed in the deep archives, where I’d always suspected the closest thing to a feather duster the books had seen in centuries was my tail.

I fell gracefully onto my hooves. Bluey grunted as he fell flat on his rump.

But even that didn’t deter him. He was already back staring at me with hope-filled eyes within moments.

“Ugh… Bluey, I’m not – look. First, you do not kiss ponies out of nowhere like that. Second, you’re a sweet colt, but I’m way too old for you.”

“That’s not true. My dad is fifteen years older than my mom.”

I facehoofed, and the flames burning through my mane and tail snuffed out. I was totally overreacting. I was the adult here, and I should act like it. Besides it wasn’t Bluey’s fault he was this dense. But was it his home life, or did he just not realize he was freaking ten?

Oh Celestia, I swore if his parents came up to me tomorrow and tried to get me to sign a marriage contract, there wasn’t going to be anything left of upper Canterlot when I got through with them.

“Just – just no,” I said. “It’s not going to happen. You’re kind of like an annoying little brother; I love you, but I’m not in love with you.”

“Wh-what do you m-mean?” Bluey asked, sniffing and fighting back tears. His practiced stiff upper lip was trembling into a pout.

“Wait. Please don’t cry,” I said before thinking. I couldn’t honestly expect rejection not to hurt.

I reached out a hoof to wipe away Bluey’s tears, but soon thought better of it. I didn’t want to give mixed signals here.

But then Bluey cheated. He cranked up his cuteness and pitiableness to a whole new level, one I thought possible only in fairy tales.

An uncontrollable little whine escaped me as I was forced to avert my gaze.

“Okay. Okay, how about this instead?” It wasn’t my best idea, but I suggested, “When you’re as old as your mom was when she married your dad, then you can ask me out on a date. Does that seem fair?”

It took a second for what I’d said to sink in. Then another second later, Bluey sunk into thought. After a half-dozen hums of all different kinds, he finally said, “Okay. It’s a deal. That’s when Dad proposed anyway.”

I facehoofed again, but Bluey proposing out of the blue was Future Sunset’s problem, not mine.

“Sooooo,” I began, this time actually carrying Bluey’s remaining tears away with magic, “what if we go raid Princess Celestia’s vault for a treasure map? Or maybe she’s got another magic compass we can follow.”

“Could we take a balloon?”

“Whatever you want, Bluey.” But if we got near a lake, I was totally going to push you in.

“Ew! Ew, ew, ew, ew, eeeeew!”

Stars, I felt like washing my mouth out with soap twice. Absolutely nothing Cadance had told me about Prince Blueblood made me want to kiss him. No matter how annoyingly cute Sunset thought him, he’d grown up into an annoying twit. That was so horribly, unbearably unattractive.

Ugh, but I had. My lips had literally touched his. Sure, they’d been Sunset’s lips at the time, but that didn’t make it any better.

And there’d been tongue, too. Oh stars, he hadn’t had any idea what he was doing, and it’d just come out gross and awful. And he hadn’t even brushed his teeth since eating, either. Just – just ew.

Seriously, what was with Sunset’s memories? Why did so many of them want to make me feel physically uncomfortable?

“Alright, I’ll bite,” Dash said. “What happened?”

“Not saying anything. I think I actually want a dose of brain bleach after that. Watch it if you want.”

Laughing intermittently, obviously at my expense, Dash said, “Yeah, no. Not falling for that reverse psychology stuff. I’m not watching that.”

Well for once, it seemed Dash had more good sense than I did.

No, that wasn’t fair. The window hadn’t warned me at all that there’d be any kissing involved. And if it were Fancy Pants instead of Prince Blueblood, then I could’ve gotten into it. Sunset’s mental image of young Fancy Pants had been pretty dashing.

And a second later, I facehoofed. The word ‘dashing’ needed to be stripped from my vocabulary.

Oh no… Wasn’t Prince Blueblood still single? Oh my gosh. If he were still pining after Mother, that could make things very awkward in the future.

And then the other horseshoe dropped.

Oh stars! Double ew! I’d just thought the idea of making out with Fancy Pants as my mother would’ve been hot. What was wrong with me? What was I even thinking? That’d be like sleeping with Dad as Mom, and what was I thinking!

Think of something else, anything else.

“Hey, Twi?”

Yes! Dash, say something stupid!

“Why are you watching Sunset Glimmer’s memories?”

“Shimmer,” I corrected. “It’s Sunset Shimmer.”

“Right, whatever. So why are you watching them?”

Because I felt horribly guilty for her death. Because I couldn’t exist while she was alive and vice versa. Because it was all I could do for her. Because I didn’t think I’d be able to think of her as a pony who deserved respect instead of as just an enemy otherwise. And because of any number of a dozen other reasons.

“Okaaaaay,” Dash said after we’d walked in silence for a little too long. “Don’t you think it’s kind of rude, though? I mean, I don’t mind sharing most of my memories, but there’s some that I totally don’t want anypony else to see.”

As an afterthought, Dash added, “And plenty Flutters wouldn’t want me to share, too.”

I shook my head, ignoring Dash’s addendum. If I simply didn’t think about sex for, like, an hour, maybe I’d be able to forget the last five minutes forever. “Sunset Shimmer is…not able to object.”

“Well yeah. She’s obviously not here. But you wouldn’t want me to go through your diary–”

“For the last time, Dash,” I interrupted, “it’s not a diary. It’s a log.”

I could feel Dash rolling her eyes next to me without even looking.

“Yeah. Okay. If you say so. Doesn’t change anything.”

I couldn’t help flinching. Nothing I did could change anything. Sunset was dead and gone forever. Remembering her would never make up for anything, but it was all I could do. I certainly wouldn’t go evil and support Celestia for her, not that that would make up for anything either.

“Dash, I… Well, I know this is invasion of privacy, but it’s…”

If I couldn’t say this to Dash, I’d never be able to explain it to Cadance or talk to Luna about it. I had the courage in me. I’d faced far worse than admitting to others I was born from recycled pony.

“All these memories,” I tried again, “they’re – they’re mine, my inheritance.”

“Yeah, not following you, Twi.” Dash scratched her muzzle with a wing. “How are Sunset Shimmer’s memories yours? Are you, like, secretly fifty something years old and the mare herself? Because that would explain a lot.”

No it wouldn’t! I did all this! Well, I did it with help from Luna and Pupa and the Nebulous’s crew. But everything I’d done, I’d done myself.

Although that wasn’t a point I should be arguing now, no matter how terrible the accusation was. That was putting the cart before the pony, given Dash didn’t even know my relation to Sunset.

“No. Sunset Shimmer is dead.” I’d forced my voice to be as relaxed as possible, but the last word had still managed to come out as a squeak.

“Oh. Um, sorry? Or good riddance? I don’t really know what I’m supposed to say here.”

I sighed to myself in relief. I hadn’t exactly told Dash the whole truth, but a small part of my mind had been whispering that even just that little admission was going to go wrong.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I don’t think I’ll hit you on impulse again, even if you say something really bad.”

Dash stopped as I kept walking.

“Wait, does that mean you’re going to hit me on purpose?”

Heh. “Probably not.” I hadn’t even meant to sneak that little loophole in. I gave Dash a small smile in thanks for pointing that out.

“Hey!” Dash shoved me with her wing, but her frustration actually managed to get another laugh out of me.

I still had more that I needed to say eventually and with Cadance, but we’d arrived at the first of Mother’s memories: the one with her and Celestia sitting together on a balcony at dawn.

I didn’t want a hundred good memories of Celestia drowning out all of my bad memories of her, and I was pretty sure this was going to be a happy memory, yet I’d made my choice. I’d take all of Mother’s memories. It’d be rude and disrespectful not to.

But beyond that worry, we still hadn’t found Cadance yet. We were near where we started, so if she were still here at all, she had to be reasonably close. Unless she left the path…

My hoof stopped a hair’s breadth away from the memory, and my gaze fell to the edge of the path of wisps. I hadn’t arrived standing on anything, so it’d probably be safe to step off the path. Maybe.

As I touched the window, I hoped Cadance couldn’t get herself lost forever here. It’d be just my luck if I had to go save her too.

“Arr! Avast ye dogs! We’ve run aground on the starboard bow. Furl the sails and break out the oars before I skin ya all alive.”

I looked out upon the miserable lot I called a crew. I should’ve had them all walk the plank for getting us trapped on a hidden sandbar after we’d just made off with Prince Blueblood. We had half the royal dogs out on the seas after us, and I hungered for the king’s ransom we’d get for that little six-year-old crown prince.

I swore, when I found that nattering wretch who pretended to pony the crow’s nest, he’d be wishing he were dead before I got through with him.

“Cap’n Sunset!” me first mate called out. “The hull’s been breached! We’re gonna need to make repairs before we’re seaworthy again!”

The ship jumped with a large wave of water, nearly knocking me off balance. We landed back on the sandbar with a thud, and I grabbed the nearest railing to stay upright.

“Ye’ve got five more minutes before I have the quartermaster break out the whips, Sunbutt!”

“Aye aye, Cap’n!”

I watched Celestia run off back below deck, completely unfazed as the boat lurched again. Somehow, I managed to get myself thrown into something hard with a thunk.

After I regained my wits, I all but jumped up, crying, “Dammit! I said – ow!”

I brought a hoof up to my head and found it noticeably lacking in a peg leg. And right next to me, I noticed Celestia doing the same.

“That must have been some dream,” Celestia commented dryly.

Oooooh, buck. My face was already burning as I stammered an apology into my chest, head dropping down to maybe save some face if it couldn’t be seen.

“Y-yeah… Sorry about that.”

I looked around my room when I felt ready to actually face Celestia. My discarded blankets were right in front of me, the book I’d gone to bed with had migrated to the dresser next to my bed, and the sun wasn’t up yet.

Wait. The sun wasn’t up yet?

“Sunbutt, what time is it?”

“About twenty minutes before dawn. I would have given you another five minutes of rest as you requested, but your surprise is a little time-sensitive.”

Turning to look at Celestia, I asked, “My surprise? What do you–” My eyes widened as I realized what today was.

Celestia smiled. “Happy twenty-second birthday, Sunset.”

I would’ve been more excited and enthusiastic if I’d been woken up, say, four hours later. Waking up at the crack of dawn was for roosters and princesses, of which I was neither.

“Thanks and all,” I began, finally bothering to pluck the rheum out of my eyes, “but why am I up this early? What’s the surprise?”

I’d seen the sun risen on plenty of occasions, so an up close look at Princess Celestia bringing light to Equus couldn’t be it, or at least I hoped it wasn’t. Not that watching her raise the sun wasn’t interesting and a privilege, but being Celestia’s student didn’t mean I had to be a morning pony.

Aaaaand that was just about the beginning and the end of the list of things which could excuse a pony for waking somepony else up this early.

When I looked at her again, Celestia’s grin said one and only one thing: follow me.

Curious enough to not return to my blankets, I hopped out of bed and soon fell into place at Celestia’s side. She led me through the castle on the usual route I’d take to her chambers.

There really wasn’t much to say about the trip. I’d been expecting decorations or something – maybe my entire extended family popping out of nowhere and shouting surprise even, but nope. The castle was just as it ever was.

With a single nod to the two stationed guards, we were admitted into Celestia’s room, and she brought me to the balcony she raised the sun at whenever she was feeling theatrical. I said whenever, since sometimes she was out of town, and lots of other times she just couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed.

“So why are we here?” I asked. “Did you make dawn extra special today or something? Should I have brought a camera?”

“Oh no, not at all.”

I knew that smirk. Celestia had something crazy planned, and I must’ve said something ironic.

“Long, long ago, Sunset, a spell of such enormity and complexity that it took me four years of hard work to understand it completely was placed on the sun.”

My ears perked up at that, and all remaining desire I had to go back to bed flew away. That was some serious magic.

“For centuries, it laid dormant and unused, but these last couple years, I made the necessary repairs for it to function properly again.” Celestia’s smirk only grew as she added, “I may also have made some improvements.”

“What’s it do? What’s it do? What’s it do!” I asked, my words running together in my excitement.

“Well, when it was still used regularly, teams of ponies would work together to control the spell. And to reach the sun, too, I suppose. It is quite far away, after all. It takes quite a bit of magic to bridge the distance.”

“Oh, come on!” I whined. “I don’t need this lead in.”

Headless to my pleas, Celestia continued, “Back then, so many centuries ago, when a pony turned twenty-two, and if she were skilled enough with magic, she would be invited to join the group.”

Hurry up! Hurry up!

“Then together, these ponies would gather several times over the day. Together, they would use the spell…”

No, no, no! Stop teasing me! Finish your sentence!

“To move the sun,” Celestia finished.

I took a sharp intake of breath, and my lungs just stopped working completely.

“This morning, I thought you might like to try yourself.”

“Eeeee!” I squealed. I wished the noise I’d made could be described as anything but, yet it was definitely a squeal.

But who cared? This was the best! Moving the sun! Oh my gosh!

“With some assistance, of course,” Celestia added.

I jumped onto Celestia in a hug, knocking both of us over.

“Best gift ever! You’re the best!”

How had Celestia even managed to find the free time to repair the spell? The spell must’ve been neglected for centuries. And it was as big as the sun! The sun!

I leaped back to my hooves before Celestia had a chance to hug me back, and then I quickly ran over to the balcony railing, throwing my forehooves up and over it.

“So how does this work? What do I have to do?”

“Well traditionally,” Celestia began, rising back to her own hooves, “we would use a very difficult spell that would allow you to intertwine your magic with mine in order to propagate our magic over long-distances. But seeing as this is a surprise for you, I can help you cross the distance more easily. There is just one little thing I have to do first.”

Celestia’s horn glowed faintly, almost too faintly to even be a spell. She gestured for me to turn around, and I reluctantly did so, facing back inward and away from the horizon.

Our horns met with just the lightest touch, and the white glow in Celestia’s horn crept into mine. I could feel it doing…something to me. My magic itched, which made absolutely no sense.

And then the light faded from both our horns, and I felt normal again. Both the light and the sensation left as quickly as they’d come.

“What… What was that?” I asked. I didn’t feel any more powerful, or any wiser, and I couldn’t detect any active spells on me or nearby.

But there was something different, some tiny little thing that I couldn’t put my hoof on.

“Just a little trick that shall allow you to touch the sun, among a few other things.” One of Celestia’s forehooves rose up in front of her muzzle, and she made a shh sound. “This will be our little secret, okay?”

I hummed angrily at Celestia’s non-answer, but she had her usual, ‘I’m not going to explain. Have fun figuring it out,’ face on. There was never any point in trying to get answers out of her when she didn’t want to give them.

“So how does this work?” I asked. “I don’t really feel much different.”

“It’s quite simple, Sunset. You merely need to reach out to the sun with your thoughts and magic.”

Eeeeeh, that sounded more than a little sketchy. That was no way to go about casting spells. But Celestia was my teacher, so I tried it anyway. And besides, who knew more about the sun than the Alicorn of the Sun?

Still, what exactly was I supposed to do? Telekinesis? Teleportation? Throw a fireball? Summon a blizzard? Try to put a mustache on the sun? Enchantment triggering?

The last one actually made some kind of sense, but how was I supposed to know how to turn on an ancient cosmic enchantment? The sun wasn’t exactly a house lamp. And even if Celestia had modernized the interface, I didn’t really know what to expect. Maybe if I just…

Somewhere in the background, Celestia said, “The sun will not answer to demands, but–”

I got a gentle bump on the head, distracting me from my efforts and fizzling my magic.

“Ow,” I moaned dramatically. “What was that for?”

“You would have had much worse from the sun if you had kept that up.”

What? Was I going to get incinerated if I messed up? I didn’t actually ask, but Celestia must’ve read my expression.

“The worst you can get is a few…burns, I suppose would be the way to put it, on your magic. You are playing with fire.”

Oh yes, and that made me feel so much better about this.

“Try again, Sunset. Remember, the sun will not answer demands, but it will take requests. You just want your magic to come into contact with it to begin with.”

Tilting my head to the side, I asked, “So, like, don’t use any spell?”

Celestia nodded.

That…was different. Magic that wasn’t shaped into a spell had an awful tendency to blow up in your face; of all ponies, I would know that. But surely this wasn’t a trap of some kind. That’d be too much even for a prank. But…I supposed it was worth a try.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Focusing on the horizon was just going to be distracting. It’d make me want to try moving the sun over the horizon the same way I’d normally move things with telekinesis.

Alright, alright. Don’t overcomplicate this, Sunset. I just had to reach out to the sun…however that worked.

“Less magic, Sunset,” Celestia said. “This is not an exercise in power.”

Hmm… Okay. I cut off my flow of magic completely so I could restart fresh. It was probably a good call anyway. Who knew how much raw magic I’d leaked into the world already?

Alright, so I just had to reach the sun…somehow. Maybe I was approaching this wrong. Celestia had done something to me, so I needed to work with that in some way. I just couldn’t find what was different about me; I felt so normal.

Perhaps this was more of a visualization thing. If I thought of myself as carrying a little piece of the sun inside me, maybe that would help. It couldn’t hurt.

So I was a little piece of the sun, a wisp of fire far from home. I still got energy from the sun as sunlight, either directly or by eating plants, and…

And this totally wasn’t working. I sounded ridiculous just thinking like that. I couldn’t imagine how embarrassing it’d be if Celestia asked me to explain what I was doing.

I took a long, slow breath. I could do this. If this were difficult, I’d have more than…

I knew how long it was until dawn. Not down to the second, or even to the minute, but the knowledge was there, and it was exact. And the sun was getting closer, and closer, and closer and closer!

“Hold that connection,” Celestia whispered. “Let it fill you, and when the time comes, ask the sun to be ready to make the leap. Do not worry. You can do this.”

The funny thing was, I did think I could do this. A warm feeling was growing in me, and not just excitement, or adrenaline, or whatever. I was literally getting hotter, but not uncomfortably so. I felt… I felt like I could do anything right now!

I let that feeling consume me, spreading out to every corner of my body and maybe even beyond that.

I heard the roar of a blazing fire. For a moment, I even felt like I was on fire.

And then it was time. The sun was waiting for instructions.

I told it – no. That was wrong. I asked it to come to Equus, to rise for another morning. And the sun responded.

My eyes twitched as light hit them, and my eyelids slowly parted.

“Eeeee!” I squealed again. I’d have time to be embarrassed later. This was way too amazing to miss.

The sun crept into the sky, just as it always did each morning.

Celestia pulled me back onto the balcony after I’d leaned over the railing a little too far. Before she could say anything, I was hanging over it again.

This was the best moment of my life. The culmination of everything I’d learned!

“Celestia! Celestia, look! I did it! I raised the sun!” I turned to find her looking at me with a big smile.

“Yes, you did. Well done, Sunset. I’m very proud of you, even if you were perhaps a bit over zealous in the effort.”

Celestia pointed to my right with a hoof. My gaze followed her until it landed on the fried remains of a potted plant.

“Oh. Whoops. Did I burn that?”

“Yes, but I can always get another fern. The loss of a plant should not ruin this moment for you. Although…”

I followed Celestia’s hoof upward this time. The charred remains of the tapestry that used to hang there still smoldered.

“Err…”

Once more, Celestia moved her hoof, this time to my left. Her relic of a tea table lay mostly in ashes, although a few splinters remained.

I shuffled on my hooves awkwardly, looking straight at the ground. For the first time, I noticed my coat had turned white, but it was slowly fading back to yellow again. Weird.

Celestia giggled, and my head rose back up.

“Don’t worry, Sunset. It gets easier.”

Just barely, I managed to restrain my squeal to a gasp. I was going to get to do this again! Oh my gosh!

“Well, still, sorry.” I hopped back around to face the horizon again. “Oh, and thanks, by the way. This was by far the best gift I’ve ever gotten.”

I felt a wing settle over me as Celestia leaned on the railing as well, finding a spot right next to me.

Celestia didn’t say anything, and neither did I. We just watched the sun rise into the sky, comfortable in each other’s presence.

Today was a wonderful day.

“Oh. My. Gosh!” I’d raised the sun! The sun!

Well, Mother had raised the sun. But I’d just relived the experience! And we shared the same body and magic, so technically I’d raised the sun too! I’d moved a star! And between one half of the universe and the other too!

“Whoa, Twi, settle down. You’re like two years too late to be even thinking of hitting on me.”

What? Oh. I let Dash out of the vice grip of a hug I’d put her in.

I regretted it immediately. I needed something to squeeze to contain my feelings. If only Cadance were around. My only outlet was to bounce around like I was eight again.

Oh, if only Sunset had been more demanding for an explanation of how that magic worked. She’d barely even touched the spell on the sun, and it’d been huge. As big as the sun itself!

How did ponies even manage that without an alicorn? That had to have been the spell Luna and her team had used to wrest control of the sun and moon from Discord. Whoever first came up with the design must’ve been a genius! An absolute genius! Oh, how I’d love to meet her and swap notes.

A strong nudge broke me out of my thoughts. It was accompanied by the words, “How many times are you gonna get lost in your crazy egghead world, Twi?”

I hopped around behind Dash and shoved her muzzle first into the window before she could react.

One second. Two seconds. Three–

“Oh. My. Gosh! Did I just raise the freaking sun?”

“I know, right!” For once Dash and I were in total agreement.

“So awesome!

“I know!” I took Dash’s forehooves in my own, and Dash soon returned the favor, both of us squeezing each other’s hooves as we shuffled and danced on our hindhooves.

“How did that even happen? I didn’t really pick up on the unicorn stuff.”

“I have no idea!” But now I had a giant super puzzle in front of me to work on in my spare time. This was going to be wonderful!

“How do you not know?” Dash released me, and while she fell back onto all fours, I flailed awkwardly until I fell onto my back. “Aren’t you like the smartest unicorn ever or something?”

I thrust my wings out after rolling back onto my barrel. “Not a unicorn anymore. I think some of that was alicorn stuff. And a whole lot of it was ancient, lost magic stuff, too, which nopony knows about anymore.”

“Except for” – Dash snickered – “Princess Sunbutt.”

“And Luna,” I added. Luna surely knew as well, or at least she remembered enough to reverse engineer the magic to learn it again.

Hmm… What Celestia had done to Mother, it was probably one of those alicorn blessings Luna had mentioned to me on the moon. Luna had told me I’d need hers if I wanted to move the moon as a unicorn, so Sunset had probably needed Celestia’s to move the sun.

Not for the first time, I found myself wondering how exactly that worked. Sunset’s memory hadn’t been all that enlightening on the matter, and Luna had always been annoyingly silent on what being an alicorn was like.

I hoped some of Sunset’s other memories would maybe elaborate on all of the abilities she’d gotten from it for me. I’d never imagined that Celestia would actually give Sunset that kind of power, but it made sense. Mother was Celestia’s tool to kill Luna, after all; she’d need all the advantages she could get.

And disguising the ceremony as a birthday gift left Sunset completely unaware of the significance too. How sneaky. Maybe I still had…

My grin faded away into terror.

Oh, ponyfeathers! Had I still been blessed growing up?

If I’d been blessed for most of my life, did Celestia know who I was? There couldn’t be that many alicorn–blessed ponies wandering around on Equus nowadays. Could an alicorn know who was blessed and who wasn’t at a mere glance? Was I still one of Celestia’s pawns working toward some unknown end?

No. No, no. No way. Celestia couldn’t have known. It was impossible.

What would that even imply if she had? That…that she’d just not bothered to try and fix me?

No, no, no, no, no, no. That came out all wrong. So very, very wrong. I didn’t need fixing; Mother needed fixing.

“You okay, Twi?” Dash asked. “You’re looking pretty off.”

“I’m fine!” I snapped, cutting off whatever else she’d been about to say. No, wait, I was being nice to Dash right now. “Sorry. Just – just give me a minute.”

Dash looked at me skeptically, but she didn’t say anything.

Okay, okay. So Celestia didn’t – couldn’t have known, but if she had, and that was a big if, what did that actually imply?

I…I had no idea. My mind was grasping at empty space, not even at straws.

But – but what if…what if she had tried to fix Mother? But then she’d found out there was no fixing her. And then Celestia would’ve just erased my memory and…what? Left?

Was that possible? When would it have happened? When would she have first found out about me? The first time we met was when I was eight…

No, if blessings were easy to spot, then the first time we’d met would’ve been when I was six, back at the Canterlot Summer Sun Celebration. I’d just been a face in the crowd to normal ponies…but maybe not to an alicorn.

And then what about the rest of her actions? A cruel punishment for an innocent filly?

No, no, no. The little voices of Sunset and even Luna in my head said Celestia wouldn’t do that. That wasn’t something she’d be okay with. I was just getting way too paranoid.

But I’d told Dash I hadn’t been paranoid enough, and I was right about that. How paranoid was just paranoid enough before I started making mistakes?

Right now… Right now, I should just acknowledge the possibility and move on. I had no idea what could’ve been going through Celestia’s head if she’d known who I was, so I shouldn’t start making stuff up. If it were true and Celestia tried to use it against me somehow, I just had to not freeze up or panic.

“Alright,” I said.

I stopped for a calming breath with the accompanying hoof gesture.

“Alright,” I said again, because the first time really hadn’t been alright. “I think I’m fine now, Dash. Let’s get going.”

“You sure?”

“Well, honestly, no, I’m very not fine. But I’m ready to go again.”

Dash paid me one last worried look. “If you say so, Twi. Just don’t do anything crazy.”

And with that, we were off.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I’d wanted to walk in silence or not. I really did need to be thinking about my next moves, but at the same time, I was pretty sure my thoughts would’ve wandered back to relatively unimportant stuff if we had.

But of course with Dash being Dash, she hadn’t kept her mouth shut. Mostly she’d asked me random questions about what had happened since her ascension and what being an alicorn was like.

From our chat as we trotted along, it sounded like Cadance had already answered most of the fundamental questions about what being an alicorn meant. Thus instead of asking simple questions on the subject that I actually could answer, Dash stuck mostly to topics I barely knew anything about.

Mostly.

Facehoofing, I said, “No, Dash, hornjobs are really not a thing. We’ve been trying to get rid of that idea literally for centuries, but for some unknowable reason, you pegasi and the earth ponies keep insisting it is a thing. But it’s not. Think about it. If our horns were sensitive in that particular manner, how would we manage to think straight when casting a spell?”

“Magic?” Dash shrugged with her wings as we walked. “Or maybe casting spells doesn’t feel like anything?”

No, they certainly did. And Dash was weaving a special kind of magic right now. I felt like bashing my face into the ground.

“What about wing boners?” I began. “I know those aren’t a thing, but a lot of ponies think they are. It’s like that, get it?”

“Weeeeell, there is a little bit of truth to that.”

Oh, you have got to be kidding me.

“Not that I’d expect a flightless pegasus to understand why,” Dash added, poking one of my wings with her own.

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever, Dash. They’re going to be in working condition when I leave here.”

“Well, yeah.” Dash’s forehoof found its way across my withers. I resisted the urge to throw it off. “You and me are going to be flying buddies. Maybe you’ll be able to keep up with Chamomile after a few years.”

“Excuse me,” I protested. “I may have been flightless in the real world, but I already know how to fly. I just need to get used to real pegasus magic. Then we’ll see who’s keeping up with who.”

“Oh, it. Is. On.”

“Well, it’s nice to see you two are getting along, at least,” Cadance interrupted.

I turned my head away from Dash. Cadance was…obviously trying to look alright and was just barely on the wrong side of success.

Dash said, “Hey, Princess.”

At the same time, I said, “Hi, Cadance.” I thought I did a fairly good job concealing my own plummeting mood. There’d been enough delays already; it was time to tell Cadance mostly everything.

“I don’t suppose you two have seen Sunset anywhere, have you?”

I slowly shook my head silently, lips pursed.

“Where did she get to?” Cadance mumbled to herself. “I’m going to keep looking. By the way, you two, you’re going the wrong direction.”

I couldn’t find my voice to stop Cadance from walking off. I was frozen in place.

What if Cadance didn’t want to talk to me ever again after this? Or worse, what if she wanted me to be Mother?

Or what if I couldn’t convince Cadance she was on the wrong side? She’d still talk to me, but she’d have no friendly words for me. I didn’t want to lose my sister.

Or – or what if I did convince her, and she ran off to go yell at Celestia. Then she’d – she’d…

“Hey, Princess Cadance, wait up,” Dash called out from next to me, squeezing my withers with her leg, which was probably supposed to be a comforting gesture. I’d been silent for a little too long, it seemed, and Dash had picked up on that. “Twi has something to say.”

Cadance’s gaze fell on me, her eyes betraying her conflicting desires to be gone and to stay as they twitched every which way. “Is it quick? I really need to get going.”

I gulped. This was it.

“N-no.” I paused for one last breath. “Sunset is – is dead.”

I silently watched as Cadance’s face turned from worry to shock before finally settling on disbelief. She mouthed the word ‘no’, but didn’t give it voice.

“Twilight,” Cadance began, halting for seconds before she said so much as a second word, “that’s not funny.”

“It’s true.” That was all I managed.

Cadance’s hoof extended and gestured off toward the memory-filled windows we’d left behind. “But her memories–”

“They’re mine,” I blurted out.

“But–”

Interrupting Cadance again, my mouth continued without my approval, “They’re not memories. They’re visions of” – my voice hitched – “my life.”

“Wait, what?” Dash let go of me and walked around to stand between Cadance and myself. “Twi, you told me you’re not Sunset Shimmer.”

Only now that it was gone did I realize how much I’d appreciated having a leg – even Dash’s – resting on my withers and holding me.

“I’m not. I’m… Sunset died. I’m what was salvaged from her.”

“What?” Cadance shrieked.

Simultaneously, Dash asked, “You’re a zombie?”

Even now, I had to fight the urge to facehoof. “I’m not a zombie. Or a mummy, ghoul, ghost, specter, wraith, lich, or any other fictional undead creature.”

“Darn.”

It was surprisingly easy to ignore that disrespectful little aside of Dash’s.

Cadance’s forehooves came to rest on my shoulders, and she looked me dead in the eyes, blocking out my view of practically everything else.

“Twilight, you’re not lying about this?”

I shook my head ever so slightly.

“How did this happen? How did you find out? What exactly are you? When did you find out? Does Auntie know? Are you alright? Is there any way we can get Sunset back?”

“Cadance, please,” I begged, “one question at a time. I” – my head fell to stare at my hooves – “I’m not really…comfortable…talking about some – no, most of this.”

A moment passed, but Cadance did eventually nod. She took a step back, her brows furrowed more than I’d ever thought possible for her.

But then Cadance’s eyes widened in realization. “Twilight, Twilight or Sunset, you’re my little sister.” Her hooves spread wide in invitation, one I was all too happy to accept.

I dove into the hug. My hooves blindly grasped for any solid purchase, my face buried in Cadance’s chest. They quickly found their way around the bases of Cadance’s wings, and I latched onto her as tightly as I could.

For her own part, Cadance’s hoof found its way up to my mane and passed through it in gentle strokes.

And that reminded me so much of Luna, and of what she’d done, what she’d had to do, what was done to her, and what Celestia wanted to do to her.

And all that nearly set me off. I wanted so much to curl up beneath Cadance’s wing and cry. This whole situation was a horrible mess. One good, long cry would help me get everything out of my system. No blaming anypony for anything or trying to figure out who was responsible for what and why, just crying.

But I couldn’t. This wasn’t the time or the place. I had so much to do, and I couldn’t let Cadance see me like that right now. Introducing her to Luna was already a difficult enough task, but she and Mother had been friends, however briefly. I didn’t know what their relationship had been like…

In the memory of Sunset’s…end, she’d said something like ‘Cadance is the only pony who pays attention to me’.

Cadance couldn’t find out Luna was responsible for Sunset’s death.

Not – not yet, at least. I’d have to cross that bridge someday, just…not today.

Cadance giggled inappropriately.

“What?” I asked, my already weak voice further muffled by talking into Cadance chest.

“Just thinking about how unfair it is I’ve been taking care of you. I’m supposed to be able to rely on my big sister, not the other way around.”

“Pretty sure that’s not how that works, Princess.”

I shot Dash a glare, but I did agree with the general thrust of what she’d said.

“Cadance, I’m nineteen.” Technically I wasn’t nineteen quite yet, and I was more around seventeen, but that wasn’t something I wanted to bring up right now.

“Oh,” Cadance began, the joking tone she’d had earlier falling out of her voice, “I’m so sorry, Twilight. I honestly didn’t mean anything by it. I just thought you’d… I mean, I can’t imagine how touchy of a subject this must be for you. I just thought you’d like that.”

I whispered, “It’s alright.” Cadance really was the nicest, most understanding pony in the world.

“Alright, enough with the mushy stuff.”

Dammit, Dash. Did you really have to try ruining even the small moments in my life?

“So what happened?” Dash continued. “Did you get sacrificed in some dark ritual gone wrong, and you came out the other end like this? Or did you mess up a spell and make yourself a newborn again? I could totally see you doing that.”

Sometimes I really hated the effect the fantasy genre had on ponies, even on other unicorns.

“No, Sunset was not sacrificed in a fake ritual of any kind. There are no spells which require a pony sacrifice.”

It was at this point that I remembered that I had somewhere I needed to be.

“We should walk and talk,” I said as I forced myself out of the comfort of Cadance’s hooves. I didn’t wait for an answer before trotting off.

Unlike last time, Cadance didn’t hesitate to fall into step beside me.

“Twilight, if you don’t want to tell me, I’ll understand, but” – Cadance spent an unpleasantly long time trying to form the rest of her sentence – “what did happen to Sunset? I’d always feared she’d died. But I’d also always hoped she was just still mad with Auntie and hiding.”

“Did you think to try finding her when you were looking for me?” I asked.

A second passed, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cadance nod slowly. It took her a moment to remember to actually reply vocally.

Since Cadance didn’t say anything more on the subject, I figured neither would I. Perhaps we could talk about it on another occasion. If Cadance felt guilty for trying less hard to find Sunset than me, I’d need to talk some sense into her.

And now I couldn’t think of anything else to stall with. I had to answer Cadance’s question. So…what should I tell her about Sunset’s death? What could I tell her?

Cadance was an understanding pony, but even she had a limit for how much she could take at once. Confirmation of Sunset’s death was probably already a big blow for her, and I still had the ‘working for the evil Nightmare Moon’ surprise coming.

Just above a whisper, I said, “Sunset ate something she shouldn’t have.”

That was true.

“That I’ve had a chance to exist at all is thanks to a friend of a friend.”

That was also true, and not just literally.

“I’d really rather not talk about the – the details.”

A shudder ran through me, and I sidled up to Cadance. I’d been spared having to experience dying – Sunset hadn’t been awake for her death – but in some ways, that was so much worse. It was all left up to my imagination, and I had quite a strong one.

This was a terrible emotional trick, but…but it was necessary for now. “I – I found m-my and Sunset’s memory of her death.”

Cadance gasped. “Oh, Twilight…” For lack of anything better to do or say, she draped a wing over me and asked, “Are you alright?”

“Not really. I really didn’t want to–”

I couldn’t say I didn’t want to know, because that’d imply I hadn’t already known about Sunset’s death. And I did want to know, just…not the way I’d found out. It’d be best for everypony if I just let Cadance convince herself that I’d known for a long time. I just had to change my wording a little bit.

“–see it,” I continued with only a slight hiccup to betray me.

“Nopony should have to,” Cadance said, squeezing me even tighter, which make it really hard to move faster than a slow walk. Not that I was complaining. I needed this so much.

Still, hug or no hug, I shook my head. “But I did want to see it. I mean, I didn’t, but I did. Sunset” – was killed for me to exist – “is dead so I can live. I don’t want to be her, but I at least want to remember her.”

Our pace slowed even further to a crawl, and soon we stopped completely as I was drawn further into Cadance. I could feel myself shaking against her, and I couldn’t get my stupid body to listen to me and stop.

Dash at least had the decency to not interrupt us while we had our moment, but I kind of wished she had. Now that I’d been around her for all of five minutes, I’d realized that Cadance was the exact wrong pony I needed right now.

I wasn’t so dense that I couldn’t recognize that my emotions had been swinging all over the place, and reliving memories with other random emotions wasn’t helping. It was sheer force of will that kept me fully functional, that and nothing more.

But Cadance… If I were a contained grease fire, Cadance was a bottomless bucket of water. She’d put me out eventually by simple virtue of being below ignition temperature, but I’d set a dozen other things on fire first.

I slipped out of Cadance’s feathery haven before I gave into its quiet whispers of comfort. Nothing would be okay if I cried my heart out now and spilled everything to Cadance all at once.

Without missing a beat, I continued down toward the end of the path and whatever awaited me there.

“Twilight,” Cadance called out, “wait.”

I didn’t. I couldn’t. I had too much to do.

Dash was already following me, and Cadance would catch up.

“Twilight,” Cadance began, galloping up next to me, “I know this is going to be one of those things you won’t listen to me about–”

I braced myself not to snap at Cadance. Or at myself.

“–but you shouldn’t blame yourself for…well, taking over Sunset’s body, I guess. Hmm…”

Glancing over at Cadance, I found her with a thoughtful expression on her face.

“What is it?” I asked, only to watch Cadance grow doubly uneasy. “You can be insensitive if you want.”

Fighting to get the words out one at a time, Cadance said, “Well, Auntie taught me some stuff about your situation.”

Huh? Why on Equus would Celestia feel the need to teach Cadance about… Wait. What did Cadance even think had happened to Mother?

“I just want to know if there’s a way to get Sunset back.” Then hastily, Cadance added, “Without killing you.”

So there was a way to get Sunset back with killing me? Somehow, I suspected Cadance had the wrong idea of what had happened. But then that was just fine for now. Whatever got the two of us though this.

“There’s not,” I replied, although a solution did present itself to me.

Take a newborn filly, age her up and have her relive Sunset’s memories in order at the right ages. With a complete enough set of them, potentially with delays between memories for the filly’s brain to properly process the memories, the end result would produce a mare similar enough to Sunset so as to be indistinct.

It would work, in theory. But in actual practice…well, it probably wouldn’t work. If I tried, I’d probably just end up with a mare who justifiably hated me for experimenting on her. And then by that point, it’d be too late to wipe her memories and revert her to a newborn without killing her.

“Are you sure?” Cadance asked. “Maybe the Elements of Harmony could do something. What exactly are you?”

I raised an eyebrow, which wasn’t very effective, given the pony I was talking to couldn’t see my face.

“I’m a unicorn. Well, nearly an alicorn now, which is significantly different, but I don’t understand what you’re getting at. Sunset is gone forever, as unrecoverable as text on paper burnt to ashes and scattered to the wind.”

Two or three seconds passed in silence. I probably should’ve tried saying that in a nicer way, but I didn’t want to give Cadance any false hope for seeing her old friend again. Maybe something could be worked out with time magic, and maybe the Elements of Harmony could make that happen, but I couldn’t make any promises. I didn’t even have any leads, just blind speculation.

Finally, Cadance said, “Nevermind. Forget I said anything.” Her wing found its way over me again. “Just remember that I love you, Twilight. I wouldn’t ever have you trade your life for another.”

“Thanks.” I leaned over just enough to nuzzle Cadance while we walked.

Once we were done, Cadance asked, “By the way, does Auntie know about you?”

“I sincerely hope not,” I said. Who knew what logic could be running through her head if Celestia knew I’d had Sunset’s body and magic all along.

Perhaps some strange argument could be made that if Celestia had known, she could’ve hoped Luna would make contact with me. She could’ve hoped that it wasn’t just some random Nightmare Moon cultist that had killed Sunset and made me, but somepony on the command of Luna herself.

Then years later, Celestia could extract a lot of information from me, avoiding me for years so as not to arouse suspicion while I collected secrets. And if I got nothing, then she’d have some more evidence that Luna couldn’t dreamwalk.

That was totally the kind of plan Celestia would use. And she had asked Pupa if Pupa were working for Nightmare Moon. And she had planned to petrify me, which would be the perfect cover for having extended, private access to me.

The small but growing voice of Mother within me said that was utter nonsense. Even I didn’t think that was what had actually happened, but for better reasons. Still, it was a stomach turning thought that perhaps I’d escaped capture and total disaster by a season or two.

But anyway, it sounded like this conversation was thankfully over. Cadance wasn’t saying anything more, and I didn’t want to talk about it. The more I said, the more likely Cadance would know what the right questions to ask were. And I also genuinely didn’t want to talk about it.

Nevertheless, this silence was uncomfortable. And if nopony said something soon, Cadance was going to notice we were passing by windows bearing images of Luna.

I supposed I should probably just introduce Luna right now. There weren’t really any memories nearby that were the ‘perfect’ way to introduce Cadance to Luna, and I wasn’t going to risk trying to keep her attention focused completely on me while I hunted one down.

Alright, this probably wasn’t the best way to go about the task, but it was all I could think of right now.

“So speaking of love, how is your fiancé?” I asked.

With a gentle, but insistent voice, Cadance said, “Shiny is still your brother, Twilight.”

I heard Dash snicker and mumble, “Shiny,” to herself.

Ignoring that, Cadance continued, “He loves you, too. If you’ve ever thought otherwise, stop it.”

“I know that.” Nudging Cadance between steps, I asked, “Stars, can’t I even ask a simple question without worrying you?”

Cadance gave me a weak apology. “He’s doing fine. He’d be missing you if you would just let me tell him and your parents you were missing.”

Yeah… I probably should have, but I hadn’t wanted to worry Shining over it. Who knew what kind of crusade he would’ve gone on if he knew I’d run away from home?

And I hadn’t wanted to burden Mom and Dad with having to constantly keep up the charade in front of Cadance and Shining, either. Let alone that I was sure they’d mess up at some point, it would just be too cruel to put that kind of stress on them.

“You can tell him now if you want,” I said. There was little point to keeping the secret anymore. “But anyway, should I be expecting a niece or nephew soon?”

“Twilight, it would be terribly inappropriate if a princess of Equestria were to give birth outside of marriage,” Cadance admonished me, yet she failed to actually deny the possibility.

As for the reason for her objection, I was just going to let that pass unchallenged. This wasn’t the time or place to debate that.

“I’m not hearing a no,” I sung.

Cadance sighed. “No, Twilight. Alicorn pregnancies are…tricky. We’re durable, and that works against us with foals. It’s very easy for us to miscarriage after our foal’s magic develops, and sometimes even before then. When Auntie gave me the talk for alicorns, she said it’s…well…a hundred times easier to” – Cadance cleared her throat – “impregnate your partner.”

Immediately, Dash broke into laughter so hard she had trouble walking, let alone keeping pace with me and Cadance.

And maybe I thought the image was just a little bit funny, too. I could just imagine the endless grumpy frown plastered on a gender swapped Shining’s face while he waddled around with a swollen belly, fruitlessly trying to give orders to the Royal Guard while they snickered and teased him.

Then there’d be the actual birth, and he’d probably be stubborn enough to do things the traditional way instead of just teleporting the foal out, which is what any sane mare did if she knew the spell and had the training to do it safely or if she could afford to pay a doctor to do it for her.

And Shining and Cadance would probably end up with a unicorn, and if Berry Punch were to be believed, unicorns births really hurt.

“Have you asked or even told him yet?”

Cadance’s blush showed up even through her coat at my question, and she quickly withdrew her wing from me and pulled it tight against her side.

“No. It’s… It’s kind of…”

“Super awkward and – and hilarious?” Dash suggested between fits.

“Yeah. That.”

After I regained control over my own chuckles, I said, “Well, good luck convincing him to accept a three season burden. Oh, plus or minus another two seasons of nursing.”

Another snicker escaped me at that. Shining almost certainly would be stubborn enough to stick it out through the whole five seasons, despite how mortified I was sure he’d feel anytime anypony ever brought it up.

“I’m sure if you wear his pride down long enough, you’ll get him to be foolish enough to agree.” I leaned in closer to whisper into Cadance’s ear. “Just let me know what you like in a mare, and I’ll see it done.”

“Twilight!” Cadance screeched, her entire face flushing.

As nice as teasing Cadance was – and as hilarious a revelation as I’d just heard – that wasn’t really why I’d brought Shining up. I’d need to do this quickly; we were close to one of my more mundane and boring memories of Luna. It wasn’t the best memory to show Cadance first, but I could do far, far worse.

“So,” I began hesitantly, “is Shining planning to do…anything else foolish in the near future?”

The color drained out of Cadance’s face. “You mean throw himself into a fight between Auntie and Nightmare Moon?”

“Mhm,” I hummed, slightly nodding.

I hadn’t had a chance to ask Chrysalis if Shining were one of the potential hostages she’d rescued, but he probably wasn’t; he was hard to abduct and far too stubborn and loyal to run from his duties. All I could really do was hope Celestia realized that Luna and I wouldn’t trade our lives for Shining’s. The math just…it just didn’t add up to make that exchange.

And Celestia would utterly lose Cadance’s support then, too, if anything happened to him, so he was probably going to be alright for now. Maybe thrown into a dungeon, but still alright.

“Well…” Cadance began, “Captain Armor has to obey me if I make it an order.” Cadance looked doubly uneasy after saying that as compared to before. “But Auntie outranks me, and she has plans of her own for ponies.”

Fantastic. “Alright,” I sighed. “If Shining chooses to or is forced to do anything stupid, I promise I’ll prioritize his safety as much as possible.”

I wouldn’t ever let my brother get caught in the crossfire, even if he hated me for the rest of his life for the interference.

“And I can probably do the same for the rest of the guard,” I added. They didn’t deserve to be caught up in this, either. A few of them I even had a certain fondness for.

“Twilight.” Cadance reached out a hoof to place on my shoulder, but I didn’t stop walking for it. I’d leaned on Cadance more than enough already. “Twilight, you don’t have to help us. Auntie and I can take care of Nightmare Moon. We have backup plans, although we didn’t expect you to, well, you know. Not that I’m blaming you for trying to solve your problems, but you could’ve picked a much better time.”

“No, I really couldn’t have.” This was it. We were only a dozen steps away from one of my memories of Luna.

“Yes you could have,” Cadance scolded. “If you would’ve waited even a year, things would’ve gone a lot smoother for everypony. I know you probably don’t want to hear this right now, Twilight, but you honestly have put all of Equus in danger.”

“I have not.”

I stopped dead on the last word, and my two companions went an awkward step and a half past me. I had to prepare myself for screaming, and yelling, and fear. The last time Cadance had found out about me and Luna, it hadn’t exactly gone over well.

But this time I could help guide her reaction. It still wasn’t going to be good, I was sure, but I’d be prepared to face it. Any negative reaction Cadance had was surprise, not a rejection. I just had to be as patient with her as she’d always been with me.

Turning around to face me, Cadance asked, “Are you deliberately trying to be difficult, Twilight?”

“It certainly wouldn’t be the first time,” Dash commented in the background.

I shook my head. “Cadance, I told you I have a mentor. Just like Trixie has Celestia” – I took a half-step back and held out a hoof invitingly toward the memory across from me – “I have Luna.”

The window depicted Luna overlooking me trying to learn a new spell. Along with the two of us was an artistic interpretation of what the spell could – with a lot of artistic license – look like if spells were visible through eyesight. A series of three concentric blue and purple disks floated parallel with my horn at varying distances, growing larger as they went out and upward.

Cadance’s jaw ever so slowly fell. At the same time, her hoof made its way to her forehead and stayed there, gently rubbing back and forth.

“Twilight,” Cadance began, clearly fighting off hyperventilating, “I think – I think I’m going to freak out.”

I opened my mouth, only to be cut off as Cadance continued.

“Could you please leave?”

W-what? She wanted me to – to leave? That wasn’t – Cadance didn’t do that to ponies! She didn’t do that to me.

Long before I could even think about replying, Dash asked, “Should I stay?”

“A-are you…”

It took her a few seconds, but Dash picked up on what Cadance was trying to ask, which was probably something along the lines of if she were Luna’s apprentice, too.

“Nah. That’s just Twi. I’m more of a self-taught pegasus.”

Cadance’s eyes lit up like she’d found a rock just shy of a waterfall. “Yes! I mean, please. It would help.”

Wha… Dash? Dash! Of all the ponies you could ask to help you, you asked Dash!

No. No, I needed to stop. I needed to calm down. In. And out. In. And out.

Dash was the only other pony here. If she hadn’t asked, Cadance probably would’ve sent her away, too. Cadance wasn’t the pony asking. Dash was just a boring mostly neutral party to Cadance, not anything special.

This wasn’t Cadance saying goodbye and good riddance. She just needed space.

But Cadance never needed space from me befo–

I stomped down on that little voice in my mind with everything I had. Cadance just needed some space from me. I’d been ready for accusations, and pleas, and just – just all kinds of talking, but I should’ve realized she might need some room to calm down. That was my fault.

But I wasn’t going to fall for this trap. No. I was going to be calm and reasonable. Not mad. Not upset. Not crying. I was here representing Luna. Everything I did right now would color Cadance’s perception of her. Everything.

I didn’t think I quite hid the hurt on my face, but I nodded. “I’ll just go down the way then.”

One step, then two. On the third, I almost let myself sniffle. But I didn’t. My face was out of sight, not out of hearing range.

“I’ll just…see you two later, then.”

It wasn’t until I’d walked to approximately as far as sound would carry – so far as I knew – in the Æthereal Realm that I first heard Cadance’s panicked and barely coherent shouts.

I – I guessed I should – should get out of hearing range. It was only polite.

My head jerked up off the ground when I heard a single pony’s fast, impatient hoofsteps approaching. The rhythm of the thumps came quickly, one after another: a four-beat gait. Cadance was walking – definitely not galloping – but her hooves must have been hitting the wisps with the force of a mare on a mission.

I rubbed the tears out of my eyes with a forehoof before rising to face whoever was coming. It was possible it wasn’t Cadance.

But no, it was Cadance, and Dash was nowhere to be seen. And her face was hard-set and focused as she approached. And when our gazes met, I had to check myself before I flinched away.

“Twilight Sparkle,” Cadance began, her voice cold and scolding, “you and I are going to have words.”

“I know. But are we” – I sniffed – “are we still sisters?”

Cadance tried to speak several times, but all that came out was incomprehensible nonsense. Finally, after the wind had completely been knocked out of her sails, she said, “Of course we are.”

I managed a smile, and I got a small one in return.

“Hug?” I asked, my wings spread open invitingly.

“I… Well… Okay.” Mid-hug, Cadance continued, “But we’re still talking about this.”

I knew that, and that was fine. But I needed this right now. I squeezed Cadance a little tighter.

I let out a long sigh and then finally let Cadance go.

“So where’s Dash?” I asked.

“She’s waiting back that way” – Cadance gestured backward down the path – “for us to finish our talk.”

I supposed that was for the best. “So did you watch my memory?”

“I did.” Cadance paused, her brows scrunching together. “Twilight, I need you to really listen to me on this one, okay?”

Biting back a sigh, I said, “I’ll listen, Cadance, but that doesn’t mean I’ll agree. And you have to listen to me, too.”

Cadance’s jaw worked ineffectually for a few seconds. “Fine. But you can’t just let what I say go in one ear and out the other.”

“Same to you.”

“I always listen to you, Twilight.”

“Not real…” Upon consideration, even if Cadance didn’t always agree with me or I with her, she did at least do her honest best to understand me. “You know what? You do. And that’s a big part of why I love you.”

I got another smile from Cadance, but it didn’t last long.

“Twilight, Auntie and I haven’t always seen eye to eye, but if she were here, we’d be in agreement over this. You’re being tricked. You’ve been taught by Nightmare Moon, not Aunt Luna.”

And there it was. I wouldn’t snap at Cadance; I’d seen this coming an AU away.

“Alright, Cadance, I’m listening.” I had plenty of objections, but I’d hear out Cadance first as I’d promised.

“How much do you know about Discord?”

Less than I probably should, but I had enough working knowledge of him for most purposes. “I’ve never met him, but I know what he was like and the kind of stuff he did. Honestly, I probably know more about the Discordian Era than you do.”

“Really?” Cadance asked, eyebrows raised.

“Mhm. My mentor doesn’t try to hide her past from me.” Unlike some other teachers I could name.

“I…don’t know what to say to that.”

I shrugged. It wasn’t like a pony couldn’t use openness to hide information, too. I’d certainly learned that lesson today with Mother.

Eventually, Cadance asked, “Well, have you ever heard of the Alicorn Amulet?”

That did ring a few bells, although it wasn’t actually that useful of a magical artifact.

“I have. I actually… I guess it doesn’t matter much at this point, but will you make me a promise?”

Cadance hesitated before asking, “What is it?”

“Please consider my point of view on this. I see Celestia as a threat, and I have a lot of” – potential – “friends on the Nebulous, as well as…”

Hmm, this wasn’t really the right time to bring up Twinkleshine.

“As well as what?” Cadance asked.

“Well, some other time for that.” Smooth, Twilight. Real smooth. “But anyway, I brought Spike with me as well. I’m reasonably sure Celestia won’t do anything to the two foals we have with us, but I don’t know what she’ll do to the mares who agreed to come with me of their own free will. I tried playing a trick on Celestia to get her to spare them, but I need you to not let her know I actually care about them. As far as she’s concerned, I conscripted them into service, okay?”

After a moment of thought, I added, “Dash included, I guess.”

Even now, a small smile grew on Cadance’s face.

“Sure, I can keep that secret. You never talked much about your friends, and I suppose I understand why now, but I’m glad you really made some.” And then Cadance added, “Did you bring Twinkleshine with?”

I was halfway to facehoofing when I said, “Now is not the time, Cadance.”

“Alright, fair. But what were you going to say?”

“Oh, right. I know a bit about the Alicorn Amulet. I used part of the enchantment to help Spike make a birthday gift for–”

Cadance put a hoof to my muzzle. Then as serious as I’d ever heard her, she asked, “Twilight, do you know what the Alicorn Amulet does to ponies?”

“It makes it much easier for them to draw in ambient magic for spellcasting, effectively making them stronger. The amulet itself seems like a major magical artifact, but it’s actually pretty simple and low power.”

After bringing her jaw back up, Cadance said, “Twilight, the Alicorn Amulet isn’t – well, I mean, it does do that, but it’s a Discordian Artifact. It’s cursed!”

“Well, maybe part of it, I guess. But I didn’t give Berry Pinch anything bad for her. I only used–” And then I realized what exactly Cadance was trying to suggest.

“Twilight, Aunt Luna was the last pony to possess the original amulet. It drives ponies to madness! It clouds their judgment and warps their personalities. And Auntie said that even back then, Aunt Luna liked to use dark magic. That’s not a good combination!”

No, it certainly wasn’t, but only an idiot would wear a known cursed artifact, and Luna wasn’t an idiot.

And even beyond that, rule number one of magical safety was if you don’t know what something did, you found out before you used it.

“Cadance, I understand what you’re saying. Trust me. I do. I know a lot about magic. But you watched at least one of my memories. Did Luna really seem like a madpony to you?”

“Not all kinds of madness are obvious, Twilight.” Cadance took a step closer and brought a wing up to my muzzle. “I don’t know if Pupa told you, but I was so worried whenever I saw you – her – you two using dark magic. I guess I don’t know how much of what I saw was real anymore, but you were so dangerously obsessive about magic. That’s its own kind of madness.”

I had to work extra hard to make my mouth work. “You – you think I’m insane?”

“No! No, Twilight. I – I mean, what you showed me of your life had me really worried. I just meant that sometimes it’s hard to tell if a pony is in their right mind. Insanity doesn’t necessarily make ponies any less intelligent or any less able to present a stable front.”

I meshed my own wing into Cadance’s and pulled it off of my muzzle.

“Luna hasn’t made any attempts to hide the bad things she’s done from me.” Except her involvement with Mother’s death…

“You’ve thought of something!” Cadance half-shouted.

“No. Cadance, please don’t remind Celestia of this – I don’t want anypony to get hurt – but do you know what Luminance is?”

Cadance’s eyes widened for just a moment. She then whispered to herself, “Of course you’ve been there. You went to the moon, after all.”

“Let me guess. Celestia showed you the hallway sealed off by dark magic.”

“Among other things there,” Cadance replied, nodding. “If you’ve seen that, too, then you must understand what I’m saying.”

I shook my head slowly. Cadance was the one who didn’t understand here.

“The rest of the paintings didn’t stop while Luna painted that hallway, Cadance. That story was decades long. All that hate, all that anger, all that despair, it was all Luna. That was Luna at her worst.”

My eyes found their way back to Cadance’s.

“But that’s the point. That was Luna’s worst. She’s not normally like that. Maybe one percent of her painting efforts at most went into that hallway at the time for stress relief.”

“You’re just rationalizing away things you don’t like, Twilight. That wasn’t Luna anymore. That was a break in Nightmare Moon’s facade. Why do you think that was the only place with Nightmare Moon’s image?”

“That’s a bit of a stretch.” Even with a sympathetic ear and a large pinch of salt, that conclusion was still a stretch. “Cadance, I’ve seen Luna at her worst, live and in pony. She was terrifying, but she was hurting so, so much. She was devastated to hear what her sister intended to do to her. Maybe she went a little more off the deep end a thousand years ago than she can admit to herself, but she’s not normally like that.”

Cadance took a deep breath, afterward letting the tension run out of her withers.

“Suppose you were right, Twilight. A thousand years of banishment would just make things worse for her, as terrible as that would be. The seal on her must be weakening if she can reach your dreams, but even just nine-hundred years alone–”

“Stop. Cadance, Luna has been dream walking since she was banished.”

I knew what Cadance was getting at, though. A thousand years of solitary confinement would shove almost anypony to the wrong side of sanity. If Celestia hadn’t already planned to kill Luna, I’d dare say that would actually be almost an excuse for her behavior.

But Luna hadn’t been put into that position, and Celestia had intended to erase Luna from existence from the outset.

“Banishment is terrible, even for Luna,” I continued before Cadance could find words to respond with. “Dreams are impermanent, ephemeral. There’s no books; she can only visit one pony at a time; she has to remember everything or forget it forever, since she can’t record anything; and Luna has been denied most of what makes her happy for centuries. Dreams don’t last long enough for her to paint, or sculpt, or build, and her exile has kept her from being there for Equestria in times of need. I’m sure you know Luna was the head of Equestria’s army from day one.”

It was my turn to take a deep breath after getting all of that out.

“And even with that,” I added, “Luna is remarkably balanced and stable. Now can you imagine what it took to make her lose control a thousand years ago?”

“No. Twilight, just no.” Cadance’s frown had only grown deeper as I’d spoken. “How do you even know Nightmare Moon has been dream walking for long?”

Well, assuming that I couldn’t just say because Luna said she had, which wouldn’t be much of an argument from Cadance’s point of view, there weren’t many ways to truly verify historical claims. Time magic wasn’t an option yet, but I could take a page out of historians’ books.

“We could check Equestria’s financial records against something Luna claimed to have done,” I suggested. “Luna has been active in Equestria, and she still has ponies managing her assets and financing her affairs, including me. I would expect at least some of those records have been preserved, if perhaps not ones from all the way back to the start of her banishment.”

I certainly wasn’t afraid of the results I’d find from such a test. If Cadance wanted, I’d be perfectly willing to ask Luna for the requisite information.

“Fine,” Cadance said begrudgingly, “let’s assume you’re right, that Nightmare Moon has been able to dreamwalk the entire time. It doesn’t change the fact that she was already a lunatic by that–”

It took me a few seconds to realize I’d been glaring. But then on second thought, I kept glaring. I didn’t think I knew any derogatory terms more insulting than ‘lunatic’.

“Ugh. Look, Twilight, I’m sorry about how I phrased that, but my point still stands. That the word lunatic exists at all should tell you something. And then there’s ‘moon madness’, and ‘touched by the moon’, and plenty more expressions.”

I stomped my hoof. “Social proof is the worst kind of logical fallacy. Do you think Luna eats foals if she doesn’t receive offerings of candy on Nightmare Night?”

“No, legends aren’t true, but they…” Cadance’s eyes lost focus for a moment.

“What?” I growled.

“Nothing. Just, this explains why you were always so stubborn about Nightmare Night.”

Oh. Wow, talk about putting a damper on my temper. I briefly wondered if Cadance had done that intentionally.

“Anyway, answer me this.” Cadance paused to take a breath. “If Nightmare Moon were really Aunt Luna, and sane, and her little outburst a thousand years ago were just a fit of anger, then why didn’t she try to talk to Auntie? Why didn’t she try to explain herself? Yes, terrible things had happened when they’d fought, but Aunt Luna could’ve worked with Auntie to find a way out of banishment early.”

I opened my mouth to yell out my response, but I checked myself after realizing it was untrue. Luna hadn’t known Celestia intended to kill her yet. Not that there wasn’t a perfectly good explanation anyway.

“Cadance, Luna only had one chance to retain her sanity. If Celestia found out she could dreamwalk, Celestia would’ve found a way to block that ability. And even if Celestia couldn’t–” I begrudgingly added, “Or wouldn’t,” for the sake of argument before continuing. “–it would be far too big of a risk for Luna to reveal herself.

“Think about it. Luna was – and still is – near murderously angry with her sister, and for good reason.”

I paused for just long enough to give Cadance time to interject and deny that Luna’s anger was at least understandable, but she didn’t.

“Luna was hurt and felt betrayed by the pony she was closest to and trusted the most. How could she possibly ask Celestia to free her? How could she trust Celestia with her future?”

“Because they could have talked it out!” Cadance calmed herself and continued, “Auntie is stubborn, but she does listen to ponies. If Nightmare Moon really were Aunt Luna, she would’ve known that. And even if she somehow didn’t, she would’ve been able to figure that out if Aunt Luna had just spent a night talking with Auntie.”

Cadance paused for only an instant to catch her breath. “Maybe not right away. Emotions were running high for everypony in the weeks after. But Auntie would’ve listened.”

I shook my head, resisting the urge to snarl. Luna may have acted out of turn, and she may have been forced into doing one or two terrible things since, but Celestia’s actions – even just as Luna had known them at the time – were inexcusable. Luna would have had to be insane to have trusted Celestia in that situation.

“I don’t think we’re going to agree by talking this out, Cadance.” I didn’t want to admit that, but I didn’t see any other end to this conversation. “I can show you my memories of Luna. They’ll show you how nice and wonderful she’s been to me and my friends. But they won’t mean anything to you since you didn’t know Luna a thousand years ago.”

“Neither did you,” Cadance commented. “How would you know the pony you know is the real Aunt Luna?”

“I…wouldn’t,” I said lamely. “But what does it even mean to be the real Luna? Ponies aren’t static creatures, not even once fully grown. We change over time. We grow and learn. I’m not the same pony I was when I was two, or eight, or eleven.”

“Maybe, but you’re still you at your core. Nightmare Moon isn’t Aunt Luna. She’s just acting the part. They’re not the same pony at all. Auntie and I don’t know enough about the Alicorn Amulet to tell you exactly and in detail what happened to Aunt Luna or if that’s even the problem. But if it’s not actually the truth, then Nightmare Moon might as well be a possessing spirit in Aunt Luna’s body anyway.”

Cadance’s eyes widened in time with my own as we both realized the other application of what she’d just said. We both knew a pony who approximately fitted that description.

“So what?” I whispered. Then with all the force the words deserved, I asked, “Even if what you were saying is true, and it’s not, why would it matter to me? Why should I care?”

I knew the current Luna. I knew the Luna who had taught me magic. I knew the Luna who had guided me from a little filly unicorn just barely scratching at the surface of magic all the way up to ascension. I knew the Luna who knew the perfect way to rub my mane. I knew the Luna who always knew just what to say. I knew the Luna who I still had a score to settle with in most every game we’ve ever played.

Why would I ever want to trade her for another version?

“Twilight, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean anything by that. I really didn’t.” Cadance stepped forward to wrap her wings around me, and I just barely allowed the gesture. “You’re your own pony, Twilight. Whether or not we could get Sunset back by removing you from your body, you don’t deserve that.”

“And if she were like me in any way, Luna wouldn’t deserve that either.”

A second passed, then two, then three.

Finally, Cadance said, “I…suppose.” Hugging me tighter, she continued, “Twilight, whatever you believe, whatever I believe, whatever the truth is, I have a responsibility to the ponies of the world. I can’t let an insane alicorn roam free.”

“Luna is not insane. How can I make you see that?”

Cadance released me from her wings. “I don’t know, Twilight. I’ve listened to you, and I’ll keep listening to you. I’ll watch any memories you want to show me, but I don’t think you can change my mind on this. I can only tell you what I think from what I’ve seen and heard, and it’s not good.”

That was what I’d thought and what I’d been afraid of. Cadance was arguing that we should trust Celestia, which would just be foolish for me and Luna. I was arguing that Cadance should trust Luna, and she was going to see all the facts colored against Luna.

I knew how this story ended. I’d seen it before with Luna and Celestia. But I could learn from them and take action before this blew up in my face.

“Cadance, whatever happens, I’ll always be your little sister.”

I managed a weak smile, and Cadance smiled with me.

“And I’ll always be your big sister.”

“Hug?” I asked, my wings open and ready for Cadance this time.

“Of course.”

Author's Note

Prereaders – Starlight Nova, Strange Reasoning

Chapter Thirty - Perpendicular Perspectives - Between Enemies

“Oh no…” I sighed to myself. It was that memory.

I backed off from the window I’d just touched. The rather cheery image of a ridiculous filly Luna and me mid-tackle atop a cloud concealed the deeper secrets contained within this memory.

“What is it this time?” Cadance asked, her eyes studying the window while her face grew ever more confused.

“Oh, no way!” Dash said. Somehow I could hear her intention to use this as embarrassing blackmail material later. “Is that Princess Luna?”

“Well, yes. We were making fun of…er…”

Cadance, the pony we’d been joking about, turned her head away from the window to look at me. “Of what?”

“Nevermind,” I said. “It’ll make sense in context. Long story short: my dream, my rules. But this memory was from…the last Hearth’s Warming you and I physically spent together.”

Eyes narrowing, Cadance asked, “And how much of that disaster was Nightmare Moon responsible for?”

“Luna didn’t do anything. It was all my fault. It was an accident, but I could’ve stopped it from ever happening if I hadn’t been an idiot.” I pulled my gaze up from my hooves. “Before you watch it, I want to apologize in advance for what I had to do.”

“Twilight–”

“Just watch it,” I interrupted. “I was stupid, and that’s no excuse, but everything will make sense in context.”

Cadance hummed in annoyance, or maybe even in anger, but she did as I asked. Her hoof came up to the window. The usual second passed, then two, and the third. And then her hoof came off the window.

“I’m…I’m done.” Before my brain could catch up with what Cadance had said, she continued, “I can’t – I can’t do this anymore.” Cadance turned to face me, tears at the edges of her eyes. “I can’t watch your memories anymore, Twilight. It’s like watching a disaster unfold. How can you not see that Nightmare Moon is dragging you into the darkness?”

“Wha…” There were too many objections vying for my attention, but one came out right away. “I told you that was all my fault. Everything was my idea. You must’ve seen that.”

“And that’s what’s so horrifying!” Cadance cried. “Twilight, they were your ideas. They came out of your own thoughts. Normal ponies don’t think like that. Normal ponies don’t attack their family. When you were just a wee filly, you never would’ve thought of such things.”

Alright, alright. Calm down, Twilight. If you let your emotions get the better of you, too, you and Cadance would just start yelling at each other. You had to keep it together for her.

“Cadance, I really am sorry for what I did. If I’d been smarter, you and I never would’ve been put into that position.”

Sniffling, Cadance said, “I – I don’t – don’t even care about that. What you were planning to do to me – to us…”

That drew a wince from me, but Cadance had to know I hadn’t wanted to hurt her. The original plan, as unpleasant as it was, had been in the memory. It’d just been so much safer for me if nopony had discovered I’d left home. I couldn’t have known in advance that things would work out even if Cadance and Celestia knew I’d vanished, and maybe it wouldn’t have if I’d done it under different circumstances than the ones I’d left under.

“You understand!” Cadance’s voice cracked as she shouted.

“No, Cadance, I–”

“I know you’re not a monster,” Cadance interrupted. “I know it. You’re not like Nightmare Moon, but she’s turning you evil with smiles and kind words.”

I sighed inwardly. “Cadance, I know the difference between right and wrong. I know I’ve done things I wish I hadn’t. But I didn’t have a choice. I don’t regret them. I’ve always tried to minimize the damage, and I always will. Unlike you and Celestia, Luna and I haven’t been allowed the luxury of operating overtly.”

Cadance opened her mouth to object, but I beat her to the punch.

“I mean overtly in regards to your opponent. It didn’t matter if you leaked information to me. You two held all the cards. But if I leaked information to you, it was game over. Can we at least agree on that? From my perspective, at least?”

“It wouldn’t excuse anything.”

“It’s not like I enjoy straddling the line between good and bad. There has always just been too much at stake for me.”

“And for Nightmare Moon,” Cadance retorted.

This was completely unfair and not an argument I’d normally use, but it’d probably get through to Cadance.

I unfolded my wings. “Look where we are, Cadance. We’re in the Æthereal Realm. I’m all but an alicorn now. Even if I had no connections to Luna at all, do you think Celestia would have ever let me have this?”

Cadance took a couple seconds to react to the change in topic, but she replied, “Those are Nightmare Moon’s words, not yours.” Her eyes momentarily darted toward the window next to us.

“No, they’re not. I may not have thought much about it until recently, but I always knew the answer to that question. Honestly ask yourself, do you think Celestia would’ve let me chase my love of magic all the way here?” Sunset had been slapped down hard when she’d tried.

“Well…” Cadance hesitated, but she did agree with me in the end. “No, probably not. I mean, I don’t really know, but I guess I am only the third alicorn.”

An extended moment of silence passed as Cadance contemplated something or other.

“But Aunt Luna didn’t ascend ponies, either. Nightmare Moon wouldn’t have let you do this if she had a choice. You’re just a tool to her.”

I shook my head. “You’re wrong.”

“Twilight–”

I interrupted Cadance’s interruption. She was going to misunderstand if I didn’t explain.

“I am Luna’s tool, but I’m not just her tool. She’s my friend, and I’m hers. Whatever use she makes of me, she wants me to be better off afterward.”

“That is a horrible definition of friendship.”

“It’s not a definition; it’s a corollary.”

“It’s still horrible.”

“I admit it’s a bit cynical, but it’s accurate. I can make predictions of Luna’s – no, all my friends’ behavior with it.” I quieted the little voice telling me this was a horrible, unfair argument as I added, “And it’s historically true, too. Luna guided me all the way here. My flares are gone. I’m safe. Everypony around me is safe. And – and you’ll never have to bury me.”

Cadance paled, and her jaw worked ineffectually.

Finally, whispering into my hooves, I finished, “I don’t know where I’d be without her…” Other than not existing, but if Luna had decided all those years ago after having me made that she actually didn’t want me, I honestly had no idea what would’ve happened to me or where I’d be now.

An old question I’d asked Pupa resurfaced into my thoughts. If Luna hadn’t been there for me…

No, I didn’t even want to think about that anymore. I wasn’t as immortal now as I wanted to be, but I was pretty close.

Into this heavy silence, Dash interjected, “Uh, hey, you two. Maybe we should just move on? I mean I don’t know what you’re really talking about–”

I swatted Dash’s hoof away from my memory. I’d only shared it with Cadance because it concerned her and had Luna behaving like a proper mentor in it. It wasn’t like I was showing Cadance my entire life, just small parts of it.

“–but you’re sorry for whatever, right, Twi?”

A moment passed before I answered, “I am.” Not that I would go back and change my actions.

“And you’re not gonna do any of it again?” Dash continued.

“No, not likely. Not unless circumstances require.” I brought my gaze back up to Cadance’s. “I won’t let anypony die.”

I saw Dash nod to herself out of the corner of my eye. For whatever reason, she looked pretty proud of herself.

“Right, and Twi was raised to be a princess, and make hard decisions, and see that everything gets done no matter what, and stuff like that.”

After a brief pause, Dash added, “You know, probably. Twi is kind of tight lipped, which I guess is important for princessing, but it’s also really annoying.”

I spared just enough time to glance at Dash and roll my eyes.

“Anyway, no offense, Princess, but you kinda seem too nice for that. I mean, Alicorn of Love and all that. You’re probably not really in the right profession.”

In what was probably the most patient voice Cadance could possibly bring to bear at the moment, she said, “Rainbow Dash, I know you’re just trying to help, but–”

“Argh.” Dash’s wings rubbed furiously through her mane in frustration. “Why do I have to do this horsecrap? Look, you two love each other. Just hug or something.”

Hugs didn’t solve everything, Dash.

“Cadance,” I began, “I really am sorry for every abuse I’ve taken or thought of taking with our friendship. I never would’ve done any of it if I weren’t convinced it was important. Whatever you think of her, Luna is important to me. I couldn’t risk her freedom or her life.”

I fell to my haunches and took one of Cadance’s forehooves in two of my own.

“I trust and love my big sister Cadance, who just wants the best for everypony.” My weak smile faded into a frown. “But you’re also Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, niece of Celestia. I couldn’t trust her not to trust Celestia, the aunt who could afford to be in her life. Trust is… I need…”

Wait… Ugh. If I could get a headache in the Æthereal Realm, I’d probably have the worst one of my life right now. It just occurred to me that Celestia was my foster, adoptive Aunt – and my adoptive aunt-in-law after Cadance married Shining – something like an estranged sister-in-law with how close I was to Luna, and my foster grandmother.

Stars, and we were probably distantly related genetically through somepony in Luna’s family, separated by a couple dozen generations. Just imagining the royal family tree was–

No, not thinking about it right now. I pulled my gaze back up from where it’d fallen and resumed the infinitely more important task before me.

But I closed my mouth just after parting my lips. There had to be a better way to phrase this for Cadance. She didn’t really have the experience to relate to what I was trying to get across.

Maybe this was one of those things I was trying to do backward again. There were two special ponies who always at least knew something about what was going on in my life, after all.

“I told Mom and Dad about my trip. And they always knew about Luna. It wouldn’t hurt them, or me, or Luna for them to know, so they always have.”

A second or two passed in silence as I waited for Cadance to ask the next obvious question. During it, I kept hoping Cadance wouldn’t think to ask about my potential long-lost sister. I held no answers there, only questions.

“And Shining?” Cadance asked exactly the question I’d wanted her to.

I shook my head. “Like you, he had a conflict of interest. He’s a royal guard. I don’t know what choice he would’ve made in the end” – but I hoped it would’ve been me – “but either way, telling him would have cost him either me or his honor, pride, loyalty, et cetera. I couldn’t do that to him, let alone the other risks involved.”

I let Cadance mull over my words for several seconds before I continued.

“And if he didn’t choose me, even if he reconsidered one second too late, I would’ve lost everything: Luna, my ascension…my magic.”

That elicited another wince from Cadance, unfortunately. I hadn’t meant my apology to make Cadance feel guilty. That sort of defeated the purpose.

“Cadance” – her gaze refocused on mine – “I’ve always known I was going to have to make up Hearth’s Warming to you, and I promise I will. I’ll spend centuries apologizing if I have to, because you’re worth it. We’re worth it.”

I bit my lip and emphatically did not add, “That is if I’m still alive after everything is said and done.”

“You can be upset with me. I’ll understand. I’d have to be crazy to hold that against you when I give Luna’s grudge a pass.” And that wasn’t even considering my own. “I just want you to see me for me. I’m not being tricked. I don’t need rehabilitating, and I don’t need to be dragged out of the ‘darkness’.”

Lastly, I added, “I just want you to be upset with me. I just want the chance to apologize to my sister, not to have her shift the blame to somepony else. Is that…” I clung onto Cadance’s hoof extra hard. “Is that too much to ask?”

It really wasn’t, right? Cadance should be upset with me personally, not Luna. Seeing somepony in a new light can be hard, and this wasn’t exactly an improvement for me, but that should make it all the easier. It was always easier to dislike somepony you loved than to love somepony you hated.

So why wasn’t Cadance saying anything? I could understand if it took her a few days to fully process it, but surely she could say something. A yes, or a no, or even an ‘I don’t know’ would be wonderful. Instead, she just kept staring at nothing, her mouth moving a tiny bit every second or so.

It wasn’t like I was asking her to forgive me. I hadn’t even asked that much of her. All I wanted was her anger, or sadness, or whatever she was feeling right now directed toward the pony who deserved it.

Cadance fell to her haunches, and her other forehoof came up to steady my own shaking ones. She wore a sad smile on her muzzle.

And she still wasn’t saying anything.

“What is it, Cadance?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Cadance replied, her voice brittle and breaking. “I think we should spend more time together, just the two of us.”

“Wha…” How had Cadance come to that conclusion? “I – I would love to, but…why?”

I could see Cadance reaching for a lie. It was written all over her face as always.

“I think we need time to get to know each other. And this time no secrets, no aunts, no responsibilities. Just us.”

“That does sound nice.” Nice enough even that I didn’t really care to try and find out what Cadance was really after with the suggestion. “Maybe we could wander the moon together. My tour guide was busy the last time I was there. Oh, or maybe we could go visit Draconia. If you wouldn’t mind if I brought Spike with. Or–”

“Anywhere would be fine. But I – I need to go.” Before I could get a word in edgewise, Cadance whispered, “I’m sorry.”

And then Cadance disappeared. She’d faded out of existence over a fraction of a second, and I’d missed most of it as I’d blinked. I nearly fell onto my face with her sudden disappearance, having lost the support her hooves had offered.

“Uh, Twi, where did she just go?”

I grunted as I got back up onto all four hooves. “Probably back to the Physical Realm. I guess. I don’t know.” Cadance could be on the Nebulous or in another galaxy for all I knew.

“Right… Well, should we get going?”

“Yeah,” I sighed. If I hadn’t already gotten through to Cadance enough to at least set her to thinking, I probably wouldn’t be able to at all. This was a pretty horrible parting of ways, but I didn’t see what more I could do without letting her cool off first.

And based on my best guess, we likely only had ten minutes or so of walking left at this point, which wasn’t much time for concluding remarks anyway. And I still hadn’t come up with anything I could really call a plan for escaping Celestia. I had more options now as an alicorn than I’d had before, but I still didn’t like my chances.

Waiting out Celestia probably wasn’t a good idea either. We could probably stay safe here in the Æthereal Realm for weeks, but by that point, there’d be no way we could leave safely. There’d be a thousand and one traps and wards waiting to snare us the moment we reappeared. If we left now, we might have a chance. There’d probably only be a dozen…

I sighed again. Then together, Dash and I began the last leg of our journey.

After I finally felt ready to, I pulled my hoof off what was probably the last of Sunset’s memories.

“Huh,” I whispered to myself. It wasn’t really all that important, but I hadn’t expected Sunset to know dark magic, too. Unlike me though, she fueled it with fear, not anger.

If the memory hadn’t already told me, it wouldn’t have been hard to guess what fear Mother used for her dark magic. She really had loved Celestia like a mother and hadn’t wanted to lose her, even when their relationship was stressed to the breaking point…

“Of course I did,” the voice of Sunset in my head told me. It wasn’t just a whisper or a feeling anymore, but a proper and distinct personality. I knew it was really just me talking to myself – I’d checked, just to make sure, and it couldn’t tell me anything about Sunset I didn’t already know – but I’d even managed to get the cadence in her voice right. “She practically raised me, you know, and I barely ever saw my own parents. We lived so far apart.”

Ignoring Mother, I turned my attention down the path of wisps. There were no more memories in sight further along, and I was fairly sure it had an appreciable incline.

“Let’s get going,” I said to Dash. “Do you remember the signals we talked about?”

Dash groaned out another, “Yes.”

“And you remember everything I told you about using your horn?”

“Oh my gosh, Twi! Yes!”

I checked myself before shouting back. With Fluttershy at stake, I knew Dash was taking this seriously. I just wanted her to be pedantic in her preparations for once. We only had one chance to make good our escape.

The rest of the climb went by quickly, and looking back, we had definitely climbed. At the peak, the wisps abruptly fell downward and the path ended. The edge wasn’t frayed, but it certainly didn’t look like a natural break either.

“So what now?” Dash asked. “Do we jump?”

I tested a hoof over the edge. Like much earlier, some wisps came out to meet it.

“Probably not,” I answered. I wished Cadance were still here; she would know what to do. Luna had only told me to follow my memories, and now I had no directions left.

“Oh my gosh!” Dash shouted all at once from behind me.

I spun around to discover a blue…swirl, for lack of a better word, the same color as Dash’s coat orbiting around her increasingly fast. And then it split into two swirls, orbiting Dash like electrons.

Before I could say anything, a lavender light of my own popped out of my chest and did the same.

“Get ready!” I shouted, unable to control my volume. “This is probably it!”

A pure white glow emanated from Dash’s chest and slowly lifted her into the air, growing brighter all the time. Moments later, the same happened for me. The feeling was not unlike being held in somepony else’s magic.

My eyes slammed shut as Dash’s light intensified to a blinding level. I could only assume the same happened to me as well when the light fighting its way through my eyelids doubled in intensity.

A steady crackle of raw power built up until I felt myself being torn apart again, exactly as I had when I’d first come to the Æthereal Realm.

This was it! This was it! Oh my gosh!

The next thing I knew, my wings felt heavier, and I was being assaulted by some new sense. I hadn’t even opened my eyes yet, and I still couldn’t feel my horn and magic properly. They were there, but…different.

But the new sense, I didn’t know how to describe it. There was a whole lot of whatever it was I was sensing around me, and three somethings in particular stuck out to me. Two were close by, both blazingly…bright, I supposed was the word, although one was far brighter than the other and sent another weird feeling through…itself? Or me? What?

But there was another, far smaller, but still appreciable ‘light’ rather far from me, and it was surrounded by seven smaller sources.

And now that I’d had a little time to adjust, I could tell there were another seven whatevers near me. Six were together, vaguely in a circle, and a seventh one was just beside the really, really, really bright one. It didn’t hurt the way staring at, say, the sun would, but if I knew how, I’d want to wince away from–

My eyes snapped open, as did that other, new sense that I had. And when I connected what I saw with my normal sight and where that overwhelming source of whatever was, I knew what was going on, even as I panicked. I could sense magic passively.

The elements were tucked away on the bridge; those were the six dim magical sources I’d noticed before. Dash must’ve been the other intense source. She’d been moved to her bedroom. Probably. It was the right area. I didn’t care right now.

In front of me sat Celestia at the table I’d intended to bring up to the bridge. Chamomile was nearby without the sweater she’d had on earlier, and she was pouring a cup of tea placed in front of a vacant cushion.

I could feel a cold sweat building all over me, and my knees shook as I took stock of my situation.

Celestia opened her mouth, and her magic swirled in my magic sense, reaching out to some unknown purpose.

I readied myself as best as I could, summoning my own magic. I wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

“Argh!” I shrieked. Celestia hadn’t done anything, but a familiar pain wracked my head. I fell to my knees, unable to keep my balance.

I turned my magic sight onto myself, and I let out a weak gasp at what I saw. My magic was burning away and trying to regenerate, both at an insane pace. And I was pulling in magic from ill-defined sources around me somehow, but that was being singed away, too.

Chamomile’s magic spread out through her wings and launched out all around them, rushing closer to me. But it stopped soon after, and I heard her hooves fall back to the floor.

After both my whimpering stopped and my magic stabilized, I finally heard Celestia speak.

“I am terribly sorry, Twilight Sparkle, but we need have one of two long overdue conversations. The antidote is in Dame Chamomile’s delicious tea, but you will need to drink several cups for it to be effective.”

Out of the corner of my eyes, I caught Chamomile mouthing, “It’s true,” to me.

“You force fed me unicorn bane?” My voice came out hoarse and barely above a whisper.

A sip of tea separated my question from Celestia’s response. “Again, my apologies. I teleported it into your stomach upon your return. It was the only way I could be sure you would not slip out of my hooves before we had a chance to speak. I know it is quite rude to show up to a parley–”

I rose my head up just to let it slam back down into the ground. I’d left the parley illusion up, forgotten about it, and hadn’t told Chrysalis about it.

“–with ill intent, but I suspect you can at least understand the necessity. Knowing you, you forgot about your request as you ascended.”

Chamomile mouthed an apology to me this time. How much information exactly had Celestia already extracted from her?

My legs didn’t exactly take to the task well, but I rose to my hooves.

“You don’t know me,” I grunted. It wasn’t as hard to talk as before, but Luna had been right, even if she’d understated it, and Sunset’s memories couldn’t have prepared me: unicorn bane was unpleasant.

“Perhaps not as well as I should, but perhaps more than you know.”

Oh, horseapples. How much of my life had Celestia spied on? How much did she know? Obviously she hadn’t known enough to stop me from ascending, but…I didn’t even know anymore. I might be in an even worse situation than I’d thought.

“At any rate, we have plenty of time to get to know one another now, do we not?” Celestia continued. Her hoof extended toward the empty cushion in front of me. “Would you care to take a seat?”

Hesitantly, I said, “I guess.” It wasn’t like I gained anything from standing on weak legs. And if there really were an antidote in the tea, I absolutely needed it. I didn’t want to wait out this poison; I didn’t even know if my dragon magic would help flush it out of me.

I wobbled forward, prompting Celestia to ask, “Would you like assistance?”

“No,” I snapped. Celestia could’ve just put me on the cushion to begin with. These stupid little games to emphasize how in trouble I was weren’t needed. I wasn’t an idiot.

As I sat down, or rather collapsed down, I finally noticed the elephant in the room, so to speak.

“Why on Equus did you bring that with?” I asked, my head pointed toward an oversized bronze statue of Luna in her youth.

Celestia quietly set her teacup down before she turned to face the statue. I could tell she was using earth pony magic to move the cup with her hooves. It felt distinctly different from unicorn magic. More…mechanical than flowing?

Maybe that wasn’t the right way to say it. More rigid? That was closer to the mark, but still not perfect.

“I recovered this from Mona.” Celestia finally answered, a faraway look in her eyes. “That it survived all this time was a surprise to say the least. I wonder how much else I can recover.”

I fumbled with my now considerably larger wings to pick up the teacup in front of me. I’d never exactly developed Dash’s or Fluttershy’s level of dexterity with them, but I should be able to manage this. I’d have tried using grip magic myself, but I figured even earth pony magic would set off another poison attack.

However, apparently, I was wrong, since Celestia said, “You should try using your hooves. Unicorn bane is aptly named. It does little to limit other types of magic, although you would be unwise to use pegasus magic or changeling magic.”

As skeptical as I was of the advice, I didn’t see much of a point in lying about this. Mother told me I was being stupid, too, so I went ahead and tried.

My hoof came into contact with the cup, and I reached out to it the way I’d been taught. My hoof tingled, and the cup wasn’t exactly steady, but they came up together. I managed to down the entire contents before I set the cup back down.

“Well, I must admit I’m impressed,” Celestia said.

And I didn’t care. I cut off my glare before it could really get going.

“What were you expecting from the Alicorn of Magic?” I grumbled. At the same time I motioned for Chamomile to refill my teacup, and Sunset said, “I told you I could do it, Sunbutt.”

“A fair point. I imagine you will have far less trouble than Cadance.” Celestia chuckled before adding, “My sister wasn’t exactly a natural flier herself. She flew too low over a forest one time, and a tree spontaneously came to life and tried to grab her. Instead of just flying up, she plummeted straight into the ground. Heh. I had to pull her out of–”

“Shut up!” I screamed. How dare she speak about Luna like that! “I don’t want to hear this from you, you sororicidal mule!”

Celestia’s expression inverted, and her voice boomed and reverberated about the room in the way only one-hundred story tall adult, male dragons should be able to speak. “Twilight Sparkle, I never tried to kill Lulu!”

I wished I could return the favor, but without magic, I could only manage a regular scream. “Yes. You. Did! Saying ‘purify’ doesn’t make it any less murder!”

Did – did Celestia just snarl at me? What? I’d almost thought that was physically impossible for her.

“I think,” Celestia began, each word slowly and carefully chosen, “we both need to calm down.”

My eyes narrowed, and somewhere in the background of my thoughts, Sunset warned me to be careful before I set myself and everything around me on fire, although without flares to trigger the effect, I doubted I’d ever do that again.

That aside, did Celestia honestly think she could convince me she was anything less than an attempted murderess?

“Please, sit down,” Celestia added. “I would rather not end this conversation here.”

I complied with a huff, regular dragonfire bursting out of my nose with my snort. As much as I didn’t want to listen to Celestia, I didn’t want to fight her even more, especially while poisoned. But poisoned or not, simply put, I’d lose. Again. I hadn’t even had a chance to fight back after returning to the Nebulous before I’d gotten knocked out.

Taking a deep breath first, I reached out with a hoof and fiddled with my teacup. I put a little too much force into my – I shivered at the strange sensations coursing through me – grip and cracked the cup. It wasn’t leaking, so I wasn’t going to say or do anything about it.

“Fine,” I mumbled into my tea.

Celestia took that as her cue to speak. “Thank you. Twilight Sparkle, as well read as you are, there are things that you do not know, things that you could not know.”

Said the pony responsible for censoring most of those things. I was so close to saying that to her face, but I just buried my muzzle in more tea instead. Even in this situation, Chamomile’s best was delicious, and the antidote was apparently tasteless.

“When I defeated Discord with my sister, Luna” – Celestia put the oddest emphasis on those last three words – “we also restored much of the world to its rightful state. However, the Elements of Harmony are neither omnipotent nor omniscient; much of Discord’s fouler magics remained in the world.”

Oh no. Was she seriously going to try this on me? Cadance, sure, but me?

“Luna and I tried our best to eliminate them, but always there was one we missed, one we overlooked. Possessions were not uncom–”

“Oh, don’t even try!” I checked my voice before I started off another shouting match and decided to pretend Cadance hadn’t already given me this talk. “That is the lamest excuse you could’ve possibly come up with. What, was it some nightmarish moon spirit nopony had ever heard of before that just so happened to infect Luna, hence the name Nightmare Moon?”

Did Celestia understand just how utterly ridiculous that sounded? Something ‘possessing’ an alicorn, even a young alicorn, was the stupidest, most transparent lie I’d ever heard, disregarding all the other objections I’d brought up with Cadance.

“‘Oops, I spilled a glass of milk.’

“‘Don’t worry, it’s not your fault. You were just possessed.’

“‘Oh good. I wouldn’t want to take responsibility for my own actions when I make mistakes.’

“‘I’m glad you feel that way, because I’ve always wanted you out of my way. And since you’re an evil spirit, who cares what happens to you.’”

Finished with my little skit, I looked back at–

Oh my gosh! I was halfway to my hooves before I stifled my instinctive desire to flee. Celestia’s smoldering glare pierced right through conscious thought and reason to strike directly at my sense of self-preservation.

“Twilight Sparkle–”

The room darkened as Celestia spoke. No, the sun darkened. Once upon a time that would have terrified me, but now it – no, it still terrified me. I could feel my legs shaking beneath me. I didn’t know how many more cups of tea I needed to drink, but I needed my magic right now.

“–you have never watched your sister fall into darkness. You have never felt that magnitude of loss. To lose the one constant in your life, it is a pain nopony should ever have to bear.”

Celestia’s magic slapped my hoof away from my teacup. Under her gaze, I shrunk down into my cushion with a helpless mewl.

“My dear little Lulu might appreciate a good fight more than she should, she might throw small tantrums, but she would never say the things she did to me that night one-thousand years ago. She would never have been so careless with the lives of the ponies around us. She would never have that crazed look in her eye, a look so far gone it gave me goosebumps.”

“Yes she would,” I whispered, just barely finding my voice again. I just barely managed to raise my head from the ground, letting me sit up with a little pride.

And that was enough. That little act of defiance gave me the warm feeling I needed to find my courage again. In a growing crescendo, I continued, “Luna was miserable. She was hurting. And she broke for a short while. I’ve been to Luminance, and unlike some ponies, I was invited. I’ve seen the madness you’re talking about. It was all her. Don’t you dare” – my teacup shattered beneath my hoof as I slammed the table – “try to say her problems weren’t real.”

The two of us held each other’s gaze for an unknowable amount of time, perhaps for all eternity. But…I was getting wet, and my cushion was growing soggy, which broke my concentration. I scooted my cushion awkwardly away from where my tea was spilling over the edge of the table.

The mood was horribly broken, but surely that was for the best. Both of our tempers were getting a little out of control again. I didn’t want to be a smear against the wall or a mindless, brainwashed puppet under Celestia’s magic.

Chamomile bravely stepped between the two of us to clean up and provide me with another cup. Granted, being off to the side wouldn’t leave her much safer if we came to blows, but it would at least help keep Celestia’s eye off her.

I managed a stiff, “Thank you,” simply taking the cup with telekinesis this time. It was a grating experience, my teacup was shaking, and I could feel a sharply growing pain in my forehead again, but my magic was working at least.

For a time, Celestia and I drank in silence. Her thoughts were as impenetrable as ever, even if her emotions had been coaxed into the open for once. Literally every part of Sunset within me was screaming that I was missing something important, that Celestia wasn’t telling me something, but Celestia was just trying to rationalize her actions as usual.

However, even that part of my mind locked up when Celestia actually sighed, and I could have sworn I saw a smirk pulling at her lips, like she’d won somehow.

“I would like to make a deal with you,” Celestia began, “an exchange of favors. Agreed in advanced with full knowledge of what each would entail, without trick or guile. Do you think you could trust me enough to be open to such things?”

I wanted to say no, but all of Sunset was screaming at me again. “Sunbutt keeps her serious promises!” And…a favor could be very useful. Could I trust Sunset’s trust in Celestia? I – I supposed Celestia hadn’t ever actually broken an explicit promise, at least not so far as I knew…

“Maybe,” I said. I felt the small cut I’d bitten into my lip heal nearly instantly, although the taste of blood on my tongue remained. “What do you want?”

“I need answers to a few questions, fully and in detail, regardless of whatever you must do to obtain them or what knowing them may or may not do to you.”

“In other words,” I began, fairly confident my guess was right, “you need somepony to talk to Luna for you. Otherwise you would simply take what you needed as you did with Pupa, right?”

Without hesitation, Celestia replied, “With all of Equestria at stake, yes, I would. I have unfortunately never quite grasped my sister’s gift for less intrusive interrogation myself, and even she has had trouble with changelings. It is extraordinarily difficult to know what they are truly up to, as I believe they have just proved today.”

Great. So Celestia hadn’t been fooled by the geases at all. Or else she’d pried the information out of Chrysalis or Chamomile. I couldn’t say I’d be surprised if so.

Either way, Celestia knew I cared enough about everypony here to protect them, and that meant she knew she had blackmail material if she lied about how long the geases had been placed. And she had a number of potential willing hostages. Everypony had agreed to come on this trip of their own free will, but no sane mare would trust the word of somepony who had placed a mind controlling spell on them in a hostile confrontation with the ever popular Princess Celestia.

Why the buck not? Life was too easy right now, what with Celestia trying to bargain for information.

“Do you have a list?” I asked, proud at how level my voice came out. I wouldn’t be surprised if Celestia had prepared one or several while waiting for me to return from the Æthereal Realm.

Celestia nodded. “Dame Chamomile, the third one, if you would.”

Ugh. I didn’t know what was worst, that Celestia knew Chamomile was my knight, that I was jealous somepony else was giving her orders, or that I was already thinking of her as my knight. They were all pretty bad. Chamomile didn’t belong to me.

“Here you are, Princess,” Chamomile said to me, not Celestia, a lengthy scroll held out with a hoof. So much for a few questions.

“Thanks.” I took the scroll with telekinesis, not trusting myself not to rip it to shreds in the unrolling process otherwise. It was worth the headache if it got Celestia off my ship even a second sooner.

I first took a preparatory breath. There was no telling what information Celestia was going to demand from me, but whatever came up, I couldn’t react to any of it. That could be the trap in and of itself.

Alright. I unrolled the scroll.

And I read, and read, and read. If I wrote full and complete answers to these questions, I’d be giving Celestia a novel. That said, most of them were…reasonably benign, if perhaps offensive, but I had to work hard not to pale at some of the questions. If I hadn’t already known their answers… I suppressed a shiver at the last instant.

I had a feeling saying, ‘I’m not comfortable answering some of these,’ wasn’t such a good idea either. I’d be all but admitting I knew the answer. And with a lot of those questions, I might as well have given the answer away for free. Simply being uncomfortable with answering, say, ‘Who killed Sunset Shimmer?’ gave Celestia free information.

As if I had little interest in the document, I tossed it onto the table just in front of me, still partially unrolled.

“Some of those questions were redundant or are invalidated by negative answers to related questions,” I commented.

And Cadance already knew the answers to a lot of them. I couldn’t even try to delay action on this exchange of favors because of that, or most of my bargaining power would vanish.

“Forgive me if that bothers you,” Celestia said with something that was almost a frown. “I remember Cadance once mentioned you had a strange mental tic with lists.”

I didn’t like the way Celestia had said that. It’d sounded like there was some deeper meaning behind it.

“There’s always a deeper meaning with Sunbutt,” Mother commented.

Still, it wasn’t like Celestia was wrong, at least when I was eight. Not that I wasn’t impressed she’d remembered that for so long. She must’ve gotten that piece of information from back when she was still considering making me her apprentice.

“Honestly,” Celestia continued, “I didn’t compose that scroll to leave you unbalanced. For completeness, I added everything that might need to be addressed, and personally, I merely would wish for time to recover between bad news and the details of it.”

For lack of any better words, I said, “That’s fair.”

“So then” – Celestia’s eyes met mine and held them there – “what would you want in exchange for this information?”

Well, what I wanted was obvious. “Stay away from me and mine in every possible conceivable meaning of those two words at all times, maintaining at least a distance of one AU.”

“I fear I would have to move the sun and moon a little too close to Equus to accept that deal.”

I raised an eyebrow. Was Celestia trying to inject humor into this situation?

Celestia mirrored my action almost perfectly, although it seemed she was a bit out of practice at moving her eyebrows separately.

“Unless perhaps you did not plan to return to Equestria?”

I wasn’t sure – it was far too subtle to be certain – but it sounded like hope and dread were both vying for control of Celestia’s voice.

“Of course I’m going to return,” I grumbled. I wanted to go home. “How about this, then? Promise not to mess with anypony’s mind ever, by your actions or through another’s.”

Celestia shook her head. “I could not possibly agree to that without having those answers first, as much as I wish I could.”

Yeah, right. You couldn’t possibly agree because you could never reach your goal if you did.

“Fine. Leave us in peace until after the Summer Sun Celebration is over.” Luna would be free by then, and all we really needed to win was peace until that moment. “And tell me what you plan to do once you have your answers. I won’t settle for anything less than that.” It was times like this that I wished Luna had forced me to go to Ponyville’s market to learn how to haggle.

After a moment’s deliberation, Celestia said, “Provided you leave me and mine in peace as well; you make a prompt effort to discover these answers; and after I have those answers, I have a chance to speak with your mentor directly before the summer solstice. If you can do that, then we have a deal.”

I fought off the urge to roll my eyes. “Yes, I’ll honor the spirit of your words if you honor the spirit of mine: no moving the solstice, no moving the Summer Sun Celebration, no shortening it, no interfering with Luna’s return, none of that.”

“You have my word,” Celestia said with a nod. “I left instructions for the flame sending spell with Dame Chamomile, as well as directions on how to reach both my flame and Cadance’s. If you cannot manage it yourself, Spike should prove able. Or you may always visit Canterlot Castle to speak to me in person.”

Yeah, like that was going to happen.

A tiny little smile snuck onto Celestia’s lips. “I must admit how impressed I am with your son’s growth and character since custody was returned to you. Given your circumstances, you have proven yourself a far better mother than I could have imagined possible.”

That compliment wasn’t exactly free of thorns, but it was still nice to hear. At least I was getting some respect for my accomplishments. And maybe Celestia’s words had stroked those little parts I got from Sunset, parts which would always want her praise.

“Thank you, Sunbutt.”

A moment passed in which Celestia and I were silent. Chamomile was silent, too, of course, but her silence was more of the jaw hanging open, I couldn’t believe you just said that variety.

And then it hit me that I’d just said something I probably really shouldn’t have. Celestia would’ve found out who I’d once been from Cadance or from a letter from me, of course, but I would’ve been long gone at either of those two points, not still in the same room with her.

“Sunset?” Celestia whispered.

I turned away from Celestia’s eyes before they had a chance to draw me in. Something about them felt like they were looking at more than just the normal visible spectrum. And even turned away, I could still feel them on me.

Magic swirled and danced inside Celestia to some unknown end. All I knew was it wasn’t forming a spell, at least not one from any type of magic I recognized.

“I’m – I’m not Sunset. I’m her…daughter.”

Celestia didn’t say a word, but she did stand up.

“Just go,” I said, my voice accidentally amplified by my magic. The sound of hooves came to an immediate halt. “If you want any of your answers, if you think your word is worth anything, then leave.”

Leaving me in peace most certainly included not inflicting emotional distress on me, too. It wasn’t exactly what we’d meant when we’d made our agreement, but it was certainly in the spirit of it.

I waited and waited and waited, and when nothing happened, I finally looked back up. Celestia was gone. I hadn’t even felt her use any magic. Had I really been that out of it? No, I was the Alicorn of Magic now; there should be no way I could miss a teleport.

Whatever. I lost interest in the problem. Unless she’d found a way to hide her magic from me somehow, Celestia was gone, and that was more than enough for the moment.

And for once, my brain and my body were in complete agreement. I collapsed onto the table with a thud, and soon after, I slipped and fell to the floor. But before I landed, Chamomile caught me in her hooves. She deposited me back on my cushion, and I whispered a quick thank you. I couldn’t give in to any kind of fatigue yet, mental, physical, or emotional. I still had things to do.

“Where are the elements?” I asked. Even as I remembered that I already knew, an extended hoof guided me to where they were tucked away.

It was actually a little hard for me to believe my brain was still working enough to worry about this kind of stuff. The elements were useless to Celestia now, so she had no reason not to use them to track me.

Granted she’d probably legitimately forgotten about them at the end, since she hadn’t hidden them away. I would’ve looked for and would’ve found them no matter where she put them anyway, but still, if I were her, I’d have given it a shot.

I teleported the elements outside the ship and casually flung them away. They were out of sight before I could even blink. That got me to smile at least. Being an alicorn was going to be fun.

As I set up all of the spells I’d need to scrub my teleport signature out of existence after we left, I turned to my temporary doctor.

“Hey, Chamomile?”

“Yes, Princess?” she asked, snapping to attention with an almost infectious energy. I’d lost pretty much everything that was keeping me going.

“Can you make sure Dash doesn’t try to use any magic until I wake up? I don’t want her blowing up the ship or giving away our position.”

“Your will be done. Do you require anything else?”

Nodding, I said, “More tea. My head is still on fire right now.”

Chamomile held out the entire pot for me, and I took it without complaint. Before I began the process of downing it all, I asked, “What happened while I was gone?”

“Honestly, not much. The sun princess was rather polite.”

I swallowed an extra large gulp. “No surprise there. It’s kind of her shtick.” I’d actually gotten to see her yelling and angry. I kind of wondered how many ponies besides Luna could lay claim to that rare event.

“Yes, I could tell. She showed up about ten minutes after you left.”

Ha! I deserved an award for a pretty accurate guess on her travel time.

“When she first arrived, she didn’t so much dish out divine retribution as gentle slaps on the hoof, if even that. But she did remove the geases you placed on everypony, and then…”

“Yes?” I asked, although through the teapot, it came out more like, “Hmpgh?”

Chamomile picked up a book from the table and deposited it in front of me. The ship’s log really wasn’t something I’d wanted Celestia to get her hooves on, but here it was.

Hesitantly, I asked. “How much of it did she read?”

“All of it.”

I choked on my tea, descending into a coughing fit. “How?” I squeaked. I swore, if Luna had been holding out on me with a speed reading spell…

“I think she skimmed it for the most part. I couldn’t tell you what pages she read in detail.”

Ah. There must’ve been keywords Celestia had been looking for. That made sense.

After I nodded, Chamomile continued, “Once she’d finished with the log, she asked me for quill, ink, and parchment for those scrolls of questions. I still have the other three, if you want to see them.”

“Later,” I sighed. I didn’t have the energy for any actual thinking right now.

I downed the last of the tea and rose to my hooves. After testing some basic teleporting and finding the dull throb in my head bearable, I set about my next to last task for today.

More magic channeled through my horn than ever before, almost more than I’d ever dreamed possible, and I was barely even trying. There were no flares, no restraints, no worries. There was only more and more magic as it flowed in from nowhere all around me. I’d dare say I was even brighter in my magic sense than Celestia had been when she’d knocked me out.

Honestly, I didn’t even know where it was all coming from. It wasn’t my magic…unless I had so much now it couldn’t all fit in a Twilight Sparkle sized package. That was a crazy thought.

A hoof touched my shoulder, and Chamomile’s voice accompanied it. “Are you all right?”

Ah. I was laughing at nothing, wasn’t I? I hadn’t even noticed. That had to have been creepy.

All the magic I’d stored and shaped into a teleport, I released at once. The stars around us all moved in an instant, some moving very little and others making great leaps across the sky.

I really should have teleported us a few more times and changed our velocity randomly before arriving at the coordinates Luna had written to go to after ascending, but just one teleport was already asking a lot from me. We’d be safe enough. Celestia had left. We’d be safe at least until after I’d given Celestia her answers.

“Yes, I’m fine,” I said, finally answering Chamomile’s question, yet wobbling on my hooves.

But I couldn’t collapse yet. I had one last thing I wanted to do.

This was probably a little too complicated of a spell to do safely when I was this tired, but I wasn’t mortal anymore. If I messed up too badly, my body would just fix the damage done.

Huh. Was any alchemy permanent on me anymore? Was I going to look like Sunset when I woke up?

No, probably not. I still looked like me. I’d think regeneration would work faster than that like it had when I’d drawn blood from my lip, even for detail work like changing my appearance. And Cadance could cut her mane short and dye it if she wished, and she still molted normally.

If none of that counted as damage that needed to be regenerated, then what constituted ‘damage’ was probably flexible enough to let me change my genetic makeup to viable alternatives.

Besides, I was just going to change the pigments of my current mane and tail. It wouldn’t let me produce new hair with the same color, but as a temporary solution, it’d do. Later, I’d find two ponies with the colors to copy into my genes properly.

Magic washed over my mane and tail from the roots to the tips.

I didn’t have the energy or balance left to look at my tail, so I put together a scrying spell.

Ugh. With my usual pink and purple stripes replaced with red and yellow, I looked like Dash.

Whatever. I could fine tune the colors to better blend into my dark blue hair later. I was done with today.

“Oh, and Chamomile,” I continued, the last of my work done, “I really need a bed.”

I passed out.

Author's Note

Prereaders – Starlight Nova, Strange Reasoning

Chapter Thirty One - Perpendicular Perspectives - Between Friends

Before I even knew what was happening, I found myself spinning about with somepony’s hooves wrapped around my barrel. And then, only once I was thoroughly sick to my stomach, I flew away from whoever was holding me until our forehooves met. My captor used what could only be earth pony magic to hold me to her as we spun.

Ah. My vision focused just long enough to see Luna in front of me and grinning like a madpony who had way more energy than I did right now.

“You did it! You did it! You really did it!” Luna exclaimed.

She pulled me in for a tight hug, resulting in the two of us spinning even faster and completely out of control. It took but a moment before we toppled over and tumbled across the ground. We came to a rest side by side some ways off from where we’d started, Luna giggling like a filly.

“Oh, Twilight, you have no idea how happy I am for you. No, of course you do. You must be even more excited than me!”

“Mhm,” I managed, content to do nothing more than lie down and relax.

“Twilight? Is something wrong?”

I turned my head toward Luna to find her gazing toward me.

“No. Well, yes. But mostly no. I’m just every kind of tired except magically tired. Today has been rough.”

“Rough? How so–” Luna’s eyes widened, and she froze. “Oh no. Twilight, what – what happened to your mane?”

“Well…” This was my moment to channel my inner Pinkie Pie. “First, Spike awakened Generosity, and then Dash ascended, and then I freaked out, and then I did some thinking and some more thinking, and then Chamomile awakened Loyalty, and then I awakened Friendship, and then I ascended, and then I went to the Æthereal Realm, and then I found out what happened to Sunset Shimmer, and then I had a talk with Cadance, and then I had a talk with Celestia, and then I made a deal with her, and then I teleported away, and then I changed my mane and tail to look like this, and then I collapsed.”

Luna sat up. Her eyebrow raised as she looked at me, silently telling me she hadn’t followed a word I’d said.

I got a little giggle out of Luna’s confusion. My head collapsed back on the ground as I finished, my eyes closing as well.

“Luna, if I went to sleep in a dream, would I get double the amount of rest?”

“Are you really that tired?” Luna asked.

At the same time, I felt something soft come into existence beneath my back and another something soft beneath my head. Finally, something wonderfully heavy and constrictive fell on top of me, and I snuggled into it.

I opened my eyes just a little bit to make sure I’d been given a bed, pillow, and blanket.

“I literally fell asleep on my hooves, Luna. I’m dead to the world.”

“Ah, my apologies for all the exercise earlier, then. Feel free to relax, although I’m afraid the answer to your question is no.”

I silently cursed to myself. I really wanted and needed to talk to Luna, but even that just felt like so much work right now.

Sensing my rather obvious distress, Luna offered, “Would you like me to return after you’ve had some rest?”

“I – yes. I’m sorry, Luna, but I need some time to recover. If you could come back in four hours or so, I’d really appreciate it.”

A hoof ran slowly and cautiously through my mane as Luna spoke. “Of course, Twilight. It’s enough to know you’re safe and sound. I can wait a few more hours. I have more than enough experience with waiting.”

“Feeling any better?” Luna asked.

“A little,” I answered. “Enough to talk, at least. But I think my body is going to sleep for two days straight, regardless of whatever else I might need to be doing.”

Nuzzling me, Luna said, “I certainly wouldn’t complain about that. It’s been too long since we were together like this.”

Yes, it had. But Luna’s affections felt…wrong, off, like she wasn’t putting her whole heart into it the way she usually did.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

Luna bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. “I…don’t know. Is there?”

Oh. Oh, right. I’d rambled off a dozen things to Luna earlier, each one of which could be rather distressing all on their own. And then I’d basically told her to leave me alone. That was a little mean of me, but I really had needed time to let my brain reset.

So now that I’d had some rest, how did I feel about…well…everything? Yesterday had been high pressure to remain functional; my thoughts should be suspect until reexamined. And now I had the pony I needed to fill in a lot of my guesswork with real answers.

“I don’t know either, Luna,” I said. There was no way I was going to jump to conclusions or do anything I’d regret, not at this point. But at the same time, well, there was a lot we needed to work through. “Let’s just start with the petty stuff, I guess.”

“The petty stuff?” Luna echoed me, her voice pure confusion.

“Did you know Dash could ascend?”

“All ponies can ascend, Twi–”

I cut Luna off with a glare. It wasn’t often that I glared at her outside of games when she’d skirted the edge of the rules a little too closely. It remained a very effective move, judging by how Luna flinched.

“Please, Luna, straight answers. I’m tired; I spent yesterday dealing with Sunbutt – ponyfeathers – Celestia doing that half-truth crap to me, directly or indirectly; and I really just want to hear full truths from you right now. Please?”

I thought I saw Luna gulp, but I might’ve just been imagining it.

“Very well. You of all ponies deserve that. We will have no games or lessons this afternoon.”

Luna took a moment to do nothing and say nothing, not even to breath. It wouldn’t have been a stretch to describe her as a statue in that instant.

For my own part, I let out the breath I’d been unknowingly holding. I – I supposed I hadn’t been as sure Luna would be open with me as I’d thought…

“No, Twilight, I did not expect Rainbow Dash to ascend. If I heard you earlier correctly, that must have been…distressing, to say the least. I spent much of the past several hours chiding myself for overlooking that potential problem, that somepony other than you could ascend.”

“Alright,” I said with an accompanying nod. One answer down…and what felt like a million to go. “In that case, I don’t need to have words with you later about that. Or at least not too many, I guess.”

“‘Have words’?” Luna’s face flashed with obviously fake distress. “Oh Stars, I think I just dodged a bolt. Both Spike and Twinkleshine have told me on more than one occasion that your lectures can be quite the terrible fate.”

Hmph. It seemed I needed to have words with those two when I woke up.

“Anyway,” I began, ignoring Luna’s jab, “I guess this isn’t too relevant, but did you notice both of our ascensions? I’m just curious because I don’t remember you looking too surprised when I mentioned Dash’s ascension.”

Luna shook her head. “I can’t feel much of anything in banishment. I was just distracted by the…other matter.”

The other matter being Sunset, of course. Yes, I could imagine that would be distracting for Luna.

“Okay,” I began, trying my best to keep the strain out of my voice, “then there’s something else I have to know. No, there’s two somethings, one of which I really should’ve asked years ago. The last time you and Celestia fought, you two made a mess of the Everfree. How much are you willing to sacrifice to defeat her? And do you want to…”

It was my turn to gulp. I didn’t want to ask this question. I was sure I wouldn’t like the answer. But I had to. I couldn’t make any decisions if Luna didn’t answer it for me.

“Do you want to – to kill Celestia? I don’t want you to – to…”

Stars, I couldn’t say it! I didn’t want Luna to commit sororicide unless she really had absolutely no other choice. I didn’t know how Celestia planned to live with herself after it, but I couldn’t let Luna do that to herself.

And yet – and yet I knew what Luna was going to say. She just hadn’t said it yet.

I mustered up the courage to speak without thinking, and I spat out, “I-I can’t get behind killing alicorns, no matter how much they deserve it!”

Luna muttered some Old Equestrian curse I didn’t know, but the sound and tone made its intent clear.

A horrible image of wiping Cadance’s blood off my hooves flashed through my mind, and I whispered, “Much less your own sister…”

“Twilight, three times now in my life that mare has made me honestly and truly want to kill her, and each time I told myself not to. I told myself I would regret it someday.” Luna looked away from me, gritting her teeth as she sunk into a whisper herself, her mood spilling out and darkening my dream. “But yes, I want to.”

“But you won’t?” I squeaked.

A very tiny, silent nod was all the answer I got, which wasn’t exactly reassuring.

But at the same time, I – I could understand her feelings. My own thoughts toward Dash lately hadn’t been much different. I’d be lying to myself if I said I hadn’t wanted to murder her. I honestly didn’t know how I felt about her right now, but I knew what the right thing to do was, unfortunately.

Sigh… It was probably best not to dwell on my own admittedly less reasonable grudge right now; it wouldn’t accomplish anything useful. And besides, Luna really looked like she needed to be reminded there were ponies who loved her. Her problems were so much worse than mine.

I wrapped my forehoof around Luna’s. She jumped at my touch, but she didn’t flee as she had when I’d told her of Celestia’s plans. I drew her eyes toward mine and held them there until her features softened. I gave her a smile, and shortly after we shared a nuzzle.

Once we were finished, Luna said, “I never did thank you for your hug and words all those years ago. And most of all for your patience with me; I should’ve been responsible enough not to lose control of my anger like I did.”

Saying I just did what anypony would’ve – or rather should’ve – done probably wasn’t the right response here. If I were Luna, I wouldn’t want my appreciation thrown back in my face. Nor did Luna have much luck with ponies treating her right by default.

“So thank you.” Luna’s face contorted through a half-dozen emotions as she continued. “It – it helped me more than you know.”

“How so?” I blurted out before I really thought about it. Luna winced. “Sorry, you don’t have to answer that.”

“No…” Luna started, words abandoning her. “I – there was nothing you could have said or done then to convince me to calm down, but…”

Luna turned away from me completely, face and body. I lifted a hoof to walk back in front of her, but I quickly thought better of it. It was insanely hard to notice with her coat color, but she was shivering. And something about her was radiating a ‘leave me alone’ vibe. It might’ve been a magical effect or something to do with our being in a dream.

“Twilight, I… No, I can’t just – I need to explain – but then you already know.” Luna descended into incoherent mumbling for some time. Finally, just as I was about to speak, she asked, “You still want to be called ‘Twilight’, right?”

“Of course I do,” I answered firmly, leaving no possibility for doubt. Of everything that I’d learned and thought yesterday, the one thing that I was absolutely sure of was that I wasn’t Sunset Shimmer.

I just barely heard Luna let out a sigh. “Twilight” – Luna’s tone overflowed with equal parts relief and dread, like my name was the last rock she could latch onto in a river just a few hooves shy of a waterfall – “I almost ruined everything that day.”

“Surely you didn’t think to go haunt Celestia’s dreams!” I asked.

That would have ruined everything, and it would’ve made Sunset’s death utterly pointless. Luna had only had one chance to surprise Celestia with her dream walking, and it had to happen after the elements were dealt with. Otherwise Celestia would have gone through the painstaking effort to keep them on her person at all times.

Magic poured into Luna’s hooves, and the ground groaned beneath her under the strain. “Worse.”

“Worse? What could you have done that would’ve been worse than that?”

Luna didn’t answer. Instead, more and more magic entered her hooves until the ground about her actually fractured. Dozens of long crevices were left in the wake of what must have been earth pony magic squeezing the ground.

“Twilight, I said I almost lost everything. Everything, Twilight, not just my life. When you touched me, when you spoke, you reminded me you existed.”

“You were…going to hurt me?” I asked hesitantly. It didn’t sound right, but Luna made it sound like she would’ve lost me somehow.

But that couldn’t be it. I would’ve forgiven Luna eventually; she hadn’t been in her right mind at the time. If I couldn’t forgive Luna for lashing out at the nearest pony to her when she was that upset, I could hardly tell Celestia what she’d done a thousand years ago was wrong; if I’d abandoned Luna over something so petty, I would’ve been equally responsible for her death, and if I thought that was right, then Celestia could justify killing Luna with any petty slight.

Not that it meant Luna could just go around hurting anypony with her life in their hooves, but it was an extreme situation and she would’ve apolo–

“No.” Luna said, interrupting my thoughts. An awful coldness had entered her voice. “I was not going to hurt Twilight Sparkle, but I would’ve lost her all the same.”

What? But then how did being reminded I existed – my eyes widened and I unconsciously took a step away from Luna.

“There I was, far beyond furious with that mare, and who should happen to interrupt me but Sunset Shimmer, the weapon she’d spent decades affectionately grooming to destroy me. I wasn’t going to hurt you; I was going to break you. And in ways that would keep your mind from focusing long enough to take control of your dream. I’d already planned what to do first.”

I worked my tongue and jaw, but it was some time before I managed, “B-but you didn’t.”

Luna laughed once. It was short, dry, and filled with derision. I had no clue if it was directed at me or herself.

“No, I did not.” Luna’s voice picked up a pale shade of the fire and anger she’d had when I’d told her of Celestia’s plans. “How could I? I needed you to free me, and to have my freedom in your hooves, even by my own choice, that vexed me more.”

A silence feel between us. Luna ruffled her wings, but she otherwise didn’t move.

For my part, I really didn’t know what to say. Here I’d gone and thought something silly like my love and words had reached Luna back then and she’d left me for so long to cool down and reflect on her life. Obviously, I’d been living in a fairy tale.

“I left,” Luna picked up where she’d stopped, “unable to trust myself with you, making excuses to myself about how it would hurt you and your teacher more later if I did; torture doesn’t have to be physical, and the irony was delicious. I was ready to come back the following morning, but I couldn’t bring myself to. Your hug and your voice were gnawing at my mind. There was something that I had to remember, something fundamentally important.”

Er… That counted as my love reaching her. Kind of.

“When the haze finally cleared, I recalled my decision the year prior.” Luna pointed toward her mane with a hoof, still refusing to properly face me. “I resolved to stay away until I truly remembered who you were and put your past behind me, until I could trust myself to never make that mistake again, until I was fit to be in your company.”

“I-I see.”

I really wished I could have said something more eloquent. It wasn’t everyday Princess Luna, Alicorn of the Night and Goddess of the Stars, said she was unworthy to be in your presence. That was one big gargantuan apology. But still…

“So–”

I nearly gasped as Luna turned around. Her face was plainly a nervous mess, and there were actual tears in her eyes. I’d never ever seen her cry – no, I’d seen her cry once before, but only when she’d found out about the mare in the moon.

“–I owe you one timely rescue from insanity, an apology, and a promise that I will do better. If – if you will continue to put up with me.”

“What? No!” I trotted forward to close the distance between us. “I mean, of course I will! No! No! I mean, I don’t put up with you! Luna, I’m not going to abandon you ever! If you ever got so bad that I felt I had to, I’d try to help you instead, not leave. I…”

My voice dropped to a whisper, and I stopped just short of Luna. “I don’t appreciate even the thought of being” – I gulped – “t-tortured. But you didn’t. And you grew from it, right?”

I locked eyes with Luna, and she visibly kept herself from looking away.

“I don’t know,” Luna said, her voice matching mine in volume. “I’m very old, Twilight. It’s not easy to change at my age.”

I opened my mouth to make a suggestion, but Luna cut me off.

“If you’re about to suggest I grow up again with a more plastic brain, I can’t do that while banished, nor do I know if that will work for alicorns.”

“Oh.” So much for that idea then.

“But I’ve…” Luna fell into silence, clearly struggling with whatever she wanted to say.

I leaned forward into a nuzzle. “It’s alright,” I cooed. “We all have to start from somewhere, and you’re tried your best so far, right?”

Luna had taken half a season off from teaching me to work out her problems. That was a pretty significant chunk of time, even if I should’ve been teaching myself while she was gone. Those five weeks could’ve made the difference between me ascending and not ascending, in theory. That was the difference between Luna living and dying. That said an awful lot to me all on its own.

Finally returning my nuzzle, Luna let out a long sigh. “I suppose. But I…I know I’ve rearranged my – my priorities.”

A slight increase in the pressure on my neck was all the hint I received that Luna was both physically and emotionally leaning on me for support right now. But…why? What exactly about admitting she’d changed her priorities was so much more difficult than anything else she’d already said?

“What’s wrong, Luna?” I asked as one of my forehooves found its way across her withers

Sadly, Luna merely tensed up, so I tried running my hoof through her mane the way she always did for me. I wasn’t tall enough to do it right, and Luna’s mane was…weird, to say the least, but I liked to think it helped.

My ears perked up as I just barely heard Luna mumble something.

“Hmm?” I asked as I leaned back to properly hear her.

“I’m done,” Luna whispered again. “I’m done with her. Maybe in a thousand years I’ll get nostalgic and change my mind, but I’m done. She’s not worth it. As far as I’m concerned, I’m an only child. It was time and past time the pony who actually cared about me got the attention and regard she deserved.”

O-oh my. I – I didn’t know what to say.

Luna shuddered as she let out an impossibly long breath. “There. I said it.”

This time I knew exactly what to do. I leaned forward again and held Luna tightly. Giving up on Celestia, even when Luna hated her enough to want to kill her, had to be one of the hardest things she’d ever done. I could barely imagine ever doing the same with Cadance.

After sufficient hugging, Luna said, “Thank you, Twilight. After everything I had to do to get you, I really don’t deserve you.”

A frown passed over my face, but I removed it before Luna and I separated. We’d get to that horrible mess soon enough, just not right now. I wasn’t going to ruin this moment with that. Instead, I gave Luna a smile straight from the heart.

“Thanks for telling me all that. But I’m kind of confused on one thing.” I pointed to my mane as Luna had done earlier. “What was the decision?”

“Ah, sorry,” Luna began, wiping away the tears in her coat with a hoof, “that might have been a little vague. I was referring to the Hearth’s Warming Eve when I gave you a feather.”

I cocked my head to the side. “When you said you hoped I’d ascend and give you one of mine?” What part of that was a decision?

Oh ponyfeathers. Luna’s face warped into disbelief.

“Okay, what am I missing?” I asked. I’d like to hope it wasn’t anything too big, but context was screaming that was a futile hope.

“How do you not know? The Alicorn of Love helped raise you. And then you spent more than half a decade in close quarters with a pair of pegasi you married.”

“Is…” The answer to this question was almost certainly going to sting. “Is this maybe social incompetence on par with not noticing Dash had the talent to ascend?”

Luna facehoofed. “This goes far beyond a little egocentricity. Twilight, your homework is to read a few romance novels and war epics written by pegasi.”

Now I was getting a little annoyed. “Alright, I get it. I need to work on my casual interpersonal skills. I’d already figured that out yesterday. What cultural subtext did I miss?”

Luna sighed and mumbled, “I’d hardly call it subtext,” before continuing with more of a lecturing tone. “When a pegasus gives you a primary feather, it’s a vow of – of…of… Stars, what’s the modern word?” Luna once more reached far afield into some ancient sounding foreign language for a swear I couldn’t recognize. “It’s approximately a vow of love and fraternity. In essence, I’d told you, ‘I will not abandon you under any circumstances.’”

Oh stars, did I have egg on my face.

“I thought you knew that…” Luna trailed off with an exaggerated quivering lip.

“Well, I mean, I sort of kind of remember thinking something vaguely along that line, like ‘I’ll see you to the end of this safely so you can give me a feather, too’ or something approximating that. I, um, here.” I plucked one of my own primary feathers, wincing slightly, and then presented it to Luna. “I have natural alicorn feathers now, and I pretty much said the exact same thing to you a few minutes ago. Do you want it?”

“It’s the giving that matters,” Luna said as her magic wrapped around my feather, “not the taking. But I will gladly accept this, and all that it means. Thank you.” My feather came to a rest in Luna’s mane, sticking up just behind her left ear and rising upward higher than the peak of her tiara.

A small little frown fell onto my face. Lavender didn’t go nearly as well with Luna mane as I’d have hoped. At least her mane only looked transparent, though; it would’ve been incredibly awkward if my entire feather were visible in it instead of just the part sticking out.

Wait a second… My frown deepened as my mind stumbled over something Luna had said.

“Luna, you said giving me your feather was a decision. What were you deciding between? Not abandoning me and…what? Abandoning me?”

There was that ancient curse again. “I’d hoped you wouldn’t notice that.”

“I’m right?” I screeched.

“Wait, don’t let that busy little mind of yours run off yet. Look, I… Before I got to know you, I was expecting to be teaching approximately a young Sunset Shimmer. If that was what I’d gotten, I likely would’ve distanced myself from you after everything was over in, well, one way or another.”

By one way or another, Luna probably meant if I annoyed her, I would’ve been taking a thousand plus year nap with Sunbutt. Which, I supposed, wouldn’t be so bad. Everypony but Cadance and Luna would be long gone when I woke up, but I’d still be alive and well, which is more than I could say of what Celestia would do.

Not that it wouldn’t be bad; it just wouldn’t be terrible. Luna and I probably needed to work on how she dealt with her problems sometime in the next few years. I couldn’t really tell if she just had a skewed sense of scale as an alicorn or if she just needed some help adjusting to a more modern – and reasonable – way of solving interpersonal and or judicial problems.

“But instead I got Twilight Sparkle,” Luna continued. “I spent many years trying to determine exactly what to do with you, all the while growing more and more attached as I came to know you as your own pony. When I gave you my feather, I stopped avoiding the truth. I finally decided to stop pretending I needed to ask that question.”

Ah, that was alright, then. Well, it wasn’t actually alright that it took Luna so long to know she wanted me around just as much as I wanted her around, but better late than never, I supposed. Some ponies went their whole lives without admitting their feelings to their friends or love interests. Considering the complicating factors between us for Luna, I could understand her struggling to accept that she liked me.

And in hindsight, offering ascension to an eight-year-old filly you’d just met was a little crazy. Luna would’ve needed time to get to know me well enough to know if she actually wanted me around her forever, regardless of whatever her plans required. It wasn’t like I could reasonably expect to have been her best friend when we first met. That just wasn’t how friendship worked.

“Then what about my other question?” I asked. “The one about what you’re willing to lose for us to win.”

The question wasn’t ultimately as important as everything else we’d discussed and still needed to discuss, but it did need to be answered. If Luna was worried she might lose it and destroy part of or all of Equus, I needed to know so I could be ready to hold her in check.

“I…” Luna began, only to trail off into a pregnant silence.

Had Luna really never thought about this before? Had she really never weighed the value of everything? Had she not calculated what she would be willing to destroy or throw away?

I couldn’t believe she hadn’t, so what was going on in her mind?

“At one time, I could have answered that,” Luna began, her voice starting as nothing more than a whisper. “But I don’t know anymore, which is more than a little distressing. Too many things have changed for my old thoughts to be considered truth. Certainly not you, though.”

I fought an eye roll off. “Well, as glad as I am to be on that rather exclusive list, we’re going to talk about this in detail later. I don’t want us to rule over a wasteland or a country terrified of us.”

I’d need to decide what exactly I was willing to lose as well. I hadn’t thought much on the matter myself. Mostly, I’d always assumed Luna would just go out there and win the fight for us while Cadance and I sat off on the sidelines. That was probably still true – plus or minus that other alicorn – but I needed to answer the question in advance, or I could hesitate at a fatal moment.

“Fair enough,” Luna said with a nod. “Now if I might ask a question, do you happen to know exactly what Rainbow Dash is an alicorn of?”

I shook my head. “No idea. I collapsed before I could even talk to her post-ascension. I only had an hour or so of alicorn time myself. I really meant it when I said I was exhausted.”

“That’s fine. I more or less figured that out when you actually asked me to leave and let you rest. I’d expected either hugging or screaming, not whining for five more minutes.”

“I did no such thing!” I huffed. Not that there was anything wrong with asking for five more minutes of sleep. Morning ponies were the worst kind of pony.

Luna just chuckled.

“I have other questions,” I said sharply. Luna’s laughter abruptly cut off: a small victory. “I guess the one I’m both most and least concerned with is what happened to Twilight Sparkle.”

I was most concerned because I didn’t want to have two ponies suffer for my continued existence, and I was least concerned because Luna had already claimed the original Twilight Sparkle was happy.

Frowning, Luna replied, “I don’t suppose you would appreciate me telling you your life story?”

“No. I just watched most of the prologue to my life story in the Æthereal Realm. I don’t need a recap of the sequel, too.”

“Ah! So that’s how you figured it out.”

Well, I probably would’ve deduced what had happened to Mother soon enough even without the Æthereal Realm’s help. I’d already figured out something was strange with Luna’s story of what had happened to her. It shouldn’t have taken me too long to put all the pieces together after that if I really sat down to think about it.

“Not primarily, but yeah. Speaking of which, were you ever going to tell me how I was born? Who my…mother was?” It still felt a little weird to call Sunset that even after getting some rest, but it also felt like the right thing to do. “I – I know you thought those windows during the ascension process were memories and probably assumed I would’ve have Sunset’s. They’re actually more like glimpses into the past. But either way, it was a big risk not telling me.”

Those last few words came out angrier than I’d intended, but I let them stand.

Luna sighed, “Yes, I know.” Then shortly after, a weak smile graced her face.

“To answer your original question, Aurora is the adoptive second daughter of Marble Sketch and Inkwell, a sculptor and a writer respectively who live in a small town just outside Manehattan. She skipped a few grades in her earlier years in education, and she’s now in her senior year at Manehattan University with a full scholarship. She’s due to graduate at the beginning of summer with a degree in history and…some kind of degree in library science.”

Luna’s brows scrunched together for a moment. “I can’t seem to remember what library science degrees are called. Anyway, she has a rather cushy job lined up for her in the Canterlot Archives come this fall, although I hear she’s expressed regrets about moving so far from her family.”

So…Aurora. I tested the name once just to get a feel for it. It was a nice name. I wouldn’t have minded having it myself. It would’ve been a good name for a princess. It certainly sounded more royal than Twilight Sparkle.

“Is she happy?” I asked. It sounded like she loved her family and that her family loved her back, but I had to ask. Anything less would be horribly irresponsible.

“As happy as a pony can be expected to be,” Luna said. “She’s not locked in a state of pure magical bliss.”

I didn’t really need the weak attempt at humor right now, but oh well. Twi – Aurora was happy and well taken care of. That was what really mattered. I could live with what Luna had described. But I had one more question.

“So how much have you interfered in her life?”

It didn’t really matter too much if some invisible hoof made things more pleasant for Aurora, but I didn’t want to risk messing her life up any more than we already had. At least not without her permission.

“As little as I could, but I do have a stallion subtly seeing to it that she wants for nothing.” Then after a brief pause, Luna added, “Beyond a healthy level of wanting in a pony’s life, of course. I didn’t just hoof over everything to her on a silver platter.”

Well, we wouldn’t want to turn her into a spoiled brat.

“Although I did do her a few very unnecessary favors,” Luna continued. “Her grades were beyond good enough to get a full ride to any college she wanted, but I saved her the hassle of writing scholarship applications. I’ve heard that they’ve become quite tedious over the years. I also had one or two couples who might perhaps have not given her the life she deserved chased off before they could adopt her.”

Luna stopped to chuckle to herself, and I couldn’t help wondering how exactly she’d made that happen. It didn’t exactly sound on the up and up. But whatever. That was hardly an issue anymore.

“Other than that,” Luna finished, “I’ve had no significant presence in her life.”

“I see.”

I breathed deeply, once in and once out. Yes, Luna had taken care of Aurora very well. That did wonders to ease my mind: one less pony that had to suffer for me to exist. She had a good life and, from the sound of it, a good family. What more could a pony ask for?

“Thank you, Luna,” I said, slightly bowing.

Luna tried to interrupt with, “No, Twilight, please don’t,” but I wasn’t having it.

“Thank you for taking good care of my sister. I – I really don’t know how my parents will react, or if I can bring myself to tell them” – I kept myself from biting on my lip; this wasn’t the time to worry about that – “but I’d like to thank you on their behalf too.”

“I did what I did for Aurora as an apology, that it might make up a little bit for what I’d done. I didn’t do it to be thanked. It’s nothing I should be thanked for. I was merely minimizing the damage. After centuries of ruling, it’s something you learn to do instinctively.”

Maybe Luna had a point, but it couldn’t just be instinct. Luna had gone above and beyond what she’d had to do to just ‘minimize the damage’. She could’ve just dumped Aurora anywhere, and she would’ve had as fair of a life as any other pony. Luna hadn’t had to go out of her way to make sure she’d be happy and well taken care of.

A moment passed as we both digested each others words, and a thought registered in my mind.

“Actually, do they know? Did you tell my parents?”

Luna looked down at her hooves for a second or two before responding.

“No, I didn’t tell your parents. All four of you – your brother included – were put under a minor suggestion spell for a season to overlook any unusual behavior on your part, and that was that. Ponies change quickly at the age you started at.”

And that brought a thousand other questions to my mind, but there was another dangling question that needed to be answered first.

“Still, you could’ve just left Aurora in an orphanage and called it good, so thank you. But that leaves the question of when the buck–”

No, no, that was Sunset talking. Swearing wasn’t a habit I intended to keep. I just needed to wait for her memories to settle into the back of my mind, and then that little quirk would go away, just like any other bad habits I’d picked up today.

Mother laughed at me. “Ha! Yeah right. You’re stuck with me, you know.”

I really needed to stop that. I really, really didn’t need to be developing a split personality.

“Ehem.” I locked eyes with Luna once more. “When were you going to tell me I was born from Sunset Shimmer?”

Luna opened her mouth. And then she closed it.

“Please tell me your answer isn’t never.”

“No.” Luna then repeated herself more firmly. “No. I intended to tell you before you ascended, but… Before the Canterlot disaster–”

I winced.

“Sorry, let me rephrase that. Before your last Hearth’s Warming on Equus, I’d played with the idea of telling you. I was going to introduce the idea to you slowly, testing how you might react as I went. I started by telling you who Sunset Shimmer properly was.” Luna took a huge, sluggish deep breath. “And that was as far as I got. Your reaction to Pupa’s condition, which was a reasonably similar situation, wasn’t exactly positive.”

“Wait.” I only expected one answer to this question, but I had to ask it, or it would prey on my mind forever. “Did you engineer that disaster just so you could see how I’d react to Cadance messing with a pony’s – er, a changeling’s mind?”

“Of course not,” Luna said, and I let out the breath I’d been holding. “I don’t go looking for trouble, Twilight. I just have practice turning setbacks to other uses. You might notice that our opponent did the same; my niece was forced to take her magic lessons seriously, even if her progress remained fairly slow.”

My muzzle hung open for a moment or two before I pulled it shut.

How could I have missed that? I hadn’t given it a single thought. Cadance had taken the blame on herself all by herself, yes, but she didn’t decide the punishment. It’d felt like a natural consequence, not one with an agenda.

Ugh. I’d been so sloppy. That should have been obvious. How long was I going to be so terrible at this before I reached Luna’s level?

But wait. Celestia stopped Cadance from working too hard later on. How did that fit?

Well, no, that was obvious. Cadance had been on a pretty self-destructive path at the time. A broken alicorn was far less useful than one who couldn’t fight or defend herself. That made sense.

“After that disaster,” Luna continued, “I shelved the matter. I told myself I would wait until you were older and more mature. Then I told myself I would wait until you were ready to ascend. Then when your secret was discovered, I nearly revealed the matter to you, but I told myself it wouldn’t do to seem like I was only telling you from fear of somepony else doing so first. Always I found an excuse to put it off until later.”

“I suppose that’s better than nothing,” I grumbled. At least Luna had actually taken the first step to tell me. That was…something.

“Perhaps, but I was making excuses. I couldn’t bear the risk of losing you, let alone what that would have done to my plans, and I was a fool. I should’ve had this entire conversation with you years ago.”

Yes, she should have. Luna really should – and probably did – know better than to fall victim to this kind of procrastination. It was a horribly unsatisfying excuse, but…not one I couldn’t at least understand. I’d done the same thing with Twinkleshine when we were young, although with much lower stakes.

But Luna would have to do better with me. I was old enough now, and I knew what Luna was capable of when pressed. She wouldn’t ever have to hide anything from me again without a real reason.

“If it means anything to you,” Luna said, “the only lies I’ve ever told you were related to Sunset Shimmer in one way or another.” Luna cleared her throat. “Well, excepting the setups for harmless pranks or jokes, but–”

“–those don’t count,” the two of us finished together, one of us very grumpily.

Whatever. I closed my eyes and attempted to clear my mind for a moment. It wasn’t exactly something I ever had much luck with, but I sometimes found the frustration of failing at it sometimes diverted my frustration with other things: in this case, Luna.

It wasn’t like it benefited Luna for me to have found out the way I had. She’d made an innocent mistake, even if she really shouldn’t have. I understood her lame excuse. It was stupid and frustrating, but I could relate. Still, I wasn’t going to let her forget this.

Seriously, I’d been old enough to cope with my origins for forever now. All she had to do was write me a letter saying, ‘Hey, Twilight, you’re made of recycled pony.’

Okay, maybe it wouldn’t have been that simple, but still. Was it really that hard? Chrysalis already knew, so Luna could’ve even simply delegated responsibility if she really couldn’t have brought herself to do it herself.

Ugh. Whatever. “Fine. I don’t care. I mean, I do, but be more prompt with this kind of stuff in the future, okay? Please don’t keep secrets from me anymore. Not without a valid reason, like when I was trying to awaken the elements.”

“I… Stars, how did it go?” Luna scratched her head with a wing until inspiration hit her. “Oh. I Pinkie Promise I won’t. Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.”

I raised an eyebrow. I wasn’t even going to ask how Luna had managed to learn that from Pinkie Pie.

“Twilight, this honestly has bothered me for years, and I feel terrible for not telling you myself.”

After Luna had said her part, I asked, “Should I be expecting any more surprises?”

“About you or recent events? No. At least none that I can foresee. But I could certainly spin you a historical yarn or two that would shock you, if you wish.”

“Maybe some other time.”

While shocking historical tales certainly did sound interesting, I’d had more than enough surprises and mental strain for the year, and maybe even for the decade.

“Alright,” I sighed. “I guess my next question is just pure morbid curiosity. You mentioned a minor suggestion spell. And I assume the Quartz pony you’ve mentioned before got involved, probably acting as a mare named Crystal.”

Luna nodded silently.

“And the big favor you owed him was from – from him assassinating Sunset.”

Luna nodded again.

“I mean, I can guess the general approach, but what did you do to Sunset exactly?” What did you do to me?

“Yes, you would want to know that, wouldn’t you?” Luna let out a long sigh. “Very well. The suggestion spell we – that is Quartz used was a befuddlement spell, one step removed from a geas yet not dark magic. As I said before, it wore off soon enough, its purpose served. You adapted to your new life as much as your family adapted to you.”

“I didn’t!”

Luna looked at me with an eyebrow raised.

“I – I didn’t adapt to my new life. It was the only life I’d ever known. I was just…being me.” That was a fundamentally important distinction to make.

Ever so slightly, a smile crept onto Luna’s face. “You have no idea how happy I am to hear you say that. Which leads me to how we actually did the deed, as they say.”

“Um…” This was kind of not too relevant, but it bore mentioning for Future Luna’s sake. “I think ‘do the deed’ is a sexual phrase now.”

Luna’s head titled to the side. “Really?”

“Well, I mean, I don’t really know. The thought came from Su – Mother, not me.” Shrugging, I added, “I personally thought the phrase was only used how you used it”

After one false start, Luna asked, “How do you mean? Does Sunset Shimmer somehow have a separate train of thought independent of your own in your head?”

“No, no, no,” I said, vigorously waving my hoof back and forth. “I mean, sometimes I pretend she’s talking to me, but she’s not.”

Luna opened her mouth, but I interjected, “I checked.”

Getting a nod from Luna, I continued, “I watched – relived all of her memories available to me in the Æthereal Realm, and there were a lot. They’re all in here” – I pointed to my head – “now, and they seem to work like ordinary memories in terms of recallability. I don’t know what effects taking them all in had on me, but for example, I trip over Celestia and Sunbutt sometimes.”

Just for an instant, it looked like Luna wanted to frown and laugh at the same time, but she played it off as a hum.

“Well, I trust you will tell me if you need any help coping with the memory intake. Sunset Shimmer was approximately twice your age at the end. I imagine it must be quite a burden.”

I shrugged again. Only time would tell for sure. “I’m managing. I might be able to get a research paper or two out of this as well.”

This time Luna did giggle. “Yes. Yes, you’ll be just fine.”

I was being serious…

“But all of those memories,” Luna said, her tone growing more somber, “we purged them from your mind. It took us weeks; we couldn’t risk damaging your brain. We removed nearly all of your explicit memory, that is facts and events. However, we left as much of your implicit memory intact as we could.”

My face paled, and my stomach grew uneasy. “My implicit memory? B-but doesn’t that cover…”

“Quirks?” Luna guessed. “Some, yes, although I’m not an expert. Of the two of us, Quartz knows far more about biological alchemy. But yes, from what I know of her, you did retain a small, but non-trivial, chunk of what made Sunset Shimmer Sunset Shimmer. I don’t know who likes butterscotch more of the two of you.”

I shook my head. “She does, but that’s not at all what I meant. I already realized that. What I meant… What I meant…” In a tiny voice Fluttershy would be proud of, I whispered, “What about Procedural memory? Muscle memory? M-magical memory?”

“Yes? We did try to keep much of that intact. It would be hard to explain why Twilight Sparkle suddenly found herself in need of potty training, let alone walking and talking.”

No, no, no. That wasn’t it at all. “Luna, you don’t understand. So much of me – my identity, my self-image, my self-confidence – is tied up in being a genius. If I’m just running off of Sunset’s hard work, if I’m just unconsciously remembering how to do everything, then what have I even done? Nothing. Nothing. I’m just a little pony who was given wings without even working for it. Worse than Dash! She at least worked hard, even if all that hard work wasn’t to ascend. And – and – oh stars, how can I be worse than Dash! I–”

Luna’s hoof stopped my rambling dead in its tracks.

“Twilight, I didn’t catch half of what you said, but I believe I understood the general thrust of your words. Let me show you a few ponies.”

Horn glowing, Luna removed her hoof from my muzzle. The spell she was casting was just a simple illusion, nothing fancy. Between the two of us and off to the side, she created the image of a brown, brown, and brown earth pony. I’d say he was covered in mud, but I honestly couldn’t tell if that was just how his mane, tail, and coat naturally looked.

“This is Iron Hammer. He was born just after the end of the Discordian Era. He was a master engineer and heralded as a genius. His rather mundane upbringing didn’t get in the way of his goals, and whenever he hit a setback, he redoubled his efforts. Several fundamental architectural designs were once credited to his name, including the arch.”

At Luna’s words, a few simple buildings spawned into existence around us. Arches were a common feature on them.

“But…it’s an arch,” I protested. “You can see them naturally form in the Badlands. It’s so trivial, anypony could just use the concept. You’re making stuff up.”

Luna frowned at me. “Twilight, many things are not trivial before somepony first notices them. When Discord fell, most ponies didn’t know how old they were. Not because the sun and moon cycled randomly, oh no. They couldn’t count high enough. They literally couldn’t count to thirty, twenty, or sometimes even ten. If you wanted to know how old somepony was, you asked what order ponies in the herd were born in.”

“You’re…exaggerating.” Even as I said the words, they felt hollow and false.

“Twilight” – Luna’s forehoof came up and squeezed my withers – “the terrifying thing is I’m not.”

And I knew she wasn’t, too. Luna just held me and bore a small frown until I nodded. After I did, she walked over to one of the buildings to rub a hoof along an arch.

“The terrible thing about knowledge is if nopony passes it on, it disappears. Yes, there were small bands of ponies, myself included, who preserved some knowledge. I helped fight to maintain an orderly cycle of the sun and moon, which is a non-trivial magical task. But most ponies…”

Luna shook her head slowly back and forth. She didn’t even look at me; she just gazed at the stone in front of her. “Most knew nothing. I lived in a ‘house’ made of rocks and tree branches. Discord or his magic destroyed anything bigger or more structured eventually. We didn’t even have hewn stone to build with!”

“You’re – you’re serious?” I asked, but both Luna and I knew I didn’t need that answered. It really did sound like my own personal Tartarus. How could ponies live like that? “I really don’t know what to say…”

“There’s nothing to say. Discord was a monster. I imprisoned him. He’s been suffering his punishment for nearly two millennia now. If I have my way, he’ll stay imprisoned unto the end of time. And I’m trying to make a different point.”

Luna’s illusions faded, and in their place rose another pony. This time it was a yellow pegasus mare in full armor, blades attached to the ends of her wings. I’d trained under Luna, if not as seriously as Chamomile, and still this mare sent shivers down my spine at the mere sight.

“Lion Heart. Not exactly the name you’d expect of a mare, but there you go.”

Armies upon armies encircled us, frozen mid-battle. If I tried to look closely at anything, I found myself unable to focus my eyes, a mark of incomplete illusions. It was the big picture that mattered here, not the details.

“She was a psychopath. I say that now, fifteen-hundred years later when the word exists. She was all but born to her position, both in terms of educational opportunities and in terms of political connections. In her day, she was a war hero, a general, a cunning strategist, and a dear friend. She was a genius in the field and reportedly quite talented in bed.” Luna’s grin faded as she continued, “She refused my own advances, I’m afraid. I…lost her to a failed ascension.”

“I – I’m sorry for your loss.” I really hoped I wouldn’t ever be in Luna’s position, having to permanently lose a friend, but I likely would be in a century or two.

“I’ve moved on,” Luna said as her illusions disappeared again. “It hurts a little from time to time, but I’ve adjusted as we all do, mortal or immortal. I cannot save everypony by myself.”

No, but we were princesses, and that was rapidly becoming a very appealing fact. We could fund research to work toward a solution to mortality that didn’t require ascension. I’d have to make it a priority to find out what ponies were already working on and where more funding could be used.

Still, that was another problem for another day.

Luna sighed. “It was probably for the best, in all honesty. Having an Alicorn of War would be asking for trouble.”

Luna created yet another pony. This time she’d made a white coated unicorn filly without a cutie mark.

“After you moved to Ponyville, a number of ponies loyal to us moved with you over time, and most of them have remained there. On a number of occasions, I’ve heard rather remarkable news about the ponies who live in the village, and in particular about this little filly. Care to guess what her special talent is going to be?”

“You know?”

“I have a good guess.” As she spoke, Luna’s horn glowed again, and an indistinct sound of music reached me.

“You know there’s like a million instruments, Luna. I don’t know, does she play the balalaika?”

Luna snickered before she could control herself. “Do you even know what a balalaika is?”

“Vaguely.” It had strings, and it was like a cello. Probably.

“Well at any rate, you’re wrong,” Luna replied, rolling her eyes. “No, this little filly’s name is Sweetie Belle. Apparently she has a very nice singing voice and a gift for musical theory. I plan to send her a scholarship to a music school soon after she earns her cutie mark.”

Well that sounded a little familiar. “Catch them while they’re young?”

“Indeed. I know the concept of a court musician fell out of style two centuries ago, but I would like to see it revived. However, that was not the point I wished to bring up. In her field, Sweetie Belle may just have as much raw talent as you. She’s gotten quite far on her own with absolutely zero formal education in music, and it’s little more than a hobby for her at the moment.”

I’d try not to take that as an insult. And I really shouldn’t. I was trying to be nicer to ponies. Mostly my friends, but strangers, too, I supposed. The first thing that came to mind when somepony said there was somepony as talented as me shouldn’t be, ‘In music? Who cares?’

In fact, an Alicorn of Music could be a pretty great thing, at least so long as she never asked me to dance with her. Arty alicorns might even be the best thing since sliced bread, considering how much color they could add to life.

Ooh! And maybe background music would follow her wherever she went. That would be pretty exciting.

“So, Twilight, what makes a genius?”

“What?” I hadn’t quite been ready for the question, being too absorbed in conditioning myself to think more positively.

“What makes a genius?” Luna repeated herself. “What might all three of these ponies have in common?”

“I…don’t know. They all have different backgrounds, educations, and…well…everything.” There was the hard worker from the dirt age, the privileged blue blood, and the humble prodigy. “I don’t really get what point you’re trying to make.”

Ever so slowly, Luna smirked.

“They don’t have anything in common?” I guessed.

“Well, they’re all ponies, but yes, more or less. They have little to nothing in common as a group, except one thing.”

“A goal?” I hazarded. That was a big part of what got me to where I was today.

But apparently that was wrong. Luna chuckled before finally getting around to continuing her explanation.

“They were all born lucky. They were born in the right environment, at the right time, with just the right initial brain configuration.”

“That…sounds wrong,” I said.

“What about your brother?”

I tilted my head to the side in confusion.

“What has he accomplished? He went to the most prestigious school in Equestria and graduated at the top of his class; his magical talents don’t measure up to yours, but they cannot be overlooked; he’s the captain of the day guard; he’s about to marry an alicorn; and I could go on for some time still. If he were born four centuries ago, he would’ve become one of the most celebrated officers in history.”

But in a peaceful Equestria, who even cared? The day guard was just another policing organization at this point, and only a wingful of ponies looked up to them.

“That still sounds wrong…”

“I think you mean that sounds unfair,” Luna returned.

I nodded. That was a much a better way to put it, but that also meant there was the obvious counterargument.

“But the universe doesn’t care if it’s fair,” I said weakly.

“Indeed. All we can do for our ponies is to provide them with the very best environment to grow in as possible.”

Funny how Luna said ‘our’ ponies, implicitly saddling me with the burden of a nation I probably wasn’t technically a princess of yet. I… More and more I found reasons to want it, but Luna had just casually placed an awful lot of responsibility on me. Raising and educating one dragon had been hard enough with teaching two unicorn fillies on the side, let alone millions of ponies.

“But the point I wish to get across to you,” Luna continued, “is that you are a genius. Perhaps you have a double dose of luck, but never doubt that you have worked hard. Whatever Sunset Shimmer did for you in advance, it does not invalidate your own efforts.”

Luna finally remembered to dismiss her last illusion and the music as she moved to stand beside me. Her wing wrapped over me, and I snuggled into her.

“Twilight, I’ve seen you go through spells Sunset Shimmer knew nothing about in a day. You are frighteningly intelligent. So much so that I sometimes wonder if Quartz had a hoof in it somehow.”

Well, I supposed while he was busy wiping Sunset’s memories and generally reshaping her however he wanted, it wouldn’t be a stretch to mess with the brain even further. But…it did sound pretty far-fetched. The brain was absurdly complicated, even for alchemy. It could do a lot, but fine modifications like that was a little much, although perhaps not in a thousand years from now.

Not that it wasn’t a blush-inducing compliment.

Luna smiled down at me and said, “I very much look forward to the day when the differences between our ages and experiences even out and we can truly call each other equals. And that day will come; you need have no fear of that. You’re clever, and perceptive, and always willing to put in the extra effort, and–”

“Fine! I get it! I get what you’re trying to say.” Not that it or the huge blush on my face made me feel much better. “It’s still not fair, though.”

Luna let out a tired sigh. “Yes, I know. But perhaps you can try to make things better as a princess.”

Well, I did have a few ideas already to start with. I supposed–

“Besides, it comes with the domain. I’m sure the world will forget about your magical talent soon enough and will call you the Princess of Books.”

I shoved Luna away in a huff, eliciting nothing more than a giggle from her.

Once her fit was finally over, Luna said, “Now we should probably get back to your actual question. I wouldn’t want you to accuse me of trying to dodge answering it.”

That would be a good idea. “We’d just covered the memory spells.”

“Mhm. There were four other things that we did, plus or minus a slew of supporting spells for detail work.” Luna finally fluttered back to her hooves in front of me. “We cast three major alchemy spells. The first gave you your appearance.”

“Straightforward,” I commented. That was pretty obvious. “The second was an age spell?”

“Indeed. The third one was…a bit of a personal request.”

I raised an eyebrow. Mom and Dad had pictures of me – of Aurora when she was still with them, and I’d never noticed anything odd about them. It was just barely possible they were all doctored, but whatever Luna had asked for must’ve been non-visual.

“Have you not guessed yet?” Luna asked. “Twilight, there’s something very different about you from most ponies. Something you take for granted.”

Oh, ponyfeathers. The last time Luna had said something like that to me, the answer had been embarrassingly obvious. So what was different about me compared to a randomly selected pony?

It couldn’t be gender. It couldn’t be color. It was a little unusual to have three hues in my mane and tail, but Aurora had already had them. I wasn’t particularly tall or short. Intelligent would be a stupid answer, and if Luna were actually looking for that, she needed a slap or something.

Ugh… I was approaching this wrong. What was different about me that Luna would find useful slash desirable? Or rather what would Luna want in a pony? That was a better question to ask.

I facehoofed. “I’m nocturnal.”

“Correct. I know that’s caused you inconvenience in your life, and for that I apologize.”

“It’s fine,” I said with a wave of my hoof. “I like the night independent of you. It’s the best time of the day.”

“Well, I’m glad you still think so.” Luna paused, but she added, “You’re making this much easier for me than I was expecting.”

“You’re being open and transparent with me.” I paused just to make sure what I was about to say was true, or at least to check if it felt right. And it did. “I think that’s all I really need right now.”

Luna opened her mouth, but I interrupted her before she could say anything.

“But don’t get me wrong,” I added with enough force to make sure there was no room for doubt. “There are things we are going to be talking about at length, but…I mostly just want answers tonight.”

This time I let Luna have her chance to speak. “Whatever you wish. I wouldn’t want you to drive yourself mad with worry.”

Heh. I gave Luna a wan smile. “I think I used up nearly all the panic, worry, and anger a pony is allowed in their life yesterday. Or is it still today?”

“It’s yesterday by now, Twilight. You slept through midnight already.”

“Alright, I used them all up yesterday. I have to be careful with what little I have left. I have to dish them out in tiny little allotments at appropriate times.”

“Ah, well in that case,” Luna began with a cruel smile forming quickly, “maybe I’ll just have to annoy you and give you exams until those emotions come back.”

Ugh. I could feel the headache forming already.

“Oh, by the way,” I began, “as long as we’re talking about this stuff, you didn’t get the color of Aurora’s magic right. It was off a shade or two.”

“Yes… Well…” Luna’s head sank down to her hooves. “That’s the other major thing we did to you.”

Well that hardly sounded ominous. I was just going to pretend Luna had phrased that in a more neutral manner.

“You will not like this, I’m sure.” Luna took a deep breath, and then she raised her head to look at me again. “We…crippled you.”

“What?”

I wiggled my legs one at a time and even my wings, too. They all seemed equally not crippled as compared to before my ascension. Well actually, even in my dream, I could feel earth pony magic coursing through each limb, so technically they were now better than ever. Uncrippled? Anti-crippled?

“Not your limbs, Twilight, your magic.”

My smile faded in slow motion. My eyes widened. “M-my magic?”

Luna nodded.

I hit her in the face.

Author's Note

An announcement! I have created a Patreon account. For those of you unfamiliar with what it is, Patreon is essentially a small-scale kickstarter, where you give money to creators as they create, instead of all at once. If you have an extra dollar or two to throw my way, you can make my life easier. And when my life is easier, that means more free time for writing, and consequently, faster update times for you, the reader.

In short, if you are the kind of generous soul who wants to support authors financially, you can do so here. If not, well, that's fine too. Having so many readers is worth a lot of moral support all on its own.

Prereaders – Starlight Nova, Strange Reasoning

Chapter Thirty Two - Perpendicular Perspectives - Between…

Luna didn’t stand still. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t even fall over. Somehow I’d managed to knock her sideways a few hooves, spinning in midair to land facing away from me. I had no idea how that hadn’t simply taken her jaw clean off, but apparently she was as sturdier than I’d thought as I was stronger.

“My magic!” I screeched, just shy of the Royal Canterlot Voice. “Y-y-you c-crippled my m-magic?”

Luna mumbled something I couldn’t quite catch.

“What was that?” I hissed.

Luna sighed. “Nothing that would benefit either of us if I repeated.” Groaning, she rose back up to her hooves. “You know why I did, of course.”

“Argh!” Bucking curse everything that ever lived! I did know, and it made sense! Horrible, awful sense!

A ‘new’ filly Flare appears in Canterlot with all the magic of a grown Flare? Obviously not a normal filly to any outside observer. I’d understood the need to reduce my magic, and – and I’d known it’d happened, but crippling it? No, no. That was too much. Too too too much.

I instinctively gripped the ground to keep my hooves from rising again. That didn’t stop my horn from doing its job, though. At this close range, I barely had to aim, let alone try to form a proper spell.

And Luna just stood there waiting for it. And not moving. And just accepting it. And–

Oh, bucking horseapples! At the last instant, I yanked my head and horn to the left. The barely ordered burst of magic brushed past Luna’s shoulder at dizzying speeds and disappeared off into the distance. When it finally hit the ground, the resulting explosion would suitably be described as planet-sized.

In the split second I had to realize I was going to be caught up in the blast, I closed my eyes.

And then nothing.

I hesitantly opened one eye to find Luna smiling just a little bit in front of me. Around us was a blue and violet shield. Below us was…a tiny little chunk of ground floating in a vast void of nothing.

The stupid part of me wanted to know if I could do that in the real world.

“Luna” – my voice came out in a tiny squeak as I wobbled on my hooves – “I’m the Alicorn of Magic. W-what if I’m broken? What if my ascension thought I was normal, and I’m stuck as a crippled alicorn forever? H-how much of Mother’s magic did I even have?”

“I don’t know for sure–”

No, no, no! That was the kind of answer you put in front of bad news!

“–but the last time I saw you, perhaps half.”

“Half?” I echoed back. Luna’s magic nudged me back upright as I leaned dangerously to one side, but I still collapsed onto my knees. And from there, it was only a short fall to my side. I curled up into a little ball with my tail between my hooves.

Shortly after, my head was lifted up and deposited on Luna’s side. Her hoof found its way through my mane, but – b-but it wasn’t helping.

“For the first few years of your life, you used very little magic,” Luna said softly. “It allowed you to recover from the damage we – I inflicted on you. You had more magic than Sunset had at that age, and apparently that made you quite the troublemaker.”

Luna’s free forehoof just barely made contact with me and bopped me on the nose, I thought. I couldn’t even feel it.

“However, your frequent use of magic over the last decade took your recovery time from perhaps one decade to two or three. And, well, I won’t blame you if you kick and scream over this, but your constant use of magic aboard the Nebulous on the errand I’d forced upon you exacerbated the problem further.”

This was all wrong. I was having a nightmare. Luna couldn’t really have crippled me. And I couldn’t really have kept myself crippled. That would’ve hurt. I knew what broken bones felt like. They hurt. Broken magic must hurt, too.

I tried to say something, but it only came out as a wheeze and a sniffle. I tried to make Luna disappear, b-but she wasn’t part of my dream to control.

“Another thing you won’t want to hear. Sunset Shimmer was rather good at controlling her magic. If you were discovered and found to retain the same ability, there’d be no reason you couldn’t simply take her old position. Not willing to risk that, and since it didn’t matter for my plans if you were a half-trained Flare, I ordered some, but not nearly all, of your implicit memories relating to magical surge control destroyed.”

But…I could’ve grown up a fully trained Flare if Luna hadn’t done that. I – the reasoning made sense, but – but there were no words.

“This, at least, is easily reversible,” Luna added, “but we also removed the nerve endings which would tell you when you were hurting your magic. Your ascension most likely fixed that for you, but you should pay a visit to Quartz to be sure.

“Then I suppose you will want to know the process we used to cripple–”

“S-stop,” I finally managed. “Please. I – I don’t want to hear anymore.”

But Luna didn’t stop. She had a horrible question of her own. “Would you like me to tell you all the things wrong with you being more upset about this than anything else?”

No. Even now my mind was listing them for me.

It’d been necessary to keep the secret of my birth.

I would’ve blown up Canterlot if I’d had so much magic as a two-year-old, even if I’d retained the incredibly suspicious instinctive ability to control it completely. I’d destroyed a big chunk of Canterlot with far less magic when I was a decade older and wiser.

What had happened to Sunset was far worse, a-and in my heart, I knew I didn’t blame Luna for it.

I’d already had orders of magnitude more magic than other foals. I shouldn’t be greedy.

What had happened to Aurora was…not all that bad, but still more morally ambiguous.

I was a member of the very exclusive alicorn club. I probably had more magic now than every non-alicorn in Equestria put together.

I was somehow bonded to the Element of Friendship. With enough study and tinkering, the Elements of Harmony could probably fix me in what might be a literal deus ex machina.

And that was just barely scratching the surface.

I rolled over and buried my head in Luna’s barrel, weakly shaking it side to side. No, I didn’t need Luna to tell me anything. But – but at the same time, it – it was my magic. My m-magic! It was like…like…like a sister to me. I knew it so well, and I loved it, and it could do such wonderful things, and – and – and–

My muzzle raised up all on its own, and the rest of my body followed. Luna’s magic placed me on my haunches, and her hoof poked at the corners of my eyes.

“Twilight, you once asked me what I would do if you lost all your magic.”

I did? When did I ask that?

I cast my mind back. When could that have come up? Why would that have come… Oh. That – I’d been so mad at Celestia, and I’d asked Luna so many unreasonable questions. I’d asked her if she’d bring me back from the dead if I died. And then she’d given me her feather.

“You remember that?” I wouldn’t have ever held Luna to any answer she gave to it.

Luna’s face widened into a sad smile. “Of course I do. I meant every word I said. I promise if I’ve done any lasting damage to you, I will help you fix it.”

My unsteady hoof reached out to rest on Luna’s foreleg. “Y-y-you p-promise?”

“Yes, Twilight. You’ve had to endure far more than anypony your age should ever have to. I won’t let this be a scar for you in the future, too.”

Luna reached a foreleg around my neck and pulled me into a hug. I…I pulled back at first, but I caught a glimpse of her eyes. They were so sincere. She wasn’t lying.

I slumped over onto Luna, more collapsing than hugging. “T-thank you.” I sniffed. “I d-don’t want to be b-broken.”

“Don’t worry,” Luna said, her hoof running through my mane again. “I’ll clean up my own mess.”

I let myself relax into the long-missed feeling of Luna parting my mane in her own slow, steady rhythm. It had a slower beat than I remembered. But the last time Luna and I had met face-to-face, I must’ve been two or three hooves shorter. That probably made all the difference.

Still, it was such a peaceful feeling. I could just melt away like this without a care in the world.

“Twilight, might I ask a favor?”

“Hmm?”

“A little less tight, please. I think you’re about to snap my radius.”

Her radius? Wasn’t that a bone?

“Oh stars!” I flew off of Luna, taking the hoof that had still been resting on her leg with me. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t even know I was doing it, I swear.”

“It’s fine,” Luna said casually, stretching out her foreleg which somehow looked even darker than usual, as if I’d blocked all the blood flow. Which I probably had. Or – or maybe I’d caused internal damage and that was all blood.

No. No, Luna was just stretching. If I’d hurt her more, she’d just have willed her body back to normal. She was fine. I was fine. Everything was fine.

Once Luna finished her exercises and her leg was on the ground once more, she added, “Earth pony magic is a little difficult to get used to controlling consciously. Take this as a lesson, though, or perhaps as a warning. I really don’t want you sobbing in my hooves after breaking Twinkleshine’s neck or tearing her in half.”

Oh. Oh, yes. That was pretty good advice. Really good advice even.

But it wouldn’t help me now if, say, Spike crawled into my bed and curled up next to me, which he would totally do if he thought he’d almost lost me, all embarrassment of doing fillyish things put aside, and – and I might squeeze him like a stuffed animal!

Ponyfeathers! “Luna, is there anyway you can wake me up right now?”

“Not while banished, I’m afraid. Did you go to sleep sharing your bed?”

I shook my head furiously. “Spike is going to join me, though, and maybe Twinkleshine, too. I just know it! I didn’t lose anypony to Celestia, and now the universe feels cheated and wants to take somepony from me. I don’t want to wake up without a son!”

And now I felt like I was missing something very important, even as I felt panic’s talons claw deeper into me.

“Oh, double ponyfeathers! Luna, I need you go see if anypony else is asleep and have somepony warn Dash. I really might sleep for a day straight myself if nopony wakes me up. Please! You have to save my cr – my friends.”

I really hoped Dash hadn’t already discovered the problem for herself. I’d asked Chamomile to tell her not to use magic, but she wouldn’t know how to keep her earth pony magic in check. I’d at least had training in the basic concepts, but she hadn’t had anything at all, and none of our earth ponies were exactly good teachers.

Oh, this was bad. This was really, really bad. Dash was pretty rough with ponies in general, and Fluttershy was pretty fragile. And Spike might be a dragon, but he was still so small. And – and Berry Pinch was a twig in comparison. Oh stars! I really, really didn’t want to lose a pony on this trip, and especially not to something so stupid.

“I’ll see who’s available,” Luna said far more calmly than I felt, “but before I leave–”

Luna’s magic swept over me and dulled the jitters in my muscles. I felt my heart slow, or maybe it just disappeared. And then Luna said, “You are panicking.”

I was? Yes, I was. I already knew that.

“You’re going to give yourself a nightmare at this rate. Deep breaths, Twilight. In. And out.”

‘Why aren’t you leaving?’ I wanted to scream, but there was just enough sense left in me to let Luna guide me through the usual breathing exercises. Her reasoning was terrible – nightmares were trivial compared to the stakes! – but I’d practically had the phrase ‘calm minds prevail’ hardwired into my brain while learning from Luna.

And as I breathed, a little sense of clarity returned to me. Everypony was still in potentially life-threatening danger, but…maybe I was getting worked up over nothing. What were the odds that these last thirty seconds were the deciding factor between somepony’s life and death?

Pretty much zero. Disaster had either already struck or the warning would get out in time. And if somepony had gotten hurt, surely at least Chamomile would’ve woken me up. Fluttershy was our…well, more nurse than doctor, but I was no slouch with medical spells after years of injuring myself with flares.

Yes, I wasn’t awake, so nopony needed my magic, so nopony had been seriously harmed. I didn’t see any obvious holes in that logic, unless somehow everypony was hurt, but that would just be silly.

“Better?” Luna asked.

I nodded weakly. “Thanks.”

“Good. I expect there is a changeling contact of some sort I might avail myself of by now, and I confess I’m quite eager to find out if a certain changeling queen is bawling her eyes out. I suspect long range teleports disrupt the hive mind for some time before it ‘snaps back’, so to speak. Anyway, sweet dreams until my return.”

Wow, this was completely irrelevant, but the thought popped into my head, and it had a simple yes or no answer that I really wanted before I lost it to regular dreaming.

“Luna, wait. Am I going to develop a hive mind?”

Luna stopped working her dream magic to give me a strange look, one followed promptly by some rather rude laughter.

“It’s a serious concern,” I huffed. I was certain alicorns didn’t have to eat love, but our magic was still part changeling.

“Yes. Yes, of course it is.” Luna cleared her throat, trying very poorly to hide the tail end of her giggles. “You and I might each be in a hive mind of one. If you ever decide to lay a few eggs, do let me know if your nymphs’ thoughts are always buzzing in your mind.”

And with that, Luna disappeared, not at all hiding that she was laughing at me again.

“Ow,” I mumbled, my horn stinging a little from the gentle flick it’d received. Sniffling, I looked up at my companion and asked, “What was that for, Princess?”

“Sunset, it is unbefitting of a lady to be seen eating so gluttonously.”

I eyed the remaining pile of a dozen butterscotch cookies undeterred. Etiquette class was stupid, and the fancy parties I used it for were boring. And the delicious snacks set before me were irresistible.

“Ow.” My horn got another flick, and I reflexively dropped the cookie my magic held. “Why are they there if I can’t eat them?”

Princess Celestia gave me her usual look when I was doing something wrong.

“Correct me if my memory has failed me, but I believe you have eaten them.”

“Only half!” I protested.

“Indoor voice please, Sunset.”

I mumbled an apology, but Princess Celestia gave me the look again. “Sorry,” I repeated myself, louder and clearly this time.

“Apology accepted. But back to the matter at hoof. Your parents would be distressed to know I already let you eat more than a dozen.” Princess Celestia took what could only be described as a demure sip of tea.

“You know, back in the old days, it was inappropriate not to be seen partaking of ale and a too large portion of food, much of it encrusted on your muzzle.”

“Ah,” Princess Celestia began, setting down her cup, “how nice of you to join us Miss Nightmare.”

Something about that struck me as odd, but I couldn’t put my hoof on what exactly.

“But on the topic,” Princess Celestia continued, either oblivious or paying no mind to the glare she was receiving, “I personally am quite glad we moved on as a culture. Still, if you enjoy that barbarism, it remains a part of griffin culture. You merely have to overlook the roast beast they serve with it and the spit in the center of the dinning hall.”

“Oh, don’t give me that holier-than-thou nonsense,” Miss Nightmare all but growled. “I’ve seen you drool at the mere smell of sautéed fish.”

“You eat meat, Princess?” I exclaimed.

“Indoor voice, Sunset.”

Stupid etiquette class. “Sorry. But you eat meat? You both do?”

“I do not,” Princess Celestia said.

At the same time, Miss Nightmare answered, “On occasion. Refusing a meal as a guest in the old days was incredibly rude, and many sapient species are omnivores or carnivores. Meats play an important part in their diets.”

“To which they always have an alternative,” Princess Celestia retorted.

Miss Nightmare scowled. “Enough of this nonsense.” Then turning to me, she continued, “Twilight, you should strongly consider ridding yourself of Sunset Shimmer’s memories once more. Unless you’re just playing along with this dream for some reason?”

“Wha?”

The name – no, my name echoed through my mind endlessly. I groaned a little and rubbed my head as the world – er, as my dream came into proper clarity, and I realized just where I was and what was going on.

“Ah… Luna… Sorry about this.”

I focused for a few seconds to banish the tea party and Celestia from my dream. Although I did leave behind the pile of cookies to munch on. After that, I turned my attention to myself, changing my appearance from Mother’s back to my own.

“It’s fine. I understand.” Luna placed a forehoof on my shoulder, and unblinking, she held my eyes fast with her own. “Twilight, your dreams shouldn’t be that resilient to allowing you to become conscious. Holding all of those new memories, especially so many taken in so quickly, might be damaging you.”

“I know,” I whispered. It was an obvious enough concern. “But I can’t! I can’t do that to Sunset. I can’t forget her. Not unless I absolutely have to. It’s – holding her memories is the only thing I can do for her. It’s not much, but it’s something.”

Luna’s frown doubled in size, and the furrows in her brow only grew deeper. Her eyes searched my own for who knew what as we stared at each other. I tried to stand a little straighter and look determined in return, but being under such intense scrutiny sent a shiver through my legs.

Finally, Luna broke away from me. “Very well, Twilight, if that is what you wish. But remember, magically erasing memories en masse can severely damage your mind. It’s possible – nay, probable – that magically adding memories en masse can do the same.”

Yes, I knew that. That… Well, it was actually a good point, a very good point, a very, very good point. I’d tried to ignore it, but that was something I could not disregard at all. But at the same time, if I abandoned my memories of Mother, I’d never ever forgive myself. But on the other hoof…it hardly benefited either of us if I drove myself insane.

“I… Please keep an eye on me, Luna.”

“Always,” Luna interjected in the utmost seriousness.

“If I start acting too off, let me know. I’ll…do what needs to be done.”

It’d be like killing Mother all over again, except this time I’d be the one snuffing her out. A shiver ran through me at the thought.

“But – but I have to try keeping them first.” I locked eyes with Luna. “I have to.”

After a moment for the mood to pass, Luna sighed as she relaxed her stance. Her frown disappeared, replaced by something that might charitably be called a smile.

“In other news,” Luna said, “you might like to know that Rainbow Dash did no long-lasting damage to anypony, and Spike has been removed from your bed without injury.”

Huh? What was Luna talking ab – oh. My eyes widened as I remembered what we’d been talking about earlier. But then a mildly stern look from Luna shut down the resurfacing panic. She had just told me everything was fine. It’d be pretty silly to freak out again.

Oh…except now I remembered the other thing we’d talked about. There was nothing quite like sending me into a panic to distract me from bucking crippling my magic.

Ugh. Stop infecting my vocabulary, Mother.

My head went through the strangest sensation of rolling imaginary eyes at myself. My own vision went all…squiggly, for lack of a better word, for a moment. One of my hooves shot out to catch myself before I tripped over myself and fell onto my head.

Only after I felt balanced again, my hoof came up to my forehead and rubbed it. That…had been weird.

But anyway, as I’d said, it was so easy to distract me by sending me into a panic. Did Luna do that on purpose? Even when I was… No, I was still unhappy, but my blood wasn’t boiling anymore. Still, did Luna even actually visit anypony while she was gone? That kind of seemed like the sort of thing she’d have taken care of between when I’d first fallen asleep and when she’d returned again.

Then again, maybe I was just being incredibly paranoid. I’d remembered being putty in Luna’s hooves just before my freak out started. There’d been no need to ruin that moment.

Although at the same time, it wouldn’t hurt to check if Luna was still being honest with me. It was always so much easier with a level head.

“Alright,” I began. “Thanks for passing that warning along for me, Luna. Now we were in the middle of a discussion I want to finish.”

“As you wish, Twilight. I no longer have anything to hide from you.”

I watched Luna carefully as she spoke. She had no consistent tells when bluffing or lying, but infrequently, I would catch something: a flick of an ear, a rustle of her tail, a slight hitch in her breath.

This time, at least, I didn’t see any signs she’d lied. Still, I could prod her again for a second sample.

“But you’re not volunteering information?”

I caught just the slightest grin on Luna’s face, the kind which said, ‘I taught you that. I know what you’re doing.’

“Twilight, if you had it your way, you would go around demanding every piece of information a pony possessed from every pony you met.”

A blush erupted on me before I’d even realized it. There was a little truth to that, but it wasn’t like I’d ever do so forcibly or anything. That was the kind of cartoon villainy that got ponies sentenced to Tartarus. No, it’d be a purely voluntary concession.

But I was off topic.

“That was a distraction if I’ve ever heard one.”

Luna shrugged. “If you miss anything I think is important, I’ll attempt to steer the conversation in the right direction. But for the moment, I think we can both agree it would be best for you to control the topic.”

“I suppose that’s good enough,” I mumbled. None of what Luna had said or how she’d moved suggested she wouldn’t be true to her word. Luna always kept her promises to me; I didn’t see why that would change now. I was just being paranoid.

And in a little corner of my mind, Mother reminded me that Sunbutt always kept her promises, too, or at least the serious ones.

I shooed the thought away. At Luna’s and Celestia’s age, your word needed to maintain a basic level of trustworthiness. If you were statistically unlikely to keep your word with that large of a sample size, nopony would ever trust you. You’d quite simply never get anything done.

Besides, it held no bearing on the current matters at hoof.

“First question,” I began with a little hoof stomp to punctuation it. “I love my special talent, and I wouldn’t give it up for any other, but I have to ask. Did I have any chance to get anything but magic as my special talent? I’m curious because my cutie mark is different than Mother’s.”

And because I was a little uncomfortable with not having had alternative options, even if I never ever would’ve pursued them. I…I understood that I was made to be Luna’s tool and became her friend, so the answer was probably no.

But then maybe Luna would’ve given me the chance to be whatever I wanted. It wouldn’t have been all that much of a gamble. I couldn’t imagine ever getting anything else, so I couldn’t imagine a reboot – or a predecessor – of me getting something else either.

“That depends,” Luna said.

“On what?” I asked impatiently. How could the answer possibly depend on anything Luna didn’t already know?

“On which answer will get me punched in the face again.”

“Luna!” I admonished. Everything that needed to be said was in that one word and my glare. I just barely restrained myself from granting life to her fear.

“Fine, fine.” Luna sighed before continuing. “No, you had no chance for anything else. Nothing we did to you fundamentally altered your magic or returned it to a youthful state, so your special talent remained the same as Sunset Shimmer’s.”

“But my cutie mark–”

“The change is the result of the damage done,” Luna interrupted. “Like a broken bone that was not set properly, your magic couldn’t quite return to the shape it once had. Although magical injuries, and especially ones as severe as we inflicted on you” – Luna at least had the decency to look apologetic – “are themselves very rare, it’s a well-documented effect. I believe you know enough about cutie marks to fill in the remaining blanks.”

I nodded. Cutie marks appeared in a sort of miniature flare of magic when practicing your special talent. My own magic apparently hadn’t been up to the task of putting a cutie mark back on my haunch after Sunset’s had been taken away, but my first flare obviously had fixed that.

But…I – I supposed all this was a moot point. I wouldn’t have wanted anything but magic as my special talent anyway, so it didn’t matter. Not too much. Kind of. Mostly. It was just a little sour note that I had to do what I loved to do, like turning a hobby into a job.

“Wait.” It’d taken long enough, but I finally connected what Luna had told me with…an important event. “What about when I ended up in the hospital after…on Hearth Warming Eve? The doctors did a full medical checkup on me, and they didn’t say anything about me being a magical cripple.”

“I know.” Just a little bit of anger crept into Luna’s voice. I didn’t think it was directed at me, but I was ashamed to admit I flinched anyway. And Luna saw it, and her tone softened.

“Twilight, you have no idea how terrified I was that afternoon. Even now, the mere memory manages to trouble my thoughts, and my mind runs in circles trying to find something I missed. I was mildly upset with you for not thinking ahead that day, true, but I was primarily distressed and worried that you’d managed to land yourself in Canterlot Castle’s own hospital.

“However, the circumstances and your use of dark magic concealed the truth. At the time, I honestly couldn’t have believed my luck. I’d thought for sure everything was going to come down on my head that day. I don’t mean to upset you, but I’d created enough noise in your medical data that nopony questioned the stranger aspects.”

Well, the circumstances probably would have left the doctors grasping at straws all on their own. I was a Flare, which was already odd enough, but I’d also allegedly had my magic sealed for years – who knew what that would do to it – and I’d just channeled an enormous surge of magic.

Yes, I could certainly see normal doctors having trouble identifying long-term damage from recent, short-term damage. And then throw in dark magic, and even Celestia…

My thoughts ground to a halt. “Luna, did you teach me dark magic just for that reason? So that if I did end up in a hospital, it’d make it harder to see what you’d done to me?”

“It was among my motives, but not nearly the primary one. Just as I had you survey non-unicorn types of magic, pegasus magic in particular, we could not afford to leave you unaware of the field of dark magic.” Luna’s head tilted to the side. “Besides, I thought you agreed with me that there’s nothing wrong with dark magic. Have your thoughts on that changed?”

I shook my head. There wasn’t any reason to keep mentally stable ponies from dark magic; I knew all the anatomy that explained why. Which now that I thought about it, I might not strictly speaking qualify as mentally stable at the moment…

“Yeah, you know you’re teetering on the brink.”

Talking to myself as my Mother wasn’t exactly boosting my confidence here. And it really didn’t help that she was making coo coo sounds in the background now.

Okay, that decided it. I should just stay away from dark magic for a while. I couldn’t afford to exacerbate the damage taking in Mother’s memories had probably done to me. I really was going to go insane if I kept deliberately making things worse for myself.

“Alright.”

My voice hitched as I turned my attention to the next – and third to last – big question I had. I took a deep breath to calm myself, silently promising myself that I wouldn’t cry or scream until after Luna said something that upset me.

“I have three – three more questions, Luna. B-but before them, I just wanted to clarify something I vaguely remember saying when we first reunited.”

“Would this be about that deal you mentioned?”

“Yes,” I said hesitantly.

I hadn’t taken the time yet to calculate if I’d actually gotten a good deal or if I’d gotten horribly screwed. Although at the same time, not being permanently detained or killed was a pretty all-around good trade for any information, all the way up to where I planned to go to and all the way down to when I stopped wetting the bed.

Which…I didn’t think I ever had, now that I knew about my origins. That’d always been Aurora. I must’ve kept my Mother’s bowel control…

Well, um, moving on, I wasn’t going to do that calculation now either. I was just going to give Luna a little clarification to think about on her own.

“Celestia was waiting for me when I left the Æthereal Realm. We…talked.”

That didn’t need any elaboration on, no matter how many eyebrows Luna rose. It wouldn’t be a pleasant or useful experience for either of us. And I couldn’t remember the conversation as well as I really should. I’d been way too tired.

But also in the absurd case where Celestia actually believed her paper-thin excuse, Luna didn’t need to hear that the sister she’d finally given up on hadn’t thought of her as a sister in over a thousand years.

“Celestia promised to leave me and mine alone until after the Summer Sun Celebration in exchange for some…rather compromising information. I mean, Cadance already knew the answers to a lot of the questions she had, but it’s something to think about, I guess.”

“Do you have the questions memorized?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. There were too many, and I’d been too tired at the time. “I haven’t answered any of them myself yet, though, at least not to Celestia directly.”

But I would. I didn’t want to be the one alicorn that wouldn’t keep her promises. And there was nothing on the list Celestia had given me that was life-threatening to reveal. I could afford to answer everything.

Well, it might be bad to let Celestia know I used to be Sunset, but I’d already ruined that twice over. It wasn’t much of a stretch to assume she’d kill me to get Mother back, given her track record.

Hesitantly, Mother whispered, “Do you really think she wants me back?”

No, no, no. I was not going to start a conversation with myself, especially not one that had suicidal subtexts for me. If Mother came back through some deus ex machina, I died.

Luna finally emerged from her own thoughts. “Well, that’s not so terrible,” she said. “It’s a far better outcome than I’d always assumed would occur should she catch you just after your ascension. I suppose that’s something to be grateful for.”

“That’s…not all.”

Luna sighed, probably in disappointment. “I can’t say I’m surprised. What else did you promise?”

I cringed before I could help it. I… Honestly, I didn’t think Luna had meant that to come off as a rebuke, but that was what it’d sounded like to me.

“Celestia wanted to talk to you before the solstice.”

Luna awkwardly fumbled with her mouth, trying to form words. After everything we’d already discussed tonight, I understood just how unintentionally cruel that promise was.

The thought that this was fair karma for what she’d put me through intentionally flash through my mind. I knew I was going to forgive Luna completely, but it still stung right now. It was only fair if I got to hurt Luna a little, too.

I dashed those thoughts to pieces immediately. Nopony deserved this. I didn’t want to hurt Luna, and even if I did, she’d been hurt more than could ever be fair already.

And I did understand why Luna had done what she had to me. It all made sense. Except for why I needed to be hidden in plain sight, but that question could wait a moment or two.

“Celestia did agree to tell me her future plans after we held up our end of the bargain,” I said. Maybe that would lift Luna’s mood somewhat. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

Silence fell once more.

Eventually, Luna weakly said, “I don’t understand. Dream magic isn’t something a pony can learn; dreams are my domain. This… It can’t be a trap. What purpose could she possibly have to make that request?”

Well, if Celestia knew Luna would react like this…

“Maybe it’s a distraction?” I guessed. “It cost Celestia essentially nothing to ask, and she’ll waste a lot of our time with us overthinking it.”

“It’s possible…” With a final shake of her head, Luna brought herself out of thought and directed her full attention back onto me. “We can think about it later. What was your next question?”

I held Luna’s gaze for a second. I wished there were some magical words I could say to make all this go away. And not just Luna’s problems, but mine, too. But no such words existed. All we could do was try to work past this the hard way. And that meant more questions.

So…which one? I knew which question I had to put last, but the other two were equally unpleasant to pose. ‘Why do I have a family?’ ‘Why did you assassinate Sunset?’ The former was a mystery. The latter…well, I was pretty sure I knew the answer to the latter, but I needed to hear Luna tell me her reasoning herself. All of it.

Which one? Which one? Both could be horrifyingly painful to hear the answers to. But at the same time, they both had the potential to be equally cathartic.

I looked up at Luna for a moment to find her waiting patiently, a small frown and sympathetic eyes staring back at me.

Stars, just start talking, Twilight.

“Why does my family have Mother?”

A moment passed.

Horseapples! Plan failed! Plan failed! Try again!

“Why do I have a family?” I asked even faster than my previous incoherent question, although with the same squeaky voice. My eyes scrunched up even as I spoke, and I could feel my everything practically shrinking into myself.

Luna sighed. That was the first thing that happened. It was the kind of sigh I’d imagine a pony condemned to the gallows a thousand years ago made.

“There is no simple answer to that question, Twilight, and I fear the only honest answer I could give you is I don’t know.”

A second passed.

What? Had I heard that right? Did Luna just say she didn’t know? How? How could she not know?

“That doesn’t make any sense! You can’t expect me to believe I just – just – I don’t even know! Replaced somepony through some unexplained fluke of the universe? That sounds ridiculous just trying to put into words!”

“No, that isn’t what I meant. Twilight, I certainly planned and saw to the execution of your placement with Night Light and Twilight Velvet, but I don’t know why I did it. I’ve never managed to pin down my exact reasoning for more than a week or two.”

“What…what do you mean?” That didn’t sound good at all. That didn’t sound like Luna at all.

“‘I can find somepony else to aid me. It was enough to remove Sunset Shimmer from the board,’” Luna began, settling into an easy cadence.

“‘I never want to see this filly ever again. This is the only way to get rid of her safely short of killing her.’

“‘There won’t be enough time to teach this filly to wield the elements. She’ll attract attention, she’ll be rejected, and it will hurt her. Hurt ponies tend to be clingy and loyal.’

“‘My pawn needs to be grounded in reality. She needs to believe she chose me herself.’

“‘If I try to push this filly too hard too young, she’ll either turn on me, be mind-numbingly boring, or fail in her role.’

“‘I want somepony who is more than just a tool, if for no other reason than to avoid having to foalsit her all the time. She needs to grow independently for a little while. Maybe I can even kind of enjoy her company that way.’

“‘I’ve never forgotten my terrifying foalhood. This filly deserves a safe, loving family who expects nothing of her but love in return. Every filly deserves that.’

“‘No good can come from my interfering in this filly’s life so early. I’m sure I’ll ruin everything.’

“‘This filly needs to be able to function without me. She needs to learn how to act independently and make her own choices, but at the same time, she’ll still need parents to hold her hoof. Unfortunately, the ponies I can actually trust to raise her aren’t exactly the nurturing type.’

“‘I’m not looking for a daughter. I’m not at a point in my life where I can expect to be a good parent.’

“‘If I hope to ever enjoy this filly’s company a few thousand years down the line, I need her to actually like me for me. I can’t let her latch onto me by virtue of being the only pony she knows.’

“‘For all that I hate what she is, Sunset Shimmer has my sympathy. She deserves something. She deserves to have some part of her remain in the world free from alicorn games for as long as possible. A daughter, perhaps.’”

Luna gave me a warm smile at the last entry of her list, but I didn’t much feel like returning it. She’d given a dozen reasons for me to have a family and to grow up separate from her, but not one was what I wanted to hear. None of them had the ring of truth that I needed. None of them were giving me either peace of mind or a sense of closure.

And worse, none of them were entirely consistent with each other. Several of the reasons Luna had listed off were working toward cross purposes. They had mutually exclusive goals. She couldn’t get rid of me and use me. She couldn’t set me up to be hurt and keep me protected. She couldn’t give me no choice and leave decisions in my hooves.

It just didn’t make any sense! This wasn’t the Luna I knew! What was wrong with her?

“Luna, I…I really don’t know how to express how unsatisfying that is. Please give me…”

I fruitlessly searched for exactly what it was that I wanted from Luna, but the right words just wouldn’t take shape.

“I don’t know. Something,” I continued, practically begging. “Please give me something to scream about, or something to – to – to hold in my thoughts when I think about Mom and Dad. Please! Anything is fine!” I really couldn’t care less what Luna said anymore so long as it was concrete. Luna did not do this indecisive nonsense.

Luna shook her head, and I felt what little hope I’d had left shatter.

“Nothing I might tell you would be the truth, Twilight. Although I can, perhaps, offer you some small comfort in a reason I did not hold in the act.”

Too focused on fighting back tears, all I could do was nod slightly.

“I never truly intended for you to be hurt as badly as you were, although perhaps not for the reasons you’d like to hear. It would’ve – and did – invited trouble. I’d meant to quietly teach you, but events conspired against me. You somehow drew attention to yourself quicker than I’d thought possible. If I'd known that would happen ahead of time, I would've placed you with a less optimal family further from Canterlot.”

Luna fell backward onto her haunches, and her forehooves rubbed at her forehead. “Then of all possible things, your brother and my niece hit it off and started dating.”

Awkwardly sniffling, I commented, “Well, I wouldn’t want Cadance out of my life. And things worked – are working out.”

Luna grumbled, “I suppose. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the universe had it out for me personally.”

After an exasperated sigh, Luna continued normally, “At any rate, after your first flare, I continued to observe you for a few weeks. There were other, safer ponies who I could guide toward ascension if necessary. One or two might have already been ready to try.”

The part of me that didn’t think right wanted to scream and shout about how Luna made abandoning me sound so easy. She hadn’t explicitly said she’d ever seriously considered it, but the subtext was there loud and clear.

But then the part of me that had any sense, the part of me which recognized that Luna had still associated me with Mother and Celestia then, kept my mouth closed. No, not quite closed, but that part of me which could always think clearly under any amount stress kept me from interrupting just yet.

“That said, except for a few foolish moments when I thought to forget about you, I did intend to pick you. You were a vastly preferable choice for many reasons. Once I was sure I could trust you with my existence, I introduced myself. And from there, you know the rest.”

I grit my teeth to keep from biting Luna’s head off. Almost growling, I asked, “So what if Sunbutt abandoned me and you couldn’t teach me? Were you going to abandon me, too? Were you just going to leave me a mess of a pony?”

Would Luna really have done that? She’d been so nice to Aurora even though it hadn’t been to her advantage at all. Why was I always the exception? Why did I always get the short end of the stick. Apparently it didn’t matter if I was Sunset or Twilight, I always–

“No,” Luna said, bringing my unruly thoughts to a screeching halt. “I had nopony whose life I could gamble in teaching you, but there were…other options which would have made themselves known to you.”

“Like petrification?” I cried. That was the same horror Celestia wanted to push off on me.

“No, Twilight, there were many solutions to your old problem, although none are exactly pleasant to contemplate. Petrification and sealing your magic are but two. Another option would be to let you grow up without magic and then revert you to a filly, an option which you are at least implicitly aware of.”

That…was a reasonable solution. Not that I ever would’ve thought of it before I’d learned about age spells. But surely Luna and I weren’t the only ponies who could’ve come up with the idea.

“Then why didn’t Celestia suggest that?” I asked. “Cadance would’ve gone along with it, wouldn’t she? And my parents would’ve…kind of been okay with it, I guess.”

Unless Celestia had been deliberately antagonizing me all the way back then, but I couldn’t see any point to that. It was a solution somepony could think of in five seconds off the top of their head, after all; there really wasn’t any excuse beyond pointless cruelty if so. Or unless…

My stomach wrenched. Or unless Cadance had objected to a real solution. But surely she–

“I said it was another option,” Luna began, interrupting my thoughts again, “not a good option. Imagine a pony mentally eight years old with all the magic of a fully grown Flare and all the magical knowledge of an adult mare who’d had nothing better to do growing up than study.”

“Oh.” Right. I’d made a similar argument earlier myself. I’d been walking disaster at age eight with only a few dozen spells and just a little bit of magic in comparison to how much I’d had just prior to my ascension. Magnify the problem a hundred times or more, and my parents wouldn’t have been the only ponies to suffer.

“‘Oh,’ indeed,” Luna continued. “There were dozens of other potential solutions to your flares, although admittedly less to somepony who believed you had zero experience controlling your magic.”

Wait, what?

“Still, sealing your magic was… What’s the right way to put it? Lazy and uncreative?”

Luna had told me Quartz hadn’t removed all of the effects of Mother’s practice at controlling her magic. And now she’d just told me that was actually important to deciding how to solve my flaring problem without ascension or actually being taught. That…

“Luna? What would’ve happened to me if I’d lost all of Mother’s developed instinctive ability to control my surges?”

A frown fell onto Luna’s face. Then quite frankly, she said, “You would’ve been useless or dead.”

My jaw hung open.

“If I’d tried to teach you from banishment with your mind as a true blank slate, you would’ve self-destructed within a season, probably taking most of Canterlot with you. Unless, of course, we only practiced spellcasting in your dreams, but then you wouldn’t have been able to make the journey to recover the elements.”

What? Had – had Celestia had a point when she’d put a suppressor–

“But,” Luna interrupted my thoughts, “even then, sealing your magic was lazy and uncreative. Had it proved necessary, the solution I would’ve proposed – with or without knowing you had a head start on learning control – would’ve been to re-cripple you every four ye–”

“What?” My shriek drowned out whatever else it was Luna had said.

Luna just barely flinched at my shout, and I saw her hoof lift an almost imperceptible amount. It was a second later that I realized my own hoof had come up with it, already halfway toward Luna’s face again.

Forcing my voice down to a just a shout, I asked, “And how long would it have been until you broke my magic permanently? How long would it have taken before it wouldn’t come back at all? Would I have lost half – half! – every time?”

“We only would’ve had to do it two or three times, Twilight. I believe you would’ve been strong enough to withstand it.”

Barely coherent, I screamed, “But you don’t know!”

“No, Twilight, I do not know. But I am allowed to make educated guesses.”

This time I really did hit Luna again, but it came off as little more than a slap to the cheek. It didn’t even put Luna off balance. My hoof slid weakly off her muzzle as both it and I collapsed to the ground in a heap.

“Then when everything was over,” Luna continued as if I hadn’t done a thing, “I would’ve taught you myself. Flares are simply too useful and too dangerous to ignore. Further, you would’ve been able to learn magic normally growing up the first time, too, so you would’ve been immediately useful to me at the time I would most need aid to reestablish my crown.”

T-that was true. I would’ve still been useful. Luna would have taught me, even if she hated my ancestry. Everything would’ve worked out for me.

“And I know one thing for sure.” Luna stopped to lift my muzzle up to stare into her eyes. “I would’ve grown as close to you then as I am now, as close as I hope we still are now. Without a doubt, I would’ve offered you ascension, no strings attached.”

I heard a short, sudden intake of breath, but it was some time before my need to keep breathing let me know it was mine.

“D-do you mean it?” The question was faint, but it did its job.

“Of course.” Everything about Luna’s voice screamed sincerity, and her eyes were like a honey trap, irresistible in their pull and endless in their depth. “Our friendship would’ve had a very different shape, yet it would’ve been just as strong. You’re a wonderful mare, Twilight, and I’m sure that’s not because of my presence in your life.”

Oh, how tempting it was to just forget everything else and ask my last question.

But no. No, I couldn’t do that. The answer to that final question would be meaningless without first asking the penultimate one. I wouldn’t be able to focus at all; the guilt would eat me alive.

But – but the urge to fall into Luna’s hooves was so powerful. She was right there, all her attention focused on me and completely mine for the taking.

No. No, stop. Bad Twilight. I pulled my hoof back from where it’d wandered without my consent. That was the easy way. I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t stand to leave anything unsaid between us.

Now I just had to actually ask the question. That was the easy part…right?

“Alright. I – um – my – my next question. I already know – I mean, it’s not… I want – no, I absolutely must hear the answer from your own mouth.”

A second or two passed as I recomposed myself, evening out my breathing as best I could. I looked up at Luna for some support. She was always my rock. B-but even she looked uneasy now, even if it barely showed past the twitch in her wings.

“Why?”

No. No, that wasn’t enough. Luna probably knew what I was asking, but I had to put the question into words. I couldn’t let myself be too cowardly to not do so. I was better than that.

“Why?”

I gulped, hesitating again. This question wasn’t very long. I just had to force it out.

My eyes squeezed shut as I shouted, “Why did you kill Mother? Why did you make me?”

Silence. I peeked out an eye. Luna was frowning, and she’d frozen a half step closer to me.

No, not frozen. Her hoof fell back to the ground.

“I’m sure you’ve guessed why,” Luna began solemnly, “so I won’t belabor the point.”

Another moment passed between us in silence as I waited for Luna to continue.

“I was never certain, but I was reasonably confident the elements had abandoned their bearers a thousand years ago. I drew that conclusion from my own experiences that night, from the later discoveries of those loyal to me, and especially because they were not used again since.”

Another question jumped to my mouth, but it wasn’t quite time to ask it yet.

“I didn’t expect the elements to become inert stones. I dearly wished I had, but I did know they were unusable in some fashion.”

Luna’s gaze drifted, and I could all but hear her teeth clenching.

“But Sunset Shimmer’s purpose I could see all too clearly. The Element of Magic will only respond to ponies with the strength of magic and force of will capable of channeling the full power of the elements.”

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I made note of that fact. It was probably why Celestia and Luna referred to the Element of Friendship as the Element of Magic. I also made a note to ask Luna how she knew that. She probably had fragmented pre-Discordian histories about the elements somewhere.

“Sunset Shimmer was clearly the weapon carefully raised by my enemy to stand against me. I had already proven myself the superior warrior; the safest option to defeat me was to use the elements once more.”

Now was the right time to ask my question. “So you lied to me? You said you didn’t know what Celestia wanted Trixie to do for her just before Hearth’s Warming.” Luna had said Trixie was Sunset’s replacement, after all.

“Technically, no. I was only reasonably confident what purpose Trixie Lulamoon served.”

If my frown and glare weren’t getting across the message of how much of a stretch that was, then Luna would’ve had to be blind.

“Although personally,” Luna continued sheepishly, “I consider it another lie concerning Sunset Shimmer. It is a simple implication that if I knew what purpose Trixie Lulamoon had, then I should have known what purpose Sunset Shimmer had. And you would never have believed I had lost track of Sunset Shimmer if I’d known.”

“I…suppose that’s true,” I begrudgingly admitted.

Luna would’ve had to invent a lot of untestable explanations for Mother’s disappearance then. And I probably would’ve wanted to meet Sunset, too. I never would’ve let a chance to meet another Flare go without a really, really good reason. I would’ve begged Luna to tell me where Mother was forever.

Or worse, I would’ve asked Chrysalis to find her for me.

Well, I supposed that was a bit of a moot point. Chrysalis had seen the importance of Sunset’s disappearance long before I had. Still…

“Twilight, I’ve told you many times how dangerous lies are, especially important ones. And now you know exactly what they lead to. They infect even casual conversations of little import, and as you’ve indirectly pointed out, they often make it impossible to communicate vital information. Unless you want to end up trapped and eventually with somepony hitting you in the face like me, you should stick to truths and half-truths.”

And naturally, Luna made an example of herself out of this mess as a lesson for me. That… I was actually pretty touched she cared enough about me to do that even while I was screaming, angry, and occasionally violent, rather than just trying to pacify me.

“But back to your original question.” Luna fought to keep the snarl out of her voice, but she didn’t quite succeed. “I would not allow myself to be banished again. I may not have been isolated here, no doubt as had been intended, but I admit I’ve long since gone stir crazy.”

Mother was kind enough to inform me that ‘stir crazy’ meant something more literal five decades ago, which was probably the meaning Luna knew and had intended.

“Sunset Shimmer, the weapon prepared to renew my suffering, had had to be removed. If but one or two mortal lives stood in the way of my freedom, removing them was a price I was willing to pay.”

Oh no. Did that mean…

“And yet,” Luna said, the venom draining out of her voice, “as I said before, Sunset Shimmer had my sympathy.”

“Wait.” With her having been recently on my mind, I needed to know if she was okay. “Luna, is – is Trixie…”

“Alive?” Luna finished for me.

I gulped, uttering a terse, “Yeah.”

“Yes.”

No, Luna couldn’t stop there. Everything about her face said she was holding back important information.

“But what?” I asked. “What did you – we do?”

“Very little. I made the request to have Trixie Lulamoon abducted if anything went wrong, and if necessary, killed. Our resident changeling queen was quick to agree with the necessity of it, although she refused to have her hive be the one to perform the task. Reportedly, Trixie Lulamoon was detained from Rainbow Dash’s ascension until shortly after your own.”

Well… Well when Luna knew she was in a kill or be killed situation, I couldn’t fault her for going to such extreme measures. And she’d taken the risk to not simply outright assassinate Trixie. That counted for a lot.

“But we were speaking of Sunset Shimmer, and I imagine you care more about that.”

“I, well, yes. But Trixie is fine, right? I mean, she…she knew what she was being trained for.” My voice sunk to an unsteady whisper. “You didn’t” – I gulped again – “do anything, did you?”

Please, please, please say no.

“Somewhat, I suppose.”

Oh, ponyfeathers.

“You know you weren’t actually expecting a no. She killed me over less.”

That wasn’t true, Mother, and you knew it. She… And now I was talking to myself again. Great.

Heedless to Mother’s unfair aside, Luna continued, “I didn’t go out of my way to request her abduction be gentle. I’d imagine she’s still sleeping off a unicorn bane attack in a hotel somewhere. Most likely she’ll knock herself out at least once more after waking up and trying to use magic. I’m sure you–”

Luna instantly cut herself off, and her features softened again. “Unicorn bane is not exactly gentle, but it’s necessary to safely hold unicorn spellcasters prisoner. It wouldn’t have bothered you with the damage we did to your nervous system–”

Well I supposed that answered the question of if I could feel pain when I was hurting my magic now. It had hurt when Celestia had poisoned me, and I’d stopped trying to use unicorn magic immediately after recognizing the sensation.

“–but do you…” Luna’s voice became almost inaudible. “Do you remember?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “I remember the last thing Mother remembered. I’m familiar with the feeling of my magic burning away, if not – if not dying.”

Luna’s muzzle awkwardly hung open, and her eyes drifted to her hooves.

“I’m sorry you experienced that. It wouldn’t have happened if I’d just told you of your relation to Sunset Shimmer years ago.”

No, I would’ve watched that memory even if I’d known what it was. And Celestia had poisoned me, too.

But this was all kinds of unpleasant for the both of us. Trixie might have a little bit of emotional trauma, but nothing too bad. We could move on now.

“So you were saying?”

“Ah… Yes…” Luna gracelessly began. “Well as I said, whatever else I thought of her, Sunset Shimmer had my sympathy. I saw much of myself in what I’d heard of her situation. I let her live as long as I dared, but no amount of pity was worth the extraordinary risk of letting her remain alive, not even drugged and detained underground. The thought of being banished for another thousand years was maddening.

“Or worse, I could be petrified and left in the royal garden to be mocked and taunted forever. Petrification lasts until reversed, unlike banishment.”

I pulled my jaw up from where it hung. I hadn’t thought of that at all. Discord had been petrified for well over a thousand years and hadn’t escaped. Luna had explicitly told me both that and that she wanted him to stay that way forever. What hope would Luna have had? How long would Luna have had to wait to be free? Ten-thousand years? A hundred-thousand? A million? More?

A chill swept through me. That was awful. Not – not as bad as being killed, but it was so close. Or maybe it really was worse. I didn’t – no, couldn’t know. If that was why Luna had had Mother assassinated, I couldn’t blame her at all. That – that was terrifying.

Mother had been innocent of any ill intent herself – at the time, at least – but just…stars! I didn’t like this, but I understood it. Celestia had forced Luna to action, and sometimes we had to do things we didn’t like to survive, or even just to stay sane and free.

Luna had had a good reason, and…and now I was feeling bad for Discord. Buck.

Ugh. No. I could think about that some other time. Maybe when we had enough alicorns and the elements working, we could try to do something about him.

But not now. Not anytime soon. I had other things to do now.

“And…the other question? Why do I exist?”

I obviously wasn’t just a tool to Luna. I’d meant that when I’d said it to Cadance. I was at first, sure, but all friendships started like that in some sense, even if it was as simple as using somepony for a mutually enjoyable conversation.

But that wasn’t really what I was concerned about, not at all. I was worried that Luna hadn’t had a real reason to make me; that every reason I’d come up with or Luna had implied so far was mere rationalization; that when all the pretenses were swept away, I’d just been a good way to hurt Celestia at the cost of another’s life. The cruel irony of my and Sunset’s circumstances was certainly not lost on me.

And the worst part, the absolute worst part, was some small part of me could appreciate that irony and loved it. Some small part of me whispered how wonderful it would be to watch how Celestia reacted to that knowledge. I hadn’t had the courage to watch her reaction earlier when I’d messed up on the Nebulous, but…

No. That was so wrong. It was so – so bad. Mother’s death wasn’t something I could enjoy. It couldn’t be personal. It had to be just self-defense. Otherwise…otherwise it’d – it’d be murder.

But it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all. We were… Mother’s death was sad, but we hadn’t had a choice.

“Why?” I squeaked, repeating myself. “Why do I exist?”

“There’s no meaning behind your life beyond the obvious,” Luna began none too quickly, not bothering to look at me. “I needed the elements to be drained, and it would be easiest to do that while they remained far from Equus, away from watchful eyes. I needed somepony who could ascend. I needed a team of ponies who could reach the elements.”

I ticked off one correct guess I’d made earlier. Luna had known the elements were in space before I found out. She’d probably known ever since Celestia first put them there. Honestly, now that I thought about it, I really should’ve been more surprised to hear the opposite.

“A Flare with a special talent in magic could do all three mostly by herself,” Luna continued. “Simple and easy, regardless of the independent implementation details. It would vastly decrease the number of ponies who needed to be aware of my plans, which is always a strong feature of any scheme. A loyal Sunset Shimmer would’ve been the best choice, but I’m sure we both know how that would’ve turned out.”

Yes. I did.

“So I had Quartz make you under my guidance. And as I told you before, we gave you as much of a helping hoof toward ascension as we could by keeping Sunset Shimmer’s implicit memory intact, not that it lessens the value of your own work in any way. If we didn’t make any mistakes, you were a sure thing. I knew I could get you here if you worked hard. Knowing your predecessor's work ethic, I considered that a non-issue.”

Luna’s sigh was deep and long before she continued. “Of course, as you know, there were complications. Anyway, as I mentioned before, I couldn’t risk letting Sunset Shimmer live, so regardless of my final decision, she would’ve met her end. Yet I also felt she deserved to have some part of herself continue on, if possible. That desire played no significant part in the decision making process, but I am glad I could do a little something for her in exchange for the ultimate price.”

Luna stopped, turned to me, and gave me a long, thorough inspection. Her magic swept through my mane, briefly holding it aloft as her gaze fell onto it. Only once my mane had settled did she speak again.

“Your color choices could use some work, but the gesture is commendable. That you’ve taken to referring to Sunset Shimmer as your mother eases some of the troubles that plague my heart. It was a surprise and rather worrying at first, but I have no complaints. Although you have given me some all new worries in these past few hours.”

“I…um…” What even was I supposed to say to that? “You’re welcome and sorry?”

Luna shrugged. “Worrying about somepony isn’t all bad. It’s the privilege and burden of friendship.”

Under other circumstances, I’d probably roll my eyes at that, but I didn’t need the distraction right now. It felt like Luna was holding back on me. I couldn’t put my hoof exactly on what gave me that impression, but even if I felt she was being completely honest, I’d need to press further anyway. I couldn’t be anything less than thorough, not about this.

“Are those really the only reasons I exist? The real reasons? Please be honest, Luna. I – I won’t ever abandon you. You know that. You can tell me anything.”

“No,” Luna said, barely above a whisper. “No, there’s no other influential reasons. None beyond the fine details of how I picked which pony to ascend: loyalty to me, of course, being one of those fine details.”

“Yes, that’s obvious.” I knew a deflection when I heard one, and this one needed to be shunted aside. “There’s no sense in making your number of enemies grow. But you don’t sound like you meant what you said.”

When Luna still hesitated, I reached out with a wing and rested it on her foreleg.

“Please, Luna, talk to me. I just want to know, to understand, to help if you need it.”

“Twilight,” Luna growled, softly yet sharply, but she was quick to check her tone, “understand that I would never base my actions on this. I would never trade efficaciousness for this. But I knew exactly how loved Sunset Shimmer was.”

That made two of us…

Mother muttered, “And only two.”

“I take no pride in it, but I would give nearly anything to see the reaction on her face when your heritage came to light. I’ve been dreaming of it for decades.”

Luna’s voice trembled with her wrath, or perhaps her…ecstasy. That was not a good sign.

“I would’ve wanted it to be revealed after I’d already won, so I could properly torment my foe, but there’s no helping it. I’d imagine one of those questions you promised to answer is about Sunset Shimmer’s fate.”

“Y-yeah, it is – I mean, yes, there are such questions.”

Stars, curse me. Being scared of Luna wouldn’t be good for her at all. I had no excuse, not even if she had a faint echo of that madness she’d had all those years ago in her voice.

“Cadance already knows, too,” I added, my voice perfectly level this time.

Luna nodded curtly. “But no, that is not why you exist. I promise you that. It was a perk and a guilty pleasure I’d intended to enjoy alone. Are you satisfied?”

I unconsciously took a step back, rather intimidated by Luna’s glare, before silently berating myself again. Help started with understanding, and Luna obviously needed help with this. This particular act of vengeance had been preying on her mind for far too long. Luna needed somepony to talk to. She needed to be able to let this go. It wasn’t healthy for her.

Hopefully Luna would be willing to talk with me. There weren’t really any alternative ponies to go to, except maybe Quartz or Chamomile. The latter was the only pony not involved in this whole mess, though. It’d probably be easiest for Luna to talk to Chamomile, but even then, I wanted to be the pony she leaned on.

Stepping forward, wings extended, I wrapped Luna in a hug as best I could. I’d grown much since I last saw her, yet she still towered over me, and my wings weren’t quite big enough.

I felt Luna tense, and I tightened my hug in response as much as possible.

“No, I’m not satisfied. I – I can appreciate the feeling, Luna. I really, truly can. But I think you need to talk this out. Please let it go.”

After a painful silence, I finally heard a long, steady sigh just behind me. At the same time, Luna’s head and neck came to rest across my back.

“Some other time, Twilight. There is much I likely should speak of to somepony, but not this morning.” Luna’s forehoof worked its way up to my withers and gently pushed me off her. It stayed there as she continued, “This morning is for your benefit, not mine.”

“O…okay.” At least Luna was open to the idea. That was the big, important, first step.

“Which reminds me to ask, how are you feeling now?” Luna gave me a wan smile. “Better? Worse?”

That was a good question. Just from my general mood, not thinking deeply about the question, I thought I was feeling better. Most of what Luna had said to me hadn’t been surprising. It’d helped me a lot to hear that my guesses had been mostly right, to know I knew Luna well enough to know why she’d done what she’d done.

And even more than that, it’d helped just to hear Luna herself give voice to those words. That all by itself meant so much.

I wasn’t at all happy about what had happened to my magic. But…Luna had promised to help me if anything was still wrong with me. That wasn’t so bad.

Luna’s feelings toward Mother were…unsettling. I could understand and sympathize, but they were still disturbing. On the bright side, she’d agreed to talk through them later. I’d absolutely make sure that she actually did, too, even if it wasn’t with me.

Tilting my head back, I took a deep breath. I focused my eyes on the ill-defined nothing above me: a small little mental exercise to help clear my mind.

Yes. Yes, I was feeling better. All the uncertainty of the past day had disappeared, or at least most of it had. I wasn’t exactly in the best condition of my life, but I was in a better place than where I’d been mere hours ago.

“I think I’ll be alright now, Luna. Or rather I think I’m in the right position to be alright later. I probably need some time for everything to settle, but right now, I just need to relax.”

“Ah,” Luna said, some cheer returning to her voice. “That’s great to hear. I’m glad you’re taking everything that’s happened to you this past day so well. At your age, I likely would’ve been an emotional wreck for weeks with less than half of what you must’ve gone through.”

I felt a slight blush grace my face, although my coat likely concealed it completely.

“But didn’t you mention you had one more question?” Luna added.

This time, I knew my blush was showing through my coat, as my cheeks were almost burning: a sign of a good answer to come.

I stopped myself from biting on my lip and looked Luna in the eyes, holding her gaze in place. I didn’t know if this was the best time or the worst time to pose this question, but it had to be answered.

“I-I just have one more question. I’ve been waiting to ask it for seven years, and I need to know the answer is still the same as I always thought it would be.”

Standing on nothing more than my hindhooves, wrapping my forelegs around Luna’s neck to balance me, I rose up to the prerequisite height necessary to pose my question.

Luna’s eyes widened. “Wait, Twilight, do you – mmph!”

Silenced by my own muzzle pressing into hers, Luna took a half step backward. In the process, she pulled me forward. I clung to her even tighter than before as I scrambled to regain my balance, yet I didn’t lose our connection. I didn’t give her a chance to breathe or speak.

I’d always imagined it’d be hard to avoid Luna’s teeth poking my tongue as it intertwined with hers, but it turned out not to be the case; we didn’t even need to avoid it. Every time my tongue scraped along the points, a wave of pleasure shot through me. It was almost as if they’d been designed specifically to find new ways to tease and caress.

For just a moment, I brought myself out of the blissful haze I’d descended into to reorder a few things in my dream. Breathing simply wasn’t acceptable anymore, and I needed something soft.

An insistent step forward by me, followed shortly by a step back from Luna.

Then another.

And another.

And then Luna tripped over my trap, sending the two of us tumbling onto a cloud, Luna on her back and me on top of her.

Sadly, this tore our muzzles apart, yet I’d already gotten half of what I wanted. My question had been for both of us, and I had my answer.

Sex was about trust and friendship. If I was close enough to Luna and trusted her enough, I’d enjoy sleeping with her. Just that kiss alone had been pure, distilled bliss, so I knew I’d love spending the night with Luna. Thankfully, the contrapositive couldn’t tell me my thoughts for me, but that in itself was strong evidence. Whatever squabbles I had with her right now, I still loved Luna. I still trusted her enough to let her be this close to my heart.

But Luna, she’d been hesitant at first to return my kiss. I’d seen it in her eyes. I’d felt it with my tongue.

“Should we continue?” I whispered, giving voice to the last question I had to have answered. Our muzzles were removed from each other by less distance that anypony could measure.

“Forgive me, Twilight.”

I felt my heart stop, the only defense it had against shattering.

“I… It’s been some time since I last lay with a pony. You mean so much to me. Please don’t take anything the wrong way.”

“I-I-I see. It’s – it’s – it’s okay. I – I should’ve given you s-some more space.”

Luna’s wings pulled me the rest of the way down onto her and into a second, shorter kiss, one not so much of passion as caring.

“You silly pony. Space won’t help either of us.”

“Eep!”

Luna’s hindleg had bent to rub against me just below my tail. A-and it wasn’t s-stopping! Her hooves reached up to pull me back down again, down far enough to nibble on my ear.

All the tension in my body melted away at the electrifying jolts of pleasure spreading through me. A little moan escaped, and my entire face felt like it was on fire.

H-how did Luna k-know that – that my ears were my w-w-weak spot!

Luna stopped to whisper directly into the ear she’d captured, leaving me in a daze.

“I just need you to promise me one thing, Twilight.”

“Mmm, wha–”

Oooooh Stars! I didn’t even know that spot existed on wings!

Luna eased up on me, but just enough to let my mind emerge from the haze that’d settled over it.

I managed a weak, “What?”

“I’m a centuries old goddess of the night.” Luna lowered her voice even more as she boasted, “And of all things that happen in it.”

I didn’t know if my face could be burning any more if it really were on fire.

“Passion is a well-known sister. Desire is a loving friend. Lust is a welcome companion.”

Luna rolled us over, placing herself on top of me. A dozen tiny little spells picked up where her limbs had left off, leaving me a squirming mess of putty.

“I know of magics that even you might shy away from.”

O-oh my. That sounded like a ch-chaaaaallenge.

“Promise me that when we’re done, you’ll be able to do something other than beg for more.”

Half mad with desire, I wrapped my hooves around Luna’s neck and pulled her down into another kiss in answer.

Author's Note

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Chapter Thirty Three - Among Friends - Part One

“…light…”

I groaned and rolled over, pushing away whatever was shoving me around.

“Twilight!”

“Ah!” I teleported in reflex away from whatever was assaulting me. My eyes shot open, and I realized I was in space.

Well, I was always in space, but now I was outside the Nebulous. It wasn’t the first time I’d accidentally done this, but this time…just didn’t bother me. Yes, there was no air, and that was getting annoying, but that was about it.

My vision finally focused after waking up. I retraced my path back to my bedroom. Twinkleshine was waiting half on my bed and half on the floor, her head scanning the room for wherever I’d gone.

One quick teleport later, I said, “Hey, Twinkleshine, what’s up? Do you need something?”

It seemed Twinkleshine had a bit of a hard time looking me in the eye, but she replied, “No, but Chrysalis is getting cranky and wants to go to bed.”

Oh. Oh stars! How long had Luna and I been at it? “How long was I asleep?”

“About a day and a half.”

Wow, I’d really lost track of time. That was probably a world record, even if dreams didn’t exactly require stamina. At any rate, I tapped into the enchantments scattered around the ship and sent the usual flow of magic…

“Is something wrong, Twilight?”

I shook my head. No, nothing was wrong, but…using magic felt…weird. It – it felt normal, but there was also a feeling of…going with it?

So weird. Not uncomfortable, but weird.

Anyway, I noticed Chrysalis’s magic break off. Her magic felt very much like what she was; it was always changing and rolling around within itself. It was like I was on one of those festival rides during the Summer Sun Celebration as a filly again. I almost wanted to throw up.

“Twilight!” Twinkleshine shouted again, stomping her hoof. “Pay attention!”

“Ah, sorry.” I blushed and withdrew from the strange sensation. “What were you saying?”

“Dash has been alternating between freaking out and showing off ever since she woke up yesterday. If you want to catch her while she’s showing off and, you know, actually able to communicate, you should hurry up.”

Twinkleshine pointed above me. I looked up and found a blue blur lacking a rainbow whizzing around out in space, somehow jumping from one cloud to an entirely different cloud somewhere else. I could feel her magic giving her thrust without air, but I had no idea how she was moving from cloud to cloud. One moment she was in one, and the very next she was in another.

“What is she doing?” I asked.

“Trying to see how fast she can go. Chamomile says she’s hitting the limit of her reflexes, but Chrysalis and Cherry Berry have been giving her pointers.”

Yeah, that sounded like Dash, alright. What else would she think to do with all the power of a… “Cherry Berry?”

“Yeah. She had some theories about alicorns she wanted to test.”

Well that made sense, I supposed. I’d have to tell…ask her to keep quiet about a few things, but I didn’t have any problems with letting her and Dash experiment together.

“I see. Lead the way, then. I have a lot of explaining to do, I expect.”

I was only a step toward the door when Twinkleshine’s hoof flew backward toward my bathroom. “Shower first.”

Why – oh. “Alright. I guess I probably should.” Now that Twinkleshine mentioned it, I did feel a little…soggy.

Yet again, I was only a step toward the bathroom door when Twinkleshine spoke. Unlike last time, her voice was too quiet to hear.

“Sorry, I couldn’t hear you. What did you say?”

Still mumbling, Twinkleshine said, “Please don’t when we’re in bed together.”

Don’t what? “You mean have sex with Luna?”

I only got a weak nod in response to my question.

Hmm. Well, I didn’t really understand why it would actually matter. It wasn’t like we’d be having a threesome, not that I’d object to that. Luna and I wouldn’t even be in the same bed, really. Twinkleshine wouldn’t even be awake to hear me sleep talk.

But at the same time…I supposed I could understand the symbolic meaning. If that was what Twinkleshine wanted, it wouldn’t hurt to oblige her.

“Alright.”

Twinkleshine’s eyes brightened instantly. “Really? Just like that?”

“Yeah, I promise.”

“Thank you.” Twinkleshine jumped on me in a hug. I almost didn’t even feel it, and that sparked a thought.

As we broke apart, I asked, “Hey, Twinkleshine, would you mind if I tried something?”

“I guess?”

I fell to my haunches and beckoned for Twinkleshine to turn sideways. Once she had, I slipped both forehooves under her and raised them up. Twinkleshine went with them, and the only thing I felt was the raw magic coursing through my body.

“Oh my gosh,” Twinkleshine said all at once. “How are you doing that?”

Fighting down only most of my giggles, I set Twinkleshine back on her hooves. “Earth pony magic. It’s pretty nice. I feel…sturdy.”

“Right, should’ve known that,” Twinkleshine mumbled to herself. Then she said, “Well, I – I’ll just go let everypony know you’re awake, then. See you later.”

Twinkleshine practically bounced out of my room, far more happy than I’d have expected. I made my way in the opposite direction to my bathroom. I’d only just opened the door when Mother spoke up.

“She was worried you didn’t need her anymore, you know.”

As much as I hated giving voices in my head attention, I said, “Oh, please. I told her exactly what I was like. I mean, I guess she might worry anyway, but that’s natural. It’s just a feeling that we have to work through together. But anyway, she already knew I wasn’t monogamous.”

“What are you, brain dead? Do I have all the working neurons between us? You’re an alicorn now, and that came right the buck out of nowhere for her. And immediately after ascending, you spend over a day making out with Princess Luna. For the very first time, I might add. What was she supposed to think?”

I…supposed that was fair.

“And you know she’s a monogamous mare trying to understand why you’re not, even if the two of you have made peace with that over the years.”

That was a fair point, too, I supposed. But Mother really needed to go away. I turned on the bath to get a nice steam going before turning my attention to the task at hoof. I really didn’t need to, but I turned to look at myself in the mirror as I went to work.

“Are you sure you want to do that?”

The surge of dark magic – which felt rather sickly, as if it’d eaten a rotten apple – at the tip of my horn fizzled before the geas spell could form. I had told myself not to use dark magic, but just one spell wouldn’t hurt. One geas would probably be less damaging than this whole talking to myself issue.

“That wasn’t what I meant,” Mother added. “You say you’re watching Princess Luna, but what about you? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”

Somewhat annoyed, I said, “I don’t speak…” Even as I formed the thought, I knew it was false. I had understood what Mother had said, and even if I hadn’t, there was no way she could’ve formed those words if I didn’t know them, too.

“Yeah, you do. You’ve always had the motor sequences; you just forgot the vocab. Why do you think it was so easy for you to pick up Old Equestrian but not the minotaur language? They’re related languages. Well, the newer dialect of Old Equestrian that you speak is.”

“Est quod verum?” I tried, and the words came to me.

“See?”

“Wow,” I whispered to myself. I’d watched a lot of Mother’s lessons with Celestia, and foreign language class had been among them, but I hadn’t thought I’d actually absorbed the vocab.

I tried to form another, longer sentence. I tried to form another sentence. The verb for ‘to lay’ kept eluding me, as did the translation of ‘plain’. I knew what they were. They were on the tip of my tongue. Just a little reminder was all I needed, really.

Ugh. Okay, so I’d only absorbed a little vocab. It was still cool.

“So what’s it gonna be, Sparklebutt?”

Sparklebutt? Was Mother serious?

“Am I going away forever, or are you going to do the smart thing and let me tell you when you’re being stupid?”

I let out a little moan as my stomach objected to what I was about to do. That voice wasn’t actually Mother, but squashing it felt…uncomfortable. It talked like her, it had her memories, and it was going to drive me mad.

“You’re not real.”

“I’m as real as you are. I am being computed in my own brain, even if you’re at the controls for me. I mean sure, I’m not the original Sunset Shimmer. I can’t really disentangle myself from your thoughts and feelings; I’m not an actual split personality. And I guess I just kind of don’t exist when you’re not thinking about me.”

Both Mother and I fell silent for a second as we contemplated that.

“Yeah… Anyway,” Mother picked up again, “I’m still pretty close, though. Do you want to kill me, too? Only a couple days ago, you told little Cadance that if Princess Luna really were ‘Nightmare Moon’ inhabiting Princess Luna’s mind, she’d still have a right to exist. Are you going to go back on that?”

I hated having my words thrown back at me by myself.

“But then maybe I don’t really have a desire for self-preservation. Perhaps you’re just simulating one in me because your conscience is bothering you, and I’m the only way you’ll admit it.”

My conscience was not bothering me. I knew Luna had problems, and we were going to work through them together. Well, after we got over our hormones and had a short vacation, that was. That kind of work was best done when we were both calm and comfortable, and these last several weeks had been anything but.

“Well, you’re just crazy, then.”

“I’m not crazy!” I shouted aloud. Not yet, anyway. But taking an imaginary friend seriously was a good start.

Mother laughed at me despite me mentally glaring back at her. Once she was done, she continued,“That reminds me, you should verify that Princess Luna is Princess Luna. You’re not afraid of the results either way, right?”

“I’m not.”

“Then you won’t mind performing the test, or at least asking.”

I supposed I could… If I ever hoped to get through to Cadance, I’d need to know all the facts surrounding her argument.

And if Luna actually didn’t have her own body, I needed to find a way to separate her from the other Luna without killing her. But if that wasn’t possible, I much preferred my Luna. Well, it was conceivable I’d like a hypothetical other Luna more, but that’d be a dumb gamble to take, let alone how wrong it’d be to kill my Luna.

Mother’s thoughts facehoofed. “Alright, I suppose that’s good enough. Now just admit you’re not going to get rid of me.”

I opened my mental mouth, but Mother interrupted me before I could form my abstract thought into words.

“I can tell what you’re feeling just as well as you, you know. You’ll get bored with me once you say yes, which means I’ll disappear for a while just like you want. Then I can go on being an excuse to think things you normally wouldn’t for you.”

The frustrating part was Mother was completely right. I wasn’t going to get rid of her. I wasn’t going to go so far as to call her a person with the right to exist…but she had a point.

Ugh. I had a point. Or maybe I should use her. I didn’t know. She wasn’t a person. We both agreed on that. Hopefully. But at the same time, I was clearly personifying her.

In the exact same frustrated tone I would use, Mother interrupted, “Oh my gosh. What did Princess Luna do to you? Sunbutt told me I overthink things, but I’ve got nothing on you.”

“It’s a minimal level of prudence, especially when you have eternity in front of you.”

Mother sent a strange feeling of shrugging through my body as I entered my bath without actually making me do it.

“Whatever you say. So anyway, what’s up with Twinkleshine? You realize she looks like a young Celestia, right?”

“She does not,” I objected.

“White coat? Check. Pink mane and tail? Check. Unicorn? Check. Slender build with most of her fat stored around her rear? Check. She’s even taller than you.”

Mouth hanging open, I fumbled through both Sunset’s and my memories until I found a relevant one. I had seen it on my visit to Luminance, but I hadn’t seen it. The shade of Twinkleshine’s coat was slightly off, and the eyes were different, but the resemblance was uncanny.

“Twilight,” Mother cooed, actually sounding motherly for once, “have you maybe ever thought that the reason you hate Celestia so much is because of me? Because you felt my familiar sense of abandonment? I mean, knowing everything you do now, do you really blame her for not teaching you? Princess Luna all but said she set up the two of you for that little drama.”

My magic scrubbed away at my mane, trying in vain to shampoo the thought away. But – but there was no removing an infectious thought like that, not without a geas or a memory spell.

“Well?”

I uttered an inaudible no.

But that didn’t change what Celestia had done and still wanted to do to Luna. And she’d wanted to petrify me. Even – I gulped – even Luna’s backup plan to cripple me again and again wouldn’t have been as bad as what she thought she would’ve done. My feelings remained unchanged.

“Wow, you are stubborn. Princess Luna would’ve been there for you, you know.”

Yes, but Celestia hadn’t known that. Not unless she’d known who I used to be or that I was Luna’s apprentice the whole time, but there was no way she had. Even after a day-and-a-half of rest to reset my brain, that possibility still didn’t make any sense to me given Celestia’s past actions.

“Unless that reaction is also part of her plan.”

“To what end?”

“Pft. Who knows what Sunbutt can find cause to do. It’s not like she could’ve taken you back even then. Princess Luna scrambled most of my instincts with flaring, after all. Probably just enough that you would’ve failed in your role if she tried, even, knowing Princess Luna.”

That wouldn’t surprise me if Luna had planted that as a trap in case her plans for me went barrel up. She was nothing if not thorough.

“I think you meant psychotically meticulous.”

“Do you want me to erase you?” I growled.

“Fine, fine. Shutting up now.”

After a good who-knew-how-long of silence, I let out a sigh. The rest of my bath went by in relative peace.

Still a little damp – I’d taken the luxury of towel drying myself instead of magicking my coat dry – I finally wandered onto the fake beach next to our lake. Everypony but Chrysalis and Chamomile was gathered there, although Dash was more often in the lake than not.

Or maybe that was the wrong way to put it. From the way her magic appeared and disappeared, it was as if she were barely ever in the lake at all. She was performing some sort of dolphin routine, leaping up from one section of the water in a huge splash and then diving into another section with a cannonball.

Spike was the first to notice my approach. He ran over for a hug, obviously hiding tears.

“I thought you were dead,” I just barely heard Spike mumble into my leg.

I returned the hug with one of my fancy new wings. “I’m sorry for worrying you. These past few days were supposed to be carefully planned out.” I squeezed Spike a little tighter. “But don’t worry. I’ll always be here for you now, Spike.”

“Forever?”

“Mhm,” I hummed.

Unfortunately, our moment was ruined by a glomp. Accompanying it was Pinkie Pie’s overly dramatic shout.

“You’re returned to the world of the living! Did your Princess Charming finally wake you up?”

Without even waiting for my response, Pinkie Pie continued, “I made a whole pile of butterscotch and put it under your nose, but you didn’t wake up at all. I even tried standing you on your head, but you were a total zombie. I guess it’s true that princesses can only be woken up by true love’s kiss.”

I silently told myself not to buck Pinkie Pie off my back.

Just as I was about to reply, Dash appeared directly in front of me out of nowhere with barely more than a stirring of magic. I leapt back in surprise, hardly feeling the weight of the two pieces of cargo still clinging to me.

“How did you do that?” I asked just shy of shouting. That hadn’t been a teleport. It hadn’t been a shadow jump, nor had it been a changeling portal. It hadn’t even been…whatever it was Pinkie Pie did when she broke physics.

Faster than I’d ever heard her talk before, Dash spewed out, “I was kinda hoping you’d tell me, Twi. But it’s totally super cool! I love this whole teleporting thing! No wonder you do it all the time. I just get into the right mood, and bam! I’m somewhere else. I can only do it between, like, clouds and water and humid areas for some reason, but oh my gosh is it awesome.

“Did you see me earlier going like a million kilometers an hour out in space? I didn’t even have to breathe. I mean I did, but I was like vhroosh, and then I was somewhere else, and the whole breathing thing was only mildly annoying at the start.

“Speaking of annoying, I’ve got this weird feeling, like, everywhere. I mean, not everywhere everywhere, but pretty much everywhere in the ship. It’s not all that bad, and I can tune it out, but what’s up with that? I didn’t feel like this in the Æthereal Realm.”

“Okay, stop.” I said.

I took a deep breath. I was not going to blow up at Dash. I was not going to yell at her for talking like Pinkie Pie after too much caffeine.

“Have you asked anypony else yet?” I asked. “Maybe Chrysalis or Chamomile?”

“Yeah, they said I was ‘manifesting out of my element’ or something like that, but I figured you’d know for sure. By the way, am I totally screwed out of a normal life now? And is there some law that says princesses can’t be married? None of them are, and I–”

Not going to shout. Not going to shout. “Dash,” I interrupted calmly, “can we bring the energy levels down just a little bit?”

“Why would you want to do that?” Pinkie Pie asked. “She’s perfectly understandable, and now she’s communicating twice as fast.”

I let out a sigh. One Pinkie Pie was already pushing the limits. Two would be unbearable.

I turned my head around and asked, “Are you going to get off me?”

“No problemo,” Pinkie Pie replied, finally hopping off my back.

“Alright,” I began, turning my attention back to Dash. “First–”

I felt Spike’s claws very tentatively let go of my leg.

“Spike, you don’t have to stop.”

Suddenly remembering that ‘all this touchy feely stuff wasn’t manly’, Spike slightly blushed and tried to play it cool. “Er, no, it’s okay, Mom. I’m good. Just forget I ever–”

Rolling my eyes, I wrapped up Spike in another hug with both of my hooves. This one he couldn’t escape no matter how much he squirmed or protested.

Once Spike finally accepted he was going to be cuddled whether he thought it was cool or not, I turned my attention back to Dash again.

“As I was saying, first, I couldn’t care–”

No, bad Twilight. Be nice. Or at least not dismissive.

“You can opt out of princesshood,” I began again. “If you pick up some changeling magic, you can just wear your old pegasus form as a disguise. It won’t fool everypony, but it will fool everypony that matters.

“And as for your other question, no, princesses aren’t disallowed from marrying. Cadance is engaged to Shining, and they plan to marry soonish. Luna and I simply aren’t interested in the institution, and I don’t know what Celestia’s problem is.”

Even with a huge chunk of Mother’s memories floating around in my head, I didn’t have the first clue as to who any secret suitors or hidden paramours might have been. Not that that was really important. I did vaguely remember Luna saying Celestia wasn’t asexual, though.

“But anyway, how did you first manifest?”

Now that I’d said the word, it was dredging up old, obscure memories from chatting with Cherry Berry and Chamomile. It was something like teleporting, but not.

“Ah…” The hyperactive look in Dash’s eyes finally faded away. “Well, when I woke up yesterday, I was really comfortable in bed. And that feeling just sort of fed into itself? Yeah, let’s go with that. Flutters said I spent a half-hour ‘being part of the bed’. It took me a while to calm her down.”

Looking rather sheepish for once, Dash scratched her muzzle with a wing and added, “Well, after she calmed me down first.”

“Wait, you became a cloud?”

Dash shrugged. “It didn’t really feel like that. I mean, I guess I don’t know what being a cloud feels like, but I felt…big, you know?”

“I see…” I mumbled.

It sounded like Dash’s alicorn domain was weathery things. Thank the universe’s whims that it wasn’t pegasus magic. But turning into a cloud? Really? I supposed Luna had kept me mostly in the dark about what it meant to be an alicorn, because ‘it would be more magical that way’, but that seemed a little strange.

“You should give it a try,” Dash said. “It’s like moving a muscle you’ve just realized you had. I tried to explain it to Flutters and Chamomile, but they couldn’t do it.”

Hmm… Alright. Why not? It sounded interesting enough. But I wasn’t going to become a cloud, or rain, or lightning, or whatever. I was pretty sure that wouldn’t work for me.

I turned my attention toward one of the enchantments in the lake area. Like most every piece of unicorn magic I’d sensed so far, it was very structured and organized. Hundreds of magical pathways interlocked exactly as I’d designed them with only a little wear and tear to show their age.

I tried following all the pulses of magic through the spell but only met with marginal success. Instead, I tracked a single pulse and followed it along.

My eyes couldn’t see anything useful, but they felt compelled to follow along with my magic sense. That was distracting. I closed them and further absorbed myself in just trying to live what the one little pulse of magic I’d singled out was experiencing.

I went at a relaxing, yet still fast, speed through the enchantment. Every so often, I’d suddenly jerk at a right angle instead of taking a gentle curve.

Maybe my spellcrafting needed a little artistic work. A few less sharp edges here and there would make the ride better and the overall design much prettier. But then there was a simple beauty to rigid lines that a tangled mess of curves could never possess. Perhaps I shouldn’t change a thing.

The end of the ride approached. Whatever magic was left would be recycled into the spell for another round, but this pulse was running low. It’d fade out soon enough, utterly spent and removed from existence. Maybe I shouldn’t follow–

A scream escaped me into my thoughts. I was gone. I’d died!

But – but I was still thinking. That didn’t make sense! How could I be gone and not gone?

That question stopped the encroaching panic dead in place of curiosity. I leaned back and let myself breathe. And it was only a couple seconds into that when I finally realized I couldn’t see, hear, or feel anything anymore. That included my lungs.

And yet my magic sense was working perfectly fine. All of the magic on the Nebulous was plainly arrayed all over. There was the enchantment I’d been following, Dash’s nearly endless pool, Berry Pinch’s barely mature magical core, little fluffy swirls of magic left behind in clouds…but my own magic was gone.

And that meant I’d done it! Success! I’d recreated Dash’s little trick.

Well, mostly. I’d managed to demanifest myself, but now I had to actually get a body again. Being some sort of alicorn ghost thing wasn’t exactly desirable in the long run. But maybe I could indulge for just a little while and investigate.

Hmm… Other than not having a physical body, I didn’t really feel all that different. My wonderful new magic sense was working normally, and my thoughts were unimpeded. And judging by the speed my friends’ magics were moving around at, nor were my thoughts boosted, unfortunately. I hadn’t expected otherwise, knowing Luna and Cadance so well, but still.

Anyway, moving around…didn’t seem to be a thing. I wanted to say I knew where I was, but I didn’t even know that. My magic sense was the only external information available to me; without a body for reference, it apparently gave me the position, velocity, acceleration, angular velocity, et cetera of magic in absolute coordinates. Spike’s magic was…

‘It was just there’ wasn’t the right way to say it. That had too much of an ‘over there’ connotation, which implied I wasn’t over there, too, which I very well might be for all I knew.

Argh! I imagined myself furiously rubbing at my nonexistent mane. By definition, sensory input had to interact with the physical world. I, or whatever mechanism that communicated magical information to me, should be somewhere in the world taking in data. Spike’s magic should have been, say, five hooves to my left, or twenty hooves below me, or something, but it was just – just there.

There just – there weren’t words in Equestrian that accurately described what it was like to not have a reference point for sensory information. Nopony had ever needed to invent them. And even if those words existed, nopony would truly understand them. Except…alicorns? Were we all like this?

Wait, wait. This all sounded familiar. What was it? Something Luna said, perhaps?

Hmm, well regardless, I was still on the Nebulous, right? I felt very… I waved imaginary hooves about, searching for the right words. It didn’t take long for me to give up and simply settle on ‘there’. The Nebulous’s magic was definitely at the forefront of my attention. There were other things in my peripheral…sense, but they didn’t exactly feel near–

A silent gasp escaped me. As I focused on the things just on the edge of my attention, those little blurs exploded into detail. The sun was magnificent. And oh my gosh, the moon. Both were present, sharing the same space, both impossibly far apart and impossibly close together. Equus was just a little tiny blob of magic swirling to a million purposes beside the sun.

A-a-and then the moon, the sun, Equus, everything shrunk to pinpricks of magic against a great sea of borderline itchy almost-nothing. There were little scraps of magic scattered across the void of space, but only little scraps. Yet there were so many of them, maybe even as many as there were atoms in a mole or more, but they were insignificant like grains of sand on a planet.

Oh. Oh my! That was another star now, not the sun. And on the other side of the universe where the moon was lay a – a gash in the universe. A dead nothing filled with a thousand suns’ worth of magic. Hundreds and hundreds of other stars filled my mind as I delved deeper into the unknown half of the universe, turning away from the side I lived on.

Some stars had their magic packed into spheres smaller than Equus, but the sheer amount present said they had to be stars, not planets. Luna must’ve created or found some neutron stars centuries ago for whatever reason.

But then there was a warm and cuddly carpet of low-density magic. The strangest urge to roll around in it struck me, but I had no idea what that would even mean, let alone how to go about it.

There was so much for me to explore. The universe was so big, and it was all there for me to see! I just had to look.

Except…there was something in the way. I’d run straight into some kind of wall as my attention ventured further and further outward.

I stared at the wall for whatever staring was worth at the moment. Unlike the magic on the Nebulous, which had been in crystal clear clarity, this magic was frayed and completely out of focus. Not that the stars I’d been observing had been much better. Stars were awfully big, even the neutron stars; I’d merely been losing resolution on them as I zoomed out, no doubt. I did, after all, still only have the sensory processing power of a single pony…probably.

But those stars had at least appeared whole. This barrier just faded out, and on the other side…nothing. And yet not nothing, because that would imply there was nothing to see instead of just…nothing.

The barrier appeared to be a shell stretching across the universe, dividing in into the side whose magic was within my purview and the side that was…just not. It wasn’t like there was no magic on the other side. I knew there were stars out there, too. All stars had magic, right, not just the ones close to the center of the universe?

But wait. Now that I was paying closer attention, my cage was expanding. Fast. More and more stars popped into my awareness even as I watched. It was almost like picking out individual stars in the twilight sky as they faded into view. That one could be Alcor, and that one over there could be Meissa.

And that was about all the names I could remember. Twinkleshine hadn’t drilled me on what she’d called all the stars in this half of the universe yet. It would be great to have her here with me, and Luna, too. All we’d need then was a blanket and a hilltop, and it’d be the perfect stargazing party. I could spend hours just curled up with them like this, watching the stars’ magic swirl and blaze to whatever purpose stars put it to.

I let out a contented purr. Solar magic was so warm and inviting. I just wanted to snuggle up around it, or in it, or whatever I could do with it.

Mmm… This was nice, almost like dozing off with Mom and Dad by a Hearth’s Warming fire.

Just as I felt myself fall into that blissful state between sleeping and waking, I pulled my thoughts back together. I needed to get back to…the others…

Oh no. Stars, this was bad. Where was everypony? Where was the Nebulous?

Okay, okay, okay. Calm down, Twilight. There was nothing to worry about. Look, the divide between the universe’s halves was right there. It was pretty obvious.

There was the moon and the sun. Oh, and little Equus was there, too, hiding beside Polaris, which was maybe a thousandth as magically dense as it was light dense at most. There just wasn’t all that much free floating magic out in space to find its way to Polaris.

So from there, I knew what coordinates I’d teleported to after Celestia had left, and I still vaguely remembered the velocity we’d had when we’d reached Mona. I could find everypony. I knew where to start looking; that was the important part. And Dash’s magic was a blazing lighthouse in the midst of a dark sea. This would just take time; it wouldn’t be hard.

Okay, so if I started from…there abouts, I just needed to search a small cone heading away away from the sun.

Ugh. There was too much random background magic in this particular part of space. Sorting through all this with a fine-toothed comb would be such a pain.

Oh. Unless Dash and I had been radiating magic. That honestly wouldn’t surprise me, especially since Dash apparently had been showing off a lot. And it would explain why there was more magic here than elsewhere. So if I just looked for where the magic density dropped off, I should have a boundary for the Nebulous’ location.

And…ah ha! I found her. That was Dash, and then that was Chrysalis, and there was everypony else minus Chamomile, who was hanging out on the bridge for whatever reason.

I let out a sigh of relief. My little trip through the cosmos could have been a disaster.

Well…I supposed not, actually. Luna had never had much difficulty finding my dreams, and it wasn’t like she’d slacked off and just kept track of my location all day every day. Her dream walking and my magic sense likely weren’t perfect analogs, but they probably were close enough for the comparison to work.

Anyway, now all I needed was to manifest a body again.

And it only occurred to me now that I’d never asked Dash how she’d done that. But surely it couldn’t be that hard. She’d figured it out without any guidance, as had Luna and Celestia. And she did say it was supposed to feel very natural.

So then what would feel natural to me? It would be logically intuitive – not that that was necessarily what would feel natural – to do the opposite of demanifesting. I’d gotten lost in the feeling of magic earlier. Perhaps all I needed to do was try to cut myself off from all this.

A shudder ran through my imaginary body. No, the natural thing to do was not to cut myself off from magic. Never again ever.

What I could do instead would be to focus on having a body again instead of…being whatever I was right now.

Actually, what even was I? Besides an alicorn, that was. That much was given. What clues did I have?

I apparently had an astronomical-scale level of perception now, although I could only process small chunks of that information at a time. That and my general thought patterns and emotions suggested I still had an equine brain of some kind, or at least something approximating it.

Along that train of thought, Cadance – and other alicorns, presumably – had a natural form that continued to grow to ‘alicorn adulthood’. That form was vulnerable, too, which meant it either carried or had a strong connection to our actual consciousness. Given that our bodies could regenerate from anything, including atomization, the latter was most likely the case.

Then based off of what Cadance and Dash had said to me and my own experiences, every alicorn had the ability to sense their domain. I could sense magic. Dash had weird feelings ‘pretty much everywhere’ on the Nebulous, which if I were guessing, was probably her sensing humidity. Cadance could sense emotional bonds.

Hmm… And Cadance could alter emotional bonds. She didn’t just use a spell like a geas to force a pony to think differently while under the spell effect; when Cadance finished with a pony, they were different. They were fundamentally altered.

Oh my gosh! And – and Luna could move the moon and stars around however she wanted without effort. Did that mean I could do whatever I wanted with magic? All magic everywhere?

I squeed at the thought. That would be the best thing ever! I had to experiment right…away…

No. I needed to spend time with my potential friends first. I couldn’t keep ignoring them like I had. And like I was now. Sigh…

But back to the question of what I was for the moment. What hypotheses could I generate from this data for testing?

There was the standard sci-fi answer Twinkleshine would suggest. I could be magic. All of it.

As wonderful as that would be, the idea seemed a bit strange with not having an expanded consciousness. Why would I still think like a pony and have the same processing power as one if I was the universe’s magic?

Well, to be fair, I did have an extra sense now. That required additional processing power since my other faculties hadn’t felt impaired to compensate for the new input, but that wasn’t quite the same as having a universe-sized brain to perform computations.

Anyway, a related idea could be that I was just a ‘little’ bit of magic shaped into the form of a pony. That didn’t really jibe with having an astronomical-level of sensory input on its own, though. There would have to be some additional framework operating behind the scenes in conjunction with myself to allow that to occur.

Hmm… There was the Æthereal Realm. I didn’t really know why that realm existed or what it did exactly. It did seem to have enough access to my mind to show me memories directly, which meant it was conceivable that it could provide sensory input to me even now.

Of course I was giving the Æthereal Realm a sense of agency right now that it might not actually possess. The ascension process was clearly standardized somehow…which now that I thought of it might be an important clue about the distant past. But that didn’t mean the Æthereal Realm had any ability to interact with the Physical Realm. I needed a lot more information before I could actually chase this particular theory further.

Another possibility was that I was an avatar of magic of some kind. Depending on how much I fed my ego, magic could all belong to me, or I could just have a built in mechanism to control magic somehow. There were certainly real differences between the two phrasings in practice, but without another Alicorn of Magic to contest me for ownership slash control – if it were even possible for there to be another Alicorn of Magic – there was little effective difference.

This seemed like the most solid theory, but that was likely because it held little explanatory power; it described the data more than it revealed information about the data. I had no idea what an avatar actually would be. All I could say about avatars would be what was minimally possible for them. It was possible for them to be pony-like. It was possible for them to control their domain. It was possible for them to sense their domain.

I hummed thoughtfully, regretting that I couldn’t run a few feathers across my jaw. Really, I needed a lot more information before I could even begin to attempt to answer the question of what I was. Luna probably had plenty I could ask for, but…well…that would be cheating. And she didn’t keep me in the dark my entire life about being an alicorn just to ruin my chance to explore and discover on my own.

Actually, putting it like that, it was entirely possible Luna had told me nothing because she wanted another opinion on what it meant to be an alicorn. If that was true, it probably meant discovering any useful information would be frustratingly difficult.

But on the other hoof, I might have a comparative advantage at the task. I was the Alicorn of Magic, and magic powered ascension. There might be other mechanisms coming into play, but I got to experience the overwhelming wave of magic from Dash’s ascension as it passed me…by…

Oh how I wanted to facehoof. That was what the wall I’d run into earlier was. That was my ascension propagating outward. I couldn’t see past it because it was…doing whatever it did as it went. And I wouldn’t ever be able to study it because only the very tail end of that magic was under my control.

Dash’s ascension…was probably all on the other side of mine. She’d had a huge lead, and apparently ascensions traveled faster than light. I couldn’t study that either. How frustrating. I needed to ascend somepony else. If I could figure out how ascension magic worked, I could learn so much. I might even be able to recreate the process on smaller scales using less magic while simultaneously probably reducing the problem of having too many absurdly powerful alicorns running around.

Of course it was entirely possible that I couldn’t leave the areas of the universe affected by my ascension. It wasn’t a problem for a full alicorn like me, but a miniaturized alicorn like I’d just proposed might feel a little trapped. Well, after ponies started spreading out into space, that was. Hmm…

Still, it’d be better than dying.

Anyway, I needed to get a physical body again. No more distractions.

So I got here by focusing on a particular piece of magic, although I suspected that was more of a useful thought exercise than an actual requirement. Dash had been manifesting in and out of clouds and water, but I doubted she actually needed to demanifest into something. I hadn’t gone near the enchantment I’d been focusing on, after all.

But I probably did need to manifest out of magic. Or if I didn’t need to, it might at least help me learn the process. But if it were required, how much magic did I need? Would any little scrap do, or did I need to work with a lot? Conservation of magic wasn’t really a thing the way, say, conservation of momentum was, but producing enough magic for an alicorn could take a while.

No, I couldn’t need an entire alicorn’s worth of magic. The magic I’d had within my physical body before was just gone. I didn’t know if it’d radiated out into space, but it certainly wasn’t on the Nebulous anymore. Dash’s magic would’ve similarly disappeared the first time she’d demanifested, if not during the other times, so she’d manifested without an alicorn’s worth of magic nearby to draw into herself.

And again, Dash had done this without direction, probably while she was freaking out. I likely just needed to get myself into the right mental state, and things would just happen correctly.

Alright, this shouldn’t be too hard.

My eyes cracked open hesitantly. I was pretty sure I had eyes again, but you never knew.

And then I fell into the lake. I’d finally managed to manifest out of some unimportant magic holding some clouds together. The trick that had finally worked was to imagine the magic constructing my body spontaneously and simply willing myself into the world. That was not how you cast spells, but then I supposed this wasn’t really a spell.

At any rate, I had a minor problem. I hadn’t really thought about where the clouds were situated. With a mighty splash and a gargled groan, I belly flopped straight into the lake.

Once I’d recovered my wits, I teleported onto the beach, hacking up the water I’d inhaled.

A hoof thudded down on my back, helping me cough. Berry Punch’s voice accompanied it, asking, “Are you alright, Twilight?”

“Fine,” I wheezed out. “Just fine, thanks.”

Off to my side, a small little blob of magic that must’ve been Berry Pinch poked at my wing.

“Wow, you really are an alicorn, too. These wings are really soft and pretty.”

I shut down the thought that said Berry Pinch was only complimenting me because she wanted something. I – she probably did in the ‘I’d love to have these, too’ sense, but not in the ‘please ascend me’ sense.

“Um, thanks,” I managed to get out as I coughed up the last of the water in my lungs. “Yes, thank you.”

“Well, it seems it finally happened, Princess,” the voice of Cherry Berry said from the other side of me. “Congratulations are in order, I think.”

“Ah…right. Thanks. But you can still just call me Twilight.”

“Nope.”

I resisted the urge to facehoof. Cherry Berry was going to give me crap about this forever, wasn’t she?

Oh well. Twinkleshine snuggled up comfortably next to me, and Spike found his way to my other side with Berry Pinch.

And then my eyes caught sight of Fluttershy limping forward with Dash supporting her. She had a pair of rather large bandages running across a forehoof and her barrel. I supposed this is what Luna had meant when she’d said Dash had dealt no long-lasting damage.

“Fluttershy, what’s wrong?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s nothing, Princ–” Dash nudged her in an uninjured part of her barrel. “I mean Twilight. I’m alright. Besides, are you okay? You coughed up an awful lot of water.”

Ugh. Patience, Twilight. Patience. Fluttershy was just like that. That was why the Element of Kindness liked her. She’d ignore her own problems if there was somepony else to worry about even the slightest bit.

“I’m perfectly healthy,” I replied. “You must’ve seen Dash flying around in space without air, right? A little water in my lungs isn’t a problem. But we can’t leave a princess consort injured like you are.”

A blush erupted onto Fluttershy’s face, and she descended into incomprehensible squeaking. It was actually kind of cute if I overlooked how difficult her reactions made it to communicate with her.

“So what’s wrong with her?” I asked Dash this time.

Rather more subdued than she’d been before, Dash said, “Large bruising and possibly a minor fracture.”

Alright, I could fix that. I knew how to fix broken bones and bruising like I knew the frog of my hoof. I’d had more than enough of both over the years.

My horn lit up. The necessary healing spells formed about Fluttershy’s injuries, seeking out and repairing damage as little magical tendrils threaded through her. I’d expected healing magic to feel warm and soothing, but these spells honestly felt more like the magical equivalent of a red hot wire mesh. It wouldn’t hurt at all, yet I hesitated a moment to go through with them. But only a moment. Fluttershy needed this, and I was sure I was going to get all kinds of strange feelings from all manner of benign spells; this might as well be the first.

I didn’t know how long it took to finish casting, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute. I cut the bandages off of Fluttershy and scryed across where she’d been hurt. Everything had healed properly as if nothing had ever happened.

“Done,” I said.

Fluttershy blinked at me. Then she reacted properly and tested her leg.

“Thanks, Twilight,” Fluttershy said.

Dash added, “Yeah, thanks, Twi.”

“You’re welcome.” A genuine smile graced my face, but it faded quickly enough. I still had something important to do. “I suppose I mostly already have it, but if I could get everypony’s attention.”

As the little side chatter died down, Cherry Berry asked, “Are we going home now? Is this the end of our adventure?”

“Um…” I should just say no, but would it really be so bad to tell them the truth? I didn’t have any further use for them, at least not on the Nebulous, and Celestia already knew or would find out anything I could tell them.

No, there was no reason not to tell them whatever they wanted to know now, at least within reason. I still knew a lot of secrets that shouldn’t be revealed to anypony.

“Well, I can take you home if you want,” I began, “but other than for a short visit, it might be dangerous for you. Although then again, probably not. If Chrysalis hasn’t mentioned it, her hive has all of your close friends and family safely hidden.”

Cherry Berry’s eyebrows rose. “Safe from what?”

Apparently Celestia, Dash, and Chrysalis had neglected to tell anypony anything. That was kind of them, I supposed; it gave me the chance to come clean myself. And Twinkleshine and Chamomile hadn’t said anything either, obviously.

“Celestia. With some…assistance…from Dash, I kind of just ruined her plans for using the elements to kill Luna.”

I got a rather loud chorus of whats, come again nows, and two I knew its. Of the latter, the first came from Pinkie Pie. I didn’t know if she was being serious or just pretending – such knowledge was beyond the reach of ponies – but the other voice, Cherry Berry’s, I knew was very serious.

“How did you know?” I asked. “And since when?”

“A mare has her ways.” Cherry Berry smirked.

I returned it with an unmoving frown. This kind of security breach could lead to an enormous problem if repeated in the future.

“Oh, alright,” Cherry Berry finally said. “I guessed on the moon. I didn’t want to bring it up in case you were…proactive in keeping state secrets. If history has taught me anything, it’s not to get too involved in fights to the death between rulers.”

My head fell awkwardly to my hooves. That wasn’t an entirely unfair worry to have around me, unfortunately. But in my defense, I hadn’t done anything to her when she’d found out I was going to ascend. That ascensions could be planned was a bigger and more important secret than Luna’s and Celestia’s problems. Surely Cherry Berry would’ve figured that out at some point.

“Twilight wouldn’t do that,” Twinkleshine spoke up in my defense. “I knew the whole time.”

I wrapped a wing over Twinkleshine, uttering a soft thank you.

“No offense taken, Cherry Berry,” I said. Then speaking to everypony assembled, I continued, “But just to clarify, Luna isn’t going to kill Celestia.” Although that didn’t mean she didn’t want to. “This is only a one-sided fight to the death. Our, that is Luna’s and my plans are simply to put Celestia into what amounts to a coma for a while.”

Cherry Berry hummed thoughtfully, running a hoof under her muzzle. Eventually, she said, “Fair enough.” Nopony else had any objections either, although it was possible they simply didn’t voice them.

“But as you were saying?” I asked.

“Oh right,” Cherry Berry said. “Well, things didn’t add up on the moon. Luminance was obviously made by Princess Luna, and her art gallery of a castle obviously took a lot of time to make. Surely a diarch wouldn’t be absent from Equestria for that long, so it stood to reason that alicorns can make casual field trips to the moon. A theory which you proved recently, I suppose.”

I guessed the rest of Cherry Berry’s reasoning, “So why wouldn’t Celestia just retrieve the elements herself?”

“Yeah, pretty much. Although I was only sure because nopony on the moon had anything good to say about Princess Celestia, yet they all knew who she was.”

I supposed that was all fair enough. I couldn’t have prevented Cherry Berry from deducing our trip’s general purpose without not taking her to the moon. This was just another reason I needed to learn to truly respect other ponies. And if possible, Luna and I really needed to find a good job offer for Cherry Berry. If she was willing, she was far too smart to not employ her again after this contract was over.

At any rate, I was pretty sure this was the point where I should give a friendly compliment.

“Excellent work, Cherry Berry. I’d like to say this was an intelligence test for another job, but Luna and I were honestly just trying to keep you all out of the loop for your own protection. It’s still treason even if you didn’t know what you were doing, but if something went wrong, we figured Celestia probably wouldn’t bother herself with sweeping you under the rug and would’ve just let you go.”

Plus or minus a geas or memory wipe to keep them quiet. Those were possible outcomes, too.

“Is it really even treason, though?” Berry Punch asked, a little bit of distress showing on her face. I could see her eyes flitting toward her daughter every so often.

I shook a hoof back and forth in the air. “Kind of. It’s complicated.”

Cherry Berry interrupted with, “It’s treason to back the losing monarch.”

Echoing Cherry Berry’s earlier words, I added, “Yeah, pretty much. But in reference to what I was saying before, it’s…probably…safe for you to make trips home. As long as you don’t cause trouble for her, I don’t think Celestia will actually care about what you do. I made a deal with her earlier, too. Hopefully that will keep all of you safe no matter how this turns out.”

If I’d been less exhausted, I would’ve stipulated to Celestia that she had to leave everypony I cared about alone – minus me, Cadance, and Luna, of course – for the rest of their lives, but that hadn’t registered with me at the time unfortunately. Still, Celestia and I had agreed to honor the spirit of our words. Hopefully her honor would naturally extend that promise beyond the Summer Sun Celebration.

I let out a little involuntary sigh. I’d just have to learn from that failure.

“So yes,” I continued, “you can go home if you want, but…” I bit my lip, and my voice sunk almost to a whisper. “I’d much prefer it if you all stayed with me.”

The silence that fell, for all that it lasted less than a second, was probably one of the worst ones of my life.

Pinkie Pie was the first to speak, naturally. “What are friends for if not for fighting epic battles together?”

“Um, no. That’s not what I–”

A little magical tug at my foreleg interrupted me and brought my attention down to Berry Pinch.

“You’re still going to teach me magic, right? You’re really good at it.”

Well Quartz would probably be the better teacher for Berry Pinch, given his specialization. But at the same time, I didn’t know how I felt about sending a sweet little innocent filly to him. Although Berry Pinch really shouldn’t be hanging out with me either, not unless she intended to enter politics or the secret service. I wasn’t exactly a bad influence, but I had enough self-awareness to know a pony taking me as a role model could go astray very easily.

But…it should be fine, right? Twinkleshine had turned out alright, although I didn’t think she’d ever seen me as a role model.

“Yes, if you want me to, I’ll finish your education for you.”

Berry Pinch gave me a cavity inducing smile before hugging me and saying thank you. I couldn’t help but ruffle her mane with my magic in return, smiling myself.

Turning my attention back to the ponies at eye level, I said, “I wasn’t asking for any of you to fight with me.”

“Even me?” Dash asked.

“No, not you,” I sighed. “I don’t expect you to fight directly, but I do expect you to behave yourself. Your existence alone is enough to keep the younger generation of alicorns out of this fight completely, which should sharply reduce the potential collateral damage.”

We should be able to pressure Celestia and Luna into fighting off-planet this time, too, but I was less sure of that. Celestia very much had the home field advantage this time. I didn’t know how much that was worth in comparison to not being outnumbered three to two.

“So exactly what were you asking?” Cherry Berry said.

“Not – not much.” My hoof awkwardly played with the sand below it, and I had a hard time actually looking anypony in the eye. “I just…wanted your time to, you know, get to know you all better. I’ve–”

I gulped. This was the point where I could turn everything around. I just had to put myself on display and let everypony in. It wasn’t that hard. It just took a few simple words. It would only take a minute or two.

“I – I realize that I haven’t – that I haven’t exactly been the nicest or friendliest pony. I was hoping everypony would…start over with me, I guess. I’d like to actually be your friend, not just your boss.” My wings shifted nervously as I forced myself to look ponies in the face. “Would – would that be okay?”

Pinkie Pie was the first to respond again. “Aw, you silly pony. You don’t need to change. You may be a grumpy pants, but you’re our grumpy pants.”

Spike clung to one of my forelegs in a supportive hug, and the other one bore Berry Pinch.

“You’re just fine, Twilight,” Fluttershy added. “We’re already friends.”

A warm smile bloomed on my face as, one by one, I was buried in a group hug from most of the ponies present. This was nice. Really nice. I wouldn’t want to go back and tell myself not to study or read, but I wished I’d listened to Cadance just a little bit more when I was younger.

And in the midst of this warm, fuzzy moment, Dash ruined it.

“So does this mean I can fly in the library now?”

I sighed as everypony finally released me from the hug.

“No,” I said plainly and simply. “So anyway…”

Now that it came to it, what was I supposed to do now? As nice as the emotional support was, I would’ve appreciated criticism more. I was trying to better myself here, not stay the course.

“Oh well,” I quietly sighed to myself. I already knew the general changes I wanted to see in myself. It was just a matter of trial and error now, I supposed.

For lack of anything better to say, I asked, “What’s going on here?”

“A ‘you’ve got a horn’ beach party!” Pinkie Pie replied with her usual enthusiasm. “I even broke out the good schnapps.”

Yes, well, I still wasn’t going to partake in social drinking. That just wasn’t my thing. Although…I supposed I could drink anything short of moonshine now without having it affect me, just like Spike could.

“We’ve got music, and snacks, and volleyball, and water Frisbee, and lots and lots of sand.” Pinkie Pie gestured behind her, where indeed there was a volleyball net set up. It was obviously a homespun cotton net, but it did look sturdy.

Given the lack of any sand sculptures and that nopony but myself was even the slightest bit wet, I’d probably interrupted a game of volleyball. I’d never played, but surely it’d be fun if I just tried.

“Is there room for me to join in?”

Pinkie Pie wrapped a hoof around my withers and led me toward the court.

“Of course there is, Twilight. And we needed somepony to balance out Dash and to catch wayward balls ever since Chrissy went to bed, too, so this works out perfectly.”

That Twinkleshine or even Berry Pinch couldn’t catch stray shots had me more than a little worried. Exactly how wayward did these balls get?

Heedless of my concerns, Pinkie Pie continued, “Fluttershy is refereeing, so you can play the aerial position.”

Oh no. I could see it now. This was going to be a disaster. A sporting event wasn’t at all how I wanted to try flying in the real world for the first time. That required the kind of accelerations and reflexes that would almost certainly send me crashing into walls, the ground, other ponies, and anything else that wasn’t intangible.

I gave a weak, tentative flap of my wings, feeling the kind of magical thrust I’d been denied for years lift me a hoof or two off the ground. Maybe this would still be fun.

“Okay,” I agreed, sealing whatever fate awaited me. “Whose team am I on?”

“Ours!” Berry Pinch and Spike chorused.

I raised an eyebrow at putting both the foals on the same team, but honestly, that shouldn’t surprise me. I knew well enough that those two liked to team up as often as possible.

“How quick are your reflexes?” Cherry Berry asked me.

Very, very hesitantly, I replied, “Reasonably fast.”

“You still have a repair spell memorized, right?”

Against all sane and rational thought, I again hesitantly answered, “Yes?”

“Good. Our team hasn’t broken anything yet, but ‘Team Spike Every Chance They Have’ has ruptured the ball twice, put a hole in the net three times, and set fire to the net once.”

“Er…”

“No injuries yet, though,” Cherry Berry continued. “Chrysalis had your position before. She was quick on the draw when she had to intervene and stop the ball with magic.”

Oh stars. What had I gotten myself into?

Author's Note

Prereaders – Starlight Nova, Strange Reasoning, The Great Eater

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Chapter Thirty Four - Among Friends - Part Two

“Argh!” I whispered as Spike pulled a broken feather from my wing. Volleyball could be fun, but it wasn’t exactly the best way to learn to fly in the real world.

“Sorry, Mom.”

I mumbled, “It’s fine,” as I sank back into my beach towel below me and Twinkleshine curled up next to me, where she dozed in the afternoon sun. I felt like I needed a bath, and I probably had a half-dozen feathers to preen still, but Spike had probably gotten most of the ones that needed to be out immediately.

No doubt demanifesting and remanifesting would fix both those problems, not to mention the physical exhaustion, but…it just wasn’t worth it. I’d miss out on snuggles, and I was enjoying this time quietly chatting with Spike, even if he was a little too heavy in too small of a package to be resting on my barrel comfortably.

Picking up where we’d left off, Spike asked me, “So what color is your flame?”

“Hmm… Probably the same as my magic. Why don’t you walk me through it, and we can find out together?”

Not that I couldn’t figure it out for myself. I’d taught Spike about his dragon magic as best as I could. There was little doubt I could breathe some fire with a little experimentation.

Spike rubbed two of his claws up and down his jaw thoughtfully. He had the most adorable little expression as the tip of his tongue stuck out and his eyes tried in vain to look at his mouth.

“Well,” Spike began slowly, grasping for each word, “there’s a fiery pit in your stomach, but actually a little higher?”

I was pretty sure Spike didn’t actually possess some sort of organic fire pit inside of him, but I most certainly didn’t. That was a little too vague of a description for me to work with.

“Could you elaborate a little more?”

“Hmm… It helps if… Ah! It helps to take a deep breath first and then blow fire with a huff. Yeah, actually, the fire comes from your lungs. You know when you hold your breath too long and your chest feels like it’s burning?”

“Mhm.”

“Well, it kind of feels like that. Maybe doing that flaming mane thing you do when you get really mad would help with the whole breathing fire thing.”

One of my wings came up and wrapped around Spike. With it, I guided him off my barrel and onto his feet. I rolled over afterward, being very careful not to disturb Twinkleshine’s rest.

“Sorry, Spike, but I never figured out the whole fire pony thing. It only ever happened when I got really mad.”

And without Flares to set it off as a random spell effect anymore, it might never happen again. Well, I supposed it wasn’t exactly a random spell effect. If I flared and was angry, I was white-coated, red-eyed, and on fire. There was nothing random about literally burning with righteous fury.

Anyway, I asked, “Why don’t you go ahead and demonstrate for me? I’ll just watch and see what goes on in there.” I poked Spike with a hoof between his lungs for emphasis.

“Yeah, alright. Welp, here goes.”

Spike went through the motions he’d described at exaggerated levels, but I was paying far more attention to what was happening to the magic inside him. The warm little pool of magic that inhabited him grew sharp, and quite appropriately, fiery at the edges as it invaded his lungs. A little explosive pop would go off every once in a while, which only stoked the spell Spike was forming. The little sparks of magic would launch out and set off another explosive pop elsewhere in an exponential chain reaction.

Then when the magic looked ready to explode out of him, Spike finally let out his breath. The magic came with it, fading away and bursting into an even, controlled fire while it was still inside his throat.

That…seemed kind of painful for a pony to try. But Luna had done it in a dream. Maybe part of the spell endowed a natural magical protection from fire. It was true that Spike didn’t have any problems with fire, lava, and such things himself, and there was no chemical explanation for the lava at the very least. Worst case scenario, I supposed, all I’d have to do was wait a second or two to regenerate.

Now that Spike was done, he turned to look at me with almost impatient eagerness. Regardless of any safety concerns, it was my turn to try, for who could say no to that face?

I inhaled just as Spike had. Within my lungs, I focused on sparking the magic inside of me the same way it had inside Spike. The concept wasn’t all that different from earth pony magic, just…more volatile.

Just as I began to crave another breath, a little fire sparked inside me. I fed magic into it, providing it with all the fuel it could ever need and then some. It almost felt like somepony were filling my lungs up with more and more air until I burst.

And burst I did. I ungracefully hacked up a raspberry fireball that should have singed my coat as it passed by. Fortunately, I still had the presence of mind to shield Twinkleshine from the heat and explosive noise.

Intermittently coughing up small bursts of fire, I said, “I think I put a little too much into that.” My hoof came down with a slight wince on a little piece of beach towel that had caught fire, smothering the flame instantly.

“I’ll say,” Spike said in chorus with Chamomile, who had jumped into my shadow just moments before I’d exhaled.

I coughed up what I suspected was the last of the fire trapped in me. “Good afternoon.”

“Could I beg a minute of your time, Princess?”

I almost felt like facehoofing. Chamomile knew since day one not to do that. “Please just call me Twilight. But sure. What is it?”

Chamomile let out a little cough as she emerged from my shadow. “In private?”

“Oh. Do you mind if I take off for a little while, Spike?”

“Nah. Pinch and I were going to build a sandcastle anyway.”

“Sounds fun. I’ll have to see what you two come up with later.” Between Berry Pinch’s magic and Spike’s opposable claws, I was sure they’d have something impressive.

Once Spike had sufficiently wandered away and I’d checked that Twinkleshine was still napping, I asked, “Where to? Is here fine, or should we go to the library?”

“The bridge, please.”

I nodded, and a simple teleport brought the two of us to our destination.

“So what’s up?” I asked.

In response, Chamomile held out a hoof to my left. My eyes followed it, and – oh. Well this was rather embarrassing. The statue of Luna that Celestia had dug out of Mona was still here.

“Why didn’t Chrysalis take care of this while I was out?”

Surely there was some reason. Although the statue was decidedly not magical – I would know otherwise – and although I doubted Celestia would be rude enough to place a chemical bomb or something similar inside, it really would be better to get rid of the statue.

“Chrysalis examined it and said it was just a normal statue,” Chamomile explained.

“Solid metal all the way through? No cavities?”

Chamomile nodded. “So it would seem. We didn’t know if you’d kept it for a reason. Chrysalis thought you wanted to give it to Princess Luna as a gift, so we just left it here and kept everypony off the bridge.”

“Good work,” I went out of my way to say, even though it really went without saying. Honestly, I didn’t think Chamomile understood the concept of bad work. Then I asked, “But do you really think Luna would like this?”

I turned back toward Chamomile just in time to catch a shrug. “It might hold some special significance for her. And even if not, it is a piece of her past that, from my understanding, has been all but erased from Equus. I could certainly see her placing sentimental value in it.”

There was an unspoken but there. Chamomile’s face always gave her away when there was. A quick magical rap on the statue confirmed that the statue at least sounded solid.

“Makes sense.” But Chamomile wouldn’t have brought me up here for this if there weren’t something more to it. “So then what has you worried?”

“Well, it’s just, I asked Chrysalis to do the investigation.”

Ah, of course. Conventional wisdom said to always double check a changeling queen’s word or deed, and it’d be really embarrassing if there was such an obvious problem that my knight hadn’t thought to mention to me. Still, by this point, unless Chrysalis were under one of Celestia’s spells, I doubted she’d betray us.

Well, she’d probably kept her options open enough to still be able to, but I’d imagine that would take some doing. And besides, there was always Pupa. She took after her mother in many ways, but she tended to try harder when things got rough instead of considering cutting her losses. She’d proven that to me several times over. I could count on Pupa to keep Chrysalis in line if she somehow got it in her head to switch sides.

But I might as well double check for Chamomile’s sake anyway. First I shifted my attention toward Chrysalis’s magic off on the other side of the ship. So far as I could tell, there weren’t any spells on her. Probably. Her magic – and definitely not Celestia’s – was buzzing around wildly in her head. That was probably the hive mind at work.

Then near her stomach area, a pool of fuzzy magic that made me think the word pink was – what in Tartarus! Shivers ran down my spine as I imagined the acidic hisses of magical digestion. A hoof came up to my mouth as I resisted the urge to vomit and turned my attention away…for about two seconds.

Stars, why was watching love literally dying so fascinatingly horrifying? Oh gosh, I’d wanted to know what it meant to eat love, but this was just – just revolting. Ugh, and I’d promised to feed Pupa myself for the rest of her life, so I’d have to watch this all the time and watch whatever happened in the extraction phase.

And I was only seeing the magical side of the process. What must Cadance think?

No, no, no, no. Focus on something else, Twilight. The statue! Yes! Focus on that.

I sent off a few scrying spells into the statue along with an accompanying illumination spell. As could be expected of early Equestrian metallurgy, there were small little marble-sized air pockets in the metal. No doubt the trip past the sun had caused the holes to expand as the air pressure increased and the metal softened.

Other than that, I didn’t pick up any significant cavities, and those air pockets were too small to hold anything actually dangerous. Although I did note that the inscription was remarkably well preserved, almost like new.

‘In this life or the next, we will always be together.’

Wow. Ominous. Was this made before or after Luna’s banishment?

Oh well. It didn’t really matter either way. I turned back to Chamomile, my inspection complete.

“My second opinion is there’s nothing wrong with this statue. I don’t see any harm in keeping it, so we might as well. Put a bow on it, and we can give it to Luna as a gift. Although it is in pretty poor condition.”

I kind of wished I’d left the elements on Mona so I could find the comet again. There were probably more relics inside it that I could excavate. Oh well. I supposed that was a missed opportunity.

“There are several artisans in Luminance who could restore it if you wished,” Chamomile suggested.

Hmm… Well, I’d have to make sure the city wasn’t trapped first, but I didn’t see any harm in a visit. I’d imagine Chamomile was pretty homesick, too. Although in all honesty, it would be better to evacuate everypony there rather than visit. There was no sense in leaving them unprotected, ceasefire agreement or no ceasefire agreement.

But at the same time, I highly doubted it was an urgent matter. Celestia wouldn’t agree to my terms and then immediately break them two days later. There wouldn’t have been any reason not to simply bring me back to Canterlot as a souvenir if she did. Luminance wasn’t exactly a high priority target in and of itself, either.

Speaking of Celestia, though, I should give the Nebulous a once-over to make sure she hadn’t left any small, mundane-looking spells behind. I couldn’t imagine what she would have found cause to enchant, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

But that would have to wait until tomorrow. Since Chamomile hadn’t been to the beach party yet, there was still something I needed to say to her.

I began, “We’ll stop by Luminance for a while. I’m sure everypony there will be happy to see you and I safe and in pony, and I’d also imagine there are ponies there you want to see again.”

Chamomile blushed. “I – I didn’t suggest that because I was homesick. I just thought it’d be easier to use ponies loyal to you. That’s all. Really.”

Uh-huh. Sure. I believed you.

“It’s my duty to keep you safe wherever you go,” Chamomile continued, trying desperately to save face as she rambled. “But if we’re returning to civilization, the moon might be safer than Equus. Although the sun princess mentioned she’d been there without alerting anypony, so perhaps not. It might be best if nopony was there.

“If so, I don’t think anypony would mind if we evacuated Luminance to Equus if you felt it was necessary. Bookkeeper was looking forward to maybe visiting our ancestral home someday. And Turn A Phrase wanted to see a modern printing press. He tried to build one but couldn’t get it to work. Oh, a-and I know Astral has always wanted to see a film in an amphitheater.”

Oh my gosh, this was so cute, especially how Chamomile’s flush doubled on the last name. I’d just discovered her taste in stallions, if I remembered correctly.

I interrupted, “They’re just called theaters, actually, or movie theaters.”

“O-oh. Right. Apolog–”

“But if you want to go,” I interrupted again, “you can just ask. I’m not going to try to monopolize your life. And I’m always willing to help a friend in need.”

I tried to give Chamomile a smile, but it just wasn’t coming. Sure, I’d been more amiable to Chamomile than to, say, Fluttershy, but she’d made is so easy for me to do so. Even if it hadn’t been official, she’d acted like a loyal knight the whole time. That more or less meant doing whatever I asked of her without complaint and asking for almost nothing in return.

A sigh escaped me. Still, however unpleasant this was, the second time around came much easier.

“Well, I haven’t exactly been much of a friend. I’ve ignored and yelled at ponies, and I haven’t given anypony the respect they deserve, yourself included. But I’d like to do better. I’ll try to set aside…”

The right words to summarize exactly what I wanted were elusive, but one kept coming up. It was accurate, and it fit perfectly. For better or worse, it described exactly what Luna had molded me to be.

“At least when we’re in private like on the Nebulous, I’ll be Twilight first. I’ll try to set the princess aside and just be…whoever I am underneath.”

Really, without all the responsibilities I’d collected over the years, who even knew who I was?

“Ehem.” Chamomile cleared her throat.

I shook the thought out of my head before it could sink its claws in too deep. There would be plenty of time for self-discovery later. And perhaps I was being a little melodramatic.

Once I’d given my attention to Chamomile properly, she asked, “May I speak freely?”

I didn’t know how many times I’d already told Chamomile this, but the message just didn’t stick. “You’ve never needed permission. And either way, that would be a part – even a big part – of being Twilight first.”

“Right…” Chamomile’s wings twitched and stretched at her sides. “You… I… That is, I think this is something important to you…”

After a silence that stretched several seconds at least, I prompted, “But…”

Another moment of hesitation passed, but then Chamomile said, “But I like my princess, and I’m proud to be her knight.”

One second passed, then two, and then I facehoofed. What else could I have expected from Dame Chamomile?

“Princess?”

“Please, Chamomile, just Twilight.”

“Princess” – Chamomile failed to correct herself despite my disappointed look – “we do not speak of such things, but…well, I’m sure you know that I wanted to be a knight. I know it’s improper, and I should–”

“Chamomile, it’s fine. I know your heart is in the right place, and that’s all that matters to me. Cultural sensitivity doesn’t extend to me making myself be upset with you.”

Despite the frown that had crept onto her face, Chamomile said, “Fair enough. But before the idea was given to me, I never would have thought of it. I remember telling you that being a guard wasn’t my first career choice.”

“If I remember correctly, it was your fourth. Or was it fifth?”

Chamomile looked rather mortified. Tripping over her own tongue, she said, “I-I-I fully intend to put my – my everything into this job. I d-didn’t mean–”

I cut Chamomile off with a giggle. “I’m just teasing.”

“R-right. Um…okay. But – but as I was saying, even after Princess Luna trained me and offered me the position of Captain of the Night Guard, being a knight hadn’t even entered into my mind. I didn’t even know it was still an official position. Princess Luna hadn’t had a knight in nearly a thousand years. It was a huge surprise when she asked if I’d be open to the idea.”

I did remember Luna mentioning that a certain mare had swooned at the time. Calling it a surprise was no doubt a bit of an understatement. And yet for all the excitement that had been swelling up in her, Chamomile suddenly shrunk into herself.

“I took a few days to think it over. When I gave Princess Luna my answer…it wasn’t…I’d gotten the wrong idea.”

Oh dear. “You didn’t know about me yet?” I tried to put on the most encouraging and sympathetic smile I possessed.

“No, not as a princess. But Princess Luna would often speak of you. As much as she tries to hide it, she has such a soft spot for foals. I didn’t imagine – no, I suppose in hindsight, it was obvious she was raising you as royalty. The questions she asked me about how she was rearing you should have told me that.”

“And she went to you?” I asked, head cocked to the side. Had I taken Chamomile away from her own foals and she’d never thought to mention it? “Are you a mother?”

“No, no, no, no, no,” Chamomile shot off in rapid fire. “I wasn’t nearly of mating age yet the last time we started a new generation.” Blushing she continued, “But I did help raise a foal or two or six. And I’ve accepted I probably won’t have a chance to foal with my job. Er, my old job and my new one. Please don’t worry about that. I made some adjustments to what I want out of life ages ago.”

Well so long as Chamomile was happy, that was fine. Not every mare had to be a mother to feel fulfilled. Still, I couldn’t help thinking of Spike and all the warm fuzzies that came with him. And judging by her face and tone, Chamomile had obviously enjoyed helping with Luminance’s foals.

“Just so you know, I have no problem with you having a foal. Luminance won’t need to be careful with births anymore, either, so don’t feel constrained to the traditional schedule. If worst comes to worst, I’ll ferry food from Equus to the moon for everypony.”

Realizing who I was to Chamomile, I quickly added, “Not that you have to. It’s not a command or suggestion. Honestly, no pressure either way. I meant it when I said I don’t plan to monopolize your time. Just, you know, enjoy life.”

I snapped my mouth shut before it could add, “Because it’s short.” That would be more than a little rude coming from the immortal goddess.

But my hypothetical rudeness aside, Chamomile had the strangest smile on her face.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Nothing. Just…nothing.” Her smile finally faded as she picked up her story. “But as I was saying, I’d gotten the wrong idea. I’d thought Princess Luna wanted me to be her knight, and when she didn’t actually ask, I…well, there’s no hiding it. I was furious. She plainly told me she didn’t need anypony else looking after her.”

Eyebrow raised, I echoed the words, “Anypony else?”

Chamomile shrugged. “I can only assume she was talking about you. You were, will, and have rescued her from certain doom, after all.”

Hmm, I supposed that was a fair point.

“And rather than calming me down, she decided it was a better idea to outright confuse me. She told me that being open to the idea isn’t the same as agreeing to it.”

Ah, yes, I would imagine that would be confusing for Chamomile. Without centuries of romanticizing knighthood in Luminance’s culture, it’d probably seem more like a very important job from the past than a two-way relationship.

“Let me guess,” I began. “Princesses need to be able to trust their knights, and that only works if their knights fully trust their princess, right? Being a knight is a lifestyle, but being a particular princess’s knight is personal.”

Nodding, Chamomile said, “More or less. Princess Luna told me to think long and hard about what I’d need to see in a princess to pledge my fealty. To make a long story short, I decided that my princess would have to be a princess.”

Oh. Now I understood exactly how this related to what I’d said earlier. I opened my mouth to respond, but Chamomile interrupted me.

“Please hear me out, Princess.”

“I…” I sighed, “Alright.”

“Please forgive me if this comes out wrong, but I think Princess Luna molded you to take the sun princess’s place.”

A little blood made its way onto my tongue as I kept myself from yelling at Chamomile. I said I’d hear her out, and I would.

“I mean no disrespect to Princess Luna,” Chamomile continued. “She’s a wonderful princess, and I know she cares about us. Er, that is the ponies at Luminance, not the ponies here on the Nebulous. Not that she doesn’t care about us, too.”

Chamomile collapsed to her haunches, blushing furiously. “Oh, this is coming out all wrong. Princess Luna does care about us. She wouldn’t have bored herself to death over the centuries learning about agricultural advances on Equus for us if she didn’t, let alone everything else she’s done for us and ponies and Equus. But I think she has to remind herself of that over and over. It’s not natural for her.”

“Chamomile,” was as far as I got before I reconsidered what I was about to say. Luna wouldn’t want me spreading her past around without permission. “How much has Luna told you about the events leading up to her banishment?”

“Some. Why?”

“It’s just,” I said slowly, trying to find the right words one by one, “Luna has emotional scars. They’ve…festered. I’ve been noticing recently that she’s – she’s limping.”

Stupid nose. A small sniff escaped me.

“But please don’t hold that against her,” I added. “She’s trying. And something happened recently that I think will be good for her.”

“Should I not inquire?”

I nodded. It wasn’t my place to tell anypony that Luna had finally given up on her sister. I was pretty sure most of her pain and anger was knotted around Celestia. If she could let it go as well, I suspected she would feel much better.

“But she’s opened up to me. I think I’ll be able to help her. It’s just going to take a while.”

“I see… Please let me know if there is ever anything I can do to aid her recovery.”

“Of course.” Then remembering what we were talking about, I said, “But I’m not…that. I don’t have a natural altruistic impulse. Cadance is… We never did the official ceremony. I’ll pretend you never said yes to being my knight if you want. I’m not – Cadance is the princess you want for that. Maybe in a couple decades, but–”

Chamomile’s hoof muffled the rest of what I’d been about to say.

“Princess, I’m sure Princess Cadance is wonderful and well worth my time, too, but I wouldn’t have said yes if I wasn’t sure I was right about you. I know you didn't mean to imply otherwise, but I am taking this job seriously.” A shiver ran through Chamomile. “Princess Luna would throw me into an oubliette to rot with every other false knight if I committed such treasonous negligence. She knows I know better than to accept an offer of knighthood without carefully considering it.”

A shiver crept through my own spine as I recalled some of the darker fantasy books on knights. Apparently those bad endings had a more solid foundation in historical fact than I’d thought. But…life imprisonment was a relatively nice punishment for high treason historically. It was probably just standard policy nowadays, though.

But still…an oubliette…

“You do know I’m the only pony with authority over you, right?” I managed to ask.

Chamomile simply said, “Yes,” before moving on. “Princess Luna told me so much about you, and after watching you these past years, I know one thing for sure: you’re efficient.”

Three things happened. First, my ears and brain got into a fight over what exactly I’d heard. Second, my jaw moved strangely, trying to form words that didn’t exist. And third, I made some sort of sound vaguely reminiscent of, “Huh?”

Turning to Old Equestrian, Chamomile said, “Stars, was that not the right word? What I meant was you possess an inclination toward optimization. If there’s a problem, you’ll try to fix it without even thinking about it.”

“I…suppose?” A hoof found its way to massaging my forehead as I tried to parse what Chamomile had said. “So I…do good for ponies because…I don’t like to see inefficient government?”

“Yes!” Chamomile hooves and wings came up with her exclamation. “Unlike Princess Luna, you’ll help anypony that comes along with a problem – er, a real problem – because it fundamentally bothers you when everything isn’t perfect or fair.”

A second hoof found it’s way up next to the previous one. “No, I don’t – that – I don’t even – that is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Just…I need to introduce you to Cadance.”

Chamomile made her own little exasperated groan. “You’re missing my point. I’m saying I see a princess who cares about her subjects in her own way, but she doesn’t realize it because she thinks caring is all about kind words and warm feelings.”

“Okay.” I could admit Chamomile had a bit of a point about that, even if I felt compelled to argue semantics. “But we were originally talking about friendships, not subjects. You and me, specifically…”

“Ah.” Visibly deflating, Chamomile said, “Right. Sorry, Princess. I got a little worked up there.”

“It’s alright.”

“What I was trying to get at is everypony shows their affection in different ways. You show your affection by helping others with their problems. Unlike Princess Luna, you’re a princess all the way down to here.” Chamomile poked me over my heart with a hoof. “Please don’t try to be anypony else. If you want to be warm and fuzzy in your affections, that’s fine, but please make sure that’s what you want, not what you think is necessary.

“And don’t let it bother you too much either way. Even if you’re prickly at times, everypony here is your friend. You know that, right?”

Yes. I did. If I hadn’t known it before, I certainly knew it after today.

Almost as an afterthought, Chamomile awkwardly rubbed her mane with the hoof that’d been on my chest and added, “But I’m honored you count me as a friend, Princess. That means a lot to me.”

“I… I… I don’t know what to say.” No matter what Chamomile or anypony else said, I knew I needed to work on respecting others, but… “Am I really not that bad?”

Chamomile suspiciously looked away from my eyes.

“What is it? Please be honest, Chamomile.”

“Well…you did say you can be rude and dismissive. I think it’s just you have too much focus on whatever you’re working on, and you’re a little impatient with ponies who aren’t as smart as you. Which is pretty much everypony, actually.”

That got a small giggle out of me despite how seriously Chamomile had said it.

“I choose to take that as a compliment.”

Although she clearly tried, Chamomile couldn’t resist an eye roll.

“But seriously, though,” I continued, “thank you. I still think I need to change–”

Chamomile interrupted, “Nopony is perfect.”

“Yes, well, between your words and everypony else’s response, maybe I’m not as bad as I thought. But I still have some changes I want to see in myself.”

I could still feel the warmth of that group hug spreading through me. Even with years’ worth of Sunset’s memories in my head in addition to my own, that’d been a wonderful new experience for me. I’d like to be the kind of pony that could bring out that kind of feeling in her friends, too.

And being honest with myself, I couldn’t afford another Dash. That was just as big a part of this as anything else. I could’ve prevented her ascension if I’d just paid attention and given her the proper respect. I still found it hard to believe that Celestia just let me go in exchange for information after that fiasco. It was almost a miracle.

“Yes, thank you, Chamomile. You’ve been very helpful.” My smile turned to a frown as I asked, “But what exactly did you mean when you said you think Luna wants me to take Celestia’s place?”

“Hmm? Oh, well like I mentioned before, I think Princess Luna struggles to rule. I believe deep down she knows that and knows she needs somepony to help her shine. What you said on the subject only makes me more certain of it. Princess Luna’s sister may have fulfilled that role at one time, but those days are long past.”

And that left me as the only pony who could make Luna shine. It was a reasonable enough idea, but I’d much rather see Luna shining on her own. And I would. Not that Luna didn’t already shine, but she and I both knew she could do better.

Well anyway, that was for some other time. “Thanks for clarifying. So now that we have all that out of the way and this” – I gestured toward the nearly forgotten statue of Luna – “sorted out, I heard Spike and Berry Pinch were making a sandcastle. They have a lot more experience, but do you want to go show them what a princess and her knight can do?”

Smirking, Chamomile said, “Those two are awfully competitive. You don’t have your own castle yet either. Are you and Pinch going to bring everything to life again?”

“It wouldn’t be a day at the beach without a war, now would it?”

“Certainly not, Princess.”

And with that, we were off. To honor, to glory, and most likely to epic-scale silliness. Sometimes I regretted teaching Berry Pinch the come to life spell, but other times, it was worth the headaches.

I giggled as Luna nipped at my neck atop me. I tried to squirm out from under her, but the cloud beneath me wasn’t responding to my magic.

“Luna, stop,” I said between giggles. “I said I remembered something important to ask you.”

“More important than my ministrations?” Luna looked up just long enough to teasingly ask that question.

“Yes. Yes,” I managed.

“Oh fine.” One last nip, this time at my ear, drew a small moan from me, but Luna finally stopped afterward. Not that she got off me. That would be asking for entirely too much. “I suppose I can resist for now, my adorable little star.”

I blushed as I rolled Luna onto her back and off to my left by hoof.

Once she’d settled, Luna quietly asked, “Is this about putting me through therapy?”

And just like that the mood plummeted. “No. We’ll put that off until we’re both rested and actually ready. And it’s not really therapy. It’s more…”

“Rehabilitation?”

“No. Luna, everypony has problems. Yours are just really old and have stagnated. And you’re an alicorn and a princess, so they get magnified and look worse than they really are. We need to talk them out is all.”

“So therapy.” I could almost hear Luna roll her eyes. “It’s fine, Twilight. It’s not as if I’ve never tried before.”

I raised an eyebrow to the starry sky above us for all the good it did. “Really?”

“Well…sort of. Psychotherapy as you know it is a fairly recent development.”

“Hmm… Fair enough. Did–” No, it obviously didn’t work, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Or maybe it did, but not enough. Instead of asking that, I said, “What brought that mood on?”

Luna rolled back over and wrapped a pair of legs around my barrel.

“A millennium can’t go by without feeling depressed and hopeless at least once. I’d entertained begging for forgiveness more than once, but fortunately I never did.”

“Luna…you’re not the pony who needs to apologize.”

“I know. But time does strange things to ponies.”

A small wheeze escaped me as Luna squeezed me like a teddy bear with enough force to snap non-alicorns in half. As it was, I was just a little uncomfortable.

“The first year was especially bad,” Luna continued, her voice weaker. “I was an absolute wreck with wild mood swings. As much as I hate to admit it, I can barely remember that year. It’s mostly a blur now, but I was probably responsible for…”

Luna trailed off into silence, and I squeezed the forehoof that I had access to on my barrel.

“Luna, we don’t have to do this now. Honestly.”

I really didn’t know if I was ready for this yet, intellectually or emotionally, let alone Luna. My only experience with therapy was short lived and when I was eight, and I’d never helped somepony like this before. I really, really didn’t want to screw this up.

After a few seconds of hesitation, Luna sighed a quiet, “Thank you.” She then asked, “So what was on your mind?”

“Oh.” Right. I’d kind of forgotten about that for a moment there. “There was something I wanted to ask you about. Is there such a thing as possession magic?”

“Hmm? Of course there is. A geas is a type of possession.”

Well, okay, but that wasn’t what I’d meant. A geas only overrode a pony’s ability to think naturally…which was more or less what a possession was, I supposed.

I clarified, “I meant more a magical intelligence controlling somepony else.”

Luna groaned as she struggled to get to her haunches, taking her warmth and fuzzy softness with her, denying me snuggles.

“Yes, Twilight. There are three main types. A sufficiently complicated geas would effectively be its own intelligence. I’ve also mentioned golems to you before. Those require a spell to make decisions for the construct. The come to life spell is a very simple golem spell. Of course I expect you’re most interested in the last type, which more fits the idea of a ‘spirit’, a ‘ghost’, or a ‘demon’.”

I hummed in agreement.

“The short answer is there’s no such thing. So far as I know, nopony has ever created a spell that creates something I would call a new person.”

Luna tapped a hoof against her cheek while humming thoughtfully.

“Well,” Luna continued, “some spells simply create a biological person or work off of an existing personality. As an example of the former, an alchemical duplication spell can duplicate a pony. However, doing so is rather irresponsible. The spell can’t duplicate the pony’s magical core, which tends to leave the copy a bit…off.”

“Not to mentioned the philosophical and ethical issues of creating a duplicate,” I added for Luna, who had left that out.

“Yes, yes,” Luna said far more dismissively than I’d have liked. “But anyway, there’s a magical pool in the Everfree somewhere… Hmm… Well, I can’t remember where the cave entrance is to it, but it’s enchanted to duplicate any organic material that enters it. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that it’s one of Discord’s enchantments.”

No, that didn’t surprise me at all. That sounded like it’d cause all kinds of chaotic problems if it were just left lying around for hapless ponies to wander into. Just imagine if Pinkie Pie fell into it!

“I never did get to finish analyzing that spell,” Luna mused.

After Luna had been lost in her thoughts for a sufficiently overly long time, I nudged her out of them with a hoof.

“Ah, sorry. As terrible as he was, and ironically despite his chaos shtick, Discord’s magic has always been surprisingly complex and worth studying. I’ll have to dig out a few of his artifacts for us to look at together once we’re settled into Equestria.”

I suppressed a gulp. As I’d told Cadance, I really didn’t care if my Luna was the original Luna or not, but everything would be so much more complicated if she weren’t.

“Like the Alicorn Amulet?” I asked perfectly normally.

“Hmm? No, I threw that into the sun when I was done with it.”

Ha! Take that, Cadance. Whether or not it was ‘cursed’, Luna had disposed of the amulet responsibly.

Still, it was kind of hard to prove that something was destroyed and not simply hidden really well. Cadance would have to trust my word, Luna’s word, and that Luna’s memory hadn’t been affected. That was probably too much to ask for.

But then I hadn’t given Luna any prompting to lie. Or at least not much anyway. And she’d promised me she’d be open and honest, too. Maybe Cadance would simply trust–

“Or at least I think I did,” Luna continued, casually destroying my conclusion that she’d responsibly disposed of a potentially cursed artifact. “That was so long ago. It might have been the artifact I hoofed over as payment for my larger armor. Hmm…”

Er…okay. At least Luna had sent it from her presence in some manner. And I supposed if she hadn’t destroyed it, I could find it and show it to Cadance. Maybe it would be for the best if it still existed somewhere.

“Well regardless,” Luna said, “I’m fairly certain I left the Inspiration Manifestation somewhere in the old castle. Then there’s the mirror pool, of course. A season before my banishment, I found plundervines below the Everfree, too. Those are on my priority to-destroy list, so we should look at them first.”

“Why? What’s a plundervine?”

Luna shrugged. “The elements were keeping them in check, but after my banishment, they started growing and draining magic from the Everfree Forest area. That said, I don’t know what they’re actually for. They appeared to be spreading, which could’ve been potentially catastrophic, given that they drain magic. Ever since, I’ve had a number of ponies stunting their growth over the centuries. I’m glad I didn’t forget about them. They probably would’ve destroyed several cities and towns if I had.”

Yikes. It kind of went without saying, but what on Equus was wrong with Discord? Who made that kind of crap?

“But back to your question, the person who’s come closest to creating a ‘spirit’ is Discord. But honestly, the spell is more of a nasty virus than a possession. I don’t know if he ever gave a name to the spell, but ponies under its influence were usually referred to as ‘discordified’. The fundamental idea is it would alter its host’s decision making process.”

Oh fun. So when I got around to talking to Cadance, I had to deal with the fact that the general possession idea she’d brought up was real. Fantastic.

“Permanently?” I asked.

Luna shook a hoof back and forth. “Sort of. The effects were permanent, but…well, let me explain what the spell does first. In essence, the spell sends invasive thoughts into its victim’s brain and conditions the victim to generate those thoughts on their own. Worse, the more the victim listens to and acts on the thoughts, the more the process accelerates. You know, probably.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“The last pony with the spell on them died before I knew what a neuron was and long before I knew what conditioning was.”

“Okay, that’s fair.” At least that meant Cadance couldn’t claim Celestia had any additional insight into the spell.

“Anyway, the ultimate goal of the spell was more or less to ‘invert’ the host’s personality, although it’s hard to say what the inversion of a personality is. Still, the effects were usually predictable, ironically. A loyal pony would typically become treacherous. An energetic and cheerful pony would typically become grumpy. An honest pony would only tell the truth enough to make it hard to know if they were lying.”

I interjected with, “Discord knew statistics?” which elicited a chuckle from Luna.

“How else would he know if he’s being random?”

That…was an excellent point. I couldn’t argue with that.

Luna’s playful smile turned to a frown. “Sadly, sometimes the changes were improvements. A miserly mare might suddenly find herself with a heart of gold. A cruel mare might, for no reason at all, decide to apologize to everypony she’s wronged and then proceed to distribute cookies to foals.”

Wait a second. All five of those examples had one big thing in common.

“Did the spell only affect traits associated with the Elements of Harmony?”

“No, no,” Luna said with a wave of her hoof. “It affected most every aspect of a pony’s personality given enough time. I have no idea how to actually cast the spell, but I could tell you every last detail about how it worked. I was never short of victims to study, after all, which brings me back to your question of permanency.

“When the elements petrified Discord, the vast majority of the reality warping magics and miscellaneous enchantments he’d placed on Equus were dispelled and reversed. Discordification was not among them, or not entirely at least. The spell itself was lifted, but its effects lingered.”

That was strange… Hmm… If Cadance thought Luna was discordified, why would she think the elements would help if they only removed the spell? Luna couldn’t even be lying about that since she was able to study the spell effects in detail who knew how many years after the spell was removed. It sounded rather optimistic to hope for a deus ex machina, even by Cadance’s standards.

Had Celestia simply omitted information from her ‘explanation’? That wouldn’t surprise me, and it’d be the simplest answer.

“The preferred cure was straightforward and expeditious,” Luna continued. “In hindsight, it likely worked under similar principles as the discordification spell itself. You simply had to force the victim to remember how they used to behave. In the best case, that meant showing the victim an illusion of their past while blocking out other sights and sounds.”

“That sounds…complicated.” And it sounded like something few ponies could do, especially at the end of the Discordian Era.

“Indeed, and reportedly it was a terribly intense experience.”

I’d imagine so. It sounded rather morally questionable, too. Granted Discord’s spell was monstrous and shouldn’t have been used to begin with, but reversing its effects were questionable at best as well. It really depended on where ‘changing for the better’ ended and where ‘killing the pony’ began.

Ugh… But if I were geased to be so generous that I left myself all but destitute, I’d definitely want the geas removed. But from the perspective of Geased Twilight, she might not want to change back. We’d both have a right to exist, but were we really different ponies? Did we need more differences to be distinct? Was I killing myself by trying to change?

No. No, that wasn’t a useful definition of death. Ponies changed all the time, and especially as we grew up. Even if I said I’ve died several times already…not counting Mother…it didn’t possess any meaning beyond the definition. That kind of death didn’t bother me, which meant the definition was too weak.

Luna nudged me with a hoof. “Twilight?”

“Huh?”

“Are you alright?”

“I…yes. I’m just…you know…struggling with the philosophical question of what constitutes death.”

Luna was snickering. It was quite obvious she was really trying to hold it back, but the occasional giggle still managed to escape her.

I glared at Luna in return.

“Sorry, sorry,” Luna weakly said between laughs. “I forget how young you are sometimes.”

“Hmph. Should I throw you in a dungeon for molesting a minor, then?”

“If you do, be sure to throw yourself in there, too,” Luna countered. “Twinkleshine is mentally a lot younger than you, with or without Sunset Shimmer’s memories.”

I supposed Luna had me there. No dungeons for either of us, apparently.

“You two are the worst,” Mother commented.

Perhaps, but we were the worst together. That was all that really mattered.

“So if you’re calling me a foal,” I began, “you must have a definition of death. And it better be a good one.”

“Hmm, yes, I suppose I do.”

Oh great, here came the but.

“But–”

Yep. I was going to have to fight for this answer, wasn’t I?

“–I think you should come up with your own first. We can discuss it together after.”

“Luna, it’s not like I don’t already have thoughts on the matter. I just want some direction, another opinion, a place to start.”

With a shake of her head, Luna said, “Nope. You are young, and this is one of those things that will help you grow.”

Luna had a big expectant smile on. While that normally would’ve ended the conversation as homework, her eyes were twitching.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing? Why do you–”

Luna cut herself off and took a few seconds to think, or to prepare herself, or something. I had no idea what was running through her mind yet.

Sighing first, Luna said, “Twilight, you want me to be open with you, right?”

“Yes!” I said a little too excitedly.

“Even with things better forgotten?”

Oh stars. What was Luna remembering?

“Yes,” I said again.

Luna sighed once more. “Alright. I’d prefer if you came to understand death without me. My relationship with it has always been intimate.”

My stomach turned as a question I’d never asked popped into my head. I knew more about Luna’s past than anypony but Celestia, but I’d never bothered to…count.

“Luna, how many people have you killed?”

“I have no idea,” Luna deadpanned. “As a princess in charge of a government, there are certainly countless deaths I’ve indirectly caused, although I don’t know how fair it would be to claim responsibility for them.”

Incredibly unfair. If Luna had a choice between letting one pony starve to death or two as a result of how Equestria ran, for example, she shouldn’t be held accountable for any of them. Not unless she was deliberately not trying to improve Equestria to save those lives in the future.

“However, the number of lives ended by my own magic or by my direct command likely exceeds one-million, if not ten-million or more.”

As Luna’s hoof gently pushed my jaw back up, she gave me a sad smile.

“What do you think happens in war?” Luna asked. “I am very good at it now, but I didn’t used to be. All the magic of an alicorn means little if you only know a dozen crude spells. Other nations adapted to avoiding me, and I usually ended up putting down armies at a time as Equestria’s own army scrambled to deal with ever increasingly sophisticated raids and guerrilla tactics. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Discord’s little toys didn’t pop up once in a while. I nearly died more than once from reckless overconfidence.”

“Luna–”

Luna’s hoof pressed against my lips and cut me off.

“Before you say anything, I’ve long since made my peace with my early years. I grew more skilled faster than Equestria’s enemies, and the body count dropped. Eventually.”

What was I supposed to say? Luna would do what she’d done again without regrets, and I wouldn’t blame her. She couldn’t just let her subjects die. Although maybe she should’ve just conquered the world for everypony’s sake. But then that probably wouldn’t have ended all the fighting. It would’ve just driven it further underground.

“I’m sorry the world isn’t prefect,” I eventually decided on.

Luna guffawed at my sentiment, which upon reflection, I supposed was kind of useless and cheesy.

“Now what fun would it be if there was no room left to improve?” Luna asked. “Perfect worlds are so dreadfully boring.”

After but a moment’s hesitation, I replied, “I guess so.”

“Yes, but I fear we’ve gone off on quite the tangent. To finish what we were discussing before, if a discordified pony didn’t have a close unicorn talented in illusions – which most didn’t – the fall back was the dedicated support of their friends and family over several years. It was fairly similar to what we would call therapy today, but with more hugs and personal anecdotes.”

My mind shifted gears back to…two topics ago?

“And that worked?” I finally asked.

Luna shrugged. “Sometimes. Sometimes the changes were never undone, and ponies would just have to accept them.”

Wow. That was…pretty brutal. And Discord inflicted that spell on ponies for fun? No wonder Luna wanted him locked up ‘unto the end of time’.

“Well…” I faltered as I tried to think of words that would be less pointless than apologizing for an imperfect universe. “It was just for one generation, right?” After that, the spell would be just a bad memory to be told as a ghost story.

“Yes. Once Discord was sealed away for good, very few ponies ever suffered from his magics after the last ponies born during his reign died out.”

A loud cracking sound met my ears as Luna stretched her back. A few more followed shortly after from her wings. And once she was stretched out, Luna walked very close to me, our muzzles barely separated.

“Now with all that said, do you want to ask the question that started all of this?”

Huh? “You mean ‘is there such a thing as possession magic?’”

“Honesty is a two-way street, my little star.” Luna’s hoof came up to caress my face, eliciting a blush from me. “I meant the question that prompted you to ask that. No doubt it was my niece who gave you the idea.”

Oh, stars. So Luna had known what we were really talking about the whole time. Well, maybe not the whole time, but a significant chunk of it. I couldn’t say I was surprised.

“I personally don’t care,” I began, awkwardly pawing at the cloud below me in embarrassment, “but if I’m going to get through to Cadance, I need to know. Have you been under the influence of possession magic? Are you Luna?”

“Yes, and” – Luna paused just long enough to chuckle – “yes, that is the name you’ve been screaming lately, is it not?”

Oh my gosh! Way too much blood was rushing to my head!

“To be more clear, I’ve been under several harmless geases, but to the extent of my knowledge, nothing else.”

An unwanted sigh of relief escaped me, but was quickly interrupted by a kiss.

“That makes it easier for me to talk to Cadance,” I explained once Luna finally let me breathe. “I mean, I got her to admit you have a right to exist either way, just like I do, but this will be a lot easier.”

Luna leaned forward and pushed me down. Our muzzles met through the whole trip.

Breaking away, Luna said, “Glad I could help. Now then, was that all that was on your mind?”

“Mhm,” I hummed.

“Good.”

Mid-kiss, another thought invaded my mind, and it just wouldn’t go away. It was too important.

After some technical issues, I eventually managed, “Luna, hold up.”

Luna let out an amazingly long sigh and just let herself flump down on top of me.

“I weep for Twinkleshine if this is your idea of pillow talk.”

“Sorry…”

“I’m just teasing,” Luna said. One of her hooves found its way to my mane and idly swirled around within.

“I know we probably shouldn’t, but I’d like to ascend another alicorn.”

Luna kept perfectly quiet for some time as we stared into each other’s eyes.

“Who?”

Well, it didn’t really matter who. “Maybe Twinkleshine or Shining? I – I think Shining would probably be better. I’d hate for Cadance to lose him, and he’s older.” And Cadance might hate me for decades to come. I wouldn’t want her to be alone…and scared, probably, through all those years.

Luna’s head rose up properly to regard me with a more intense expression. “You have my undivided attention now.”

She said that, but her hooves and wings were still getting up to mischief.

“Why do we need another alicorn?” Luna asked.

“Ascensions propagate through space normally, but I can’t see all of mine. And I’m the youngest alicorn, so I can’t study anypony else’s either.”

Luna blinked.

“Um… Since it keeps going at FTL speeds, it’s probably an infinitely self-sustaining spell. If I tweak it a little, I can probably make it use up magic faster than it generates it, which would miniaturize the effects.”

Seeing as Luna was still silent, I continued, “And we could probably replicate it with less magic. And we could have more alicorns. And we wouldn’t have to say goodbye to anypony. And…it might be possible to make the affected space move with the pony and make pony-sized alicorns. Um… And – Mpfh.”

I was going to suggest we could start a golden age of gods, but apparently Luna thought kissing was a better idea. Which upon reflection, it was.

“Twilight, this could be the most important thing we do ever. This is the kind of thing that writes your name into eternity.”

“So I have your permission?”

“No, you have my full support. Just…let’s make sure we don’t destroy the universe, okay?”

Somehow I giggled at that, but it was a completely reasonable concern. Neither of us had any idea what kind of magic we were tampering with.

Luna hummed thoughtfully, to which I hummed, “Hmm?” in return.

“Oh, it’s just a silly little joke.”

“You can’t tell me that and not share.”

“Weeeeell, alright.” Luna cleared her throat. Then to the boom of thunder and the flash of lightning, she shouted, “First Equestria, then the universe. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ah ha ha ah ah ah ahhhhh.”

I gave Luna a much deserved kiss.

“That was very evil of you.”

“Mmm, it’s all in the laugh. So many evil spirits ignore the laugh, and that’s about standards.”

“Heh. It certainly is.”

Luna pouted and gave me a disapproving glare. “What was that? We need to work on your maniacal laugh and your cackle. That wasn’t even up to accompanying minion levels.”

I rolled my eyes. The last thing I needed was a good evil laugh.

“No, it’s not like that,” I replied, doing my best not to focus on Chrysalis’s magical digestive system. “I passively know where magic is and where it’s going, but I still have to comprehend the spell myself.”

“So it’s like investigating manually with your own magic as per normal?”

“Well…not really. Using your horn is like a blind mare running her hooves over something to see it, where I can just use my eyes, so to speak.”

Chrysalis hummed thoughtfully as we fell into silence. So far we hadn’t picked up any unusual magic or foreign objects aboard the Nebulous, but we still had about half the ship left to investigate.

“But as I was saying before, I’m still new to this. If anypony could fool my senses, it’d be Luna or Celestia. I just wanted you to sweep as well to double check.”

“It doesn’t hurt as a show of trust from one ruler to another, either.”

After a few seconds of quiet hesitation, I agreed, “I suppose so.”

“No offense taken, Sparkle. That I’m still here now instead of relaxing on Equus after bartering a ride home says much the same.”

That was true, too. Chrysalis and her hive had little left to offer me or Luna except their company and opinions. Luna and I couldn’t even claim them as our subjects, since we were technically separate nations.

But then Chrysalis wouldn’t be here to begin with if she didn’t trust us to keep our word. She would’ve betrayed us a long time ago and left with Celestia if she didn’t.

We spent some number of minutes in a comfortable silence as we worked. The tedium of the task was apparent on Chrysalis’s face, and I was getting pretty bored myself. This wasn’t exactly the most difficult job in the world, and neither of us expected to find anything.

“Hey, Chrysalis?”

“Hmm?”

“What are we going to do after all this? Ponies and changelings, I mean.”

Without even thinking about it, Chrysalis said, “You could leave us alone again.”

“To what end?”

It wasn’t until Chrysalis had finished her latest salvo of spells that she said, “Just say what you want.”

“Nothing, really.” I waited until the library door had closed behind us to continue. “But I would miss your and Pupa’s company.”

Chrysalis cast the few dozen detections spells she’d been checking the ship with on me, as well as a few additional ones.

“Hey! I’m being serious here.”

“Yes, that’s nice, now where did you hit your head?”

I facehoofed, which was a rather unfortunate choice.

“Ah, I see. Well, your muzzle isn’t broken, your teeth are all still there, and I don’t think your cranium is fractured. Still, you should go see a doctor.”

At this point, I just decided to wait out Chrysalis. She’d say something less sarcastic on her own eventually, no doubt. I had a much higher tolerance for awkward silences.

My patience was rewarded after I’d reached my third bookcase and had flipped through nearly half the books for hidden non-magical surprises.

“So what is it that you want us to do? Give up our culture and integrate into Equestria?”

Not exactly, although I knew the changeling culture would experience a bigger change than ours if we joined together. I couldn’t deny that.

“It’s not like you don’t already abide by our laws.”

For the most part, at least. If nothing else, replacing stillborn ponies with newborn changelings was…probably illegal. And I didn’t know a whole lot about what happened with changelings internally. For all I knew, ninety-percent of them could all be slaves for the queen. The world would look the same to me.

“And pony culture has certainly seeped into yours already, and has for centuries, no doubt. You can’t live somewhere without its culture at least touching your own. And that goes double for changelings, since you pretend to be ponies instead of just being different-looking people.”

Chrysalis apparently didn’t have a response to this, sarcastic or otherwise, so I said, “Just think about it.” Then as an afterthought, I added, “And besides, I promised I’d feed Pupa myself, which is a lot easier if she stays close by, so you might as well stick around, too.”

A fiery green portal opened near me – without burning my books – and a small stack of folded papers dropped out of it. I caught them in my magic before whatever it was that Chrysalis had teleported here hit the ground.

“What’s this?”

“A distraction.”

I rolled my eyes. This was had to be pretty good if Chrysalis thought she could get away with openly telling me it was a distraction.

The papers unfolded before my eyes. I scanned over them with a frown, as they contained nothing but a slew of random gibberish. Although from the arrangement of the text, it was formatted as a letter.

“Would you mind giving me an unencrypted version?” I asked.

“Ha!” Chrysalis laughed dryly. “You have no idea how many changeling hours I’ve put into cracking that. It’s your problem now.”

“Oooookaaaaay.”

I gave the papers a once-over again, counting the number of letters in the first two words, which was no doubt the name of the pony this was addressed to. I came to eight for the first word, and seven for the second. Then glancing at the very last word, probably the signature, I counted eight letters.

“Alright, since you’ve given this to me, I’m going to assume the first two words are Twilight Sparkle.”

“Congratulations.” The sarcasm was just dripping off Chrysalis’s every word. “Now you just need to figure out what encryption scheme this is using and what the key is, and you’ll be done in no time. Have fun.”

I rolled my eyes again. Anyway, who did I know with an eight letter name?

Well, there was Twilight, of course. It could be from me in the future, or a past me who had wiped her memory. I was just going to set those ideas aside as unlikely.

Ugh… But it could also be Twilight, as in Aurora. Chrysalis had found her, after all. But then I didn’t see why she’d send me an encrypted letter. That probably wasn’t it either.

There was also Twilight as in Twilight Velvet, namely Mom. But she never signed anything as Twilight. She always went by Velvet.

Who else… Shining was seven letters. So was Cadance. Spike was five, and his full name was way too long. The Berrys on the Nebulous were all too long.

Heh. Nebulous was eight letters, but somehow I doubted my ship was the writer.

Chrysalis was nine, and Pupa was four. Pinkie Pie was nine, as was Chamomile, and Twinkleshine was eleven. Fluttershy and Dash didn’t fit either.

Luna, was, of course four, but I didn’t see why she’d send me a letter like this to begin with. Unless maybe it was an apology or confession of some kind for if everything went wrong, she died, and I got away safely. Or maybe it was a list of things I’d need to know and take care of in her place, like those plundervines.

But still, Luna’s name was the wrong length. Even Nightmare Moon wouldn’t fit. Although I supposed it was possible Luna was a nickname, and she never used a formal, longer name.

“Alright, I give up. Who is this from?”

“Celestia.”

“What?” I caught the letter in my magic after the surprise had worn off, then repeated myself without the unintentional traditional royal voice. “What? Did she give this to you while she was here?”

Completely lacking any sense of urgency or guilt, Chrysalis said, “No, I’ve had that for years.”

“And you never told me about this why?” Ugh. This whole extreme, magical lung power was going to take some getting used to.

“Because you didn’t need the distraction, because I didn’t need suspicious attention from Princess Luna, and because I had more than enough changelings working on decoding it.”

I took a deep breath.

Okay. That was fair. I probably would’ve done the same in Chrysalis’s position. Who knew what was written in this? Maybe it had hundreds of Luna’s secrets that would make her look bad to an innocent, young bookworm. Giving that to me would certainly look like collusion with the enemy.

“So why did Celestia give this to you? What purpose does it serve?”

Chrysalis shrugged. “As a return favor for letting Pupa feed off of the Princess of Food, Celestia gave her the original copy of that letter–”

I opened my mouth, but Chrysalis interrupted my interruption. “It was non-magical and had no hidden elements.”

Well alright, then.

“Anyway, her instructions were to put this somewhere she wouldn’t be able to find it, but where you could retrieve it.”

My brows scrunched up. “So why are you giving me this now?”

“I told you it’s a distraction.”

No. No, that couldn’t be it. “You got permission, didn’t you.”

“Not exactly, but Celestia did ask if I still had it.”

“I see…” It wasn’t like I could fault Chrysalis for this in any way. I had my own letter to write to Celestia, after all. We did what we had to.

But this letter. If Chrysalis, with all her resources, couldn’t crack it, then I probably wasn’t going to be able to read it until Celestia wanted me to. How annoying.

What did Celestia even gain from this? If she wanted to send me a letter at a specific time, she could’ve just sent it then. And if it was some sort of gambit for after she was defeated, why go through the trouble of giving it to me like this? If she expected me to accidentally stumble onto the key, she could just put the unencrypted letter there instead.

So if that wasn’t it, then I was thinking about this the wrong way. Whatever the letter was actually for, what did sending it out early accomplish? Chrysalis said it was supposed to be hidden somewhere Celestia wouldn’t be able to find it. That had to be significant.

Or…this could all be a red herring and a time waster, but assuming this had a real solution, why send a letter somewhere you couldn’t find it? If I were doing that, it would be either because I didn’t want to read it, or I wanted to be able to say I hadn’t altered it since it was written. Ponies did the latter all the time in engineering and science, although on a much less serious level.

For the moment, assume the former. If I didn’t want to read something…well, that was a silly notion, but what would be the point of writing something I wouldn’t ever read?

I idly flipped through a few hundred books in my library as I tried to think of any real answer to that question. The best I came up with, that is the least insane idea which could actually work that I came up with was that I wanted to forget something forever myself, but I didn’t want the knowledge permanently lost.

But that…seemed pretty weak as an explanation. There were a million better ways to do that than what Celestia had done, and there was a very real chance I would’ve just burnt this letter to ash when it was given to me.

So that idea was right out. Reductio ad absurdum.

Then that most likely meant Celestia wanted to establish that she’d written this years ago and hadn’t altered it since.

“Can I assume that if I asked every single changeling, they’d all tell me that you got this at the same time, with the same story, and that this is the original text?”

Getting no response, I repeated myself a little louder. This time Chrysalis heard me halfway across the library.

“I can’t vouch for one-hundred-percent, but certainly every last one that worked on it for years would love to regale you with stories of their frustrations.”

Yeah, no thanks. It would be the nice thing to do to let them vent at me, all things considered, but I didn’t have to be that nice to everyone to be a good friend or a good princess. I’d drive myself insane.

“She knew.” Mother suggested.

“Knew what?” I asked hesitantly, but we both knew what Mother meant.

“She knew who you were. She knew you were sun-blessed, she used you somehow, and this is her proof if she needs it.”

Pft. If so, then she obviously didn’t use me very well, considering where the two of us now stood. Celestia wasn’t that incompetent, therefore she hadn’t known.

“You’re just dredging up irrational fears,” I retorted.

“She was awfully calm when we met her, you know. Well, at least until we pushed her buttons. And Cadance said Celestia was pretty upset when she first left for Mona. One of those was an act.”

“Or Cadance straight up lied to my face for Celestia,” slipped out of me before I thought about what I was thinking. Sorry, Cadance, I didn’t mean that. And I knew you couldn’t tell a lie to save your life, too.

Anyway, there was another possibility. “Maybe Celestia just has a really good backup plan and she calmed herself down.”

After I’d thought about that for a while, Mother said, “Fair enough. It’s a good thing you asked her to share her new plan, isn’t it?”

Indeed it was.

But as for this letter… It was probably best I didn’t feed my paranoia right now. Some other time, perhaps. I’d mention it to Luna, but there wasn’t much else I could actually do with it. Sigh…

I waited until I heard the thud of books returning to their shelves, then called out in the general direction the noise had come from.

“But seriously, Chrysalis, I do consider you a friend. Or at the very least a mentor figure. If nothing else, please come to visit once in a while, alright?”

Eventually, Chrysalis shouted back, “I’ll think about it.”

With a sci-fi vhroosh sound, the door to bridge opened automatically to admit Chrysalis and myself. To this day, I still felt like facehoofing for letting Twinkleshine talk me into adding that sound effect to otherwise silent doors.

Well anyway, after exchanging hellos with most of the crew, I locked onto the pony I needed to talk to at the moment.

“Berry Pinch, Spike, could you two leave us alone for a few minutes?”

The two foals looked to each other, then Berry Pinch asked, “Are we in trouble?”

I raised an eyebrow. “You weren’t, but you might be now. What makes you think you are?”

“What? Oh, nothing. Nothing at all.”

As explicitly nonchalant as possible, Spike added, “We didn’t do anything. We’ve just been minding our own business.”

Right. Like I believed any of that. I supposed we’d just have to wait and see what they’d gotten up to.

“Okay. But please run along, you two. I need to speak with Berry Punch alone.”

And with that, Spike and Berry Pinch went off suspiciously quick.

“Foals, right?” I said to Berry Punch.

“I’m sure it’s nothing bad. They probably just set a book on fire again.”

I sighed. Not even my magic could bring a book back from a dragonfire pyre. It was always such a tragedy when we lost one, and nopony really understood that but me.

“Anyway, what did you want to talk about?”

“Well…two things, I guess.” One of my forehooves awkwardly rubbed up and down my opposite leg. “First, I really want to thank you for foalsitting Spike as much as you have over the years. I know you didn’t sign up for that, but it’s been a huge help.”

“Oh, no worries. Spike is such a dear, and he and Pinch get along so well. It’s been no trouble at all.”

“Still, thank you. And the other thing…” I really should have asked this years ago, and I was a horrible pony for not doing so. “How – how are you doing?”

Berry Punch emitted a confused sounding, “Fine?”

That she’d completely missed my point was a good sign. Still, I had to make sure.

“I meant with your past. Noteworthy, and the Everfree Forest, and all that.”

“I… I’m okay.” A few seconds passed before Berry Punch relaxed and readopted a normal stance. “Yes. Yes, I’m okay.”

“Are you sure? If you need anything, or if you just need somepony to talk to, you can come to me.”

Berry Punch shook her head. “Thank you for asking, but I’ll be fine. Cherry Berry helped me a lot already, and watching Pinch grow up and doing so well…” She turned to watch our foals running around and doing whatever it was that normal foals did. “It’s healed the wound.”

I studied the warm smile sprouting on Berry Punch’s face. So far as I could tell, it appeared to be completely real.

Excellent. My neglecting her emotional scars, as bad as that’d been, at least hadn’t made things worse. That was more than a little relieving. I’d taken responsibility for her recovery when I’d recruited her, and I’d just left her to drift alone. I swore, sometimes I just didn’t know what I’d been thinking.

It was kind of sad that I’d missed my chance to help Berry Punch, but…well, the important thing was that she’d gotten better. I didn’t have to be the pony who did that for her, especially not when I had somepony even worse off to help already.

“Alright, well, that’s all I wanted. Thank you.” I turned to address the crowd in general, which had grown while the two of us had talked. “And now that everypony is here, we need to decide what we want to do.”

It took a minute or so for the chatter to die down and for everypony to gather. Once that was done, however, Chrysalis spoke up first.

“Whatever we do, I want to retrieve my daughter. We’ve been apart too long.”

I nodded to Chrysalis. I could certainly make that happen.

“Any other thoughts?”

Twinkleshine was the next to speak. “How far can you teleport?”

Oh, I knew where this was going. And I had to admit I liked it.

“I have no idea. But presumably anywhere worth visiting.”

“Oh my gosh!”

In a frenzy of flying papers, a scroll crossed the room to come to a rest in the center of our circle. It unrolled in midair suspended in Twinkleshine’s magic to reveal a star chart. An illusory arrow appeared over one particular part before Twinkleshine simply magnified the chart instead for all of us to see clearly.

“This star has a planet in the habitable region, and it’s supposed to have an atmosphere.”

“A breathable atmosphere?” Cherry Berry asked.

“That’s entirely beside the point,” Twinkleshine replied.

I was pretty sure that it was not beside the point, but who was I to trample over Twinkleshine’s enthusiasm?

And who knew? If we got lucky, maybe we’d stumble upon another civilization that an ancient alicorn had started tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe we’d find some bizarre world where everypony walked on two legs and didn’t know how to use magic, or a world where everypony had evolved into a sentient energy field.

“I’m fine with a little space exploration to pass the time,” I said. “But keep in mind that I’m only free for a few days. I have things that I absolutely need to get done and ponies that I must meet with.”

Dash added, “Flutters and I are down with that, too.”

A general chorus of agreement of varying enthusiasm continued on until everypony was on board.

“Alright, then. We’ll make a quick stop at Equus to pick up Pupa and any supplies we might want, then we can go visit some planets.”

Dancing on her hooves in excitement, Twinkleshine asked, “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Can I say it, Twilight?”

Ugh. “Alright, go ahead.” It wasn’t like she really needed permission.

“Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Nebulous. It’s continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no pony has gone before.”

And on that note, I teleported us back toward Equus, where many a pony has gone before.

Author's Note

So ends the second act, which leaves only the conclusion of the story. There are most likely about six chapters left before the end.

Prereaders – Starlight Nova, Strange Reasoning, The Great Eater

Behold! A shameless promotion for my Patreon page. Speaking of which, Turn a Phrase is a cameo for the ever generous Levi Browning.

Chapter Thirty Five - Peace and Quiet

The wind blowing on my face, the slight strain in my wings, the feeling of defying gravity. Oh, it was just so wonderful!

I spun myself in a slow circle, my wings and hooves fully extended as I reached the peak of my vertical ascent. My timing hadn’t been as good as I’d wanted, so I flapped my wings to keep myself level. Below me I could feel Dash blasting straight toward me at a reckless pace, burning through absurd amounts of magic. Chamomile and a dozen other overprotective lunar pegasi fled out of her way while still remaining nearby.

At the last second, I created a large cloud between me and Dash.

“Oh cra–” Dash shouted. Her cry was interrupted by a pomf as the rather viscous cloud – to pegasi at least – slowed her to a stop and trapped her.

For my part, I fell over laughing safely on top of the cloud.

“Nice one, Princess,” Chamomile said, flying up to me. When she was close enough, we high hoofed each other.

Below us, I heard Dash finally manage to crawl out of the cloud, even spitting out a chunk of it.

“Okay, Twi, I admit it. You’re not bad.”

“I told you I could beat you at tag with just pegasus magic.”

Chamomile chuckled, asking, “Princess Luna taught you this trick, didn’t she?”

“More used it against me, but yeah. How did you know?”

“She did the same thing to me once, too. I went face first into a–”

“Hey!” Dash called out. “I said you’re not bad. But I’m the best.”

Oh horseapples. Dash reached out to the cloud and ripped control of it away from me. Her magic spread through it and started to tear it apart.

I spread my wings back out, ready to stop myself from falling. But then just before the cloud burst, Dash’s magic receded and left the cloud in place. Instead of plummeting as I’d expected, the cloud shifted of its own volition and rolled me head over hooves inside of it.

And while I was stuck inside, a hoof nudged my barrel.

“Got ya.”

Ugh. I kicked the cloud, but nothing happened.

“Oh come on,” I complained, “are you serious, Dash? Fine, two can play at that game.”

I kicked the cloud again, but this time I put a little alicorn into my effort, just like Dash had when she’d cheated and reshaped it. This time, the cloud burst apart the way I’d intended, although I frustratingly didn’t quite dissipate all of it. Still, that left Dash right below me in plain sight.

But before I could nose dive into her, Chamomile caught me in her hooves.

I sighed. “Chamomile, I can fly, you know.”

“Sorry. It’s just after–”

“I’m not going to crash again,” I interrupted, my hoof flying up to my face. At the same time, I wiggled out of Chamomile’s hooves and hovered under my own power. “I just needed more time to adjust to real life pegasus magic.”

“And you gotta admit,” Dash added, “it was pretty funny watching Twi flail into the Hornburg in two seconds flat. That’s got my record beat for epic fail crashes.”

Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up.

“But anyway, you got wrecked,” Dash gloated.

I retorted, “You cheated.”

“Like you’re one to talk, Miss I Can See Magic,” Dash countered. “We agreed no alicorn powers.”

“It’s not like you can’t track the electrical charges in my nerves yourself, or the water in my veins. You and I both know we can’t turn our extra sense off.” Or at least we had no idea how to. It was like trying not to hear things. I, at least, could mute my magic sense by surrounding myself by lots of magic or focusing intently on something, but I couldn’t actually disable it. “Besides, it’s not like I was relying on it.”

“Yeah. Sure you weren’t.”

I rolled my eyes. I’d show Dash what relying on alicorn powers really meant.

I didn’t exactly have much practice at this, but it wasn’t that hard; it felt rather natural whenever I tried, like moving a limb I hadn’t known I’d always had. Dash’s magic was coursing through her wings and spreading out around her to keep her level. As ever, it had an almost astounding level of complexity to it, absurdly beyond what she actually needed just to hover.

But it was just magic. Without her æthereal essence pervading it, Dash’s magic was ultimately mine. Or maybe it was me. I still hadn’t puzzled out what it meant to be an alicorn.

Anyway, just like stretching a leg, all I had to do was shift a few things here and there around Dash’s wings, aaaaand–

“Twi! I’m going to–”

Dash’s scream as she plummeted cut off. She’d demanifested herself out of existence. Then before I could even blink, her voice returned from behind me.

“–get you!”

I whirled just in time for Dash to tackle me. She was barely more than a cloud when we first made contact, but she properly manifested in a fraction of a second.

“Not this time,” I replied as I demanifested myself, letting my body devolve back into magic.

The last time Dash had tried this – emphasis on last – she’d blown me into the ground with a hurricane gale past sonic rainboom speeds. I’d splattered into my component magics against the moon before I could even register the pain. Sure, that time had been an accident, but I’d made the mistake of telling her it hadn’t hurt.

I remanifested from the ambient magic of the moon way away from Dash. Unfortunately, she was preventing me from interfering with her magic again. Such a shame. But that was okay, because there were other magics here I could play with.

“By the way Dash,” I called out as I set my plan into motion, “please start counting.”

“What?” I just barely heard Dash call back as she flipped over to face my general direction.

“I’d like to know what the moon’s true gravity is.”

Dash just looked confused, but only until I interrupted Luminance’s gravity spell local only to her.

“Are you serious?” Dash screamed as she dropped like a rock, her wings struggling to support her drastically increased weight on such short notice.

Just shy of the ground, Dash managed to level out. She even managed to actually get some upward thrust out of her wings. If she weren’t an alicorn now, I’d be rather impressed by how much magic she was using to keep herself airborne.

Dash tried to remanifest away from the hole in the gravity spell, or at least that was what I thought she was trying. Like that would work.

But then Dash disappeared a second time. A gentle breeze picked up around my mane. And then Dash hit me from behind like a train, completely knocking the air out of me and sending a surprisingly short jolt of pain through me. I thought I even heard my spine crack.

“Okay, okay,” I wheezed. I let the gravity spell snap back to normal. Dash leveled out halfway to the ground, and after fiddling with my wings for long enough, I got them to respond and keep me aloft. “Let’s not escalate this any further.”

Knowing Dash, she’d get way too into it and unleash a natural disaster on Luminance.

“Ha! I totally won!”

Yeah, no. I’d been all kinds of holding back even after Dash cheated.

“Let’s just call it a tie. Unless you want this to end with me teleporting you to the other side of the moon with an anchoring spell.”

“Er…”

Dash suddenly didn’t look so confident, and I gave her a little smirk. She could make the trip back, sure, but she still hadn’t bothered learning how to dispel enchantments, so I could force her to remain manifested and fly back.

Really, more than anything, the return trip would be boring. Dash’s natural regeneration would heal her before suffocation could induce any real damage or pain, and without even that to distract her, she might have to – gasp – think to keep herself entertained. The moon certainly wouldn’t offer up much in the way of sightseeing.

But then maybe I should teleport her whether she yielded or not. Maybe that would finally motivate her to take her unicorn magic lessons seriously.

Ugh. No. That was the wrong way to motivate her. Crushing her in sports and drawing out her competitive spirit, that was the correct choice. If I made her frustrated and miserable, she’d try to outdo me, just to win. Maybe eventually she’d even prove herself to be a challenge that I could actually enjoy beating into the dirt; it was more or less like picking on a newborn as she was now.

“Alright,” Dash finally let out, her dissatisfaction obvious on her face. Maybe that would get her thinking about at least learning a brute force counter spell. It really wasn’t that hard. “Tie.”

Dash reached out with a hoof, and I somewhat reluctantly shook it. After our hooves parted, Dash flew over to my side and wrapped the same hoof across my withers.

“Anyway, good game, Twi. We should totally be flying buddies. If you put that space bubble thing on me–”

Space bubble? Were you serious, Dash? It was just a simple shield spell and an air spell. Any unicorn guard knew the former, and any unicorn miner knew the latter. They were trivial spells. Learn them yourself!

“–then we can totally have races across the universe. Just think about it.” Dash’s free hoof slowly moved from left to right in front of us. “We start on Equus and fly all the way out to the nearest star, banking off the gravity instead of air pockets. How cool would that be!”

“Pretty cool, except for the fact that it’d take us years to finish.”

“Pft.” Dash flew off of me. “You’re such a stick-in-the-mud. But whatever. I guess we could just race to the sun.”

“You might call that endurance training,” Chamomile said, finally gliding in to join us.

“I’m pretty sure anything that long would have to be called intensive training.”

“Ha!” Dash punched me in the shoulder. “See? We’ll make an athlete of you yet, you egghead.”

Yeah, when the sun burnt out and the universe ceased to be, which was never going to happen. I was done with this conversation.

As I flew off back toward the palace, Dash flew into place next to me and asked, “So what do you think about ‘Alicorn of Typhoons’?”

I facehoofed. It’d be wrong to name Dash for her, but this was getting so annoying. “Dash, there hasn’t been a typhoon on Equus in… I don’t even know if centuries is the right answer. There probably hasn’t been one since Discord was defeated.”

“The Cloudsdale Weather Factory organizes one annually for weather ponies to practice dispersing. Just in case, you know.”

I hadn’t known that, actually. I’d never really paid much attention to weather, what with staying indoors almost all the time.

At any rate, I said, “Okay, but still, it’s not really an appropriate or accurate name.”

“Are you sure she’s not the Alicorn of Pegasus Magic?” Chamomile asked, flanking me on the opposite side as Dash.

“She’s not.” Although I wouldn’t have been surprised if the universe hated me enough to spontaneously add pegasus magic to Dash’s domain. “Luna was very clear that I’d know if our domains overlap. I don’t know if they do, so they don’t.”

And Luna only knew that because hers and Celestia’s domains heavily overlapped. They could both be more generally described as Alicorns of the Celestial Bodies. Luna had a slightly stronger association with satellites, planets, and miscellaneous space stuff, and ironically, Celestia in turn had a stronger association with stars, in particular the sun. But given their characters and their talents, they went by Alicorn of the Night and Alicorn of the Sun slash Day respectively.

“Okay, well what about the ‘Alicorn of Lightning’? I could show up everywhere as a lightning bolt and legitimately say I’m as fast as lightning.”

Oh my gosh. I face hoofed again.

“Dash, ponies are going to learn to refer to you practically forever by what you introduce yourself as. First impressions matter. Please try to pick something accurate and something that you won’t want to change every other decade.”

“You’re a total stick-in-the-mud, Twi.”

I sighed. Fortunately, Chamomile picked up the conversation for me.

“What exactly can you manifest out of? Is that the right question? Or is it more about what you can feel?”

“Nah, I don’t really feel the stuff. It’s just…part of me, I guess.” Dash scratched her head with her hoof. “Yeah, let’s go with that. I mean, I know there’s a cloud behind and above me like I know where my hoof is. And I can ‘feel’ the tiny little natural winds everywhere in this place like it’s my own breath. There’s this spot just behind the castle where it’s both freezing and hot. Oh, and that river is totally evaporating, and there’s water vapor everywhere.”

Dash’s eyes closed, and she fell into a simple glide. “And if I focus hard enough, there’s a blizzard in the Frozen North on Equus. And a thunderstorm not far from my parent’s house, I think.” Her eyes opened again in time with a beat of her wings. “It all gets kind of fuzzy that far away.”

“You’ll get better at it,” I commented.

Equus kind of itched for me. There was so much magic there in use and moving in every which way. Every once in a while, I got the strangest urge to scratch it, but who knew what that would do? Or even if I could. I didn’t even know what it would mean to scratch magic.

“Why don’t you just call yourself the ‘Alicorn of Weather’ and be done with it?” I asked.

“Because that’s not cool,” Dash protested. “Maybe I could be the…‘Alicorn of Wind’? No, that’s not good enough either. The ‘Alicorn of Storms’? Hmm… Yes. No. Yes. Yes! I love it! Storms are dangerous and powerful, and they have the kind of raw beauty – no, majesty that befits me. That’s like twenty percent more awesome. It’s perfect!”

I swore, at this rate most of my alicorn regeneration was going to be recovering from facehoofing injuries.

“You do realize if you call yourself that, ponies are going to blame you for bad weather, right?”

Chamomile asked, “Is weather not manufactured on Equus as well? I could’ve sworn…”

“It is,” Dash answered. “But why wouldn’t they blame me anyway if I called myself the ‘Alicorn of Weather’?”

I conceded that that was a fair point.

“Besides, if anypony wants to complain, they can do it to my face.”

Oh. My. Gosh. Dash needed a thousand lessons in public relations. That was not how a princess – ugh, I shuddered as that thought ran its course – behaved. Dash needed to learn to be less overtly confrontational; it’d save Luna, Cadance, and myself a daily headache if she did.

Whatever. Some other time. The three of us all touched down in the palace courtyard. The few ponies tending the gardens stepped aside with a bow to make way for us as we walked, as did the wingful performing restoration work on the decidedly nonmagical statue Celestia had left behind on the Nebulous. It needed a little more polish, a careful chiseling for detail work, a new coat of paint, and probably a new inscription, but it otherwise looked as good as new.

Hmm… Or perhaps I should say as good as old. Saying it was as good as new more implied a return to proper form, while saying it was as good as old had more of a ‘picking up right where you left off’ vibe. I supposed they both had good points.

But then I suspected Luna would be more inclined to the former. She’d never really struck me as longing for the past or resisting change, especially given how much she looked forward to indulging in modern culture and technologies.

At any rate, as soon as the artisans were done, all the statue needed was a big, fancy bow, and it’d make a wonderful surprise. I could feel a happy little grin growing on my face.

We exited the courtyard for the castle proper, where we were greeted by nearly a dozen ponies who all put their business on hold just to bow, and on occasion, smile and wave. The waves at least I returned, and my earlier smile still lingered.

At this point in my life, I was completely used to royal treatment; there were a hundred ponies up here all the time now, making the castle properly livable again. All of them treated me exactly as a princess should be, which included the good, the bad, and the extraordinarily annoying aspects. Even when I lived on Equus I’d already had a little taste of the experience, although not much.

But Dash was a different story entirely. She went on fidgeting next to me as usual. It was pretty ironic that she loved attention and praise but couldn’t really handle deference. I supposed they weren’t quite the same thing, but still, I always got a small, private laugh out of it.

“Princess,” Crescent began after all the bowing was done and over with. He awkwardly added an, “es,” before continuing proper. “Have you ascertained your plans for the immediate future yet?”

“Yes, actually. Oh, but before I forget, please tell Astral that I should have some free time after moonset to offer him and his team some more in-depth pointers and suggestions than during my last visit.”

“Of course, Princess.”

I nodded in thanks, or maybe in confirmation. I really didn’t know exactly what my ponies made of the whole smile and nod routine, but they seemed to like it for whatever reason.

“But yes,” I said, “I’ve talked it over with Princess Luna, and we’ve decided to stay here for the time being.”

We’d decided to stay even though Luminance was kind of a really obvious place for Dash, me, and the rest of the crew to hide out in. An anonymous corner of space would’ve been a lot safer. But, well, these were my ponies. Even if all I could do was teleport them away if Celestia appeared, I needed to be here to protect them. Not to mention the sudden influx of parents, siblings, and assorted other loved ones from all over Equestria.

Although I had played with the idea of simply removing Luminance from the moon. I'd discarded that plan, though, on the grounds that I'd probably break the city unless I took weeks and weeks to prepare, and if I was going to be here that long anyway, why bother?

“Very well then, Princess. In that case, I’m afraid I must request assistance either out in the fields or in town and at the castle. We are unfortunately a little shorthoofed accommodating such a large population influx.”

I nearly facehoofed at my carelessness. We’d probably increased the moon’s head count by at least thirty percent. I should have seen labor issues coming from day one.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t even think of that. I’ll see what I can do, but I imagine everypony will be willing to lend a hoof.”

Aside from general relaxing, exploring the castle, and helping Luminance natives learn Modern Equestrian, there was little else to do here without knowing the vernacular. I’d already heard more than one complaint about boredom, although not nearly as many as I’d feared.

“Thank you, Princess. Unless you need anything” – Crescent paused long enough for me to shake my head – “then I will take my leave. Good night.”

With Crescent gone, Dash, Chamomile, and I continued our journey into the castle, occasionally running into either a native or somepony we’d brought up from Equus. Every time I saw somepony gawking at the paintings, I reminded myself just how much I needed to explore the entire castle myself.

Sadly, since I’d arrived, I’d learned that the castle ignored geometry, just like Canterlot Castle did. It was kind of a cheap trick to use magic, but it did make the whole painting history task actually doable. But I’d kept that little secret to myself. Knowing detracted from the awe and disbelief.

“Alright, Dash,” I began. She was going to turn left, while Chamomile and I headed further in to a quieter part of the castle. “I’ll see you later this morning. We’ll see if we can actually get at least telekinesis to work for you this time.”

“Ah. Nope. No can do, Twi.”

I let out a sigh, but I at least restrained my urge to facehoof. “Why not?”

“I have a date with Flutters tonight.”

Nope. It was facehoofing time after all. Dash chose a date over learning magic that was not only insanely useful, but also the first step toward being a useful combatant. Clearly she had her priorities straight.

“I see,” I grumbled. “Well, have fun, I guess.”

“Yeah, we’ll see. Our parents are getting involved. They’re still not over the whole alicorn thing as well.”

Well, having your daughter slash daughter-in-law switch species was a bit of a change, at least for normal ponies. Once Dash had wandered off and disappeared, I let out another sigh. The equinox was only three days away, and we only had a season left after that to whip Dash into shape, just in case.

Oh well. I set off with Chamomile. If Dash was going to ignore her lessons, I supposed that freed up some more time to figure out how alicorn blessings worked for me. I hadn’t had much luck following Luna’s vague advice so far, and apparently, the process was slightly different for every alicorn. Still, I thought I was getting close. I hoped.

Wait, wait, wait! “I think I’ve got it!”

“A-are you sure?” Chamomile squeaked out. On the surface, she looked rather comfortable lying on her cushion, but I could see her magic twitching through her wings. It did this every single time I failed.

I bit my lip. I almost had it. Again.

Damn it. I let my æthereal grip slacken, and Chamomile’s magic fell out of my grasp. It took far, far too long to settle back into its natural state. Chamomile herself didn’t even manage to suppress her sigh of relief or the faint traces of tears in her eyes.

“Did it work?”

“No.” Why couldn’t Mother just beat me over the head like usual and tell me how Celestia had done it? A second perspective would help me generalize the process.

“Because I don’t know, you idiot. I didn’t even know that was a thing.”

Ugh. I was living every filly’s worst nightmare: having my mother constantly watching over me and making judgmental comments.

“I can take it, Princess.”

I flicked Chamomile’s magic, something I’d done whenever Chamomile called me Princess in private, like training a cat with a squirt bottle. I put up with it in public, but at least when we were alone, I wanted her to call me Twilight.

“Er…Twilight. You don’t have to stop. Please continue.”

“No, I’m done for today. I’m going to break you if I keep trying.”

Chamomile insisted, “I’ll be fine. It’s just like being pinched is all.”

“Not every injury is obvious. If your magic isn’t already screaming at you, it should be soon.” Not that I’d know anything about that.

“Really, Twi–”

“No!”

Horseapples.

I calmed myself down with the usual breathing exercises, then said, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“It’s okay. I’m sure it’s frustrating for you to find magic difficult.”

“No. Just…no.” I loved difficult magic. It always gave me a real opportunity to challenge myself mentally. I wished more magic was difficult, even. “Chamomile, I know how to turn a ninety-year-old mare into a four-year-old colt. I’m no stranger to difficult spells.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing.”

Immediately, Mother hit me over the head with an imaginary hoof.

“Are you serious? You’ve told Twinkleshine, like, a million times not to bottle up negative feelings.”

“So what? It doesn’t mean I have to talk to everypony who crosses my path.”

“Well, then who are you going to talk to?”

I wanted to say Luna, but I wasn’t going to complain about Luna to Luna. Not without a real complaint, at least. Of course I didn’t really want to complain to anypony else, either, especially Chamomile.

“Oh shut up and just do it, Sparklebutt.”

Before I could retort, Chamomile said, “Princess?”

A sigh managed to escape me even as I flicked Chamomile’s magic again.

“Twilight…” Chamomile corrected herself.

“It’s really nothing, Chamomile. I’m just…worried I can’t do this, I guess.”

In no uncertain terms and without the slightest hint of doubt, Chamomile said, “Of course you can.”

“No, I meant, literally can’t. I…”

Was I really going to do this? I…supposed Chamomile was my knight; it was hard to get more trustworthy than that. And this was the kind of things friends did all the time, right? I told Luna everything. I should at least tell Chamomile something, especially when that something might affect how well I could protect myself in unexpected ways.

I gulped. Here went nothing.

“I – something happened to me when I was younger. I might” – before I could say, “be broken”, I substituted in less awful words – “not be completely healthy, even as an alicorn.”

Just for having said that, I breathed a sigh of relief.

One of Chamomile’s wings came up to brush away tears that definitely weren’t on my face, and she had a sickeningly sweet, pitying smile.

“If you’re unwell, what does that make the rest of us? Shambling corpses?” Chamomile paused just long enough for me to barely laugh. “No matter what, Princess, you’re amazing. Don’t forget that. And all of your friends are here for you if you ever need a shoulder to cry on.”

“I know. I just… If this blessing thing doesn’t work, it’ll be the first time I’ve ever noticed something physically wrong with me.” While it was still a problem, at least.

Humming first, Chamomile asked, “Well, how long did it take Princess Luna to learn how to impart a blessing?”

“Years, I guess. And only centuries after she became an alicorn.”

“See? You’re expecting too much from yourself.”

I really wanted to bat off the hoof Chamomile had placed on my withers, but I let it stay; it’d be rude.

“Luna didn’t even know what she was doing at the time. She was doing research. I’m just trying to replicate her results. Stars, I bet even Cadance has already figured out how to do this.”

Would Cadance answer a letter? Or if I went to her for advice, would she talk to me? As embarrassing as it would be, it’d help me a lot if she had some words of wisdom to share.

I glanced at Chamomile’s magic, which was still mutely protesting its rough treatment. I should really make a point of talking to Cadance soon, or…even Celestia if I had to. Duty to me or no, I didn’t want to keep doing this to Chamomile. Blessing was supposed to be a painless process. I’d felt it myself as Sunset, and it’d been mildly uncomfortable at worst. Yet here I was not making it that.

All I had to do was partially manifest from the part of Chamomile’s magic that was attuned to my alicorn domain, which was all of it. I couldn’t go wrong. I just had to reach in and leave part of myself in her magic without tearing it from her again.

Leaning back, nay, collapsing into my cushion on my back, I said, “I just don’t know, Chamomile. I know my ascension fixed some of my related health problems. I’m probably fine. Luna thinks I’m probably fine. But even then, it’s hard to not worry.”

The two of us sunk into a companionable silence, or at least what I thought was companionable. I didn’t know how comfortable Chamomile was with it, but I supposed she’d have to get used to them. They were more or less part of the job description, especially for me.

After who knew how long, I fought to roll myself over and back onto my hooves. I grunted with the effort, and briefly considered just manifesting on my hooves, but I wasn’t that lazy. Yet.

“Anyway, Chamomile, we’re done for today. I’m afraid I’m probably going to take up much of Astral’s time this morning, but do you have any other plans for the rest of the day before bed?”

“P-P-Pr-Princess!” Chamomile sputtered, her face ablaze at my words’ implicit assumption. “I’m not – we’re not – I haven’t – it’s been years since – no.”

So cute! “In that case, would you mind being on translation duty for me? I wanted to spend some time with my parents, Cherry Berry is off in town doing research, and Pupa said she’ll be busy with Chrysalis today doing something important, which just leaves Twinkleshine, and she can barely ask where the bathroom–”

My eyes widened as one of the spells I’d added to Luminance’s magical core triggered. My horn immediately flared to life in reflex, preparing to evacuate Luminance in the precious second or two of safety we had. All the enchantments were set up in advance and awaited only the necessary power to trigger.

But then my mind caught up with the warning it’d received. Something had hit my shield without penetrating it, or even stressing it at all, really. It wasn’t a teleport. It wasn’t an alicorn manifestation. It wasn’t any number of other transportation spells. Mostly likely a rock had fallen off of the Hornburg onto us. It wasn’t exactly a common event, but it didn’t warrant a full-scale evacuation.

Still, this did warrant caution. I set about scanning the town and surrounding area for any magic I didn’t recognize. At the same time, I fired off some more conventional – and known to be reliable – detection spells.

When everything turned up negative, I said, “False alarm. Something mundane and non-magical hit the shield.”

“Do you know what it is?”

I shook my head. It would be a rather good idea to track down the object, just in case Celestia had thrown a chemical bomb at us or something. That wouldn’t get through the shield, but I’d need to know in advance if she intended to do that kind of super rude crap.

“Oh, please. Sunbutt only has three ways of doing things: winning, throwing the fight, and showing off.”

“Is something wrong?” Chamomile asked after I’d facehoofed.

“Nothing important,” I mumbled back.

Chamomile rose to her hooves, stretching her back and wings. “If you say so,” she moaned, several bones cracking on the last word. “You’d know best, Prin…Twilight.”

I gently let Chamomile’s magic settle back into place instead of letting it snap back. In hindsight, I was pretty sure I’d missed one or two ‘Princess’es in our conversation.

“Do you want me to look for whatever hit the shield?” Chamomile asked.

“N…”

It’d be a lot faster and easier for me to just do it myself, but I didn’t want Chamomile to feel useless. But I also didn’t want to just give her boring tasks anypony could do and trivialize her job.

Ugh. Whatever. I was probably overthinking this. “Go ahead. Knock yourself out.”

Wings spread wide, Chamomile turned about to face the balcony of the room we’d sequestered ourselves in.

Just as she took her first step and flap, Chamomile aborted her flight. “Oh,” she began, “where might I find you if trouble arises?”

That was a good question, one I didn’t really know the answer to. “I’m going to guess down along the river, but I’m not sure. If my parents haven’t eaten yet, I’ll probably be down there with them having a picnic.”

“Oh my gosh! I just can’t get over how cute you are,” Mom said as she pinched my cheek.

I restrained a groan. I’d agreed to this after all, and it’d been my suggestion to begin with. I’d overheard Mom and Dad waxing melancholic over ‘missing’ my filly years.

Which they totally hadn’t. I’d kept in contact through Chrysalis and Pupa, even if I maybe should have kept in more frequent contact instead of reading a few less than important books. But my point stood.

Anyway, Mom and Dad had been looking at some of Luna’s historical art, and Mom had said something along the lines of, ‘I wish I could see our little Twilight one more time.’ I’d offered to fulfill that wish. Basic changeling magic for shapeshifting hadn’t been that hard to pick up from Pupa.

And, well, here we were. Mom leaned into an enthusiastic nuzzle as we strolled through town, looking for the local baker, Pumpkin. Whatever we scrounged up there would complement the fruit salads we’d brought down from the palace.

“You are rather adorable,” Dad said, briefly turning toward me where I rested comfortably on his back.

Honestly, riding on Dad’s back was something of a guilty pleasure. I’d carried Spike around so much that I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed the other side of the act.

Continuing on with the rather excessive gushing – which I was very glad nopony around but us could understand at any appreciable level – Mom said, “And these tiny little wings are so endearing.”

“Although the dyed mane is a bit worrisome, even if it isn’t as crazy as that Rainbow Dash’s. You’re not starting your rebellious years, are you?”

A full blush erupted onto my cheeks. I didn’t know how much more of this I could take. It was one thing to be subjected to this kind of treatment as a filly, but as a mare, it was just plain embarrassing.

Mother just had to ruin it. “You should tell them.”

And with that, I promptly told Mother to shut up. She was right, of course, but that didn’t mean I had to do it right now. I wasn’t going anywhere. Mom and Dad weren’t going anywhere. Telling them I was adopted could wait.

Before I could even get a word in edgewise, Mom replied in mock dread, “Oh no. She has been rebelling against Princess Celestia. It’s happening. Now she’s going to stay out all night, and start having promiscuous sex, and get into fights.”

“Mooooom,” I groaned.

“See? It is happening.”

Dad nodded. “I have it on good authority that she does all that already, too.”

I hung my head in defeat, and eventually I just let it rest on Dad’s back as he prattled on back and forth with Mom. Not that I was ever allowed to be out of the conversation or to recover my dignity. My parents were just enjoying teasing me far, far too much.

Well anyway, we found a rather confused Pumpkin, and I made the request for some picnic-worthy food. We made off with a strawberry pie, and Pumpkin had dug up a mix of water lilies and chrysanthemums from a neighbor. I almost sent the lilies back – I’d been allergic to them as a filly – but I figured I might as well try them again now. If I was still allergic as an alicorn, I’d have to go complain to…the æther or something.

“You know,” Dad began, “this place kind of reminds me of Ponyville, don’t you think?”

I pulled my head up from where it’d rested, more than eager to have something other than me to talk about.

“Luminance has some cultural contamination through Luna, which also includes architectural style. The available building materials here are primarily organic, although if you head clockwise around the Hornburg, there’s actually a…well, it’s not quite a quarry since it goes underground, I think. I’m not actually sure if quarries have to be open-aired.

“But anyway, the ponies here don’t mine much, so they tend to use wood and straw as their primary building materials. Luna made the palace herself, although I was a little disappointed when I found out she cheated. There’s some dimensional magic on the structure which warps the geometry to suit Luna’s artistic needs. Oh stars, don’t tell anypony that. It’s demystifying. But anyway, there’s actually a similar spell on Canterlot Castle – which totally explains why I used to get lost in there! – and I think the old castle also… Why are you two laughing?”

“Nothing, Sweetie. It’s just so good to see you in pony again.” Mom gave me a huge smile. “I think your dad was more referring to the lifestyle and ponies, though, not the architecture.”

I let out a sheepish, “Oh.”

“This place is such a quiet little town,” Dad said, “even if you brought us up here during a three-day-long celebration. I mean, if you want bread, you go to an actual baker. I’ve never seen an actual bakery before. Sugarcube Corner came close, but it was more of a cafe.”

The appeal was rather lost on me. There was nothing wrong with it, but I didn’t understand why Dad was making such a big deal of it. It was so much more convenient to just have one cook like Pinkie Pie be responsible for everything, even if she decided to delegate.

“Ooh! That looks like a good place to eat.”

I hopped off of Dad and hovered in the air at eye level, pointing toward a small, relatively flat area near some bulrushes. The river had a minor babble as I glided closer, but nothing distracting or annoying.

“Hurry up!” I called back. It wasn’t really fair that I had wings and they didn’t, but they were taking an awfully long time to join me at their snail’s pace. And they had the picnic blanket too, so I couldn’t even get set up.

“Hold you horses, young lady,” Mom said. “Grown up or not, you can wait. We’re not as young as we used to be.”

Oh, right. I’d forgotten about that. I flew back over to my parents and landed on Mom’s back this time to a small, “Oof.”

“Say, Mom, when do you think you were most crazy and energetic?”

“Ha. That was more your father’s thing. When we first started dating, he dragged me all over Equestria.”

“Not all over,” Dad said, lightly bumping into Mom. “And you loved it.”

I could almost hear Mom rolling her eyes as she turned to Dad. “I was a young, lovestruck mare. Of course I enjoyed it when you swept me off my hooves on an adventure.”

Dad leaned in to kiss Mom right on the lips. “We should do that again,” he added.

“How old were you two?” I asked.

“I was just a year older than you, and your dad was twenty-three.”

Alright, well that sounded like as good of a target age as any.

“Ah, those were wild times.”

While Dad and Mom went on reminiscing, I put a simple illusion on my horn to hide my spellcasting. After that I set about crafting a pair of age spells. Mom was spreading the picnic blanket when the spells were finally ready and triple checked for errors, and Dad had the silverware and plates out. I readied myself to catch the breakables with my magic and let my spell go to work on both of them.

“Twilight, what’s hap–” Dad began, although I didn’t know if he was talking to me or Mom. The spell taking hold properly on him knocked the coherency out of him as it did its work.

For her own part, Mom hadn’t managed anything coherent at all, not until the process ended and she got her first look at Dad.

“Nighty, you’re…young.”

‘Nighty’ – I couldn’t help but giggle at that – looked up from his hooves to stare at Mom. I also couldn’t help but wonder if that was where Cadance got ‘Shiny’ and Shining got ‘Cady’ from.

After failing to find words for quite a long time, Dad said, “You’re gorgeous.”

“What, and I wasn’t before?”

“Wait, no, that wasn’t what I–” Dad said, backpedaling in a mad scramble.

Mom interrupted him with a chuckle. “I’m just teasing.” Her magic picked me up by the tail and floated me hanging upside down in front of her. Then with her scolding face, she asked, “So are you responsible for this?”

I nodded weakly. Even as a grown mare, Mom’s scolding went straight through all my higher brain functions and struck at some primitive part of me.

“Is this permanent?”

I nodded again and squeaked out, “I can undo it.”

“Is it safe?”

“Yes,” I said in an even smaller voice than Fluttershy’s.

Mom spun me a bit to level me out, and her magic let go. My wings took over when I was released, and I fluttered down to land just in front of them.

Being a filly again had advantages. I brushed off a few old skills and looked up at my parents with puppy dog eyes.

“Are you mad?”

Dad started, “Of course n–” but a sharp jab from one of Mom’s hind hooves cut him off.

“Twilight, you should always ask permission before you use magic on ponies. I shouldn’t have to tell you this at your age. It’s very rude, and some ponies might be traumatized.”

I supposed… Fluttershy was pretty skittish about everything, although Dash and Pinkie Pie didn’t really ever mind, and Twinkleshine was completely fine with it.

When I didn’t reply right away, Mom added, “Understood?”

“Yes…” I mumbled. “But you just did to me.”

Somehow Mom heard that last bit. “That’s different. That’s parenting.”

“Seriously,” Dad added. “You had that little unicorn filly Berry Pinch with you. Did you ever ask Berry Punch how she managed to control her newborn daughter?”

I tilted my head to the side. “No?”

“Oh gosh,” Mom sighed, exasperated. “I don’t know what we would’ve done about you and Shining without a horn of our own. We caught him levitating cookies from the kitchen at midnight while he was in his bedroom.”

And that was such a crime? That sounded like a perfectly good use of magic to me. I’d have to give Shining a hoof bump the next time I saw him.

Dad picked up the slack as Mom’s eyes faded out and her mouth moved without speaking. “And when you were a newborn, wow, I thought I was going to go insane. Infants let out their magic in large – but thankfully infrequent – bursts. There was one day we couldn’t find you, and it turned out you’d made yourself invisible. Shining eventually bumped into you, and we removed the illusion.”

“Teeeeell theeeeem,” Mother wailed like she was a ghostly voice in the wind. All she needed was a pair of chains and somepony making fake ghost wails, and the cheese would be complete.

I kept my sigh to myself. That hadn’t been me in Mom’s and Dad’s memories, but I could still appreciate cute stories about Aurora.

“Okay, fine,” I replied. “I’m sorry. I wanted to surprise you, but I guess I messed up. Do you want me to age you back up?”

“Um. No,” Dad emphatically said.

Mom spared Dad a sharp glare, no doubt upset that he’d basically undermined her whole lecture. But she did agree.

“Apology accepted, Sweetie. Please ask first next time you want to do something like this. But I agree. This is a wonderful gift. I haven’t felt this good in ages.”

Twenty-eight years to be exact.

“So long as you understand,” Mom added, “let’s get this picnic started.”

I smiled up at Mom and Dad. Afterward, I ran over atop the blanket and set about setting up. With nopony joining me, I glanced back toward my parents to find Dad whispering in Mom’s ear, who giggled soon after. My ears perked up to listen in, and I regretted it soon after.

“Doesn’t this remind you of our first anniversary? We might want to recreate the experience after Little Twilight scampers off.”

Oh, squick. Interrupting Mom’s blush and borderline sultry smile, I said, “Please don’t flirt in front of me.”

Mom turned even more crimson at being overheard. Her blushes always stood out on her light-gray coat. Dad just laughed, though, apparently enjoying both my and Mom’s reactions.

Anyway, that aside, I set up the rest of the picnic by myself because my parents were…well, reasonably distracted. Once everything was in place, I plopped myself down and snuggled against Mom’s barrel. Being curled up with Spike was nice – like, really nice – but there really wasn’t any comparison to being the smaller pony in a parent–foal cuddle.

And really, this was something I’d missed so much. We just needed Shining now, and it’d be just like old times again, back when I hadn’t had any responsibilities or worries beyond household chores. For the first time in years, almost everything was absolutely perfect.

I let out a little contented sigh, then took a bite of my delicious fruit salad. Mom and Dad were chatting about nothing important. I listened in and occasionally made a comment or asked a question. Things were looking up.

It wasn’t until we were mostly done eating that Mom noticed my occasional nervous fidgeting.

“Is something wrong, Twilight?”

A sinking feeling grew in my stomach. I asked, “You mean besides the whole ‘Celestia could show up here anytime and arrest me or worse’ thing?”

“You’re not normally this jumpy.”

Dad took over, asking, “Is it just relaxing that’s hard? I know I used to get the jitters pretty bad when I had nothing to do but sit and watch the grass grow. From what you’ve told us, you’ve kept yourself pretty busy these last several years.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s it…” I mumbled.

As I stared at my hooves, I couldn’t help but notice in my magic sense that Mom’s and Dad’s magic in their heads moved suspiciously like they were looking at each other, probably worriedly.

And then Mother had to go and say, “Honesty starts with admitting you have a problem.”

I knew I had a problem! But…Mom and Dad didn’t. And that was what Sunset was getting at.

“Yes.”

“Hmm?” Mom hummed. “I didn’t hear you, Twilight.”

“Yes,” I repeated a little louder. “Something is wrong.”

Dad asked, “Do you want to talk about it? You can tell us anything.”

“No. No, I don’t want to talk about it at all, but it’s really important, and I have to tell you, but I can’t, and I know you love me, and I know you always will, but I’m so scared that you’re going to hate me, and I know that’s stupid, but I can’t help it, and if I don’t say anything, it’ll eat me up inside, but if I do say something, it’s going to hurt even worse, and–”

Mom made a shh sound as her hoof slowly ran across my back in gentle strokes. “It’s going to be okay,” she cooed. “Just take deep breaths.”

As she said those magic words, a cloth napkin flew up in Mom’s magic from the pile and fell into place right in front of my muzzle.

And then to make things worse, something passed through Luminance’s wards. After entering full on panic mode, it registered in my mind that whatever it was had gone from the inside to the outside. And then I realized that Chamomile must’ve found whatever hit the shields earlier, which was a bad sign, because that meant it probably hadn’t been a rock.

But I could worry about that later. I made a short term change to the wards to let Chamomile actually come back in through her shadow jumps, and I made a mental note to tell her that this little stunt could’ve gotten her killed if I’d just teleported everypony away without thinking.

And…now that I was done panicking over that, I realized that I wasn’t as out of it as I’d been just moments ago. Leave it to a potential crisis to distract me from social problems; those I could manage.

Still, I blew my nose, because the mucus already there wasn’t going to go away on its own.

“Thank you, Mom.”

“No problem. Now would you like to tell us what’s wrong?”

Dad added, “You know the two of us will always love you. You said it yourself. We’ll try to take whatever it is in stride.”

This wasn’t exactly the kind of thing a pony took in stride…

“I… Okay. But” – I dispelled the changeling magic on me, awkwardly shoving both Mom and me sideways as I regained my proper size – “I can’t do this as a filly. I need a fully developed frontal lobe.”

“Whatever you want,” Dad said. “Honestly, today was really nice, but I much prefer the wonderful mare our daughter has grown into.”

After recovering from being knocked onto her side, Mom leaned over to nuzzle me. “You’ll always be my little filly, even if you grow as big as Princess Luna or Princess Celestia.”

“T-thanks. I think.” I knew Mom meant well, but it was kind of embarrassing all the same.

I took a deep breath to prepare myself. But where to start? I couldn’t just come out and say, ‘I’m adopted.’ Mom would have some pretty reasonable objections, and then I’d get all flustered again, and I’d start rambling, and it’d all go to Tartarus so fast.

No, I was more organized than that. I’d start with the related details and work my way up.

“You’re just trying to avoid the issue.”

I promptly told Mother to shut up even though she was probably right. After that, I put a little magic into a small illusion in front of us.

“This is…Sunset Shimmer,” I explained. Celestia walked into existence in the illusion to join Mother. “She was Celestia’s apprentice before Trixie.”

I couldn’t help noticing both Mom and Dad eying the yellow and red stripes in my mane suspiciously. Or maybe it was just curiously. I didn’t know right now.

“Yes, we know, Sweetie,” Mom said.

“You do?” I asked, but I immediately facehoofed right after the words had left my mouth. Of course they knew.

“Of course,” Dad answered anyway. “Everypony over thirty would, I’d imagine. Maybe thirty-five.”

“Right, well, then you know she just disappeared, right?”

I got a nod from Dad and an affirmative hum from Mom.

“Well, you see, the thing is,” I began, awkwardly fiddling with my hooves while I modified my illusion. Instead of just showing Mother and Celestia, I’d animated it to depict what I intended to explain. “Mo – Sunset was being trained to use the Elements of Harmony to philosophically assassinate Luna. It’s the only known way to kill an alicorn. I mean, the elements aren’t strictly necessary, but they make the whole task a lot easier, since pinning down an ancient alicorn like Luna is kind of really hard, although if you have a thousand years to prepare, maybe not that hard, and–”

Mom cleared her throat.

“Sorry. I was rambling again, wasn’t I?”

“It’s fine, Sweetie. It’s kind of obvious you’re not at your best right now. Just know that if you feel uncomfortable, we won’t hold it against you if you feel like you need to stop.”

“Please stop giving me excuses to never tell you,” I didn’t say. I could keep secrets forever if I had to, but this was one secret that I’d never forgive myself for not revealing.

“No, I have to tell you two this. And Shining, too. If Cadance hasn’t already told him…”

I wouldn’t imagine Cadance wouldn’t tell him, although she might need Celestia to point out the fine details to her first. Hopefully I’d still be his LSBFF when I next saw him.

“So Sunset was being trained as an assassin, and she didn’t even know it. Instead of waiting to die, Luna – Luna did what she had to.”

Mom and Dad shared a look, and it was only a couple seconds before I found myself flanked by them. Each had a hoof over my withers, and their heads softly leaned against mine.

“Twilight, have you talked about this with anypony yet?” Dad asked.

“Luna.”

“Besides Princess Luna,” Mom added.

“Well, a little bit with Cadance, but we mostly ended up arguing.”

“What about Twinkleshine or Chamomile?”

I shook my head at Dad’s inquiry. “I don’t…can’t tell Twinkleshine much. I know she can keep a secret, but…”

I trailed off into silence. The essential part of a secret was knowing that a secret existed. But these were my parents…and that didn’t automatically qualify them for unconditional trust. But – but I really needed to explain, and – oh, to Tartarus with it.

“Some of the stuff I know are secrets that I can’t risk spreading. It wouldn’t be safe for other ponies. And if I just told that kind of stuff to anypony I was close to, they’d start being targeted, and then the people I care about wouldn’t be safe. I – I mean, Chamomile signed up for danger, and sometimes I tell her things I probably shouldn’t, a-and really everypony that lived with me on the Nebulous is potentially in danger or a potential security leak at this point, and I know I should deal with–”

Mom squeezed me tight to her chest with both fore hooves.

“Sweetie, my dear little Twilight, you don’t have to bottle everything up. You don’t have to tell us everything, but you need to find a healthier way of dealing with these feelings than whatever you’ve tried.”

“I…I know.” I knew that so well. And there was one thing that I knew would help, although I would’ve preferred Cadance to Mom and Dad for it, not that I’d ever admit that to either of them. “Could – could you two just stay here like this? And let me cry in your hooves? I-I haven’t had a chance to yet.”

“Of course,” Mom said. “What else are parents for?”

“T-thanks,” I managed, already on the verge of letting myself go. “A-and if I say…anything, I d-don’t mean it, okay? I-I’m just venting.”

Mom had apparently decided she’d heard enough, so she pulled Dad into our hug. And – and that sent me over the edge. She just held me as I cried, murmuring encouraging words, and Dad’s magic ran through my mane in loving strokes.

This…this was everything that I needed. I should have done this days ago.

I was halfway asleep next to Mom, still occasionally sniffling and nowhere closer to having told her or Dad anything important, when I felt Chamomile jump into my shadow. The Hornburg itself glowed above and behind us, and the ground was regular dirt inside Luminance, so while we always had shadows here, they were also very weak. If I moved much, I might accidentally knock Chamomile out of the shadows, as light as they were.

“Princess,” Chamomile said, partially emerging from the ground.

Mom’s head jumped toward the voice in surprise, as did Dad’s. However, while the latter’s eyes only bulged, Mom let out a bloodcurdling shriek.

I didn’t even have to look to know what the problem was. The only part of Chamomile’s magic that was properly three dimensional right now was her head and part of her neck.

“Chamomile, could you not do that in front of others?” I thought about asking her to speak in Modern Equestrian, too, but whatever she had to say probably wasn’t good news. I didn’t want to worry Mom and Dad.

“Ah, my apologies.”

Chamomile emerged the rest of the way and trotted around to speak to me face-to-face. Tucked under her wing was a piece of paper with several folds along it. She’d flattened it out, but the creases remained.

“I found this parchment beyond the boundaries of the village. I’m fairly sure this is what collided with your shields.”

I took the proffered paper in my magic, wiping the remaining tears from my eyes.

“To whomever may find this letter,” the letter read. “I would sincerely appreciate it if you would see to it that (Princess?) Twilight Sparkle receives it through whatever means available to you. My own method of communicating with her appears to either be in hiding or has been abducted, although I suspect the former.”

Oh no. My gaze fell all the way to the bottom of the letter, whereupon I discovered it was signed Princess Celestia. This was really…not that bad. She hadn’t addressed it directly to me, and since Pupa wasn’t in Canterlot anymore, the easiest way to contact me would be to send a message through Luna by means of a lunar pegasus.

I was kind of confused why Celestia didn’t just try to come here herself to deliver the message in pony. Maybe she knew I was here and didn’t want to scare me away. That would be–

What on Equus? Just next to Celestia’s signature was a doodle of her blowing a raspberry at me. I…I didn’t even know what to say to that. Was this…a taunting letter? Maybe?

Before I did anything else, I turned to Chamomile. “I don’t know how much good it will do, but can you put the Night Guard on alert?”

“Already done,” Chamomile replied. “I confess I may have…not wanted to interrupt you earlier. I didn’t think this letter was as important, so I went and spoke with Captain Starry first.”

I bit my lip as I thought about how to respond to that. If Celestia were a mundane threat, I wouldn’t have had a single objection, but she was an alicorn. Chamomile really should’ve brought this to me right away. But…I had really needed the time to just be Twilight Sparkle and not the pony in charge.

In the end, I just settled on, “Thank you,” before turning my attention back to the letter.

"Twilight Sparkle, if this letter reaches you through your mentor, you may ignore this, but two minutes of making demands of me is not the conversation you promised. As I have not received your replies to my questions yet, I shall assume the visit is unrelated.”

Luna went to talk to Celestia already? And she’d threatened Celestia? I wanted to bang my head on the ground, but I trusted Luna knew what she was doing. I’d have to ask her what she was thinking right after this, but given that Celestia wasn’t here herself, maybe Luna hadn’t antagonized her too much.

“That said, I am eagerly awaiting your letter now more than ever and hope to hear from you soon.”

Fantastic. I was barely even a fourth the way done writing the darn thing, and now Celestia wanted her answers now. Thanks, Luna.

“Of course, I cannot help but feel a little cheated. You sold me the information I asked for at a rather high price, and yet I came home to discover you gave much of it to my niece for free. Did demand suddenly skyrocket? I know I signed a bill outlawing such fraud at some point.

“Well, I shall certainly be checking the answers you send me against the ones you gave to Cadance. I am very interested to see how well they match up. Cadance is rather concerned about you, too. I suspect she will want to know a little more about her little sister as well.”

Oh horseapples. I hadn’t even thought about Celestia passing on all of that information to Cadance. I’d just assumed Celestia would act as an information black hole like she always did.

But I hadn’t lied to Cadance. I just hadn’t told her everything. She…wouldn’t be any more upset with me than she already was. Right? Right.

Sigh. Probably not. But at least she’d be mad at me this time. Maybe that would actually help things between us.

Anyway, after that last paragraph came Celestia’s signature and the raspberry. I wasn’t entirely sure what exactly she was trying to say with that. If I were to guess… No, I really didn’t understand.

“Don’t ask me,” Mother said when I’d deliberately poked into her memories. “Sunbutt is an enigma, even if her actions make sense in hindsight.”

I sighed and read the short postscript.

“P.S. If you do not know what an alicorn blessing is, you should inquire further. If you are having trouble granting one to Dame Chamomile, you may wish to speak with your sister.”

So Cadance had blessed somepony already. I wondered – no, I didn’t wonder who she’d blessed. It was kind of obvious. Her knight in shining armor had always been one pony, and I’d have to kill myself if I ever used that pun again.

Still, I did wonder what Cadance’s blessing did. It probably wasn’t anything like her usual alicorn powers if she felt comfortable giving it to Shining, or anypony at all, really. But then that was also putting the cart before the pony, since she wouldn’t know what it did until after Shining had it.

Well anyway, it really would be helpful to have Cadance’s perspective on the blessing process. Maybe I could organize a clandestine meeting of some kind on Equus. But then maybe that was the trap. Or maybe worrying that it was a trap was the trap to make sure I didn’t talk to Cadance. Or maybe I was overthinking this and letting paranoia win the day.

Although on the other hoof, maybe I just shouldn’t even try. I didn’t really want to know if Cadance would show up or not. With eternity ahead of us, I hadn’t broken her trust in me forever, but it’d still hurt if she didn’t trust me right now.

And…maybe she’d be right to not trust me until this was all over. Cadance was probably still on Celestia’s side, but both Celestia and I could classify her as under ‘me and mine’. If I wanted to take Cadance away with me against her will for her own safety, it might not quite be violating the spirit of ‘leaving me and mine’ alone. Maybe. Maybe that was just a rationalization.

I let out another sigh, then turned my attention to a little mystery I knew I could solve. The whole ‘letter from Celestia’ situation didn’t seem like it needed particularly urgent attention. I did need to do a few miscellaneous things, and I really needed to talk to Luna, and apparently I needed to get back to work on writing that letter to Celestia, but I could spare a minute or two for this.

“Chamomile, how was this folded when you first found it?”

Step by step, Chamomile instructed me on how to undo the unfolding process. I only got three folds in before I felt like facehoofing.

When I was done folding, I paused a moment to admire Celestia’s admittedly impressive work. But I didn’t need to keep this around, so I tossed the letter off and set a corner of one of its wings ablaze.

For a short time, the letter, now a paper plane, flew slowly through the air. I’d never been much for origami myself, but apparently Celestia was a master. If I’d tried to come up with a plane design, it would’ve crashed into the ground long ago a second or two after I’d thrown it.

The plane burned to ashes mid-flight, and I made a small wind to scatter them. After that, I rose to my hooves and stretched my wings, preparing to take off.

“Mom, Dad, I’m really, really sorry, but I have some princess stuff to take care of. I promise I’ll talk to you later. And if I don’t…hit me in the head or something.”

“Go take care of whatever you have to,” Dad began, “we can wait until you’re free and ready.”

“Thanks.” I gave both of them one last hug, then launched myself into the sky with Chamomile following close behind.

Ever since I’d ascended, I’d noticed my hearing was a lot better. Not Pinkie Pie, ‘breaking the laws of physics’ good, but far better than average. Below us, I heard Mom and Dad talking to each other.

“Do you think we made the right choice?”

“Of course we did,” Dad replied. “We had no reason not to let Princess Luna teach her. I’m sure Princess Celestia has a few skeletons in her closet, too.”

As I slipped out of even my range of hearing, I cast a subtle little spell to listen in longer.

Mom sighed. “You’re probably right. At least we know why she dyed her mane and tail now. Or at least we know a little bit about it. That obviously wasn’t nearly everything.”

At some point, I needed to tell them my mane and tail weren’t actually dyed. I didn’t know why, but the accusation made me feel kind of offended. It wasn’t like dying your mane was bad or anything. Just…yeah.

Anyway, Mom and Dad fell silent for a few seconds, but then Dad said something I really wished I hadn’t heard.

“Not to ruin the mood, but I haven’t had this many hormones in me in decades.”

“Oh sweet Celestia, don’t I know it.”

“We got a prince consort, then a princess. Wanna try for an empress?”

I skipped flying all together and demanifested away from my parents.

“Luna,” I began much like I was a disappointed parent with a disciplinary letter from my son’s teacher in hoof, “would you care to explain why I got a message from Celestia about threatening her?”

“Ah…sorry. Did that make any problems for you?” Luna did look genuinely apologetic, not playfully so as she usually would in this kind of situation.

I shrugged. The more I’d thought about it, the less sure I was. “Maybe. Part of the letter was a ‘reminder’ that she was expecting her answers soon. And that whatever you did didn’t count as the conversation promised. But it could be that she was already impatient and just took your behavior as an excuse to press for answers.”

“Perhaps…”

I gave Luna as long as I could stand to think before I complained, “So anyway, what was this about a threat?”

“Oh. Well, since you promised I would visit her dreams–”

I emitted a weak, “Sorry,” as I had every other time this had come up, but Luna paid it no mind.

“–I’ve been trying to figure out why she asked for that. As you suggested, it could be just to waste our time, but it could also be something more sinister. I went to her dreams last night to catch her off guard. If she had any traps to spring, I thought perhaps she might use them then in haste, thinking it would be her one chance.”

Well that was a pretty solid line of thought, actually. I couldn’t argue with that, although I certainly could argue with the choice of topic.

“You could’ve at least done something besides deliberately antagonizing Celestia.”

This time it was Luna’s turn to shrug. “If I didn’t do that, I have no idea what I would’ve said instead. I went in with a clear purpose beyond checking for traps, and I left. It’s embarrassing, but I honestly don’t know if I could’ve done any better.”

My hooves took over without a conscious signal from my brain and gave Luna a hug. Underneath the rather stoic frown, I’d seen the burning rage and suppressed pain in Luna’s eyes, even if it was just a flicker. Meeting Celestia in pony for the first time in nearly a thousand years couldn’t have been easy.

In fact, that Luna wasn’t burning with fury or sobbing like a foal was probably a good sign. Relative aloofness was good. It showed she’d managed to put at least some distance between herself and Celestia emotionally over the past several years. Gaining perspective was the first step on the road to healing.

Probably. I really needed to read up on this stuff as soon as possible.

“It’s alright, I suppose. But what did you say exactly?”

Luna cleared her throat. “Word for word, I said, ‘If you so much as dare to pluck a single feather from Twilight, I promise you Equestria will be on fire before you can remove a second.’”

“That doesn’t seem like a very credible threat,” I replied, not that it wasn’t sweet in a horrifying sense. “There’s no way you’d ever do that.”

“No, but I doubt everypony is under that impression. I might as well make use of that.”

Fair enough. Celestia did seem to regard Luna as a monster, and she’d passed that impression on to Cadance as well. I supposed I – and Celestia – could believe a monster would have her evil minions burn down cities in her place should it suit her purposes.

“Anything else?” Luna asked eagerly for whatever reason.

“No?” I replied questioningly. “Just that. I just put myself into a power nap to ask the what and why of your actions.”

Luna’s eager smile turned into a rather exaggerated frown.

“Um… Did you have something you wanted to do?” I asked.

Luna gave me the look. “Twilight, you’ve unearthed centuries of mostly ignored and repressed feelings. What do you think I want to do?”

Faster than anything could catch fire, a blush erupted on my face. “I-I – I mean we have time to make out. Just a little bit.”

“Glad you asked,” Luna said just before she captured my muzzle with hers.

Author's Note

Prereaders – Starlight Nova, Strange Reasoning, The Great Eater

Chapter Thirty Six - Date Night in Las Pegasus

Oh. My. Gosh. My feather fell out of my magic, spilling leftover ink all across the desk I’d been writing at, but who cared. I was done. Finished. Concluded. Finitoque. Was that the right conjugation?

Eh, whatever. I let my head crash onto the table, finally, finally done. This had been entirely too much writing, even for me. I was used to taking notes and giving oral reports to Luna, not writing epic-length essays. Now I knew why Dash, and Fluttershy, and Twinkleshine, and everypony else in the world hated writing written reports.

“Ugh…” I moaned as I slowly, painfully pulled my head back up. Eight days straight of jam-packed schedules with no time for myself was brutal. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d seen Twinkleshine, or Spike, or my parents. Was it two days ago? No, I ground out a couple dozen pages then.

But wait, wasn’t two days ago when I gave a magic lecture? Yeah, it was. I’d asked Twinkleshine to be my assistant for that. Right, I remembered that now. So it was two days ago that I’d last seen her in particular, at least.

Well, with my letter to Celestia finished, I should have so much free time now that everypony would get sick of me. They’d be like, “Go away, Twilight. We need some space, too.”

“Oh sweet Celestia, Sparklebutt, go to sleep. For my sake, if not yours.”

Nope. I could at least make it until my normal bedtime. That was only… Ugh, why was my sense of time so screwed up?

Whatever. Not having a clock in my room, I cast my senses far afield into the universe to find out where the moon currently was. From there, it was just basic trig. Fourteen hours remained until moonset. I could last that long.

I remanifested a new body for myself, one that hadn’t been exhausted yet. It wasn’t a real solution to sleep deprivation – it didn’t reset all of the parts of me that needed rest – but I at least physically felt more awake. Then just for good measure, I stretched out my neck, and my back, and my everything to get myself back in working condition.

I knew I had no business complaining about this, but I’d been sitting in one place for way too long. With a book, I could at least roll around and sprawl however I wanted, but ink was more demanding.

Well, I could create a localized gravity to work with ink upside down, but that was an awful lot of work – and was rather distracting – to do every single time I rolled over.

But then as an alicorn, maybe scrying for extended periods wouldn’t hurt my eyes anymore. I should give remote writing a try next time. Or if I wanted to be boring, I could just magic the words onto the paper, I supposed.

Groaning with the effort, I coaxed one last crack out of my left wing. I grabbed hold of my letter in my magic then got to my hooves. Normally, I’d just teleport down to the dining hall, but the exercise would do me good. Maybe I’d even bump into somepony interesting along the way.

I made my way over to the door, opened it, then immediately said, “Oh, buck this.”

The room I’d acquired for myself at Luminance was in one of the higher towers. No way was I going to descend ten flights of stairs right now. It wasn’t worth it. Instead, I teleported to the base of the stairwell.

Anyway, my trip through the hallway was peaceful enough. Every other pony I bumped into was a moon native, and everypony from Equus was polite enough.

Everypony except Twinkleshine’s parents, that was… Still, we had a ‘if you pretend we don’t exist, we’ll pretend you don’t exist’ kind of deal going on. It wasn’t strictly speaking the healthiest relationship possible, but it was far better than trembling in fear of a goddess while screaming and yelling at her again.

The massive dining hall doors stood open to admit anypony looking for a late breakfast. A wingful of ponies were still present, including Dash and Fluttershy. Instead of trying to navigate the maze of tables and chairs, I simply flew up and over the obstacles, shortly after landing next to my target to the soft clop of hooves on stone.

“Hey, Dash.”

Muffled by a rather delicious looking blueberry muffin, Dash presumably said, “What’s up, Twi?”

Fluttershy swallowed first before saying hello herself.

“I’m heading to Equus for a little while, so try not to do anything…” Instead of saying ‘stupid’, I substituted, “That would require my help.”

“Yeah, sure. Hey, while you’re there, would you pick up that new Daring Do movie? Pupa told me it’s pretty good.”

“Just don’t tell Cherry Berry you have it, alright?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dash mumbled through more muffin, waving her hoof dismissively.

I turned my attention to Fluttershy and asked, “While I’m at it, do you need me to pick up anything? From Equus or the Nebulous?”

Fluttershy shook her head. “Thanks for asking, though.”

“Alright. And remember, Dash, if the wards go off while I’m gone–”

“I’ll demanifest and run away,” Dash interrupted. “You’ve told me like a thousand times. I get it, alright?”

“So long as you know.” The wards would alert me on Equus, too, but my response time would be non-instantaneous. So long as Dash got out safely, I should be able to either rescue everypony or bargain for anypony who was taken hostage if I really screwed up. “Anyway, I’ll see you two later.”

I waited long enough for Dash and Fluttershy to wave and say goodbye, then I teleported away. It’d be a lot easier if I could just manifest on Equus, but I couldn’t bring anything with me that way, which included letters, unfortunately.

However, I was pretty sure there were loopholes to that. Luna had told me it was flat out impossible to manifest something that wasn’t me, but I was pretty sure Celestia had left the Nebulous by demanifestation, and her regalia went with her. Maybe it was considered part of her body somehow. Hmm…

But that was another future project to work on. Or maybe I could just ask Luna. As it was, I stuck with teleportation for now. I made it most of the way to Equus on the first jump, and I still couldn’t get over that. Being an alicorn was almost like cheating. Everything was too easy.

Well, at least things with brute force solutions were. Just like you couldn’t solve every economic problem by throwing lots of money around, you couldn’t solve every magical problem by throwing lots of magic at it. Still, I’d have to try making an intergalactic teleport sometime, just to say I did it.

I made a second jump to just inside Equus’s thermosphere.

Hmm… Magic was fast – much faster than light even – but it wasn’t instantaneous. An intergalactic teleport might take quite a while to actually finish, maybe even a couple days or more. I shouldn’t go about doing that willy-nilly, then. Not that it wouldn’t be fun to do once or twice.

I made another jump to a ways off the ground above Las Pegasus, minimizing my magical output. So long as I made my approach to the planet right, Celestia wouldn’t know I was here. I’d know if there were any planet- or country-sized spells in Equestria to detect me, and there weren’t. The only way she could notice me was if I used a giant burst of magic all at once.

I made my last jump to a skyscraper’s rooftop in the city, soon after descending into weak little giggles. I’d gone to so much trouble just to reach one little comet, and now, as Cherry Berry would say, I could make casual field trips to and from the moon. It was just too much fun.

Ah, well anyway, time to do what I came here for. I pulled out my letter and separated the bottom page from the rest. It had the instructions for how to send things from my flame to Celestia’s. I’d practiced with Spike, but I hadn’t bothered to memorize the spell keys necessary to direct it toward Celestia instead of him.

I took a deep breath to prepare myself, then on the next one I stoked the fire within me, bending it to my will.

But then just as I was about to exhale, a thought struck me. After I sent this, Celestia might decide to break her word and go on the offensive. If I wanted to do anything on Equus before Luna returned, I should really do it now.

Small flames crept out from between my lips, reminding me to smother the rest of them. I huffed out the flames that already existed, then cut off the flow of magic making more inside me.

With that taken care of, I invoked a different kind of flame.

The green fire characteristic of changeling magic ran over my body, sculpting it to my will. The process tingled and numbed a bit, but was otherwise painless.

The last of the fire licked over me, and I stretched out my considerably smaller, now white wings. I gave them a few tentative flaps, then practiced hovering in place. I blew a puff of air upward to blow my boring, dirty-blue mane out of my eyes.

Comfortable with my new wingspan, I landed back on my hooves. I gave my wings a once over and straightened a couple feathers. Now ready, I promptly galloped forward, then leapt straight off the edge of the roof. My letter and Celestia’s instructions suspiciously followed behind me in my magic, not that anypony would make the connection. Worse come to worst, they'd probably just assume I had an enchanted paper clip on them or something.

If there were anything to complain about with changeling magic, it was how unhelpful it was with adapting to new bodies. A simple recoloring wasn’t a problem, but changing height or wingspan, or worst of all, getting a new horn, could really throw off my sense of balance and my magical precision.

Even so, I managed a simple glide well enough. A stray thermal nearly sent me spiraling into a building… Well, there was no nearly about it. I ran into the building, but I did so hooves first and pushed off of it, falling back into a glide.

I silently thanked that I was flying higher right now than pegasi normally had any reason to. Nopony had seen that, I hoped. With no particular destination in mind, I had nothing better to do than follow the magic pulsing through one of the city’s monorails’ spell matrix.

My path took me over a few of the smaller buildings but mostly stuck to the busy streets. Even this late in the day, this city didn’t slow down, and air traffic was just as bad as ever. I eased myself into the flock of pegasi flying above their land-bound cousins.

And then I promptly bumped into several pegasi and received dozens of complaints of various volumes. After the fourth angry and slightly drunk looking pegasus had clipped my wing, I made a vow to ask Dash about flying etiquette. Not growing up as a pegasus meant I didn’t understand their customs.

My hoof met my face. No, on second thought, Dash was not the right pony to ask. I could ask her about flying safety…kind of…but not etiquette. I’d have to ask Fluttershy…instead…

Oh, come on! Why didn’t I know any pegasi who were normal fliers? Sigh… Maybe Fluttershy’s parents could give me some advice. I remembered Fluttershy’s dad was a doctor in Cloudsdale, so his flying patterns were probably within a standard deviation of the norm. Probably.

I eventually managed to reach the bottom layer of pegasi, where they thinned out. Ten or so hooves below that was a crowded skywalk. There wasn’t anywhere to land, at least not for ponies who weren’t Dash, but I supposed I could take a page out of her book anyway and make room.

“Excuse me,” I called out as I came down without any regard for other ponies’ safety. If I just looked confident and showed no signs of hesitation, ponies would move out of my way.

And most of them did. One rather young colt that I hadn’t seen in time didn’t quite get out the way. I flapped my left wing extra hard to tilt myself. My right hooves touched down first, and I awkwardly balanced on them with my wing keeping me upright. The colt scurried out from beneath me to rejoin his mother, finally letting me stand on all fours again.

Right, then. Where was I? There was a castle, and next to it was a pyramid. Oh, and there was a giant lion. And I remembered seeing a volcano earlier with a pirate ship further down the street.

This city was weird. But then who could really object to the architecture?

I set off toward the lion building. If I remembered correctly, a film company owned that one, so I could probably find the Daring Do movie for sale in there. I’d have to buy a new projector, too. I vaguely remembered Pupa saying the one we took on the Nebulous was out of date.

I stepped to the side of the sidewalk once I’d reached its end and glanced toward my letter, riffling through it to make sure I hadn’t lost any of the pages somehow. Satisfied that it was all there, I entered the lion, and the noise of the crowd immediately doubled in the enclosed space. Dozens of shops lined up on either side of me, and I had to stop to take it all in.

At least until somepony bumped into me from behind.

The stallion uttered a gruff, “Excuse me,” before disappearing back into the flow of ponies.

Stars, it’d been so long since I’d seen civilization; I was acting like a country mare on her first trip to a big city. How embarrassing.

The crowd swept me away as I started walking once more, no longer making myself an obstacle. I passed by several clothing stores, a novelty shop, and a half dozen food stands in the middle of the hall. There was even a magic shop with a poster of–

What the buck? I stopped in my tracks and fought my way across the crowd to just beside the magic shop. There were posters advertising four other shows in town, but the biggest and most prominent one with a very familiar light-blue mare on it was all that concerned me.

“One night only,” it read. “See the Great and Powerful Trixie live on stage. Summer 8, 999. Support research on Snowdrop’s Disease”

And that was all well and good. I’d actually kind of like to see Trixie’s act; Pupa said she was pretty good. It was for charity, even. I’d say it’d be a good present from me to me, but there was no way a one night only show just happened to fall on my birthday, especially not considering the subtitle.

“With special guest Twilight Sparkle.”

Then on the opposite side of Trixie, there was an image of me looking just as hyper with a getup almost as ridiculous as Trixie’s. Well, not me exactly, but the more idealized version of unicorn me that Pupa used.

What on Equus was Celestia thinking? Why would she set this up? I wouldn’t show up to such an obvious trap, and neither would Pupa. How did she even get an advertising campaign up this quickly? I’d stumbled onto this ad pretty fast, so it must be littered throughout the entire city.

Unless…

I dashed inside the magic shop with all due haste and locked onto the register at the back of the store, or more specifically the cashier there.

“Can I help you find something?” the unicorn mare behind the counter asked.

“No, but could you me tell me how long that poster for the Great and Powerful Trixie has been out there?”

The mare’s eyebrows raised in obvious confusion, but she answered anyway. “Since about mid-Winter, I think. It went up after Hearth’s Warming, at least.”

Ah, so this wasn’t some new plot of Celestia’s. Somepony else’s hooves were at work here. Well, she could still be behind it, I supposed, but I could just as easily put it on Trixie or Pupa. I’d have to ask Pupa about this later, but no rush.

“That’s a very nice illusion, by the way.”

“What?” I accidentally let out at the traditional royal level. The poor mare right in front of me cringed and her ears fell to her head. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean – you just surprised me. I’ve been having some trouble with my…throat,” I finished lamely. That was perhaps the most unbelievable excuse ever, but it was technically true.

“No. No, don’t worry. It’s okay.” Once the mare had recovered, she continued normally, “I know having your tricks revealed isn’t very fun. I promise not to tell. But really, those papers in your magic are a bit of a give away.”

Oh. Awkward. “Whoops. I guess you caught me. I forgot it’s not as crowded in here. I was just so confused. Trixie and I talked about maybe doing an act together, but I didn’t know she’d gone through with it.”

“Wait, you’re Twilight Sparkle?”

“One of many,” I answered truthfully. On the extremely off chance this was a trap, word of a suspicious ‘pegasus’ mare would find its way back to Celestia anyway, so there really wasn’t any reason not to. Then since the cashier looked rather confused again, I clarified, “Yes, I’m Twilight Sparkle.”

“Oh Celestia! Can I get your autograph?”

It was my turn to raise an eyebrow. “I guess? But why?”

“Well, it’s just, I’m a big fan of the work you’ve done with Princess Cadenza.”

Um, what? “I see.” Just go along with it, Twilight.

“And if you make it big as an entertainer, too, I’ll be able to say I’ve had your autograph since before you were cool.”

Alright, that got a few giggles out of me. So I was the stuff of hipsters now, was I? I didn’t entirely know how I should feel about that, but I supposed it couldn’t be a bad thing.

“So what do you want me to sign?”

“Ah, one second.” The mare made a mad dash through a door and reemerged less than a minute later with a pair of custom saddlebags that bore her cutie mark and a marker. I signed at the bottom right corner, much to the mare’s delight.

“Thank you so much.”

“No, it wasn’t really that big of a deal.” I reached into my own saddlebags…which I didn’t have…to give her a real tip for the information. Well…she looked happy, I supposed. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten to bring money with me. That was what I got for spending half a decade without it.

“Anyway,” I said, “thanks again for the information.”

With that, I made my way out of the shop and back out into the hall, quickly getting swept up in the crowd again.

That…had been weird. I needed to talk to Pupa back on the moon before investigating further, and I couldn’t even get Dash’s movie without either fetching some bits or making some. That meant I should hold off on delivering my letter even longer. How annoying.

I made my way off to a quiet corner and tucked myself behind a wall where nopony would see me vanish. Here I was teleporting back to the moon like a pauper instead of manifesting there.

But then did I actually have to? A smile grew on my face as I considered just disappearing for a day or two. The moon would manage without my presence just as well as it had for the past thousand years. As much of a hassle as it was, I could go visit one of Luna’s accountants and get a bag of bits, then spend the night in Las Pegasus.

I sighed inwardly. No, that was a little too irresponsible. I at least needed to talk to Pupa. There wasn’t a huge rush with that, but the sooner the better. I supposed I was making a trip to the moon either way.

Oh! And I could bring Twinkleshine back with me for a night on the town. That would be excellent. Well, not tonight, since it was a little late for that, but I could make the arrangements today and then bring her here tomorrow.

Yes. Yes! I loved this plan! I just needed to pick the right hotel.

When the coast was clear, I teleported back far above the city to get a bird’s eye view of the various pools it had to offer.

Hmm… That one was pretty fancy, and it had a lazy river, but it wasn’t what I was looking for.

That one was just plain boring.

Ooh! I liked the temple theme there, but it still wasn’t quite right.

Oho. There was a nice, large hot tub with a few water slides at the regular pools. Aaaaand…yes! There was a spa attached. Perfect! That was exactly what I wanted.

I glided down toward the back entrance, away from the crowds of pegasi and non-pegasi. An odd pony or two wandered about, but that was no problem for landing easily.

So before I went back, I needed to get a room for the next three – no, four days, just to be safe. I might need to make reservations at the spa. I needed to obtain some money for when it came time to actually pay for things. Oh, I should see about making reservations at a fancy, overpriced restaurant with a view, too. Along with that, I’d need to scout out somewhere for Twinkleshine and I to buy dresses. I should probably see about getting some show tickets, but then I should probably wait for Twinkleshine’s input on what she’d want to see.

This was going to be a wonderful mini-vacation, just like visiting the moon had been years ago!

Oh. Oh my. My face flushed as yet another idea took shape in my mind. I thought I could pull it off…maybe…but I’d need Pinkie Pie’s help.

But anyway, first things first. I entered the hotel and followed the signs to check-in.

With a burst of magic, I appeared in the skies above Luminance. I stored my door stopper of a letter in my room to the tune of my own grumbling, wishing I could’ve left it in my hotel room without constantly fretting about somepony stealing it.

After that, I also teleported the Daring Do movie along with the new projector to play it into Dash’s room. I sent Dash a short note telling her where it was, then I set about looking for Pupa.

“Let’s see…” Pupa’s magic didn’t seem to be in the castle, at least not on my initial inspection. It wasn’t in the town either, nor was it in the hinterland.

Strange, Chrysalis’s magic was absent, too. If anypony here could circumvent my wards without letting me know, it’d be her, but I rather doubted she had: there was no point.

So then, where were those two cooped up at? Luminance, as defined by where there was actually oxygen, only extended perhaps a kilometer up past the castle, and they weren’t–

Oh. Huh. Okay. Pupa and Chrysalis were both in the quarry slash mine thing inside the Hornburg. I didn’t really know what they would find interesting in there, but it wasn’t like it was otherwise occupied. Maybe they were just indulging in a little low-danger spelunking or something.

I toyed with the idea of flying to the cave and walking through it myself, but in the end, I decided not to bother. Instead, I simply demanifested and reformed myself nearby the changelings’ magic.

And the very first thing I heard was Pupa’s shriek. “Don’t move!”

Then the first thing I felt was Chrysalis’ magic running over me. She picked me up and borderline-gently tossed me to the side. My wings popped out and pulled me into a glide, a natural reflex, but they hadn’t accounted for the confined space. I flew straight into a rock wall in less than a second before my vision could focus.

A small thud echoed through the cave as I plopped to the ground on my withers, a little disoriented but otherwise no worse for the wear.

“What just happened?” I asked, my vision dancing.

At the same time, I twisted myself around to glance behind me. Both Pupa and Chrysalis were hovering protectively over something luminescent and green. Now that I looked closer, there were just the tiniest stirrings of magic within it, almost like smoke from a tiny little candle. And in fact, there were another two–

“Are those eggs?” I shouted. All three ovoids were faintly glowing with light-red polka dots the exact same shade as Pupa’s natural eyes. Surrounding each was some sort of…strange gooey substance.

Pupa sighed in relief, then finally turned around to face me. “Maybe,” she said sheepishly.

Ah… What was I supposed to say? “Congratulations?”

“Congratulations nothing,” Chrysalis said, giving her daughter a stern look. “Someone neglected to tell me she’d been breeding when we brought her here.”

“I said I was sorry!” Pupa whispered. “I didn’t want you to kick me out of the hive to start my own, alone. You know how much I love nymphs. You were gone, and the ones you left behind all grew up, and I was so lonely without you.”

And rather pathetically, that was all it took to melt Chrysalis.

As the two of them hugged, I asked, “Sooooo…do you need me to take you back to Equus? Or do you need anything from there?”

“No. Thanks, but my eggs should be fine here. Even if this is a subpar incubator, it’s really best not to move them.”

Not move them? Oh, Pupa, you’d just given me a wonderful idea.

“Actually, on the subject of being kicked out of Chrysalis’s hive, you’re welcome to start one here at Luminance. I’m sure Luna wouldn’t mind. And the locals just think Luna forgot to mention changelings for a few centuries, so nopony will think anything unusual about you being here.

“Also, you’d be giving the ponies here better communication back to Equus, which they could really use. Food wouldn’t be an issue either if you kept your hive relatively small; nopony here would deny you the love you need to survive. And I’ve been thinking about trying to set up a more convenient means of getting to the moon and back for non-alicorns. Not right away, of course, but maybe within a few decades. If that pans out, you’d be at the forefront of colonizing the moon!”

Pupa cleared her throat, interrupting my impromptu pitch.

“I’ll be sure to think on it, Twilight. But what was it that originally brought you here?”

“Oh right.” I’d almost forgotten. “I was in Las Pegasus just a little bit ago, and I had a couple things I wanted to ask you about.”

“Las Pegasus…” Pupa murmured to herself, tapping a hoof to her jaw. “Something about that rings a bell… Ah! Did you find an ad for a magic act with Trixie?”

So Pupa did know about that, and from the sound of it, she’d consented to the idea. Excellent. I’d hate to think Celestia had organized the advertisements without bothering to inform Pupa or getting her approval. Who knew what she would’ve been up to.

“Yeah, I did. I guess you two just forgot to tell me about it.”

“To be fair, you two” – Pupa gestured to Chrysalis and myself – “were really busy with the elements when Celestia suggested it.”

“Wait. Celestia asked you?” I didn’t need all of Mother’s memories to know that smelled rotten. “What for?”

“Mostly to wean me off of Cadance, I think.” Pupa licked her lips, then added, “She is kind of addicting.”

Uh… Right… Much like how Luna had told me not to start eating gems, I believed this just put love firmly on the list of things I should never ever eat as well.

Now frowning, Pupa looked down at her barrel. “I’ve been getting really overweight, too. But anyway, Celestia made the suggestion – or really, gave her permission – to see how well love collection goes in the show business.”

Just as I was about to protest further, Chrysalis gave an actual explanation. “That was the bribe, as it were, for us to play along. Trixie was apparently the brains behind the idea. I couldn’t see what possible malicious purpose it could hold, so I thought nothing of it.”

“Did you know it was going to be held on my birthday?”

“That,” Chrysalis began, mostly absorbed in her thoughts already, “is not something I knew. Pupa?”

Pupa looked up from fidgeting with one of her eggs and shook her head. “I don’t remember setting a date, but I really didn’t get involved with the administrative stuff.” Pupa’s expression melted into a warm smile. “But my guess is Trixie set the date. She’s such a sweetheart, really.”

I asked, “So it’s a birthday present?” I hadn’t spoken with Trixie personally in years, but she wasn’t exactly somepony I pictured giving birthday gifts, let alone remembering birthdays to begin with.

“Think about it, Twilight,” Pupa said. “Trixie is a fairly famous stage performer. Even without her own skills, her name and history alone would draw ponies. Twilight Sparkle could become a famous magician overnight herself if everything went well. Maybe she and Trixie would even form a more permanent duo act.”

I thought about it for a few seconds, but it didn’t really seem all that ‘sweetheartish’. No doubt sensing the mild distress in my emotions, Chrysalis added a few words of her own.

“Celestia attends almost all of her student’s performances in person. And don’t forget that a magic act requires, as the name should suggest, magic.”

“Oh!” I said as my eyes widened. “I get it. Trixie wanted to force Celestia’s hoof to teach me.”

Pupa waved a hoof back and forth. “Ehhhhh, probably not. She’s known to be a little jealous from time to time. It’s more likely she thought it would force Celestia to be around in case something went wrong, both during practice and during the actual show. Either way, Twilight Sparkle would get to use a little bit of magic without a suppressor.”

I supposed that did make a little more sense. “Well even then, you’re right. That’s really sweet.” But…

“Isn’t she just?” Pupa smile only grew at the question. “Sometimes I just want to give her a big hug.” Pupa sighed. “But then I know she’d just teleport out of it.”

I…didn’t know exactly how to describe what I was feeling right now. Pupa really liked Trixie; her smile said everything for her. But Trixie was friends with ‘Twilight Sparkle’. Her gift wasn’t really meant for either of us, but Pupa certainly deserved it more than me. I doubted anypony who knew Pupa’s take on Twilight Sparkle would even recognize me.

Especially considering how that mare in Las Pegasus reacted to me…

“Twilight? Is something wrong?” Pupa smiled and poked me in the leg.

I shook my head vigorously of the dark thoughts I was heading down. Maybe I could give Pupa my identity. Maybe she had more claim to it now than I did. Maybe I could pretend to be an ancestor when I came back. But even then, the ponies I was actually close to all knew the real me; that was all I really needed.

“I’m fine, thanks. I was just thinking about…things.” Before anypony could object to that vague statement, I added, “Anyway, if you want to go on stage with Trixie, I think I can make that still happen.”

“Can you!” Pupa asked, her forehooves clapping together. “I didn’t think I’d get the chance when I agreed.”

Seeing the rather pointed glare Chrysalis was giving me, I said, “I’ll make sure however we arrange it that it’s safe for everypony. Given the deal I made with Celestia, that shouldn’t be too hard.” At least in theory.

Pupa gave me a brief, yet tight, hug. “Oh my gosh, this is going to be so much fun! But I’m completely out of practice. Horseapples! I need to work on my illusions and evocations; I haven’t cast anything more complex than a polymorph in weeks. I don’t even remember the dialogue for–”

As much as I could sympathize with a good rambling panic attack – Pupa hadn’t pretended to be me for over half a decade without picking up some of my habits – I had some romantic encounters to plan.

“Pupa,” I interrupted, “I’ll leave you to it in a second, but could I ask a question?”

“Huh? Oh, sure. What is it?”

“Well, when I was in Las Pegasus…” Trying to sum up exactly what happened in a sentence wasn’t working, so I just asked, “Am I famous?”

“Of course! Equestria loves their royalty.”

Okay, I supposed I was officially a tentative member of the royal family, given my, and especially Shining’s, relation with Cadance.

“I meant more as in personally famous. For acts that you performed as me.”

Pupa brought her hooves close together and said, “Just a little bit. I did promise to do my best to make the public like you.”

That cashier’s reaction seemed like more than a little famous. Although I supposed actions that would result in a minor celebrity status plus being related to royalty would make Twilight Sparkle a bit of a household name.

“All I really had to do was stick to Cadance like glue,” Pupa continued. “I just had to help her out and make public appearances with her at charities and such. You know, simple, diffused love-collecting strategies blown up to the national scale.”

Huh. Apparently I’d left my PR campaign in the right hooves.

“Thank you, Pupa.” I hoped there wouldn’t be any inconsistency issues if we – when we switched back, but I wasn’t going to complain about that to the mare who did all the work for me.

“Don’t thank me just yet. The wealthy Canterlot elite are still skittish around you.”

Ah. Those would be the ponies who were actually at court the day Celestia had dragged Pupa in for my trial, most likely. Unfortunately, many of those ponies had a big say in how Equestria was governed.

“I suppose that’s going to be a bit annoying,” I began, “but I honestly couldn’t care less right now. I probably couldn’t have done better myself. You’re amazing, Pupa.”

I couldn’t help but notice Pupa licking her lips, and I pointedly focused really hard on the magic of Luminance, rather than watching the love draining process in any detail. Someday I would study it, but that day would not be today.

“Ehem,” I cleared my throat. “Anyway, if you need anything” – I gestured toward Pupa’s eggs – “let me know. I’ll make any trips to Equus that are necessary.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Twilight. Thank you.”

With that said, I made my goodbyes and then remanifested back up to the castle courtyard above ground. First things first, I had to actually ask Twinkleshine out on an extended date. Then after that, I needed to track down Pinkie Pie.

As usual, Twinkleshine wasn’t very difficult to find. The last several days, she’d taken to digging through the library for star charts at night and star gazing during the day. As it was after moonrise, I knew just the place to find her.

My wings beat, thrusting aside such primitive notions as gravity. That fundamental force and I were barely on speaking terms nowadays.

I soared through the sky, circling about the castle to one of the library’s many windows. With a strong beat of my wings, I arrested my momentum and landed on the sill, gazing down like a falcon hunting its prey.

Hmm… Actually, with that simile in mind…

Slowly, carefully, oh so quietly, I leapt into the library and glided through the air to a bookshelf I could land atop. Technically I was breaking the no flying in the library rule, but this wasn’t actually my library, and I wasn’t Dash, so whatever.

A tiny series of clops emanated as I landed on my hooves and trotted to a halt. I waited for what felt like a minute before I looked over the edge. Twinkleshine was still engrossed in her work; she hadn’t heard me.

Excellent.

A hungry smile grew on my face as I hunkered down and prepared to pounce. A few intuitive trig calculations fired off in my head. I needed to make my angle of descent just so, or I’d end up crashing into Twinkleshine and hurting her.

I licked my lips and straightened my wings, then leapt.

My prey was in sight.

Her innocent ears twitched in distress at whatever she was working on. Her posture changed, and I accounted for it instinctively.

“Roar!” I said, pouncing on Twinkleshine. She let out the cutest little scream as I knocked her over onto her cushion. I landed on top of her, successfully having got ahold of her ear with my mouth. I nibbled on it a little as if I were going to eat her.

“Mmm,” I hummed.

“T – T-Twilight?” Twinkleshine stammered, apparently regaining her wits just a little bit. Her pupils, once dilated, returned to normal.

I let Twinkleshine’s ear go for the sake of conversation. “Yes, it is I. At long last, my draconian instincts have finally been thrust upon me. I hunger for pony flesh.” Just for effect, I snorted little burst of dragonfire out my nose, which stopped well short of Twinkleshine’s face.

“I… You…”

Every time Twinkleshine tried to form words, her expression warped to something new, yet equally confused. It was so adorable that I just watched it all work through her system.

Finally, Twinkleshine asked, “You’re not really going to, well, eat me, right?”

It was my turn to stare blankly.

“I – I mean…” Twinkleshine blushed. “It’s just… Um… I’m not… Here isn’t really…”

I tilted my head to the side.

“Er… Spike ate some of you when we first left.” Twinkleshine went on to whisper, “Yes, that’s it,” to herself.

“And he was very sorry when he woke up.” Besides, I’d self-inflicted worse with flares than a little flesh wound. I grinned as evil a smile as possible. “Just like I’m sorry I haven’t gobbled you up yet!”

Twinkleshine squeaked as I pounced once more. It took considerable effort, but I got my mouth a little bit around the upper half of her muzzle.

“Om nom nom.”

Twinkleshine mumbled something, which was far from coherent without the upper half of her mouth available for use.

“What was that?” I asked.

“I said, ‘How long has it been since you last slept?’”

It was more that I was overworking myself than that I hadn’t slept, but – “Not too long. I’m trying to get back onto my normal sleep schedule today.”

“I see.” For some reason, Twinkleshine sounded rather glum as she said that. “So what do you need?”

“Weeeeell, I thought you might appreciate a little mini-vacation starting tomorrow afternoon. Just you” – I poked Twinkleshine in the barrel, then turned my hoof back on myself – “and me.”

“Really! Where!”

Another grin crept onto my face as I answered. “Las Pegasus. I found a room and organized a fancy dinner, a spa date, a few shows, the works. It’ll be the most luxurious, self-indulgent, hedonistic few days ever, I promise. If all goes well, the next several weeks should be pretty free for me, too, not like the last couple.”

Here I was being serious, and Twinkleshine broke into giggles. Powering through them, she managed, “The most hedonistic?”

I nodded, although some small part of me had a bad feeling about this.

“Okay, but if I’m not bathing in chocolate while you fan me with a giant leaf and feed me grapes before it’s over, you owe me. Got it, Princess?”

Oh? I got to my hooves, still straddling Twinkleshine. “As you wish, My Queen.” With an exaggerated bow, I brought my muzzle back down to Twinkleshine’s and left her with a kiss. I let myself dissolve into raw magic as I did so, then set about my other task for tonight.

“Pinkie Pie,” I said as I manifested behind the mare in question. Very gratifyingly, I actually got to see her jump in surprise for once. Well, kind of. It was barely noticeable.

Still, moral victory.

Then while Pinkie Pie whirled in place, somehow not spilling the bowl of batter she held – on the ground, somepony else, or me – a small crashing sound emanated from behind me. Pinkie Pie had me locked in a hug, so I couldn’t check to see what happened the mundane way, but everypony’s magic nearby seemed normal enough.

Except for Pinkie Pie’s, but I tried not to look too hard at that. Figuring her out would be for another day.

“Twilight! I haven’t seen you in…”

The lunar pegasus mare on the other side of the counter helpfully suggested, “Since breakfast,” when it became clear that Pinkie Pie didn’t know the vocab for the rest of her sentence.

Wait… “Pinkie Pie, do you understand me?” I asked in Old Equestrian.

“A little smidge.”

“Bit,” the mare corrected Pinkie Pie. Now that I looked closer, she appeared to be coming out of shock, given the terse responses, vacant eyes, and rigid ears.

And that was probably my fault. “Sorry if I frightened you…Pumpkin, right?” I was pretty sure this mare was the local baker. And actually, that crashing sound I’d heard was probably from me startling somepony with my sudden appearance. I apologized to the kitchen staff at large.

“Ah, yes, Your Highness,” Pumpkin finally said in answer. Just the tiniest hint of a stutter was in her voice, but it faded quickly enough. “But please don’t worry. We’re quickly adjusting to having an alicorn truly with us once more.”

Perhaps, but I should probably be more considerate. Even on Equus, it wasn’t like ponies were used to unicorns teleporting out of nowhere all the time, and they had the benefit of growing up with ponies actually doing it. It didn’t really help matters that Dash and I went around casually doing things that, while not strictly impossible for our pre-ascension selves for the most part, tended to be rather impressive and sometimes beyond average mortal ken.

“So, Twilight, need a snack?”

I suppressed a cringe. “I hate to say this, but please speak in Modern Equestrian, Pinkie Pie. Your accent is atrocious.” Chamomile and Luna had called me out on mine, too, but I’d at least grown up with the language – effectively twice – so it wasn’t nearly as bad.

“Aw, fine,” Pinkie Pie pouted. This lasted for about half a second, at which point she perked right back up. “So what is it you need? We don’t have any butterscotch ready yet, but we have, like, two dozen kinds of muffins out of the oven, and another half dozen types of bread, as well as–”

I cut Pinkie Pie off there before she could really get going. “I’m not hungry. I just wanted your help with something, if you were free. But I can manage by myself. You seem fairly busy.”

“Nonsense!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed, a hoof wrapping its way around my withers. “What do you need help with? Is there a baking emergency somewhere? Or” – she gasped – “is there a party emergency somewhere.” For whatever reason, Pinkie Pie checked her tail and frowned.

And I was not going to think about that further right now, because I needed my sanity intact for at least another season. Sure, I only had a sample size of one, but right now, the set of all known time mages was equivalent to the set of all Pinkie Pies.

I shook my head, both at Pinkie Pie’s questions and at where my thoughts were going.

“No, Pinkie Pie, I just wanted you to help me write a song.” Given that the mare in question broke into song and dance at random and that I was pretty sure she wrote most of them herself, Pinkie Pie was the mare to go to for this.

“Oooooh,” Pinkie Pie said in sudden understanding. She nudged me with her knees and gave me a wink. “Say no more.”

“In less than a day,” I added.

I got a worrying hum in response as Pinkie Pie tapped a hoof to her muzzle.

“No. Sorry, Twilight, but even I can’t teach you to sing in a day.”

Hey! My singing wasn’t…awful. I wasn’t tone deaf. Still, that was beside the point.

“I know I can’t sing well. I just wanted to write the song. I mean…” My forehooves timidly tapped together as I blushed, thinking back to my first visit to the moon. Half-mumbling, I continued, “I-it’s not as much of a sweeping romantic gesture, but it’s more me, you know. I understand the basics of musical theory, and it’s just like math, and I think I could come up with something good if I had some direction.”

Another hum emanated from Pinkie Pie, but this one was more thoughtful than worrying. On occasion, she muttered random words.

“Maybe–”

“But then–”

“Risky–”

“Super cheesy–”

“Adorkable–”

And finally, Pinkie Pie grinned. “Okay! Let’s do this!”

While I was a bit worried about the particular words I’d caught from Pinkie Pie’s rumination, I smiled, too. “Are you sure you have the time?”

“Of course! I always have time for my friends. Besides, we can brainstorm while we bake!”

I stopped myself before I said I didn’t want to do any cooking. There was a very distinct memory floating around in my head criticizing me on the very subject.

“Alright. So…” I looked around for another apron. Not finding one, I shrugged and ignored it. Cleaning myself up was trivial with magic. “What exactly do I need to do?”

Pumpkin raised her eyebrows in surprise, which I took to mean those Modern Equestrian lessons the Luminance natives were getting were paying off at least a little bit. Princesses usually didn’t cook, after all.

“Hmm… Stirring and pouring stuff would give you the most time to pore.”

I didn’t cringe at the pun, but it boded poorly for the success of the song.

Oh stars, I’d just done it myself.

Heedless to my worries, Pinkie Pie continued, “I can come up with a melody in no time, and we can mix it up as we need to romanticize it. But the words” – I didn’t like how Pinkie Pie was looking at me – “I already know exactly what they need to mean, but only you can translate them into Twilight Sparkle.”

Translate them into Twilight Sparkle? “What do you mean?”

“Simple, silly! We’re going to write a proof!”

Oh dear.

With a little clacking of machinery that wasn’t perfectly soundproofed, the lift came to a halt right in front of Twinkleshine and me. The doors parted to allow us entry, and we stepped aboard.

“What floor, ladies?” the lift pony asked.

“Top floor, please,” I answered right away. There we would find one of the fanciest of fancy restaurants in town, at least in terms of fancy per unit bit. I had no doubt that there were more absolutely fancy restaurants in Las Pegasus that cost absurd amounts of money, but I highly suspected neither Twinkleshine nor I would enjoy them.

The doors to the lift closed, and the lift pony went to work. A faint, inaudible hum of magic whirled and danced as the machinery operated and elevated the three of us. I put it out of mind as best as I could, but there simply was no artistry to it. The spellwork was lazy and ungraceful, yet admittedly functional and somewhat efficient.

Maybe these kinds of spells were what made Equus itch for me. They got the job done, but whoever was enchanting the parts for this lift clearly didn’t fully understand what they were doing. Although to be fair, to service the magical demands of a nation the size of Equestria, a lot of enchanters would end up being non-specialists.

A small sigh escaped me, and I hoped Twinkleshine didn’t hear it and take offense. I stole a glance at her just in time to catch her in the act of staring at me. She turned away with a blush, but the tiny sound of hooves on tile suggested she was inching toward me.

I unfurled a wing and let it rest over her, pulling her all the way to my side with a small squeak and an even deeper blush. I rested my head against hers, and she reciprocated within moments. Our two adjacent forehooves naturally found themselves intertwining.

And then the magical bubble isolating us from the world popped. The lift pony cleared his throat rather awkwardly and said, “We’ve arrived at your destination, ladies.”

“Yes, thank you.” I reached underneath my dress and pulled a couple bits out of my purse, soon after tossing them to the lift pony as a tip. It was rather crude sleight of hoof, but unless somepony were already suspicious of me, they probably wouldn’t question how a pegasus managed to pull bits out of an unseen bag with one hoof.

I fidgeted a bit in my dress as I withdrew my wing so we could walk. I wasn’t quite tall enough to move like that comfortably with Twinkleshine, especially not dressed as we were.

Really, I should have thought a little harder about my selection of apparel when I was out shopping with Twinkleshine. Sure, it’d looked great when I’d bought it, but I didn’t understand how mares wore this kind of stuff all the time in Canterlot. It was kind of cramped when worn for extended periods, especially around the dock.

I couldn’t help but look at Twinkleshine’s rear in envy. She’d had the clarity of mind to buy something less formal that let her tail hang free out the back and clung to her legs.

“Alright, let’s go.” I said, taking the first step myself. Twinkleshine followed suit, still rather close to me, occasionally brushing against my wing.

Actually, once we were off the lift, I noticed that my adorable date was fidgeting herself, and it didn’t seem to be from the dress. I took her hoof in mine once more and gave her a reassuring smile.

“Is anything wrong?”

Twinkleshine shook her head somewhat vigorously. “Just nervous, I guess. Luminance was one thing, but I’ve been in space for so long. Being around this many ponies again is…different. And I don’t really know how to act. I mean, the spa was really nice, and kind of embarrassing, but there weren’t, you know, rules.”

“Ah. Well, the others on the Nebulous haven’t rubbed off on you at all. You still have a perfect upper class Canterlot accent, just like me. Ponies, at least ones outside of Canterlot, generally tend to overlook social missteps if you sound fancy.”

Squeezing my hoof all the tighter, Twinkleshine said, “Thanks. But what if I use the wrong spoon or something and get us kicked out.”

I couldn’t help snickering at that, as much as I tried. I felt like I was looking at a really young me fretting over the silliest of things.

A frown briefly passed over my face as my thoughts automatically went to the most pessimistic explanations for my weird quirks as a filly. Everything had to be perfect: perfectly organized, listed, nitpicked, orderly. Being around other ponies was even worse. Maybe something had broken in my brain for a while, or maybe I’d subconsciously remembered good manners and drove myself up a wall over not being able to consciously remember and act on them in social settings.

“It’ll be fine, Twinkleshine. Don’t worry. This place isn’t that fancy.” I wasn’t sure if there even were places that fancy.

“Well,” Twinkleshine began hesitantly, “how fancy did you say this place was again?”

“It’s certainly not uptight enough to toss anypony out for how they privately behave at their own table. But, well, pretty fancy. It’s Prench food on the top of an expensive resort overlooking the whole city at night, and if I didn’t have access to Luna’s absurdly deep pockets, I’d have had to rob a bank to afford this.” Or have had to make a rather large amount of gold or diamonds, I supposed, but that ruined the imagery.

I turned to Twinkleshine just in time to catch her squeak and watch her eyes glaze over.

Suppressing another inappropriate snicker, I led Twinkleshine forward by the hoof into the lobby proper and away from the lifts.

Twinkleshine took a deep breath. “I don’t think I can do this, Twilight. I’m going to get us kicked out for sure. Is this dress even formal enough?”

Formal or not, Twinkleshine certainly passed the eye candy test. They’d let her in on that alone, if nothing else.

“You look stunning. And if you’re about to make any real mistakes, I’ll stop you in time, okay?”

“Since when are you Ms. Manners?” Twinkleshine asked, diverting her worries to me, which was just fine. Better she fret about me than about herself.

“Hold that thought,” I whispered aside. Then to the maître d' awaiting us, I said, “Hello again, Monsieur Brackett.”

“Ah, Madam Sparkle,” Brackett replied, looking up from his work. “Welcome back. Please allow me to show you to your table.”

As we walked, Twinkleshine nudged me and whispered, “Did you place the reservation under your own name? Is that a good idea?”

Not bothering to whisper back, I replied, “There are a lot of Twilights in my extended family, and I have a unicorn… Oh, I forget how she’s related to the family. I think she’s my father’s, cousin’s mother. Well anyway, she’s also named Twilight Sparkle. I’ve only met her once, though. My mother told me she got into some kind of trouble.”

“I see.”

Apparently Twinkleshine had gotten the hint. As long as we didn’t act suspicious, I could walk around normally minus my horn, and nopony would be the wiser. Honestly, even if we did act suspiciously, I doubted anypony would call us on it.

And really, it seemed more pettily vindictive than I’d imagine Celestia could be for her to put out ‘do not serve’ orders to every business in Equestria, and she certainly wouldn’t issue ‘arrest on sight’ orders.

After a moment of contemplation, Twinkleshine asked, “Is that true?”

“Mhm.” There really was another Twilight Sparkle in the family…besides Aurora. And besides Pupa. Right…

Okay, but she did exist, and I’d only met her once at a family gathering. Of course, she was a unicorn, not a pegasus, and she didn’t look like how I did now, but nopony would call me on that. That Twilight Sparkle was decidedly not famous or infamous.

After being led through the small maze of tables and chairs, about half with ponies at them, Brackett stopped at a table beside the all glass walls facing out toward the town. Perhaps not the best table in the restaurant, but it was certainly one of the better ones.

“Your table, madams.”

The two chairs pulled out for us at Brackett’s words. We took our seats, although I saw Twinkleshine visibly suppress her simultaneous urges to gape and stare out the window with her hooves on the glass and to run away from the window because she wasn’t a pegasus and couldn’t fly and heights were scary.

“Your waiter will be with you presently. While you wait, would you care for a complementary bottle of chardonnay? We recently acquired some direct from Prance, vintage ‘79.”

“No thank you,” I said.

At the same time, Twinkleshine emitted a nervous, “Yes, please.”

I locked eyes with Twinkleshine. Then a second later, I suppressed a sigh.

“Yes, that will be fine,” I said.

Brackett bowed and went off to fetch the promised bottle.

“You know, Twinkleshine,” I began, breaking her off from staring out the window with misty-eyed awe, “the solution to nerves isn’t alcohol.”

“I know that. But I won’t have that much. And I’ve only ever had the stuff Pinkie and Dash distill with Punch’s help. I’m sure this will be way better. I have to try it.” After I rolled my eyes, Twinkleshine added, “You should have some, too. You don’t have to worry about flaring anymore, right?”

“Well, no, but it’s kind of pointless.” Not to mention that getting drunk would be highly irresponsible of me. I was the only pony standing between Luminance and anything Celestia might want to do with it and the ponies who lived there, after all. And that was disregarding that I just plain didn’t like the idea of being drunk to begin with.

“Oh, come on. Just for tonight?”

I sighed and reluctantly agreed. It was a horrible idea, but I’d indulge Twinkleshine. I didn’t do that nearly as much as I should.

“Your wine, madams,” Brackett said as he returned. The bottle was held suspended in his orange magic.

As he started pouring our first glasses for us, I asked, “Excuse me, but would you happen to have any moonshine?”

It was only for a split second, but Brackett broke his usual polite facade and looked at me like I was the scum of Equus. I hoped I hadn’t just ruined our chance at good service tonight.

“No, I’m afraid we do not stock moonshine nor any other high proof liquors.”

“Ah, well, forget I mentioned it, then.” So much for actually getting drunk tonight. There was a reason moonshine was called moonshine. It was Luna’s drink of choice, and supposedly, it was originally her personal recipe. It was also the bare minimum required to get an alicorn – or a dragon – drunk for any length of time.

Hmm… I wondered what Celestia did at these kinds of places. Did she place an order in advance? Did they run out to a liquor store to find what she wanted on demand? Was there some special codeword?

“Mother?” I asked.

“Ah, no idea. Sunbutt did her drinking alone and infrequently. She otherwise mostly stuck to hard cider.”

Well that was unhelpful. But I supposed this was fine, too. I really shouldn’t get myself drunk, even if it probably wouldn’t cause any problems tonight. Still, I could at least drink what Twinkleshine was having.

I lifted my glass up with a hoof, clutched in my earth pony magic. Hopefully nopony would think too hard about that if they looked in our direction.

Twinkleshine’s glass floated up in her magic in turn. We brought the two glasses together briefly to clink together.

“Cheers,” I said.

Twinkleshine echoed, “Cheers,” and we both took our first sip.

Once the glasses were replaced upon the table, I asked, “Thoughts?”

Twinkleshine hummed, took another sip, hummed again, and swirled the wine around in her mouth a bit.

“A little bitter, and a little ticklish. Not bad, but…different, I guess.”

“I’ve heard that wine is a bit of an acquired taste,” I idly commented. Some part of me was unsure if I’d heard that or if Sunset had heard that. Not that it really mattered, I supposed.

Before Twinkleshine could form a response, our waiter arrived. We quickly went through the motions of ordering our dinners, mostly based upon what was recommended to us.

Once we were alone again, or at least as alone as we would get in a public restaurant, I said, “Twinkleshine, I’ve been thinking a little bit about something my parents said to me.”

Twinkleshine didn’t say anything, but her eyes betrayed her interest and confusion. I wondered where exactly she thought I was going with this, but I doubted her guess was right.

“They told me I needed to find somepony besides Luna to…well…to talk to about my issues. I know it’s not the most romantic thing to dump on you–”

“Of course I’ll listen!” Twinkleshine cut in, more enthused than any polite pony had any reason to be at the subject. “What’s wrong?”

I took a deep breath, or maybe it was a sigh. Which it was, I wasn’t exactly sure.

“Well…” I hesitated, but the subject was broached. There was no turning back now. Twinkleshine’s curiosity could be almost as bad as mine when awoken. “How much has Dash told you about what happened during her and my ascensions?”

“Not much more than what I weaseled out of you.”

I rolled my eyes and offered a small grin. Silently, I thanked Dash for the favor.

“To answer your earlier question about when I learned etiquette requires a bit of explanation.”

Twinkleshine frowned. “You’re not going to tell me you looked into the abyss, and the abyss filled your head with the knowledge of the universe, are you?”

Through a few escaping snickers, I said, “No, I’m still in my staring contest with the abyss. Neither of us has blinked yet.”

And on that awkward line, our waiter choose to appear with a pair of salads for us. I tried to ignore his bemused and somewhat pitying expression.

“I…can’t tell if you’re joking,” Twinkleshine finally replied.

“I was,” I said before taking the first bite of my salad. It was…alright. No, it was fantastic, but I’d been spoiled my whole life by dream food and Pinkie Pie. I had unrealistically high culinary standards.

I continued, “But anyway, while ascending, I did recover a lot of memories I’d lost, which I suppose you could say were implanted into my head.”

“And manners were part of them?” Twinkleshine asked. Her tone conveyed her utter confusion. “The universe decides to make you a goddess, and it implants etiquette into your head? Doesn’t that kind of go against the whole ‘the universe doesn’t care about anything’ line that you’ve said to me?”

I quickly cast a few dozen privacy spells even as Twinkleshine carelessly dropped the word ‘goddess’. And by cast, I meant I commanded the magic around me to move into the appropriate forms, no horn required. I probably should’ve done that to begin with, but oh well. Nothing we’d said yet was particularly sensitive information without context.

“Sort of. I’ve been nursing a theory that ascensions are part of some grand magic laid upon the entire universe in days gone by when technology and magic were far more sophisticated than our current levels.”

“Wait, what?”

Through a mouthful of green, planty things, I delivered the horribly ominous words, “Don’t worry. I won’t let anypony make any apocalyptic mistakes again.”

“No, time out.”

Twinkleshine’s forehooves covered her face as she took deep breaths. Her salad went untouched, and I took the opportunity to steal some of her tomatoes. She didn’t really like them, and I did, so no worries. I even gave her some of my carrots in return.

“Okay. Okay. Okay,” Twinkleshine said, each word at varying levels of distress. “We’re not in any trouble, right?”

I shook my head, and swallowed. “Not likely. I don’t think any of us, that is the current five alicorns, are desperate enough to fight to that level of collateral damage. But also, I’m really hoping I can push Luna and Celestia to fight alone and off planet. We don’t need another Everfree Forest.”

Twinkleshine held up a hoof. “No, stop, Twilight. I – can you please try to be less…blunt about this?”

I idly played with my salad, nodding. Twinkleshine took a few moments to recover again while I poked at my food.

“Is…is this what’s bothering you?”

“No, we sort of got off on a tangent.” I hated to say this next part, but it had to be said. “But I should emphasize that you will not tell anypony about any of this or anything else I tell you tonight. I’m sorry, but that’s an order, not a request. If you’re not comfortable with that, then we’ll–”

My hoof was dragged across the table in Twinkleshine’s magic, and she grasped it with both of her own.

“Twilight…” Twinkleshine didn’t seem to be able to find the right words, but her eyes said everything I needed to hear for her.

I gave Twinkleshine a smile in return, then reached out with my other forehoof to return the sentiment.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

Twinkleshine would do her best to keep my secrets, just like she always had. Her track record was spotless; she deserved more of my trust than I’d given her. I’d be on my way to becoming Celestia if I couldn’t at least trust a lover who’d proven she had tight lips.

Once Twinkleshine and I had broken apart, I asked, “Do you happen to remember who Sunset Shimmer is?”

“Sunset Shimmer,” Twinkleshine echoed the name in thought. “Oh! Yeah, the last Flare. There were pictures of her at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. She went missing or something, right?”

I nodded. “You’re looking at what’s left of her.”

“Huh?”

Now that I had to be less cryptic, I bit my lip. “She’s…something between a mother and a past life for me.”

After some hesitation, Twinkleshine asked, “Is reincarnation real?”

Damn my cowardice. I’d told Cadance already; she’d taken it well enough, and she’d known Sunset. I could do the same with Twinkleshine. And then I could finally tell my parents with Twinkleshine’s support.

“No, but age spells and memory spells are.” Was that too vague? No. No, Twinkleshine was a smart mare. She could fill in the blanks for me so I wouldn’t have to say it myself.

“So you’re Sunset Shimmer,” Twinkleshine said slowly, each word tentatively released, no doubt waiting for me to deny them, “but you’re…aged down and memory wiped?”

“I’m Twilight Sparkle,” I insisted. “But…yes, this was originally Sunset Shimmer’s body.”

It obviously took a few seconds for Twinkleshine to fully parse that. But when she had, she asked, “Wait, how old are you? Do I need an adult?”

I really hoped Twinkleshine only said all that because she knew I was so good at reading expressions. It was a wonderful attempt to make me upset at something entirely different, but if I were anypony else, it probably would’ve backfired spectacularly.

“A season ago, I would’ve told you I was approximately nineteen. During my ascension, I would’ve told you I was seventeen, if you wanted to be strictly accurate. Now…well, I recovered a lot of Sunset Shimmer’s memories, so one could argue that I’m fifty-five or so.”

I smiled as best as I could, then added, “But thank you for the sentiment. It means a lot to me.”

Twinkleshine smiled back. “Your welco–” Then I saw the math click in her expression. “Wait, seventeen? You were born two years old? Then you’re adopted?”

I sunk into myself as I whispered, “Yes.”

“Do your parents know?”

“No,” I whimpered. “I’m too scared to tell them.”

Twinkleshine frowned. “Twilight, I’ve met your parents. They love you.”

“I know…”

“They’ll always love you,” Twinkleshine added.

“I know!” I said. “I just… I’m scared to see how they look at me after they know.”

“That’s not why and you know it,” Mother chided.

I told her to shut up.

“You’re worried they’ll tell you Princess Luna was wrong.”

I already knew what Luna had done was…understandable but less than ideal. Wrong, but not bad, or evil. Just…the desperate action of a scared and scarred mare. Not that I had any real right to complain about existing in any case.

“And above all, you’re worried they’re going to tell you to abandon Princess Luna.”

Those words felt like a solid buck to the barrel, even though I’d known them in some vague terms already.

“Oh, and then you’ll have to choose. And you know who you always choose.”

My growl slipped out into the real world. My eyes widened immediately as I realized the mistake I’d made and watched Twinkleshine flee backward in her seat.

“I’m sorry,” I forced out as calm and composed as I could make myself. “I was…elsewhere. That wasn’t directed at you.”

“It’s – it’s okay, Twilight,” Twinkleshine interrupted, but the quiver in her voice said it was not okay.

“Twinkleshine, I’m really, really sorry. There was a false dichotomy that…was on my mind. I’m not…entirely mentally stable right now from recovering all those memories.”

“Twilight, it’s really fine,” Twinkleshine insisted.

Regardless, I pressed on. “I don’t expect it to be a problem, but if you think I’m about to hurt you or anypony else, please scream or something.”

“Twilight–”

“I’m serious, Twinkleshine.” I stopped myself from slamming my hooves on the table at the last second. That wasn’t me. That was my questionable sanity and slipping grip on my temper talking.

Not that that was any better.

I deflated in my chair. “I’m so sorry.”

Some time later after I’d awkwardly poked at my salad, Twinkleshine said, “Well, I can see the mother–son resemblance now, at least.”

“Hmm?”

“You looked like an angry dragon for a second there. Smoke came out of your mouth and everything. It looked a little silly coming from a pony, actually.”

Heh. That would look kind of absurd. Good thing I didn’t set off any smoke alarms.

Our brief, subdued laughter was interrupted when our first course arrived. I had… I didn’t actually know what I’d ordered. It was something I couldn’t pronounce and involved exotic plants I wasn’t familiar with fried to a crisp, golden brown. Whatever it was came recommended, and it was fried, so no doubt it would be delicious.

Twinkleshine had ordered something equally unpronounceable that involved tofu and at least a half-dozen esoteric spices. Pinkie Pie had at least a hundred strains of spice and seasoning still growing on the Nebulous, but I didn’t recognize any of the ones on Twinkleshine’s meal.

We both took our first bites. After reassuring our waiter that everything was delicious and to our satisfaction, we were left alone once more.

Twinkleshine’s fork and knife came to a rest on her plate, and it seemed she'd mistaken her lip for her dinner, given how she was gnawing on it. It was some time before I noticed.

“Twinkleshine?”

I was just about to poke her with magic when Twinkleshine, who'd otherwise been unresponsive, finally spoke. “Twilight, can I ask you a…”

“A deeply personal and painful question?” I suggested.

“Succinctly put.”

A sigh escaped me as I set my own silverware down. “Go ahead.”

Twinkleshine opened her mouth, then closed it. She repeated this action again several seconds later, but this time she shook her head vigorously to herself.

Finally, Twinkleshine spoke, but it was far from the question I’d been expecting. “Would you be okay if we put off the rest of this conversation until tomorrow night?”

I leaned my head back to stare up at the ceiling. That might be for the best. Mother had pushed too many of my buttons too recently; I might as well be a vat of nitroglycerin next to a cliff right now.

I really should be better than this. Luna had taught me to be better than this. I should be able to hold my temper and check my other emotions to approach this whole situation calmly and logically.

But apparently I wasn’t.

I sighed silently as I finally nodded. “Can I ask why, though?”

“You need some time to relax and enjoy life, I think.”

Twinkleshine smiled as she said that, but I could see all of her tells signaling that she was lying, or at least not telling me all of the truth. No doubt she wanted some time just to think about what I’d already told her and to decide if I was too weird or dangerous to be around.

But I wouldn’t call her on that. She had every right to break things off with me if she felt unsafe. Or for any other of the many reasons she could give…

I sighed to myself as gloomy thoughts overtook me.

Rarely, I felt like I did more harm than good to Twinkleshine. Some part of me even worried that Twinkleshine was still incapable of breaking things off with me like she’d admitted on the moon all those years ago. It wouldn’t be surprising. I’d dug my claws too deep into her and only realized it after the fact.

I shook those dark thoughts from my head. They were perfectly legitimate concerns, but I didn’t trust myself to fairly evaluate them right now. For now, I’d just have to trust that Twinkleshine could grow to hold her own against me, so to speak, if I kept pushing her forward. If she wasn’t at that point already, of course.

On the other, far more optimistic hoof, I had evidence that I was a nice pony who did nice things for the ponies I loved. If I were to follow Twinkleshine’s advice, that was just what I needed right now. I hadn’t intended to do this quite yet, but it couldn’t hurt to give Twinkleshine the fruit of my labor a little early.

“Thank you for the sentiment,” I began. I reached out into the magic back at our hotel room and teleported the score Pinkie Pie and I had written to just below our table. “I have two more surprises for you. I was going to give you this one tomorrow, but…well…now seems like a better time, I think.”

Twinkleshine’s fork, which had gone back to work, slowly set back down onto her plate. “Oh? What is it!”

“I… Um…” I ran a hoof nervously up and down my mane. “Well, it might not be perfect yet. I kind of ran out of time before we left Luminance. But I think it’s okay. And Pinkie Pie said it was a high stakes gamble on whether you would like it or not, but I think it’s nice.”

“Twilight, come on,” Twinkleshine whined. “What is it? What is it!”

Oh Stars, just thinking about actually showing the song Pinkie Pie and I had written to Twinkleshine sent a rush of blood to my face. This was the cheesiest thing I’d ever done or probably ever would. And yet it was really, really catchy and coherent.

“I – I can’t sing like you do for me, b-but I have the next best thing. Composition is mathy, in essence.”

Twinkleshine’s eyes widened. “You wrote a song!”

“Pinkie Pie helped,” I whispered. Barely able to say anything else – my face was burning and it was kind of hard to breathe – I levitated the score from below the table to hoof, then from hoof I passed it to Twinkleshine’s magic. “Here.”

I thought I heard a little squee from Twinkleshine, but I couldn’t be sure. Either way, she eagerly dove into the song.

And then Twinkleshine’s eyebrows rose, and she showed me that cute little lip twitch she got when she was confused.

“Finite Simple Group?” Twinkleshine read off the title.

“Of – of Order Two,” I added meekly. It’d be okay. Twinkleshine liked math too. Maybe not pure mathematics like me, but she could at least appreciate it. “Have you read any group theory overview or introductory texts?”

Twinkleshine shook her head.

Ponyfeathers. “W-well, it’s okay. I don’t perfectly understand all of it – the song, that is, myself.”

“How?”

“My education focused on magic, not math.” My forehooves nervously tapped together. “I know definitions but sometimes not applications.”

Twinkleshine hummed thoughtfully, or maybe skeptically. I couldn’t trust my hearing to filter between the two right now, seeing as it was mostly preoccupied with filtering out the pounding of my own heart.

At any rate, Twinkleshine indulged me and hummed the melody as she read. It was far from a continuous process as she stumbled and reread over and over again. Occasionally I would catch her mumble a few words from the lyrics.

“You’re my Axiom of Choice.” I could see Twinkleshine’s hooves coming up to her face, but they stopped halfway through their journey.

“Without loss of generality… Seriously?” Twinkleshine hadn’t said it to me, but I nodded as well as I could anyway.

And then the snickering started. “A kernel of a rank-one map. I get that one.”

Okay, laughing was better than nothing, and way better than pity.

“Proved – proved my – my prop – propo – proposition!”

Twinkleshine was openly guffawing by this point. She’d long since lost the ability to hum the music. She almost looked like she was in pain from the wheezing sound she made on occasion when she actually stopped to breathe.

Finally, Twinkleshine let the song fall to the table and reached out for her glass. It was clearly a struggle, but she managed to down some wine, no doubt to get some moisture back into her throat after abusing it so much.

“So…” I began very hesitantly. “Thoughts?”

“Oh – oh gosh, Twi – Twilight,” Twinkleshine said, gasping for air. “That was – the nerdiest thing – I’ve ever seen ever.”

My ears fell to my head. “Was it at least adorkable?”

Twinkleshine shifted her weight and fell out of her chair. No, she was just struggling to get up. She leaned on the table for a bit of support as she walked to stand right next to me. Then her magic seized my muzzle and pulled me into a deep, long kiss. All of the tension in my withers melted as I returned the affection.

Sadly, this wasn’t the place to make out, and Twinkleshine knew it too. She pulled away, utterly out of breath again. Instead of walking back across to the other side of the table, she levitated her chair over to right where she stood and collapsed in it.

What I suspected was the last of Twinkleshine’s wheezing passed. Even then it was clearly a bit of a struggle to speak, but she managed.

“Twilight, that was, without a doubt, the most adorkable thing in history. I barely understood half of it at best.” Twinkleshine leaned over to kiss me on the cheek this time. “Thank you for being you.”

“Ah. Y-you’re welcome. It still needs some work to get the rhythm just right on the lyrics, but I think all of the core meanings and words are right. Pinkie Pie suggested the, well, generic unmathy words, and I did the translation. The third verse in particular–”

“Twilight,” Twinkleshine interrupted, somehow having found one of my hooves and squeezing it with her own, “it’s wonderful as is. Thank you so much.”

My eyes found their way to the floor as I erupted into a full blush again. “You’re welcome,” I said again dumbly.

“So, is the other surprise as good as this?”

“I-I like to think so!” I squeaked. The other surprise was easily twice as embarrassing, if that was a valid heuristic.

“Hmm? Well, I’m looking forward to it then.”

Twinkleshine held her wine glass up again invitingly. I grabbed my own and bumped it against hers again.

“To surprises?” Twinkleshine suggested.

“To a” – hopefully – “bright future,” I returned.

It was bound to happen eventually. The city was filled with them, after all. I was more surprised that Twinkleshine hadn’t noticed one of them yet; we’d passed by at least a dozen yesterday and another half-dozen so far today.

To be completely fair, about half of them had been billboards placed high above the city streets. There was some truth to the old saying that only pegasi ever bothered to look up, as I’d discovered recently. There was a strict, finite limit on the number of times I could bump my head on something before I finally internalized the lesson the universe was trying to teach me.

“Are you sure this is safe?” Twinkleshine had asked me.

“Of course it is,” I’d replied. Most pegasi had a maximum load far in excess of their body weight, and Twinkleshine weighed slightly less than I did. Somehow.

Anyway, a flight through the sky, far removed from the sweltering ground below, had been in order, even if Twinkleshine had it in her head that it was a brilliant idea to strangle the pony keeping her airborne. Spring in the San Palomino Desert was brutal, especially for Twinkleshine, who still had a bit of her winter coat.

Now though, Twinkleshine’s forehoof pointed off at one particular billboard without a care in the world, much less a scream or a shiver.

“Can I go to that, too?” Twinkleshine asked.

I tried not to groan. “I…suppose so.”

“Yay!” I could hear Twinkleshine’s smile in her exclamation. “I haven’t seen Trixie in forever! Is she still…you know?”

I suggested, “Does she still speak in illeisms?”

“Um… I’m going to assume that word means ‘talks in third person’.”

“She does. Or at least that’s what Pupa says. I haven’t spoken with Trixie myself in a long time either.”

We flew in silence for what could have been hours as easily as minutes. The wind flowed across my feathers wildly and uncontrollably. Unpredictable thermals would send us skyrocketing at random, and Twinkleshine would squeal like I was a roller coaster. She had the good sense to hold on tighter then, though, rather than putting her hooves up.

The daytime skies of Las Pegasus weren’t for the faint of heart, yet they were almost as relaxing as the near perfectly calm air above Luminance. All I had to do was hold out my wings, glide, and not drop Twinkleshine.

It really was such a wonderful thing to soar free under one’s own wingpower. Maybe I should take up Dash on one of her crazy race ideas. A trip around Equus did sound like fun.

Twinkleshine said something.

“Sorry, wasn’t paying attention,” I said. “What was that?”

Practically shouting into my ear over the roar of the wind, Twinkleshine asked, “Can we go visit Princess Celestia’s School?”

I frowned at that. Returning to Canterlot was decidedly not a safe course of action. And yet…so long as I was careful not to walk into any dangerous wards, I should be able to teleport us away in time. I’d have to have the spell constantly ready to trigger, just like the one I had in Luminance, but that was no problem. If Twinkleshine wanted to go, I didn't see any problems with it.

My wings tilted ever so slightly, pulling us into a wide circle. I leveled out when we were pointed toward Canterlot. We were too far off to see the mountain, let alone the city, but all of its magic was dead ahead.

“Do you mind if we fly there?” I asked. “We’ll want to visit after the school day ends, I’d imagine.”

Twinkleshine’s thoughtful hum was just on the edge of my hearing. “How long will it take?”

“I’ll try to time it so we arrive just before supper, so maybe a couple hours? We should be flying slow enough to take in the scenery below.”

“Then that sounds wonderful!”

I took a deep, anticipatory breath. “Alright. Hold on tight.”

One of my shield spells fell over Twinkleshine. It’d keep her warm and would make it so she could actually hold on to me, rather than the wind speeds ripping her legs off. With a strong beat of my wings, the two of us shot upward.

We burst through one cloud, then two clouds, upon which I stopped counting because there were only two. As far as I could see, there weren’t any other clouds around.

And still higher we yet rose. The temperature dropped rapidly as the world below fell away. The once enormous buildings were reduced to mere toys, and the ponies were barely visible.

The air was thinner, too, but I would manage. Twinkleshine might have a bit of a hard time, though, so I added another spell to give her a proper supply of oxygen, just in case.

“T-Twilight? I-isn’t this a l-little high?”

Well, I could fly lower, but it’d be much less efficient. Even this high up, a trip to Canterlot would be a marathon at the very least for a pegasus. Not so much for an alicorn, though.

“Think of it this way,” I began, “if you fall from this height, there’s no way in Tartarus that I won’t have time to catch you.”

“Good p-point. I’ll get used t-to it.”

Just to make sure my guess was right, I scryed just behind my head. And indeed, there was Twinkleshine with her head buried in my mane. Her eyes were probably sealed shut as well.

I didn’t bother to hide my giggles.

“It might help if you take a look around at some point.”

“I’ll get to it when I’m good and ready!” Twinkleshine squeaked. “Some of us still have unicorn brains that experience vertigo.”

I conceded that this was a fair point. “Still, you grew up on top of one of Equestria’s largest mountains. Surely that counts for something?”

“Just fly.”

Well, no sense refusing the order. My wings raised. My magic tensed. The air about us stilled.

And then there was a great, mighty whumph as the two of us launched forward. My vision blacked out for a moment, even with pegasus magic coursing through me.

Too much acceleration. But also, too little. To quote Dash, that. Had been. So. Awesome!

“Note to self,” I mumbled when the adrenaline high wore off, “acceleration sucks, even if it’s not gravitational.” Then, louder, I asked, “Are you okay?”

No answer.

“Twinkleshine?” I shouted much louder.

Horseapples! Okay, okay. Panic was the enemy. The changeling magic on me swept away, leaving me with a horn again so I could work magic more comfortably.

Twinkleshine’s heart was…still beating. Good. Her lungs were still breathing. Great. Her miscellaneous organs were not damaged. Excellent.

The next step was to try an awaking spell.

Twinkleshine’s body jolted as she returned to the realm of consciousness.

“Twinkleshine?” I called out hopefully.

I got a moan in response. “Ugh. What happened?”

“I accelerated too fast.” Rather sheepishly, I added, “Sorry.”

“Accel–” Suddenly remembering where we were, or perhaps looking down and remembering, Twinkleshine’s hooves squeezed around me all the tighter. “Oh. Okay. Right. F-fly on.”

Well alright then. I hadn’t put Twinkleshine off of flying forever. Fantastic.

For the next couple hours, the two of us flew over Equestria with the kind of freedom only pegasi had, chatting about nothing important. It was rather relaxing after Twinkleshine managed to relax herself.

Once we finally made our way out of both the desert and the nearby mountains, we found actual signs of life. Farms littered the countryside below us, and with them we saw the occasional pony out and about working on them, whether that be planting seeds or plowing fields.

Beyond that, we stumbled upon what I was sure was the river that connected to Saddle Lake in Ponyville, and then to the Canterlot waterfall even further upstream. We followed that for a time, occasionally running into a small town that had grown about the water source.

Eventually, Twinkleshine spotted one of the backbones of the Equestrian Railway. If we followed that, it would take us straight to Ponyville and then to Canterlot without meandering through Froggy Bottom Bog or the Everfree Forest. Seeing as neither of us wanted to fly over the Everfree, we turned northward along the tracks to give the forest, which even now loomed upon the horizon, a wide berth.

And then there was Ponyville. It hadn’t been my home for long, but it was still home. I kind of wanted to go visit and see what had become of my birthday present library after I’d taken most of the books, but I let the opportunity fly by.

Twinkleshine must have noticed me picking out my house in the distance, since she suggested I take a break to rest, but I refused the idea once more. To begin with, it wasn’t safe to go home, but also, it just wouldn’t be the same without Mom and Dad there waiting with hugs to welcome me back.

At any rate, from Ponyville, it wasn’t long before we arrived in Canterlot, or at least in the airspace somewhat close to Canterlot. I had to poke around in the city’s magic for what had to be at least a half-hour to make sure I wasn’t about to fly the two of us into a trap. It seemed unlikely Celestia would set up city-wide enchantments, but it never hurt to be sure.

Fortunately, it seemed Canterlot Castle itself was the only seriously dangerous spot. There were an uncountable number of more benign spells littered throughout the city, but there was only one large area spell.

Encircling the entire city was an extremely strong shield enchantment, although it lay dormant and completely unpowered. At full strength, it might have stopped me as a unicorn, maybe. But as an alicorn, particularly as the Alicorn of Magic, it posed little threat. It should be okay to leave it alone.

Celestia’s School wasn’t much more secure than the rest of Canterlot. Yes, there were thousands of wards and protection spells placed over it, but so far as I could tell, nearly every last one was intended to protect its occupants, not to attack or subdue. There weren’t any teleport wards either; I could even sense a few ponies blinking from room to room on occasion.

And really, what else could I have expected? I remembered Twinkleshine once mentioning that magical accidents like setting things on fire happened all the time. With the magical, youthful talent gathered here, the students would need all the protection from themselves that they could get.

I disguised myself as just an ordinary pegasus once again, then brought the two of us in for a landing just outside the gates of the school. The guard on duty was quick to offer a cheery hello to Twinkleshine as we passed by him, and he made note that there was a visitor on campus.

Much to my annoyance, Twinkleshine introduced me, her guest, as ‘Sunset’. It’d clearly been a snap decision made in a bit of a panic, but she could’ve come up with a better alias than that.

Sigh. Oh well. We had more important things to worry about right now.

“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” I asked.

With the ‘utmost confidence’, Twinkleshine replied, “Of course. The college section is…this way. For sure.”

I withheld the urge to facehoof for as long as I could. But when we ended up back at the clock tower again, the impulse was simply overwhelming.

“I’m going to ask for directions,” I said. There was nothing strange about a pegasus, who was obviously a visitor, asking for directions.

I tracked down somepony who looked old enough to know where the eldest students lived and studied. The stallion I found was nice enough – or perhaps rude enough, depending on the perspective – to enchant a crude map for me and left without a word. The map itself gave my position and had a number of buildings labeled. I located the dormitories for the college-level students and ran off back to Twinkleshine.

As we walked, Twinkleshine commented, “You know, this place is both bigger and smaller than I remember.”

It…was possible that the campus had acquired some more land shortly after I’d severed Canterlot into n plus one pieces, for some large n. Property values had dropped significantly for years after that.

I didn’t even bother to keep my sigh to myself.

“You okay, Twilight?”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “I’m fine.”

Twinkleshine stopped to frown suspiciously at me for a moment, but thankfully ended up letting it drop. As we approached the dorms, she made herself scarce and told me to go inside and ask after her room. She’d come in a couple minutes after I did.

Entering the building, I found the front desk quickly enough. The pony on duty had her legs kicked back on the desk, and she awkwardly sat hunched on a chair as she read. I couldn’t imagine how that was comfortable.

And something about that was ringing a few bells, but I couldn’t quite put my hoof on why…

Oh well. “Hello?”

That was sufficient to get the mare’s attention. “Hmm? Oh! Um, welcome to Princess Celestia’s School for–”

I cut off the mare who was clearly reciting from a script she’d barely memorized.

“I’ve visited before. Don’t bother on my account.”

“Ah, alright, then. My name’s Lyra. What can I do for you…”

I grudgingly replied, “Sunset,” for the sake of consistency. “I’m looking for Twinkleshine’s room.”

Lyra frowned. “She’s been missing for a couple weeks now. Do – do you happen to know where she is? She left without saying anything.”

Oh horseapples. I’d walked muzzlefirst right into this one, hadn’t I? I supposed it was time to start making stuff up.

“Yeah. She had a family emergency. We split up when we arrived on campus. She said she needed to do a few things first.”

Lyra let out a sigh, and her nerves went with it. Then she asked, “What happened?”

“You’d have to ask her,” I said to hopefully shut down this line of inquiry. Twinkleshine could make up whatever excuse she wanted later on her own.

“Fair enough. Her room is on the fourth floor if you want to wait there. It’s number–”

Lyra didn’t get a chance to finish as I whirled on whoever was trying to cast a spell on me. A changeling shapeshifting counter spell of all things!

The threads of magic that had been reaching out to me stopped dead in place.

I winced when I began shutting down the source’s magic to render whomever it was harmless, then slowly relaxed my grip on her magic. I knew how traumatic that could be for a mare.

And I was facing a mare. Two, actually, if a sheepish looking Twinkleshine behind her counted.

“Twinkleshine!” Lyra shouted, hopping over the desk and landing roughly on all four hooves. She galloped over and swept Twinkleshine up in a great, big hug.

“Hello, Lyra. It’s great to see you again.”

I tuned out the happy reunion. I was engaged in a staring contest with a flabbergasted Trixie.

And then because the universe hated me, I felt a teleport just outside the dorm. It didn’t bring an alicorn with it, but it brought somepony almost as bad.

“Twilight Sparkle! You get your flank out here this instant!” Shining shouted.

Author's Note

If you’ve never heard of Finite Simple Group (of Order Two), then you are truly a poor, deprived soul. Highly recommended to all who love math. It speaks straight to the heart.

Prereaders – Starlight Nova, Strange Reasoning, The Great Eater

Behold! A shameless promotion for my Patreon page.

Chapter Thirty Seven - Outside Opinions - Part One

I could cut the tension with a knife as Trixie and I silently stared at each other. Lyra seemed oblivious to the tense atmosphere, but Twinkleshine was none-too-subtly trying to herd her from the room.

Outside I could sense Shining storming in our direction as spell after spell enveloped him. No small number of them were wards and miscellaneous protections, unsurprisingly. I didn’t know whether to smile that he’d actually listened to me all those years ago or to cry that he felt them necessary.

Not that they would do him any good if I tried anything…

I must have blinked at the thought or broken eye contact, because Trixie seemed to collect her wits. Her eyes narrowed, and her blunt, deadpan words set a slightly better tone than I’d expected from her.

“Which princess are you?”

“Princess?” Lyra echoed, but Twinkleshine continued to shove her out of the way down a hallway.

I could hear the latter’s voice as she disappeared around a corner.

“Come on, Lyra. Let’s not make things worse, okay?”

With those two out of the way and nopony else around, I decided to start this conversation my way. There was something I needed to say to Trixie, and it would mean infinitely more if it came without prompting.

I gulped, hoping I would get this right. I hadn’t exactly practiced, given that I’d thought this conversation wouldn’t happen for a while still. I was also betting that Trixie had actually been informed of what was going on, but…well, giving how Shining was acting at the moment, it was probably a safe bet.

I only hoped Trixie didn’t hate me so much right now that she wouldn’t remember this decades later when she…could maybe tolerate me. Friendship would be asking for far too much.

“Trixie, before either of us say anything else, I…I know what it’s like to have your dreams and purpose ripped out from under you. I’m…not apologizing, exactly; I would do what I did again without hesitation. But I will try to make it up to you somehow.”

There were a few seconds of silence as Trixie’s face warped through various phases of disgust and anger. Her magic was rolling around inside her, barely kept in check instead of lashing out. Trixie wasn’t stupid; she knew nothing good could come of attacking me.

“Princess Twilight, then,” Trixie eventually spat. “Trixie does not want your platitudes, nor does she want you in her presence.”

Well…that went about as well as I could’ve possibly hoped. I guessed. Pupa would probably know approximately how many years it was going to take Trixie to cool off. Or centuries. Speaking of whom…

No, I should wait. After all, any moment now–

The doors to dormitory exploded inward. The glass panes shattered. Shining stood amongst the carnage, exuding an aura of pure anger. His eyes scanned the room and settled on Trixie.

“Where’s Twilight and her accomplice?”

Trixie pointed to me, and I in turn tried my best to smile and wave. It…didn’t exactly go over well.

Shining’s magic reached out. Unlike with Trixie before, I checked myself before nullifying it. It was just a little telekinesis. Shining wasn’t going to do anyth–

“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!” I screamed as Shining pulled my ear, forcing me to trot toward him.

Shining stopped pulling when I was just a hoof or two away from him, but he didn’t let go. He glared down at me, and I shrunk under the intensity of his gaze. My head tilted awkwardly to keep my ear from being twisted or pulled.

“You are up to your neck in trouble.”

I gulped before I could help it. Shining was a lot more intimidating than I remembered, especially in full armor.

“You and her.”

Twinkleshine squeaked from somewhere behind me. Her hooves thundered as she no doubt tried to run, but Shining teleported her right next to me. Twinkleshine tripped over herself and fell onto the ground. It would’ve been cute in any other situation.

“Shining, please let go.” The words came out as a whine, as much as I tried otherwise. “I know you’re upset, but–”

“Upset?” Shining interrupted frigidly. His face came within a centimeter of mine and followed me as I stumbled backward. “No, Twilight. I have three sisters and a nephew, and only recently, I found out that I don’t know any of them. I am beyond merely upset. I don’t know if there’s even a word to express how furious I am.”

My ear that wasn’t held up fell to my forehead. I couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

“And while we’re on the subject, I want to know for sure which sister I’m talking to.”

Shining’s horn didn’t glow; he’d cast a simple spell over it to hide his spellcasting from the casual observer. But I could sense the lines and pools of magic forming to disrupt a changeling polymorph.

In a moment of indecision, I let Shining’s spell wash over me. It tore apart my disguise to reveal the alicorn beneath.

Shining looked me over for several seconds, his gaze lingering on my wings as they ruffled and stretched. His eyes narrowed when he looked at my mane, particularly the new colors of my stripes.

But in the end, Shining moved on without a word and turned to Twinkleshine.

“She’s clean,” Trixie commented, to which Shining just nodded.

“So,” said Shining, turning back to me, “what do you have to say for yourself?”

I was about to reflexively blurt out, “I’m sorry,” but I wasn’t. I’d told Trixie as much mere minutes ago. Maybe that was what Shining wanted to hear, but it wouldn’t be honest. We couldn’t fix our relationship like that.

Really, what even was I supposed to say here? I’d never read a book that told me what to do in situations like this. I had no experience with this, aside from Cadance, kind of, I supposed. I hadn’t even taken the time to think about what I would say.

“Well?” Shining asked, obviously impatient.

I cringed under the accusatory tone and just started talking.

“I… Um… H-hello, I’m Twilight Sparkle. I-I’m your adoptive sister, and – and I’d like to get to know each other better. I…like books and magic. Princess Luna was my mentor as a filly, and we’re really good friends. I used to be a Flare, but I’m the Alicorn of Magic now. I’m magically bonded to the Element of Friendship.”

Shining raised an eyebrow at that one.

“I’ve been away for a little while, but I’m home now. And I’d” – I gulped – “I’d like to be your LSBFF again.” My right forehoof extended in the vain hope of at least getting a hoof bump.

Some part of me was worried that Shining was trying to set my hoof on fire with his mere gaze, which at this point, I feared might be possible. I hadn’t cataloged all the spells he’d cast on himself.

Fortunately, that didn’t happen. Shining just muttered, “I’ll think about it.”

I let my hoof slowly fall back down to the floor. Twinkleshine tried to make up for the lack of brotherly affection by holding my other hoof in hers, but it wasn’t the same.

“Ow!” Twinkleshine and I both complained as the pull on our ears abruptly increased.

“Come with me,” Shining demanded.

Shining led us out of Celestia’s School and into Canterlot proper without a word, barely grunting in acknowledgment when I asked him to wait while I disguised myself again. I wasn’t about to let all of Canterlot swarm us as word of a new alicorn spread.

So it was that Twinkleshine and I were dragged across town practically by leash and collar. I quietly mentioned that I wasn’t willing to go into Canterlot Castle as we turned in that direction, but Shining didn’t deviate from his course. Or even respond to me at all…

Twinkleshine walked close enough to me that I could lean on her for support. I suspected she was offering a wither to cry privately into, but I couldn’t do that to Shining. Crying was…unfair. He had plenty of reasons to be mad at me; I wasn’t going to try to throw that back in his face.

It might even just make him more mad if I did anyway.

Trixie had abandoned us at some point before I could say anything, although as…distracted…as I was, I didn’t recall exactly when. There was just a point when I realized that the angry, roiling ball of magic inside Trixie was no longer present.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t late enough in the day for our march to go unnoticed, even with Trixie’s absence. Most ponies just looked confused to see the guard captain leading two random unicorns around, but occasionally somepony would look at us like we were arrested criminals being hauled off to jail, despite the utter lack of restraints. Those were the worst.

Shining flagged down a guard as she was passing by. He cast a spell to prevent me from listening in as they conversed for a minute or so, making me wish I could read lips. When they were done, the mare galloped off toward the castle. Shining gestured to follow him again, and we turned aside from the main street.

Several blocks went by before I finally recognized one of the back roads we’d been traversing. We were on one of the streets from home to the castle that I used to take.

I looked off in the direction of our old home. There were too many buildings in the way to see them, but I could sense ponies where there couldn’t have been any years ago. That meant that Canterlot was being repaired. I’d already known, but it was something else entirely to witness it firsthoof, to see my mistake slowly erode into forgotten history.

“Shining,” I began hesitantly. There was a question that I needed to ask, one that I’d never had the courage to ask of somepony who wouldn’t lie to me about it. And…Shining would have no reason to lie right now.

I got a questioning grunt in response, which was better than him outright ignoring me.

“Did anypony die when…” I trailed off into silence, looking toward where home should have been.

“Ack!” I bumped into Shining, who had stopped and turned around. Looking up, I squeaked under his glare.

He asked, “Would it make any difference to you?”

“Of course!”

Shining’s eyebrows rose, as if to ask, “Oh? How so?” Or maybe it meant, “What would you do?”

And really, what could I do? I couldn’t bring dead ponies back to life. That escaped even my powers.

I was sure Luna had used some of her funds to help Canterlot already – there was no way she’d miss that opportunity – and I didn’t have any money of my own.

My magic now could probably have put Canterlot back to right in weeks, but it wasn’t like I could retroactively do so.

And above all, I’d already learned an important lesson about planning ahead and collateral damage.

Was there anything left to be gained from the knowledge, besides more guilt? It wasn’t like I’d act any differently.

“I guess not,” I finally admitted, bracing myself for…whatever: a slap, a punch, a sword through the barrel.

But the only thing that came was another yank on my ear, drawing me forward again. It seemed I wasn’t getting an answer.

My ears fell as I realized that I didn’t know Shining well enough anymore to know why he didn’t reply. Did he not want to lie to me? Did he want to keep me guessing? Did he want to make me worry myself to death?

Or worst of all, did he want me to realize I didn’t know him as well as I used to? Old Shining wouldn’t do something like that, but I’d been gone so long.

I didn’t know Shining anymore… This must have been how Luna felt some thousand years ago. At least with Cadance, I still knew her like sisters should.

I was terrible.

Sigh… Twinkleshine and I followed Shining through familiar back roads. We were getting rather close to the castle. I was about to say something when Shining turned down a wide street perpendicular to the castle.

It wasn’t long after that before we found ourselves in something like a field. While not the rolling lands surrounding Ponyville or the expansive, flat San Palomino Desert, there was a fair bit of open, grassy space reserved for, apparently, members of the Day Guard. A ways away from us, there were an awfully large number of ponies in full armor swinging around spears.

But it was not to them that we were headed. Instead, Shining led us to what I could only assume were the exhibition grounds, given how many ponies were idling around watching others spar. He held up a hoof, halting just long enough for us to understand he was asking us to wait where we were.

Glancing around, I noticed that an awful lot of ponies were taking interest in me and Twinkleshine. She sidled up to my side under the attention, mumbling something about ‘bad idea’. I gave her a pat on the withers and whispered a few comforting words; we were safe as long as Celestia wasn’t here. None of the attention felt hostile either, just curious.

Ignoring the crowd, I watched Shining retrieve a wooden box from the mare he’d spoken with earlier. There was something familiar inside the box, but I couldn’t put my hoof on what exactly. I recognized the magic, but I couldn’t put a name to what it was exactly. Maybe once the box was open and I actually saw what was inside, everything would become clear.

Coming to a stop mere hooves in front of me, Shining held the box out. “Take it,” he said.

My curiosity compelled me to comply without even thinking about it. I grabbed the box in my own magic, forgetting to ask if I could open it or even if it was safe to do so.

And inside was rusty piece of metal. Granted the silver and gold trimming was in good condition, but the base – bronze, I thought it was – had rusted everywhere. It looked about ready to fall apart.

I removed the metal from the box, which I discarded. Turning it about, I raised an eyebrow. “Can I fix this?” I asked, still not recognizing…whatever this was supposed to be.

Shining nodded, and I went about reversing the oxidation reaction. The green patina hissed slightly as the oxygen was released back to the air, and some of the bronze crumbled away. Realizing my mistake, I slowed my spell down and added another to melt the freed metal back into the rest of it.

When my spells finished, I looked over the repaired…thing. Turning it about in my magic, being careful not to trigger any of the spells inside it, I found myself only more confused.

“It’s…a fancy rod?”

My ears protested at the crack that came from Shining kicking the box closed with a hoof. He tapped that same hoof against the top.

“I have no idea if I’m pronouncing this right, but that’s Se Be-a-dul-e-oma.”

“Sé Beaduléoma,” I corrected. My brows furrowed as I looked over the metal lump again. “The sword?”

“No way!”

I turned my head to Twinkleshine, knowing my lack of cultural slash social knowledge was about to bite me in the tail again. Even so, I asked, “What is it?”

“I-it’s a mythological weapon, like Caliburn, or the hammer Mjölnir, or the spears Gungnir or Gáe Bulg. It’s supposed to be strong enough to defeat an entire army. Cherry Berry would go nuts for this!”

A legendary sword, eh? I looked at what was supposed to be Sé Beaduléoma again, this time investigating its magic more closely. Every little connection, I could see. Every frayed spell line, I patched up. But I had no idea what it did, like staring at a page-long mathematical equation.

It was certainly old, though. Unless it was a pre-Discordian artifact, it probably didn’t do anything interesting. Maybe it was a sufficiently advanced spell for its time that nopony would have been able to deal with it, but I rather doubted it.

“Huh,” I finally said. “So this is the real thing?”

“Yes.”

And Shining stopped there. His mouth moved on occasion, so I waited for him to continue with whatever he wanted to say.

“Do you know the old Hearth’s Warming tale about the pony tribes?”

What? That question had come completely out of left field. “Of course I do. I forced you to read it to me a million times.”

Shining pulled out another metal rod – or hilt, I supposed – from somewhere on his armor. His magic trickled into it, extending out into a weak field from the hilt to make a purely magical blade. To anypony but me and the most sensitive mages, it might as well have been invisible.

The air shrieked in the wake of Shining’s sword. He’d swung it entirely too fast, slicing no more than a hair’s breadth away from my muzzle. I didn’t even have time to react until after it’d gone past.

Over my protests, Shining continued, “The spell’s official modern name is the ‘phantasmal sword’. It was rediscovered a few centuries ago and repurposed into the gentlecolt’s dueling weapon of choice. In Sé Beaduléoma’s–”

“Sé Beaduléoman,” I corrected Shining again, this time for the genitive form of the noun.

For just a moment, I saw Shining sigh and roll his eyes at me like he used to.

“When that sword was made, most people called it the butcher’s blade. If the pony tribes had possessed it, there would be no earth ponies or pegasi.”

Again, I gazed upon Sé Beaduléoman skeptically. It really wasn’t that impressive of a weapon. There were more efficient ways to kill somepony with plain old magic.

Shining continued, “It probably has more blood on it than every other weapon in Equestrian history combined.”

And then it clicked. I knew why the magic placed on this sword was familiar.

“That is the original weapon of Princess Luna,” Shining said.

At the same time, I said, “It’s Luna’s!”

Shining blinked. It then occurred to me that he might have wanted to shock me into thinking Luna was evil or something. But even if that was what he was after, he was doing it all wrong. A million was a statistic, after all.

Either way, Shining moved the topic along.

“You’re not my cute little sister who needs protecting, are you?”

W-what? No. No, you shouldn’t take that the wrong way, Twilight. You knew what he meant. You weren’t Aurora, nor were you the little filly who cried during a thunderstorm and ran to her big brother anymore. That was surely all he meant.

“Defend yourself!”

That was all the warning I had before Shining’s sword shot straight toward my face. I reacted reflexively, triggering Luna’s now repaired sword and scrambling to move it into place to block.

Squeaking only after the event, I hopped backward straight into Twinkleshine. We took a tumble and ended up in a mess of hooves.

Shining was still nice enough to grant us a moment to separate. I took advantage of it to say, “Shining, I don’t know how to sword fight!”

Apparently done with waiting, Shining teleported Twinkleshine out of the way. “And I don’t have the magic to win a contest of strength. Get over it.”

Oh shoot. Was Shining upset about Hearth’s–

“Eek!” I scrambled again to move my own sword between Shining’s and mine. But being held in his telekinesis, it easily sidestepped my clumsy swipe.

Shining’s sword sunk into my side. My body flailed about out of control. The magical shock roiled around inside me until Shining removed his sword.

“Ugh…” I groaned. When I could move again, I glanced up to find Shining frowning down at me on the ground.

“Get up.”

“Shining, I–”

“Get. Up.”

As much as I’d love to remanifest, we were in public. Instead, I teleported to my hooves, staggering slightly when they protested at supporting my weight again.

And Shining came at me again as soon as I was stable. This time I moved my own sword as if I were moving magic about so that it would intersect his. That was more like something I’d been trained to do.

It worked at first. I parried one blow and then another, but he somehow slipped by me again on the third.

I fell to the ground in a twitching mess, gasping for breath.

This time, as soon as Shining pulled his sword out, I jumped into action. I teleported to my hooves again far away. I landed behind Shining and to his left, which should be where his vision was weakest.

My own sword I left behind, right next to Shining. Growling, I shot it forward toward him at supersonic speeds.

In the split second before it pierced him, my eyes widened. This was a huge mistake.

I froze the magic powering my sword. The blade disappeared in an instant, and it stopped accelerating.

But it was still a fast-moving chunk of metal.

Shining swatted my sword aside, my sword that had the original enchantment, my deadly sword. He took advantage of my daze and swung at me again.

I just felt the tip slice into me. I could feel a spasm coming again.

Shocked into action, I shouted, “Enough!” All of the magic within a meter of me was ripped to shreds.

A half-second later, I felt a teleport next to me. A sickening crunch met my ears as I flew sideways. My eyes caught Shining with his hind hooves falling back to the ground after kicking me in the side.

“You can do better than that, Princess,” Shining said mockingly. He picked up his sword and replaced the enchantment.

I grit my teeth and waited for my body to finish repairing the minor damage it’d taken.

While I lay in the dirt, Shining’s hooves came to a rest beside me, just inside my field of vision. This time he didn’t even wait for me to get up. His sword came down for the coup de grâce.

Gritting my teeth ever harder, I rolled out of the way. My own sword came down to block a follow up attack, but Shining didn’t seem interested in pressing his advantage.

I tried to sweep Shining’s legs out from under him as I spun. They met with air where I’d expected pony. An instant later, one of Shining’s hooves stomped down on them, prompting me to shriek.

“Shining! What the buck!”

Shining pressed down harder on my leg. “Language.”

Screw that. I let my inner Sunset flow. “Buck you! Do you want me to rip out your spine and feed it to you?”

“You could. What’s stopping you?”

Wha… What kind of question was that? “You’re my brother.”

“Is that it? We’re not even related. Now what?”

I lay speechless at Shining’s words. My heart felt like it would burst.

I – was I – had he disowned me?

“That feeling,” Shining said, twisting his hoof harder into my leg. “All of this. You’re going to remember all of it. Every time you look in the eyes of somepony you hurt, of somepony you betray, you’re going to remember this. The anger, the pain, the intent to kill, the sense of betrayal, the restraint.”

Shining used the hilt of his sword to turn my face toward his.

“I know you were the talented filly in the family, although I wonder how much of that was being fifty something years old. But I’m smart, too, and I remember a lot of things you’ve said to me. The ‘annoyances’ that you casually sweep out of your path, they’re just like you.”

“Damn it, Shining, I don’t need an empathy lesson!”

Shining continued on as if I hadn’t said anything. The only indication that he’d even heard me was his hoof pressing down harder still.

“Angry. Hurt. Vengeful. Betrayed by somepony who should be leading and guiding them.”

None too gently, Shining rolled me over and away from him.

“Now get. Up. You have a lesson to relearn. I know Princess Celestia taught you this decades ago.”

A relevant memory did come to mind, but it was a thousand times more gentle. It wasn’t…this. It wasn’t a physical demonstration.

“Stupid meathead,” I growled, wobbling to my hooves.

I was going to beat Shining into the ground.

“Hah… Hah…” I panted, one hoof pinning Shining’s center of mass to the ground. My sword had his pinned down as well.

Shining tried to teleport, but I reacted quicker. I dispelled his teleport before it was even halfway constructed, let alone powered.

He squirmed again, and I just laughed weakly at the attempt, pressing down slightly harder.

“Earth pony – strength,” I managed between breaths. “Surrender.”

Shining stared me down. I stared back, unblinking. I’d won. He wasn’t going to cheat me out of this, not after giving me a sword I couldn’t even hit him with.

“Fine,” Shining finally grunted out. “You win, Oh Goddess of Cheating.”

“Ha!” I pulled my hoof off of Shining and collapsed onto my haunches, reveling in my victory. “Says the pony who challenged a novice swordsmare to a duel. How did that work out for you?”

The latter half of my taunt was drowned out by hoofstomps and cheers. I looked around at the sizable crowd we’d attracted as our match became progressively more flashy.

We were soon swarmed by ponies saying things to the effect of, “Good match,” or, “I’ve never seen the captain get his flank hoofed to him like that,” or even the odd request for a date.

It took some time, but eventually we managed to separate ourselves from the crowd, rejoining with Twinkleshine off to the side. She immediately set about fussing over me. As much as I liked the attention, I hurt in far too many places for it to continue. Public or no, it couldn’t continue.

I threw up an illusion, quickly remanifested, reapplied my disguise, and tore the illusion down in less than a second, muttering a curse that muscle pain and fatigue weren’t considered worthy of automatically regenerating. There was no excuse.

But anyway, I turned to Shining. “I won.”

Shining, rather obviously envious of alicorns at the moment, wiped back his sweaty mane. “Whatever.”

“I won, so I claim you by right of conquest. And I demand the customary tribute.”

We both heard Twinkleshine’s stomach growl. We were running pretty late for dinner by now.

I added, “Oh, and something for my concubine.”

“Twilight,” Twinkleshine protested.

But now that I actually thought about it… “You know, I think that’s technically what you are, like Shining is Cadance’s concubine.”

In almost the same indignant tone as Twinkleshine, Shining said, “Hey!”

“No complaints, Mortal. Now bring unto us vittles and libations so that we might partake of them.”

Shining rolled his eyes. There was a wonderful moment where all of us were smiling at least a little bit.

But it passed, and I was forced to remember that I wasn’t a filly playing pretend with her big brother anymore.

“Do you actually like donuts?” Shining asked. The barbs sticking out of the question were only twisted deeper as he added, “I forget.”

“I haven’t had a deep fried donut in years,” I countered, “but if they’re still as sweet as I remember, I’m sure I’ll love them.” I turned to Twinkleshine, silently asking if donuts was fine for, if not supper, than a snack to hold her over.

“Pinkie’s donuts are nice, but I could go for something different. We can sit down and eat them, right?”

Shining and I nodded, and with that, we headed for Pony Joe’s. While there was still an invisible wall between Shining and me, he and Twinkleshine at least talked to each other while I listened in. They mostly talked about old myths and epics, which was one of the few things they had in common, particularly the most obvious subject, Sé Beaduléoman.

“As I see it,” Shining said, “the phantasmal sword was innovative solely for being a weapon that unicorns wouldn’t break while swinging it around.”

I glanced over at the box for Sé Beaduléoman that I’d been ‘allowed’ to keep. It belonged with me more than Celestia, after all.

At any rate, what Shining said made a lot of sense. Most of the unicorns anypony would actually want to send into battle could probably snap a sword in half if they tried hard enough.

“Until we switched over to bows, spells, and projectiles exclusively, the stronger unicorns would break their swords as easily as they’d rend armor.”

“Wouldn’t that get really expensive?” Twinkleshine asked.

Shining chuckled for a moment before answering. “Oh yes, very much so. I think Princess Celestia tried to hide it, but there’s an embarrassingly large amount of money spent hiring blacksmiths in Equestrian history.”

I silently mumbled, “It wouldn’t be the first thing she hid,” to myself.

At any rate, we arrived at our destination soon enough. It was only a few minutes’ walk from the training grounds.

Pony Joe’s was just as I remembered it. They had donuts, donuts, and more donuts. There were also drinks and a few other things, but nopony came here for them. Behind the counter was Joe himself, looking considerably older than I remembered. It looked like my favorite donut had been taken off the menu, too.

Resisting the urge to sigh, I made my way to the counter and placed an order for a glazed donut, a mocha donut, a raspberry twist, and a mug of hot chocolate. They weren’t my favorites, but they still made my inner filly squee at the thought of having all that for dinner.

That done, I identified and locked onto our usual table. That, at least, was still there. Shining and I used to sit at it when we were younger on my way home from school and later from the Canterlot Archives. As it was unoccupied, I immediately claimed my window seat.

Twinkleshine arrived next, and Shining followed soon after with a hint of a smile. It was only a hint of one, the barest upturning of the lip amid a perpetual scowl, but it was something. He sat down across from me with Twinkleshine awkwardly stuck in-between us.

“I’ve spent the last week trying to think of exactly the right thing to say to you, and I don’t even know where to begin.” Shining paused and held himself as if he were about to say something else, but then he seemed to decide better of it and took a sip of his own hot chocolate.

The two of us fell into a strained silence. He’d certainly said a lot already with his sword, but I knew what he meant.

“Hopefully you got all the anger out?” I tried, mumbling a bit and hiding my muzzle behind my hot chocolate.

Shining glared at me like I was the biggest idiot in the world. I sank further into my seat.

The three of us poked at our meals for awhile. I tried hard to pretend the various other conversations in the store weren’t suddenly infinitely more interesting.

“Er…”

Shining and I perked up to look at Twinkleshine.

“I’m not under arrest, am I?”

She’d better not be. Not that it would really matter.

Shining let out a strained sigh. “As much as I would like to say otherwise, no. Why?”

“I just wanted to go get something is all.”

Eyebrows were raised questioningly, but Shining let Twinkleshine go on parole. I made my own promise to keep an eye on her magic in case anything went wrong.

Distracted as I was, I barely noticed when Shining cast a few basic privacy spells and said something.

“Twilight!” Shining shouted, banging the table with a hoof.

I jumped at the shout and focused less intensely on watching Twinkleshine. She should be okay, in theory.

“Sorry, what did you say?”

“I asked if I really do have a third sister. Princess Cadenza and Princess Celestia said they were guessing.”

My ears fell to my head at how Shining addressed his fiancée, let alone his tone. “Please don’t be mad at Cadance. I’m sure whatever is wrong, it’s my fau–”

“Twilight Sparkle!” Shining shouted, banging the table again. “Answer the question!”

“Ah…” After maybe a second’s hesitation, I nodded. “She’s doing well. You might have met her, actually. I mean, obviously you’ve met her before, but you might have met her since…after me. She has a job in the castle waiting for her, so she might have done an internship or interview there or something.”

Shining’s scowl only deepened. “What’s her name?”

“That’s confidential,” I whispered.

“Twilight…” Shining growled threateningly.

I…supposed I’d given Shining enough information to finish an investigation on his own. “Just don’t do anything rash, okay, Shining? I have checked in the past couple weeks, and she does have a really happy family life. I don’t want us to ruin that. Please?”

“I’ll decide that for myself once I’ve seen her. Now what is her name?” Shining punctuated his words with either frustration or anger, maybe both. It was hard to tell.

I checked my own temper in response to Shining’s ever-growing one. I could completely sympathize with not having answers and how awful that could be. Not that he couldn’t ask a little more nicely; it’d be more likely to get information out of me, if nothing else, even if he didn’t want to really talk to me ever again.

“Aurora,” I finally replied.

Shining’s face scrunched up in thought, but eventually he shook his head.

“She has a really distinctive mane,” I added. It wasn’t quite as eye-catching as Dash’s, but, “It’s green and blue and purple, and it looks just like an aurora in the wind.” It was actually rather fetching; Luna had obviously put some work into building a new identity for her.

“Oh, buck.” Shining’s pupil’s shrunk to pinpricks, and his head fell into his hooves.

A few giggles escaped me. “What? Did you have a stallions’ night out and discuss what a hot piece of flank she was?”

“No.”

Hmm, I was pretty sure Shining had put a little too much force into that denial, but oh well. I certainly wouldn’t be doing myself any favors right now by grilling him on it.

Still, I could have a little fun.

“You know, you didn’t grow up with her, and outside of her brain, her DNA is mostly distinct from yours. It would perfectly acceptable to ogle her, if you were in the mood to. I won’t judge.”

“I said that wasn’t it!” Shining shouted.

I just giggled. And really, if I couldn’t at least laugh at the funny parts of this mess, how could we ever get past it?

Shining’s expression hardened, and his eyes looked terribly serious, robbing me of my grin.

“You do realize that what was done to our family is evil, right?”

Frowning, I asked, “You’re not going to try to convince me Luna is some fictional Nightmare Moon, are you?”

“Whoever your…mentor” – Shining said the word like it was covered in poison – “really is is irrelevant. I’m just finding out about this whole thing – when I should have been briefed on it the very moment I became captain or years sooner – so maybe that’s only obvious to me.”

“Shining, please try not to take this the wrong way, but we all had good reasons not to tell you anything. I’m sorry you feel left out, but–”

“Left out?” Shining interrupted. “Left out is when you have friends over and tell your annoying little sister to stay away. This is…”

Words failed Shining, and as much as I knew I’d regret it, I suggested, “Shut out?”

“Yes.” For a moment, Shining just stared at me, as if he could set me on fire with his mere gaze.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “It wasn’t that I didn’t–”

“No,” Shining interrupted again. “No excuses.” His horn lit up, and he cast an illusion in the center of our table. “You know what this is?”

I knew this was a trick question, but for the life of me I couldn’t think of what the real answer might be. “Your cutie mark?”

“And?”

“I… An expression of your magic–”

“No! Dammit, Twilight! I might as well have ‘I love you, Little Sis’ tattooed on my flank!”

Oh…

“If you’d just asked, I probably would’ve dropped everything to help you. But no, not you. You listened to the scary-looking goddess and kept secrets from me. From Cadance. She adored you. She would’ve dropped everything, too. How is it not obvious that your evil goddess separated you from everypony who cared for you?”

“Shining, that’s not fair–”

“Don’t you dare tell me what’s not fair! What’s not fair is that I’ve spent the last who knows how many years completely out of the loop. My sister was abducted. My other sister left. My third sister tricked me into thinking she was my second. My fiancée lied to my face constantly. All because you wouldn’t trust us, not even me.”

“I… Sorry.”

What else was there to say? I could call him a liar, but his complaints were fair. He really might have simply quit the guard if I’d asked him when I’d first met Luna. It would’ve been such a risk, though, a high-risk, low-reward gamble – mathematically unjustifiable.

Shining uttered a terse, “So I’ve been told. Everypony is sorry.”

“I really am,” I insisted, for what little it was worth. “I never thought – it’s not that I didn’t want you around. It’s just…” There was no nice way to say this, but I tried. “Your skills were redundant with mine.”

“Nice lie. Not that it even addresses why you didn’t say anything.” Shining let out a long, loud snort. “At any rate, I don’t know or care who your mentor is, just that she’s evil.”

I let out an exhausted sigh. It always came back to that. There would be no forgiveness while I supported Luna, no matter how sorry I was or what I did to apologize. It wasn’t that I hadn’t trusted him, just that I hadn’t statistically trusted him.

Munching on my mocha donut – for no other reason than because it was terribly awkward in this atmosphere, and Shining wouldn’t feel comfortable talking while I did – I considered how to proceed. What exactly was the best argument to get through to Shining? He was not a mathy person. Numbers didn’t have the kind of sway with him that they did with me.

Well…as a guard, Shining should have undergone at least some training on psychological profiling, especially so as he was the captain now and an officer for a long time before. That was probably hurting Luna’s case right now, since Shining would be modeling her in criminal terms, but maybe I could use that to my advantage.

“Shining,” I began, hoping this wouldn’t blow up in my face, “I’d imagine the cognitive sciences are more your field of expertise than mine, but I do know how to abuse the mistakes people commonly make.”

“Don’t change the topic,” Shining interrupted.

“I’m not. Just listen, all right?”

Not being interrupted again quite yet, I continued, “So if I know how to take advantage of mistakes, it follows that I have a fairly intuitive, if not formal, understanding of what those mistakes are.”

“And your point is?”

“Well…part of how I recruited some of my crew members – ah, actually, you know I’ve been in space, right?”

Shining nodded, and his frown doubled. Still, he let the remark pass without objection.

“So part of how I recruited them was shock and awe. I…um…sort of first internalized this lesson when I was convincing Twinkleshine to leave with me, but I don’t think I explicitly realized what I was doing then.”

An eyebrow raised – Shining was apparently almost as good at that as me now – he asked, “Something you want to say about that?”

That I abused memory spells to get Twinkleshine to join the Nebulous? No, I was going to take that secret to the grave if I could. It was rather unlikely I would ever do that again, or at least not with any frequency that had any impact on my moral character, and I didn’t see what point it would serve to mention it.

“It’s not relevant,” I replied with a wave of my hoof. “The point is, I made a big display of showing off and wowing my potential crew members with my power and self-assurance, like going to space was just another day at work for me.

“I mean, it was, in some sense, but flaring was a constant worry at the time, and it was always frustrating when somepony rejected my offer, and I would get a little nervous that I was going to mess up my pitch. But I put all that aside and presented myself as some kind of perfect pony, at least until we’d already left and started…socializing.” To whatever extent that we actually socialized.

As I’d awkwardly stopped talking for just a little too long, Shining finished for me, “So you tricked them into thinking you were more competent than you actually were by making them think ‘perfection’ was a core feature of your personality, rather than something you’d constructed for the situation.”

To Shining’s disapproving look, I said, “I’d prefer to say I tricked them into thinking I was exactly as competent as I was, but yes. Being half the size of everypony else made things hard sometimes.”

I took a rather long drink of my cooling hot chocolate. After having to ration chocolate for so many years, I might very well cry if I let the drink go to waste.

“But that’s the same mistake that you’re making,” I said, playing with my cup in my hooves. “‘Luna did this horrible thing, so she must be a horrible pony, too.’ But that’s not true. It’s not like Luna goes around randomly killing ponies and disrupting families for fun. Yes, Luna asked me not to tell you about her, but what reason did she have to trust you, a guard, with her life? By the time I was old enough and educated enough that she could trust the ponies I trusted, the opportunity to talk to you or Cadance was long gone.”

All throughout my little speech, Shining leveled a withering gaze at me. Finished, I just sat up a little straighter and stared back.

“That’s not how justice works, Twilight. You don’t just let a murder go free because they don’t plan on committing another murder.”

I purposefully tilted my head to the side and made myself look confused. “What are you talking about? We do that all the time even in the modern world. One second…”

Law was not my specialty, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find the precedent I was looking for. My horn lit up as I scryed the Canterlot Public Library a few blocks away and went through their legal section. There should be public records of court cases somewhere in the non-fiction section. Canterlot was the capital of Equestria, after all; if any public library kept such things, it would be this one.

Halfway through another donut, I exclaimed something to the effect of, “Fnd tem!” while spewing crumbs all over Shining. I swallowed, then uttered a sheepish, “Sorry.”

A ‘small’ stack of books found their way to our table via a short-term teleportation loan. I had no idea where my library card was, and I wasn’t going to bother getting a new one or going through the motions. I mentioned as much to Shining as I started digging through the cases.

The entire process went rather faster than I’d expected. At least in the past fifty years or so, the documentation was clean and well-structured. All I had to do was glance at the charge and the verdict of each until I stumbled upon one I wanted.

“Ah. Here we are. One” – I scanned the paper for the defendant’s name – “Petal was acquitted of first-degree murder.”

Shining’s magic seized the book from my own and pulled it over to him. He read through it frighteningly quickly, at least until I remembered that he’d certainly read a lot of these in his job. He was probably just skimming it.

“This is a self-defense case, Twilight. Are you seriously trying to argue…Luna, I suppose, did all…this” – Shining waved a hoof vaguely in my direction – “in self-defense?”

Knowing exactly the kind of reaction I’d get if I just said yes, I shook my head. But knowing how easily Celestia had beaten me weeks ago only proved the point I was trying to make.

“Not in the normal sense, but I could certainly make the case.”

“Twilight!” Shining began, dramatically rising to his hooves, but I cut him off.

“Just listen first. We can hardly have a debate if we don’t at least pretend to hear each other out.”

With a pronounced snort, Shining slumped back onto his seat.

“How do I explain this…” I idly ruffled my mane with a hoof in thought. “It’s… So I once told you to learn a whole lot of defensive spells, and I see that you’ve taken the lesson to heart.”

Eyes narrowed, Shining opened his mouth but paused. Then in a much more controlled tone that I’d expected, even if it sounded kind of nervous, he asked, “Are you expecting to attack me or something that you’ve been probing them without me even noticing?”

“Alicorn of Magic,” was all I said to that.

Shining raised an eyebrow, beyond obviously unsatisfied with that answer.

I fiddled with my now empty glass. If Cadance hadn’t told Shining anything about how…different alicorns were to regular ponies, I didn’t exactly want to step on her hooves there.

But then I supposed I could just say that, actually. Except Cadance’s domain was actually kind of scary. If I said anything at all, even to go talk to her, Shining would eventually realize something was up.

Sighing, I said, “I’m going to go get some more hot chocolate.”

I got up from the table and made my way toward the counter, letting my mouth run on automatic.

So what did I want to do about this? Did I risk getting Cadance even more upset with me, or did I let Shining worry?

As I sat back down, another sigh escaped me. I sipped at my new drink and gazed into its swirly, viscous goodness.

“Let’s just say I’m very good at magic, okay? I’m not going to do anything to you.”

Hesitantly, Shining agreed. But he did sit up straighter on the edge of his chair, far more alert than before.

“All I was trying to say by it is you at least understand how many avenues of attack there are with magic now, right? The number of ways you can kill, or maim, or just in general defeat somepony scales exponentially with how much magic you know.”

“And your point is?”

“The point,” I began, kind of annoyed that Shining didn’t understand just from having his attention drawn to it, “is that at a certain point, you win just by showing up to the fight first. I… For example, after returning from banishment – or ascension – an alicorn is extremely vulnerable. Like, lose in an instant without having a chance to fight back vulnerable.”

I supposed I wasn’t being very subtle, but my tone of voice must have tipped Shining off.

“Speaking from experience?”

“Yes.” Then much more calmly, or at least with a more even voice, I continued, “The only defense against that is to win before the fight begins.”

“Or send a minion in to delay the fight,” Shining retorted, sending not-so-subtle gestures my way.

As much as I hated to admit this, I said, “My record survival time sparing against Luna seriously is ten seconds. My average is more like three, and that’s without her having an ambush ready.”

“Okay, sure.” Shining finally returned the book he’d taken back to the pile. He leaned forward and stared directly into my eyes. “But do you honestly believe what happened was necessary?”

After a fatal hesitation, I said, “There’s always a way for a plan to succeed with non-zero probability without element X by increasing complexity, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.”

Shining leaned back somewhat. The smug look on his face told me he knew he’d just pounced on an important issue.

“That’s a no if I’ve ever heard one.”

“Fine,” I admitted. “I’ve said something somewhat similar to Luna myself. But I wouldn’t be defending her if I didn’t understand what was going through her head at the time. Surely you know what ponies are capable of when they’re afraid for their life.”

“Sure, but–”

“Double that a million times for alicorns,” I interrupted. “Death isn’t just terrifying for us. It’s something that must be avoided at all costs. Any probability greater than zero will happen eventually if we keep tempting fate.”

“That still doesn’t justify anything!” Shining said, more than a little heated for some reason.

My ears fell to my head. “No,” I whispered. It didn’t. “But it’s understandable, especially for somepony who stared her impending death in the face for a whole millennium. I can’t even imagine what I’d be like after that.”

“A frightened, crazy monster,” Shining said rather bluntly, “but still a monster, and still crazy.”

“Luna is not a monster!” I resisted the urge to slam the table, but only barely. Breathing deeply first, I continued, “She has some problems, but we’re working on them.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” I insisted. “I mean, not too much right now. I’m studying up on the subjects, and we’re letting our emotions cool off” – in more than one way – “but we definitely have been and will be.”

“Twilight, how on Equus can you be fooled by a simple pretended show of remorse? You’re supposed to be the smart one. For crying out loud, you’re not even planning to see a professional!”

I bit down my annoyance with how stubborn Shining was being. “Shining, there are zero alicorn therapists. Er, that is, therapists who are alicorns. No confidentiality clause is enough for some of the information being discussed.”

Shining opened his mouth, but I interrupted, “Has Celestia ever been to a therapist? After at least banishing her only sister. There’s no shame in it.” There weren’t therapists a thousand years ago, but there were still plenty of ponies who would listen and offer advice.

“Well, no, not that I know of, but that’s hardly any of my business.”

“It’s not not your business, either. You’re family, if only a soon-to-be in-law by adoption. You’re complaining I didn’t trust you or talk to you. What about her? If her position really is that she had to send her beloved sister to the moon, how has she been coping? Does she care anymore? Is Luna just another potential threat to her rule to squash?”

Shining didn’t answer right away. In fact, it became increasingly clear that he wasn’t going to answer at all. It seemed he’d never bothered to even ask those kinds of questions. Even if, by some grand cosmic joke, Celestia was a loving – however poorly – sister, Luna’s banishment could hardly have changed her for the better.

Still, happy to have the reprieve, I said nothing either and just let the time pass us by for the moment. Shining munched on an inferior raisin cookie as he thought.

And I, well, for the first time in years, I took a proper look at my brother. He was a lot…squishier than the last time I’d seen him. Certainly he had more magic, but there was less muscle to him. Upon closer inspection, there were a few places on his face where his fur didn’t line up just right, which probably meant small scars he didn’t want to go to a doctor for.

I tucked that thought away to ask about later. Surely Shining would love to regale me with stories of his great battles and daring dos when we were on better terms. Even if they probably wouldn’t be as good as Luna’s, I’d still like to hear about them at some point.

He really should go to a doctor, though. Magic could make such superficial damage go away. And if he was ignoring them, what else might he be ignoring?

But then maybe he just hadn’t noticed? No, Cadance would have said something. Well, she would have harped on him to go to a doctor, rather. Hmm…

Eh, oh well. Another time. Twinkleshine was about five seconds away. I turned toward the door to greet her even as I teleported the books I’d borrowed back to the library.

“I’m back!” Twinkleshine called out to us. She retook her seat and proudly displayed a few packs of unopened playing cards.

I raised an eyebrow in her general direction, and she said, “You two used to play cards together often, right?”

Ah. “We did,” I said, not wanting to look at how Shining reacted. He’d probably been wondering if it’d always been Pupa that destroyed him in games. “I’m undefeated at poker. At least against Shining. Luna usually mops the floor with me.”

My magic grabbed one of the boxes and opened it up. The cards flew out in a needlessly dramatic fashion. Rather displeased by the boring images of the face cards, I cast a little spell to repaint them.

The jokers I turned into Dash, although I was sorely tempted to put Pinkie Pie there instead. But then Discord would work, too.

Eh, whatever. The aces I replaced with myself. Then I placed Luna on the kings, Cadance on the queens, and Celestia on the knaves.

I nodded to myself, my work done. Or at least my artistic work. There was something about shuffling cards dramatically that really got the blood flowing. It was mesmerizing in a way to watch them fly back and forth in simple – but to an outside observer, seemingly complex – patterns. It was much like a grand dance in a ballroom, in a way.

Alright, that was entirely enough whimsy. I set the well-shuffled deck down in the center of our table.

“Hmm… You remember how to play Spades, right?” I asked Shining.

After a half-second’s hesitation, he asked, “The usual stakes?”

I turned to Twinkleshine. “By which he means one low-cost favor, like paying for snacks.”

“Oh. Oh, okay! Sounds great.”

With Twinkleshine’s agreement, I split the deck into three piles of thirteen and passed one to each of us.

“Whoever has the two of clubs, swap it with the last card and lead the first round.”

I fanned open my hand and quickly found it rather wanting. I didn’t have too many or too few of any one suit, and my trump cards were pretty low. The only thing that it really had going for it was that I had three of the four aces.

In a few moments, Twinkleshine threw the two of clubs down on the table and picked up the fifty-fourth card. She bid seven – curse her luck – while I bid four and Shining bid three. Somepony had overbid by at least one. I was certainly not looking at Twinkleshine when I thought that.

We’d gotten through only three tricks before Shining picked up an old thread of conversation again.

“So if you agree with me – and it sounds like you do – why are you still on her side?”

I threw down a wasted king of diamonds and sighed.

“I don’t agree with you, Shining. Sunset Shimmer’s death wasn’t a good thing, exactly. And while I really appreciate having you, and Mom, and Dad, there wasn’t much of a reason to swap Aurora out for me.” I bit my lip and glanced at Twinkleshine, who was fortunately not reacting with any surprise. “But that doesn’t make Luna evil.”

I realized it at the exact moment Shining spoke.

“You’re just going in circles now. Now I say, ‘You can’t let ponies get away with that kind of stuff.’”

“Well she hasn’t!” I shouted over Shining. “Celestia ruined her life, locked her away, and for the past thousand years, Luna’s been stuck banished to the moon! She’s served, like, twenty-five life imprisonments for no reason. Equestria owes her a few mortal murders! And besides, the diarchs are the law!”

I glanced over at whatever was on my shoulder, which turned out to be Twinkleshine’s hoof. Then it hit me that I’d completely lost my temper like a foal.

To the tune of a muttered, “Apologies,” I flumped back down onto my seat and breathed deeply to cool off.

While I did that, Twinkleshine said, “Um, Shining Armor, I don’t know Princess Luna nearly as well as Twilight, but she has been pretty nice as long as I’ve known her. Maybe a bit condescending, I guess, but she hasn’t struck me as particularly bad.”

Shining’s glare let up as he looked away from me to address Twinkleshine.

“Most criminals that… In laymare's terms, I suppose, most criminals of Luna’s ‘caliber’ tend to come off as charming and likable. Since she has a known criminal record, I’d bet on it being an affectation rather than her normal behavior.”

I found myself unconsciously gritting my teeth when I recalled Chamomile’s words, that Luna had to remind herself she cares about her subjects. And then there was my own admission that Luna had serious problems.

But that I could deal with. Rather, Shining was insinuating that Luna didn’t care about me even as he argued that Luna was evil. I wouldn’t have thought him capable of such subtle subtext if he hadn’t glanced at me while he said it.

“Maybe?” Twinkleshine said. “I mean, I don’t really get that impression myself, but I wouldn’t know what to look for. But, um, what exactly would you want to have happen to Princess Luna?”

Shining let out a long sigh. “That’s a good question. I highly doubt she’d cooperate with any legal sentence, which drastically limits our options. Presumably we’d have to resort to banishment again or something similar.”

“Not going to happen,” I grumbled.

Before Shining could respond to that, Twinkleshine said, “Suppose she would, though. Then what would you do?”

“Well…” Shining stopped to think for a few seconds. “I’d probably want to send her through the courts and let them decide. Life sentences for an alicorn mean eternity, so imprisonment until rehabilitation would be my suggestion, I suppose.”

“What counts as rehabilitation?” Twinkleshine asked. I thought I saw where she was going with this, and it was fairly clever.

This time Shining’s brow scrunched up in thought. It felt like at least a minute before he spoke again.

“The usual standard of judgment is good behavior in prison and a genuine feeling of regret for the action in and of itself, not regret for being caught, captured, et cetera. Usually the subject has to understand why they committed their crime and has to be able to explain why they won’t do it again. But if this Luna were a psychopath, however, that could prove difficult. It’d be hard to judge if she had actually adopted a reasonable moral code–”

“Shining,” I interrupted as calmly as I could. “I’ve talked at length with Luna about Sunset Shimmer, and Aurora, and…other things. She’d do all that again if she had to, and I wouldn’t blame her. At least not much. She may be hardened to it, but she still feels. She tries to minimize damage.”

“That’s not the same thing as regret, Twilight,” Shining said.

If nothing else good had or would come from this little side conversation, it at least left Shining calmer and more comfortable with the more familiar subject matter. It was a refreshing change from being yelled at every other sentence.

“By the way, I’ve got this last trick.”

Shining placed down his last card of the round. I’d barely been paying attention, throwing out cards practically on automatic. I had three tricks from my three aces, but I’d let everything else go by.

Only slightly more annoyed than I’d already been, I brought a napkin over to us. With a simple spell, I wrote our scores onto it. My minus forty was particularly…rough in appearance.

Taking all the cards except the two of clubs, Shining shuffled them with less flair than I’d displayed.

“Has this Luna of yours ever once expressed to you regret over something? Not regret that ‘she had to do something’, but regret that it happened at all to begin with?”

“Yes,” I answered immediately.

Shining raised an eyebrow as he dealt. “On what issue?”

“Um…” I put up a hoof to forestall Shining saying anything. I didn’t want to unintentionally lie in the details, so I thought back to when I’d talked with Luna right after my ascension. That night was a little…hazy, given the emotions and the rather emotionally charged sex that had followed, but I was sure I could remember what I needed well enough.

Sunset Shimmer… I remembered Luna saying she sympathized with her, but that wasn’t quite what Shining was asking for.

I had a vague impression that Luna had felt bad about putting me in Aurora’s place, but I suspected that feeling was more directed inward than toward the act itself. There were certainly some feelings there that I needed to help her work out, but that wasn’t what Shining wanted either.

Oh. “She cried when she… Actually, that’s kind of…personal.”

I’d seen Luna cry twice. Once over the ‘mare in the moon’ thing, which probably came right after she’d decided to give up on her sister, now that I thought about it. The other time was when she confessed what she’d almost done to me after I told her about Celestia’s plans.

But there was a…slightly less personal thing I felt comfortable sharing.

“Luna apologized to me for not telling me about Sunset Shimmer sooner and for being cowardly about the whole issue. She… I experienced unicorn bane for the first time and…dying, sort of, during one of Sunset’s memories. Luna sincerely apologized for letting me go through that.”

Preempting any objection Shining could make, I added, “She did that independent of my finding out about my relation to Sunset on my own. As I said, she also apologized for not telling me about that herself, but not exactly in the way you wanted to hear about.”

“Hmph.” Shining dealt the last of the deck out to us and quietly said, “I guess you’re not completely brainwashed.”

It was hard to tell if he intended for me to hear that or not, given how much time he spent with Cadance and her own excellent hearing. Not that I really wanted to dignify it with a response anyway. ‘Not completely brainwashed’ still meant ‘brainwashed’.

I picked up my new hand and fanned it open. It was rather mediocre again, so I just bid three, expecting to be as distracted as the last round. That was probably how Twinkleshine actually took so many tricks, come to think of it. She’d said less than Shining and me, and she also had less personal investment in the conversation.

After we’d started the round proper, Twinkleshine said, “So getting back to what I was saying. If you want to reform Princess Luna, and you’re not happy with where she’s at right now, then what’s the point of locking her up?”

Shining stole one of the tricks I’d been counting on with a random trump card, then turned to Twinkleshine. “What do you mean?”

“Well, Princess Celestia already put her in jail for–”

I interrupted, “That’s not what she intended to–”

“Shh.”

Did – did Twinkleshine just shush me? That was new.

“Anyway, Princess Luna has been in jail for a thousand years already. What use would there be in putting her back in when it clearly didn’t do for her what you wanted?”

There was an entire two tricks of silence as Shining contemplated that.

“Fair enough,” he finally admitted. “But it’s not like we have any other real options.”

“You could just let her go,” Twinkleshine suggested.

Her words were met with an immediate, “Absolutely not.”

“Why? If Princess Luna were welcomed with open hooves, that is if everything went back to normal for her, wouldn’t she go back to normal, too? Twilight knows more history than me, but wasn’t Princess Luna a great princess, a patron of the arts, and a war hero?”

I nodded in confirmation, after which Twinkleshine continued, “And also wouldn’t she be more open to being reformed, or reeducated, or rehabilitated, or whatever, if she were in a comfortable environment?”

“I suppose so,” Shining agreed, “but that’s not an option. She’s murdered, abducted, and who knows what else. If she’s done all that, then what else will she do before she calms down?”

“Nothing,” I said, claiming an unexpected trick. “Luna’s grudge is only with Celestia. Anypony else she could’ve possibly taken issue with is centuries dead and buried.”

“And who’s to say she won’t find some new grudge once the old one is gone? Or perhaps she’ll strike at Trixie again for some petty revenge.”

I paused a second to let my growing irritation with the constant accusations settle. “For the record, Luna isn’t going to kill Celestia. She never planned to even before she made me.”

Shining raised a skeptical eyebrow, but I ignored it.

“And she only abducted Trixie as a precaution until after I bonded with the Element of Friendship.”

Shining’s eyebrow only rose higher at that, which admittedly got a blush out of me. He also glanced at Luna’s sword on the table, which I promptly moved out of sight. I did not need him to get the bright idea to abduct me for a couple hours…anymore than he already had, that was.

“A-anyway, it’s not like Luna is that quick to anger. Her conflict with Celestia took decades to develop and spin out of control, and she didn’t even notice Celestia starting it until years later.”

“That’s not the way I heard it.”

Obviously, Shining had heard the story about a sudden personality change. To that, I said, “Luna is not possessed by any kind of spirit, magical intelligence, demon, et cetera, et cetera.”

Practically ignoring me, Shining said, “From what I heard, Luna went insane with paranoia with or without the help of some artifact, tried to depose Princess Celestia, and got banished.”

“No, technically, and yes, respectively,” I retorted.

Twinkleshine, who had been quiet since she’d last spoken, asked, “How do you technically try to depose somepony?”

“Ah… Well, Luna probably would’ve tucked Celestia away somewhere for a while, but Celestia would’ve still been a diarch. She wasn’t going to ruin Celestia or kill her.”

“I’m very skeptical of that,” Shining said, “but she was hardly innocent during that time.”

I bit back a sigh. “Luna admits that the time right before and especially right after her banishment that she wasn’t a very good pony – mostly after – but can you really fault her for that? She was in an incredibly hostile environment with a sister that was out to get her; it would take…”

I tried to come up with the exact right word to describe just how absurdly nice somepony would have to be to suffer all that with a smile. And I did find one, but it wasn’t exactly a word, per se.

“You’d have to be Cadance to put up with all that.”

In a quiet voice that had a certain sense of…doom, I supposed, about it, Twinkleshine asked, “Could I make a suggestion?”

Our game ground to a halt, and Shining and I fixed our attention upon Twinkleshine.

“Well, I think either Princess Celestia is lying, or Princess Luna really misunderstood her in the past.”

Shining and I nodded almost in unison. The issue might not be quite a dichotomy, but the fiddly extraneous explanations weren’t much worth considering.

“If the former is the case, then Princess Celestia is…well, pretty horrible. But certainly Princess Luna is still at fault for her own actions, even if they may have been somewhat justified.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Shining hesitantly nod in agreement.

“But if it’s the latter, Princess Luna really did overreact. It doesn’t really change how moral her actions were, given she really felt she was in danger, but she’d also be at fault for not saying anything.”

Twinkleshine paused for effect, then looked at Shining in particular.

“But Princess Celestia would be responsible, too. If you went years…decades?”

I nodded.

“Decades,” Twinkleshine continued, “without noticing your sister and coruler was afraid of you and Equestria wasn’t treating her well despite her good service, all while she slowly went mad, that’s… I don’t even know what the term would be. Grand criminal negligence?”

“That seems unfair…” Though he said that, Shining sounded a bit unsure.

I was more than a bit unhappy with where Twinkleshine was going with this, too.

“What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that neither side is really good or evil no matter who’s right. I don’t think either side really wants to compromise, but…maybe…”

Twinkleshine gave me a particularly significant look of worry and nervously bit her lip. I tried not to frown in return. So long as she wasn’t proposing a compromise – which would never work – it might be possible to work with whatever she had in mind.

Still obviously not confident in her proposal, Twinkleshine continued, “Maybe we could stop trying to argue about who’s at fault and who’s in the wrong. At least to start with. It’s not… I don’t know exactly how to put it.”

“Twinkleshine, even if we did that, we’d just argue about who deserves to win instead. Same debate, different terms.”

Shining nodded. That, at least, we were in agreement on.

“I suppose so…” Twinkleshine said, looking rather dejected that her idea was shot down so quickly.

I understood where Twinkleshine was coming from, though. During my ascension when I was with Cadance, she and I had expressed a similar desire to not let Luna’s and Celestia’s fight come between us, at least not permanently.

“When I last saw Cadance…” I began. My remaining cards floated up to somewhat hide my face, or rather to keep Shining out of view. Cadance had been a sure thing for this, but Shining… Well, he wasn’t exactly in a good mood. “She and I promised to always be sisters. I – well…even if you don’t want me, I’ll always consider myself your little sister, Shining.”

Seconds passed. Out of the corner of my eye – which was focused on my hand, and not Shining – I could see Twinkleshine grow increasingly worried. That…was not a good sign. I felt myself sinking lower in my seat in response.

I dared to peek out over the top of my cards and found Shining frowning and staring me down. Or…maybe just not knowing how to look at me, as a more charitable interpretation of his scrunched up and randomly shifting brow.

“That,” Shining began, apparently choosing his next words very carefully, “is the worst kind of emotional blackmail.”

That hurt. I tried not to let it show, but my voice still hitched a bit. “It wasn’t supposed to be. I really would miss my BBBFF if this tore us apart.”

“Just like you ‘missed’ me these past several years, no doubt.”

“I visited!” I repeated myself at Shining’s skeptical, glowering look. “Not as often as I should have. But I did! Pupa and Chrysalis, her mother, would patch me into their hive mind, and I’d visit you, and Mom, and Dad, and Cadance through them.”

Shining’s brows furrowed deep. Somewhere between grumbling and talking to himself, he said, “Cadance didn’t mention that to me.”

“Really? Didn’t she tell you she knew I’d left home?”

“Yes, but–” Shining’s eyes widened for a moment, then narrowed on me. “Wait. Was I the only one who you didn’t tell? The only one you didn’t talk to directly while you were gone?”

I let out a weak whine as I withered under Shining’s glare. “Kind of… I – I didn’t mean for Cadance to find out. Celestia revealed Pupa in front of her. Mom and Dad knew, though. I mean, they’re Mom and Dad. I had their permission to leave.”

And that was true, even if I’d had to argue with and persuade them and…wordlessly insist I was going to go with or without their approval. But still, I had convinced them it was important and worth the danger.

“Mom and Dad agreed to this madness?” Shining shouted, slamming the table. I nearly jumped out of my seat. He knocked over his own cup with the force, but Twinkleshine manged to grab both hers and mine in time.

Why on Equus would he be this upset with… Oh.

Rather weakly, I said, “They didn’t know about Aurora and me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Shining blinked. “Ah. Of course. Sorry. For overreacting there, that is.” He went about cleaning up his spilled drink, and as he did so, he spoke, descending into mumbles. “Still pissed about this. Need to have words with Mom and Dad. Of all the stupid…”

I quietly sighed to myself. This wasn’t getting us anywhere. I really needed Luna to be back and to have been in charge of Equestria for, like, a decade before I’d be able to actually convince Shining that she was on the up and up. He needed to personally see that she wasn’t the monster he imagined her to be. Celestia’s influence was too deeply ingrained in him otherwise, and Luna had done him deep, personal harm. Seeing past both of those would take a lot of work.

And then there were his issues with me personally. I had no idea what I was going to do about that. Apologizing wasn’t exactly my forte, as unpracticed as I was.

I’d promise to be more inclusive of him, but what would that even mean, really? I wasn’t going to be on Equus for any significant length of time for a while yet, and coming over to play…probably wouldn’t solve anything.

Sigh. What was a mare to do?

Well, here went nothing.

“Shining, without it meaning anything else, I really do still consider myself your LSBFF. Even if you won’t be my BBBFF, that won’t change. That’s what the ‘forever’ is there for, after all.”

I overheard Twinkleshine giggling to herself, and Shining just rolled his eyes.

“Look…Twily…”

My heart soared at Shining’s usage of his nickname for me, even despite the somewhat strangled tone he’d said it with. A huge smile grew on my face. It was dreadfully premature, but at least he hadn’t disowned me. Maybe today wouldn’t turn into a disaster after all.

“I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but it’s not enough to just say it. You have to… Don’t give me that look. You’re too old for it to work.”

My puppy dog eyes turned into a frown. But there was an obvious solution. I cast a little spell to keep ponies from seeing us if they looked our way, then set off a changeling polymorph to my filly form.

Without a highchair, I had to balance on my hindhooves to get my head fully above the tabletop. Once I was steady, I reengaged my ultimate attack.

“Twily, that’s not… Stop. I–”

Shining pinned a napkin to my face. Over my muffled protests, I could hear him sigh.

“No wonder Mom and Dad went along with you. I forgot how adorable you were.”

“I know, right?” Twinkleshine said. “Growing up with her was one thing, but seeing her from this perspective, it’s a wonder fillies don’t rule the world.”

“Ugh!” With the napkin finally removed from my face, I said, “The known extant alicorns practically do, and they’re fillies as immortals measure age.”

Shining replied, “I certainly believe that you never grew up.”

Rolling my eyes, I returned to my previous disguise. “There. Happy?”

“Better. But take your turn already.”

Oh, shoot. I played my last card of the round, securing another negative thirty points for myself. I gave my measly two tricks to Twinkleshine and dismissed the game from my mind for the moment.

Shining was in…a neutral mood, at least. His voice wasn’t exactly brimming with joy in my presence, but this was a vast improvement over the constant bile and sharp words.

“Seriously, Shining. However this works out, I’ll always be your little sister.”

“Then act like it.”

I frowned. “Well besides backstabbing Luna, what do you want me to do? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure I’m doing the sisterly thing right now. I love you, we’re playing games together, and we’re talking about each other’s lives and feelings.”

“That’s…”

“She’s right, you know,” Twinkleshine quietly interjected.

“Look, Shining, I’m sorry. I really am. We can argue at each other about what I should have done all day until our voices are hoarse, but it’s not going to matter. I’m prioritizing Luna’s life, and I hurt you. Neither of those things will change. I can talk to you more. I can lend a friendly ear for you to vent to. I can do whatever sisterly thing you want me to. But I can’t magically make your hurt feelings better, however much I’d like to.”

Shining only looked more and more upset as I’d spoken, but at least he didn’t lash out in response. It’d all needed to be said, and I suspected he understood that, too.

“Fine,” Shining growled in defeat. “Let’s talk about your love life.”

I let out an exasperated sigh.

“Her I approve of,” Shining said, point a hoof at Twinkleshine.

Twinkleshine responded with a blush, hiding her face behind the new hand she’d quietly dealt. “T-thank you.”

“Now tell me all about her flaws.”

Wha… I glanced toward Twinkleshine, who predictably looked absolutely mortified.

Hesitantly, I asked, “In front of her?”

“Twilight!” protested Twinkleshine, turning her dismayed expression my way.

Shining cast a quick silencing spell over Twinkleshine’s head, much to her further indignation. “Well?”

For a moment, I glanced Twinkleshine’s way. Unable to bear it I looked away and spoke quickly.

“Low – but improving – self-confidence; somewhat dependent on me, which is entirely my fault; generally doesn’t think too far ahead; and shy, to name the important ones.” Dismissing the silencing spell on Twinkleshine, I asked, “Happy?”

“Very. But Princess Cadenza has deigned to tell me that you love Luna as well, romantically and every other way.”

“And?”

“What are her flaws?”

I was tempted to just say Luna was perfect just to annoy Shining, but that’d hardly get me anywhere with him.

“She bottles up her emotions, she obviously can take things too far, she has a hard time connecting with ponies – even more so than me – and she’s an addict.”

Shining said nothing.

I rolled my eyes. “Look, if you want me to say she’s perfect, I can come back as starry-eyed eight-year-old me and yell at you for even suggesting that she’s not.”

Twinkleshine faked a cough, drawing my attention to her. “Princess Luna is an addict?” she asked.

“Yeah…” I rubbed my mane with a hoof awkwardly. “I mean, it’s not really a problem for alicorns, but still. Her teeth are for chewing gems.”

“Oooooh,” Twinkleshine said. “I’d always wondered about that.”

Anyway, I finally got around to picking up my new hand. It was far better than my previous two, and I bid five on it.

I picked up Shining’s hand for him – without looking at it of course – and waved it around in front of his eyes. Eventually he got the message and took hold of it himself.

“Really, Shining, is it too much to believe I’m not blindly following Luna?”

“No,” Shining mumbled, “but I’d hoped.”

Well, that wasn’t the worst reaction he could have had.

“Just don’t turn in your commission,” I said, “and you can see with your own eyes that Luna will be great.”

Recovering properly from his daze, Shining asked, “Better than Princess Celestia?” No doubt he was baiting me into saying things that I wouldn’t be able to back up.

I shook my head. “Probably not. Celestia is the law and order sister. Luna is more arts and sciences, and she knows she’s not quite as good at day-to-day ruling.”

Shining stole one of the tricks I thought I’d had, then asked, “And why would anypony want to downgrade rulers? We live in a golden age, Twilight. What does Equestria get out of your mentor’s coup, besides a selfish, unstable princess?”

“A renaissance, I’d expect. Luna can only do so much from banishment with her own funds. Besides, if my talks with Cadance are anything to go by, Celestia has most of the daily grind down to a routine for ponies at this point, so it’s not like we really need her anymore. I don’t think we could run Equestria into the ground if we tried.”

“Besides destroying it fighting for the crown.”

“Oh, please,” I said, rolling my eyes.

Twinkleshine chose to speak up at that. “It is a serious concern,” she said. “You did mention something about getting them to fight off planet.”

“Mhm. I’m pretty sure I can talk Cadance into forming a…younger generation alliance, I guess, with me and Dash. The point would be for us to do nothing and force Luna’s and Celestia’s fight off planet this time. I don’t want another Everfree Forest on my lawn, so to speak.”

We played through a few tricks while Shining thought about what I’d said. He didn’t have an instant retort this time, which I took as a good sign.

Eventually, though, Shining said, “That is perhaps the sanest thing you’ve said all night. Was that a subtle hint that I should tell the princess?”

Oh, I actually hadn’t thought about that, but that worked out well enough.

“I suppose so.”

But if Shining was taking messages, he might as well be a delivery boy, too. I didn’t want to open a dragonfire channel to Celestia, even if it should be perfectly safe to. It’d make negotiations for Pupa’s performance easier, too, with Shining acting as the middlemare.

“Actually,” I added, “I have a few things I’d like to relay to her through you, but that can wait until later.”

Shining mumbled something about cadets and coffee, but I didn’t quite catch it all. At any rate, he had another question for me.

“So what happens if your mentor wins and turns out to be a monster?”

“Luna’s not–”

“Suppose she were,” Shining interrupted, echoing Twinkleshine’s earlier words. It was practically forcing me to indulge his scenario.

“Fine,” I said. “Luna’s a monster and rules with an iron hoof. She… I’ll be honest, I don’t even know what an evil Luna would do. Eternal night is stupid, so don’t let that nonsense infect this conversation. It’s not like Luna actually wants anything from Equestria. It’s the other way around, really. And when you’re a goddess and the head of the government, there’s not much point in embezzling or other petty crimes. The worst she could do is shut down all attempts at government, but that’s–”

“Twilight, I can’t hear you.”

Oh shoot. I’d started mumbling halfway through that, hadn’t I?

“Sorry, but it occurs to me that I honestly don’t know what an evil Luna acts like. I mean, I guess she’d have a shorter temper and…issue corporal punishment?” I shrugged, passing the burden of conversation back to Shining.

It took a moment and some rather funny thoughtful faces, but Shining eventually said, “Let’s just suppose she’s generically evil and needs to be stopped. What are you going to do about it?”

“Well, I mean, if she needs to be stopped, I’d stop her.” It was barely better than a tautology, but it was the truth.

“How?” Shining pressed. “Force? Words? Political subversion?”

“No!” Realizing only after the fact that I’d shouted, I said, “I mean, no. Not that last one. Luna… I think she would understand if I tried to defeat her in combat, and she’ll always listen to me, but…”

I breathed deep, then downed the rest of my hot chocolate to keep the shivers at bay.

“Just imagining what she’d look like if I betrayed her like that…” I’d be just another Celestia in her eyes at that point. “I couldn’t do it. I’d never make her go through that again.”

Shining nodded slightly, whatever that meant. It didn’t quite feel like sympathy.

But whatever it was, Shining asked, “So how long would it take words to fail before you opened fire?”

That was an easy question. “When I felt like she was a lost cause.”

“A lost cause?” Shining asked. “You mean when she’s so far gone you have no hope of getting her back? At the point where you might as well kill her, since she’s not coming back?”

Well…probably before then. I wouldn’t kill her. Alicorn murders were near the top of my list of no-nos.

Shining put his cards down. His gaze held my own. “Do you honestly think you’d ever think she was a lost cause? You’re madly in love with her.”

As much as I hated to admit it… “Love fades,” I whispered. “I’m sure Cadance knows that better than anypony. I don’t know if I’d be able to love her if she were beyond hope.” Sighing, I forced my frown back into a small smile. “But it’d take a long time.”

“I see.” Shining relaxed a bit and sat back, picking his cards up once more. “At least I don’t have to worry about my great-great-great-great-great-great–”

“I get your point,” I said. I could hear the irritation in my voice just as easily as Shining no doubt could. “It’s not like I wouldn’t try to get her to stop being ‘generically evil’ before then. Besides, it’s not going to happen. What would even be her motivation for being evil on a large scale?”

“And what do you think is going to happen?” Shining asked.

A moment later, Twinkleshine shared similar sentiments. “I’m actually curious, too. I mean, after taking a trip through space and staying at Luminance” – I kicked Twinkleshine under the table – “for Hearth’s Warming, what’s the plan now?”

“Um…”

“You can’t tell me she hasn’t said anything to you,” Shining protested. “That’s a big ‘I’m going to betray you’ red flag if she won’t talk about after the victory. How can you be so–”

“It’s not that,” I interrupted, biting down a more yelling-inclined response. “It’s…kind of embarrassing. Luna’s immediate plans are basically movie nights.”

Shining stared at me with his jaw dropped and his eyebrows furrowed like I’d gone crazy.

“She’s been out of the loop for a thousand years!”

I looked to Twinkleshine for support, but she looked just as surprised, if perhaps a bit more polite about it.

“Okay, look.” I took a deep breath. “Basically, the next few years Luna just wants to get caught up with modern and historical culture and take a look at new things in the real world. I expect she’ll want to read and paint, too, since she has a castle that’s a thousand years behind in its historical record-mural. After that, her plans are basically ‘be a princess’, but I’ve had my own ideas I suggested that she’s fine with. I want to get space exploration and colonization going. Celestia has been dragging her hooves on that for centuries, probably because she didn’t want anypony to be able to access the moon. And I have a little side project to study alicorns and immortality, because I’m the Goddess of Magic and have a comparative advantage at the task. Hopefully I can make everypony immortal. Eventually.”

I practically gasped after getting that all out, refilling my lugs as fast as possible.

“There,” I said. “Twilight Sparkle’s current centurial plans.”

There was a rather extended silence until Twinkleshine said, “Er…could you say that again? But slower?”

“Fine,” I sighed. It took forever, but I repeated myself and added a bit more detail.

When I was done, Shining was still in a bit of shock. “I’ll give you that Princess Celestia probably has kept ponies from going off planet,” he admitted. “I’ve heard a bit about how you did it, and it’s remarkably easy. But you want to make everypony immortal? Don’t you think you’re reaching a bit high?”

I shrugged. “Dream big or don’t dream at all. I don’t know if it’s possible with our current reproduction rates and magical capacities, but I’ll never know if I don’t try.”

“And…Luna is okay with this?” Shining asked, clearly skeptical.

“More than okay,” I replied, recalling the rather enthusiastic endorsement she’d given to the project. “The goal wouldn’t be to create a billion gods. More like demigods. Disregarding the almost assuredly absurd power requirements, having that many true alicorns flying around would end in disaster.”

“Two did quite a lot of damage on their own,” Twinkleshine commented.

“No, that’s not the problem,” Shining said, rubbing his forehead with a hoof. “I cannot even imagine Luna going along with this.”

That brought a smile to my face. “Well,” I said, “maybe it’s time you rethink what you think you know about her.”

Shining shook his head. “The far simpler explanation is that she saw what it meant to you and thought, ‘Why not say yes? She won’t be around long enough to do it.’”

I hummed happily at where our conversation had led. This time I would get to say the words, and rather cheerfully so.

“And now we’re arguing in circles again. Since you won’t take my word for it, all I can tell you is to wait and see with your own eyes what kind of pony Luna is.”

Shining’s only response to that was a growl of acknowledgment, and then a frustrated groan as I stole a trick from him.

Humming again, I ran through the remains of my hand to pick a card to lead in the next trick. Eventually, I threw out a trump card for no other reason than I had a lot of them.

Eventually, Shining said, “You hardly have an unbiased, objective opinion of Luna. I’d think of all ponies, you would appreciate that.”

I snorted at the absurdity of that. “Oh please. There’s probably only three or four extant ponies who know Luna and what she’s done well enough to judge her.”

Shining opened his mouth, but I interrupted, “And Celestia is not one of them.” Although admittedly she’d be closer after I gave her that novel of a letter she’d demanded.

Supporting my point, Twinkleshine said, “A thousand years is a long time to not talk to somepony.”

Shining stopped to actually think about that as we played through several tricks. I managed to steal two that Shining should have had – if I was counting cards correctly – with him so distracted.

“Ponies don’t change that easily,” Shining finally said, “but I suppose a thousand years is a long time. Not that it changes what she’s done. It’s also a very long time to hold a grudge.”

“Not when you’re reminded of it every moment of every day.” We played a trick in silence. “A thousand years is a long time to love an absent sister, too.”

“Not when you have to raise her moon every night.”

Personally, I’d almost think that more of a chore…after the first couple thousand times, but I gave that a pass as an argument.

“I suppose I could tell you about Luna’s nighttime activities, or at least some of them. I don’t really keep up with her princessing as much as I probably should.”

Ever the skeptic, Shining said, “That sounds suspicious. What doesn’t she want you to know about, I wonder.”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t get more time than anypony else, Shining. I can’t do everything.” Securing another trick first, I continued, “Besides, I’ve only recently gotten into the idea of ruling. I still mostly want to do research, but the idea of being something like ‘Equestria’s Principle Investigator’ is kind of growing on me.”

Almost grumbling, Shining said, “I swear, if you force everypony to call you that…”

I glanced over at Twinkleshine and found her grinning wildly for some reason.

“It’d be okay, Shining Armor. There were a few weeks where Twilight got really into mystery novels–”

Oh no…

“–and had Berry Punch make her a detective hat.”

Shining grinned. “I see. So we could call her ‘Twilight Sparkle, PI’ for short.”

Twinkleshine nodded, humming in agreement.

“Anyway,” I interrupted, “Luna does move a lot of money around. I know she supports an awful lot of scholarships and grants. She funnels bits into charities, too, and is the head of a number of nonprofit organizations.”

“And where does all that money come from?” Shining asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t have the first clue how banking and investment works. Which now that I think about it is probably really bad. I need to study macroeconomics at least a little bit sometime between now and the solstice.”

Shining raised an eyebrow, no doubt thinking I was being awfully presumptive, but I ignored him.

“It’s certainly not from heists or whatever, though,” I added. “That’s hardly sustainable.”

“Or subtle,” Twinkleshine added.

“Fair enough,” Shining said to Twinkleshine.

Some part of me was outraged that he didn’t prefer the unsustainable argument. Perfect crimes probably happened all the time, hence the perfect in the name. But then I supposed between two perfectly valid arguments, Shining was more likely to not pick mine right now.

“But, um, could you humor me for a moment?” Twinkleshine asked.

Shining shrugged, saying, “I suppose so.”

“Well, I guess it may be my fault, but you didn’t quite answer what I was asking about before. That is, Princess Luna can dreamwalk, but what if she couldn’t? What would you do with criminal alicorns, or even just immortal criminals that won’t submit to conventional justice?”

Twinkleshine, why did you have to make me feel bad for Discord? Not that it wasn’t a good point, though, and one that I’d eventually need to deal with if I wanted to make everypony immortal.

“That” – Shining reached for words that simply weren’t there – “is a very good question. Can others learn to dreamwalk?”

“No,” I replied as the magical expert at the table. “To be more specific, Celestia…might, I…would probably be a stretch, and certain other types of alicorns could in theory, but you can consider it exclusive to Luna.”

“Then maybe some sort of reversible group banishment?” Shining mumbled to himself. “But then even with a counselor among them, it could take forever to rehabilitate them. I suppose we could kick them off planet. Well at that point, it might be more ‘out of the space empire’. But that just displaces the problem.”

Unable to help it, I smiled a little bit. “Could I just point out right now that you implicitly disapprove of Celestia banishing Luna.”

Shining looked about to protest, but judging by how his eyes widened a bit, it must have hit him that Celestia hadn’t expected Luna to be able to dreamwalk after being banished by the elements.

“To be fair,” Shining began, no longer in shock, “she had little choice.”

“I’ll agree with that for the sake of argument. Then shouldn’t she have at least done Luna the favor of unbanishing her and hitting her with a sleep spell? Luna certainly wouldn’t have been able to escape it.”

A frown slowly grew on Shining’s face. “It wouldn’t be safe. Surely Luna had ponies who would work to free her.”

I shrugged. “Store her in the next galaxy over.” It’s what Celestia should have done with the elements. Sure, it’d cost her a huge chunk of time in teleportation costs, but nopony but an alicorn would have been able to get to them.

Shining rolled his eyes, likely not taking me literally.

“It’s a fair critique,” Twinkleshine said.

“But the elements–”

“In a thousand years,” I interrupted, “do you honestly think she couldn’t have figured something out. The elements might not like Celestia anymore, but surely she could’ve at least found somepony to use them earlier to undo Luna’s banishment.”

Wait… No, something about that sounded wrong.

“Then why didn’t she?” Shining asked, echoing my thoughts. His tone grew ever more triumphant as he went on. “Either side of the story suggests Princess Celestia would. Her story says she should’ve either wanted to bring her sister home as soon as possible or to refresh the banishment with plenty of spare time to prepare the bearers. Your side has a similar argument.”

“So it stands to reason that she couldn’t,” I mumbled. Shining was certainly right about that.

But that simply didn’t make any sense. I’d studied the banishment spell, and unless the element’s version was drastically different, it could be undone with enough effort.

“There must be some correlating factor we’re missing,” I concluded. What on Equus could it be?

I shook the thought from my head for now. “Regardless, she didn’t even try. The Elements of Harmony were exactly where she’d put them a thousand years ago. It’s unlikely she would’ve went out of her way to put them back there if she’d retrieved them.”

“But not impossible.”

“Oh, come on!” Surely Shining didn’t really buy that? “That’d be silly. The only reason she could’ve possible had to return them would be to store them with a bunch of old, broken Luna paraphernalia. Yes, not impossible, but unlikely.”

“Sentiment is a powerful force,” Twinkleshine commented. Just whose side was she on anyway?

“I agree,” Shining said.

“Fine. You wanna bet?”

“On what?” Shining asked. “Are you going to try to release Luna early?”

I shook my head. “The elements are out of commission for now; that would hardly be a fair bet. No, I bet I can figure out how to free Discord. The elements were operating at full power on him. Surely his prison must be at least as strong.”

That wasn’t actually necessarily true. And besides that, the main difficulty in removing a petrification or banishment spell was reversing it. I could dispel them easily enough, but there was no telling what would happen to an alicorn victim – a mortal would just no longer exist.

To be fair, though, I’d prodded Luna’s banishment spell, and it was rather stable. It’d probably just reform if I removed it. Besides, we could afford to wait another season. We were in no hurry to justify the risk.

“Twilight, you know how earlier I said, ‘that’s the sanest thing you’ve said all night,’ or something like that?”

I just sighed, already knowing what Shining was about to say.

“This is the opposite of that. It’s the most insane thing you’ve said all night, and you’ve said a lot.”

“I wouldn’t actually let Discord out.” Honestly, what must Shining think of me right now that he’d come to that conclusion? “I’d just come up with the spellwork and explain it to you. Stars! Way to put words in my mouth.”

Twinkleshine injected her own little thoughts again. “It’s true she only said she’d figure out how, not that she’d do it.”

Sighing, Shining rubbed his forehead with his hooves. “Fine. I’ll take that bet. What are the stakes?”

The first thing that came to mind was to make Shining Luna’s knight, but that would be terribly disrespectful to the institution, not to mention Shining likely wouldn’t perform the role very well. No amount of irony was worth that.

Oh, but there was one thing that I definitely wanted from him, come to think of it.

“I want you to help me with one of my research projects. It’ll be a lot of work on your end.” Ascension always was.

“Nothing…harmful, right?”

I rolled my eyes then shook my head.

“Fine, then. If I win, I want you to switch sides.”

“No way. That’s not even close to a fair bet.”

Shining muttered in near-mute protest. “Alright, how about this, then? You cast some spell on yourself to make Luna just another pony to you for a week.”

I flinched away from the idea, knowing what Shining might be able to talk me into when I was like that. But…it wasn’t like I wouldn’t have the memory of the feelings. I wouldn’t do anything silly for no reason.

“Okay,” I finally agreed. “It’s a bet.”

“Really?” Shining looked legitimately surprised that I’d agreed.

And maybe that had been the real trap. If I’d refused, he probably would’ve drilled me on why it would be such a big deal. No doubt he’d claim a ‘non-lovesick Twilight Sparkle’ would want to switch sides.

“Yeah,” I said, far more sure of myself this time. “I won’t intentionally drag my hooves on this, but it’s also not a priority. The bet doesn’t end until I come up with a spell or prove it’s impossible. It might take decades.”

“Whatever,” Shining said with a wave of his hoof. He took the last trick of the round, but it wasn’t enough to get him to his bid.

It was my deal again, so I gathered up all the cards. Our official napkin scores updated, and I began shuffling.

Author's Note

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Chapter Thirty Eight - Outside Opinions - Part Two

Frowning, I wrote down the final scores of the game. Shining was ten points short of winning, I was ten points over, and Twinkleshine – curse her luck – was seventy points over. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve called her on cheating. I was rather suspicious that she’d fed both Shining and me points on occasion to keep the game even, but I didn’t understand how she still won while doing so.

It did occur to me that I’d never played this particular game with her before, but that didn’t actually explain anything.

Glancing across the table, Shining seemed just about as stumped as I was. Although maybe that could be from the shock of seeing me lose.

Well…maybe not. It wasn’t like I’d never lost to Shining before. Still, it was the principle of the matter.

I sighed again. There was nothing else for it. “So, Twinkleshine, what forfeit are you claiming from us?”

“Hmm…” Twinkleshine tapped a hoof to her muzzle, and she had a patently mischievous smile on her face. “I wonder if I should just hold it over your head. That’s what you’d do, right?”

Rather than rolling my eyes and admitting defeat, I said, “No, I think I’d ask for something a bit more” – I leaned in to whisper in Twinkleshine’s ear – “intimate.”

Even as Twinkleshine’s face erupted into a blush, Shining plainly said, “I don’t need to hear this.”

I heard an almost silent chuckle from Twinkleshine. “He’s right. Why would he want to hear about it when he could see it?”

Oh. Oh my. Who stole my Twinkleshine away and left this mare in her place?

“You’re completely right,” I replied, running with the joke. “Two beautiful mares. What stallion could resist?”

We both scooted closer to each other. Our hooves wrapped about each other soon after. Twinkleshine hesitated, her legs quivering nervously.

“Don’t worry,” I whispered, “nopony will notice through our spells.”

“No.” Shining’s magic split us apart just barely on the right side of gently. “Just – just no. I will arrest you for public indecency.”

Twinkleshine and I both broke into the giggles we’d been holding back. I supposed we were tempting Shining to sic Cadance on us, but whatever.

“Are you quite done?” Shining asked.

Petering out, I said, “I guess. Twinkleshine?”

“Hmm, yeah. Anyway” – Twinkleshine fiddled with the deck of cards nervously – “I know what I want from you two.”

Twinkleshine stopped there, despite claiming that she knew what she wanted. I raised an eyebrow and asked, “Yes?”

“Well… Um… Do you promise not to get mad?”

I cocked my head to the side, confused. What exactly did Twinkleshine plan to ask for that she was worried I’d be mad?

Shrugging, I said, “Sure.”

Twinkleshine stopped biting her lip and smiled a bit. She turned to Shining expectantly.

“What? Me, too?” Shining asked, to which Twinkleshine nodded.

And now I had a bad feeling about this…

“Anything reasonable is fine,” Shining said.

“Okay, great. Then I’d like you two to spend the rest of the night together as a family. That means no fighting, or bickering, or whatever.”

What, was that it? I could see why Shining might not like that, or at least why Twinkleshine would think that, given how we’d been arguing. It didn’t really bother me though, so long as we weren’t at each other’s throats.

It would be imposing on Twinkleshine’s and my vacation time, though, I supposed. I did go to some effort to set it all up, but not so much that I’d be–

“And with your parents,” Twinkleshine added, which made her full request click in my head even before she finished, “at our place.”

And then I understood why Twinkleshine thought I’d be mad.

Before Shining could object – and I could already see the no coming – I said, “Twinkleshine, can I speak to you in private for a moment?”

Twinkleshine had barely begun to nod before I teleported us away to my old practice room inside the Crystal Caverns beneath Canterlot.

Once we’d arrived, I fell to my haunches, my forehooves otherwise occupied with rubbing my forehead.

“You’re mad.”

I scrunched my eyes closed extra hard, trying to decide exactly how to respond.

“I’m sorry,” Twinkleshine said. “I just thought–”

“No. Give me a moment, please.” I needed to figure out how to say this without crushing Twinkleshine’s independence. I’d been working on it for years, and there was no way it was going to blow up in my face here when she was taking her first real steps forward.

Twinkleshine nodded, and I spent at least a minute choosing my words carefully.

“Okay. First, let me just make sure I’m not jumping to conclusions. Did you expect us to run into Shining?”

Hesitantly, tapping her forehooves together, Twinkleshine rather guiltily said, “I…alerted the guard.”

“You scoundrel.” My tone was one of grudging approval, and I saw that Twinkleshine picked up on it in her small smile. “You kept Shining and I busy talking while you quietly won the game.”

It wasn’t even a question. It only occurred to me now in hindsight, but it was obvious in hindsight. Even so, Twinkleshine gave me a small nod.

“Look, I’m impressed. I did not see this coming.”

Twinkleshine grinned.

“But,” I continued, reverting Twinkleshine to a frown, “taking Shining to Luminance is a different matter entirely.”

“But don’t you think Princess Celestia is keeping tabs on our location anyway?”

I did, and I knew we weren’t exactly hiding out in an anonymous corner of space, but she didn’t know where we were.

“And can’t she just track you like you tracked the elements?” Twinkleshine added before I could say anything.

“No.” That, at least, I knew she couldn’t do. Probably. I blocked the usual means of magical tracking, but I didn’t know what else Celestia might have in her bag of tricks.

“Okay…” Twinkleshine visibly gathered up her remaining courage and said, “But still, you’re just being paranoid. Just ask your brother not to say anything if you really must, but we’ll be fine even if he does blab. That’s why you put all those contingency spells in place, right?”

Yes…but I wasn’t as confident in them as Twinkleshine was. I didn’t actually want to put them to the test.

“And your brother was just complaining about how he feels left out and untrusted. Give him a chance, if not for him, then for you.”

“But he–”

“Come on, Twilight,” Twinkleshine insisted. “Trust me. It’ll be alright.”

No, no, no. This was so dumb.

Twinkleshine pressed even further. “I mean, you can always just steal the moon afterward.”

Steal the moon?

“Pft…”

Twinkleshine’s grin grew and grew as I tried to hold back my giggles, but the challenge was too much. I could just imagine myself appearing in the middle of, say, Manehattan, dramatically claiming the moon was mine. Then I’d swirl my cape and vanish as the moon faded into darkness.

But still, there was a flaw to that plan. Celestia was tied to the moon like I was tied to magic. I couldn’t hide it from her anymore than she could hide her magic from me.

“I can’t actually do that,” I said. “Taking the moon with me would be like sending Celestia a letter with my return address on it.”

Twinkleshine let out a long sigh. “Okay. But this is your chance to let your brother see what life is like under Princess Luna’s rule! And by extension, Princess Cadance, too.”

“Alright,” I sighed.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

Honestly, she’d had me at making Shining feel better, but Twinkleshine did have a good point. I should prevail myself of every opportunity to win over Cadance as I could, and this was certainly one of them. I had to give her credit for thinking of it, even if everything about this made me uncomfortable.

“But,” I added, “we need to have a long talk about schemes, plots, and stratagems. You are all kinds of lucky this worked for you.”

“I know.” Twinkleshine’s withers sunk at my criticism. “I just wanted to help.”

The first words that wanted to come out of my mouth I clamped down on; criticism right now needed a light touch. My second instinct to comfort her I also stopped; she didn’t need comforting after a success. It’d send entirely the wrong message.

“Twinkleshine,” I said, choosing my words with care, “you did help. The only…complication in your plan” – as far as lasting consequences for it going wrong went – “is if alerting the guard had summoned Celestia.”

Now that I’d explicitly stated it, why wasn’t she here? Strange…

Eyes wide, Twinkleshine said, “I didn’t think – but I – you’d have teleported us out, though, right?”

Not wanting to erode what was probably letting Twinkleshine sleep comfortably, I said, “Yes, but it would’ve still been an unnecessary danger. If you’d at least given me a heads up…”

No, this was having the wrong effect on Twinkleshine. She wasn’t taking this very well. I needed to spin this more as a classroom lesson.

“I think I should teach you about risk minimization. You have a firm grasp of the basics; I completely underestimated you there.”

“R-really?” Twinkleshine asked. She rubbed a hoof at the corner of her eye.

I nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been holding you back, I think. You wrought well today.”

Twinkleshine blushed at the compliment, but there was something I still had to ask.

“However” – I put a hoof on Twinkleshine’s wither – “how much of today was improv?” Unless Twinkleshine was hiding a lot of skills from me, she’d been genuinely surprised that Shining and I bet favors with each other.

Her blush further reddening for an entirely different reason, Twinkleshine said, “Almost all of it.”

I sighed inwardly, determined not to let Twinkleshine see it.

Patting her on the wither, I said, “Alright. I like your quick thinking.”

“Thank you.”

“But,” I added in jest, “if we all die, I blame you.”

Rolling her eyes, Twinkleshine replied, “I can live with that. Now let’s go back before your brother runs off.”

I nodded and cast a teleport to bring us back to Pony Joe’s. I was a little surprised that Shining was still around, but there he was at his seat, acting as if we’d never left.

And naturally, the first word that came out of his mouth was, “No.”

“I haven’t even said anything yet.” Twinkleshine pouted and crossed her forehooves, displaying a kind of giddy confidence.

“No,” Shining repeated.

“Look, I’m sure I understand why you don’t want to. Twilight didn’t want to for similar reasons. But you came to us. Alone, too. If Twilight wanted to do anything to you, she’d be doing it now.” As an afterthought, Twinkleshine added, “Or anytime, anywhere, actually.”

Twinkleshine turned to me for confirmation, so I said, “I haven’t actually tried, but yeah, that’s probably a thing I can do.” Either through conventional spellcasting or cheating with alicorn powers, I should be able to form spells across galaxies if I tried hard enough. The latter would be a lot faster, though.

“See?” Twinkleshine said. “There’s nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.”

“No, he could hide,” I commented. “He just can’t run once I’ve found him.”

“Oh, and that didn’t sound villainous,” Shining snarked. “Do you even listen to yourself?”

I giggled. Shining was certainly right about that. I hadn’t been able to help myself after Twinkleshine had started it.

“How about this?” I brought a forehoof up and went through the usual motions. “I promise not to strand you away from Canterlot. Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.”

Shining raised an eyebrow and flatly asked, “What was that?” He was clearly unimpressed with my attempt to reassure him.

“A Pinkie Promise,” I answered. Seeing as that wasn’t actually an answer, I added, “Pinkie Pie is a time mage. I think. She takes promises very seriously, so it’s best not to break ones made in her name.”

Shining just looked at me like I was crazy, which I could hardly blame him for.

“Here, watch this.” I cleared my throat, just because it seemed appropriate for the demonstration. “I promised I wouldn’t abduct you. I think, deep down, you still trust me. If I broke my promise, I’d lose that trust. And losing a friend’s trust is the fastest way to lose a friend.”

It didn’t even take a second before Pinkie Pie popped out of nowhere from behind the front counter. Joe behind it looked as though he’d wet himself from the surprise.

“Forever!” Pinkie Pie said.

Shining started and whipped his head about to face her. He watched her slowly disappear behind the counter again in her own overly dramatic way.

After several seconds worth of silence in the entire restaurant, Shining turned back to face Twinkleshine and me.

“Ha ha. You got me. I didn’t–”

“No,” I interrupted. “It’s not a trick. Scry the area, if you must. She’s gone.”

“Wha…”

Horn alight, Shining took my advice and searched the store for Pinkie Pie, but obviously didn’t find her. There hadn’t been any obvious magic use, either, so unless he concluded this was a very elaborate hoax, he’d have to believe.

Shining hesitated, but he asked, “Is that replicable?”

“Yeah. Go ahead and try if you want.”

“Uh, no. No thanks.” Shining seemed to be at a loss for words. In the end, all he said was, “How?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t had time to figure that out. As for the general approach she took there, I think that’s a Pinkie Pie from the future who slipped back in time. She’s too far away right now for me to believe anything else without evidence.” I shrugged again, just to show how shrug worthy my theories were right now.

“Wait. If you have a time mage, why haven’t you just gone back in time a thousand years?” Shining asked, and it was a good question.

“Time is cyclic. Or at least from our perspective it is. It may be that going back in time simply places us in a self-consistent timeline, that is our memories and the world in general are modified to fit. At any rate, until I figure out how Pinkie Pie works, I only get one ten second journey back in time, and I don’t want to waste…”

A thought occurred to me, and it came with an annoying voice.

“I totally bet I already cast that time travel spell,” Mother said. “No wonder Future Twilight didn’t come to your aid before.”

Twinkleshine poked me with a hoof. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing important.” The only way I could test that theory – that I knew of – would be to cast the spell, and that would defeat the purpose. Now I wasn’t sure if I could rely on time travel for a get out of death free card. Ponyfeathers.

I shook my head of the thought for the moment. “Anyway, if I break my promise, I’ll have to deal with Pinkie Pie, which is a terrible fate. Can you at least trust that you still know me well enough to know nothing as petty as detaining you is worth that to me?”

For a moment, Shining looked like he was going to say no again, but he stopped. He mulled it over and munched on a donut for a while before finally, quite reluctantly, saying, “Alright.”

“But,” Shining continued, interrupting whatever Twinkleshine was about to say, “I want to be back tomorrow by noon.”

“Sure,” I said.

“And,” Shining continued again, looking quite vexed for the interruption, “on the condition that you actually tell Mom and Dad who you are.”

My ears fell to my head. I mumbled, “I was planning to.”

“Well plan for it tonight, then.”

I pursed my lips, mulling it over. Without Shining hovering over me, I knew it’d take me forever to get around to it. Every time I’d tried, I’d felt just as weak in the knees and as sick to the stomach as the time before. But having a judgmental older brother around wouldn’t exactly make it a more pleasant experience.

The right thing to do was obvious, unfortunately.

“Okay,” I whispered. “But – but please be nice about it. I-I can’t lose Mom and Dad.”

Shining sighed, then said, “Alright, I promise not to intentionally sabotage whatever miracle you want to try and pull to make Mom and Dad not hate Luna. Happy?”

First, I took a deep breath. Second, I nodded. Third, I asked, “Is everypony ready to go, then?” The sooner we got this over with the better.

Twinkleshine and Shining both agreed, and I set off the first teleport, the one which would take us outside of Canterlot.

“Welcome” – Twinkleshine paused, stood up on her hind legs, and held her forehooves wide, gesturing toward everything behind her – “to the moon!”

Perhaps a little too over the top, but Twinkleshine had given about as good a welcome as any. Shining did look impressed, too, which was a bonus.

“This is all on the moon?” Shining asked.

Hmm? “Cadance didn’t say anything to you about it?”

“More mentioned,” Shining said as distractedly as he looked. “I wasn’t exactly expecting this.” I watched him watching a small flock of lunar pegasi following after Dash fly through the sky. Once they’d disappeared from sight into town, he added, “Or that ponies lived here.” Another pause, then he asked, “Those are ponies, right?”

“Moon ponies!” Twinkleshine chimed in.

In return, I said, “Ignore her. They’re Equus-native pegasi with a bunch of recessive genes. When you get back to Canterlot, look for ponies with small fangs or ears with extra hair on the tips. They have lunar pegasi ancestry.”

“Huh,” was all Shining said to that.

We fell into a silence for a while, lazily watching Luminance go about its business. Occasionally we’d spot one of the birds that lived here flying nearby. It was just another day on the moon, even with an alicorn or two running around now.

I dared to lean against Shining. My breath caught when his muscles twitched. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught him looking my way. He looked about to say something, but shook his head. He just sat there and didn’t push me away.

Time passed. It could have been hours as easily as minutes. I was pretty sure Twinkleshine and Shining were talking, but I dozed off for a while, drifting between asleep and awake.

It was so nice having Shining back, even for just a day. As questionable an idea as it was bringing him here, I’d have to thank Twinkleshine for setting this up.

It was then to weak, protesting groans that my pillow moved.

“Shining?” I mumbled.

“Let’s go,” Shining said. “I’m impressed, but admiring the landscape isn’t why I came here.”

I sighed. No, no it wasn’t. “Right,” I said weakly. “Come on, then. I’ll track down Mom and Dad.”

“I’ll leave you to that.”

Slowing almost to a stop, I turned my head to look at Shining, raising a questioning eyebrow.

“I promised I wouldn’t interfere,” Shining said. “Just get it done and over with, and I’ll find you three later. Meanwhile, I want to talk to our…older?” He looked to Twinkleshine, who nodded. “Older sister.”

It took me a few seconds to parse that, but once I had, I checked her usual spot these days and found her.

“Pupa is in the quarry,” I said to Twinkleshine. “Can you take him there?”

With a sloppy salute – a habitual remnant of our days aboard the Nebulous – Twinkleshine said, “Aye aye, Captain.”

There was a moment when Captain Shining looked very confused, but it passed. He asked, “Do I want to know?”

I brushed the topic aside, saying, “It’s a long story. Anyway, Pupa is really nice like Cadance but with a lot more bite, so play nice. And don’t do anything even vaguely threatening, or Chrysalis might bite off your head.”

Shining turned to Twinkleshine and asked, “Who’s Chrysalis?”

“Pupa’s doting mother,” Twinkleshine replied. “I’ve never actually seen her bite somepony’s head off, but there’s a first time for everything.”

“Right…” Shining said. I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant by it. His tone came off somewhere between sarcasm and worry.

Anyway, I saw the two of them off. Knowing that Twinkleshine would want to walk Shining through town, I didn’t bother to teleport them. I then focused on finding Mom and Dad. Knowing Shining and myself, I was going to drag this out, and if Shining found me before I’d said anything, he’d just blurt it out. I needed all the time I could get.

It took a little while, but eventually I found Mom and Dad together at one of Cherry Berry’s Old Equestrian lessons. Most of the other Equus-natives were there, too.

Chamomile was absent. I’d kind of expected her to be acting as a teaching assistant, being one of the few ponies here fluent in both languages. But then Old Equestrian was her native language. Maybe she was busy teaching the locals Modern Equestrian instead.

Well at any rate, I manifested myself just outside the room Cherry Berry had commandeered for her lessons, which had the added bonus of reverting my appearance. I knocked, letting myself in once I’d heard Cherry Berry call out to do so.

If Cherry Berry was surprised to see me back before my vacation was over, she didn’t show it. Instead she just asked, “What is it, Twilight?”

“I need to borrow my parents, if possible.” I looked toward Mom and Dad, who nodded and moved to get up.

While Mom and Dad found their way toward me and the exit, Cherry Berry snarked, “Imagine Twilight Sparkle getting ponies to skip out on class, and her own parents no less.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, yes. Very funny.”

Once Mom, Dad, and I were all clear of Cherry Berry and the accompanying giggles from the ponies in the class who knew me well enough, Mom asked, “What is it that you needed, Sweetie?”

I didn’t reply for a while. We trotted along with me leading. I was going to take us to the balcony of the highest turret, which aside from scaling the Hornburg itself, was the furthest place from Shining in Luminance.

“Twilight?” Dad asked, the concern obvious in his voice. But I could also hear just a shred of impatience underlying it after I’d wasted so much of their time not telling them about Aurora.

I could already feel my knees protesting holding my weight and tears clambering to get out, and I was just thinking about saying something.

“I saw Shining today.” I was so pathetic. I’d sidestepped the real subject again.

“Oh.” I sensed Mom and Dad look at each other before Dad asked, “He didn’t say anything…untoward, did he?”

Well, that little sword fight of his was definitely something I could complain to Mom and Dad about, but that would be a little too petty. No, Shining hadn’t done anything really wrong, per se, just annoying.

I shook my head. “He’s visiting, actually.”

“Really?” Mom asked almost at the same time as Dad. It’d been quite a while now since they’d last seen him, and it showed in their tone.

“He’s going to talk to Pupa first, but then he’ll come find us.”

“Fair enough,” Dad said.

Mom, on the other hoof, seemed to radiate displeasure at having to wait.

“I don’t know exactly how well that’s going to go over,” I said. “He called her a sister, though, so maybe it’ll work out.”

I sensed Dad shrug. Part of me wondered if he’d figured out that I watched how ponies’ magic moved, given how often he’d reply nonverbally when I wasn’t looking at him.

Either way, Dad said, “I don’t see why not. She’s part of the family after all this time.”

I sighed to myself. Dad had just given me the perfect prompt to delay this conversation even further, and I was jumping on it even as I told myself I shouldn’t.

“I guess, but Pupa wasn’t acting too much like herself when he was around. But I’ve seen changeling’s fit into families well before, despite…circumstances.”

“Oh?” Dad asked. “Is there a story there?”

Yes, but there was no way I was going to share the full story. “Mom, do you remember meeting Amethyst Star?”

For a few seconds, Mom didn’t say anything more than humming in thought. Finally, she said, “Not that I recall.”

“Her little sister is Lemon Hearts.”

“Oh! The night you met Chrysalis and adopted Spike.” Mom’s voice still sounded a little bitter about that whole ordeal. “Yes, I remember her. She was a changeling, right?”

“Yeah. She grew up in the family since she was a newborn nymph. I never asked, but I don’t think her parents ever knew, or at least not for a long while.”

Who knew how Lemon Hearts had found out, though. Maybe it was an open secret in family, but even if so, bringing it up would hardly be beneficial to the current conversation.

Anyway, we came to the base of the massive staircase that lead up to the highest part of the castle. I opened the door for us, and all three of us began the slow climb toward the top.

“Pupa and I talked about that a few times,” Dad said. “Not Amethyst Star specifically, but the situation in general.”

Half of me dreaded drawing this conversation out to its natural conclusion, but the other half was excited that Pupa had already laid some of the groundwork for me.

Wait… My small smile turned into a frown as I ran that thought through my head again. It wasn’t certain yet, but Pupa probably had laid the groundwork for me. Chrysalis had figured out Luna had placed me with Mom and Dad a long time ago, and she certainly would’ve told Pupa about it.

I sighed inwardly. I supposed I should thank Pupa at least, if perhaps not Chrysalis.

Anyway, Dad had waited long enough for a response. “Oh?” I said. “Chrysalis was really stingy with details with me.” And that was not exactly a lie. It was entirely possible Mom and Dad knew more about changeling practices than I did.

Of course, Dad picked up immediately that I wanted him to share. He said, “Apparently, Pupa’s – er, Chrysalis’s hive, at least, has been transitioning more toward legal adoptions. But they can only do so much without attracting attention, and they have to run the selection process to, and I quote, ‘weed out the mildly loving’.”

Mom said, “Of course! It’d be a tragedy to give somepony a foal they couldn’t feed. Some parents are so busy nowadays.”

“Pupa had quite an appetite before Cadance started feeding her,” Dad added, nodding in agreement. “I’d imagine they’re far more demanding than pony foals in their early years before they have friends, and Celestia knows how crazy caring for a pony foal can get.”

“To be fair,” I said, “Pupa is a queen. They’re bigger and have more biological functions to support than a worker or a drone, so they eat significantly more.”

I paused for a moment and let the sound of our hooves against stone be the only thing we heard. I had all the responsibility here to keep the conversation on track, and it was awful. I was digging my own grave, but if I didn’t, Shining would come and do it for me.

I’d hate that Luna had put me in this situation, except that if she hadn’t, I wouldn’t have Mom, Dad, or Shining to begin with. There had to be a name for this feeling of dual anger and gratitude. I couldn’t be the first pony to feel it.

No, stay focused, Twilight.

“So if not adoption, then…” I trailed off, letting Dad pick up the thread of conversation again.

“Replacement.” One word, and it came out very differently than when he’d talked about adoption. Not…angry, quite, but something more approaching it. “In the old, old days, changelings would just act as midwives. There were so many stillbirths and miscarriages, it was easy to find a place for each and every nymph.”

Since neither Mom nor Dad wanted to say anything, I said, “I’d imagine that got harder.” Especially once the birthing process moved to hospitals and became heavily documented. At least neither Mom or Dad sounded like they had any particularly strong objections to replacing a dead foal with a live one.

No, it was what was coming that they clearly took issue with.

Mom was the first to reply, and her tone carried a surprising amount of sympathy in it. “The way Pupa tells the story, by the time her great, great, grandmother noticed the problem, there were too many changelings to feed and were being placed too slowly. They were starving. A mother does what she must to protect her foals.”

Changeling queens didn’t see most of their hive in the same way ponies viewed their foals, but between that and being the queen, I could sympathize, too. Seeing your people starving was the stuff of nightmares already. That they were your own foals just made it worse.

“Some of the things they did, though…”

Mom and Dad stopped to share a hug. Mom said, “I know, Honey. But they were desperate, and they stopped when they could.”

“Yes,” Dad reluctantly agreed. “They still replace live-born foals sometimes, though.”

I bit my lip. This was my chance. “It’s – it’s not like they kill them.” Stars curse my stutter. “They don’t kill live-born foals, right?”

“No,” Dad said. He parted from Mom, and we restarted our hike up the staircase, already quite near the top. “Some are brought up by adult changelings, some go into the system, and some are raised inside the hive.”

Huh. I’d known about the first two, but the latter was news to me. I didn’t know Chrysalis ever brought ponies into the administrative part of her hive. But then I supposed it’d be easy to get a fresh snack that way.

“I’m sure Cadance will help feed changelings once this is all over,” I said, it being intuitively obvious what ‘this’ referred to. “So it’s kind of a moot point, but” – I gulped; this was it, the make or break point – “is that really so bad?”

There was an awful silence as we reached the top of the staircase. The door creaked open ominously under the influence of my magic.

Trying to say everything at once, my mouth working as fast as possible, I said, “I-I mean, Cadance could’ve given me any old dragon, and I’d have never known the difference. I’m very happy with the Spike I have, but that’s after having raised him for years. Day one he was just a baby dragon that I’d hatched. Wait, I mean, dragons have a bit of an imprinting instinct, so I guess it would’ve made some difference to the both of us, but if he were a pony, he’d never know the difference. I’d never know the difference. Where he ended up would be only slightly less random after the switch than before, but random is still random, and that’s all anypony can expect of where they’re born.”

Mom put a hoof on my shoulder. She looked me in the eyes, held me there for a moment, then said, “Breathe.”

And I did. I gasped in air I’d denied myself in my spiel. And – and I could feel that increasing airflow turning into wheezes, and that became a runny nose, and that became tears, and I couldn’t stop it, and I was a mess, and–

And Mom hugged me. Hugs made everything better.

Better, but not okay. Mom eventually let me go, but I didn’t feel okay again, just less awful.

Even so, Mom led me inside and found a nice comfortable place for me to sit. Dad hovered about, obviously wanting to be helpful but not really sure how: Mom was on the case, after all.

I watched Mom bite her lip, no doubt deciding if she wanted to say anything at all. She’d seen through me. I knew it. Now she was deciding if she wanted to defenestrate me or not.

“Twilight…” Mom hesitated, but she was far stronger than me right now. “If – and I do mean if – you are…were?” She glanced at my wings for just a moment before deciding to press on. “If you were a changeling, we’d still love you. I’m sure any parent – no, anypony would say the same: parent, friend, or even just an acquaintance. You can tell us anything. What’s wrong?”

The familiar feeling of my stomach trying to implode resurfaced as I fought to open my mouth, or to do anything, really, besides whimper pathetically.

When I’d been silent for sufficiently long, Dad sat down next to me and joined in the family cuddling proper. Rather bluntly, he asked, “Are you a changeling?”

“I am now,” I said weakly. My jest was not met with laughs, but rather the kind of oppressive silence that I was sure I’d feel was more supportive in hindsight. Not that that helped now.

“No,” I finally answered. “B-b-b-but I – I am a-adopted.”

“Twilight, Sweetie, look at me.”

No. I could hear the hurt in Mom’s voice. If I looked at her, I’d see it on her face, too. She still loved me. I knew it. She’d said it. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t just putting on a strong front. She’d probably already guessed the truth and had braced herself.

“Twilight,” Mom said again, far sterner this time. Like – like a parent scolding a filly. I couldn’t help but react to that.

Mom…looked sad. Whatever hope she’d had that I was her real…no, original daughter was gone. But she was smiling, too – not much, but enough to tell.

“You’re our daughter. You’re part of our family. Nothing will change that. You know that.”

They were all facts, facts delivered in the way only a mom could. Her words resonated with some young and instinctual part of me.

I nodded weakly. That act alone earned me a group hug from Mom and Dad, a wonderfully warm, tight, all-encompassing hug.

Even now, I couldn’t help but protest. “I’m – I’m older than both of you, you know.”

“Oh, please,” Dad said. “You’re barely a mare stumbling her way through life. Anypony can see that.”

I pouted at the accusation but didn’t say anything.

Only once my tears and sniffles finally petered out was I released. A small giggle escaped me at how messy Mom’s and Dad’s coats were. Although to be fair, I probably looked a lot worse.

“Now then,” Mom began, “do you want to talk about Princess Luna? Or” – her voice sank almost to a whisper, its strength fading – “another filly?”

I made a strangled, wheezing sound that was probably supposed to be a gasp. Suspicion confirmed. They knew. Or they’d guessed correctly, at least.

My voice faded and cracked as I whispered, “Aurora.” Even without Dad’s prompting, I knew nopony could have heard or understood me. I said again, “Aurora. She’s happy.”

The words were like twisting a knife in a wound for Mom. I didn’t catch Dad’s expression before he schooled himself, but it was probably just as bad.

For a moment, I imagined Spike growing up happy with some other mother, and it hurt. It shouldn’t have. It made no logical sense. But it did. And for another moment, I wondered if I’d stolen Spike from whoever had lain his egg, which just made it all worse.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I–”

Mom interrupted me, obviously fighting back her own tears given her sniffling. “Don’t. It’s not your fault.”

While Mom composed herself again, Dad asked the question they no doubt both desperately wanted to know.

“How…how is she?”

“Very happy,” I said again, finding little else to say at first. It was just rubbing more salt in the wound again, but really, anything I said would do that. “She’s smart, beautiful, loved, and successful. Short of ascension, her life is perfectly flawed. I – I mean, she has problems like anypony else, but they’re the happy kinds of problems. Moving away from home, studying for her finals, probably friendship drama – those kinds of problems.”

Mom and Dad were silently begging me for more, so I continued, “Her mane looks like an actual aurora in the wind. It’s very fetching. Shining saw her before, and based on his reaction, I think he deemed her a ‘hot piece of flank’.”

There was some uneasy laughter at that, but nothing heartfelt.

“She skipped a lot of grades, and attends to Manehattan University on a full scholarship. She’s almost done there. Come summer, she’ll have a degree in history and library science. She’ll have a comfy job at the Canterlot Archives then. I’ve…never actually talked to her, but I’m sure she’s really nice.”

I was about out of information. All I had left were the parts Mom and Dad would want and hate to hear.

“Her” – I hesitated, hoping I wasn’t about to tear out Mom’s heart, or Dad’s soon after – “mother is Marble Sketch. She’s a sculptor. Her father is Inkwell, a writer. She’s their second daughter. From what I found out, they adopted after severe complications during the birth of Comet, their first daughter. The four of them moved around a bit, but they settled down in the Manehattan area.”

And still Mom and Dad clearly wanted to know more. Their eyes spoke for them, and they were leaned almost dangerously forward.

“I – I’m sorry. I-I don’t k-know anything else. I didn’t want to r-ruin her life.”

Barely above a whisper, Mom said, “That’s fine. It’s enough.” I knew there was an unspoken, “For now,” tacked onto the end of the sentence.

“I’m just glad to know she’s alive and well,” Dad added.

And I just knew that I’d let them both believe I’d replaced Aurora at or near birth. That was going to blow up in my face if I didn’t correct that belief. Sunset’s disappearance was long after Aurora was born; there was no hiding that. But it was only going to blow up in my face slightly less now for the effort.

No, my doom was coming to face me soon enough, and his name was Shining. There would be no surprises from him today, not for Mom or Dad.

“I b-bet you’re wondering where I c-came from.”

Mom sighed, and Dad just gave me a sad look.

“It’s not hard to guess,” Mom said, a hoof running through the striped part of my mane. “My dear little Twilight, none of this is your fault, you know. Even if Sunset Shimmer had something to do with it, you’re not responsible for her actions.”

Dad wrapped a leg around my barrel and squeezed me tight. “We watched you grow up. You’re as much our daughter as anypony could be.”

“I know. You don’t have to keep reminding me.” Unless… “U-unless you’re reminding yourselves.”

I didn’t have to have any training or a changeling’s ability to pick up on emotions to know I’d just said something unbelievably hurtful.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I didn’t – I didn’t mean that. I didn’t. Please believe me!”

Mom restrained me, or held me down. Yes, that, not restrain. She was just keeping me from doing something stupid, not subduing me.

“We do believe you, Sweetie. Please just slow down and take your time. Breathe deep and relax. We’re in no rush.”

No, we were, Mom. We really were. I could just imagine Shining coming up the staircase right now. He wasn’t. I’d checked. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t teleport into here at any time.

But she was right. Panic led to mistakes. Mistakes led to disasters and delays.

I breathed in and out, just like Cadance had taught me.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, but a hundred times calmer this time.

Dad said, “We forgive you.” It almost seemed too easy, like there should be more I had to do to earn it, but there it was, just as it always was.

Luna had picked almost too good of parents for me. It just made the guilt of stealing them from Aurora that much worse.

“I’m sorry.” The words just slipped out of me again.

Mom put on her ‘I’m your mom, so listen to me’ face again. “Twilight, you–”

I shook my head, interrupting whatever she was about to say. “I wasn’t talking to you. I feel so bad about taking you two from Aurora. You’re about as perfect as parents can get.”

Dad was able to put on a smile. “Well, I don’t mean to brag or anything, but that’s probably why we have you.” He poked a little giggle out of me with a well-timed nudge to the shoulder.

“Probably,” I agreed.

My smile faded away as my thoughts returned to what still needed to be said.

“And probably because Aurora was so happy with you,” I managed to get out with a normal voice. “Mom, Dad, I – I wasn’t – I didn’t – you had Aurora for two years.”

Whispering, Mom said, “Yes, I made the connection.” It was the horrible whisper that a pony made when they wanted to scream and cry but weren’t.

“Sunset Shimmer didn’t disappear quietly,” Dad added, slightly less obviously hurt. My memories of that time of my life were hazy at best, but I thought he hadn’t been around as often then. Maybe he hadn’t spent as much time with Aurora.

Heh, wishful thinking.

I felt Mom and Dad intertwine a pair of hooves across my back. Part of me felt like I was intruding on something I ought not to. Would I have felt that way if I were their natural born daughter and Shining were in my place?

“Probably,” whispered the little voice of logic that had been drowned out recently. Probably didn’t make me feel any less guilty about it though.

Those two stupid words found their way out of my mouth again. “I’m sorry.”

Mom sighed, and Dad took it upon himself to say, “Twilight, the next time you apologize to us for something you’re not at fault for, we’ll find every cook in Luminance and tell them not to give you butterscotch for a week.”

I let out a snort that threatened to turn into a giggle despite the atmosphere. What was next? Taking away my reading privileges? Sending me to my room?

“Understood,” I said. Being a princess only meant you were the second most powerful class of pony in the local universe. In the end, you had to answer to your parents somehow, even if it was silly.

But then that was what parents were for. I’d enjoy them for as long as I had them.

Shining was waiting for me. He’d been waiting for five or so minutes now.

As I stepped out into the stairwell and shut the door behind me, I confirmed what I already knew. Shining was leaning against the wall with his hooves folded together and his eyes closed, apparently deep in thought.

I kept quiet, waiting for him to speak first. Surely he’d been listening and had something to say.

Eventually, I won our little quiet contest. Shining opened his eyes and found mine immediately.

“Did you tell them everything?” he asked.

“Of course not. But…enough.”

Although there was the tiny little matter that we hadn’t spoken about Luna at all, really. She was mentioned a few times, but it was a momentary thing, a glancing blow. Not that I could really blame Mom or Dad for not wanting to speak poorly about Luna around a vengeful goddess who slept with her.

“So how did it go?”

“It…”

For a moment, I thought about saying nothing. Would it be such a crime to just pretend everything was alright?

Of course it would be. I sighed.

“I don’t think Mom or Dad will cry or shout in front of me,” I admitted.

I hadn’t really noticed that until after they’d finished comforting me, but there’d been a distinct lack of conversation and hugs the other direction. It could just be a parent thing, I supposed. Spike wasn’t the pony I turned to for comfort, after all.

Suddenly, I felt hooves wrap around me, with Shining’s white coat coming into my sight soon after. I hadn’t even noticed him move…

As quickly as it came, it left. Shining released me, and obviously rather uncomfortable about it, he said, “Try not to take it too hard, I guess. They’re Mom and Dad.”

That was what I told myself, too, but the tight feeling in my chest didn’t listen. It hurt more and more the more I focused on it.

And yet, getting a hug from Shining helped lift the mood a bit.

“I hate to ask this, but would you help them for me? I – I don’t think I can.”

Shining snorted just a bit. “I certainly won’t be doing any favors for you in there.”

I forced myself not to bite my lip. Reluctantly, I said, “That’s fine.”

“Oh? What happens if they want to leave with me?”

I winced before I could help it. That would hurt. If Mom and Dad didn’t feel safe or comfortable with me…

No, it wouldn’t be about that. It would be about Luna. But even so, Mom and Dad were perfect hostages. Why would Celestia consider them anything less? Their loyalty would be questionable at the very best, there were plenty of legitimate crimes she could throw at them under her rule, and unlike Shining, they were useless otherwise.

It wasn’t about what side they were on. It was about where they would be safe. And with Celestia, they were most definitely not.

“They can’t go to Canterlot,” I bit out, feeling somewhat silly even in context at forbidding my parents something. “But they can leave.”

“Really?” Shining genuinely sounded surprised.

Stomping my hoof just a bit, I retorted, “I care, Shining! That runs both ways. I know I hurt you, but… Nevermind.” We’d promised Twinkleshine not to fight with each other tonight. “If they don’t want to be here, they don’t have to be.”

“I believe you.”

Well, that was something.

“Anyway, you three go catch up and talk about how evil I am or something.”

Before I was even two steps down the stairs, Shining asked, “Where are you off to?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and I really didn’t know. “Business.” But none came to mind. “I’ll find something to do. Anywhere but here.”

“Deep breaths, Twilight,” Shining called after me.

Seeing as I was, well, stomping my hooves a bit down the stairs, I indulged him. I slowed my descent to try and calm myself down. There was no point in blowing up at somepony just because I was sad and frustrated.

Soon after I finished, I heard the door upstairs open and close. Just to be sure, I checked that Shining’s magic was, in fact, with Mom and Dad. It looked like they were hugging, all things considered.

“Chamomile,” I said. She emerged from my shadow at my call.

“Yes, Princess?”

I was in no mood to nitpick my title right now, so I just asked my question. “Were you following Shining earlier?”

“It seemed prudent to do so, and you didn’t order me otherwise.”

No, I hadn’t. Chamomile had kind of slipped my mind.

“Did you want me to stay with him?”

Sighing, I shook my head. “No. Please just leave him to his own devices tonight. I should have told you earlier. Now he’s going to think I’m spying on him.” I sighed again, breaking out of the mumbles I’d slowly descended into. “How did his meeting with Pupa go?”

“Some raised words, some hugs, and Chrysalis silently brooding about the invasion into her family in the background.”

“So the expected?”

Chamomile nodded, adding, “More or less. No backroom deals, but then I’m sure at least Pupa and Chrysalis were aware of my presence.”

That wasn’t really what I was asking about, but good to know, I supposed.

“Is there anything that needs doing right now?” I asked. Anything to get my mind off of things would be great, even something menial and pointless. Paperwork would be fine, even, although we didn’t have much of that here.

“Well…” Chamomile trailed off into thought, searching her memory. “There are plenty of things that need doing, but nothing that requires your attention, nor anything that somepony isn’t already assigned to take care of. Your schedule is still cleared for the next couple days, as you requested.”

I sighed yet once more. Of course there was nothing to do. Curse my own organization and preparedness!

“Really? Nothing at all?”

Chamomile shrugged. “I could go start a fire or cause a storm, if you’d like.”

“No,” I said to the tune of a facehoof. “I guess I’ll just–” A thought struck me. “Actually, if you’d be up for it, why don’t we try to give you my blessing again.”

The corners of Chamomile’s mouth twitched downward, but she looked eager enough as she agreed. I didn’t expect to get anywhere with this frustrating task when I was already frustrated, but I suspected Chamomile knew that too and was just happy to help me work through the feeling.

It wasn’t for the first time that I wondered how I hadn’t noticed for so long that I had lots of friends when they acted like this. I supposed I could blame Mother for that. She was pretty much a loner too, although being raised at court certainly hadn’t done her any favors in that regard.

Well anyway, Chamomile and I headed toward our little workshop to burn some time away. If nopony came to find me within a few hours, I’d track down Mom, Dad, and Shining myself.

For now though, science!

“I’ll get it,” Shining’s muffled voice said. “It’s probably somepony looking for Twilight.”

I frowned at that. Not from what Shining said itself, but from Mom and Dad not saying anything. They knew that most everypony who called upon me this high up simply landed on the balcony. In all likelihood, it was me at the door.

No, that wasn’t fair. That was ascribing far and away too much ill-intent to Mom and Dad, especially given the context. Besides, to be truly fair, there were a lot of non-pegasi here now, and even without them, Astral and the other unicorn natives called on me often enough.

But then they knew I was supposed to be out of town. But on the other hoof, everypony in Luminance had probably heard I was back by now. But on the other, other hoof…

I needed to just stop there. Mom and Dad probably didn’t even know how to reason about probabilities on that level, let alone that they would do so now.

It wasn’t like it was fair to get mad even if this was intended as a petty slight anyway.

Shining opened the door. Seeing it was me, he slipped out with not more than a word or two to Mom or Dad.

And he looked upset. Whether that was because Mom and Dad didn’t agree with his views, me in general, or something as yet unknown, I had no idea.

“How did things go?” I asked weakly, hesitantly.

Shining was silent on the matter. His hoof tapped as he growled and scowled quietly. Everything about his countenance screamed ‘simmering anger’.

“Mom and Dad are far too nice.”

“They’re not mad!” I asked with barely concealed glee in my voice, face, wings – everything, really. It was too good to be true!

“Oh, no. They’re royally pissed off.”

“Oh…” It was too good to be true.

“But they’re willing to…move forward, is how they put it. There’s certainly not going to be any forgiving or forgetting, but they have an…interesting perspective on the matter.”

I paused for a moment to quash the little spark of hope Shining had ignited in me. What he said meant nothing more or less than what it meant.

Even so, I did ask, “A persuasive perspective?”

“More so than your ‘Luna deserves this’ argument or Twinkleshine’s ‘We don’t know what to do, so let’s do nothing’ argument. But no, ultimately.”

I tsked just loud enough for Shining to overhear. His answer was no different than what I’d expected, but it was still disappointing.

“Anyway, just try to keep it down, alright?”

Nodding, I followed Shining back inside. I found Dad out on the balcony atop a pile of cushions. Mom had laid down with her head resting on him, dead to the world. Even though she was as heavy a sleeper as I was, I did try to walk as quietly as I could with hooves.

Dad smiled down at Mom as he ran a hoof through her mane, just how I liked ponies to do for me. Like mother like daughter, I supposed. If this weren’t staged to make me feel included, that was.

I sighed to myself. That was entirely unfair, and even if so, so what? That just meant Mom and Dad loved me enough to put on a show when they were hurt. That wasn’t such a bad thing, now was it.

At my approach with Shining, Dad finally noticed us. He stopped his affectionate petting to nudge Mom awake.

“It’s okay,” I said before Dad could get any further. “Let her sleep.”

Mom had to be exhausted. The dried tears were obvious on her coat, and she sniffled every time she took a breath.

Dad looked slightly more composed, if only because he’d obviously tried to clean himself up. His eyes were still bloodshot though, and when he spoke, his voice was a little hoarse.

“Hey, Sweetie. Where’d you go earlier?”

“Business came up,” I eked out. It wasn’t a total lie. I’d had the business of being anywhere but here.

Dad’s smile widened a bit at that. “Try not to work yourself too hard, Princess. This is your vacation, after all.”

“Princesses have very volatile vacations,” I said back.

“I suppose that’s true.” A few seconds passed, and nopony said anything. Eventually, though, Dad asked, “Are you going to sit down?”

With a small voice, I said, “Okay.” There was some room between Dad and Shining, who’d already retaken his spot. I squeezed in-between them and tried to keep my imagination under control. Shining wasn’t radiating distaste, and Dad wasn’t angry at me, but it sure felt like I wasn’t where I belonged.

For minutes we just sat there, gazing out over the balcony at the scenery like Shining, Twinkleshine, and I had when we’d arrived hours earlier. The feeling of wrongness faded. I relaxed and leaned into Shining, letting the tension in my body drain away.

It really was hard to believe we were on the moon sometimes; it was so much like Equus here. But then there were times like this, where we had to be in some exotic, magical place.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

For a few moments, I didn’t register that anypony had said anything. Then to Dad, I worked up the courage to reply, “Even considering who made it?”

Dad hummed in what I thought was an affirmative tone. It came out a little too monotone to know for sure.

I waited for Dad to say anything else, but he didn’t. Was that a cue to drop the topic?

No, probably not. Shining would have told me if Mom and Dad didn’t want to talk at all. He wouldn’t intentionally sabotage me like that, and he promised not to, too. And doubly so since it’d upset Mom and Dad.

I pressed further. “Shining said you have an interesting opinion on…everything.”

It was a weak chuckle that Dad made, but it was a chuckle nonetheless.

“I suppose you would say that,” Dad said.

I could almost feel the sarcasm in Shining’s voice as he replied, “What, did you want me to use Twily speak? Your opinion is orthogonal to the problem.”

What on Equus had Mom and Dad told Shining?

“What do you mean?” I asked whoever would answer.

Shining responded first. “Quote, ‘Whatever gets Twilight on the throne,’ end quote.”

I couldn’t help the, “What?” that leaked out of me as I turned my head from Shining toward Dad.

“There was context to that, Shining.” Dad sighed when he caught sight of my raised eyebrow. “Twilight, can I ask you something first?”

“Of course. Any… Well, almost anything.” I’d try my best not to say, “State secret,” to anything he asked, at least.

“Twilight,” Dad said, waiting to continue until I looked him in the eyes, “why do you want to know what we, that is what Velvet and I think?”

I cocked my head to the side. “You’re my parents? I love you?” What part of that was not obvious?

“I know you do, Sweetie. I love you, too.” Dad nuzzled me. “But we both know that’s not how you make decisions. Do you honestly think you would trust our thoughts over your own, especially when we have less information?”

A jolt of pain ran through me as I bit down on my lip hard to keep from giving the obvious answer. I fiddled with the cushion below a forehoof nervously, replying, “I mean, sometimes somepony who hasn’t seen a problem before can notice things nopony else has, just from having a fresh perspective.”

“That’s a no,” Shining said.

Immediately, Dad sent him a scolding look. “Shining.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Shining sighed.

With that over, Dad turned his gaze back to me. I felt myself shrinking into my cushions under it, even though it was warm and loving again.

“Yes, that’s true,” Dad said. “Is that why you’re asking me?”

“Yes.”

Dad just held my gaze until my withers fell.

“No,” I admitted. That was not at all why I was asking. The thought hadn’t even occurred to me before.

“It’s fine,” Dad said, not even a trace of hurt in his voice. “No foal cares what their parents think when they grow up. It’s a universal truth.”

Surely not. There was definitely an existence theorem that said otherwise. And Spike–

“Spike will, too.”

“Ah!” I jumped in surprise, sure that Dad had been reading my mind. But then upon reflection, it was kind of the obvious train of thought to go down.

Dad giggled as I settled back onto my barrel. “Don’t worry,” he said. “He’ll still love you, and that’ll be enough.”

If Dad could say that to me so easily, then it must be true.

“Still,” Dad added, “you should cherish that he thinks you’re the sun, the stars, and everything bright and wonderful in the universe while it lasts.” He nudged me with a knee. “Lucky you. You’ll get that treatment for what, a century?”

“Spike will be a teenager in forty years or so.”

“You two are off topic,” Shining said. I took the time to glare at him for interrupting a far more pleasant father–daughter moment.

Unfortunately, Dad agreed. “Yes, I suppose we are.” He frowned for a moment before his eyes lit up, no doubt having remembered where we’d left off. “So why is it that you care what Velvet and I think, Twilight? Do you want us to like Princess Luna?”

Of course I did. Although I knew it would be very hard now.

“Or is it that you want somepony else to tell you to like her?” Dad asked.

Even with who I was talking to and even with what originally started this conversation, I said, “Luna is my best friend.” I didn’t need anypony to tell me whom I liked and disliked.

Dad nodded slightly to himself, as if checking off an item on a list. Right after, he asked, “Then if not either of those, is it perhaps that you want to feel that it’s okay that you like her as much as you do?”

I opened my mouth to reply, but no words came to me. And the more I tried to find them, the more it felt like they flew further away.

“So that is it,” Dad concluded. He reached out as best as he could to give me a hug; Mom still had him pinned down.

Still snuggling with me, Dad continued, “I won’t pretend to be the biggest fan of Princess Luna right now, but I will say how proud of you I am.”

“Proud?” I asked, breaking away. There were plenty of things to be proud of me for, but in this context? “Why?”

“Because you’re a steadfast friend to a pony who needs you. It takes a lot in here” – Dad patted his chest just over his heart – “to support somepony after even half of what Princess Luna did. Friendships have broken over far less, and over far less personal matters.”

I turned to Shining, my eyes silently asking if I was hearing things.

“I know. Crazy, right?” Shining said.

Dad sighed. “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put your hoof down when needed. Princess Luna was completely out of line. You know that, right?”

“No,” Shining answered for me.

“Shining, don’t make me send you to your room.”

I heard Shining mutter, “Seriously? Do I even have a room?”

A moment passed before Dad turned his attention back to me. “Twilight?”

“Luna is not evil.”

“I never said she was.” One of Dad’s hooves rubbed the base of my mane just above my withers. “Sweetie, life is…messy. A pony can do wrong without being bad.”

My wings sagged down along with the rest of me. “I know.”

“And you’ve spoken with Princess Luna?”

I nodded slightly. “Do you want to talk to her?”

“No,” Dad said sharply. “I don’t think that would be a good idea. Your mother and I… Nevermind. Listen, never be ashamed to care for who you love. If your friends stray down the wrong path, pull them back. You can always make things better if you try.”

And then it clicked. I pounded one forehoof against the other as my brain flew into action. “That’s why you want me on the throne. You don’t trust either of them!”

Rather sheepish after my outburst, I glanced over at Mom. She groaned and rolled around for a bit, but she didn’t wake up. I whispered my apologies in her direction.

“The diarchs, that is,” I added. “Luna and Celestia.”

I’d thought it was an odd sentiment coming from Mom and Dad, but it made sense now. They wanted me to act as Equestria’s moral compass.

“No, we don’t,” Dad eventually said. “Princess Luna is obviously willing to go to extreme lengths to get what she wants with…” He turned to Shining and asked, “How did Velvet put it?”

“‘Higher probabilities of success in the face of extraordinarily low marginal returns,’” Shining quoted. “I think.”

“Er, right,” Dad said. “That. I doubt Princess Luna does it often. Hay, she probably hasn’t done anything truly wrong with any regularity whatsoever, but she’s willing to, and that’s dangerous enough.”

Shining chimed in, saying, “Especially for somepony leading a coup.”

“Yes, quite,” Dad said, a slight hint of annoyance at the interruption in his tone. “However, Princess Celestia is potentially much worse. I’ve talked with Pupa quite a bit, and it’s become terribly obvious that Princess Celestia has edited a lot of world history. That’s bad news.”

“Says the scholar,” Shining commented, interrupting again.

To that, I said, “Says the Captain of the Guard.”

Shining rolled his eyes but said nothing further on the subject.

Once Dad was sure Shining and I weren’t going to go on bickering, he said, “Academic bias aside, for all we mere mortals know, Princess Celestia could have been a blood thirsty tyrant up until a century ago who decided, on a whim, to try being a benevolent dictator instead.”

That example was wildly unrealistic and contradicted known facts Luna, Luminance’s library, and the changelings all corroborated, but it was a good point to bring up. Celestia’s editing of world history was more than just a disservice to Luna.

Honestly, I kind of thought I was the only pony who cared that she was suppressing information. Nopony ever seemed to make a big deal of it, not even Luna. But apparently I was wrong. I supposed other ponies were just less vocal about it.

Hmm… But then I wasn’t exactly up in arms with a mob wielding torches and pitchforks, I supposed. Or subtly manipulating one, given that I couldn’t have afforded the attention before now.

Next to me, I watched Shining facehoof. “Dad, please stop trying to push that theory.”

I saw Dad roll his eyes out of the corner of my own. “It’s just an example, Shining. Try reading some dystopian novels for more ideas.”

“You know, not that I’m advocating dystopias, but inside their own cultural viewpoint, those books are usually utopias with a main character in the wrong… Shutting up now.”

Dad and I broke off our dual glares and, for the moment, simply pretended that Shining didn’t exist. Honestly, that stallion.

“Personal feelings aside, let’s not forget Princess Celestia’s infamous spat with Sunset Shimmer.”

I noticed Dad conspicuously not looking at my mane as he said those words.

“It hardly speaks to Princess Celestia’s character that she drove an obvious daughter-figure away, not to mention letting it get to the point where half of Equestria was somewhat scared of her.”

As much as I hated to defend Celestia even slightly, I said, “It…wasn’t exactly like that, Dad.”

“No?”

“I mean, well, it was pretty close, but…”

Mother dug up some of her final memories and threw them at me. The love was there, from Sunset at least, as was the constant wariness from nearly everypony she met, but what Celestia truly thought of her was as much a mystery to me as to her.

“Nevermind.” Returning to our previous topic of discussion – really anything but this would be fine – I said, “Cadance is a better moral compass than I am.”

“No offense to anyone outside our own cultural viewpoint” – Shining let out an exasperated sigh – “but Cadance is a pushover. Princess Luna certainly won’t listen to her, and Princess Celestia I suspect doesn’t listen to anypony, considering how she runs Equestria.”

Well, that wasn’t completely true. Cadance did have her moments. But I had thought as much myself on several occasions.

And of course Princess Rainbow Dash was practically irrelevant. The only pony she had any real history with was me, and I hardly needed her advice. I should probably help her work on that, but…ugh. What a pain.

“You, on the other hoof,” Dad continued, “Princess Luna will listen to. She obviously cares for you and values your opinion. If we must put one of the diarchs on the throne, I’d prefer her. Your mother and I trust you to rein her in.”

Dad mussed up my mane as he added, “We know you can tame her. If you haven’t already.”

A blush lit up my cheeks. A few thoughts that were decidedly not what Dad meant flashed through my head before I flushed them away – for later.

“Still, I wouldn’t object to having the chance to kick her in the radius once or twice.”

I giggled at that. “Dad,” I said in mock scorn.

Shining agreed with me, saying, “That is kind of petty.”

“Well, what do you want me to do?” Dad complained. Some of what must be his real feelings slipped out in his tone; he had a slight growl underlying his words and a bit of a whine. “Justice isn’t about making the victims feel better, Shining. We have a thousand words for that: revenge, vengeance, retribution, payback, et cetera, et cetera.”

Suddenly, I really didn’t want to be here anymore. It…wasn’t that I felt ashamed so much as…ignoble compared to Dad.

“Sometimes they overlap, but not here. This is just” – Dad’s mouth ran through a dozen half-formed words before he found one he liked – “just a mess. Somepony is going to get hurt no matter what. It…might as well be us.”

Dad deflated into a miserable looking lump. He seemed a stallion twice his age like that, which I supposed he really was. His frown moved his coat about on his face, creating the illusion of the small wrinkles I’d banished from him forever.

He mumbled, “Life can only get better for us from here out.”

With much trepidation, I said, “Dad?”

Dad picked himself up, almost as if the last five minutes had never happened. “Yes, Twilight?”

“Are…are you really okay with that?”

Dad let out a long breath. “I honestly don’t know what I’d be okay with, Sweetie. But at least this way I get to look cool in front of my foals. Martyrs are still cool, right?”

I smiled up at Dad. “Yes, very cool.” I kicked Shining silently.

“Oh. Yeah. Cool.”

Way to sound sincere, Shining.

“Just–”

Stars, damn it. Did Shining just yawn? I sent a short glare his way.

“–don’t take it too far,” I added. “Dead ponies are never cool.”

“Of course not,” Dad agreed, mussing up my mane again.

“Not to interrupt or anything,” Shining interrupted, “but what time do you go to bed around here?”

“Around when you wake up,” Dad answered.

“Ugh,” was the extremely dignified response Shining made.

I asked, “Surely you’ve pulled all-nighters before on patrol?” The night guard wasn’t exactly around to take care of it, after all.

“I don’t see you complaining about Mom.” Sighing, Shining added, “But whatever. So what is there to do up here?”

“A lot more if you speak the language or have wings,” Dad replied.

And it certainly was true that a civilization almost entirely composed of pegasi did tend to unintentionally exclude ponies stuck on the ground, let alone the slowly eroding language barrier.

“But there are sights to see, mountains to climb, games to play,” Dad went on. “Honestly, it’s a lot like how my grandfather described his foalhood. But on the moon.”

“And with attempts to build anachronisms,” I added.

If one dug into their culture deeply enough, there were all sorts of strange things the ponies here practiced. For instance, they played some kind of complex game to see who could recreate the most future-tech that Luna described to them. They had a huge festival for it at the start of each spring and fall.

And I’d missed the spring one. It might have been the very last time they would hold it, too, given the influx of technology I’d already brought here.

Sigh. What a tragedy.

Shining hummed in thought, then asked, “So what do we do until Mom wakes up?”

I reached out to my bedroom and teleported a deck of cards to us. “We could play some of the games we used to.”

“I’m not feeding you more favors,” Shining said.

I tsked. That hadn’t exactly been my plan, but I wouldn’t have objected to claiming them.

“Just for fun, then,” I suggested, to which Shining and Dad agreed.

I moved across the cushions to sit facing my opponents, shuffling the deck with my usual flair. Even before I sat down, we descended into a petty debate over exactly which game to play.

A very groggy Shining sipped at his coffee from his seat within Pony Joe’s. He’d nodded off for a few hours back at Luminance, but apparently somepony wasn’t as used to all-nighters as he’d led us to believe.

“Look, I realize you forgot,” Shining said about as fast as a sloth, “but couldn’t you just steal a piece of paper or something? I don’t really want to give Princess Celestia a diplomatic napkin.”

“Nonsense,” I said, my scrawling uninterrupted for the reply. “Napkin notes are a time-honored tradition of academics.”

“She’s a princess,” Shining countered.

“And also the head of a school,” I threw back. “That counts.”

Shining let his head hit the table. He mumbled something about being too tired that I didn’t quite catch.

Anyway, my case won, I scribbled down the last of the request I wanted to make to Celestia. I placed it beneath the twine that bound the original letter I had to give to her, then pushed the bundle across the table.

Shining picked his head up to frown intensely at the napkin.

I rolled my eyes.

“You know,” Shining began, “I could just tell her that Pupa still wants to perform with Trixie.”

“No. I’m taking on the debt, not Pupa. The last thing I need is Pupa and Chrysalis owing Celestia a favor.”

“Ugh, whatever.”

Shining downed the last of his coffee, then let out a refreshed ‘ah’. He stood up, taking the bundle in his magic. He took a half step away before his eyes paused on the document directly under the napkin.

“What’s the envelope? Couldn’t fit the rest in it?”

Ignoring the sarcasm, I said, “No. It’s for Cadance.” As Shining was eying it curiously, I added, “Please don’t read it unless Cadance shows it to you.”

Shining raised an eyebrow. “Evil plans or filly stuff?”

“Whichever suits your fancy,” I answered, knowing Shining wouldn’t believe either answer. It wasn’t really either, though. Beyond the basic hellos, I just asked her to meet me in the Æthereal Realm to talk. I wanted to ask her about alicorn blessings, if I could. That, and I wanted to ask her to join Dash and me in the whole ‘second generation alliance’ thing.

Hopefully she’d come.

“Evil plans it is, then,” Shining said with a nod. “Anyway, I’ll see you…later, I suppose. Last night was more fun than I expected. Or at least the second half was. Tell Mom and Dad to write at least for me, alright?”

“Can do, Shining.” I supposed it wouldn’t kill me to run a post office for a season or so.

Shining was a few steps toward the door when he stopped.

“Twilight…” he said before trailing off into thought. I could just make out his brows furrowing, and the one eye I could see moved down as if he were staring at his own nose.

Some time later, I said, “Yes?”

It was still a few seconds before Shining surfaced from his thoughts. He said, “I’m still mad at you. And Cadance, Mom, Dad, Pupa, and especially Luna. And I guess Princess Celestia somewhat, too. You are all awful.”

I bit back on my urge to defend everypony, especially Mom, Dad, and Cadance. None of this was really their fault in any way.

Still, we’d just end up arguing the same points as we had yesterday. Shining was exhausted, though, so I’d probably debate him into the ground and get him even more upset with me.

“But for what it’s worth” – Shining hesitated, frowning, perhaps deciding if he wanted to say anything more – “I’m convinced that this Luna of yours does, in fact, care for you in her own mad way. On reflection, I see how she wrapped you around her hoof when you were younger.”

Wha… Oh. Oh! Yes! Luna must have talked to Shining while he was asleep on the moon. I wondered what she could’ve said or done to get him to admit that. It wasn’t even close to saying he’d switched sides, not by a long shot, nor was it forgiveness, but foal steps, as they say.

Shining sighed in an almost resigned way, for whatever reason. “See ya.”

“Oh, right,” I said, remembering to wish him farewell only after he’d said his own. “Goodbye.”

I watched Shining leave Pony Joe’s and followed his magic a little ways down the street with a warm smile on my face. Things were looking up in the family relations department.

A frown found its way onto my face. Relations with Shining were looking up – not that it was hard to look up from the hole I’d dug myself into – but Cadance might not even want to talk to me. And…Mom and Dad were never openly upset around me, at least they weren’t all through last night. I still didn’t know how to feel about that.

I let out a sigh, then scarfed down the remains of my early-morning donut.

Done with Canterlot, I teleported my way back to Las Pegasus where I’d dropped Twinkleshine off earlier. There were theft wards I didn’t want to bother circumventing, so I made my way on hoof through the hotel up to our room.

Expecting Twinkleshine to be asleep, I opened the door silently and tiphoofed into the room, making my way to the bed we shared.

But she wasn’t there. The bed hadn’t even been touched.

Before I went off on a wild goose chase, I let my senses expand and soon found her magic in the bathroom.

And then I remembered something important I’d forgotten.

Fighting the dual urge to race in after her and to hide under the blankets of our bed, I pushed open the bathroom door. It hadn’t even been closed, but the creaking sound it made would’ve alerted even the hardest of hearing that I was back.

“Twilight,” Twinkleshine said from around the corner. There was patience in her voice, somehow.

I sheepishly followed the sound of her voice and came into the actual bathing part of our room’s ridiculously large and opulent bathroom. Twinkleshine was, of course, sitting right next to a door on top of a small crate. Two more were next to her, one opened and its contents partially consumed, judging by the wrappers nearby. There was also a smaller one that she’d rested her hooves on, which was also opened.

“Surprise?” I tried.

“I didn’t mean this literally!” Twinkleshine shouted, her voice booming and echoing enough to hurt both of our ears. Now that I looked her in the face, that part of her coat had turned red.

One of my forehooves rubbed awkwardly against the other leg. I looked away, finding it far too embarrassing to hold Twinkleshine’s gaze.

“But it’s a real thing,” I protested. “You can go to some spas in town and get it.”

“R-really?” Twinkleshine asked, her eyes drawn to the smaller crate.

I withdrew the hoofmaiden outfit that, when worn, actually made a pony look more naked than usual.

“Well, probably not this. But bathing in chocolate is definitely a thing. And I got your favorite blend.” Eying the outfit still in my magic, I added, “My Queen.”

Twinkleshine somehow got even redder in the face.

I picked a grape from the vine in the smaller box. Upon inspection, it still looked good to eat, so I peeled it and placed it in Twinkleshine’s mouth.

“Why not enjoy it?” I asked.

Silently and with a face of pure scarlet, Twinkleshine gave me one last look before nodding and unwrapping chocolate bars.

“By the way,” I said sans the undertone of temptation, “thank you.”

Twinkleshine surprised me with a kiss on the cheek. My fur felt a bit weird there after, and when I rubbed a hoof over it, some chocolate showed on my frog.

“Anytime, Twilight. Now don’t just stand there, Hoofmaiden. Do you expect me to unwrap all of these myself?”

Heh. “No, of course not, My Queen.”

Author's Note

Prereaders – Starlight Nova, Strange Reasoning, The Great Eater

Behold! A shameless promotion for my Patreon page.

Omake

Another time, another world, another TwiLuna
Or, what if you change Luna and leave everything else mostly canon?

“Come on now, y’all,” Applejack said, or at least Twilight thought so. With how hard she was concentrating on the magically inert Elements of Harmony, it could have been anypony – if she even remembered the mare’s name right. “She needs to concentrate.”

Perhaps a minute later, Twilight idly noted that her five personal distractions were gone. The thought slipped away a moment later.

“Just one spark,” Twilight mumbled to herself.

According to the book, it only took a single spark to summon the sixth Element of Harmony. One little magical spark was all that was required to restart the natural flow of magic through the Elements.

Twilight poked and prodded the inert stone spheres before her with her magic. She could see the dead, lifeless channels in them. They should be coursing with enough magic to strike down a goddess. These were the real artifacts, not some distraction Nightmare Moon placed here.

But nothing worked. Every attempt Twilight made was rebuffed, as if the Elements themselves objected to her ministrations.

It made no sense! There had to be a way to revive them. Why would the book say it was possible if somepony had never done it before? The book had to be right.

“I hope,” Twilight whimpered to herself. Her teeth bit down on her lip as a terrible feeling settled into her chest.

The oddly metallic sound of hooves on stone echoed through the crumbling ruins. For a moment, Twilight paused to think which of the ponies who came here with her uninvited wore horseshoes. Pegasi never did. The unicorn would never be caught dead in plain, simple horseshoes, so she was out. Twilight had gotten far too personal a look at the pink one’s bare hooves, so that meant it was the cook.

Twilight shook her head. No, both the earth ponies were cooks or something, but it was the farmer-cook.

Something sounded wrong though. A frown worked its way onto Twilight’s face. Applejack – Twilight really hoped she remembered a name right for once in her life – was the one that cleared out the distractions. Why was she back?

Eyes widening, Twilight leapt to her hooves, ready for anything. The hoofsteps did sound wrong. They were coming from in front of her, not from the barely functional doors behind her.

“Nightmare Moon!”

The dark alicorn had come. She walked calmly forward as if she had not a care in the world, as if the instruments of her defeat were not in the hooves of her enemy.

She walked as if the instruments of her defeat were worthless lumps of stone.

“Twilight Sparkle,” Nightmare Moon calmly replied. To Twilight’s disbelief, she sounded almost respectful.

Twilight felt herself mentally trip. This was the mare who, not a day earlier, had cackled and proclaimed the night would last forever like a lunatic?

Nonetheless, Twilight summoned up her magic in an instant. She shaped and formed it into a teleport. Flight was her only option.

“Ow!” Horn stinging, Twilight flinched and shook her head. The remnants of her half-formed teleport crumbled and dissociated into the background magic of Equestria.

“You’re kidding, right?” Nightmare Moon said, her tone somewhere between taunting and amused.

Not rising to the provocation, Twilight did the only sane and rational thing and tried again, putting her all into casting as fast as possible. Her horn protested, but it would be worth–

Twilight’s scream pierced the night. She collapsed to her knees. Her head fell downward as she tried to hide her horn away in the imagined safety of her own hooves.

“No need to bow. You are not my subject.”

Her head swimming, Twilight tried to teleport again, as it was the only thing that came to mind. It stung just to call forth her magic, let alone focus it, but she could still manage to cast spells. She had to.

A small sigh escaped the alicorn now looming over Twilight. One of her armor-clad hooves shot forward.

Twilight braced herself, her eyes squeezed shut.

“Ow…” Twilight whimpered. The relatively gentle kick would have barely hurt if her horn were in good health. As it were, Nightmare Moon was merely rubbing salt in the wound.

However, the blow did force Twilight to look up at Nightmare Moon. She was tall, as tall as Princess Celestia. The last time Twilight had felt so small, she had been eight years old and staring starry-eyed up at Princess Celestia.

“Come now, Twilight. I know my sister must have taught you better than to try the same thing over and over again.”

Twilight grit her teeth, an act which only reinforced how sharp Nightmare Moon’s were. This close, Nightmare Moon could tear into her throat before–

Nightmare Moon’s words only now registered. ‘Sister’? Nightmare Moon was Princess Celestia’s sister? Surely that was a lie.

No, true or not, it was a distraction. The fact was a relative triviality – a footnote in history – compared to escape.

But Nightmare Moon was right, as much as Twilight hated to admit it. Magic was not going win her her escape. Outcasting a goddess was a vain effort to begin with, maybe even outright impossible.

Yet what other option did Twilight have? Woefully underprepared as she was, her only skills were magic, research, and organization. She hardly thought offering to organize Nightmare Moon’s sock drawer would get her anywhere.

“Now with your permission, I would like to take this conversation elsewhere.”

Twilight tried not to let the shock show on her face. Nightmare Moon was asking for her permission.

Of course, refusing would certainly have consequences – unpleasant consequences. Talking was good though. Every second spent talking was another second Twilight had to think of an escape plan.

Even though she knew she had no other option, Twilight was still hesitant in her reply. “Okay.”

A shiver ran down Twilight’s spine as Nightmare Moon smiled. An almost overwhelming amount of magic flooded into the room. The cyan glow at the tip of Nightmare Moon’s horn was nearly blinding.

And in an instant, the world returned to normal, or as normal as Nightmare Moon’s world ever was. It was still night; what should have been daybreak had passed long ago.

That said, the place Twilight now found herself was well lit. Looking around, the magical lights floating about the admittedly comfy looking room absorbed shadows more than they projected light, or so it seemed to Twilight’s eyes. A small throne rested on one side of the room, and scattered about were various other office-like fixtures.

This place screamed ‘throne room’, however small and homely it appeared. Out of the corner of her eye, Twilight spotted the Elements tucked away in a corner.

“Where are we?” Twilight asked. She tried her absolute best to make her question not sound like a demand.

“The Temporary Night Court,” Nightmare Moon replied, as if that answered anything. She crossed the room with all the grace and poise expected of royalty, settling down onto her throne. Even so seated, she stared down at Twilight.

Only once she was obviously comfortable and at peace did Nightmare Moon speak again.

“Twilight Sparkle, I have banished my sister to the sun.”

The words were like being hit by a train.

“You liar!” Twilight screeched.

“Then where is she? Why has the sun not risen?”

“She…” Twilight bit down on her lip, fighting not to tear up. Princess Celestia had been generous enough to share some of the secrets of the heavens with an inquisitive young filly. The world needed the sun; if the sun had to share the sky with the moon, so be it. There was no sun, therefore there was no Princess Celestia. QED.

Twilight cursed herself. If she were anypony else in the world, she could force herself to believe the sun’s absence to be a mere ruse, a trap, a plot. But no, her mind had to believe in facts, and evidence, and logic.

Staring at the floor, Twilight could only guess what Nightmare Moon’s face must look like. It had to be warped in manic glee as she watched Twilight struggle to accept reality.

Well, Twilight would hardly give the mare the satisfaction. She raised her head to glare back at Nightmare Moon.

Yet this only made Nightmare Moon’s smile grow.

“Now then,” Nightmare Moon said, her diction absolutely perfect. Something about that bothered Twilight. “I believe you have a…proposal to bring forward to The Night Court.”

For at least the second time tonight, Twilight’s mind ground to a halt.

“Speak, and you will be heard.”

Twilight fumbled with her mouth, seeking words that were not there.

“Come now, Twilight. What is the one thing I possess, might be persuaded to give, and you need?”

Twilight decided that instant that she hated Nightmare Moon personally. Before, she was just a villain that needed to be stopped. They were all over Equestria like weeds. That was what happened when a third of your population could alter reality with their mind.

But this – this – this arrogance, this goading, this railroading was insufferable. Nightmare Moon was after something from her.

A moment passed.

Twilight fought to keep her scowl from becoming a mere intense frown.

Nightmare Moon wanted something from her. Assuming that something was not entertainment of one kind or another, Twilight had something she might be able to use. The only question was what.

“I want Princess Celestia.”

Nightmare Moon raised an eyebrow questioningly.

Honestly, Twilight had expected more yelling and posturing at the demand. Still, she did her best to stare down Nightmare Moon to see just what she could get from her.

“If you insist,” Nightmare Moon finally said.

Twilight none-too-subtlety let her jaw drop.

“I might warn you though. Is she what you need?”

A dozen objections ran through Twilight’s mind. She stomped down on each one, instead asking, “What do you mean?”

“Surely you cannot be so blind?” Nightmare Moon’s words came off as a question. To Twilight’s blank expression, she continued, “I defeated her once already when she was at her full strength. How would I lose in a rematch when she is weak from her foray in the sun?”

Unable to stop herself, Twilight ground her teeth together. Again, Nightmare Moon was railroading her into something.

A thought struck Twilight. It was not something useful so much as perhaps a means to gain information.

“Are you weak from banishment right now?”

Nightmare Moon’s grin grew positively feral. “That is the million bit question, is it not? Perhaps at this moment, I have nothing left, no magic to even conjure a tiny glass of water.”

No. No, Nightmare Moon was baiting Twilight. The kind of power she used and ease with which she used it at the castle in the Everfree Forest was not what Twilight would expect to see from a mare scrapping at the dregs of her power.

Then was Nightmare Moon lying about Princess Celestia being weak on her return?

No. That information was too informative. If Twilight managed to rescue Princess Celestia, she would know to make the plan foolproof enough to secret the princess away before Nightmare Moon could intervene.

And beyond that, there was still something bothering Twilight about Nightmare Moon. She had the feeling that once she figured it out, a facehoof would immediately follow, like a hard math problem with a simple, elegant solution.

“Oh! Cycle day and night.”

Any attempt to rescue Princess Celestia and save Equestria would require, well, Equestria to be alive. The world would freeze without the sun.

A half second later, Twilight realized she said that out loud and placed a hoof over her mouth. This was not a homework exercise with Princess Celestia, even if Nightmare Moon was rudely stringing her along as if it were.

“Not quite.” Speaking more to herself than to Twilight, Nightmare Moon said, “Perhaps tomorrow we might discuss that.”

Tomorrow? That was a good sign. Or rather it was a not-bad sign. It suggested Nightmare Moon meant to keep Twilight alive, at least for now. Twilight felt just a little bit of the tension in her shoulders fade.

“Tell me, Twilight, what did you do before running off haphazardly into the Everfree and nearly dying?”

“I didn’t–”

Before Twilight could say more than two words, Nightmare Moon interrupted, “The Everfree is not as nice a place as it was a thousand years ago, especially so at night. Alone, you would have died. With those other mares and some…direction, you barely made it to the castle in one piece.”

It took all of an instant for Twilight to connect the dots. “You! You – you cast some spell and – and…”

And why on Equus had Nightmare Moon allowed Twilight to reach the Elements?

“You’re welcome,” Nightmare Moon said.

Twilight refused to dignify that with a response, not that her indignation made her predicament any less confusing.

“Now please answer the question.”

It took Twilight a few seconds to tear herself away from pondering what Nightmare Moon could possibly be up to, and another few seconds to admit to herself that Nightmare Moon already knew the answer. Nothing she could say would give anything away.

Twilight grumbled, “I read a book about the Elements.”

“Which was…”

“Research?” Twilight hesitantly replied.

Nightmare Moon waved a hoof in a circle, silently asking for her to keep going.

“Gathering information?”

“Quite so. So what do you need?”

“Information,” Twilight said, fairly confident that she she just reached the destination Nightmare Moon had railroaded her to. Still, there was the matter of what information she needed. “How to cycle day and night? How to rescue Princess Celestia?”

“No. You do not yet possess the magic to do either–”

Yet? Twilight tucked that thought away for later.

“–and as soon as I find her, I plan to arrange for your foalsitter to be taken care of. One way or another.”

Shouting, nearly screaming, Twilight said, “If you harm one hair on her mane–”

Twilight found herself screaming silently under Nightmare Moon’s magic. Words having failed her, she rushed forward, her magic flaring.

Before Twilight could form even the core of a spell, Nightmare Moon ripped the magic she had summoned away from her. She collapsed to her knees again, biting down to keep from screaming again.

“Twilight Sparkle,” Nightmare Moon said, her voice icy, “Princess Cadenza’s fate lies entirely in her and your good behavior. I suggest you think before you act. Thinking is what you’re good at, I hear.”

‘Good behavior’ being the key words, Twilight bit out an weak, “Apologies.” At least she could speak again.

“Apology accepted. Now then, what do you need information about?”

“I don’t know.” Sick of playing this game, Twilight guessed, “My current situation?”

Nightmare Moon sighed. “Close enough. You might find it curious that I not only knew who you were, but also that I showed up in that backwater Ponyville to begin with. What kind of place is that to make my triumphant return?”

Rather begrudgingly, Twilight had to admit Nightmare Moon had a point.

“I had an extended” – Nightmare Moon chuckled – “conversation with my sister. I learned quite a number of interesting things about you, including where you were.”

A shiver ran through Twilight. Her mind conjured up progressively worse things Nightmare Moon might have done to get that information, culminating in some of the most nightmarish things imaginable.

Jumping on anything to distract herself, Twilight asked, “What interesting things?”

Nightmare Moon smiled again, as creepy as ever. Rather cryptically, she said, “Today is a great crossroads in your destiny, Twilight. Perhaps I might simply kill you.”

Twilight took an unconscious half-step back.

“Perhaps you might get lucky, free my sister, and live out the life she planned for you. But I rather doubt it.”

“Or what?” Twilight snapped. “I become your minion and help you rule the world?”

Nightmare Moon looked as though she were fighting off a laughing fit, yet her tone was as even and regal as ever. “That would be a bit…cliché, would it not? I could hardly expect the heroine to betray her beloved, wise old mentor to the villain for power.”

Twilight opened her mouth, then closed it a second later. She had no idea how to respond to that.

“Please, Twilight. Do not presume me the fool.”

A mad goddess was bad enough, but a mad intelligent goddess was an unmitigated disaster. Twilight’s threat assessment of Nightmare Moon skyrocketed.

Sweat slowly suffusing her brow, Twilight considered that maybe – maybe – Nightmare Moon was sane and Ponyville was all an act. Maybe even eternal night was just leverage for something else.

As if reading Twilight’s mind – and Twilight wondered if she could – the grin on Nightmare Moon’s face grew the longer Twilight thought.

Twilight gulped. “What do you want?”

Nightmare Moon leaned back on her throne, by all accounts satisfied with Twilight’s words.

“Nothing.”

“I… What?”

“Nothing,” Nightmare Moon repeated herself. “You are a charity case.”

“That doesn’t make any – I – but I tried to – and you – you’re lying!”

“Perhaps.” Nightmare Moon paused, frowning as her thoughts turned inward for a moment. Her brow furrowed as if struggling with something. Then into that brief silence, she said, “But then lies are simply data points you chose to ignore, as you say these days.”

That was hardly how that expression was meant to be used, but Twilight checked herself before correcting Nightmare Moon. Besides for a mare a thousand years behind the vernacular–

Twilight’s eyes widened.

Nightmare Moon grinned. She raised an eyebrow as if asking, “Yes? Do share with the rest of the class.”

Even as the evidence rolled in, Twilight almost refused to accept it. And yet it all made sense.

Nightmare Moon spoke Modern Equestrian with a perfect Canterlot accent. She even knew idioms, if not perfectly.

This throne room was all new but obviously used.

The spells Nightmare Moon used – from what little Twilight had witnessed – had neither the style nor structure of a mage a thousand years behind the times.

“How – how long have you been free?”

“A swing and a miss, Dear Twilight.”

That was impossible. All of the evidence pointed to Nightmare Moon having had enough time to update herself to modern standards. She was just lying again.

‘Lies are just data points you chose to ignore.’ The words echoed in Twilight’s head. There was some wisdom there; she could begrudgingly admit it. What then did Nightmare Moon gain? Or perhaps what was she trying to hide? Why did it matter when she returned?

“If you must know,” Nightmare Moon said, interrupting Twilight’s thoughts, “I escaped my confinement during the winter solstice when my power was at its greatest.”

Two seasons? Two seasons was nowhere near enough time to learn everything Nightmare Moon would have needed to – Twilight felt nauseous even thinking the words – defeat Princess Celestia. Maybe it would be enough time to learn the language. Old Equestrian was the root language for Modern Equestrian, after all.

No. No, Nightmare Moon was likely telling the truth.

“Which winter solstice?” Twilight asked, a triumphant smirk on her face.

Twilight’s smile was returned in full measure. “You’re learning. Good.”

For a moment, Twilight made to protest but held her peace. Celestia forbid that Twilight would or could not learn. What a horrible world that would be.

“Please indulge me, Twilight. Do you know what the sixth Element of Harmony is?”

Caught off guard by the change in topic, Twilight replied automatically without thinking. “No.”

“Oh? Well, I suppose my sister did think you would have more time…”

Twilight had the horrible feeling that Nightmare Moon knew her weakness. Knowledge was much alike to a carrot on a stick. All somepony had to do was dangle it in front of her, and she would chase it to the ends of the world.

Worse, even if Twilight knew that and recognized it for the trap that it was, she would walk into it knowingly every time. It was a hard-learned lesson from magic kindergarten.

“Time for what?”

“To attune with the element she attempted to groom you for, of course.”

With the expectant look Nightmare Moon gave her, Twilight hazarded a guess. “Magic?”

“That hardly fits the theme.” Suspended in the cyan glow of Nightmare Moon’s magic, the Elements passed by between her and Twilight. “Honesty. Kindness. Loyalty. Generosity. Laughter, or more properly Good Humor, but that doesn’t roll off the tongue. No, Magic does not fit the pattern.”

Twilight had to admit Nightmare Moon had a point. She ran over all the virtues she possessed even a little bit, seeking the answer. ‘Organized’ was hardly better than her first guess. ‘Punctual’ was an even poorer fit. ‘Diligent’ might work, but it lacked the ring of truth Twilight expected. It needed to be more about personal relationships.

“Trustworthy?” At the very least, Twilight liked to think that her word was as good as truth or prophecy. Unless she overreached – and admittedly that had happened once or twice – she always did what she said she would.

Nightmare Moon appeared thoughtful for a moment, but she shook the expression away soon after.

“A very good guess, but no. The sixth element is as symbolic as it is functional. It takes a careful hoof to wield, as it channels and directs the other elements, which empower it.”

By this point, Twilight was scrapping the bottom of the barrel for virtues she possessed, at least for non-scholastic virtues. ‘Studious’ hardly fit the pattern, after all.

Eventually, Twilight gave up. “I don’t know.”

“Friendship.”

Twilight would have burst out laughing in any other company. She had friends, of course, but nopony could accuse her of being a paragon of friendship. Moon Dancer was the closest friend she had, but even that relationship was little more than study buddies at its heart.

“I did say attempted,” Nightmare Moon commented dryly. “If you don’t believe me, I’m sure we can unearth some old documents somewhere if we look hard enough.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Twilight said, still actually somewhat amused even in her current situation. Nightmare Moon’s answer fit well enough, and it hardly mattered at the moment.

Besides, what reason could Nightmare Moon possibly have to lie about it right now and to allow Twilight to call her bluff?

“Thank you.”

For once, Nightmare Moon’s smile was just that: a smile. There was nothing smug or predatory about it. Not that the arrogance and self-assurance had left her countenance.

The five Elements of Harmony fell to the floor in a circle. The moment they did, a bright light flared.

Twilight averted her eyes, but she recognized the color as Nightmare Moon’s magical aura before she was blinded.

Blinking away the sting, Twilight looked back. There was a sixth stone sphere in the center of the other five, one about twice the volume as the others. Emblazoned on it was the six-pointed star representing magic.

“Destiny likes to pull at our strings in more ways than just our cutie marks.”

For a moment, Twilight glanced back at her own with a frown. It was a six-pointed star with five smaller stars around it, much like how there were five elements surrounding the sixth at the moment.

“You stand at a crossroads, Twilight Sparkle. This will be the biggest decision of your life.”

Nightmare Moon arose from her throne. Her hoofsteps echoed steadily as she approached, stopping just in front of the elements on her side of the room.

“Will you pursue this?” Nightmare Moon gestured at what must be The Element of Friendship with a hoof. She held it suspended, as if inviting Twilight to ask her to roll the element across the room. “Do you wish to become a social butterfly? Do you wish to be a pony who drops her books for a party or a pony who delays her latest project in favor of tea and company?”

Twilight clamped down on her immediate response. It was what Princess Celestia had wanted for her. She could even admit it might, perhaps, possibly be the case that she should get out more on holidays. And if her suspicions about her cutie mark were on point, it was her fate, what she was always meant to do.

But it would taste a lie to say it was what Twilight wanted.

“That…doesn’t sound like me.”

“No, it does not.”

Twilight felt dirty inside at Nightmare Moon agreeing with her, much less at rejecting her destiny and indirectly disobeying Princess Celestia’s wishes.

“Tell me, in my absence, what would you wish to be?”

Far too many times Twilight had asked herself that question. There were simply too many things that held her interest and too many books to read. And always there was that foolish dream she had of being a princess, of being an alicorn just like Princess Celestia and Cadance.

“A researcher,” Twilight mumbled. It was the best viable choice, in her opinion.

“Of magic?”

Twilight nodded.

“I believe that is a poor decision.”

A poor decision? “And what would you have me do?” Twilight demanded.

“Nothing in particular, my little charity case.”

Nightmare Moon was lying again. She was still after something. Twilight knew it.

“I merely wish to point out the effort hardly seems worth your while. A thousand years behind the times, and I learned enough in two seasons” – Nightmare Moon actually rolled her eyes at Twilight’s glare – “to best my sister. Even should I have had a decade to practice, does that not sound strange? A thousand years of progress – I should be a barbarian.”

“You are.”

“Perhaps culturally,” Nightmare Moon admitted. “Have you ever heard of the Crystal Empire? King Sombra?”

History was not Twilight’s strongest subject, but she still shook her head. Surely Nightmare Moon would inform her. “So what?”

“My sister and I together removed them from the map. And yet a train still runs through their lands in the Frozen North a thousand years later.”

“That line goes to Rainbow Falls!” Twilight protested. Not that she understood the point Nightmare Moon was trying to make.

“After detouring hundreds of leagues through a snow-covered wasteland?”

Twilight had nothing to counter that.

“The train is an ancient device, Twilight. Why is it still in use?”

It was a tautology, but Twilight said, “Because it’s useful. Not everypony can fly.”

“True enough. Yet in a thousand years, surely somepony would have invented something more useful.”

Surely that was an unfair argument. Doors were older than civilization, and nopony would suggest that doors were antiquated or should be.

“Who was the last great historical figure in magic?”

Twilight automatically answered, “Star Swirl the Bearded.”

“He was born before me.”

“That doesn’t mean–” Twilight started to protest.

“Do you know of the Alicorn Amulet?”

“In passing, but–”

“It is as dangerous today as it was when King Sombra created it ages ago.”

Twilight stomped her hoof. “Spears are no less pointy either!”

“Ha! Spears! They were ancient when I was a filly, utterly harmless to a unicorn, and in the hooves of an earth pony, worthless against a pegasus. Spears were the weapons of the ancients when magic was barely more than supernatural powers and bizarre rituals.

“And still I see earth ponies harvesting and farming with their own hooves. Unicorns have the magic to make their lives easier with enchantments, if only they were to apply it properly.”

“But…”

Nightmare Moon was not finished. “And now, a thousand years later when ponies have leisure time in their prosperity and their foals run around playing all day, how much public education does a pony receive?”

“Primary and” – Twilight’s breath hitched – “training in their special talent.” She had a horrible intuitive idea of where Nightmare Moon was taking this argument.

“And you wonder why I say that research is not worth your time? It is an esoteric field, one not fit for civilized society.”

“That’s not true!” Twilight screamed.

“It is!” Nightmare Moon firmly said. She paused for a moment, then added, “Unless something changes.”

For a moment, Twilight almost let herself do the unthinkable: agree wholeheartedly with Nightmare Moon.

“Equestria is at peace,” Nightmare Moon continued. “Centuries of peace is impressive. Equestria is fat and rich. What more could anypony ask for? Equestria is open and accepting in ways it never was a thousand years ago, although it is still far from perfect.”

Nightmare Moon’s magic pulled Twilight’s head up to stare directly into her eyes and held her there.

“But you are dead intellectually. History is forgotten and fragmented, if not outright edited. Where are the changelings? What happened to the Crystal Empire and the Crystal Princess? Who is Lord Tirek and his sworn brother Prince Scorpan? What happened in the Discordian Era? Where is Princess Luna? Who is the Mare in the Moon?

“Electricity and magnetism is new, I admit, but what do you use it for? The occasional light when no unicorns are around to maintain magical ones? The compass is not new, only more studied.

“Your knowledge of medicine and healing is little better. The only truly great invention I have seen is the x-ray, yet that is but one idea in what should be millions.

“And your magic – ha! The fact that Star Swirl’s work is still relevant is a joke. You would spend your entire life amounting to–”

“Stop!” Twilight cried. “Please. Please stop…”

And surprisingly, Nightmare Moon did. Surely it was not the tears – Twilight could never bring herself to believe Nightmare Moon cared – yet she did stop.

Without the righteous thunder of her earlier words, Nightmare Moon said, “You live in a golden dark age, Twilight. You could choose to embody friendship, to perhaps even strike me down, but you will have to live with that decision forever. You would, in essence, embody the status quo: peace, friendship, and harmony.”

Nightmare Moon finally let her magic disperse, and Twilight slumped to the ground without the support.

“Now tell me, Twilight Sparkle” – Nightmare Moon turned to face away, as if Twilight would believe that made her vulnerable – “in my absence what would you wish to be?”

“I – I don’t – I don’t know.” Twilight’s voice was weak, uneven. What could she even do alone? What if Princess Celestia – and she could barely believe she was thinking it – would do nothing about this?

“Then I ask you another question. What do you wish to be in my presence.”

This – this was the trap. Twilight hated herself for it, but Nightmare Moon had her. And really, what other option had she possessed to begin with? Nightmare Moon had railroaded this entire conversation to this point.

“I’m not important,” Twilight mumbled, defeated, her head hung low. Whatever Princess Celestia saw in her, there had to be a thousand other ponies who could do just as well. Surely there was even somepony else to bear The Element of Friendship.

Nightmare Moon turned back around in Twilight’s peripheral vision. No doubt she was smiling from ear to ear.

“Twilight Sparkle wields some clout, being both famous and almost fanatically devoted to my sister. Yet she is nothing I cannot live without.”

Without warning, Twilight’s left foreleg lit up in the cyan glow of Nightmare Moon’s magic. She stared at it for an instant before panicking. She flailed the leg around to no effect as she slowly lost all feeling in it. Within seconds, it refused to even respond to commands.

“What are you doing?” Twilight screamed, eyes wide.

“Providing extraordinary evidence for an extraordinary claim,” was Nightmare Moon’s calm reply.

Without another word, Nightmare Moon cast one last spell, one Twilight recognized. She tried to counter the ordinary kitchen-grade cutting spell, but like every other time she had tried, Nightmare Moon countered her magic before it even took shape.

Twilight stared at her leg on the floor, unable to bare looking at the stump left behind where Nightmare Moon had severed it.

And yet the numbness was fading. Even in her shock, Twilight braced herself for the coming agony.

Any moment now.

Any moment.

Perplexed and somewhat morbidly curious, Twilight lifted her view to where her leg was supposed to be gone – supposed to be, but was not.

“W-w-what’s going on?” Twilight watched transfixed with equal parts horror and now scientific curiosity as her stump knit itself back together. In what was, Twilight swore, at most ten seconds, her leg was back and perfectly functional.

Or she had a new one, at least. There was still a dismembered limb on the floor right in front of her. And while that was fascinating, there were other things on Twilight’s mind right now.

“I don’t understand! What is this? What did you do? What happened? How did this happen?”

Nightmare Moon cast a silencing spell on Twilight for the second time that night, waiting until she petered out.

“What did you do?” Twilight asked, if not calmly, then at least evenly enough that Nightmare Moon deigned to answer.

“I cut off your leg.”

“What else?” Twilight hissed.

Nightmare Moon clearly took some sadistic glee in the situation. She smiled as she said, “You tell me. What cannot be physically killed, regenerates, and is magically powerful?”

Glaring back at the patronizing mare, Twilight replied, “Alicorns.”

It took a second before Twilight tripped over her own thoughts, her words and their implications catching up to her.

“An alicorn filly, in your case,” Nightmare Moon said. “You’re such a cute, adorable little thing.”

At first, Twilight had no idea how to respond to that. But then Nightmare Moon tried to scratch her beneath her muzzle, cooing, “Coochy coo,” as if Twilight were a newborn filly. She batted the hoof away with her new leg and glared.

And yet Twilight’s heart was not in it. Her mind was still trying to process everything and struggling to cope. Being told she was an alicorn – filly or otherwise – was the last straw before it got up and left her to her own devices.

“So, Princess Twilight, what do you wish to be?”

It was too much to make a decision – to make any decision right now. Twilight needed time to think and regroup.

“If you do not want to be the Alicorn of Friendship, then what will you be? If you do not like this world, what will you do to change it? Who will you be to change it?”

“I…”

“Come now, Twilight,” Nightmare Moon said again. Twilight was really starting to hate that. “I should think the choice is obvious for you. Deep down in your heart what are you? You are the Alicorn of…”

And the truth was, Twilight did know exactly what word she wanted to finish that sentence with. It would be so easy. It would be so wonderful. All she had to do was fly out on her own away from the safety of Princess Celestia’s wings. With enough luck and determination, she could even save Princess Celestia from her banishment.

“And then what,” the little voice of doubt said. “What will she do when she sees what you’ve done with her Equestria?”

But Princess Celestia was not like that. No matter what Nightmare Moon said, Twilight knew Princess Celestia would understand and be supportive, maybe even thrilled. None of this could be her fault. No one pony could possibly wield that much influence and power. And Equestria was in a golden age, even if it was also in a dark age. Ponies were happier and better off than ever.

The problem was Nightmare Moon. She was going to freeze the world.

Except she alluded to ‘discussing’ eternal night. And she was smart; that much was clear. Twilight would never ever underestimate Nightmare Moon’s intelligence ever again, not after tonight. She would never destroy the nation she wanted to rule; that was a contradiction in terms.

No, Equestria would endure with or without Nightmare Moon at the mantle. So long it was there, Princess Celestia would have something to come back to. The short, easy victory through The Elements of Harmony was no longer an option. Twilight knew she would have to be in this for the long haul now. Whatever plan she came up with for victory, she had to be one-hundred percent, absolutely sure it would work.

Twilight doubted she would ever get a third chance.

“Magic,” Twilight finally replied, whispering the word at first. “I’m the Alicorn of Magic.”

Twilight’s head rose from staring at the floor in thought, and what her eyes found was far from what she expected.

In the place of Nightmare Moon stood a dark blue mare perhaps two-thirds her height. Her mane still flowed in an æthereal wind, but the stars in it where muted now, not blazing lights. The draconic pupils were gone, and her teeth were normal. She looked every bit a proper, regal alicorn.

Twilight noticed this mare’s cutie mark was the same as Nightmare Moon’s, however.

“Very well then, Princess Twilight, Alicorn of Magic. My name is Princess Luna, Alicorn of the Night, Diarch of Equestria, Mistress of Dreams. As my sister has seen fit to erase me from history, our first task is to slay Nightmare Moon and end this eternal night.”

And there was the confirmation of what Twilight had expected. Everything that happened in Ponyville was an act. The madness had been feigned. The threats, while real enough, where meant to be defeated. Eternal night was a sham. This Princess Luna was the villain and the ‘hero’.

Princess Luna…no, Nightmare Moon – for Twilight knew that was who she truly was, whatever else may happen – held out a hoof.

“Rise, Twilight, and let us remake this world in our own image.”

Twilight gulped. There was no going back if she took that hoof. She could refuse. Nightmare Moon would likely keep her alive for ‘reeducating’, but eventually Twilight would be left alone long enough to escape.

But that would hardly help anypony. Even being a nominal ally would let Twilight influence Nightmare Moon’s rule. As a prisoner or fugitive, she would be worthless, unable to do anything whatsoever. Not to mention Nightmare Moon’s comment about her ‘good behavior’ determining Cadance’s fate.

And deep down, as much as she hated herself for it, Twilight agreed with Nightmare Moon. Science had stagnated under Princess Celestia’s rule for a thousand years. Equestria needed to change. If Equestria had to endure Nightmare Moon for some time to bring that about…well, there were worse ways it could happen.

Princess Twilight hoped Princess Celestia would understand.

Author's Note

An extra chapter that has nothing to do with The Moon’s Apprentice’s canon. I wrote this to get back into the swing of things after getting on a reading and research binge. Hopefully the final chapters of this story will come out more quickly. Please accept this short with my apologies for being slow.

Now a story of it's own! The Moon Victorious.

The next chapter is the big one. Be prepared.

Behold! A shameless promotion for my Patreon page.

Chapter Thirty Nine - A Night to Remember

I reluctantly broke away from what was supposed to be nothing more than a greeting kiss. Passions cooled over time, but even after the better part of a season, it was hard to resist.

A moment passed as both of us cooled off. Only after, Luna said, “I still think this is a bad idea.”

“You worry too much. I swept the entire theater a dozen times, and you watched Celestia all week. There’s no traps, no wards, no anything.”

Luna sighed. “I know. It’s… Nevermind.”

Putting a hoof on Luna’s shoulder, I said, “No, tell me. No bottling things up anymore. We agreed to that.”

“Fine.” Luna’s pout was rather adorable, for what that was worth. “I’m worried you’re going to be stolen and ‘fixed’.”

“Sunset isn’t coming back. You know that.”

Sighing again, Luna guided my hoof off of her and held it in her own. “I know. I know, but that doesn’t mean I don’t worry. It’s what I would do if somepony took you from me.”

“And you’d have my thanks for trying.”

Luna and I exchanged loving smiles, neither of us wanting to end the moment. There was something wonderful about her eyes. They’d always been so confident and self-assured, but they’d changed recently. All that strength was still there, but I could feel more of the mare underneath it now.

The buried guilt and insecurities that showed in little twitches of her upper eyelids, the small little furrows in her brow when her thoughts drifted toward Celestia, the occasional vacant stare of a near-omnipotent goddess terrified of being hurt again – all of Luna’s expressions were on display for me. As small as they were, Luna knew I picked up on them.

And right now, they showed worry, worry, and more worry.

“I suppose I should actually ask,” I said. “You didn’t see anything strange about Celestia’s movements, did you?”

Obviously begrudgingly, Luna shook her head. “She hasn’t left the vicinity of Canterlot Castle for the past three days, nor has she met with anypony I know to be particularly worrisome.”

“See? Nothing to worry about.”

Luna bit the side of her lip. “But Twilight, she never agrees to something this easily unless it’s what she wanted all along.”

I kept my sigh to myself. The two of us had been down this road before weeks ago.

“It’ll be fine,” I insisted again. “We agreed on no magic except earth pony and alicorn stuff we can’t turn off, not even telekinesis. I’ll leave at the very first sign of trouble.”

“But Pupa–”

“Is irrelevant.” Luna knew that just as well as I did, and Celestia definitely knew it. “No matter how many bridges we burn with the changelings, it’d hardly matter. Celestia won’t bother herself with Pupa. I’m going alone otherwise, and it’s not like she couldn’t just take Shining or Cadance hostage instead if she really wanted to.”

“But they still agreed too readily to put her in danger,” Luna protested.

“Luna,” I said with a scolding undertone. She knew very well that she wouldn’t be saying that if she’d had to deal with Chrysalis throughout negotiations.

“But Pinkie Pie is twitching!”

I grunted, exasperated. “I know, Luna, but I’m not taking her with. Whatever it is she’s predicting, she’ll witness it herself. Therefore, it’s local to Luminance.” Well, it was always possible something unexpected would happen. “Or at least whatever it is won’t happen until sometime after the show. Or Celestia could take her off of the moon for some convoluted reason. I can check in on her once in a while to make sure she’s still there, okay?”

Luna sighed again, an act that was becoming more and more common when we were together, it seemed.

“Fine.”

“Oh, don’t be so glum, Luna. I’ll be fine, really.”

“I know. I’m just trying to talk you out of this however I can.”

“Well, good of you to admit it,” I replied, perhaps a little smugly.

Eyebrow raised, Luna asked, “You’re not mentally awarding me reformation points or something, are you?”

“No, no,” I said, waving a hoof back and forth. “That would be more Shining’s thing.”

There was a big difference between reforming and counseling, and Luna needed and was getting the latter. She didn’t have anything to learn so much as she had issues to resolve.

Luna made a small, resigned smile. “Just be careful. And make sure the wards on Luminance are up to par.”

“I know,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You don’t need to fuss over me.”

“I suppose that’s true.” Luna paused for a moment, then asked, “How much longer do I have you today?”

Guessing – I still had no idea how to tell time in a dream like I used to be able to in the real world – I said, “Five minutes, maybe? I only sat down for a last minute check with you before I leave with Pupa for Las Pegasus.”

“How unfortunate. Oh well. Try to enjoy yourself tonight. Don’t let the company ruin the show.”

“I’ll try. It shouldn’t be…too impossible to tune Celestia out.”

Luna snorted. Her breath blew part of her mane away from her face.

“May you have better luck than I,” Luna grumbled. “She’s grown no more affable over the centuries.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked, which was apparently the wrong thing to do.

“No!” Luna exploded. “No, I don’t want to talk about it. There is nothing to talk about. She weasels a visit from me out of you, and she just – just – ugh!”

Wait, what? Did Luna mean that literally? I’d always thought she was just trying to pretend the whole thing had never happened.

“You didn’t even talk?”

“Oh, we talked. We talked about Tartarus-damned nothing. No screaming, no apologies, no cries of vengeance, no begging for mercy, no proclamations of victory, nothing about you, nor me, nor her, nor anypony. Just tea and nothing, nothing, nothing.”

Huh. That was strange. “You know, getting upset about it could be what she wants. Was that maybe something she did long ago to taunt enemies on the battlefield? Invite them for tea and just…have tea?”

A good deal of frustration and anger drained out of Luna. “Hardly,” she said, her tone still quite peeved. “As if she would deign to set hoof on my field. The sky would fall and the seas burn before she would’ve risked getting a drop of blood on that pristine white coat of hers. Bah.”

Sighing first, Luna continued, “Don’t let me bother you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Even as Luna said the words, I could feel my dream falling apart.

I said, “Goodbye.” The words came out muffled as I slipped back into unconsciousness momentarily.

I opened my eyes.

Yawning, I picked my head up from the table I’d gone to sleep on. The remains of my breakfast had already been cleared away while I’d slept, although by whom I couldn’t say; as far as I could tell, the only pony in the dinning hall was me.

Oh well. I rubbed my eyes with my hooves, barely fighting the urge to doze off back into that blissful half-awake state. There were places for me to be right now, and slumped over a table was not one of them.

I’d barely shambled two steps before yawning again. Maybe I should take a cold shower or something.

Eh, not enough time. I had to be in Las Pegasus before Celestia. I wasn’t going to take any chances on that.

Blegh. Anyway, Pupa’s magic was…there. I remanifested myself outside down by the river, where Pupa was calling for aliens.

Er, no. She was practicing her performance. Same thing, really.

“Hey,” I said, only to be shushed instantly. Pupa restarted some sort of balancing act, and this time I waited until I was sure she was finished to say, “Good afternoon.”

Pupa nodded back silently, moving on to another part of her act that apparently required her to balance on her hindhooves. She was obviously still having some trouble with that, given how she nudged herself forward or back with her magic on occasion.

After she let herself fall back onto all fours, I gave her some polite applause.

“Ugh, you have no idea how easy Trixie makes that look,” Pupa complained.

I shrugged. “She has a lot more practice and has never had flight instincts.”

It was a thousand times easier to stand upright with wings to balance with. Changeling wings were a bit more difficult to use than pegasus wings, but still. Pupa didn’t have either right now, seeing as she had to be a unicorn for her show.

While waiting, I’d removed my own wings, too. Except for the different highlights in our manes, the two of us could pass for identical twins, excepting that I was just the slightest bit taller.

“Anyway, we should get going. Trixie should be backstage waiting for you by now.”

“Yeah, alright. Teleport away.”

Permission granted, I fired off one big teleport to take us straight backstage. It wasn’t like Celestia didn’t know we were coming, after all, so there was no real reason to hide our arrival. A few more magically sensitive unicorns might pick up on it, too, but they wouldn’t know what to make of it.

Pupa and I arrived directly in the changing room reserved for her. Everything was ready for our arrival, from the vanity overflowing with strange and exotic makeups to the costume Pupa had designed for the performance, which was nothing more than a simple hat and vest. Granted they still looked the part, but they contrasted with Trixie’s costume more than complemented.

Speaking of whom, there was also a rather startled – but recovering – Trixie in the room.

“Hello, Trixie,” I said, waving a hoof in greeting.

Trixie just looked at me for a moment before turning her head away. Today would not be the day she talked to me, it seemed.

On the other hoof, Trixie and Pupa greeted each other with a hoof bump and some ceremonial posturing. Neither of them took it that seriously, and it was terribly silly to watch.

“So, how have you been since our last practice, Princess?” Trixie asked.

“Oh, not too bad.” Smirking, Pupa added, “But it’s ‘Queen’ now, actually.”

“Finally overthrown that mother of yours?”

Pupa rolled her eyes. “Of course not. A few of my eggs hatched yesterday, and Mother took the opportunity to make it very clear I have my own hive now.”

“Then what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be looking after the little parasites?”

“Mother is watching over them right now, and eventually I’ll pass them off to a nursemaid, I suppose.” Pupa sighed dramatically, a forehoof held to her forehead. “A queen’s life is a busy one, I’m afraid.”

As it was getting more and more awkward to just stand around listening in, I said, “I’ll just go find my seat, then.”

Pupa at least broke off her conversation to see me to the door, although Trixie didn’t bother to get up.

“I’ll try talking to her,” Pupa whispered to me.

I would’ve told her not to bother. It wasn’t like Trixie and I were ever that close to begin with, after all, and she had every right to be upset. But Pupa shut the door right after. The last thing I heard from her as she retreated was, “Try not to get too upset tonight. You won’t want to make a scene here.”

Ha! I could try to not let Celestia get under my skin, but that was inevitable. The only control I had over the situation was if I did something stupid or not.

Well, anyway, I made my way out from backstage. Over in Canterlot, I could sense Celestia’s magic airborne on the outskirts. Two pegasi’ worth of magic blew and swirled about in front of her, likely her charioteers. For whatever reason, she always traveled about Equestria with somepony else driving. There was probably a good reason, but it was such a waste of time.

But whatever. It wasn’t my problem. At any rate, I had five or six hours to kill. Maybe I’d go hit the spa or something.

I walked out of the silent theater area straight into the main floor of the hotel slash casino it was attached to. The shift was almost deafening.

A second or two later, my ears rose back up to the sound of bits, music, and rowdy ponies.

Sunset spoke to me, her honeyed words tempting me. “You know, you’re a princess without a bit to your name.”

That…was true, although there were far faster and more sure ways to make money than gambling.

“You didn’t bother when you were here with Twinkleshine. Now is your chance.”

“Mother,” I complained, “this isn’t even your vice.”

“Nor yours. But you and I both love the feeling of winning.”

That was also true. Hmm…

“Come on, come on, come on!” I thought to myself, hobbling forward as fast as I could on three hooves. The fourth was busy holding some exotic dish I’d ordered down on the casino floor and holding onto a big bag of poker chips. My chopsticks thumped in time with the beat of my hooves against the bowl. My chips – fortunately slightly more than I’d started with – rattled against my side.

I reached out to Luminance, and yep, Pinkie Pie was still there doing her Pinkie Pie thing.

I scanned the theater area, and it remained as innocuous and perfectly safe to enter as earlier, but in watching Celestia’s approach to the city, I’d completely ignored the guards setting up security in advance. Stars, but I hadn’t wanted to deal with the day guard. Security was always annoying to deal with.

Still, it was too late now. After an encounter with a couple of guards I didn’t know and a search of both my supper and bag that dragged on and on, I was finally let into the royal box, which hung dead center above the ‘cheap’ theater seats below.

Barely stopping to catch my breath, I made my way to the very front of the box past the mini bar and other unnecessary fixtures and services. I sat down in one of the front row seats – thankfully not fully-grown-alicorn-sized – threw my bag down against the balcony railing, and dropped my meal nearby.

I leaned back, letting out a deep breath and shaking my hoof to get some of the feeling back in it.

A minute or so passed. The seats below slowly filled in with ponies of wildly varying levels of dress, all the way from Grand Galloping Gala formal to nude.

With one last deep breath, I picked up the remains of my dinner again. I held the bowl with one hoof while the other worked the chopsticks.

“Mmm…”

I had absolutely no idea what I was eating – some eastern dish – but it was delicious. Not even the approaching magic just outside the royal box could take that away.

“Announcing Her Royal Majesty, Princess Celestia,” a herald called out from the door behind me. Not that he needed to; I hadn’t rushed here for no reason, after all.

The faintly metallic sound of hoofsteps resounded in time with Celestia’s magic’s approach. I spared a glance in her direction only after she’d taken her seat, and indeed she was decked out in full regalia as usual.

Our host – who I’d blown past earlier in my hustle – asked if she wanted anything, but Celestia claimed she’d already eaten. I found that rather hard to believe, considering her mode of transportation, but whatever.

When he asked me if I needed anything, I just asked for some peach wine. I’d had to abandon the glass that’d come with my dinner downstairs earlier.

“Good evening, Twilight,” Celestia said.

“Evening,” I replied, as much out of habit as any other reason. My chopsticks flailed a bit in my salad-like meal, displaying my mediocre skill with them. I snapped up as many of the little orange and white strips as I could before filling my mouth with their sweet flavor.

Oh, how they melted in my mouth! They fell apart at the mere touch of the tongue, and when I chewed, it leaked some type of oil I’d never tasted before today.

“May I ask how early you arrived?”

I swallowed. “One.”

“My, so eager to see me. Canterlot Castle is still open to you to visit, you know.”

I rolled my eyes and ignored Celestia.

“One of our chefs would be willing to cook salmon for you, should that be the deciding factor.”

Wasn’t that a type of fish? Why would I…

My next bite stopped halfway to my mouth.

“Have you never shared a meal with Spike?” Celestia asked.

At the same time, my brain finally unfroze and connected the dots. My eyes fell to my meal. I’d certainly shared meals with Spike before, in that I’d eaten with him, but I’d never eaten his meal. But now that it was pointed out to me…

I stuffed my chopsticks into my mouth. Apparently I was an omnivore now, and that was just fine.

Celestia hummed next to me. “I’m impressed. I had something of a fit the first time I ate meat.”

Sighing, I set my chopsticks down. “Why are you here?”

Celestia did her best to look the very picture of innocence. “I watch all of the Great and Powerful Trixie’s performances. I’m quite the fan, as they say.”

“Ugh.” Rule number one when talking with Celestia was careful word choice. “Fine. Why are we sitting here together if you’re just going to bother me with inane prattle?”

Celestia annoyingly cocked her head to the side. “Were you expecting something else?”

A small little snort escaped me. I honestly didn’t know what I was expecting, but practically anything would be better than this.

I thought I heard Celestia giggle, but it was rather hard to tell if it were anything more than a short breath or two. If this was what Celestia was going to do all night, I had a feeling I was going to know exactly how frustrating Luna’s night with her had been.

Then because princesses were always precisely on time, the lights dimmed, and the stage lit up. I’d seen bits and pieces of the coming act from the practice sessions, but the full show was as much a mystery to me as it was to everypony else.

And the everypony else was a bit unusual too. The crowd below had as many unicorns as any other species too, which was rather strange for a magic act. Surely they were here for more than just charity. Trixie’s shows must be truly a sight to behold, if only for her showmareship.

“I wonder how Trixie will appear,” I just heard Celestia mumble to herself. She must have caught my ears perking up, because she added, “She does something different every time.”

I let out a long, drawn out, curious hum and refocused most of my attention on the stage, leaving just enough on Celestia to make sure her magic was behaving.

Also, just to be sure, I peeked at Pinkie Pie, who was very much still on the moon.

“Come one, come all,” Trixie’s voice boomed throughout the theater. She stood just offstage to the right and out of sight. Upon checking, I found Pupa on the other side with the same spell active.

“They’re already here,” Pupa and I said in unison and in practically the same snarky tone, although she added, “Trixie” to the end.

This time Celestia definitely giggled. I grumbled and ate my fish.

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t Twilight Sparkle. Trixie hasn’t seen you since we last met in Canterlot.”

“Mmm. Yes, lunch was rather nice today. What do you think we should have for dinner?”

“Trixie doesn’t care about dinner!”

“I think Neighponese would be good. I would love some daifuku.”

“Ugh! Enough!” A swirl of hot and apparently real, physical fire erupted from the floor of the stage. I wasn’t terribly familiar with the spell, but it’d felt like a modified version of a firestorm spell. “Come out and face Trixie.”

“Hmm? Come out from where?”

I rubbed my eyes. That was definitely Pupa; I checked, and her magic was there. She stepped out from behind Trixie, and the only spell I’d noticed was the slightest hint of telekinesis.

“How…” The word slipped out of me before I could stop myself.

“I have yet to puzzle that out,” Celestia commented. “Sleight of hoof, surely, but beyond that, only they would know.”

That was sleight of hoof? Color me impressed. With great pain, I tore my magic sense away from them and back onto Celestia’s magic. I wanted so badly to watch every detail of their tricks now, but that would ruin the fun.

And it would leave Pupa and me vulnerable, I supposed.

Once the general giggling at Trixie’s over-the-top reaction to Pupa’s appearance was over, she said, “Argh! You’ve been a thorn in Trixie’s side from the moment we met during our exams. You cheated off her!”

“Hey,” Pupa protested, “I only tried to replicate your…” – Pupa waved a hoof about in Trixie’s general direction, then coughed dismissively – “technique. Imitation is the highest form of flattery.”

My eyes widened in terror. How had Pupa found out about that!

Celestia giggled again. “I thought it was very cute myself.”

Kill me now.

“Even if I had bad taste when I was a filly,” Pupa added.

Trixie stomped her hoof in rage, or at least mock rage. “Let’s put an end to this, Sparkle. This’ll be our final duel.”

Pupa shook her head back and forth with a forehoof at her cheek, sighing. “Oh, Trixie, you say that every time.”

Okay, even if Pupa was going to reveal embarrassing facts about my foalhood, I had to admit these two were a pretty good comedic duo. Trixie did a great funny mare, and Pupa was a natural straight mare. She had to be to deal with Chrysalis, after all.

“This time Trixie means it,” Trixie insisted. “She’s completed all” – we could all hear her mumble, “Most” under her breath – “of her coursework under Princess Celestia.”

“Hmm… Well in that case, I suppose I’ll just have to use some of the tricks my grandmother taught me.”

Huh. I wasn’t aware Pupa had a grandmother.

Well, Pupa obviously had a grandmother, but I didn’t know she thought of her as such, let alone ever talked to her. I supposed her grandmother’s hive might be a bit…forceful in how they gathered love; that would explain why I’d never been introduced.

But then I supposed it could just be part of the act, riling Trixie up by putting ‘Grandma Twilight’ even higher than Celestia as a teacher.

Trixie pulled her usual floppy hat out from underneath her cloak, and how on Equus did she do that? That hat was huge.

But the act wasn’t going to wait for me to puzzle out their magicless tricks. Trixie put on her oversized hat, which now that I was in the right context to notice, had the dual purpose of hiding her horn from view.

“Trixie will prove once and for all that she is the most amazing unicorn in all Equestria.”

Trixie’s magic stirred, only to summon an old travel bag from backstage. Judging from the plaid design, it was a relic from the age of terrible fashion usually found in basement boxes. She reached a hoof inside of it…and kept reaching.

I couldn’t help myself. I inspected the bag a bit more closely and unraveled the mysteries it held. There was some basic dimensional magic on it, and there I stopped investigating, my curiosity just the tiniest bit satisfied.

Eventually, Trixie pulled out Pupa’s much less ridiculous hat. I glanced over to Pupa, who was definitely still wearing her hat.

Wait, no. That wasn’t real.

As if to emphasize my point, Pupa reached up for her hat, only for her hoof to pass through it. The hat on her head was an illusion.

“Trixie, give me my hat back.”

“Hmm…” Spinning Pupa’s hat about on her hoof, Trixie said, “Trixie wonders if she should?”

Pupa tapped her hoof impatiently.

“Oh fine. Take your smelly hat back.”

Trixie spun Pupa’s hat toward her like a discus. It sailed through the air rather suspiciously well, actually. And when Pupa reached out a hoof to catch it, it simply passed through her.

And now that I checked, the hat on Pupa’s head was real again. Pupa confirmed that for herself only a second later.

I squeezed my eyes closed and took a deep breath. However they were slipping these tricks by me, I’d find out. There was only so much a pony could do with sleight of hoof before they started using magical tricks I was familiar with.

Pupa sighed and yanked the travel bag out of Trixie’s magic with her own. “I didn’t want to do this, Trixie, but you leave me no choice.”

“No!” Trixie’s eyes widened, and she gasped.

“Oh yes,” Pupa said, turning the bag upside down. She shook it, and various miscellaneous things – some too big to fit in the bag – fell out and thudded onto the floor. “I know all about your dark, terrible past. I talked to your surgeon, Panacea, and she told me everything.”

Trixie backpedaled slowly across the stage, trying to put up a good front. “You’re lying. No doctor would breech confidentiality like that, especially not her.”

“Oh, not intentionally, but you know she can be a bit scatterbrained. I know what haunts you in the…” Pupa’s brow furrowed, and she shook the bag harder. “I. Know. What. Haunts. You,” she said, punctuating each word with a hearty shake of the bag. “Wheels!”

There was a moment where the entire theater was silent.

“Pft. Ha ha ha ha! You really had Trixie going there for a – eek!”

With one last shake, Pupa had somehow managed to get a rather crude wheel about two stories tall to crash onto the stage. She shoved it forward and said, “Catch.”

Trixie ran off the stage behind the side curtains screaming at the top of her lungs, the wheel chasing after her. Well, more rolling in her general direction, given that the wheel didn’t have the prerequisite intelligence required to chase.

Moments after the wheel crashed into something backstage and presumably stopped its horrible rampage, Trixie’s head popped out of the travel bag. She was, naturally, upside down.

“Hmm?” Pupa cocked her head to the side to let her catch sight of Trixie’s. Then because that was very awkward to hold, she flipped the bag upright.

Trixie glared at Pupa. “That was not funny.” There was a moment where Pupa smirked at her, but she flung her forelegs out of the bag and flailed them about, shouting, “And Trixie is not afraid of wheels!”

“Heh heh.”

Nope. Not paying attention to Celestia.

“Twilight, are you afraid of snakes?”

Ugh. Nope. Just ignore her.

“I take it you are.”

“Less so now than I used to be,” I grumbled. A lot of things lost their fear factor when you couldn’t die or even be hurt for long. “Why? Is Trixie?”

“No more than any other pony.”

For a moment, I thought Celestia wasn’t going to say anything else. I glanced at her and found her without her usual smile.

“Sunset once had a close encounter with one at a zoo. She had nightmares for weeks.”

Oh. Yes, I remembered that. Mother teleported into the display to get a better look. Not her finest moment.

Ah! “I told you. I’m not Sunset.”

“Yes, I know. But do you remember?”

I let out an exasperated sigh. “Yes, I remember. And I remember her falling asleep nestled under your wing for a week after. So what?”

Celestia didn’t answer me. I tore my eyes away from the stage and Trixie’s and Pupa’s increasingly elaborate antics to look at her.

“Well?”

“Do you know if she forgave me, in the end?”

“Yes!” Mother cried out. Not that she was wrong, but she wasn’t exactly right, either. There was regret, certainly, but that wasn’t quite forgiveness.

That said, I’d bet almost anything that this was what Celestia wanted out of tonight. If not forgiveness by proxy, then at least an answer.

I wanted so much to use this for something. There was no telling what this kind of emotional blackmail could do. But even if Mother hadn’t been screaming against it, actually following through on that impulse felt…monstrous. The truth would hurt enough.

“No,” I finally replied, turning my head back toward the stage, if not my attention. “Sunset felt underappreciated, underutilized, and unloved. She desperately wanted to go home, but she didn’t know if there was anypony there for her anymore. If you want to know if she still loved you, then yes, painfully so. But no, she never forgave you.”

I pretended to ignore the small sniffling I heard from Celestia, but it was a bittersweet thing. On the one hoof, I didn’t generally like to make ponies cry. But on the other hoof, bucking yes!

It was probably healthier not to delve too deeply into the latter feeling, lest I found bottling Celestia’s tears an acceptable and entirely healthy idea.

“Please can I hug her?” Mother asked.

I replied in no uncertain terms, “No.” There would be no hugging, nuzzling, or otherwise snuggling with Celestia tonight or anytime soon.

Anyway, there was one thing I was curious about that would take my mind off…that, something neither Mother nor I had ever properly understood.

“Why did you care so much?” I asked. “I don’t think Trixie is as special to you.”

Eventually, her voice slightly weak, Celestia replied, “It would have been hard not to. Sunset reminded me of my first century. So confident and arrogant, but hard-working and steadfast.” She breathed deeply. “My plans for her only made her more dear to me, yet it was clearly not meant to be.”

Rather bluntly, I said, “I’m not going to fill the void for you. I’m not my mother.”

“You have more in common than I believe you realize, but worry not. I do have to close my eyes and pretend somewhat too hard to see her in you.”

“Obviously. Sunset’s past does not define me. It just gave me a different base rate for developing specific characteristics.”

Just as I felt like Celestia was going to stay silent and let me watch the show, she spoke up again.

“Thank you for remembering her.”

I debated on whether I should reply or not, rather than automatically saying, “You’re welcome,” as I would in any other company. It wasn’t like I’d picked up Mother’s memories for anypony but her, and certainly not for Celestia of all ponies.

In the end, I held my peace. There was no sense in inviting further conversation.

Now that I actually looked back at the stage, Trixie was on fire, or at least her mane and tail were. And she seemed to be okay with that.

“Ha!” Trixie said. “If you think you can placate me with–”

“Cadance,” Celestia began, interrupting the show again and earning a groan from me, “told me granting a blessing has been proving difficult for you.”

“So what?” I all but growled. I didn’t need Celestia pointing out that I might really be broken, or at best, permanently injured.

Talking with Cadance wasn’t exactly something I wanted to remember either. She’d helped, but beyond business, she’d barely said two words to me. She’d been a bit fidgety like she had something to hide, but I didn’t press her on it. Anyway, apparently for her, the act was more…

Well, her exact words were something like, “You don’t…change it directly. You reach into their magic and pull on what you can touch, which I guess is all of it for you. But it’s not enough to do that. Your power won’t…won’t…flow, I guess, into the empty space on its own. You need to give it a little push. You’re trying to…make them bigger, I guess. You need to put your love into it.”

They weren’t exactly the same instructions Luna had given me, but they were awfully close and less helpful than I’d hoped. The only interesting tidbit she’d offered was ‘putting your love into it’. I’d experimented with trying to filter my magic – I was not the Alicorn of Love – through Chamomile to little success.

“I could offer my advice?” Celestia’s words came out as a question. “I possess rather a wealth of experience in the matter myself.”

And end up owing her a favor? No thanks.

“I won’t stop you, but I’m not asking,” I said, expecting that to get her to finally stop talking.

It didn’t.

“Do you recall what it felt like to have the sun burning inside you personally?”

Oh bucking horseapples.

“No,” I said, fighting off the sinking feeling in my stomach. Celestia was just confirming what I already knew. She’d seen. She’d known. I’d grown up a sun-blessed pony, and she’d picked up on it.

Or she could be guessing. Luna wouldn’t have put me in Canterlot if one stray encounter would’ve revealed me. Celestia would’ve needed some kind of clue to investigate closer.

It was, after all, the natural guess to assume I hadn’t lost Sunset’s blessing.

“No?” Celestia asked. “I noticed how punctual you were, an obsession Sunset never had.”

I was born with mental issues. It didn’t mean anything. I didn’t say that, but part of me wanted to.

“In hindsight,” Celestia continued, “that seems natural. Growing up, you had a better, ever-present clock than anypony else could ever hope for. The sun is rather regular these days.”

Oh… So that was why I was having issues with my internal clock. I wasn’t connected to the sun anymore.

“Am I ringing a few bells?”

I…supposed it wouldn’t hurt anything now to admit it, not that I’d describe accurate timekeeping as ‘the sun burning inside me’. I shrugged just enough for the gesture to be visible.

“Hmm… I remember your parents telling me you once wanted to raise the sun. Did you attend the Summer Sun Celebration in Canterlot when you were younger?”

I shrugged again, fairly sure where Celestia was going with this. Heading off any potential banal attempt to win my affections, I said, “And it was magical and meant so much more to me than it seemed to for anypony else. I suppose I understand why now. But I never moved the sun.”

Celestia hummed again, much longer this time. “Have you ever set yourself on fire?”

Immediately facehoofing, I connected a few dots in my and Mother’s memories. I could remember the feeling of that particular magic coursing through me during a number of flares, muddied with anger. Always anger.

“I see you have. Sunset was quite fond of that herself, once she learned to control it.”

It would be a neat magic trick, or in a fight it’d be rather intimidating.

Celestia lectured on, saying, “A blessing is more than a simple spell. There is intent layered into it. When you grant it, you leave behind a small piece of yourself; nothing you will ever miss, but it has a certain intelligence of its own.”

I supposed that made some sense. The way Luna and Cadance had described the process lacked any real structure or order. But if the partial manifestation left behind a semi-sapient imprint of the alicorn, the sky was the limit on what it could do.

“I find it helps to be in a similar state of mind. Stars are usually hot-tempered; planets are often stubborn; black holes…I never quite understood. I cannot tell you what magic is like, but I suspect you already know.”

Hmm… That sounded a bit like – “Do blessings grant a particular chosen subset of available perks?”

“I highly recommend you first find a natural mood for yourself before attempting more or less complex blessings, but yes.”

Did Luna know that?

As if reading my mind, Celestia said, “I only discovered that five centuries ago. Please believe me when I say it is deceptively difficult.”

Fair enough, I supposed. Solo research into an entirely new field would take long enough on its own, but researching blessings also required willing participants. It’d take forever to learn…

“Did – did you just teach me?” Celestia had originally offered advice, not tutoring. And I’d just sat there and listened. It was all well and good to steal information, but I hadn’t even noticed.

Celestia made that annoying little giggle of hers. “I couldn’t resist. You are ever the natural student.”

“I’m not Sunset!” I screeched. The enchantments on the royal box kept the rest of the theater none the wiser. “Stop treating me like her! She’s not. Coming. Back.”

Completely unfazed, Celestia said, “Twilight, I already said you need have no fear of that from me.”

I ground my teeth at the subtext in Celestia’s words. ‘No fear of that from me’ indeed. That she had the gall to suggest Luna couldn’t distinguish me from Mother even after all our years together–

“She couldn’t,” Mother interrupted wrongly.

When we first met, sure, I’d concede the point there. But I’d probably have expected a two-year-old Sunset to grow up into an eight-year-old Sunset, too; Quartz had done amazing work on me.

But that was hardly the case after Luna got to know me. She was well aware that I was not my mother.

“I knew Sunset very well. She was very much cut from Trixie’s cloth, not yours. She always wanted to do. Learning was simply a means to an end, not something she enjoyed in and of itself.” Celestia quietly sighed. “She had so much energy as a filly.”

“Are you sure we can’t hug her?” Mother asked.

“Yes!”

I tapped my forehoof impatiently against the balcony railing, trying not to grind my teeth to dust.

Celestia didn’t know how to shut up, which was weird, because Mother’s memories painted a very different picture. She’d never been so…talkative. It was weird, really. Unnerving even.

At least she was gone now. Celestia had excused herself to go make her after-performance charity thank you speech…thing.

Her last words were, “Trixie insisted I tell you that this act was written before she properly met Pupa, and that its ending bears no hidden messages, subtext, apologies, et cetera.”

The ending of the show that I’d mostly missed – another mark against Celestia – was…climactic, in a word. Pupa and Trixie had pulled out all the stops in their little game of insulting and one-upping each other, so much so that it’d been a little hard even for me to follow.

The conclusion was reconciliation, grudging respect, bows, and then roaring applause.

I’d vaguely wondered who would win in the end. Trixie stomping Pupa would sort of make the guest appearance more of an ego trip. The reverse would be so unexpected as to be unbelievable. But this, I supposed, was perfectly serviceable.

It might have been better from an iterative narrative perspective if they had this kind of showdown after several dozen shows, but then they probably hadn’t made plans for more than one. There was also the fact that Pupa had proved herself quite capable, so if they did put on more shows, she’d have the credibility to be more than Las Pegasus eye candy.

Either way, I supposed Trixie was the brains behind this ending, since Pupa had told me she hadn’t expected to actually get to put on this show to begin with, let alone to have multiple.

Celestia walked onto the stage behind Trixie and Pupa while I let out an exasperated sigh. Part of me wanted to just grab Pupa now and go, but I wasn’t going to ruin her moment like that, not even if I had to listen to Celestia prattle on again.

Gesturing toward her neck, Celestia found her way to center stage, right between Trixie and Pupa. The former caught on to the signal and cast the same voice amplification spell on Celestia that she’d used during the performance.

Celestia raised a hoof. The remaining audience members that hadn’t already fallen silent in her presence quieted down.

“I want to thank you all for coming today, as well as for the donations you made beyond the ticket price. Snowdrop was a dear friend of mine centuries upon centuries ago. Sadly, her condition was not only named after her, but is still without a true cure.”

Which was rather surprising, actually. I’d looked the disease up, and it’d turned out to be a genetic condition. There’d been attempts made to fix the problem both directly and indirectly, permanently and temporarily, but none had been terribly successful. If I were to hazard a guess, it probably created a weird magical quirk in the afflicted pony at birth. That couldn’t be fixed so easily.

I wondered if I could fix it.

Heh. It wouldn’t be that simple. Things never were.

“All proceeds today will be given to the Snowdrop Foundation, and the treasury has promised to match the sum. Now this would normally be the point where I subtly guilt everypony into donating more” – Celestia paused for the audience’s chuckling to die down – “but tonight is special in more than one way.”

Oh no. Turning this into a birthday party for Pupa was the entirely wrong thing to do; it’d make it look like she didn’t really earn or deserve to be here, even despite her stellar performance.

“I would much prefer to make this announcement more officially, but the mare in question is present here only because of Twilight Sparkle the Younger.”

‘The Younger’?

“She is a bit skittish around me–”

Was she…

“–and being gone for a few more centuries than planned–”

No, no, no, no! This wasn’t fair!

“–only exacerbated the issue.”

Celestia couldn’t do this to us!

“Without further ado, I would like to extend a warm welcome back to Twilight Sparkle’s great, great, great–”

How could I stop this? Luna and I weren’t sure exactly what public image we wanted to present, but it certainly wasn’t this. Celestia was constructing herself a PR shield. If we attacked her after she ‘welcomed us back’, it’d be a disaster, even if we explained.

What should I do? I could attack her now.

No, I’d lose. I’d lose badly. And Celestia would just make herself look better if she ended up letting me go after I’d lost.

Worse, I’d have broken our deal, so she’d have no reason not to do whatever she wanted with me and mine.

“–great, great, great–”

I could deny everything she was – no, that wouldn’t work. The public trusted Celestia far more than me. It’d take forever to win the crowd to my side, and I probably couldn’t while she was present. Luna and I had intended to deal with her quietly, maybe have Chrysalis as a stand-in until given a long vacation.

“–great, great, great–”

Would it still be possible to deal with Celestia behind closed doors? Would she even give us the chance? If she was doing this now, she must feel like we could beat her in a straight up fight, even if she went back on her word. Maybe she’s gotten fat and out of practice.

But if she’s effectively forcing a stalemate, she’s practically giving up. That’s not how she operates. There must be some hidden plan behind all this, either some long-term scheme that she’s trying to buy years, decades, maybe even centuries for or a disaster waiting for us if we removed her.

What if Celestia made a point of crying treason across Equestria instead of fighting back? We had the power to rule with an iron hoof, but that was the exact opposite of what we wanted. If we left even one, single witness unaccounted for, everything could fall down around us. We could pick Celestia’s brain for any traps and servants she left behind, like delayed mail accusing us, but we couldn’t stop ponies neither she nor we knew existed from talking.

“–great, great, grandmother,” Celestia finally finished, “Twilight Sparkle the Elder.”

Celestia looked at me expectantly. Gazing toward me with foal-like glee, Pupa played along. Why was she playing along!

And then the crowd shifted to look at me. Me, who was very much visible over the railing and who looked almost exactly like Pupa on stage.

“No, no, no, no, no,” I said to myself over and over. My thoughts kept galloping full tilt but ran into walls again and again.

The crowd below started to murmur.

“Who is the Princess of Books,” Celestia picked up.

What the…

“As well as Queen of Geeks–”

That doesn’t make any–

“–the Archlibrarian of the Lost Librararchy–”

What in Tartarus is a librararchy?

“–the Duchess of Butterscotch–”

“Argh! Shut up!” I exploded, slamming my hooves down. A piercing crack punctuated my scream. The balcony railing was fractured, nearly broken.

“–the mare who originally stole the cookie from the cookie jar,” Celestia continued unimpeded.

In the Royal Box, nopony could hear me scream.

“–the Dread Pirate–”

I remanifested on stage, hoof extended. There was sweet silence as Celestia stopped trying to talk past my hoof – sweet, blissful silence.

Except for the sound of my remanifested wings rustling.

Oh ponyfeathers.

Pupa tackled me with a hug, shouting just loud enough for her voice to carry, “Grandma! Are you really staying this time?”

Frozen, betrayed, I just stared into her eyes. Why, why, why was she doing this?

Pupa whispered close to my ear, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. She was going to do this whether I played along or not.”

I heard the door slam open. My head whipped toward it just in time to catch a pony with a camera bolting out.

“There is a journalist who just made their career,” Mother commented. And I knew she was right. I could see the headlines now: long lost alicorn throws fit on return.

This situation had to be salvaged. I couldn’t do that as a mute anymore than I could by denouncing Celestia.

I breathed deeply, checked my temper to merely upset, and finally replied to Pupa. Trapped as I was, there was only one thing I could say.

“Yes.”

The crowd went ballistic. Ponies swarmed the stage. Each question grew louder, and louder, and louder in an endless contest to be heard. Even if I answered, nopony would’ve heard me.

“For the last time,” I bit out, more than simply wanting to kick this stallion in the face, “there is not and never was an autocracy of libraries.”

The crowd hadn’t dwindled in the hours I’d been kept here. Rather it looked like it’d actually gotten larger. How ponies kept getting in, I didn’t know. Security was supposed to keep ponies without a ticket out.

I swore, if I found out they’d taken bribes–

“No!” I wanted to scream. “I’m the Alicorn of Magic, not books. Magic!”

“Yes, I like to read, but that doesn’t mean–”

“Argh. Look, I’m older than you. Let’s leave it at that.” Technically true. The mare asking was definitely no more than thirty.

“No, I was not shirking my duties. See how well I speak Modern Equestrian? I’ve been around.”

A stallion was polite enough to compliment me on how well I spoke the vernacular. And really, at this point, any compliment at all sounded like a romantic sonnet.

”Thank you. You speak Modern Equestrian very well, too.”

A second passed. I facehoofed.

“I meant thank you.”

I groaned, “Sure,” before the cameramare in front of me had so much as said a word. She asked for a family photo, and I obliged, dragging Pupa away from her own mob.

And really, if there were anything that made this bearable, it was that Pupa had it almost as bad as I did. Even for her, social butterfly and emotional parasite that she was, all the attention was obviously getting to her.

On the other side of the hall, Celestia and Trixie were only about half as…

Where did Celestia–

Ack! I jumped as one of Celestia’s wings extended over me. It took all of the self-control I had not to shove her away, move aside, or otherwise stop her from touching me. I’d endured this ploy of hers without branding myself some kind of heretic, and now she’d taken the offensive.

But I would grin and bear it. In the end, it would all come to naught for her. Luna and I would turn this around to our advantage soon enough. All this good PR would come back to bite Celestia in the flank.

“Please excuse us, my little ponies” Celestia said, and for once everypony around me was quiet and listened. “There are a few matters of state that Princess Twilight and I must discuss.”

Annoyingly enough, the crowd parted in front of us for Celestia, and we were on our way. Side by side. With her wing over my back. Occasionally bumping into each other.

Celestia ‘whispered’ back to the crowd, “And between us, the Princess of Introverts could use a rest.”

I hit Celestia with my wing as hard as I could, which was not nearly hard enough. It was more a mere bump than a blow.

The very moment we were technically backstage and out of sight, I growled, “I loathe you.” I knocked Celestia’s wing off with my own.

“Really?” Celestia asked. She sounded as if she were actually surprised, but she’d have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to have not noticed. “I did just give you a legitimate claim to the Equestrian throne.”

“I already have a legitimate claim! You’re not the only diarch. Stop acting like it.”

“Oh dear. I must have misplaced…well, everything documenting that.”

“You–”

No. No, something about this was wrong. The moment that thought completed, my growing temper suspended itself. There was something wrong going on. This whole day had been wrong. Celestia didn’t talk like this. She didn’t act like this.

For a moment, I thought this Celestia might be Chrysalis, but no. This was definitely Celestia; it was her magic, at least.

But then I remembered.

“You owe me an explanation. I gave you your letter. Luna endured your presence. You’ve had plenty of time to think it over this time. What is it you’re planning?”

Celestia smiled – no smirked. It was the most evil smirk I’d ever seen on her.

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit,” I retorted.

“Language.”

Must. Resist. Urge. To kick.

“What I said is the truth,” Celestia said. “Or it is now.”

“Explain,” I demanded. By ‘no plans’, she probably meant that she was done setting everything up and could wash her hooves of it.

Celestia sighed just enough to be noticeable. “Honestly, Twilight, I was hardly subtle. I even told you exactly what I wanted.”

What? When did she…

The fires of indignation were smoldered. In their place rose a terrible foreboding and a horrible sense of something profoundly unfair having been done to me.

“Right after the trial…” I whispered. Celestia hadn’t been talking to Pupa or Cadance; she’d been talking to me.

Surely she hadn’t known I was listening in. She hadn’t said anything to me directly. But she’d known the information would get back to me one way or another.

How much of that had been lies and half-truths?

“Pupa’s geas wasn’t absolute,” I guessed. It had the kind of ring of truth that sent chills down my spine.

Smiling again, Celestia said, “I gave her enough leeway to give technically correct but entirely useless answers. Calibrating the spell’s power to exactly the right level was quite the challenge: supply too much magic and the illusion was ruined, but supply too little magic and Princess Pupa would have noticed.”

“But… But that’s…”

“In hindsight, do you honestly believe ‘no’ was an acceptable answer to ‘are you, Twilight, or anypony you know in any way associated with Nightmare Moon’?”

No.

But that meant Celestia had already known the answer.

And that meant she’d found a clue. Or she’d forced the truth out of me and erased my memory of it without Luna noticing. Or… Or…

And that meant…

There – there was no denying it anymore. Celestia had known I was in contact with Luna. Celestia had known I was Sunset reborn. She might even have known I’d left Equus to retrieve the elements.

I slumped to the ground, utterly defeated. “When did you find out?”

“I presume you mean when did I discover your excursions into the Dream Realm.”

With all the strength I had, I nodded.

“It was when Doctor Panacea first examined you, although it occurs to me you never met her.” Celestia hummed to herself for a moment before continuing on. “More than a buildup of dark magical residue showed up in your test results. I investigated, and one fact soon led to another. Despite the events leading up to it, that was the happiest day of my life.”

I’d bet it was. One stroke of bad luck was all it took to ruin plans and lives, after all. Just one stupid mistake.

“I knew Nightmare Moon was dream walking, but I was erroneously certain that it was only an occasional event.”

Too down to even protest Celestia’s use of ‘Nightmare Moon’, I asked, “How?”

“Is it not obvious?” Celestia replied. “Luminance never needed me to intervene.”

Oh.

“They had the latest agricultural knowledge and hundreds of other anachronisms besides without any apparent means of contacting Equus.”

Celestia had been to Luminance. I’d known that. How would she have not noticed? Two-hundred ponies did not an agricultural revolution make.

“Honestly, I always thought Nightmare Moon knew I would deduce that she could dreamwalk. I designed and constructed Canterlot Castle not long after I banished her, after all, so I obviously knew about her lunar retreat. Whether I left it up or tore it down after I found out, the resemblance to Luminance Castle is unmistakable.”

It…was, actually. It was a castle on the tallest mountain in Equestria with dimensional magic built into it. I’d gotten lost in those halls more than once. The theme was in Celestia’s colors, but that was just a pallet swap.

Celestia frowned slightly at the look on my face. “Or I like to believe so. I never did have the time to paint the halls.”

Good. That was Luna’s project. It’d just be adding insult to injury to take that, too, from her.

“In all honesty, Luminance was what convinced me to implement my plan B, although from your reaction it seems my reasoning was based upon false assumptions.”

Yes, Luna hadn’t known Celestia had been there until I’d told her, and neither of us had noticed the similarities between Canterlot Castle and Luminance’s. Celestia was wrong about that, at least.

Celestia continued, “Even if the language stagnated, Luminance’s technology kept progressing far beyond what even a small community of genius technophiles could produce. I thought to myself, ‘She helped her ponies at the risk of true isolation. To do that, to risk everything, there must still be a sliver of good in her.’ I could never put my complete faith in it, but I hoped that given enough time, her banishment might bring back my sister. So I did nothing.”

Nothing…was plan B? As in doing nothing?

“You can do that?” The words escaped me from my stupor.

Celestia giggled. So annoying.

“It is…not natural for me, I admit. Please forgive me if I’ve been a tad blunt or excitable today. Reawakening the elements was always plan A, and while I always felt uneasy leaving Nightmare Moon to her own devices, I thought there would be no harm done.”

Celestia’s smile fell into a frown. And she looked at me. And my stripes.

“Anyway,” Celestia began, both strength and a nervous energy so uncharacteristic of her slowly returning to her voice, “this is rather late, but congratulations on your ascension. Slipping away from Cadance and Captain Armor unnoticed after I set them to watch you was a masterful stroke of genius.”

I think my mouth mumbled, “Thank you,” without any actual instructions to do so.

“Honestly, when I learned you were long gone, I was so sure you would be a thief or an assassin. I never imagined an untrained – or perhaps partially trained – Flare would attempt Equestria’s first non-alicorn space journey. Bravo.”

Celestia clapped her forehooves together in mock praise. Or…maybe it was real praise. It was so hard to tell anymore. Was anything about her real and not calculated?

But it did feel good that we’d fooled Celestia in that, at least.

“Rarely am I taken so by surprise. But it was a good surprise, I think.”

What?

“Once I’d truly ruminated on the matter, I believe this” – Celestia gestured toward my limply hanging wings – “is the best thing that could have happened for you two.”

No, I – “I still don’t understand.”

A small little sigh escaped Celestia. It was the kind of sigh a teacher made when a student was being particularly thick. I’d made it myself on a number of occasions.

“Twilight, all I wanted was my sister back. There is nothing more to it. Between your own no doubt extensive emotional support and work with her and the efforts of everypony who came before you, I believe she has been freed from the monster within her the long, hard way.” Celestia paused for a moment, apparently deep in reflection. “No, not freed. Although I wish I could honestly say otherwise, it would be nothing more than a sweet lie. Not freed, but subdued enough that we can pick up the pieces safely in time. For that, you have my eternal gratitude.

“I knew you would be able to worm your way into her heart; she was never able to resist someone so passionate about magic and the sciences – the arts, too, especially so. There is a certain trend in her lovers, you’ll find. However, I also took what little actions I could to drive you two closer together faster. As a result, I know I caused Cadance, your family, and you yourself no small amount of pain. For using you like that, you will have my sincere apologies, although I expect you would not hear them now.”

My head was swimming, still trying to cope with and process this new information as more and more assaulted me.

“Now then,” Celestia said, and her horn glowed. She cast a teleportation spell. I didn’t bother to stop her or flee. It wasn’t directed at me or Pupa, and I wasn’t sure I could muster the energy.

A surfboard overladen with too many enchantments to identify them appeared at Celestia’s side. A pair of similarly enchanted sunglasses appeared over her eyes, and a tacky aloha shirt completed the ensemble. Her regalia disappeared, presumably to wherever the surfboard and accessories had come from.

“I believe I am long overdue for a vacation. Since I set you up as the senior princess, you’re in charge until Lulu gets back. You should have enough practice from governing Luminance and captaining the Nebulous, right?”

No, no, no. This – this wasn’t how this was supposed to happen. This was almost worse than losing.

“You’re leaving?” I asked. No other words would form. “Just like that?”

“Of course.” Celestia’s eyes lit up. “Oh, actually” – she teleported a small stack of papers and gave them to me – “please take care of the sun and moon for me. I’m so tired of being unable to sleep for more than six hours at a time.”

I barely glanced at the papers I’d been given before letting them fall to the ground.

This was wrong. Even if Celestia wasn’t lying, getting everything we wanted like this, it was so hollow. There was no great victory, no vengeance, no emotional catharsis.

“I… But – but what if…”

I tried to think of some words, some action I could take, something, anything to accomplish the great irony of making Celestia stay in Equestria. We’d…won, I supposed, but if she just left like this, we’d have just as surely lost. Unfortunately, the only thing my reeling mind could think of was that stupid story she’d read to me when I was a foal.

“What if Luna gets upset and tries to bring eternal night? Or – or what if I get upset and just…do whatever comes on impulse? I’m nocturnal. What if…I don’t want to wear sunglasses and destroy the sun?”

Stars, but I was grasping at straws. Destroy the sun because I didn’t want to wear sunglasses? How stupid must I sound right now? But I could barely keep my thoughts straight, and far, far worse, I could see the goal Luna and I had chased together for over a decade slipping away, just out of hoof’s reach.

Unless… Unless we were only meant to think it’d ever been in hoof’s reach to begin with.

Celestia pushed her sunglasses up with a hoof to rest just below her horn. “Really, Twilight. I hardly think it would be so bad for me to just try it for a week, perhaps a year, maybe a decade, or even a century if I have to. I waited a millennium already.”

That…sounded somewhat familiar.

“I can afford to let you two calm down and then try to reason with you. After all, will it really be so bad, my little pony?”

The archives! The story! That was – they were – those words, they were mine!

“Until we meet again.”

Celestia waved her hoof at me. Her horn lit up, and she was gone.

Gone, as in she wasn’t here.

She’d left. She’d really left.

No, she’d gotten away.

“Get back here,” I whispered.

She didn’t even understand. It only really hit me just now. She honestly didn’t understand. She’d never understood, had she?

How could she not understand?

“Get back here!” I screamed, teleporting after her. She hadn’t scrubbed away her magical trail.

Equus’s upper stratosphere was cold, and the air was thin at best, toxic at worse.

“Get back here!” I wheezed out. But there was nothing, no response, no life besides me.

Celestia was gone. She’d left no trail behind.

“You tried to – to kill – kill her!”

My wings were so heavy.

“At least – own up – up to it.”

Where was her trail? It had to be here. I was the Alicorn of Magic, the Goddess of Magic. I was magic! I could find her!

“Shining – would be ashamed – to serve you. Luna at – at least admits – she killed – Sunset.”

“Sparklebutt, she’s gone.”

No! She couldn’t be gone. I just hadn’t looked hard enough.

“Take responsibility!”

“She’s gone!” Mother shouted. “Please. You’re dying over and over.”

That was a good point. I cast the usual protection spells. My breathing cleared up, and I felt light again.

My head cleared up, too. All of the magic around me came into sharper relief.

“Twilight, please st–”

I focused all of my attention on the task at hoof. Finding Celestia’s trail would be hard. I didn’t have the cognitive resources to spare for Mother’s nonsense.

But Celestia was somewhere out there. I would find her. She hadn’t teleported from here. That much was obvious now. I had to start looking for alicorn-sized clumps of magic instead.

I took a deep breath once my lungs completely stopped burning and set about my task.

It was Luna. It’d always been Luna. She had to understand that. Defeating her – even if she’d given our win to us on a silver platter – it wouldn’t mean anything if she didn’t understand why we did it.

And she would understand. There never was a Nightmare Moon. I’d rip apart every delusion she had and then burn them all to cinders.

But first I had to find her.

Author's Note

No, I’m not dead, merely temporarily beyond the mortal veil. But more seriously, life has finally slowed down to let me write again. The next two chapters of The Moon’s Apprentice are likely going to be the last ones. There may be a shorter epilogue chapter; we’ll see.

Now what am I going to work on after this story is finished? Well, two things primarily. I have a Chrysalis story that I’ve been working on, and that will probably be my main focus for the foreseeable future.

But if you’re looking for something completely different, you might want to check out this. I’ve been reading a lot of Harmony fics while walking to/from campus, and at some point I got it in my head that time spent walking could be time spent writing. I’ve polished the absolutely awful rough drafts I made during those walks over the last couple weeks, and this is the result.

Lastly, if you were hoping I’d go back to Seeking Power, well, after having completed this story and seeing all the things I did wrong and right, I feel like I’d have to do a massive edit/rewrite pass on Seeking Power to enjoy working on it again, and I’m just not up for that right now. I won’t go so far as to say it’s canceled, but it’s definitely still on hiatus.

Prereaders – Starlight Nova, Strange Reasoning, The Great Eater

Behold! A shameless promotion for my Patreon page. On that note, we have two cameos this chapter. One from Chace Lang, Panacea, and another from Cast-Iron Caryatid (go read Sharing the Night; it’s wonderful).

Chapter Forty - HD 9986

The air parted with a thunderclap, echoing out across the empty expanse for kilometers around. I filled the gap an instant later before the air could snap back. Below me, there was a nice, comfy looking rock wherever I was. My wings went out to glide down to it, but my heart wasn’t in it. I hit the ground harder than I’d hoped, but whatever. Life sucked, Celestia was definitely off-planet, and one of the binary stars in Cancer had a new asteroid belt.

I let out a long sigh before going totally limp. I was so done with today.

Time crawled by. I’d say I’d lain on my rock for days as time ticked ever onward, but the sun was still out. It couldn’t have been more than minutes. Way off in the distance, a desert turtle slowly crawled toward a rocky outcrop, visible only by the tiny amount of magic in it. Far, far further behind that turtle rose a natural magical rock formation. Whirlwinds blustered about it, fueled by the top-heavy rock pillar’s own magic, but physics be damned. It wouldn’t fall.

Given the context, I couldn’t help but think of that rock as a metaphor for my life. I’d interfered in Celestia’s plans and had my fun, but look at what happened. In the end, what even was the point of it all?

Sigh…

“Twilight,” Mother interjected, taking advantage of my listless state to push back into the forefront of my thoughts. “I know if anyone ever saw it, they’d think we’d gone crazy, and maybe we have, but can you please give me a physical form for a few minutes?”

Dammit. I was going crazy. Comforting myself with a puppet…

Equus’s ambient magic moved about me in my æthereal grip, slowly forming into a physical illusion, one which would fool sight and touch. In all of a second, there was Sunset Shimmer standing on her hooves next to me. Except she had wings and a horn, like me.

“No, no. I’ll keep them,” Mother said, stretching and testing her wings exactly how I had when I first got them. “Always wanted a pair.”

Whatever. I let the puppet run on…well, not automatic, but I let the part of my head simulating Sunset manage the construct. It moved about with strange, clunky movements that abruptly started and stopped. A few seconds of effort later, and the spell was smoothed out to operate on semi-automatic to make up for the moments when…Mother’s questionable existence suspended, I supposed.

Alright. It was official. It really was now. I was completely insane. Whatever sanity I’d had left earlier tonight had broken. I let my head fall face-first onto the rock beneath me.

“Ow…”

Next to me, I felt the illusion Sunset’s wings brush against my own as she sat down. Unless the spell got away from me and was doing its own thing, I was pretty sure she was staring up at the sky, perhaps watching the sun slowly descend to the horizon. Not that she could see anything, since then I’d be seeing it, too, but the idea of seeing something was still there. I guess I could always add a scrying spell… Eh, whatever.

“You know, Twilight, the only things I can tell you are things you can think of on your own.”

Yes, I knew she knew I knew that, since otherwise she wouldn’t have known that, so there was no point in saying it. Just like I knew she was about to say–

“There’s no point in telling me ‘not to bother; I already know’, Sparklebutt. I have a different perspective on things than you: your thoughts get filtered through different memories and emotions. I’m not sure if I’m a real split personality. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’m not. Honestly, I think I hope I’m not. It’s hard to tell.”

Being a mental construct would have to be an unpleasant life, a constant existential crisis. If one were actually alive, that was. This was probably just more crazy on my part, not a real, enduring person forming in my head.

Heedless of my own thoughts, Mother continued, “Real or not, I have wisdom to impart. My part of your brain, whatever that is, is glad Celestia left. It ended poorly, but I have so many happy memories with her. I don’t want to see her… Well, I suppose you never intended to do anything too bad to her. All you and Luna really wanted was her out of the way and out of your lives. You should be happy, too. You got that. It’s a pretty safe bet by now that she isn’t on the planet anymore.”

I shook my head as much as I could with my muzzle squashed against a rock. Celestia was out of the way, yes, but she wasn’t out of our lives. She’d won. We had Equestria. We had our freedom. But she’d gotten what she wanted, apparently. She’d won. We’d won. But our success was so hollow a win. It wasn’t a real triumph. We weren’t the conquering victors. All that anger and pain in us was still there, and it wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. The subject of it was out of the way and out of reach, and as such she remained in our lives.

Mother took up that line of thought. “Sunbutt did imply she’d come back when you two were ready to have a civil…somewhat civil conversation with her. Just try to relax, and when she does return, you can punch her in the face and tell her how wrong she was about Luna the moment you see her. Then you can force her to apologize for driving Luna to the breaking point a thousand years ago. Luna would attest to our mean right hook.”

“No. That’s not… I don’t want to let these feelings fester for a decade, or a century, or however long she’s gone. They broke Luna once already, and she’s one of the strongest ponies I know.”

There was a thought that Mother was deliberately not thinking, which I pointed out was entirely pointless when we shared a brain. I didn’t want to hear it, but I didn’t want to have it floating around unthought and constantly bugging me more.

Agreeing with my point, Mother said those awful words. “They broke Celestia, too. Looking back, do you realize just how much trouble she’s gone to just to get her sister back? Editing a royal tantrum out of history isn’t easy, and the Elements of Harmony aren’t exactly the most cooperative of artifacts. Then there was the constant…withholding of truth from Cadance, which there’s no way Cadance is happy about. Who knows how many scarifies she’s made over the centuries?”

“But she doesn’t want her sister back,” I countered. No, Celestia wanted maybe eight-hundred-year-old Luna back, the one who loved Celestia, who wasn’t emotionally scarred, and who wanted Celestia in her life. She was never coming back. Luna had outgrown and moved past that part of her life.

That… That was a nice thought, actually. We didn’t really win, but Celestia didn’t win either. She was never going to get what she considered her sister back no matter how long she waited.

“That’s the spirit,” Mother said, bumping me with her knee. There was no force behind it, but it triggered the appropriate nerve endings.

I had no ready response for that. A favorable tie was barely more satisfying than merely not losing. But someday…

With my despondent mood dragging us both down, Mother sighed. “You know, it really is awful how somepony can know somepony else so well but also not at all.”

“Speaking from experience?” Thinking the words flooded my head with dozens of memories of Celestia’s and Sunset’s failing relationship. I mumbled some incomprehensible curse.

“Mhm. Just think about it. Celestia knew our favorite foods, what we liked to do in our free time, how to comfort us, what we wanted to do in the future–”

Just to make sure I was following my own thoughts, I asked, “We? You and Luna?”

“Yeah…” Mother’s illusion slumped down and leaned into me, taking what support my limp body could offer an incorporeal illusion. We lay there in silence for a while before Mother started chuckled weakly. “Heh. If I hadn’t been so uninterested, Sunbutt probably would’ve introduced me to my husband, or wife, or whatever. She probably introduced Luna to a fair number of her lovers, too.”

I was skeptical of that. Luna had had so many lovers for a large sample size. She’d made that clear to me from the moment I hit puberty, and she’d at least mentioned more than a few. It couldn’t be too hard to find ponies she would take a fancy to. On the other hoof, Sunset hadn’t. Sure, there were a few kisses and some intimate touching in her early years, but nothing more than that, nothing to make an educated guess on.

For a few minutes, the two of us fell back into silence. My mind drifted in reflection, trying to comprehend just how much I’d screwed up all those years ago on Hearth’s Warming Eve. Without that flare landing me in Celestia’s care, everything would’ve been different. Eventually, Mother added her two bits.

“It’s still hard to believe Sunbutt left you alone with Luna. Sure, you didn’t look haunted by a madmare, but I never thought she would be cold enough to just…leave it be. She genuinely thinks you were being taught by her possessed and or insane sister, after all. She still thinks Luna is some Nightmare Moon, if I’m remembering right. I don’t know if you should be flattered by that amount of confidence in you or horrified.”

I shrugged. I didn’t have enough information to really respond to that. “Who knows? Maybe she geased me and erased the memory. Maybe she read my mind somehow. Or more likely, she’s well-trained to spot foal abuse. She is a teacher. She probably had to be able to spot that to legally teach. Assuming she played by her own rules, of course.

“It doesn’t matter, though. For her, if it were Nightmare Moon, I was apparently being treated well enough that it didn’t matter. If it were a slowly reemerging Luna, I was a valuable support structure to pull at her heartstrings and make her remember herself, and thus it didn’t matter. She had no reason not to leave well enough alone on the off chance I would ‘fix’ her sister for her.”

“I suppose that’s fair,” Mother said after a reflective pause. “You’re not thinking loving Luna is admitting defeat, are you?” When I didn’t reply either way, she said, “You idiot. Sure, Sunbutt said she tried to push you together faster, but what contact did you two really have with her? What did she actually do?”

An unpleasant thought occurred to me. “Just the idea of petrifying me, with or without true intent, would send me running away from her and into Luna’s hooves even more. Or if Celestia had petrified me, Luna would’ve either spent a lot of time with me or she would’ve abandoned me, and I’d have learned a hard lesson.”

“And in the latter case, you could be let out in a week,” Mother finished the train of logic for me. “Same thing with the trial. Was that just to make you hate her more?”

That…was entirely possible. And then there was what happened after I’d visited the moon. “I know Cadance was getting…unstable, but Celestia did force me back into contact with her. You know how she loves to talk about romance, or even just enduring friendships. Especially mine.”

Mother giggled, her feathers brushing against my own and almost tickling me. “Yes, I do. She’s been like that since I met her.”

“Heh. Yeah… There’s probably other small stuff Celestia did–”

“–But nothing else of significance,” Mother finished. “So you agree, then? There’s nothing wrong with you loving Luna. Celestia just took advantage of something she expected to happen anyway, and I’d give you better than even odds that half of last night was truth and the other half her bullshitting you. Think about it. She’s still doing it. You’re even more pissed off at her now than ever before, aren’t you?”

I slammed my head against my rock once, then twice. Why did Celestia have to be such a…such a Celestia? She was entirely worthy of being a new curse word. Was there any way to win against her?

“Well, you could just ignore her,” was Mother’s suggestion. To be fair, it had merit. “Even without her interference, you would’ve gotten Luna to love you all on your own by being… What was the word Luna used? Adorkable?”

I blushed a bit, not having expected to ever earnestly describe myself with that word. It wasn’t bad, per se, but…I didn’t quite know how to feel about it. Still, the side Mother had argued for was right. It was definitely right. I knew that. I wanted Luna. I loved her. But something about it, some small part, still felt somehow wrong.

“Oh, come on, Sparklebutt. I understand you still wanting to punch Sunbutt’s face in, but don’t let what she said today weigh you down. Sure, she thought she outplayed you on her plan B, but even that was ultimately a bust for her. You pointed that out yourself. She’s not getting the sister she wanted back.”

Mother had something of a point, I supposed…

“Dammit, Sparklebutt! Luna helped you design the Nebulous, but who built the damn thing?”

“I did, but–”

“Who found the crew, negotiated their employment, and kept them all on task?”

Stars, I hated it when I cut my own thoughts off.

“Who was it who thought to ally with the changelings?”

Luna probably would’ve brought it up sometime if I hadn’t.

“Work with me here, Sparklebutt.” Not having access to my chest, Mother poked me in the neck. “You found them.” Another poke. “You served as ambassador.” A third poke followed. “You performed the negotiations. Chrysalis and Pupa have been more than worth the effort.”

“Fine,” I complained. “I get what you’re saying.”

“Hardly. You, Chrysalis, and Luna all worked as a team to awaken the elements, but who was it that found it in herself to awaken Friendship all on her own?”

Awakening Friendship alone was an inherent contradiction. Friendship could not exist in a vacuum.

“Twilight Sparkle!” Mother snapped. “You’re not, and never have been, Celestia’s tool. I was. You’re not. You’re Luna’s tool, and you’re a damn good one.”

“What do you want me to say?” I asked with no more enthusiasm than before. “I already said I get what you’re saying. Celestia used me like a boat uses a river: her backup plan revolved around what I was going to do anyway. I’m very good at what I do, both academically and in practice. The wings are a constant reminder of that. I’m awesome, as Dash would put it. It doesn’t make me feel any less cheated.”

A particular memory occurred to us both, and Mother threw it at me. She spoke over it as I reveled in the feelings accompanying it.

“You and Luna utterly destroyed Celestia’s real plan. She even admitted that to you, and let’s not pretend her plan B was really anything more than wishful thinking. Her real plans were destroyed. That she hadn’t seen coming, and it really shows in the conversation – if you can call it that – you had just after your ascension. She was livid. She snarled at us! Celestia doesn’t snarl. You got to call her a sororicidal mule to her face! You screwed up on Hearth’s Warming, but she screwed up more by letting you go on your merry way.”

Looking back on the memory now that I wasn’t terrified for my life or swept up in my temper, it had felt good to tell Celestia just what I thought of her. That’d felt really good. It wasn’t every day a pony got to see Celestia react like she had on the Nebulous or insult her directly and openly to her face.

“And let’s not forget the most important fact of them all,” Mother said, her voice stern and unyielding. “You saved your Luna’s life. Sunbutt would never have not used the Elements of Harmony so long as they were an option. You know that. Forget your ascension. Forget defeating Celestia. That was the entire reason Luna sent you on your quest to begin with.”

For a few moments, my mind just stopped thinking as those words ran their course.

Swept up in all the craziness, in all the emotions being thrown around, it really was easy to forget that I’d already done my job. My goal had been to break the elements, and while I’d almost screwed that up, I had finished my quest. That was more than just a pleasant thought. Everything after that was just…living with the costs of getting me there. This was life after the quest.

“You’ve already earned your happily ever after,” Mother said, running with the theme. “All that’s left is for you to actually be happy.”

“Easier said than done after today.”

Speaking of, even after today’s events, I still found it hard to believe what Celestia had claimed all those weeks ago was what she actually believed, or maybe I just didn’t want to believe it. What were her words, exactly? ‘Her Lulu would never say what she had a thousand years ago to her or have been so careless with the lives around them,’ was it? Something like that. Possession, or discordification, or what have you was such a lame excuse. It was no less true now than it was then or a thousand years ago.

Insanity – or some similar mental condition – I supposed Celestia could make a case for. I’d seen Luna that enraged, and it wasn’t a pleasant sight. But it was still Luna. I wasn’t going to close my eyes and pretend it wasn’t. That kind of disrespect was so cruel.

“You know,” Mother began, “there’s something you’ve never honestly considered.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“What if she’s right? Or what if Luna is half-mad like us? What if your Luna is just the current dominant personality of some sort of psychological mess?”

I scoffed at the notion. “Luna wouldn’t lie to me about something like that. And as far as it was possible for me to tell, she was being honest when I asked her about possessions and the like.”

“Yes, what were her exact words again?” I got the distinct impression that Mother was tapping a hoof to her muzzle. “She’s been under a bunch of harmless geases, but to the extent of her knowledge, nothing else. The key words being ‘to the extent of her knowledge’. What if she doesn’t know?”

Cadance had pretty much asked me the same question, and my answer remained unchanged. “Then who cares? I like the current Luna. If it means that much to you, when she gets back I’ll check her for ongoing magics along the lines of a geas.”

“And remove them?”

Shrugging, I replied, “It depends what they are. Luna said there’s no such thing as ghosts, spirits, et cetera. But on the extremely off chance she is one, I’m not going to be the one to kill her.” I let out a puff of air. “What evidence do you even have to bother asking those questions to begin with? I might as well ask why gravity pushes mass away from other mass if you don’t need evidence.”

“Well, if you trust that they told you everything, from Cadance’s references to Celestia and Celestia’s own words, the most likely problem, if it exists, is discordification by the Alicorn Amulet. You asked Luna specifically about that, and let’s be honest. Luna has gotten more…stable and at ease, would be the way to put it, since you met her. If Celestia was right about Luna’s tastes, you’re a familiar love. Being around you is probably as close to the ‘long and hard cure’ Luna described as possible short of putting her into constant contact with Celestia.”

“Please,” I said, dragging the word out as I condescended to address that nonsense. “Have you even been paying attention to what’s been going on in her life? Despite how old she is, the changes she’s gone through – and really, they’re pretty small so far – are perfectly natural. She’s been through a lot of emotional trauma that’s built up and festered, and only now, intentionally or not, has she allowed somepony to become close enough to help her start putting herself back together.”

“And being that pony, you’re hardly unbiased.”

“And you think Celestia is?”

“No, but she was there a thousand years ago. We weren’t.”

No, that only made Celestia more biased than I was. She was a primary source, true, but Luna had been playing a game of politics with her at the time. Even if Celestia actually were innocent of everything but ‘grand criminal negligence’, as Twinkleshine had dubbed it, Luna had the more complete story. Luna was the one who could tell us all of Luna’s off-screen actions and feelings. Luna was the one who provided context. Even reading her record-diary at Luminance couldn’t do the story justice.

In summary, I supposed my point was Luna knew herself best. Certainly she knew herself better than Celestia did, if nothing else. Today had made that abundantly clear.

A pregnant silence grew between Mother and me as that debate died down. Still, there was a question neither of us wanted to ask but which kept floating back and forth between our thoughts as we tried to pass off responsibility. I didn’t want to ask it because I found it distasteful. Mother didn’t want to ask it because it would hurt. But somepony had to put it into words, or we would go crazy.

Well, crazier.

Stuck with the short straw, I asked, “As somepony who fell victim to essentially the same insecurities, do you think Celestia loves Luna as more than the sister she’s supposed to love, if at all?”

Mother had no immediate answer to that, and when her words did come, they were slow and hesitant. “I want to believe so. You?”

“I hope not. If she’s been lying outright to me, it’d be all the more reason to hate her. Though I’d still be without a face to hit. If not, if she really does just want a long gone relationship with her sister back, it’s…hard to understand how she could love Luna instead of more…more the idea of her sister, Luna. I mean, how could Celestia love her but also refuse to accept that Luna could even possibly be responsible for her own actions?”

“Sunbutt would hardly be the first mare to overlook a loved one’s flaws,” Mother replied.

“No…” There was something wrong with that, but the exact problem was escaping me. Nevertheless, I tried my best to put it into words. “There’s a difference between overlooking and…overlooking. You can love somepony despite their flaws, but can you really say you love someone if you just…just ignore their flaws? Or pretend they don’t exist?”

“You know,” Mother began slowly, “it’s just like Celestia to leave like she did. She probably thinks that while it’s ‘all part of the plan’, it’s just an ultimately harmless prank or something. All in good fun. I can hardly blame her for going to ground, but you would think she would try to do it a bit more…” She waved a hoof back and forth, her knee occasionally bumping into me.

“More in a way that Luna and I wouldn’t throw her into a supermassive black hole the next time we see her for?”

Mother stifled a giggle. “Succinctly put.” Then more somberly, she said, “I think… Sometimes I think Celestia doesn’t quite…get…emotions. She obviously has them and understands them, but then there are times when I have to wonder if she’s an alien. I’m not sure what happened with Luna, but I – what happened between me and her… Is it wrong that I still love her despite how she made me feel and how she treated me?”

There was only one way to respond to that question. I lifted my head up to look at Mother and raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, I suppose you’re not the pony to ask that,” Mother admitted. “But you did just make something of a point about flaws and love.”

Yes, I supposed I had. It would be fair, then, to say Mother loved Celestia, but whether Celestia deserved that love or not was an entirely different question. Mother sighed, knowing what answer I would give her.

“Well, she’s gone now.” Mother flumped down onto me and rolled onto her back, a forehoof extended up to the sky. “I probably won’t be around when you see her again anyway, so I guess it doesn’t matter. Could I ask you a favor, though?”

No, no, no. I didn’t want to hear it, even though I already more or less knew what Mother intended to say. Heedless to my desires, the words came anyway.

“If you don’t kill her, or trap her outside of time, or otherwise render her incapable of interacting with you, would you help old Sunbutt understand what she’s doing wrong?”

“No.”

“Come on, Sparklebutt. Think about ten-thousand-year-old you. You won’t have the energy to hold a grudge that long, and you won’t kill an alicorn if you can help it. If nothing else, think of all the ponies you’d be sparing the emotional turmoil you, Luna, and I have gone through. Do it as a favor for a friend?”

Stupid Sunset, appealing to my resolution to be a better friend. I couldn’t say my guilty feelings for what had happened to her didn’t play a part either. At least my imaginary friend considered me a friend.

Grumbling, I said, “I’ll think about it.”

“Thank you, Twilight.”

I made an indistinct grunting sound, but we otherwise left the matter at that for now. I lay back down properly on my rock, moping in peace, and Mother did…well, nothing. The illusion was still breathing while reclined half on top of me, but it was just on an idle animation.

Still, for the moment, things were adequate. Maybe, even, if I ignored everything for long enough, Celestia would come back and I could punch her in the face. Mother was certainly right about my having a mean right hook, and I couldn’t think of a better way to make myself feel more than just sort of okay right now.

“You know,” Mother began, shifting back to life and climbing off me, “you can’t just laze around on a rock forever. Whether you feel like you’ve earned them or not, you have responsibilities now. Cadance can hold Equestria together for awhile, but the ponies here are used to a competent ancient alicorn guiding them. You can fake that better until Luna returns.”

Yes, I had had responsibilities dumped on me, hadn’t I? But right now, I’d much rather stay face down on my rock.

“That is absurdly irresponsible, Sparklebutt.”

Whatever. It wasn’t like Equestria would implode after four weeks of Cadance’s rule. She was hardly that bad a regent.

“Then all the more reason to establish yourself now before Equestria finds itself without need of you or Luna. You don’t want that, do you?”

No, I didn’t. The last thing I wanted was to lose our consolation prize. Not that I would be much of a ruler at the moment. Maybe tomorrow. But now that Mother had brought it up, I couldn’t help but feel like I was forgetting something important. Hmm… I supposed I’d forgotten to take Pupa back to Luminance, but that wasn’t much of an issue. Something else…

Whatever. It couldn’t be that big a deal. My horn lit up, and for the following few seconds, I snuggled into the soft, pliable rock below me, getting more comfortable.

Who knew how many minutes passed as I just lay in place half-awake. Today had been an ordeal. Rest was in order, or at least that was what I wanted. I needed to talk to Luna too, if I could. Honestly, she’d probably lost track of me. And she probably suspected or knew what had happened already anyway; she might not want to talk to anypony right now.

Sigh. C’est la vie.

Even with my eyes closed and partially shadowed by the rock I’d shaped to fit me, the strangest thing was happening. It was getting really, really bright, much like somepony had aimed a spotlight at my face. Seeing as the light wasn’t getting any dimmer, I cast a well-practiced spell to shield my eyes and opened them.

“What’s going on?” I mumbled to myself. Glancing about, there wasn’t anything in particular that jumped out at me as the source of the problem. Nothing about would increase the ambient light, and it wasn’t like the sun was getting too close to Equus. Celestia had dealt with its velocity change…at…noon…

Oh, buck.

Time seemed to stop as I turned my attention to the horizon where the sun had not set, and there was light. I watched in stunned fascination as the sun grew brighter and brighter at its center, even while it rippled outward in a disk of hot, bright gases. Witnessing the death of a star was…beautiful in a way, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

When I found myself capable of thought again, what had happened was fairly simple. I’d just missed sunset. Apparently Celestia had been serious when she told me to take care of that.

Whoops.

My next thought was the obvious next step. How on Equus was I going to fix that? I wasn’t a stellar engineer. Luna was, but this seemed a more urgent sort of thing, something that couldn’t wait for her to come back or for her to teach me.

Then the important thought hit me like…well, like a star colliding with itself at the edge of the universe. Moonrise followed sunset.

“No, no, no!” I rattled off as I reached out for the moon. It was but a few precious seconds from sharing the sun’s fate. With what little time remained to me, I pulled at the moon’s magic. All the power I needed was there already; it just needed to be more sensibly organized.

With no time to spare and no time to channel my own magic, I burned through the moon’s magic at a mad rate far removed from the graceful spell Sunset had once used on the sun. I stitched it together into the necessary framework to phase the moon through to this side of the universe in large, incredibly inefficient lumps. Worse, I may have even pulled at Luna in her banishment, but I didn’t have the privilege of caution. I couldn’t stop the moon from crashing any other way; the acceleration would kill everypony on it, and who knew what would happen to Luna if the moon shattered into pieces.

I bit down on my lip hard enough to draw blood as I worked, idly dismissing the idea to waste time triggering Luminance’s emergency evacuation teleport. I would not lose the moon.

There weren’t many more connections left to be made. A second away from disaster, I laid down the last few dozen lines of magic required in parallel from one end of the moon to the other. A half-second later, I tugged them into place interweaved with already placed curves. At the last moment, I scrubbed away my own scratch work and the old remnants of the spell my ancestors must have used to control the moon.

I felt a brief tremor shoot through the moon’s magic. Only after it’d started did I activate my spellwork. With all the force of will at my disposal, I commanded the moon’s magic to push outward back to normal, to stop a disastrous moon-wide earthquake.

Stars, but I hoped I hadn’t just torn the moon in half.

I dared to look up at the sky. The moon rose steadily from the horizon, apparently no worse for the wear. Hopeful, I chanced a glance at Luminance. The castle was still standing. Ponies were still moving about, or at least their magic was. Everything was okay.

Before I could even congratulate myself on a stellar-level rush job well done, Mother echoed her earlier remark. “Absurdly irresponsible.”

“Shut up,” I grumbled. So what if my moping almost got a few hundred people killed? If I just took care of the moon properly from now on, I could just collapse and forget my woes. Maybe I’d get a barrel of moonshine.

“Absuuuuurdly irresponsible,” Mother said again.

Dammit…

Fine. The moon was taken care of – for the next five-ish hours, at least. Now there was the sun to take care of.

Right… No problem.

The remains of the sun waited, wanting to know what I would do.

“No problem,” I said, although even I didn’t believe me. “I can fix this…”

What on Equus was I supposed to do with a dissociated, expanding disk of gas? Did I just…squish it back together? Would that work?

No… No, I didn’t think I had the precision and knowledge necessary. If I made it too hot or too cold a star…

Well, first things first. I pushed the sun’s remains across to the other side of the universe where nopony would panic over it.

And only then did the second most important thought hit me. With my luck, I’d probably just upset a very delicate gravitational equilibrium that kept Equus fixed in place.

Horseapples.

I made a second note to myself to check everyday that Equus wasn’t drifting anywhere.

Sigh… Maybe it would just be better to redesign our…whatever we had into a proper solar system. If I could get the sun and moon orbiting each other with Equus spinning about its axis in the middle… Yes, that could work. Maybe. It was something to look into.

Ponyfeathers.

I shook myself of those thoughts. I was getting distracted. What did I do about the sun? I doubted Celestia would come back and fix it for me, and Cadance was an even more unlikely source of aid. I only had…approximately nine hours before sunrise to fix this mess.

I let out a long sigh. “Fantastic.”

“You know,” Mother began,“I bet Pinkie Pie saw the sun from Luminance.”

What did that even… Oh. Well, at least the doozy Pinkie Pie had been predicting was out of the way. One less thing to worry about. How wonderful. It wasn’t like I had to figure out how to fix a star in the next–

I facehoofed. I was being an idiot.

Near the top of the Canterhorn on the far side of the mountain from the vast majority of the city’s lights stood a large building with an enormous telescope sticking out of the roof. At a casual glance, it was overloaded with hundreds of optical enchantments. As much fun as it would be to tear it apart and put it back together again, that was not why I was here.

“Remember,” Mother said, “you’re aiming for surreal. And have fun with it. You definitely need it.”

After I manifested just outside the entrance to the Royal Canterlot Observatory, I tried to mentally prep myself to do just that. Between trying to have fun and Mother nagging at me to get out of the gutter, I’d much prefer the former. That’s not to mention her constant pestering about the responsibilities I had now that I couldn’t avoid. If I was doomed not to gather moss as a pony-shaped rock, I could at least attempt to enjoy life like I’d planned.

Thus emboldened – if one could call it that – I walked straight through the front doors of the observatory. I gathered from the frantic movements of magic upstairs that there were quite a few members of staff trying to figure out just what had happened not even a half-hour ago to the sun. I supposed I would have to give an official explanation for that sometime soon. Unless Cadance had already dealt with it. That would be nice.

Anyway, I swept past a very surprised looking pony at the entrance with nothing more than a good evening in Old Equestrian. Just to make sure he was good and confused, I ruffled my wings and then opened the next door with telekinesis, only to then pull it closed with a hoof. Once out of sight, I scryed back to see his reaction, and it was priceless. He stood there staring at the door, his mouth half-opened and no doubt not knowing what to say or think.

Ah, good times. I supposed I could blame Mother’s personality, or emotional response, or whatever leaking into mine, but I’d take the chuckle for what it was and not dwell on it.

I wandered through the hallways until I stumbled upon the stairs leading up. This building could do with more signage. Down the hall and through an open door after knocking, I found myself in a workroom with a cerulean earth pony stallion leaned over a desk with a potion in hoof. Judging by the magic in the vial, he probably dabbled in zebra alchemy. His orange mane certainly bore all the stains and damage that would suggest as such.

As he poured the potion onto an ordinary lens – if one half as large as a pony – he said, “I told you, Comet. The lens will be ready when it’s ready. Solar anomalies won’t make it ready any faster.”

Only now did this pony look up and see that I was not whomever Comet was.

“Good evening,” I said, still speaking in Old Equestrian. “Would I be able to procure your assistance for a moment?”

For a few seconds, the stallion just looked horribly confused. Eventually he snapped out of it and said, “Nightmare Night is still over a season away, Comet. Nice illusion, but your voice is too obvious. If you’re that bored, why don’t you actually help somepony?”

“Not quite the response I’d expected,” Mother commented, “but you can work with it.” She dug up my memories of when Chamomile was first learning Modern Equestrian and insisted I use that accent as a jumping off point. This was going to get so ridiculous so quickly.

“Ah, excuse me, noble sirrah, but I am in haste.”

The stallion rolled his eyes and waved his hoof at me, shooing me out the door. “Yes, yes. You’re always ‘busy’. Celestia help us if you actually touch an instrument these days.”

“I’m–”

“Before you leave, could you fetch me the blue and green potions from the top shelf?” The stallion pointed a hoof to behind me and off behind the door. Glancing backward, I quickly spotted the potions in question and indulged his request. I levitated them down into my waiting hoof and held them out to him. He took the vials from me, passed from earth pony magic to earth pony magic, and set them on his desk.

A second passed.

The stallion’s head shot up. “How did you–”

I ruffled my wings and cocked my head to the side. This really was fun, a once in a lifetime chance; everypony and their mother would know about me by tomorrow, most likely.

“Told you,” Mother said.

“Shush.” Ignoring Mother’s triumphant…vague general feeling in the back of my head – I needed to invent new words for these feelings – I asked the earth pony in front of me, “If I might introduce myself?”

“You – you’re a – but that…”

I faked a cough after a few more seconds of incoherent attempts at speech. “In this tongue, I believe you would address me as Princess Twilight Sparkle.” Begrudgingly, I added, “The Elder, Alicorn of Magic.” It was getting really hard not to laugh or smile as the stallion’s eyes widened and slowly glazed over, let alone maintaining the ridiculous accent. “As I was about to relay earlier, I was on mine way to a friend’s abode, but I fear I’ve become terribly lost. Might you or somepony here be able to bestow directions upon me?”

“I…don’t know Canterlot that well,” the stallion finally managed.

Waving a hoof back and forth, I said, “No, no. You misunderstand. I’m looking for the coordinates of…” I cursed in Old Equestrian. “I do not know your name for it. It’s the star with the closest known mass and temperature to your star, I believe, or at least it was so when Princess Luna put it into place.”

“I – one second. Just – just let me go ask somepony.” The stallion beat a hasty retreat out of his office and down the hallway toward where most of the other ponies in the building were congregated. Once he was out of earshot, I broke down in welcome giggles. I could get entirely too used to this. Mother was such a bad influence.

“Please,” Mother said sarcastically.“I’m just an echo. You’re a bad influence on me. The real me probably would’ve hated you.”

Ignoring that, I scryed after the stallion and found him in what was likely the largest room in the building. The observatory’s main telescope loomed over them all in all its glory, but none of the other frantically working ponies payed it any mind. I picked up an equally frantic conversation between the earth pony and a mare who did, in fact, sound a little bit like me.

“I’m not making it up! There’s a princess is my office asking for directions to a star!”

“Come on, Aqua. It’s obviously just a prank. Get back to work already.”

“I’m not going back there to tell a princess to get lost. She had earth pony and unicorn magic, and her wings moved. I saw it.”

“Please. Occam’s razor, Aqua. What’s more likely? An unknown alicorn walking into your office completely out of the blue, or an earth pony with a talented unicorn right outside your door?”

“Just dig up the Celestia damned list, Comet! It’ll take you a minute, tops. Maybe another minute to calculate the current coordinates of the sun-like stars.”

The mare – Comet, apparently – let out an exaggerated sigh and rolled her eyes. “We have more important things to do right now. We’re still waiting to hear back from court about the sun, but the moon isn’t going to wait all night for us.”

I forced my smile off my face before I remanifested next to Aqua and Comet. “If I might interrupt,” I began, promptly drawing a surprised squeak from Comet. The entire rest of the room fell into a sudden silence as well. I could feel practically every eye turn toward me. “You need not worry about your star or the moon.” I had to bite my tongue to get the words out naturally, but I added, “Princess Celestia took leave on vacation tonight is all.”

Comet stared at me for a moment, her eyes falling on my horn and wings in succession.

“I told you!” Aqua said, thrusting a hoof in my direction. Then rather nervously, he said, “Er… Excuse me, Princess.”

I waved the matter off, saying, “No matter. I do have a bit of a schedule to adhere to, though, so if one of you would please oblige my request…”

Those were apparently the magic words, as Comet shot off toward a corner filled with filing cabinets surrounding a table overflowing with loose papers. The words, “Right away, Your Highness,” came floating back to me.

While Comet hunted down the information I needed, the rest of the ponies gathered around in a rush not unlike the crowd at Pupa’s and Trixie’s performance earlier tonight. I answered mostly the same questions as well, both the ones that were actually intelligent and the ones that were inane. I put up with the crowd for two, or three, or maybe four minutes before Comet rushed back with a list of stars and frantically scribbled calculations.

“These are the most sun-like stars we know of, Your Highness. Is this – is one of them the one you’re looking for?”

My eyes scanned over the chart, quickly taking in the records for each star’s mass, radius, and temperature. The first three looked promising. Any one of them would likely be a perfectly fine replacement star for the next four weeks. After that, I could leave it to Luna to deal with my mess.

Heh. I couldn’t help a small chuckle escaping me at that. Luna had said she would clean up her own messes right after claiming me as one of them. My mess was her mess, then.

“Thank you. That’s all I needed,” I said, passing the list back to Comet. “Might I have your names?”

“Comet, Your Highness.”

“Aqua Regia.”

“Excellent. If you find yourself in need, please seek me out at court so that I might return the favor.” Now addressing the crowd at large, I continued, “My apologies for having interrupted your labors. I fear I must now depart in haste. Farewell, good ponies.”

With that, I demanifested and tracked down the first star on the list, giggling to myself the whole way. That had been an adequate pick-me-up after – no, not thinking about it. I’d just gotten my mind off that and onto happier things, and I didn’t have time for a relapse.

Anyway, I relocated my consciousness to a star some hundreds of thousands of AU away. There I found that it had no planets orbiting it, at least none that I noticed. If it had, I would’ve moved on to the next star. No sense wasting a perfectly good stepping stone on Equestria’s future space program.

In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have demolished a planet to work out my stress…

Well, what was done was done. I could try putting it back together again later.

Right then. I had to get this star into orbit beside Equus. Pushing it back wasn’t an option – it’d take years – so that meant I had to teleport it home.

I reached out with an æthereal smile and caressed the star’s magic, silently asking it if it was willing to come home with me. Of course, it didn’t answer, but I could pretend. The way it turned, burst, and roiled about felt almost alive.

Accepting the star’s lack of a response as a positive reply – it actually felt almost eager, but I could’ve been imagining that – I started firing off calculations.

It took me maybe a second to teleport the Nebulous from Mona back to the moon at a casual channeling pace. This star was approximately ten to the twentieth times greater in mass, and I had a distance to travel maybe ten to the fifth times longer. Then I needed approximately ten to the twenty-fifth times more magic to get this star home, and my time constraint was eight hours max, which was approximately ten to the fourth seconds.

How on Equus did Luna move these things?

I shook my head. Luna was a type of celestial alicorn. She probably had some trick I couldn’t replicate.

Sighing, I set myself to my task, channeling an absurd amount of magic and transferring it into the star’s already considerable reserves. This was going to take all night.

“At least you have me for company,” Mother said.

Ugh…

“Blegh.”

I flumped onto my bed in Luminance with a tired sigh. Equus’s new star was in place. The sun was still a mess, but it was out of the way. There was still an hour before I had to hope that nopony noticed the sun that rose in the sky wasn’t quite the same as yesterday’s.

I was so done with today.

Yawning, I reached out to stroke our new star’s slowly recovering magic lovingly. After spending a whole night to get him, the little guy had grown on me a bit, kind of like a pet. I didn’t think Owlowiscious would appreciate a play date though, even if they both entered my life in unusual circum…

Nope, not thinking it.

Mother, however, seemed as determined as ever to keep me from doing just that. “I bet Sunbutt sent you Owlowiscious,” she said.

Sure, an obviously trained owlet just happened to land on my back in the middle of the night in Ponyville where we didn’t have many owls to begin with, or at least not great horned owls: Ponyville was too far south. That didn’t mean Celestia sent him. Maybe it was Cadance, or Shining, or Mom, or Dad, or literally anypony else. So what if none of them had admitted to it?

“Dammit.”

A knock came at my door.

“Double dammit.”

“Language,” Mother teased.

“I don’t want to hear that from you.”

Sigh… As glad as I was for the distraction, I really wasn’t ready to entertain company. I struggled to my hooves but gave up partway. There would be no fooling anypony no matter how much effort I put into it, so why bother? I settled for merely sitting upright and called out, “Come in!”

The door to my room swung open, tinged green, and that clued me in immediately as to who was behind it. The only person currently on Luminance with green magic stepped into the room covered in changeling nymphs that clung to her in oddly amusing ways.

“Don’t you dare laugh,” Chrysalis said before I could get a single word in edgewise.

Really, if I couldn’t laugh, there was only one alternative thing I could think of to say. “Do you want me to ferry you to help or help to you?”

Chrysalis gave me a look that, were she a pony, I would’ve sworn meant ‘I’m not giving up my long overdue grandfoals’. I’d have to ask Pupa sometime how changeling queens felt about non-queen offspring of their heirs.

“I would appreciate it if you brought Pupa back here to deal with these terrors when she wakes up. I swear they’re all as bad as she was.”

I didn’t laugh, but a smile was inevitable. This was a very different Chrysalis, even if she sounded as prickly as ever.

“There are also a number of things I need to see to on Equus, and I suppose I should open relations between Equestria and my hive sometime today. Your civilization will probably react better to a group of royals appearing all at once than to one after another for a season.”

Ugh. Going to Canterlot…

Flumping gracelessly back down onto my bed, I reached out for the magic flowing about Canterlot Castle to start cataloging it. It was something I should’ve done already but hadn’t. That was the dimensional anchor for the hallways. That was a privacy enchantment. That was a cleaning spell. That was a drying spell. That was Cadance.

“Not going to bite my head off?”

“Hmm?” I pulled my attention back to Luminance and then back to Chrysalis before processing her words. “Oh. No.”

Chrysalis quirked an eyebrow while I went back to the boring – but preoccupying – task of analyzing all of Canterlot Castle’s magic for traps, as unlikely that there would be any as it seemed. Really, Chrysalis hadn’t spent the last six years waiting to backstab me and Luna without profit, especially not when it would get two or three, maybe four, angry alicorns on her case. It was like Pupa said last night: Celestia was going to do…that anyway. A little cooperation would make things easier for us.

“So you’re staying, then?” I asked. “Going public?”

Clearly reluctant, Chrysalis bit out, “Pupa decided to.”

And since Pupa was outing changelings, Chrysalis might as well step into the limelight, too, even if she didn’t want to. It made sense.

“Now then,” Chrysalis continued, moving on without a second thought, “even though you technically did do what you set out to do and got what you wanted–”

Mother poked my thoughts much like somepony physical would nudge me in the side. I ignored her.

“–let me be the first to say it.” Chrysalis cleared her throat and smiled an evil smile. It was too obvious what was coming for it to really bother me at all. “I told you so. You only succeeded because Celestia underestimated how ridiculous your plan was.”

I sighed. “Yes, you told me so.”

Chrysalis stood there like she was expecting me to say more. Under other circumstances, I probably would. We’d exchange witticisms and snark at each other. Just…not today.

“Is there anything else?” I asked. “I’m not really in the mood for this.”

“Yes, actually.” Chrysalis actually sounded disappointed, but that soon passed. One of the nymphs clinging to her had a few holey pieces of paper in its mouth, and she had to fight to reclaim them from it. She eventually came out victorious, but only at the cost of the nymph making sad eyes at her and pouting. Unfazed, she levitated the papers in front of herself and waved them back and forth as if she wanted me to chase them like a cat chases a string. “Remember these?”

I searched my memory for whatever Chrysalis could be talking about, but I came up blank. “Nothing comes to mind.”

“Dear Twilight Sparkle, love Celestia?”

Oh. Oh, stars. This was so not what I needed right now. “Did she tell you the encryption key?”

Chrysalis shrugged. “She gave Pupa what I think was intended as a hint, but it really stretched the definition of the word. At any rate, I have to admit I’m surprised that Celestia really just wanted her sister back. She’s pretty far gone if she thinks things between them could ever go back to how they were twelve-hundred-something years ago, even with The Elements of Harmony. In hindsight, I probably backed the right pony. She may be even further gone than you and your princess.”

“Please tell me this is going somewhere,” I interrupted.

“To be entirely fair,” Mother said, much to my annoyance, “you do listen to a voice in your head.”

“Naturally. Remember that statue she left behind?”

“You tried the inscription as the key already. I remember that.”

“Yes, and dozens of other keys that it brought to mind. It turns out that it was the key. Or at least one of them. Celestia used a same-length two-key encryption scheme for some absurd reason; I’m pretty sure if I checked, I’d have found that she invented that mess a few hundred years ago herself. The hive mind still has a collective headache from this nonsense.

“Anyway, the first key was ‘In this life or the next, we will always be together’, of course. No period or spaces, but the comma is kept. That’s terribly awkward, so it was easy enough to guess that the other key had a relevant meaning, one she probably chose first and then worked around. Care to guess?”

“I don’t know. Some combination of Celestia, Luna, Twilight, Sparkle, Sunset, Shimmer, Nightmare, and Moon?”

“Four of those are right,” Chrysalis said.

“Sunbutt has a pseudo-immortal pet phoenix, Philomena,” Sunset offered. “It regularly undergoes a rebirth for a ‘new’ life.”

“Philomena?” I guessed.

Chrysalis pulled her head back in surprise. She obviously hadn’t expected me to guess that, and judging by her reaction, it must have been right.

“I’m impressed,” Chrysalis said. “I didn’t think you paid enough attention to her to know about her bird.”

I hadn’t. Still, there was no reason to dispel the illusion, so I just shrugged.

“There’s still one missing.”

I rooted around in what I knew about Celestia to figure out who else in her life could possible qualify as having a next or previous life but came up empty. Poking Mother, she had nothing else to offer either.

“Alright,” Chrysalis said, “here’s a hint. Philomena, Celestia, Sunset, blank, Twilight, Luna is the proper order. In case you can’t count, that blank is seven letters long.”

Seven letters? No way. It couldn’t be.

My face must have given my thoughts away, because Chrysalis smirked. “I know. Misleading, right? Sunset and Twilight – who bridged the middle?”

“Cadance,” I said blankly.

“Exactly. It seems Celestia is fonder of Cadenza than we thought. That ‘we’ is her whole broken, messed up family.”

That was like a punch to the gut. I knew how awful it was to have a broken family. Cadance, Shining, and I were all…tense with each other at the moment, although not from lack of trying. At least on my end. Even so, I certainly wasn’t going to go and blast those two with the Elements of Harmony to put a macabre bandage on our relationships. What was wrong with Celestia?

Chrysalis let out a frustrated grunt as she tossed the presumably unencrypted letter from Celestia to me. “Honestly, I can understand your vexations with that mare. There’s double meanings and hidden depths to everything she says and does.”

Coming from Chrysalis, that said a lot. Admittedly, though, it wasn’t like Luna and I were completely innocent of that either. What royal was? Besides Cadance. And Dash, I supposed, but she hardly counted.

I grabbed the papers on my bed with a hoof, half intent on tearing them into pieces. Not that it would have done any good. Chrysalis could just make another copy. Sighing, I finally replied, “So what else is new?”

“The sun?”

I bit my lip and looked down to my hooves. Mumbling, I said, “Kind of.”

Chrysalis chuckled. “Thank you. You just won me a thousand bits.”

Leveling a glare, I asked, “Are we done here?” I didn’t even want to know who Chrysalis had made that bet with.

“For now and for me, yes, but we should leave for Canterlot before noon. I spoke with Rainbow Dash earlier, and she wanted to come with today. I don’t know what her future plans are though.”

Fun. A whole day with Cadance, Dash, Chrysalis, and a sleep deprived me. It couldn’t get any better.

On the way out, Chrysalis said, “I’ll send your next visitor to you in fifteen minutes. Or a half-hour if you blow up the moon after reading that.”

I telekinetically shoved Chrysalis the rest of the way out of my room and slammed the door shut. The lock clicked into place, which was really more for show than anything else. Anypony who would barge in on me could teleport.

Sighing, I let myself collapse back onto my bed onto my back, wings splayed out beside me. Lines of magic formed above me under my direction, which once complete, would wake me up in fifteen minutes for…whomever Chrysalis was sending my way.

“Just read the letter, Sparklebutt,” Mother said. “You’d only wake up more tired anyway.”

Yes, but then I’d have to read the letter.

“Just read it,” Mother repeated herself. Her tone very clearly would have accompanied an eye roll if she’d had eyes to roll. “It’s probably just stuff we already know anyway. That’s your own theory, you know. One-hundred percent completely yours.”

Sigh… I erased my alarm spell and fumbled around with a hoof until it again found the papers next to me. I grabbed them and, holding them above me, began to read.

“Twilight Sparkle,” the letter read. “If you are reading this, then I imagine one of three things has happened. One possibility is I need to hire a new royal cryptographer, but I did look over the math myself.”

Ha ha.

“Next, although unlikely, it may be that I find myself unable to answer any questions you might have, and you followed a series of clues I left behind. What I find much more probable, however, is that everything is over. Still, one must always prepare for the worst. The last time I watched over you in a hospital bed…

“I promised myself I would leave this unedited. There are things that you need to know before I can say anything else. I can only hope that by the time you read this there are no surprises forthcoming.”

Sighing, I quickly scanned over a lot of information that I had been in denial about Celestia knowing until yesterday, picking out keywords and moving on. If I’d just sucked it up and admitted it… Well, something would have been different.

“I always thought finding my Sunset again would be a happy reunion after the tears and angry words. That, or I would find her grave. This morning as I watch over you, I find myself without words. At first, I wanted to throw myself at your hooves and beg for your forg–”

What? What in Tartarus was I reading? I reread through the preceding sentences before continuing on to make sure I’d read it right.

“–forgiveness. I never thought my last argument with Sunset had hurt her so much she would mutilate herself just to start over in plain sight. She – you – you never betrayed the slightest recognition of me. Thinking back on what Cadance told me of you, I wish I had noticed the similarities sooner, but you changed too much. Of course, it seems nothing could ever take away your love of magic or butterscotch, and Cadance adores you no less now than before.

“But through my unshed tears, my mind kept working. Sunset was such a strong mare. I never imagined she would give up on anything, much less the life she led. But if you cannot imagine somepony doing something, they probably did not. That was true a thousand years ago with my sister, and it remains true today. Who would do this to Sunset? Who would benefit?

“Even were the moon not hanging low in the sky right now, I knew the answer. I left Nightmare Moon able to dreamwalk in the hope that it would somehow help my sister. I knew there would be a price to pay for that decision. I just thought my loved ones were as safe as they could be. I suppose that was my own hubris showing.

“Twilight, you have no idea how hard it is to leave Nightmare Moon to her own devices now. The only thing staying my hoof is you. You’re still alive. I need to ask you to be sure, but she must be teaching you. Lulu would have loved you, even if she was never much of a teacher. I hate that I’m throwing you to the wolves, but I hope you can secure a place in my sister’s heart, whatever form that takes and wherever her heart is right now. If she’s not free of the darkness yet, please help her. I know I have no right to ask this, but I beg you. Please.”

I briefly entertained the idea of burning the rest of this right here and now and vaporizing the ashes after. I certainly would help Luna – I didn’t need to be asked to do that – just not the imaginary one Celestia pined after. Still, I wasn’t going to be caught flatfooted again the next time I saw her by not reading whatever bile this was.

“If you haven’t burnt this to cinders yet–”

I hated her so much.

“–then what follows are my theories on how Nightmare Moon came to be and how to help my sister in descending order of likelihood.”

At that I sat up a little straighter. This was everything I would need to know to start an argument to convince Cadance that Luna was Luna. That wouldn’t be enough to convince her that Luna wasn’t ‘turning me evil with smiles and kind words’, probably, but it would be a start.

“My first theory is that Lulu used the Alicorn Amulet for something. It is a cursed device that Discord left behind, one of many that my sister gathered and studied against my wishes. I told her at least a thousand times to toss them into the sun and be done with it, but what’s done is done.”

I skipped over the following description of Discordification, having already heard it from Luna herself.

“In hindsight and having read her journals at Luminance, the changes my sister overwent might not have been as sudden as I thought, thus evidence for this theory over the following one. Lulu’s trust was hard to earn, true, but she was always such a sociable pony among her friends. More and more over the years, however, she secluded herself to work on her own projects. My thoughts at the time were that she was merely transitioning to a more peaceful and civilized era, one where a standing army and drunken carousing fueled by moonshine played less of a part.”

Blah, blah, blah. Stuff I needed to build an argument against later, but nothing actually important. I declined to read the next five paragraphs of Celestia’s overactive imagination, instead jumping to her next ridiculous theory.

“If my sister really is discordified and the Elements of Harmony failed to save her, all you have to do is be there for her. Keep her calm and happy. Keep her from doing anything as Nightmare Moon that she would regret. Eventually, she should be willing to let me take over her recovery.”

Fat chance of that happening.

“If that’s not the case, and I dearly hope it is, we may be dealing with something far more serious and possibly far more…difficult to discern from Lulu, I believe is the appropriate way to put it.”

I raised an eyebrow at that but read on.

“In the modern day, I might suggest that Nightmare Moon is a type of split personality–”

Interrupting my reading, snickering, Mother mockingly cooed, “Oh, wouldn’t that be just romantic. She’d be just like you.”

I rolled my eyes and moved on. There was nothing romantic about mental health issues.

“–but nothing I have seen or read indicates that to be the case. There is, however, a branch of magic that functions in a similar manner. You might be familiar with the come to life spell. If not, a short explanation is that it animates an object to do what the object is intended for. It is a type of golem spell that feeds off the caster’s own intelligence to make decisions.”

No, let me guess. Luna cast a spell on herself that took away her own free will. No, too simple. There must be something more absurd and ridiculous. Hmm…

Well, whatever. This should be good for a laugh.

“One of my sister’s duties was to watch over the dreams of every citizen of Equestria within our borders.”

I had to read that again.

Nope. It still read the same.

Just – just what? How would she even – no, even a thousand years ago, the population had to be in the millions. One pony couldn’t even briefly look into that many dreams every night without some sort of heuristic, and even if Luna could, how would she manage to…do whatever she did with dreams? Even a tenth of a percent of the population having dreams that meet some arbitrary criteria was an enormous number.

“She would have watched over everyone’s dreams, but in the early years of Equestria we signed… Well, that’s a long story and not important. I never understood exactly how the Dream Realm works. Lulu tried to explain it to me on more than one occasion, but I don’t have the prerequisite experience to truly understand her meanings. Nevertheless, I do know that she constructs – for lack of a better term – dream golems to automate the process, intervening herself only when necessary.”

Oh. My. Gosh. I needed to talk to Luna about this. The Dream Realm sounded fascinating.

“From what I understand, these golems enter a dream and take over, manipulating it as my sister would deem appropriate if she were present. For the life of me, I cannot remember what she called them. I think one variety was a tanabus. Something like that. Regardless, this may be difficult to understand as a unicorn, but Lulu is – in her own words – much like a ‘living dream’ in the same way I might describe myself as a pony-sized star.”

Oooooh, so that was where Celestia was taking this idea. Luna was a dream. The golem took over at least partially, probably one meant to inflict a nightmare for whatever reason, and ta-da. We had Nightmare Moon. Creative, if not as funny as I’d hoped.

“Aside from The Elements of Harmony, the only way I know of to remove such a transient creature from my sister would be to let it complete its mission – whatever it may be – and let it move on or fade away. What that mission may be gives me pause in letting it occur. I never had the privilege of an extended conversation with Nightmare Moon, after all. I’m sure you of all ponies are well aware of that. If I could have but a single night with her, I know I could divine her true intentions.”

There was an odd splotch of ink after that paragraph which Chrysalis had to have copied over manually. ‘Splotch of ink’ was not a character to be encoded.

“And yet, here you are resting in bed, apparently happy and, according to Cadance, ‘absolutely in love with’ this shadow of my sister. I cannot find it in me to say Nightmare Moon’s goals are too monstrous. My Sunset would never have stood for that, and I refuse to believe she would now, regardless of what name she goes by.

“I fear in this case that all I can ask of you is to be supportive and to hope for the best. Unlike with discordification, if this theory is right, it will be over in an instant once the golem completes its task. If able and necessary, I will step in before events are taken too–”

“What–”

I shrieked and must have jumped a dozen hooves into the air in surprise. Turning to look beside my bed, I found a pink-coated alicorn that had just manifested silently at my bedside.

Cadance gave me a small, sad smile. “At least that part of you hasn’t changed,” she said. “Still so engrossed in whatever you’re reading.”

“I… What are you doing here?”

With the initial surprise out of the way, I quickly schooled my features, banishing whatever melancholic or irritated tells I might have been showing. Cadance didn’t need to see me like that.

Head tilted to the side, Cadance replied, “Pupa said Queen Chrysalis told you I was coming. I can leave if–”

“No! I – no, it’s fine that you’re here. I just… I’m surprised is all. I didn’t think you…”

I shook my head and shut my mouth, not wanting to jinx myself. Cadance was talking to me; that could only be a good thing.

There was, however, one thing I was concerned about. Extending my senses out to the wards I’d placed on Luminance, sure enough, the one warning of and blocking an alicorn’s approach was missing. It seemed Celestia had made a stop here between last night and this morning. The next time I set up those wards, they’d have to be vastly more complex with far more redundancies.

“Nevermind,” I finally said. “What brings you here?”

“I’m supposed to make sure you come in to work with me.”

A frown crept onto my face. I’d like nothing more than to happily agree and leave with Cadance, but… Well, if I couldn’t be honest with myself, who could I be? It felt like I’d just be playing princess, like I’d won some contest where I got to be princess for a day. Even after Mother berating me over it, the feeling hadn’t gone away.

Mother scoffed at that and muttered something vague and ill-defined but surely offensive.

Of course, there were security concerns with going to Canterlot Castle. That was a legitimate excuse.

Except Cadance’s mere presence here reinforced how utterly screwed I would be if Celestia decided to hunt me down. If it hadn’t already been made clear to me, then it certainly was now. Celestia fully intended to keep her word and just let me and mine run around on our own. She hardly needed the element of surprise, so there was little point in her waiting to attack. Therefore she wasn’t going to do anything. QED.

Probably.

“Stop being so paranoid.” The strangest feeling of being mentally hit upside the head accompanied those words.

Sighing, I tried, “I’m about to go to bed.” Cadance wouldn’t except ‘security risks’ as an excuse anyway.

Cadance immediately let out her own long sigh. “Twilight, if you want to make work hours three to eleven, I don’t actually have the authority to overrule you, but it’s a lot easier for you to just be awake during the day.” Seeing the look that must have been on my face, she sighed again. “At least make the adjustment slow for everypony. You can wake up at noon and have the workday start then too. That’s not unreasonable. I know a lot of ponies love to sleep in during the morning.”

“Fine.” It was a reasonable enough request, and it’d make Cadance happy. Why not? I let myself flop properly back onto my bed. “I think Chrysalis hinted at pretty much the same thing anyway.”

At Chrysalis’s name, Cadance smiled. “Yes, Pupa has told me a lot about Queen Chrysalis. She sounds like a very pragmatic mare with good advice.”

“Please, Cadance,” I said, lazily rubbing an ear with a hoof, “I’m not sure I heard all the subtext in that. Why don’t you speak a little louder?”

An awfully resigned look settled onto Cadance’s face, one that practically screamed, ‘Why did you leave me with this mess, Auntie?’

This time it was my turn to sigh. Foal steps, Twilight. Foal steps. Let Cadance have the small things for now, and then maybe we could start to mend the rift between us. It was no apology in and of itself, but it showed good faith.

“What am I expected to do today?”

Cadance dithered a bit, rubbing her lips together. She eventually reached some sort of decision and said, “Mostly we need an official response to what happened at sunset last night. An alicorn of your descript was reported looking for a star at the Royal Canterlot Observatory last night, and Trixie said she can’t really feel the sun anymore. Well, her exact words were ‘it feels like curdled milk leaking out through your missing teeth.’”

I lay there mulling over that simile, utterly confused. Just…why?

“Given the timing and what I saw” – Cadance shot me a look not unlike the one she gave me when she caught me stealing cookies from the kitchen; once my foalsitter, always my foalsitter, apparently – “I can only assume what happened.”

“I got us a new one!” That actually drew a poorly suppressed snicker from Cadance. I supposed it was kind of funny. Our old light went out, so I skipped on down to the solar system two blocks over for a new one. That wasn’t exactly an anecdote I wanted spread around, but still. “Just go with the story I told the astronomers. It’s brief, doesn’t really explain anything, and everypony will fill in the gaps for themselves.”

Cadance’s withers sagged as she said, “Alright. I thought with Auntie gone, I would at least be working with ponies who weren’t…political.”

“Nope. Between Chrysalis, Pupa, Luna, and myself, I’m sure we’ll drive you completely mad.”

“I can only imagine what it’ll be like to live under your rule. Princess Twily was a bit of a tyrant.”

“All four year olds are tyrants, Cadance, regardless of whether their castle is made of pillows, books, or stone.”

“I suppose so.”

An awkward silence fell between us. The halfhearted banter, all ten seconds of it, had been nice while it lasted. I fidgeted with Celestia’s letter lying on the bed next to me. Cadance ruffled her wings and looked at her hooves.

“Cadance?”

The mare in question looked up. “Yes?”

“Did you know what Celestia was going to do last night?”

“Only recently. And I still think she’s being irresponsible even after arguing with her for days.”

I winced at the tone underlying Cadance’s voice. ‘A force of nature’ entirely failed to capture the single-minded, wrathful goddess that was Cadance when she was angry. I almost felt sorry for Celestia yet also strangely admiring. How she managed to keep Cadance in check when she was like that was beyond me.

“So what were you arguing for?” I asked diplomatically, successfully keeping the bite out of my voice. “Sending me and Luna to Tartarus?”

“No,” Cadance sighed. The tension left her withers as she relaxed. “Auntie thinks you’ll naturally keep your Luna in line, not to mention…” She shook her head. Whatever she had been about to say, she abandoned. She instead went with, “I think she’s overly optimistic.”

“I suppose I can’t argue against erring on the side of caution, at least so long as you don’t take it too far.” I rolled over to sit upright on my barrel, ready to hear some new awful surprise Celestia left behind for me. It could hardly get any worse. “So what did you get out of her?”

The surprised look on Cadance’s face asked me to explain how I knew she’d gotten something for her arguing. Really, I hadn’t known, not at all, but it was an obvious enough guess. If Celestia was going to do all…this, there was no point in riling up Cadance and then tossing her to me.

In our staring match, Cadance caved first. “Not much,” she said. “Or maybe a lot. I’m not sure.”

I quirked an eyebrow.

“Well… Aunt Celestia wanted to go off on her own merry way leaving you and your Luna to do whatever you well please.”

As much as I hated to admit it – “You’re right. That is irresponsible. Not that I’d trust her to take care of so much as my pet rock to begin with.”

Cadance let out a dry sort of chuckle. “It’s nice to know somepony agrees with me.”

“Just not the pony you were hoping for.”

“Yeah…”

Well, no sense delaying the inevitable. “So what’s the damage?” I asked.

“The ‘damage’ is that you’re the Solar Regent and I get to say when somepony can take the Lunar Throne.”

I processed that for a second before groaning and facehoofing. ‘I’m in charge until Lulu gets back’ indeed. At least I took Celestia’s throne from her. That was nice, even if it did kind of reinforce the princess for a day feeling. Still, I wonder if she left her crown behind.

“Wouldn’t fit,” Mother commented, “and is probably made of alicorn somehow with the whole manifesting thing.”

Right… Well, anyway. “Cadance, if you honestly believe Luna is a threat, why would you go out of your way to antagonize her?”

“If she can’t keep her temper over something so small, better to let everypony and you know it.” Cadance looked me dead in the eye for a few moments, and as much as I didn’t like it, I found myself admitting that was a perfectly valid reason. “It’s not like I can stop you from letting her make all your decisions. It’s just on paper that she’s not in charge.”

I supposed that was a fair enough point. Still didn’t like it though. And not that I would, but there were also probably safeguards in place that would prevent us from simply compelling Cadance’s approval.

“Besides,” Cadance continued, clearly fighting herself to keep eye contact, “I’d feel much better if somepony who might actually listen to me had final authority.”

Before I could send off a sarcastic response, I snapped my mouth shut. Cadance and I were going to argue with each other about Luna and my own actions for years, I was sure. But this, I hoped, was her extending a hoof in compromise, to at least try to work together instead of at odds. This was what Celestia hadn’t done for Luna. A thousand years ago, she’d ended Luna’s anger and despair driven rampage without even trying to bend, and only yesterday, she’d run off without so much as a by your leave. Her stubbornness had ultimately torn them apart forever.

And like that, the decision was made. Sure, I could admit to being more than a little stubborn at times myself, but Cadance and I had promised each other we wouldn’t repeat history. The words, however, meant nothing without effort. I’d be an absolute fool and a liar not to return the gesture. Without Celestia and her delusions around trying to kill Luna, I could… Well, I could yield to Cadance just about anything she asked for, if she made a decent case for it.

“Cadance,” I began, hoping I’d chosen the right words, “what do you want? In the grand scheme of things, what do you ultimately envision as the best of all possible futures?”

Cadance dared the slightest of smiles. “Not much. I’d like to live and grow…onward, I guess, with Shining. I’d like to have foals, and grandfoals, and eventually more-grands-than-I-can-count-foals. I’d like both of my aunts to be happy, if they can. I’d like my sister to be happy. But more than anything, I want everypony everywhere to be happy, even if that means I don’t get to be.”

Of course she did. That was so Cadance. Such lofty goals for somepony who wanted ‘not much’. I couldn’t stop myself from letting out a small sigh that turned into a weak chuckle at the end. I supposed with me pushing for a scientific revolution and Luna basically wanting a cultural one, one of us had to be looking out for the common pony’s happiness.

“I’m not making a lasting habit of this,” I began, “but when did Celestia usually start her work day?”

The effect those words had on Cadance was immediate. She perked up in a flash and seemed to exude energy. Stars, but I hated morning ponies. Why did Cadance have to betray me so?

“She and I are usually up and about a half hour before sunrise, although most of the staff comes in around eight. Before eight in the summer, it’s mostly paperwork, although Aunt Celestia has been shoveling it off onto me lately while she dug out and read through the laws on regency.”

Ugh. No sleep at all, then. I was going to be beyond tired when I finally got to bed. “I expect coffee all day, and you have to apologize to anypony I snap at.”

“I’ll keep the seneschal at bay and reschedule meeting the dragon ambassador to next week.”

No. That was so dumb. “Celestia really left right before a diplomatic meeting?”

“Er… She may have rescheduled it already, actually; I haven’t checked. The dragon ambassador Galok is in Canterlot right now though, I know that. I ran into him a couple days ago and had a lovely chat. I…kind of almost threw up when we ate though. It’s been a while since I fed Spike.”

Ha! And Cadance was worried I would offend the ambassador with a few sharp words. Smirking, I said, “Make it a dinner meeting then, and make sure I remember to bring Spike. Being seen with my adoptive dragon son can only be a good thing. And of course Princess Cadenza is invited, too.”

“You’re evil,” Cadance murmured.

“You have been telling me that for the past season. I might as well do something to earn the distinction.” Cadance was clearly not amused, but that didn’t stop me from laughing. “Can I get a warning, then? What’s he like?”

Cadance stopped to think about that for a few seconds, humming as she did. “Polite, mostly. Far more than most dragons, at least. Tall, of course. I think he’s related to Dragon Lord Torch, but I’d have to check. He was able to carry on an intelligent conversation, which you’ll like. I only had the one lunch with him, so that’s all I really know.”

“That’s plenty. Thanks.” With a sigh, I rolled my withers and got most of my joints in the area to crack. I dragged myself out of bed and to my hooves. “If you want breakfast, the dinning room is down the stairs, five lefts, straight, and then two rights. It’s the big, imposing doors down the hall. Give me a few minutes to get ready, and then we can go. I’m sure I must look like a mess.”

I’d barely gotten to my dressing table and picked up my brush when Cadance appeared in the mirror beside me. “You’ve always looked like a mess, Twilight,” she said. “Here, let me.”

I pouted but didn’t resist. Cadance was the pretty sister, after all. Instead, I just held my breath and prepared for a torture I hadn’t experienced in… Stars, I couldn’t even remember when. I was pretty sure Luna was the last pony other than myself to dress me up, though.

“Ow. Ow! Cadance!”

Her voice was sympathetic, but I could see Cadance smirking in the mirror. “You only have yourself to blame for this, Twilight. If you’d just take care of your mane and tail, you wouldn’t have so many snarls and split ends. Even being an alicorn doesn’t fix that for you.”

“Yes, yes. You tol – ow! – told me so. Is this really necessary?”

“Oh, yes, it is. I’ve wanted to do this for years now.” Cadance’s instruments of torture stilled for a moment as she hummed to herself. She moved about me in a half-circle, glancing at me in all directions. “Not enough for a bun,” she mumbled to herself. “We could make it wavy, I suppose, but it wouldn’t really match your look. A braid wouldn’t be appropriate, not even a Prench one. Unless… Yes!”

Curious, and more than a little worried, I asked, “What?”

“Well, you’re supposed to be really old, so we’ll go with a really old Bridlish braid. It leaves half your mane alone, and the rest comes in slowly, so we’ll have enough to work with. Your tail we can probably leave as is. Maybe add a bit of curl. Can you change the shade of your stripes to something darker?”

That was an easy enough request. For now, I just applied an illusion that slowly grew darker. I could make the temporary or permanent change later.

“Tell me when to stop.”

“Hmm, a little more. Slow down a bit, and perfect. Maybe change the yellow hue to something more goldenrod?”

I added on another layer of illusion over the previous one, slowly changing it as well until it met Cadance’s exacting standards.

“You have to teach me how to do that sometime, Twilight.”

“There’s kind of a lot of prerequisite work, unless you just want an illusion.”

“Oh. Well…eventually, then.”

Now that the color was set, Cadance took a pair of scissors to my mane while doing something I couldn’t quite see to my tail. At least she wasn’t pulling on it with a brush anymore.

Ow! Spoke too soon. Cadance ran a brush through my mane again as she cut it, pulling it straight as she went.

“Can you add a bit of wave to your mane, Twilight? It’s a little boring as is.”

“Gee, thanks,” I deadpanned. “But no. Never bothered to learn mane magic. I could…stick it together in that form, maybe.”

Cadance shook her head back and forth rapidly. “No, no, no. No experimenting, at least not today. Look up a spell later, or we can do it the normal way tomorrow.”

Ugh… Maybe I should turn evil, if just to avoid this. Nopony judged an evil goddess by how she looked. But then I supposed ponies would be too busy fleeing to get a good look anyway.

Cadance finally put her scissors down, and after maybe another minute of yanking on my mane, she replaced the brush onto my dressing table. Stepping back to get a better look at my mane from the back, Cadance’s magic pulled at more than a dozen bundles of hair. They criss crossed over each other at a speed that could only come from practice, interlacing faster than even I could follow.

“What did you do before you got a horn?” I asked out of idle curiosity.

“Mostly I stuck to simple manestyles, but on occasion I’d either use my feathers or ask somepony to help me. Though even with a horn, it’s not easy to tie up my own hair.”

Hmm, well there was the obvious solution. “Do you know a scrying spell? To look at the back of your head?”

“Not everypony is you, Twilight.” Cadance nudged me with a wing, making me take a half-step to the side, earth pony strength notwithstanding. It struck me then how nice it was that we didn’t have to be gentle with each other, not that that’d really been too much of an issue after the first few days. “I’m working my way up, okay?”

“Fair enough.”

Cadance finished up her work and spun me around so that I saw all of myself at some point in my mirror. I looked…kind of nice, actually. I wouldn’t go through the effort to do this myself, and certainly not everyday, but maybe I’d let Cadance treat me like a doll every once in a while. At least until the æthereal hair grew in, whenever that happened. I wasn’t sure if my mane would even approach manageable at that point.

“I think you’ll do fine without a dress,” Cadance said while wrapping a wing over me to pull me close, and she was right. Dresses were for formal occasions only. There was no way I was wearing one casually. “But we need to see about getting you at least a crown sometime soon.”

Huh. In all the time I’ve been at Luminance and spent being a princess, I never even thought about making a temporary set of regalia. As Mother had reminded me, Luna and Celestia somehow managed to manifest and demanifest with theirs, so there had to be some trick to royal adornments. I didn’t think Cadance even realized that, and she wasn’t wearing anything at the moment, which only reinforced the thought.

I hoped that turned out to be easier than alicorn blessings. I’d really like to know I could engage in the extra little perks of being an alicorn. Having confirmation that I could, that there wasn’t something wrong with me, would be a huge load off my mind.

“Twilight,” Cadance said, a pensive tone underlying her voice. “Is this weird?”

“Is what weird?” I asked, emerging from my gloomy thoughts.

“Twilight, I just did your mane.”

“Yes, well, once in a while isn’t too bad. I know I made a huge fuss when I was a filly, but I’m older now.”

“You’re being particularly thick today.”

“Oh? How so?”

“Twilight…”

I bit back a sigh, determined as I was to be casual about this. “There’s nothing weird about a busybody older sister dressing her younger sister up on what is more or less the day of her coronation. That’s what we are, right?”

“So we promised.”

I smiled at Cadance in the mirror. She smiled back, if not as widely. Not too long later, that smile turned to a slight frown.

“You still need to fix your bed feathers. Your wings look like you got into a fight with a tornado and lost.”

I hesitated for no more than a moment before practically whining, “Go on then. Finish what you started. Stars know I’d have walked into Canterlot Castle straight out of bed without a care in the world.”

“Are you sure?” Cadance hesitantly asked, withdrawing her wing.

I rolled my eyes. “Please. If I can’t be comfortable with you preening my wings, who could I be?”

“If you’re sure…”

Cadance led me over to my bed so we could get comfy. Once we were in place, I held out my left wing for her to straighten out my feathers on. Unsurprisingly, she set in on her task the pegasus way with her teeth, rather than with hooves or horn. I let my mind wander as I indulged in the pleasant feelings of what had been a bit of a foalhood dream, thinking about nothing important.

Today, for all the craziness that had happened yesterday, was one step down the road to a happy ending. Cadance wasn’t on my side, per se, but we’d knocked a brick loose from the wall between us. We’d taken one step away from repeating Luna’s and Celestia’s mistakes. I was an alicorn like my big sister, and I was lost in the relaxing feeling of her sorting through my feathers, although the occasional whimper escaped me when she plucked a half-loose pinion.

“Cadance?” I mumbled just on the right side of coherency. “I love you.”

Perhaps for the first time this morning, there was a completely natural smile on Cadance’s face. I’d almost forgotten what those looked like. She switched to her hooves to work on my feathers. This time, though, she went about it almost painfully slowly and carefully.

“I know,” Cadance said. “Nopony ever needs to tell me that.”

“But it still must be nice to hear.”

Cadance hummed in agreement. “Yes, it is. I can tell how everypony feels, including myself, but it’s nice when I don’t have to check.”

Done with my left wing, Cadance remanifested onto the other side of the bed and began work on the right. I didn’t remember rolling over or lying on that wing as much as the other, and it showed in how infrequently she had to pluck a feather. There the conversation lulled for some time as she built up a steady rhythm once more.

“Twilight?”

Relaxed and drifting off a bit, I replied only with a questioning hum, not bothering to raise my head from my bed or to open my eyes.

Cadance didn’t respond; her lips didn’t even part. She just kept fiddling with my feathers. Then out of nowhere, she said, “Please don’t make me have to check.”

It took me a moment to understand Cadance’s meaning – it was hardly a favor to say ‘I love you’ on occasion – but once I had, it was like a punch to the gut – the second time today. Despite lying prone on my barrel, I curled inward somewhat, an awful, empty feeling gripping at my chest.

“I won’t,” I replied. It felt…inappropriate to say any more than that.

Cadance didn’t say anything more, and all conversation died as she finished up my wing. Really, what even was there to say?

Sometime later, my wing was back in proper order. The heavy silence broke with but a word. “There,” Cadance said as she shifted my last feather into place. “All done, and with plenty of time to spare before sunrise. You’re going to make a show of it, right?”

“I hadn’t planned to.” Nor did I know Canterlot Castle was safe for me to be in, even if I strongly suspected it was.

First getting up from the bed, Cadance extended a hoof to help me up. “Well, I’d appreciate it if you would. It hasn’t even been a day, and ponies are getting anxious. I don’t think Trixie can reach your replacement star, and I’m not exactly up to snuff. It would help for ponies to see somepony had the situation well in hoof.”

In for a penny, in for a pound, as the Bridlish say. “I suppose the sun imploding didn’t help.”

A strange expression passed over Cadance’s face.

“What?” I asked.

Cadance shook her head. “Nothing. Just…things are going to be different, aren’t they? Shining’s still mad at me for all the secrets–”

I chuckled. “That makes two of us.”

“Yes, well, he did tell me about the conversation you two had. Space travel and immortality – you really meant it when you said you wouldn’t let anypony die, didn’t you?”

“Well, not so much in that context, but yes.” I paused for a moment, trying to recall the exact words that had transpired during my ascension. “If I remember correctly, Dash told us to just hug or something.”

Cadance laughed, and what a wonderful sound that was. “Come here, you,” she said, pulling me into a hug. When we broke apart, she looked me up and down with a critical eye, no doubt looking to see if we’d ruined all of her hard work. “You know, you look really good like this. You have a kind of dignified, old world feel about you that I can’t quite place. Give you ten years or so to grow into your looks and lose a bit of weight, and you’ll be gorgeous.”

“Thanks,” I said, blushing a bit despite myself. “You’re probably seeing Luna’s influence. Posture, movements, how I hold myself – I learned more from her than just magic.”

“Yes, I’d imagine so. Sunset said the same thing…” Cadance shook her head of the thought. “I’ll meet you in the courtyard?”

“Sure,” I reluctantly said. Cadance demanifested, reappearing mere seconds later in Canterlot. Searching about, none of the nearby magic looked actively hostile, so I bit down on my voice of paranoia and followed her there. I was pleasantly not surprised that I was perfectly fine on arrival, and I went through a strange feeling of telling myself I told you so.

Cadance led me through the castle to only she knew where. Much to my pleasure, she fended off both curious ponies and ponies that were a dropped pin away from panicking as we walked side by side. We ran into Prince Blueblood along the way, and at Mother’s insistence, I waved hello with an accompanying, “Good morning, Bluey.” Unsurprisingly, he was more than a little confused as we left him behind. Cadance just nudged me with her wing after we were around a corner.

Eventually, and only after making a number of turns that I swore were geometrically impossible without cheating – which the castle probably was – I found myself on a balcony overlooking the city. From it, perhaps half of Canterlot would be able to see me.

We still had a little while before moonset and sunrise, so I took advantage of the opportunity to set up a more permanent type of crude, temporary spell on the moon and the star I’d borrowed. They wouldn’t last long, and I probably should spend the hours, days, or weeks necessary to make them into respectable, self-sustaining enchantments, but if I maintained them daily, they should make it to the summer solstice.

“One minute,” Cadance said, gesturing toward a monster of a clock that was obviously a new addition based on how it clashed with the nearby fixtures and flora. I honestly had no idea how to read it, but I supposed it showed the time remaining before moonset. Somehow. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want me to see if Trixie would give you any pointers on showmareship?”

“A little late for that now,” I replied. Not that I had any intention of stirring up that hornet’s nest at the moment. “Besides, simple is good this time, I think. Maintain the status quo, right?”

Cadance shrugged. “I just want our ponies to know somepony has the sun and moon under control. Aside from that, it’s your show.”

“Alright. Wish me luck.”

I took a deep breath and stepped forward onto the balcony. I vaguely remembered how Celestia did this, but even if I’d remembered perfectly, I wasn’t interested in duplicating her style, or even Luna’s if I’d ever seen it. A new star, a new princess, a new reign, eventually a new capital if Luna and I got our way; I didn’t want to live here anymore than she did, especially now. Yes, this required something new too. Celestia was gone, and even if I had no choice to the contrary, I fully intended to wash my hooves of her utterly.

The ambient magic of Canterlot swirled about with me at the center. I kept my pull gentle enough that proper spells would be left untouched, but the rapidly growing flux was sure to attract every unicorn’s attention, maybe even pegasi’ and earth ponies’ too. From the odd sounds Cadance made behind me, she certainly felt it.

Canterlot’s ambient magic shot upward to the sky, swirling up like an inverted tornado before vanishing to the distant star and moon.

The moon set, and the new sun rose. That was one awful day behind me.

I saw Cadance out of the corner of my eye coming out onto the balcony proper to join me. Today would be better. It could hardly get any worse.

Author's Note

Prereaders – Starlight Nova, Strange Reasoning, The Great Eater

Behold! A shameless promotion for my Patreon page. Also, note two cameos this chapter. One from Henrique Gemignani, Golak (a dragon), and the other from MoiseGooDragon, Aqua Regia (an earth pony alchemist).

The next chapter is the last one, plus or minus an epilogue chapter. I'm still not sure if I want to write one or not, but I'm tempted to do so.

Chapter Forty One - Honesty

Author's Note:

Well, here we are. It turns out I'm not actually dead, although I do feel pretty terrible for not publishing this a long, long time ago. I don't really have an excuse. I'll just say that depression sucks, and a sleep disorder made it worse. Life got better, though.

For those who are interested, I've read through this entire story now that it's done and polished up the earlier chapters. Now much has changed, but it all fits together a little better now from start to finish. There were a few chapters I was tempted to edit more extensively, but I decided to leave them as they were.

Now without further ado, I present the last chapter of The Moon's Apprentice, plus or minus a possible epilogue later on.

If I were to pick a single word to describe my first day being in charge of Equestria, it would be tedious. If I were to pick a word that actually informed somepony about what my day consisted of, it would be introductions – introductions over, and over, and over again. The only thing that kept me going was coffee, and the only thing that made it all bearable was the thought that I’d only ever have to do this once.

And Cadance. Despite the underlying tension between us, it was wonderful to be able to hold a civil conversation with her again. That, and be actually physically next to her once more. It really shouldn’t be different from how I’d kept in contact with her through Chrysalis and Pupa; they were functionally equivalent. It was, though. Maybe it was just knowing it was her and not an illusion, or maybe it was the feeling of her magic. Whatever the case, it was relaxing.

Still, as I was tapping hooves with yet another pony – this one was in charge of agriculture or something – it was getting hard to keep my eyes open, let alone remember names. I…

What was I thinking about…

Oh, yeah. Even with Cadance supplying me with caffeine, I couldn’t help but wonder just how much longer it’d be before I could crash. Dash and Chrysalis showing up at noon somehow hadn’t taken the attention off of me at all, only increased the number of ponies present.

Speaking of, everypony was taking Queen Chrysalis surprisingly well. Well, I supposed since she – and Dash – was part of the entourage of a mysterious new alicorn the oh so infallible Celestia had left as regent, it shouldn’t be that surprising. But she was still an entirely new species that nopony had so much as noticed despite it living right under their noses. Except it wasn’t that hard to believe that shapeshifters…

Stars, I needed to go to bed. I was thinking in circles. Probably. Was that actually a circle?

“Go to bed, Sparklebutt.”

“Can’t,” I mumbled aloud. “Cadance has more ponies.”

Cadance, who was standing next to me, broke off her current conversation politely and then hummed questioningly at me. Now that I’d actually seen her at work other than being behind a desk with papers to read and sign, I had to admit I’d been wrong about Cadance. Sure, she wasn’t really meant for political maneuvering, and scheming, and all that, but she was such a people person. The only pony who didn’t seem to like her was…was…Duke something… Oh, and there was that earl, and every couple minutes I’d catch a reporter eavesdropping nearby, probably looking for a big scoop. Did that count as not liking Cadance?

Eh, whatever. What was I saying? Cadance was likable… Oh, right. Cadance might not be much for the cloak-and-dagger side of politics, but she absolutely shined in conversation. It was so easy to like her. Like, how on Equus did she remember that…um…Ruby, if I remembered the name right, had a two-year-old filly who’d just said her first word a week ago? Cadance admitted afterward she barely ever talked to the mare! That would’ve gone in one ear and out the other for me, but she’d remembered, and that might’ve been what got that Ruby mare to volunteer for organizing a charity drive.

Heh. Maybe I should just have Cadance walk around in front of me from now on, and when somepony wants to talk to me, we can telephone through her.

“Twilight,” Cadance said, nudging me with a knee. “Are you alright?”

“Tired,” I replied without any conscious input on my part.

“Do you think you could make it to sunset?”

“Probably.” It was another automatic response, but more mumbled. I remanifested myself in an instant for what must be the dozenth time this night. It helped. Kind of.

Cadance looked me up and down before nodding to herself. “Do you want me to have a maid arrange a room for you?”

Oh, sweet merciful Cadance, I was released from this torment! Thank you for smiling down upon me.

All dramatics aside, I shook my head. “Heading home. Luna is probably worried sick.” Descending back into mumbles, I said, “Need to apologize for disappearing.”

“What is home going to be these days?” Cadance asked. “Luminance still? I need to be able to find you tomorrow to drag you into work.”

“Yeah. I like it there. It’s quiet.” When Dash wasn’t causing a riot, that was. “The wards are going back up…tomorrow. I’ll leave a hole for you at the end of the river.”

“Alright. Run along, then. I’ll make your excuses for you.”

Of course she would. That was part of the deal for keeping me up this late. Not that I’d really hold her to that.

“And Twilight,” Cadance said, catching me as I was just about to teleport out. Demanifesting in public felt a little awkward. Nopony had seen it enough to differentiate it from teleportation, and to be honest, I didn’t really feel like making the correction.

“Yes?”

“Don’t forget to set the sun.” Cadance’s tone was teasing, but I cringed anyway. Mother took just about every opportunity to remind me how irresponsible I’d been, and this time was not an exception. I did my best to ignore her and return the jest.

“I’ll remember,” I said. “I live on the moon, after all.”

With that and a small smile on Cadance’s face, I teleported out of Canterlot and then manifested myself on the moon – on top of my bed, specifically. I threw up a half-hearted proximity ward around Luminance, set a spell to wake me up shortly before sunset, and then passed out.

I didn’t even have time to start a dream before I found myself swept up in a pair of hooves.

“Twilight, please tell me you’re you,” Luna said, clearly frantic, as her hooves turned me this way and that looking for who knew what.

“Of course it’s me, Luna.” But even that didn’t relax her.

“Okay, you remember me. But” – Luna finally set me back on my hooves – “I’m not saying goodbye, am I?”

Shaking my head, I pushed Luna over onto her back so I could give her a full body hug. “I’m…enduring.”

“Twilight, don’t do this to me. Are you safe? Hurt? Where have you been? What happened?”

I chuckled at seeing Luna so distraught. It was so not her; the contrast was too great not to appreciate, especially when being the cause of it.

“Still going to deny the changes?” Mother said. My head whipped in the direction her voice had come from, and there she was, a blotch of yellows and reds standing stark out against an otherwise black, empty dreamscape.

“Not now,” I hissed, mentally forcing her out of existence.

Of course, Luna wasn’t going to just ignore that. “Twilight? Are–”

Before Luna could say anything further, I interrupted, “I’m fine. I have her under control. It’s just…stress getting to me.”

Luna frowned. Of course she frowned. Here was her lover showing obvious signs of deteriorating mental health, somepony who’d gone out of the way to ask her to watch for that.

“It’s fine, Luna, really. I can manage.”

Rather than say anything, Luna leveled a fixed glare at me. That said plenty enough all on its own.

“I’m safe, by the way,” I said, changing the topic. “I’m not under watch or anything. Well, Cadance is acting like I’m in need of a foalsitter again, but that’s of her own initiative. Didn’t you notice her on Luminance?”

“I must have missed her,” Luna said flatly, still not letting up. I shrunk down under her gaze and focused really, really hard on not letting Mother pop up to tell me to admit I had a problem. Which I didn’t. Well, I did, but it was contained. Mostly.

“Yeah, Cadance was there for a little while in the morning. She dragged me out of bed after I–”

Luna placed a forehoof under my mouth just as I finished a word, thus preventing me from continuing.

But it was my dream and my rules, so I said, “No,” anyway before Luna could say anything herself. Not that that stopped her.

“Twilight, I don’t lie to you.”

I flinched despite myself. “I’m fine,” I mumbled. “She’s not getting any worse.” And that was entirely the wrong choice of pronoun.

“She?”

I flinched again and let my head fall. “I’m not getting any worse. I’m fine. Please.”

Sighing, Luna rolled over and pushed me off of her before rolling away onto her barrel. “Twilight, what is the point? What are you getting out of this?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? And it wasn’t one that I especially wanted to find an answer for.

When I’d gone on long enough without saying anything, Luna sighed again. “You have until the solstice. If your condition hasn’t improved by then, we’re taking care of this before it can get worse.”

Rather begrudgingly, I said, “Fine.” Mother really wasn’t getting anymore intrusive, so I didn’t really have a reason to argue anyway.

While I was sulking, Luna took the opportunity to sidle up next to me. She wrapped a wing around me, causing me to jump in surprise, but when she pulled me in close, I gave in and just relaxed into her. Some part of me was sure she didn’t understand whatever it was I was feeling; Luna had always been more inclined to righteous fury than…some muddled guilty feeling. But that was okay. She was here if I needed her, and that was what mattered.

Some undefinable time later, Luna broke the silence. “Twilight, I’m a bit behind on what’s been happening.” Unsaid was that looking for me was the cause of that. “Would you care to fill me in on why you disappeared for so long?”

Just as I was about to start explaining, I caught myself and stopped. This was going to be…awkward, at the very least. I teleported myself a few hooves away from Luna for good measure.

“I – um… You didn’t…feel anything last night, did you?”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “No?”

“Oh, good,” I sighed, collapsing onto my rear. Telling Luna I’d let her moon – and her, herself – crash into itself at the edge of the universe, even for just a split second, was not high on the list of things I wanted to do. Ever. I’d let her make whatever she wanted of what I’d just said and pretend it’d never happened myself. Of less concern, but a perfectly valid diversion, was the other, related matter.

“I – well, you see, I made a…mess of sorts. I’m not really sure how to fix it.”

Hesitantly, clearly choosing her words carefully, Luna asked, “What sort of mess?”

I tapped my forehooves together nervously. “Well, so, I sort of took some of my feelings out on a planet.” Turning away from Luna’s questioning look, blushing, I continued, “Are you familiar with the star HD 9986?”

“Twilight, I have no idea what astronomers are calling my stars these days, at least not the ones that are just random letters and numbers.”

“Fair. It’s a – well, it’s a sun-like star.”

“You didn’t!” Luna interrupted before I’d finished.

“I – I did. Kind of.” Knowing that Mother would’ve just loved to berate me for that again, I took a few moments to suppress any of her thoughts. “I’m not a stellar engineer, so, well, I contained the sun’s…remains for you and got a new one.”

There were a few seconds where both of us were quiet. Luna was the first to break the silence.

“And you did this why?”

“Negligence,” I said weakly.

“Negligence?” Luna asked, now terribly confused. “What could you have possibly been doing that caused the sun to blow up when…left unattended?” Those last two words obviously clued her into the fact that something was very wrong with whatever she’d guessed had happened over the past couple days.

“No, it wasn’t something I was doing. It’s – that’s the other thing. Celestia” – with too many nuances and things to complain about, I went with something succinct for the moment – “she, well, left.”

Again, Luna was shocked into silence, although I could see her eye twitch just the tiniest bit.

“What happened was she basically told me you’re my problem now and threw some words I’d said to her years ago back in my face. I didn’t take it well and forgot to cycle day and night.”

Luna still had nothing to say.

“Um, she made me the Solar Regent, apparently. Cadance told me after I got my act together enough to function. I spent the day half-dead in Canterlot meeting and greeting. Celestia also told me…something else. Something about you and her that… I don’t really understand how she thinks. She said she–”

Luna put a hoof to my mouth, cutting me off while sinking into thought. She stayed that way for several minutes while every variety of emotion passed over her face, but for the most part, she looked no more than merely thoughtful. Other than that, I really had no idea what was going on in her head.

Finally, after waiting impatiently for what just had to be ten minutes, or maybe even longer, Luna flatly said, “Okay. Just one question, Twilight. Do you believe she’s gone?”

My head whipped up to meet Luna’s gaze. Just one question was strange enough, but the one that Luna had asked was stranger still.

“Not forever, but for a good long time, I think. She said–”

Luna put a hoof to my mouth again. “No. I don’t want to know. If you think she’s gone for now, that’s good enough for me. I don’t want to hear anything more about it. Just barricade Equus as best as you can, and I can try to improve on your work after the solstice.”

I tried to find words that didn’t summarize to ‘I’m confused’, but it seemed I didn’t need to say anything at all. Luna picked up the unformed question from my expression.

“Twilight,” Luna said, pulling me closer for a hug. I wasn’t sure who the hug was for, however. Luna sounded fine, and she wasn’t shaking, or trembling, or anything, but… Well, I was confused. “Twilight, I told you already. I’ve rearranged my priorities. I’m done with her. I won’t pretend this doesn’t make me feel…feelings, but I’m done. I’d prefer if she were under control and stored away somewhere, but I’ll settle for gone.”

Hesitantly, I tried, “I don’t think that’s a very healthy mindset.” It certainly hadn’t helped me at all when Mother gave me her pep talk.

Luna actually laughed. “It’s probably not, but I was worse when I gave a damn.” Before I could protest that, she went on to say, “Twilight, I really don’t want to know. Bother me again with this next century.” Then, again, when I still wanted to say something, she said, “Please.”

Gnawing on my lip, I tried to resist, but Luna looked almost desperate not to hear anything more. I had to wonder if she already knew more or less what Celestia had said to me and just didn’t want to face it.

I immediately shut down Mother’s looming comment before she could appear and give voice to it, but the intent of the thought was still hanging around. If I’d let her, I was sure she would’ve said something to the effect of, “Just like you and your problems. She taught you well,” and that was just entirely unfair and hurtful. I wouldn’t want to explicitly know, either, if it’d been Cadance who’d said about me what Celestia had about Luna.

Really, hearing that your once-beloved sister wanted to kill you had to hurt. Badly. But even then, she wanted to kill you. It was…personal. There was some underlying recognition or respect. But Celestia didn’t even give Luna that much. If she were to be believed, she’d denied who Luna had become and Luna’s choices so entirely that she couldn’t even conceive that Luna really was Luna.

There was no word in Equestrian to appropriately express how painful it would be if Celestia genuinely believed that. Devastating, even, fell short. Even Luna having cast Celestia out of the family wouldn’t dull the ache; she at least acknowledged there was a bond that was broken.

Finally, I caved. “Okay. Next century, then.”

“Thank you.” Luna took a deep breath, in and out. Once that was done, she managed to get a smile back onto her face, if one that looked strained even for her. “So, Solar Regent, eh? Not exactly what I had in mind, but less paperwork for me, I suppose.”

At the word ‘paperwork’, I remembered what else I needed to tell Luna. Or rather the favor I needed to ask of her.

“Nice mane, by the way,” Luna said. “I haven’t seen somepony wear their mane like that in centuries.”

Momentarily confused, I created a mirror to look at myself. Surprisingly, all the effort that Cadance had gone to this morning had transfered into my dreams. That sort of thing happened from time to time, but the changes all came from how I saw myself; I’d been an alicorn in my dreams for years now, but I’d grown at the same rate my real body had. Was it that Cadance did this and I wanted to feel closer to her again, or was it just that I really liked the look?

Maybe it was both.

Banishing the mirror, I shook my head and put the soul searching aside. “Thank you, but Cadance deserves all the praise. She did all the work, although mostly to make me look more like a mare out of time. Supposedly, I’m almost as old as you.”

“A stola would’ve done that far better.”

“Well, yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes, “if you want to be unsubtle about it.”

“Alicorns are hardly subtle to begin with,” Luna countered.

“True, but all the more reason to forgo the stola. Imagine you have a perfectly good painting, and then you decide there’s not enough bright colors, so you throw a can of pink paint onto it. That’s an alicorn in a stola.”

“Ah, but you see, it’s those strange, unusual things that ponies remember most. For the laypony, one painting is as good as the next, but when they encounter something bizarre and out of place, they will remember it forever.”

“Sure,” I said, “that works perfectly well if you want to be forever known as the odd mare out.”

“And you don’t?” Luna asked. “A princess is a leader, a trendsetter. Where you go, ponies will follow. If you are not the odd mare out, who will be? Who will drive change internally to your government?”

It occurred to me just then that, somehow, we’d gotten from talking about my mane to political philosophy. Not, of course, that they weren’t extraordinarily closely related, but it was a strange game of witticism leapfrog nonetheless. Stars, but I loved that. I never had to lead the conversation with Luna to get something intellectually stimulating out of it, and neither did she. Nor was I surprised when I did. It always just happened. I never had to slow down with her, either.

Grinning, I pounced on Luna in a hug. When we settled, I said, “Thank you. I needed this.”

As one of Luna’s wings wrapped around me, she said, “You’re very welcome, Twilight. Just please try not to bring home anymore news.”

“You mean bad news?”

Luna shook her head. “No, just news. I would like to have a nice, quiet, peaceful summer from now until the solstice, if at all possible.”

“Well, we may have to delay action on that a little bit. I need to ask you a big favor.”

“Ugh. The last time somepony asked me for ‘a big favor’, I ended up getting beheaded in place of Sir Edward’s wife and then burnt to ashes. I was fine afterward, of course, but it still hurt.”

Giggling, I waved a hoof dismissively. “No, no. It’s hardly anything like that. It’s… Well, I’m doing my best to make peace with Cadance, but she did something really…reasonable from her point of view, but irritating from ours.”

“And you want me to just let it go?” Luna asked, although she sounded confident enough in her guess that I could probably choose not to reply.

“If you’d be willing…”

Luna heaved a great, mighty sigh. One of her hooves came up to rub her forehead. “Probably. What did she do?” Fortunately, judging by her tone, at least, Luna already sounded like she didn’t care, even without knowing what Cadance had done. I supposed anything would seem small and petty in comparison to the matter of Celestia, really. Perhaps this would go over better than I’d thought.

“Well, you see, I did some digging, and the Lunar Throne is still a concept in Equestrian law. Equestria is still a diarchy. Except technically, on paper, nopony currently holds the Lunar Throne. To make a long story short, if you read through enough dusty law books, you’d find that with me on the Solar Throne, you essentially could’ve just walked in and reclaimed yours.”

“Yes, I’m aware,” Luna said with only a mildly annoyed tone in her voice. It was kind of obvious where I was going with this by now. “I wrote most of those laws.”

“Yes, well, I can’t override a specific command from Celestia as regent, and Cadance apparently argued with her long enough to wear her down and obtain the right to decide when somepony can ascend to the Lunar Throne.”

“Ha!”

Curious, I pulled my head back to get a better view of Luna’s expression. “You’re not upset?”

“No. Well, yes, but as you said, it’s more irritating than anything else. To be honest, I’d probably be pretty mad if I weren’t so amused. I take my hat off to her for doing the impossible.”

“I think you mean crown,” I said, plucking the offending article in question from her head with a smile. It was about time something went well for me. Of course it’d be Luna who’d be that thing. She could just be trying to make me feel better, but even if so, it was working. There was no need to spoil a kind gesture. She might toss Cadance into the sun just to get the frustration out of her system, but nothing too bad.

Hmm… I should probably be concerned that my go-to stress relief is throwing the object of my ire into the sun.

Eh, whatever.

“A crown is a type of hat,” Luna protested. “It is circular, and you wear it upon your head. A hat.”

“Okay, technically.”

“Technically in the same way I will technically not be ruling Equestria. It is a matter of definition versus observed fact.” Luna paused for a moment. “Unless, of course, you plan to take over, perhaps establishing a monarchy.”

Fighting off a case of the giggles, I said, “No, Equestria is all yours. I still want to poke around in the sciences, though, and probably education, too.”

“As if I could stop you.”

This time I did chuckle. Cuddling into Luna, I said, “Thank you for this. I really don’t want to lose my sister,” which was probably not the best choice of words. Luna flinched, and I mumbled an apology.

“It is not a pleasant experience, one I would gladly spare you.”

I kissed Luna’s cheek for being so sweet. I would’ve gone full-on on the lips, but we weren’t really positioned for that right now.

“Thank you,” I said. Still, I was a bit worried. “Are you really okay with all this? I’m sure we could figure something out with Cadance.”

“It’s fine, Twilight. Irksome, yes, but I’ve waited a thousand years already and was marginalized for decades before. I can wait a little longer while acting as the de facto ruler.”

“Thank you. Really.”

Luna hummed, acknowledging my thanks, although she did sound a bit distracted by something. When I asked, she said it was nothing while she took to idly running a hoof through the part of my mane loose enough for it. For a while, we just stayed like that, enjoying each other’s presence. It was nice, familiar, calming. All of my frustrations and issues melted away. At least for the moment, I could forget everything and just relax.

“Be careful, Twilight.”

“Hmm?” I pulled myself out of the tranquil, sleepy haze I’d slipped into. “Be careful of what?”

Luna didn’t answer for a while. It looked like she was debating whether she should even reply at all, like I wouldn’t like whatever she wanted to warn me about. Eventually, she only said, “Just be careful.”

Shrugging, I said, “Alright,” before settling back into her. Then maybe a half-minute later, I mumbled, “Hey, Luna?” She hummed questioningly in response, so I said, “Tell me about the Dream Realm.”

The seconds passed as Luna continued her gentle stroking of my mane in silence. After probably thinking about what to say for a while, she spoke. “I’ve never had much success describing it to others. It is…chaotic, far more so than Equus under Discord’s rule, except that it is meant to be changing, to be ephemeral. Do you want me to try?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.” Anything to keep my attention away from real life concerns so I could properly enjoy my time with Luna would do, but from what Celestia’s letter had said – I still needed to finish reading that – the Dream Realm sounded a lot more interesting than I’d ever imagined.

“Hmm… Well, I can’t do it right now – it would have made the last thousand years much easier for me if I could – but perhaps I should start by telling you what other ponies experience when I bridge dreams together.”

Luna could bridge dreams? How did that work? Dreams occurred in an individual’s brain, so it’d have to operate on some hive mind analogue.

Not even needing to see my expression to know, Luna said, “No, I’ve never determined how dream magic works; it just does. Much like how I’ve only ever discovered crude spells to interact with an alicorn’s essence, I’ve gotten little further with dreams. The anchoring spell to keep an alicorn manifested is the most success I’ve ever had exploring the strange world of alicorn magics.”

“Aw.”

Luna chuckled. “Look up, Twilight.”

Craning my neck to do so, I found my gaze stuck on what I saw above me. Far off in the distance was the usual star-lined night sky of my dreams, but Luna had added to it. I rolled over to get a better look, though I remained cuddled into Luna’s side.

“The experience is different for everypony,” Luna explained, “but I remember this one vividly.”

And for good reason. Scattered above us was an almost living, breathing network of clouds. They glowed in the fading twilight of day, creating a spectacular gradient of colors from reds to oranges to violets. They interlinked in elaborate staircases that formed and dissipated in a languid dance of color and shapes.

“I once stepped into the dream of a pegasus named Azure. I won’t tell you why to respect his privacy, but he was what is now known as a starving artist. I accidentally made his career and introduced him to his future wife and partner, a unicorn named Marble Gallery. He painted what he saw between dreams, and she brought his works to life in living stone.”

Having never heard of such a memorable – because of at least the novelty – work of art, I asked, “What happened to it?”

“There was a fire about seven centuries ago. The entire building and almost everything inside burned and crumbled to the ground, unfortunately.”

I felt Luna shift her far wing for a short while, but when I moved to look, it was already back in place.

“Well then,” Luna said. She rolled away from me and onto her hooves, then stretched her wings out and made an experimental flap or two. “Shall we get to exploring?”

Grinning, I, too, rolled over but took off on my own, leaving Luna behind to chase after me. Life was good.

“Twilight, wake up.”

Rolling away from whoever was shaking me, I mumbled, “Tired…” I lazily considered magicking away my problem so I could sleep but decided it would be too much work.

“Come on, Twilight. Why do you do this literally every time you wake up?”

Because I wasn’t a morning pony, and they were the bane of my existence, my ultimate enemy, the Kirk to my Picard. Er, wait. That last one sounded wrong… Oh, it was the fans of each that were enemies. Right. Anyway, why was it so few ponies appreciated an extra, lazy hour spent half-awake and thinking nonsense in bed? I’d gotten up in time to reverse the direction of the sun and moon like a good filly. I should be allowed to have this.

I felt the left side of my body grow colder, and my legs dipped downward. With instincts that would make any changeling proud, I pulled my pile of blankets around me into a cocoon.

“Ugh!” Whatever unnatural creature was here shouted into my ear, “Twilight! Wake up!”

Wincing, I deigned to open my eyes just a bit. Finding nopony and myself suspended midair as somepony’s magic fought for my blankets, I forced the telekinesis holding me to rotate. Twinkleshine came into view in moments.

“You monster,” I mumbled.

Twinkleshine just rolled her eyes and pulled harder at my blankets, looking a bit more put out than usual when she did this. I whimpered as she managed to slowly pull them away from me, layer by layer. She then, at the completion of her task, unceremoniously let me flump back onto my bed.

More than a little irked, I said, “Okay, you’ve got my attention. What is it?”

“Princess Cadance is here asking for you. She was going to come wake you up, but Chamomile is keeping her busy in town.”

I sat there for a moment, frozen.

Whoops.

I’d just vanished for the better part of two days without saying a word to Chamomile. I probably should’ve taken her with me when I left with Cadance, too, if not for my safety, then for her peace of mind. Chrysalis hadn’t said anything about it to me yesterday, but still. Chamomile really deserved better than that.

Ack! I didn’t even say anything to Twinkleshine, either, not even so much as a ‘hey, I’m alive’. I needed to stop doing this kind of stuff to ponies.

Ugh. I didn’t say anything to Mom or Dad as well. What was wrong with me? Why was I so…

“Irresponsible?” Mother suggested. I growled back at her, but she was right. “You know, Sparklebutt, half the time you allow whatever your current fixation is to let you run roughshod over the ponies who care for you.”

“Yes, I’m aware,” I grumbled. Was this going to be my life, then? Having my imaginary friend constantly berate me for my own failings forever? Sighing to myself, I turned my attention back to the pony who deserved it right now. “Alright. I’ll head down as soon as I’m ready…which will probably be before you could walk back.”

Twinkleshine’s expression softened a bit as she chuckled to herself. “Then I suppose I’ll just wait here for a ride.”

“Fair enough.” As I set about untying my mane, not having bothered with it before collapsing yesterday, I said, “Twinkleshine, I’m sorry I didn’t remember to at least let you know I was still alive. I kind of got caught up in the moment.”

“As per usual.”

I winced. “Yes, I suppose.”

Sighing, Twinkleshine took a seat nearby as I worked through my snarls. “Twilight, I know I’m usually not the first thing on your mind. Nothing and nopony can really ever claim to be, except maybe Princess Luna or Princess Celestia.”

Although I tried not to show it, I could still feel my eye twitch at that claim. The worst part was that it was probably true.

“More than half the time you’re pretty much the quintessential absentminded professor, forever focused completely on what’s right in front of you. I figured that out years ago, and I still kissed you.”

Not really sure what to say to that, I said, “Er, thank you. I think.” That was a rather more charitable way of saying I ignored ponies and took them for granted. Twinkleshine just shrugged and left me to my afternoon – well, morning, for now – routine.

“Hey, Twinkleshine?” After sinking back into a more bland and slightly depressing mood without a proper distraction, it’d occurred to me that Twinkleshine had demonstrated an interesting perspective on my and Luna’s life not too long ago. Maybe she could offer some advice.

“Hmm? What is it, Twilight?”

“If you were me, what would you be feeling right now? Or doing, I guess.”

Twinkleshine gave me a strange look that more or less conveyed, ‘What brings this up?’

“You know what happened over the last two days, right?”

“Approximately,” Twinkleshine said.

“Imagine you’re me, then. The pony you hate most just got up and moved out of the way without really suffering any consequences. Except maybe she believes she’s doing the right thing for everypony involved, even though to you it’s obvious she’s not. And half the time she’s treating it all like a big joke that we can laugh at a hundred years later. And–”

Twinkleshine plopped down next to me and stole my lips with her own, effectively silencing me. When we were done, she asked, “Is this a serious question, or are you just looking for somepony to tell you something you already know but don’t want to admit?”

I couldn’t help chuckling at how bluntly Twinkleshine had put that. “The former. I have somepony to do the latter for me who never shuts up.”

“Hey.”

I shushed Mother before she could get started and waited for Twinkleshine to finish thinking over her response.

“Well,” Twinkleshine began hesitantly. “To be honest, I don’t know. I don’t have your life experiences despite how long we’ve lived together, so I can’t say I really understand how you feel about Princess Celestia. I’ve tagged along on your wild ride of a life, but I’ve only seen snippets of it, the little pieces of it that you show to others. I suppose I’ve seen more than, say, Berry Punch has, but I don’t think I know your circumstances well enough to give you a full and complete answer.”

That wasn’t at all what I wanted to hear or even something that I knew I didn’t want to hear. “I see…” Talking into my hooves, my head drooped, I continued, “I…can’t tell you everything, but maybe someday soon we can sit down, and I could tell you enough.” We’d…won, I supposed, so I could be freer with my words than either before or after my ascension. Cherry Berry would likely be hounding me for a book deal soon, too. Twinkleshine would be a good pony to bounce ideas off of for what I could and couldn’t tell her and could and couldn’t let her write. If Twinkleshine were willing, that was.

“I’d like that.” I could practically hear the smile in Twinkleshine’s words. “If you want, though, I could give an answer the old college try for now.” She drew out the words of that idiom in a ridiculous voice, making me giggle more in surprise than anything else.

“Go ahead.”

“Hmm… Well, I think I would be more worried than anything else. If Princess Celestia stopped by and saw nothing was changing the way she wanted, what would stop her from launching a surprise attack? I wouldn’t have it in me to be on guard every second of every day of every year for the rest of forever.” Twinkleshine placed a hoof on my shoulder and locked eyes with me. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t think she ever would. The Element of Magic is bound to you alone, and other approaches to her problem I think would be distasteful to her. The worry would still be there, though, and that can be just as dangerous.”

I gave Twinkleshine a small, sad smile. “I certainly do feel that. I’m going to protect Equus and Luminance as best as I can, and Luna will help out after the solstice, but it’s hard to stop a truly determined adversary with just static wards.”

“Is there a way you could de-alicorn her, maybe?”

“No,” I said a bit more forcefully than I probably should have. “Sorry. Just…I’m really squeamish about killing alicorns. Recent history has shown it’s not a good idea, and ancient history…” I probably shouldn’t share Luna’s and my speculation on what happened to any progenitor alicorns. That information fell distinctly under a need to know basis, and Twinkleshine didn’t need to know. “Well, it’s just a bad idea. But it wouldn’t be so bad if I could just de-ascend her…locally…”

Ascension propagated outward through the universe. When I eventually figured out how it worked, I might be able to figure out how to tear an alicorn back out of the universe, if only within a small volume. The de-ascension would never be able to catch up with the ascension. Maybe I could start the spell multiple times outside another alicorn’s…sphere of existence, but Celestia’s was bigger than mine, so I’d never actually be able to destroy her completely.

Still, even developing that magic would be terrifying. I’m currently the fifth oldest – well, fifth known oldest alicorn, so only four others could threaten my entire existence, but I don’t think I’d even want to trust myself with it. De-ascension might be a natural corollary to ascension, though, and thus unavoidable. Hmm… I hated to say it, but it might be best if I studied ascension entirely by myself and never told anypony whatsoever how it worked.

“Twilight?”

I jumped, startled out of my thoughts. “Ah… Sorry, Twinkleshine. Got lost in thought.”

“I think you mean you’re now lost out of thought.” I glared in response, albeit with a smile. Twinkleshine just giggled.

“Anyway,” I said, “I was more asking about how you’d feel about Celestia in particular, not my situation or recent events in general.”

“Oh. Well, without knowing the fine details of, well, pretty much everything, I can only assume I’d be somewhere between outraged and miserable.”

I perked up a bit at that. Angry, melancholic, depressed, defeated, listless – all those things I could easily describe myself as, but miserable? There was something a little off about that. It implied more of a…a certain je ne sais quoi. I wasn’t sad Celestia was gone, I didn’t think. Even Mother wasn’t sad about it.

“Why miserable?” I finally asked after thinking about it for a bit.

“Um…” Twinkleshine looked away from me and ran a forehoof along its opposite leg. “Well, Twilight, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you kind of sort of have a little bit of, well, abandonment issues.”

What?

“And Princess Celestia just sort of, you know, left.”

Mother had certainly felt abandoned when she was alive, but…I had abandonment issues? I – I vaguely remembered Mother saying something tangential to that to me at one point.

“Twilight?”

I blinked at hearing my name. Turning my head, I found Twinkleshine staring worriedly at me. Hesitantly, I asked, “Why do you think that?”

“No reason in particular until recently. It was always small things that seemed odd. But now, well, I think you might be taking and, well, always have taken Princess Luna’s problems personally. Like they were your own.” In a bit of a rush, Twinkleshine hastily added, “Not that you don’t also have reason to dislike Princess Celestia. She hasn’t been nice to you either. But your behavior seems almost disproportionate at times. Unfair, even. That, and with how willing you are to defend Princess Luna to everypony all the time, whatever your own thoughts are…”

There Twinkleshine trailed off, looking at me uncertainly. I felt similarly unsettled, if for different reasons. What she’d said felt…accurate. But whatever else I did with her opinion, I needed to say something now before she felt like she’d done something wrong.

“I – I see,” I managed to say almost naturally despite the constricted feeling in my throat. “I’ll…have to think about that.” Just not today. I had too much to be doing, and Cadance wasn’t going to wait around forever. I had to get settled into my new job as soon as possible, so I’d be just as busy tomorrow, too.

Really, I’d be busy all the way up to the solstice and long after that. Maybe I should write a memo and put it on my vanity to remind me.

“You’re avoiding the issue,” Mother stated firmly without room for debate.

Because there was no room.

But – but still, I was going to be busy.

I jumped as I felt something wrap around one of my forelegs. In hindsight, it was obvious that it was Twinkleshine intertwining one of hers with mine.

“Twilight, I’ll always be here, if you need to talk.”

I managed a smile. “Thanks. But we should leave. I can’t keep Cadance waiting forever.”

“I suppose not. Would you drop me off in the town square?”

Nodding my assent, Twinkleshine and I moved to my room’s balcony, and I had her climb up onto my back. Once she was suitably comfortable, I galloped off over the side and dropped into an easy glide down toward town. The trip was quick enough, but even the short few minutes I had to take my mind off of everything and simply enjoy the wind in my face and under my wings were the perfect distraction.

Unfortunately, the trip was over far too soon. I let Twinkleshine get back to whatever she’d been doing before and then made my way through town on hoof straight to Cadance. As ever, she was a lighthouse in the dead of night; every alicorn was as easy to find for me without them going through a lot of effort to hide their magic. And even then, it was like trying to hide a glacier in a puddle. Technically not impossible, but beyond merely insanely difficult.

Halfway there, Chamomile left Cadance and shifted into my shadow.

“Good morning, Chamomile.”

“Good morning, Princess,” Chamomile said, stepping out into proper view. I resisted the urge to flick her magic for using the P word. It was a losing battle, really, and I should just get used to it. As she slipped into step beside me, she added, “Princess Cadance is here asking for you to come to Canterlot.”

“I’m aware. Twinkleshine told me already. Thank you for keeping her company in the meanwhile. Did you treat her to your tea?”

That, surprisingly, got Chamomile to blush. “Yes. She said it was the best she’s ever had, actually.”

“I hope I don’t have to worry about her poaching you,” I said in jest.

Chamomile, naturally, replied in utmost seriousness, “Of course not,” which I got a small chuckle out of.

“By the way, I’m sorry for leaving you behind yesterday. And for vanishing the day before.” In the interest of continuing to ignore my problems, I merely said, “I kind of got distracted.”

“I understand, Princess. Queen Chrysalis told us all what happened.”

I kept my sigh to myself at the unignorable reminder of what I was trying to avoid thinking about. Well, one of many things I was trying to ignore at the moment. It took me a little while to distract myself again, but it was getting easier. Just outside Chamomile’s house, within which awaited Cadance, I pulled us aside.

“Chamomile, if you don’t have any other plans today, would you come to Canterlot with me?”

“Princess… Twilight” – I smiled at the use of my name – “it’s my entire job to be with you and keep you safe. You really shouldn’t feel like you’re imposing on me. I chose this.”

“I know. It’s just…culture.”

Chamomile held a hoof to her mouth to help suppress her giggles at my choice of words. But that really was it. It was just cultural differences. I still didn’t really understand why somepony would want to dedicate their life to somepony else, but it wasn’t my place to tell ponies what to find fulfilling.

“Speaking of, nopony on Equus has seen a lunar pegasus in centuries, so try not to take anything personally. You’ve kind of devolved into a cultural myth.”

With that little aside finished, Chamomile stepped inside her home with me trailing right behind her. Walking into one of the buildings in Luminance always made me feel like I was walking into a history museum. Half of it was steeped in the past, but the other half was perfectly modern. At times, it almost felt fake.

Cadance was sitting on a stool in the kitchen. She was leaned over on a countertop and gazing out a window into the middle of town, presumably pony watching, while she nibbled on one of Chamomile’s tea cakes.

“Hello, Twilight,” Cadance said without looking our way.

Rather than be surprised, I grinned. “I see you’re doing the mysterious ‘greet before I look at you’ thing now, too.”

Cadance hummed in acknowledgment, but her eyes kept slowly tracking something outside. “It’s not hard when you have a type of three-sixty degree vision. There’s no reason to pretend otherwise with you.”

I grabbed one of Chamomile’s tea cakes for myself. It’d serve as a light breakfast, I supposed.

“True enough. Anything interesting going on out there?”

Sighing, Cadance took her weight off the countertop in front of her and turned toward us. “No, not at all. Just trying to understand this place.”

“What’s to understand? It’s not that different from a small town in Equestria.”

“Exactly.”

Ah. Cadance was taking issue with how utterly normal this place was for being under the sole rule of the terrible and evil Nightmare Moon for the last thousand plus years. Well, I supposed I’d leave that be, then.

“Did you sleep well?” Cadance asked. “You put up a good front, but you did look dead on your hooves right before you left.”

“Yes, I did,” I said. A smile crept onto my face as I remembered everything Luna and I had done together last night. “You?”

Cadance took an unusually long time to think over her answer, stretching her wings somewhat as she did so. Eventually, she said, “Well enough.”

“That’s good. Anyway, what am I expected to do today?”

“Actual work,” Cadance replied frankly. “There’s still, well, a whole planet that wants to meet you, but Equestria’s central government can’t grind to a halt to make that happen. Some new ponies will probably pop by, but other than that, it’s mostly meetings and a little paperwork that needs your signature.”

“When you say ‘little’…”

Cadance gave me a small smile. “There’s a lot for us to do today, but we should finish before dinner so long as you don’t need to fetch another sun.”

I winced before I could stop myself. “You’re never going to let that go, are you?”

“No. Shining will be worse. I guarantee you that.” It went unsaid that Cadance meant that he would be, meaning when he was on proper speaking terms with both of us again, not when he found out or when I next ran into him.

“Why am I not surprised?” I asked sarcastically. “Anyway, ready to go?”

After stuffing the last of her own tea cake into her mouth and swallowing, Cadance nodded. “I’ll meet you in the courtyard again.”

Cadance demanifested away. With Chamomile as a passenger, I was slower to follow, having to teleport us both instead, but it was a delay of mere moments at most. Unsurprisingly, there was a crowd waiting for us. It took me a few seconds to understand the sudden change in their expressions to disbelief, confusion, and the occasional flash of excitement or fear.

I glanced back at Chamomile, the target of all the stares of the crowd. Congratulations to her; she got to be today’s attraction, the latest in a long line of surprises. With Dash and Chrysalis, their reveal had been political and carefully managed, but Chamomile was just Chamomile. Maybe with no pressure and the attention not as much on me, I could enjoy pony-watching all of the gawkers today.

“Cadance,” I whined. I could admit it was a whine. “I want to do science. I’m sooooo bored.”

Cadance glanced up from her desk of overflowing paperwork to look at me at mine. Nothing about her gaze held the usual sympathy she used to show me. She had grown so cruel over the eons, so cold, and now that we were working together, she let her divine anger flow freely. Her magic picked me up and sat me upright. A pink quill of Cadance’s floated menacingly in front of my face.

“You wanted to be a princess, you are, and you have to face the consequences of your actions.”

That was not quite right. “Technically, I only wanted to be an alicorn.”

“Quit slacking off, Twilight. Your pile will only grow larger if you don’t take care of it today. We’re really backed up from the nonsense Aunt Celestia pulled.”

“I’ll give you a cookie.”

Cadance rolled her eyes but smiled. The goddess was placated.

“The sooner you get your work done, the sooner you can play.”

But the goddess was not swayed. Alas, her cruelty was without bound. I now saw what I had to do. It was up to me to challenge the elder god and her written, eldritch abominations. The younger generation must rise up to cast out their ancient rulers or be forever more subject to their ire.

“Ah!” I jumped, startled. Cadance had flourished her quill in my face, brushing it against me just below my eyes.

“It seems I can still tell when you’re thinking something unbelievably foalish. What was it?”

“Just trying to figure out how to banish an elder god back to deep space.”

Cadance whacked me atop the head with her quill, which to be fair, I probably deserved. Really, it wasn’t the drudgery of this work that got to me so much as it was how mindless it could get. If I didn’t have to think about what I was doing, I’d end up thinking about other things that I really didn’t want to.

“Fine,” I sighed. “I can take a hint.” I took hold of the quill still floating dangerously close to me and got back to work. The drudgery continued uninterrupted for some ten minutes or so, at which point Chamomile discreetly let me know that the court steward was approaching. This time, fortunately, he came sans paperwork, excepting his usual planner floating along beside him. Just before the guards knocked to announce him, I called out, “Come in,” and opened the doors for him.

Ah, that look of surprise and shock on our steward’s face. Exquisite. There was something dangerously addictive about playing up to the ancient, all-knowing goddess shtick.

“Ah, I, y-yes, Princess. There are a few meetings that we need to set up for tomorrow.” The steward cracked open his planner and launched into his purpose here to recover. “Fancy Pants wanted to discuss hosting another one of his charity garden parties, and Captain Armor had a few questions about what you want the royal guard to be doing. Also, the Royal Canterlot Observatory is still asking for a meeting with…er, either of you.”

I couldn’t help snickering at that one. Apparently, I’d made a bit of a lasting impression on them.

“There’s also somepony here looking to interview you, Princess Twilight, and we have a number of ponies asking if you’ll be taking on a personal student or students the way Princess Celestia would.”

“I already have a few and not enough time for them, so no.”

“Ah. Alright. If I may ask, what are your plans for Trixie Lulamoon?”

I shrugged. Whatever her current arrangements were couldn’t be that bad or that big of a draw on Equestria’s budget. “Just leave her be with whatever privileges she has.”

The court steward – whose name I should really learn and remember – nodded, no doubt mentally checking off one of the items on his schedule. “One last thing. Princess Celestia never assigned a replacement head for her school. It’s not a pressing need, but the position does need to be filled.”

A few seconds passed as I idly flicked around names in my head, but I didn’t really know anypony besides myself and Luna with both magical and administrative skills. And of course, Cadance knew that, too. “Don’t look at me,” I said to her. There was no way I was going to administer the school I’d not only never gotten to go to, but had been actively rejected from about as strongly as somepony could be rejected.

“Well, then who are we going to get to do it?” Cadance asked. “I don’t know anypony who would really be appropriate.”

“Just place an ad for applications, or make an announcement or something. From my understanding, the school was doing fine the last time I checked. Just as long as whoever we get understands that it’s not a for-profit school, the standards shouldn’t drop.”

The steward made a note of that and then asked, “Would you be willing to meet with students when needed? Princess Celestia did on occasion, and as the Alicorn of Magic, it would mean a lot to them if you did, too.”

“I suppose so.” It shouldn’t be that much of a time sink, after all. “Just make sure all pertinent parties are aware that it’s a privilege not to be abused. I don’t get any more hours in a day than anypony else, and I have a lot of time-consuming plans for the coming decades.”

“Of course, Princess.”

“For the meetings you mentioned, set them up for whenever both Cadance and I have time available, but make it in the afternoon. Captain Armor we can meet with over lunch, if he’s agreeable to it.” Rather reluctantly, knowing that I needed to be visible to Equestria, I added, “Schedule an hour in the morning for whoever wants to interview me, but don’t promise any specific length of time.”

“It’s my understanding that your morning is already filled, Princess.”

I thought over the growing list of draws on my time and picked out a number of things set up for tomorrow morning, unfortunately discovering that the steward was right. Even more unfortunately, that interview was probably important, so I turned to Cadance. “Would you mind if I skipped breakfast? I know we discussed going over our plans for the day then, but–”

“It’s fine, Twilight.”

“Alright.” Turning back to the steward, I said, “Schedule it to overlap with breakfast. Make it over tea and snacks in the garden. Is that all, then?”

Nodding, the steward said, “For today, yes. Court is scheduled to resume next week, so for the most part, we’re just working through the details of the regime change for the moment.”

“Excellent. Have a good day…” I did my best to hide how I trailed off awkwardly at the end, still not knowing this pony’s name. Apparently, I did so successfully, and the steward left without taking offense after wishing both Cadance and myself a good day as well. Once he was gone, I noticed Cadance still watching me out of the corner of my eye. “What?”

Cadance bit on her lip, deciding what to say or, far more likely, how to say it. Eventually, she went with, “I’m just still surprised is all. When you’re not complaining, you’re actually pretty good at this. What happened to my antisocial little filly?”

“She gained more and more responsibilities and grew up.” My smile was bittersweet as I added, “Sorry you didn’t get to see it.”

“At least I got to talk to you.” Cadance sighed. “I suppose Shining got to, too, but we both really hurt him, you know.”

I grimaced, not really having anything to say to that. “Yes, I know.”

“We could try giving him a cookie.”

I smothered a laugh only with great effort. Apparently, Cadance was taking a page from my book as far as bribes went. The sad thing was, it was so utterly and completely foalish that it might actually help a bit – not a lot, but a bit.

We went back to work, slogging through everything that needed our signature or opinion, and I did my best not to let my mind wander. The day wore on through the afternoon, and the pile of things to do slowly decreased in height to something far less intimidating. Not too long before supper, Chamomile again warned me that somepony was approaching; this time it was a maid. Cadance must have noticed her coming as well, because she glared at me when I was about to ask the maid to come in before being announced. She was no fun.

A knock came at the door, and after a brief exchange with the guard who’d stepped inside to ask if we would allow the impending visit, the maid herself came in.

“Good evening, Princesses.” The maid, an earth pony roughly a few years beyond my biological age – honestly, having to qualify my age with an adjective was so dumb – bowed. That was a habit in the ponies, well, everywhere, that I’d resigned myself to long ago. I wouldn’t ever say anything – although I’d certainly imply and hint – but if somepony noticed I didn’t care and stopped, they’d get my attention.

“Good evening,” Cadance said, otherwise leaving it to me to deal with whatever the maid wanted.

After giving my own greeting, I asked, “What did you need?”

“The chamberlain wished to know when she can expect you to move into the castle, Princess Twilight. We’ve had a room drawn up for you for some time now but never got a chance to tell you.”

“I have a room?” Already? I highly doubted they’d stick me in a guest room or even one of the more luxurious permanent resident rooms. That was just not how Equestria treated its princesses. I glanced at Cadance, but she just shrugged, apparently not knowing anything either.

The maid nodded. “Princess Celestia ordered the addition to the royal wing about half a season ago and requested that it be done in secret. We’d thought that, er, maybe…”

Cadance rolled her eyes. “I’m not pregnant, and Captain Armor and I haven’t set a date yet.”

Obviously embarrassed, the maid flushed, which was rather visible against her very light-blue coat. “Yes, well, Princess?”

Oh, right. I’d been asked a question. “I might move in after the coming solstice, but no earlier, I think.” And none of us would be staying for too long before we likely moved the capital, but nopony needed to deal with that until things had settled down. “Would you mind showing it to me, though?” I swore, if there was some sort of mocking joke inside the room, I’d burn it to the ground. I wouldn’t put it past Celestia.

“Of course, Princess. If you’re free–”

Grinning, I realized that there was an unintended benefit of my request, a negative externality, one might say. “Take care of the rest for me, would you, Cadance?”

I rushed out the door, dragging the maid with me, as Cadance shouted, “Twilight Sparkle, you get back here!”

“Run,” I whispered to the maid, and we took off through the halls. If Cadance were really upset with me, she could find me easily enough. We ran through the halls until we were far enough away that Cadance wouldn’t be able to be heard if she shouted, and there we stopped for my companion to catch her breath. She might be an earth pony, but an all out gallop alongside an alicorn would wear anypony down.

“Princess?” the maid said. She looked uneasy, at least that’s what her downcast eyes told me, but she was still smiling as she breathed. “May I say something?”

“You may.”

“You’re not at all what I expected.”

“Some days I’m not even what I expect.” That got a breathless laugh from the maid. “Feel free to gossip about that. Princess Cadenza grew up under the law and order alicorn, and it shows. I grew up under the arts and sciences alicorn; she and I aren’t much known for standing on ceremony. I’m basically a mad scientist.”

“Emphasis on mad,” Mother unhelpfully commented.

Demonstrating an ability to pick up subtext, the maid asked, “Should I be gossiping about that, too?”

I looked over the maid with a calculating eye, memorizing her appearance. “What’s your name?”

“Pond Lily.”

After repeating the name to myself three times and turning over the task of remembering it to Mother, much to her annoyance, I said, “Well, Lily, I certainly can’t stop you from gossiping, just as I can’t stop you from arranging for another room.”

Lily’s eyes widened as she finally registered that ‘arts and sciences alicorn’ referred to somepony the public hadn’t been informed of quite yet. It’d probably be a good idea to get a room for Dash, too, but she wasn’t in any hurry to be a princess in more than name. It was very much a job, and not one that sat well with her.

After getting a nod of understanding from Lily, I said, “Anyway, let’s get going. I’m eager to see this room of mine.”

And we were off. We eventually arrived at a part of the castle I was intimately familiar with. A ways past Cadance’s room and down a hallway that used to be a dead end, we turned to the right. The faint, lingering scent of paint filled the hall, which I could only presume was coming from my cutie mark displayed on the door to what must’ve been my room like Cadance’s was on hers. It could only be a recent addition, since Celestia apparently hadn’t told anypony who the room was for.

Not taking any chances, I extended my senses forward to search the room for traps. I doubted I’d find one, but it never hurt to…

What in Tartarus was that?

Something sat in the middle of the room on top of, judging by the magic that held it together, a cloud bed. It was weak, but the magic felt alive, somehow, and when I observed it closer, it spun and danced wildly.

“Thank you,” I said, although I wasn’t really paying attention to what I was saying. “I’ll take it from here.”

I walked inside the room and shut the door behind me. It was nice, I supposed. Plenty of bookshelves lined the walls, although they were empty and waiting for me to fill them. A reasonable enough desk stood against a wall, and it looked like there were two doors leading to an adjoining bathroom and a closet, as well as what I could only assume was a separate bedroom for Spike.

And there in the very center of the room was a comfortable-looking bed covered in blankets and pillows spelled to stay atop clouds. But atop those blankets rested a box, a plain cardboard box about the size of a hundred books. It wasn’t even taped shut; the tabs were merely folded into each other to stay closed. Whatever was in it wasn’t dangerous. The magic was too weak and wild to do much of anything, and now that I was looking even closer than before, parts of it felt dead, or at least unmoving or sluggish.

I opened the box.

Nothing happened.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Mother said. That snapped me out of whatever focused trance I’d been in.

I walked closer. Nothing nearby would trigger based on proximity; no magic flowed around to check for a breach of some volume. Inside the box resided the very mundane sight of packing peanuts bearing an envelope atop them. Really, nothing good ever came of opening envelopes. I should just turn around and leave.

But I didn’t. I blamed my curiosity.

Tearing open the envelope revealed a birthday card. From Celestia. I incinerated it, but I’d still managed to read it before it’d turned to ashes.

“Every princess needs a crown, and peytrals are all the rage this millennium. Celestia.”

If this was what I suspected it was, it could survive fire. If not, then good riddance. I burned away the box and the peanuts, and the bed got caught up in the conflagration. All that was left was slightly damp ashes and shriveled husks of material that wouldn’t burn further – plus six other things.

“I am so tempted to see if I can crush these things,” I grumbled.

Mother was quick to mentally slap me upside the head. “Don’t you dare. The Elements of Harmony are a priceless treasure. At the very least, study them first.”

“Whatever. They’d probably just reform on the tree, anyway.”

I let out a long sigh. The Elements were here; I might as well keep them around. It wasn’t like anypony else could use them without me, and they weren’t that hard to find. Poking around for the right ponies’ magic at Luminance, I teleported Generosity to Spike, Kindness to Fluttershy, and Laughter to Pinkie Pie. If they wanted to wear or keep them, that was fine by me. If they wanted to leave them on the ground, that was also fine. I’d washed my hooves of them.

“Chamomile.” In an instant, Chamomile was behind me. I levitated over Loyalty and held it in front of her. “Do whatever you want with this and…leave me alone for a little while.”

A few seconds passed before Chamomile said, “As you wish, Princess.” She raised her head slightly, and I picked up on her silent message. With Loyalty fastened about her neck, she slipped away back into the shadows.

Once I was sure I was alone, I picked up Friendship with a hoof and brought it up to eye level. The gold that made up most of the tiara clashed with literally my entire color scheme, and it would only fit a pony twice my size comfortably. It was a bit ostentatious with the extra embellishments supporting the six pointed star resting atop it all. I’d even go so far as to call it gaudy.

But it was mine. It was proof that I could be a decent pony to others if I just tried, that I could be a proper friend. What would it say about me if I threw it away?

I sighed again. After transferring Friendship from hoof to magic, I made my way through the room until I picked the right door for the bathroom. While obviously alicorn-sized, luxurious, and definitely worth a more in-depth look later – the bath through another door looked amazing – I ignored most of the room in favor of the large mirror at the vanity. I plopped Friendship atop my head and went to work.

Cadance was still growing, but she already had many of the features of the other two-and-a-half fully grown alicorns – Luna counted twice, once for as she was now, and once for her old, shorter look. Cadance had the elongated, sharper horn, the lengthened, slender legs, the slimmer barrel, and, of course, the larger wings that all alicorns had. She was still missing the æthereal breeze in her hair, but that would come in time. Her, I used as a model to fire off a long series of shapeshifts.

Now twice as tall, Friendship fit me perfectly between the ears instead of around them. I grew my hair out to be absurdly long, because it seemed to be the alicorn style, although before I added a breeze to keep it off the ground, I looked absolutely ridiculous. Seeing as I had no idea what would happen to my mane, I used Luna’s as a base and added a bit of the night sky into it. I might have done too good of a job, because when I looked at my tail, some parts actually seemed to vanish into stars and nothingness. Admittedly, I liked the look, but it was a bit eerie at first.

Ooh! I had a much better idea. I left the stars in as a background, but I swirled my colors into an accretion disk centered at the upper part of my tail. That looked glorious. I was actually tempted to make the look permanent.

Friendship was still a problem, though. I couldn’t change it, but I could certainly electroplate it if I had the time. For now, I just placed an illusion to change the gold to silver.

“Much better.” Glancing over myself, I liked what I saw. It was far showier than I’d ever contemplated being, but…it felt right. Not now, of course. I still had a lot of growing up to do first – physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially, to be honest. But maybe someday.

Rather clumsily with my longer legs, I walked back into the other room to take a short rest, only to remember I’d incinerated the bed.

“Smooth, Twilight,” I said to myself. “Really smooth.”

And then I noticed something I’d forgotten.

“Twilight, I know you’re in there,” came the voice of Cadance as she approached my room in Canterlot Castle. She must’ve been shouting for me to have heard her from this far away, not that it really mattered in this part of the castle. Very few ponies were permitted in the royal wing outside of working hours and without business. “You lazy filly, where have you been? You even missed sup…”

There Cadance fell silent. She’d found me lying on the floor with only my thoughts for company, and I hadn’t yet bothered to turn back into myself. A pile of ash lay nearby, and it was obvious that there was supposed to be a bed where I was.

I was also fidgeting with the last Element of Harmony, still in its unawakened stone sphere state, weakly rolling it beneath my hoof and occasionally batting it around.

Cadance backed out of the room when I looked up, and she shut the door. She came back in some ten seconds later, and I still hadn’t moved. Thankfully, though, the Alicorn of Love had at least the slightest bit of empathy and sensed the mood. Instead of berating me for my admittedly foalish behavior earlier, she just sat down across from me.

“Twilight, what…” Cadance said with actual patience in her voice, although she seemed to be at a loss for words. “What is all this?”

I looked up from my hooves at Cadance. My expression must’ve been pretty unreadable, not because it was controlled, but because I had no idea whatsoever what I was feeling right now.

“My crown was too big.” That was technically the honest answer.

“Should I be taking that metaphorically?”

It took me a few seconds to figure out what she meant, but once I had, I gave Cadance a dry chuckle. “Cadance, I’ve been regent for two days. I hardly think I could feel overwhelmed by responsibilities I’ve found I can’t hold to already.”

“Okay,” Cadance said hesitantly, clearly not sure where exactly to go from there. Eventually, she asked, “Where did you get that crown?”

I smiled a little bit, remembering just what was sitting on my head. “It’s the Element of Friendship.”

“Ah. And that?” Cadance pointed to the Element still in my hooves.

Rather than answer that question, I asked one of my own. “Cadance, sister to sister, will you please give me your honest opinion without any of what’s been going on between us since my ascension muddling it?”

Cadance took three seconds longer to reply than I’d have liked, but she said, “I can try.”

“I feel like… I don’t know. It’s hard to put it into words. I feel cheated, and hurt, and angry, and disappointed in myself for not being better than that, and annoyed that Luna of all ponies is taking this in stride while I’m not, and irritated that a third of the people I really care about hate me–”

Interrupting my weakening rant, Cadance said, “Twilight, we don’t hate you.”

I took deep breaths to calm myself down. That had been unfair. “Sorry. I didn’t – I’m just… I don’t know what I’m feeling right now. I… I don’t know. I feel like there was some big lesson we were all supposed to learn – Luna, Celestia, and I – but we didn’t.”

“You mean like forgive and forget?”

It was two or three seconds before I realized I was glaring and stopped. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Twilight,” Cadance sighed. “Aunt Celestia isn’t going to do anything to your Luna anymore. She even left you in charge. Can’t you just let it go?”

“She only left because she thinks she’s already done everything she must to get her way. She’s not repentant. She’s never been punished. She’s never even apologized – not really. No, Cadance, I won’t let it go. Luna did for my sake, not because she’s actually over what happened.”

“Wait, what?”

I grimaced at that slip of the tongue, really, really, really not wanting to get into that topic with Cadance – or anypony else, either. “Nevermind.”

Cadance stopped whatever she was about to say halfway, instead remaining silent on that issue. She then asked, “What was it you wanted my opinion on?”

“I – I don’t even know.” Frustrated, I batted away the Element in my hooves and let it roll off into my closet. It bumped around with heavy thuds before eventually crashing into something and stopping.

After a long, uncomfortable silence, Cadance said, “Twilight, wait right here. I’ll be right back.”

Before I could say anything, Cadance was off, simply demanifesting away. I sighed and collapsed onto my side before rolling over onto my back. Friendship fell off my head and thudded onto the floor; it was not a light crown, not that I’d really noticed. With nothing better to do, I craned my neck back to watch a clock tick away. Anything to avoid going back to thinking right now.

Six minutes and forty-one seconds later, which was definitely not ‘right back’, Cadance walked in through the door with a train of comfort foods following behind her in the air. Nearly every sugary treat in existence had joined us, up to and including ice cream enchanted to stay cold. Were I not an alicorn, I might think Cadance was trying to kill me. Locking the door behind her only reinforced that image, and I couldn’t help but chuckle at the idea. Death by sweets, what a way to go.

“Twilight, do you remember what I told you?”

Tearing my gaze away from where Cadance was stacking desserts, I quirked an eyebrow at her, still upside down. “You’ve told me two or three things over the years. Which of those few, scarce words we’ve exchanged are you referring to?”

“A fair question,” Cadance said, smiling slightly. “Remember during your ascension? I told you we needed to spend more time together with just the two of us.”

Right before you left. “Yes, I remember that.”

“I just rescheduled most of our appointments and asked Queen Chrysalis to find someone to fill in for us for those that I couldn’t.”

Chuckling, I said, “Well, that’s good news.”

“Don’t expect this to be a regular thing.”

“I won’t. Not without first corrupting you to my wicked ways.”

Cadance rolled her eyes.

“So what’s the plan, then?” I asked. “You’d have a better chance of locking me in here with books than sweets, you know.”

“No, that’s not it.” Despite my rather vocal protests, Cadance flipped me upright. Being stubborn, I remanifested myself back upside down, which unintentionally reverted me back to my normal form. Cadance was having none of that, though, and she flipped me back onto my barrel again. “Shining mentioned that you were trying to act as a therapist for your Luna.”

Not really in the mood to argue over the semantics of exactly what roles I filled in Luna’s life, I said, “And you want to be mine?”

“Well, I do remember a young filly who came crying to me when she blew up half her house, who was terrified her parents would finally hate her and throw her into a dungeon.”

“I was seven!”

“Yes, you were.” Cadance let out a long sigh. “You’ve changed so much from the little filly I used to foalsit. Once in a while, you do or say something that I just don’t understand. I honestly don’t think I could be your therapist; we’re not as close as we used to be, nor are we strangers. And I missed the last…somewhere between the last five and the last eleven years of your life.”

“Not entirely. We talked often, and I did go to you for advice growing up,” I protested, although the words felt hollow even as I said them. I knew perfectly well that Cadance wouldn’t buy that either. Really, the look she was giving me said that all on its own. Turning my head to look at a suddenly very interesting design on the room’s stonework, I asked, “So what is this, then?”

Cadance reached out with a forehoof to pull my gaze back to her. “I’d like you to tell me everything.”

My breath caught in my throat. “I… Everything, everything?”

Cadance nodded. “Everything, Twilight. I want to understand my little sister again. No sugar coating anything. Don’t try to explain anything with hindsight. I won’t comment. I wont judge. I won’t berate your choices. I might ask questions, but I’ll try not to make them anything like, ‘why didn’t you do this entirely more reasonable thing instead?’ And then when you’re done, I’ll go next. Okay?”

I’d grown more and more horrified at what Cadance was suggesting as she went on. It took a good long while after she’d finished for me to realize she’d stopped talking and was waiting patiently for an answer. “I – I don’t…” I gulped. “That wouldn’t…be a good idea.”

“Twilight, please. I promised you that you’ll always be my sister, and I’ll say it again as many times as you want me to. Nothing you’ve done will change that.”

Yeah, and I bet Luna and Celestia both thought that, too, once upon a time, and just look at how that turned out.

Nonetheless, Cadance was persistent. “Tell me your story. Tell me what you were thinking, and feeling, and why you made the decisions you did. Help me understand, and then I can help you understand me, and then we can help each other.”

“But… I…” I bit my lip, trying not to look at Cadance’s hopeful expression.

“Please, Twilight. Nothing you’ve done can possibly be as bad as what I can imagine. Telling me can’t make it any worse. Not telling me won’t make it go away.”

It was no use fighting against that logic. Cadance had somehow stumbled onto the freaking Litany of Gendlin without knowing it, even if she’d applied it in a non-scientific pursuit.

“Please don’t tell anypony,” I said weakly. Cadance had promised to be nothing but supportive, and there wasn’t really any good reason not to trust her to keep to her word. Maybe this wouldn’t be…not what I didn’t need; it was certainly going to be bad. At the very least, everything would be on the table. We’d either start moving past it, or we’d start fighting over it until the end of time now instead of a century later. Considering who stood across from me, I doubted it’d be the latter, but I’d also bet Luna would’ve said that about Celestia, too.

So far so good, though, for what little that was worth. Cadance sat down and said, “I promise.”

I took a deep breath to prepare myself. This was it, I supposed. “Where do you want me to start?”

“At the beginning.”

“Which beginning?” I could go back to Luna’s and Celestia’s, or their conflict’s, or Sunset’s, or my issues’, or mine.

“Your beginning, Twilight, whatever that is. I’m asking for your story. Start wherever you think it starts.”

I had to stop to think about that for a long while. Where did my story start? The life of Sunset Shimmer was a prologue at most, and it wasn’t really that important for setting the scene, despite how much it explained some of my odd behaviors. And…Twinkleshine had at least had a bit of a point earlier today. Luna’s and Celestia’s problems weren’t mine, so that wasn’t really a good place to start. And skipping forward to when I first met Luna left everything out of context. The day of my first flare wouldn’t make much sense without some background information, and while Cadance had a good idea of what my life was like before then, it sounded like she wanted something more in depth than what I’d shared with her at that age.

That left only one choice.

“Pancakes.” I managed a genuine smile at Cadance’s confused expression. Maybe this actually wouldn’t be so bad after all. I now understood what all the comfort food was for, at least. “That’s what it all started with, Cadance: pancakes. I was two years old at the time. The very first thing I can remember is Mom waking me up for breakfast…”

As day waned into dusk and dusk passed into night, forgotten in a dark corner of a closet, a bright glow faded away.

Author's Note

And that's the end. To be honest, every time I think about writing an epilogue, it just feels like I'd be cheapening everything that came before it. Nothing really comes to mind that isn't fluff, randomly depressing, mindless violence, or requiring a proper sequel (which I have no material for). I'm not discounting the possibility of posting one eventually, but I'm leaning toward not.

Lastly, I want to thank everyone who read this story from beginning to end and especially those who followed and commented along the way. I've sure most of you already know this, but beyond the simple joy of writing, comments are a large part of what makes all the effort worth it. And that's especially true when dealing with depression.

Prereaders – Starlight Nova, Strange Reasoning, The Great Eater, Reese

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Additional thanks to all those kindly souls on Patreon who helped make my life easier.

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Original Oneshot/Prelude - A Dream Fulfilled

“Here’s your tea, Your Majesty.”

Celestia looked up from her paperwork with a start. She had entirely missed the maid’s entrance.

The maid quickly apologized. “I’m terribly sorry for surprising you.”

“Do not worry. It was entirely my fault. I have been ruminating on…some affairs of state recently.” Taking the proffered tea, Celestia continued, “Thank you for your hard work…Dusty, right?”

Blushing and nodding her head vigorously, Dusty said, “Y-yes, Your Majesty! I can’t believe you know my name.”

Celestia smiled and sighed internally. That reaction was cute at first, but after a dozen centuries, it has begun to get a little trying.

Dismissing the maid, Celestia returned to her paperwork. She barely made it past one sip of tea and the introduction of a new tax law when a knock came at the door.

“Enter.”

The door creaked open – I need to talk to maintenance; that is the third squeaky door today alone – to reveal a young, pink-coated alicorn princess.

“Ah, Cadance. Excellent. Do come in, and please close the door behind you.”

Cadance closed the door with her hooves and walked across the room to take a seat opposite Celestia.

Once they had made their greetings, Celestia asked, “No magic?”

Blushing, Cadance replied, “I’m still getting used to having a horn, Princess. I sometimes completely forget.”

“I was just as hopeless with my wings for the first few years. Give it time – and a lot of reminders – and you shall find it completely natural.”

“If you say so,” Cadance sighed. “Anyway, you wanted to see me?”

Nodding, Celestia said, “I was wondering about your opinion of Twilight Sparkle.”

“I figured as much. Well, besides my confusion over why you set me up with a foalsitting job, I’ve been having a lovely time with her. She’s a really sweet filly and a delight to be around. Really shy, but she warmed up to me quickly enough. Although, just between you and me, I’m more interested in her older brother.”

Laughing as Cadance licked her lips, Celestia teased, “We do have that one grand hall we never use this century if you want to hold a wedding.”

“N-n-no, t-that’s okay. One s-step at a – at a time.”

“It was just a thought, Cadance. No need to take it so seriously. Unless, of course–”

“No!”

Chuckling, Celestia said, “Very well. Now then, as you were saying…”

“Um… Twilight… Yeah… Just – just one sec.” Cadance performed a few rounds of the Traditional Royal Breathing Exercises and continued, “So, she reads a lot. And when I say a lot, I mean more than I have in my entire life. Mostly about magic, but sometimes we read adventure books together.”

A hoof rose to Cadance’s muzzle in thought. “Let’s see… She really likes cookies. Particularly butterscotch and the ones I make; the ones Sunset begged me to make, you know. Still a blank flank. Hmm… Lavender…”

“Okay, Cadance. I think you reached the bottom of the barrel. I was more interested in her magical aptitude.”

Cadance winced.

“Oh dear. What happened?”

“Well…it’s not that she’s untalented…”

“Twilight!” Cadance called out from the bathroom. “Your bath is ready!”

When no response came, Cadance called out once more. Still getting no response, she set out to investigate. In all likelihood, Twilight would be in her room, just where Cadance had left her.

After walking down the hallway, Cadance entered Twilight’s bedroom and, sure enough, the filly was still lying on the floor with her doll, Miss Smartypants, completely oblivious to the world as she read a book. She grabbed a page with her magic and slowly flipped it over as if it were the greatest and most delicate treasure in the world.

“Twilight, it’s time for your bath.”

Looking up briefly, Twilight said, “No way.”

“Yes way.” Cadance scooped Twilight up with her own magic and said, “Now come along quietly or I will have to take drastic measures.”

Plucking a loose feather from her wing, Cadance suspended it before her and wiggled it threateningly.

“Nu-uh,” Twilight said, shaking her head. Her horn lit up to a blinding level and both broke her out of Cadance’s magic and tore the feather to shreds. She then took the opportunity she had made to slip out the door past Cadance with the book she had been reading.

Ow…my horn… That’s one new experience I could have gone without…

“Twilight? Where are you? Twilight?”

No response.

“Twilight, you can’t get out of taking a bath! Wherever you are, I’ll find you! And when I do, it’s two baths for you unless you come back here right now!”

Still no response.

Cadance sighed. Oh, Twilight. Why must you be such a wingful?

Walking downstairs, Cadance began her long search in the kitchen. There were dozens of tiny corners and cabinets a filly could hide in and only one way in or out. Despite that, after an exhaustive search, Twilight was nowhere to be found in the kitchen, so Cadance moved on to the next room.

Fortunately, the house was laid out such that Cadance would be able to close doors behind her and not give Twilight a chance to slip between unchecked rooms and checked ones. Still, even then, there was an awful lot of space to cover.

Twilight was not in the dining room. She was not in the living room. She was not in the study. She was not in the foyer. She was not in the master bedroom nor the adjoining bathroom. For the last two rooms, Cadance had to barricade the staircase to prevent Twilight from potentially running from upstairs to another room.

Now removing the piles of furniture she had placed in front of the stairs, Cadance ascended to the second level and began her search once more. The hallway was clear. Twilight’s bedroom was empty. The closet was empty. That only left one room.

Whistling innocently, Cadance pushed open the door to Shining Armor’s room.

“Ehem… I’m just looking for Twilight who I know is in this room. Yep. Just that. And if I should happen to find something else while I’m at it, well, who could blame me?”

Cadance’s first target was underneath the bed. Sure, no filly would be able to fit under it, even one as small as Twilight, but a mare had to make sure after all. Disappointingly, she did not find anything of interest. Or Twilight. With a sudden spark of genius, she decided to lift the mattress and investigate underneath it.

“Drat. Nothing. I mean, I guess Twilight wasn’t under there. I suppose I’ll just have to try the closet next.”

Half slamming the doors open, Cadance was less than surprised to find the absence of Twilight at this point. Digging through everything else, she did not find a single embarrassing thing.

“Where in Equestria does he keep the stuff he doesn’t want ponies to find?” Cadance mumbled.

Eying the desk across the room suspiciously, Cadance opened all of the drawers at once and stubbornly riffled through them and found nothing. Nothing of interest. Not a single thing.

“Ugh… I give up. And where’s Twilight? I hope she didn’t go outside at night…” Wait, there is one room I haven’t checked yet.

Replacing everything just the way she had found it and closing the door behind her, Cadance left Shining Armor’s room and headed down the hall to the very last room in the building: the bathroom.

And there Twilight was. She was not even bothering to hide as she read her book.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Cadance complained with a facehoof to compliment her words. “Okay, Twilight. You’ve had your fun messing with me. Now it’s time for you to… Really?”

Twilight did not look up or even stop reading, but Cadance could see the smile on her grow.

She froze the bathtub…

“Again, I’m so sorry, Velvet,” Cadance apologized as she bowed.

“Cadance, you’re the princess here,” responded Twilight Velvet. “If anypony should be bowing, it’s me.”

“But I–”

“You spooked Twilight, and she reacted poorly. It’s happened before. Several times. Don’t worry about it.”

“But still, I shouldn’t have–”

“It’s fine, Cadance. Really, it is. If you insist on being scolded, just tell me what you’ve learned from this.”

“Um…”

Cadance looked out at the half-destroyed wall in front of her and the destruction around it. A shattered door lay in pieces everywhere across the living room. Broken glass was buried within the carpet and was likely mingling with ceramic pieces from a vase that was missing, presumed dead. The couch had mostly survived but was upturned with several rips.

“Never surprise Twilight with a scary illusion spell that you’ve just learned. And if you absolutely must, be sure Shining Armor is around to make sure you don’t die.”

Cadance stopped for a moment and then idly mused, “Or get severely wounded. I’m not really sure if I can die anymore.”

Shaking her stray thoughts away, Cadance finished, “Anyway, I’m pretty sure that’s the lesson I should take away from this.”

“It’s a pretty good lesson. Shining learned a similar one for himself a year ago when Twilight’s magic first started growing stronger.”

“I see… How bad was it?”

“About twice as bad as this.”

“Yikes.”

“Yeah… But we all learn from our mistakes and move on. At least it was only one wall this time.”

“Well…I have a lesson you can take away from this.”

Velvet raised her eyebrows. “And that is?”

“A princess always pay her debts.”

“Cadance, you don’t have to do that.”

“I insist. This is my fault.”

“Cadance–”

“Just let me do it. I have plenty of bits burning holes in my saddlebags as a princess and nothing to spend them on.”

“But–”

“No buts,” Cadance said, using her best stern voice she had learned from foalsitting Twilight. “As you said earlier, I’m the princess here. And when a princess decides to toss a bag of gold at you, you say thank you, not throw it right back.”

“Very well,” Velvet eventually conceded. “But I want to make this up to you somehow.”

“You don’t–” Cadance broke off to actually consider the offer. “Well, if you really feel that way” – she leaned in to whisper into Velvet’s ear – “you could always give me Shining Armor.”

Giggling like a filly, Velvet whisper back, “Like, to keep?”

“Oh, no. Of course not. Slavery is illegal.”

“For males.”

“Plausible deniability is the name of the game, Velvet. They’re not our slaves. They’re coltfriends.”

“And husbands.”

“Let’s just stick with coltfriends for now.”

“…and that’s more or less where she is with magic.” Cadance licked her rather dry lips after concluding her story. “I could give a bunch of other examples besides those two, but I think I’ve made my point. She’s very strong but lacks any true control to speak of.”

“I see…” She might be a Flare, just like Sunset Shimmer was. I should love to have a Flare to bear the Element of Magic, but it’s too late. Nightmare Moon will return before I could teach one to control her magic. I need somepony…lesser, I suppose is the way to put it. The last thing I want is a repeat of last time.

Celestia sighed inwardly. Only time will tell. I shall know for sure when she grows a little more. In the meantime, I need to increase my watch on other potential bearers. Trixie Lulamoon was a good second pick. I hope she develops well in the year between now and her entrance exams. Moondancer was also–

“Princess Celestia?”

From the expression on her face, Cadance obviously had been trying to get Celestia’s attention for some time now.

“Yes?”

“Why are you so interested in Twilight? I mean, I trust you, but…things tend to get complicated when you get involved.”

“Oh, it is nothing so serious. I am merely looking for a new student. It has been several years since Sunset disappeared. That is as good of a resignation as any other, I fear.”

Heaving a sigh of relief, Cadance said, “Alright then. I can say without a doubt that Twilight is the strongest unicorn I’ve ever met, so she gets my recommendation.”

“And of course there would not be a single hint of any other biases in that recommendation.”

“Of course not.” Cadance hesitated under Celestia’s smile. “You know. Probably.”

“Very well. It will be some time yet before I make a decision, but your opinion is noted. Speaking of, I was hoping to get your opinion on a few matters later. Would you care to take supper with me?”

“Sounds great,” Cadance said with a nod and a smile. “But Princess?”

“Hmm?”

“Please don’t give up on Sunset. I miss her, too.”

Celestia’s smile faltered for a fraction of a second, but she nodded. Maybe someday Sunset would return on her own; for all her immense power, nothing Celestia had tried had managed to find the mare.

“What if I can’t do what they tell me to?” Twilight asked her mother. “What if… What if they ask me to turn somepony into a plant? I don’t know how to do that.”

“Twilight,” Mom reassured, “they will ask you to do the same thing as every other unicorn, or something very similar. Entrance exams would not be fair if they tested prospective students on obscure magic they couldn’t possibly know yet.”

“But what if they do? Or what if there’s some spell that every unicorn should know by my age that I haven’t learned yet?”

“You’ll do just fine, Sweetie,” Dad said. “Shining went through the entrance exams, too, and passed with flying colors. All he had to do was lift something heavy. In fact, I think the exams have something to do with telekinesis every year. Something you excel at.”

“For certain definitions of excel…” Like breaking half the things I use mine on… “What if I break everything and they ship me away to prison to work off my debt to society?”

“Okay, now your fears are becoming completely ungrounded, young filly,” Mom said with a facehoof. “Just do your best. You wouldn’t want the proctors to get impatient waiting for you, would you?”

Twilight gasped before bolting off into the exam room to the cry of, “Dear Celestia, you’re right!”

The room was a large lecture hall with a dozen rows of chairs, and at the very front, halfway between the front row and the chalkboard, was a wooden cart with a large egg upon it. At the very back of the room, Twilight spied five ponies wielding clipboards with sour looks on their faces.

Oh no! I’m already too late! They’re going to fail me for wasting their time! Why, oh why didn’t I just come straight in here?

“Twilight Sparkle?”

Twilight snapped to attention upon hearing her name and said, “I’m so sorry I was late. Please don’t fail me. I promise not to do it again.”

Of the five ponies in the back, the middle one raised an eyebrow. Then she said, “Um… You’re not late, but I appreciate your punctual fervor.”

Twilight blushed and looked away.

“Anyway, your exam is very simple. You need only lift the egg in front of you with your telekinesis and suspend it in the air for as long as you can.”

Bitting her lip, Twilight took a quick glance at her parents who had entered the room behind her. They gave her a reassuring look, and Twilight turned back to the proctors.

“But – but what if I break it? I don’t want to – to kill a baby…whatever is inside this egg.”

The proctors gave Twilight what she hoped was an approving look.

“Don’t worry about that, Twilight. That egg is very durable. Even Princess Celestia would have to deliberately try to break it in order to do so. Just do your best.”

With a gulp and a weak nod, Twilight turned to the egg.

Okay, Twilight. You can do this. This is the most important day of your life. Your entire future will be affected by the outcome of this day. Don’t blow this.

Twilight reached out to the egg with her magic with the faintest touch she could possibly manage only to feel her magic sputter out in small sparks.

Wha… Did that egg just reject my magic?

Trying again, Twilight got the same result. The feeling was like the magical equivalent of having a door slammed in one’s face.

Once more, Twilight reached out with her magic, but this time she tried to increase how much strength she put into it without letting her magic go out of control. However, she only met the same result. Again and again she tried, each time increasing the amount of magic she used as much as she dared. She even tried a few poses like she had seen that filly Trixie make in the waiting room earlier. Surely she had had a reason for making them.

Whatever secrets Trixie had, however, they were not helping Twilight, and she had reached her limit. Any more and she knew she risked causing major damage to not just the egg, but the room as a whole.

Twilight collapsed on the ground on the verge of tears.

“I’m so sorry for wasting your time,” she whispered.

Suddenly, a deafening boom echoed through the room. It was followed soon after by a burst of magical energy. When it struck Twilight’s horn, she yelped. And then the worst thing ever happened: she lost control.

Choking back a scream from the pain, Twilight threw as much of her magical output at the egg as she could, hoping to salvage the disaster. Somehow.

To her surprise, the egg hatched under the influence of her magic and revealed a baby dragon. Unable to cut the flow, Twilight gave more and more magic to the dragon, and it absorbed each and every bit, quickly growing large enough to burst through the walls and ceiling.

Startled by the dragon’s growth, Twilight’s magic grew even stronger, and she lost her feeble influence on its direction. Random bursts of magic flew through the room and the area had become so saturated with it that a field of magic was actually visible around her.

But to Twilight, the world was pain.

Through her screaming, Twilight saw her magic turn her parents into plants out of the corner of her eye. She had the vague impression that something had happened to the proctors as well, but they were too far in her peripheral vision to know for sure, and she had other things occupying her attention.

Somehow, Twilight’s magic even managed to conjure an illusion of Princess Celestia in front of her. The princess had some sort of metal ring with her, and for some reason she put it over Twilight’s horn.

Once the ring was affixed, Twilight’s magic abruptly cut off as if it had been severed from her with a knife. She fell roughly to the floor, hit her head, and welcomed her failing senses as she fell unconscious.

Celestia wanted to sigh as she took her seat. There were plenty of times she wanted to sigh. Open court was perhaps where her sighing most threatened to overtake her, but her current situation was a close second.

Twilight Velvet and Night Light sat across from her. On a nearby pile of pillows that Celestia had conjured slept Twilight Sparkle. The magic suppressor she had prepared just in case was still on the filly’s horn.

How do I tell these ponies that I have too little time to help their filly? Sunset took twenty-three years to get her magic under control, and she was one of the most talented unicorns I have had the pleasure to teach. Nightmare Moon returns in half as many years. I just cannot use Twilight Sparkle.

Celestia took a guilty glance at Twilight Sparkle’s haunch and the pink and white stars on it.

She just had to get a cutie mark in every field of magic, just like Sunset. She even loves butterscotch, too…

“Princess Celestia,” Night Light said, “is Twilight going to be okay?”

Fighting back her urge to sigh and frown, Celestia kept a neutral face. “Physically, yes. She is quite well and shall be on her hooves again after a full day’s rest. Magically, however, is an entirely different matter.”

Celestia paused to let herself feel as bad as she deserved as Twilight Sparkle’s parents’ faces went from hopeful to frantic.

“Your filly is something called a Flare. It is a very rare magical…not affliction, per say, but you could think of it as such.”

“Is there a cure?” Twilight Velvet asked, her voice cracking.

Shaking her head, Celestia answered, “There is not. Flares are normal in every way except in their magic. They are born with an extraordinary amount far beyond their ability to control. With strict discipline throughout their entire lives, Flares are capable of learning both how to wield their power as well as how to reign it in if it begins to flare – hence the name – as you witnessed earlier today.

“Unfortunately, that is a long, difficult, and dangerous journey. Because Flares rarely appear more than twice a century, I usually make it my business to oversee their training. If Cadance were significantly older, I could entrust her with the task. However, as the world stands today, I am the only pony capable of mentoring your daughter.”

Celestia let her words hang in the air, hoping that the implication was clear enough. It was not.

“So – so you’ll teach her?” Twilight Velvet asked. “You’ll help her with her magic? I – it’s funny, really. She always kept going on and on about wanting to raise the sun. She even imagined she could feel it at times. We didn’t have the heart to tell her she’d never be able to. But this is a good substitute.”

This time Celestia did frown, and both parents knew exactly what it meant.

“I am sorry,” whispered Celestia. “I truly am. I am in a desperate time crunch right now, and not a political or personal one. I would not be able to give her all the attention she would require.”

Surprisingly to Celestia, it was Night Light who quietly sobbed. Twilight Velvet, on the other hoof, choose to shout.

“How can you do that? She needs you more than anypony else, and you won’t help her! Just look at her! She has a cutie mark in magic now! What do you think will happen to her when we tell her that she’ll never be able to use magic again?”

Celestia took a deep breath without showing it and said, “She shall not be completely without magic. She is too powerful for the suppressor to completely counteract her. A little bit of her strength shall seep out and allow her a few weak spells like telekinesis. She will be one of the weakest unicorns, but she her magic shall remain available to her.”

“So what? Do you know what we ground her for? For studying magic hours after her bedtime! Magic she’ll never be able to cast again because you won’t help her!”

Night Light interrupted his wife’s tirade with a hug. That was all she needed to fall into tears herself. No more angry words were flung, but the tension in the room only worsened.

Celestia turned her attention to Twilight Sparkle and away from the filly’s parents. “She is still young, and she shall grow stronger with age. With a little luck, she may grow strong enough to reach average levels even with the suppressor on. After…a long time…I shall try my hardest and then some to teach her.

“However, I offer an advance warning. Flares not taught from a young age generally are unable to learn control without resorting to extreme measures. I have only heard tale of one Flare to overcome such a barrier.”

“Who?”

“The ‘Father of Magic’, Star Swirl the Bearded. It could be just a legend, though. He lived long before I was born. I do not want to unnecessarily raise your hopes.”

“Not when you could so easily fix everything right now,” snapped Twilight Velvet.

Celestia did not flinch – she never flinched – but it did take her a second to find her voice again.

“If Twilight Sparkle ever finds herself in need of anything, ask Cadance to inform me, and she shall have it. You are welcome to stay in the castle for as long as you wish while she recovers. I know Cadance will gladly show you where everything is, and I expect she should be overjoyed to share a room with you. I shall send her to you shortly.”

Before anything else could be said, Celestia teleported away and reappeared in her bedroom.

Finally free to sigh, Celestia thought, That went about as well as expected.

“Twilight? What’s wrong?”

Snuggled against Princess Celestia, Twilight was reading a book about magic and silently crying. The book only held things she already knew, but it was always good to review.

“It’s nothing, Princess.” Twilight touched her horn with a hoof where there was not a ring of pure evil. “I’m just sad this is only a dream. Again… For the thirty-ninth time… A-And this time I know it’s a dream, and that makes it s-so much worse.”

The princess pulled Twilight forward with her wing and nuzzled her affectionately.

“My dear faithful student, this isn’t a dream.”

“Yes it is!” Twilight sank into the princess’s soft coat and repeated, “Yes it is…”

“Shh… Dear Twilight, you’re not in a dream. This is real. You’re my student. We spend lots of time together, and everyday you learn a new spell. And, of course, you get to stay up late without getting yelled at. I know how much of a night owl you are. I understand how much it exhausts you to sleep through the night.”

“Stop it,” Twilight cried. “Please… Please, I can’t take it anymore.”

Twilight phased through the wing that bound her as if it were an illusion and ran out of the room, trailing tears behind her. She ran endlessly through the bizarre geometry of Canterlot Castle in her dream, never growing tired or even short of breath.

Finally, her mind had decided she had run enough, and her legs gave out in an empty bedroom. With the last of her energy, Twilight commanded a blanket to come to her without magic, and she cocooned herself in it so she could cry in peace.

Minutes, or perhaps hours, passed without Twilight being disturbed. She never left her cocoon once the entire time.

Why? Why can’t I at least enjoy my dreams? They’re – they’re all I have left…

Twilight felt herself be picked up in somepony’s magic. Or at least the blankets were. For all she knew, she might have just been along for the ride.

“Go away! I don’t want to see you!”

Whatever figment of her imagination that was bothering her beyond her covers paid her no heed and continued unwrapping her. Irritated, Twilight tried disposing of that part of her dream to no avail.

“I said go away…” Twilight murmured. “Please just leave me alone.”

Once the blanket was fully unwound, Twilight nearly plopped to the floor, but she was caught with the same magic that had been manipulating the blanket. She was then gently placed on the ground facing somepony she had never seen before.

Somepony with the same stunning, regal beauty that Princess Celestia had.

Somepony with a pure black coat and an æthereal mane and tail that held the stars themselves.

Somepony with wings and a horn.

Somepony of incredible stature that dwarfed Twilight’s meager height and rivaled even the princess.

And her eyes, they were turquoise, and her pupils were familiar. Twilight could never forget any moment, any sense, any agony – both mental and physical – of her exam. This alicorn’s eyes were just like the eyes of the dragon she had hatched: long and narrow slits that seemed to peer into a pony’s very essence, both terrifying and mesmerizing, and yet strangely appealing.

When she spoke, it was with the same song-like quality as Princess Celestia.

“Hello, Twilight.”

Nearly petrified, Twilight stammered, “W-who are y-you?”

The alicorn smiled and said, “I have many names, my dear Twilight, but I believe you would wish to know me as Luna. Or the forgotten diarch of Equestria, if you are interested in history.”

Her curiosity overcoming her more primitive instincts, Twilight asked, “Diarch? As in…a princess? Why would I dream about you? What are you exactly? Where did you come from? Or I guess rather what memories do I have that led me to dream about you? Are you just some sort of coping device for” – Twilight felt herself mentally stumble as she tried to put words to her situation – “my life…”

Luna smiled and sat down, beckoning Twilight to come closer.

“I am no mere denizen of your dreams, Twilight. I am a dreamwalker; I am a real pony who has come to visit you as you sleep. And yes, I am a princess. But with you, I would much prefer to be informal, just like how you are with my adopted niece, Cadenza.”

“Cadance? Niece? But wouldn’t that mean you’re the princess’s sister?”

Nodding, Luna said, “Indeed I am.”

Flying into full panic, Twilight backed off and fell into a deep bow. “I’m so sorry I shouted at you. And for treating the princess in my dreams so poorly earlier. And for being so inf–”

Luna put a hoof to Twilight’s mouth. “It is quite alright, Twilight. My sister and I are…not on particularly good terms. Feel free to vent your frustrations with her as much as you wish. I, at least, shall understand completely.

“And unlike her, I would not see your talent be as a curse to you.”

Twilight’s eyes went wide. “You mean…” she began, not daring to finish her sentence lest she unnecessarily raise her own hopes.

“Twilight Sparkle, unicorn Flare and perhaps the strongest one to appear in millennia, I would ask you to be my student in the art of magic.”

Before even an instant had passed, Twilight shouted, “Yes!” Then bouncing around in a circle around Luna, she continued shouting, “Yes,” over and over.

In the meanwhile, Luna had enjoyed a dignified laugh at Twilight’s antics. After the third lap, she said, “Okay, Twilight, I think I know what your answer is by now.”

Ending her bouncing and blushing, Twilight said, “Oh, um, thank you so much, Pri – er, L-Luna?” Getting a smile and a nod, Twilight managed to smile back.

Amidst Twilight’s nervous fidgeting, Luna asked, “Do you have a question? Or a request? You can say or ask anything you wish.”

“Oh, um… Well… I was just wondering how this is going to work. I mean, I’ve never actually heard of you before, and I don’t think anypony else has, either. Where are you in real life? Will I have to leave Canterlot?”

“I’m afraid that I cannot be with you outside of your dreams, or at least not for many years. I currently reside on the moon, in a sense, and it will be over a decade before the stars align to allow me to return to Equestria.” Twilight’s head drooped, but Luna raised it back up with a hoof. “However, I will spend each and every moment of your unwaking hours with you.”

“Really?”

“Really really. Although, I’ve heard that you are quite the little trouble maker in that regard.”

“Well, now that I have a real reason to get to sleep, I’ll sleep all night!”

Luna shook her head. “Not all night. All day perhaps, but not all night.”

“Huh?” Twilight said as she cocked her head to the side.

“I’d much prefer if we could meet during the day. I have many other ponies vying for my attention at night, and I do not want even a moment of our time together to be interrupted.”

Hesitantly, each word feeling like a death sentence, Twilight said, “I don’t think my parents would let me do that…”

With a mischievous smile, Luna said, “Don’t worry about them. I’ve already spoken with your mother and father, and they were more than happy to oblige my request. They’ll also be homeschooling you from now on so you can practice magic in a more comfortable environment.”

“But I have a magic suppressor on my horn. I can’t even turn a book page anymore.”

“It’s not glued on, though. You can take it off whenever you wish.”

“But Princess Celestia said that I could flare again…”

“Unfortunately, she is correct in that regard. We will do as much practical work in your dreams as we can and as much reading in the real world as possible, but we cannot avoid working with magic outside of dreams as well. That is why we will have to rush.”

“Rush?”

Luna nodded. “We will have to rush to teach you fine control over how much magic you use. Your flares are still weak enough that they will not destroy the suppressor you possess, but there’s no telling how many years we have until that is no longer true. You will likely have to move to a more rural area later in your life.”

Interrupting Twilight before she could object, Luna said, “I have also spoken with your parents about that as well. They did not outright reject the idea – after your brother graduates – and even expressed an old interest in moving to Ponyville.”

“Is there…” Twilight began. It was terribly rude to Princess Celestia to even think about asking the question running through her mind.

“Yes, Twilight?”

“Ah. Um… Is – is there any way I can get rid of my flares completely?”

“N–”

Luna abruptly cut off. She obviously had been about to say no but seemed to reconsider.

There is a way! Princess Celestia lied! Twilight stopped to consider what she had just realized. Princess Celestia lied…

Before Twilight could process that any further, Luna said, “There is one way for you to be truly rid of your flares. But before I say anything, I need you to promise me two things.”

“Anything!”

“First, I need you to keep my teaching you and my existence a secret from everypony except your parents.”

“Even Cadance and Shining?”

“Especially those two,” Luna said firmly.

“O-okay. Sure.” Then with more confidence, Twilight added, “I can do that. What’s the other thing?”

“If I tell you how to rid yourself of your flares, you will not speak of it to anypony, including your parents. You will not even idly speculate about it aloud when you think you are alone. And you will absolutely not under any circumstances ever write it down. Understood?”

Twilight nodded eagerly. As far as she was concerned, magical secrets were the best kind of secrets, and this sounded like the biggest of them all.

“Very well. In that case, please tell me about your foalsitter.”

Caught completely off guard, Twilight said, “Cadance?”

Luna nodded.

“Well, she’s really nice. And she reads with me once in a while. And we sometimes go to the park to play. And she sometimes teaches…taught me magic.” Perking up again quickly, Twilight added, “She even let me ride on her back while she flew once!”

“Oh? How was it?”

“Exhilarating! But terrifying.”

Luna chuckled, “Yes, that about sums up my first time flying as well. So then what is she?”

That sounded so much like a trick question. Hesitantly, Twilight guessed “A princess?”

“No, no. I mean, what species is she?”

“Oh, she’s an alicorn, of course! Right? I mean, she has wings and a horn, and she’s super strong. At least, my brother says she is. It’s not like I get into hoof fights with her or anything.”

Raising an eyebrow, Luna said, “Yes, I have no doubt that he knows exactly how strong she is. Now, has she ever told you about her past?”

“Yeah! She’s told me lots of stories about her filly years and about that evil love stealing pony she beat up. I think her name was Prismia.”

“Beat up? That’s not exactly how I heard the story, but that I suppose the spirit is there. So how did she do it?”

“Well, she didn’t have her magic, so she had to steal the necklace that Prismia was using to steal love with her cunning and guile. First what she did was–”

Luna held up a hoof. “As much as I would love to hear you tell the story, Twilight, we are discussing another topic, and you’ve already stumbled onto the important point. Why didn’t she have her magic?”

“Because she was just a pegasus th–”

Twilight froze both physically and mentally as she connected the dots.

“Yes, she ascended to become an alicorn and surpassed the magical limits of all three pony species.” Luna gave Twilight a suggestive look. “Doing so is deceptively difficult as there are only two steps. First, you must become extraordinarily skilled in your special talent.

“Your cutie mark is in magic, so naturally that is what you must work on. Of course, with me teaching you, you should have no trouble clearing that requirement if you prove truly dedicated. And you will have to be to survive.” Luna’s gaze softened as she added, “I will not sugarcoat your predicament; learning magic without me physically with you will be dangerous.

“Now the second step is less achievable from a hard work perspective. Did my niece tell you what happened to the necklace?”

After finally realizing that Luna was waiting for her to answer, Twilight said, “She said it blew up in their final battle and was destroyed.”

“Technically correct. That is the next step. You need to find a large enough source of magical energy to fuel your ascension. They are precious and far between. Worse, they are always destroyed after use, and if you select one too weak, you die in the attempt.

“That was supposedly how Star Swirl the Bearded met his end in his old age: in a giant magical explosion. Most likely, he was attempting to shed his mortal coil and did so in the wrong way.

“Anyway, there is only one set of artifacts that I can think of that are both safe and are singularly reusable, if only rarely. I give you this task as homework, Twilight Sparkle. In your waking hours, you must track down and recover the Elements of Harmony, wherever they are, before I return to Equestria.”

Twilight wanted to say she could not do it, that there was no way she could find a legendary set of magical artifacts she had never heard of whose location was obviously not known to Luna herself. But the h word had been invoked, and Twilight was not about to admit she could not do her homework.

“The Elements of Harmony,” Twilight repeated to help her memorize the name. “Do I need to keep them secret, too?”

“Hmm… I do not think it necessary, but your interest in them could draw unwanted attention upon yourself. I would urge you to err on the side of caution and avoid discussing them with anypony likely to come into direct contact with my sister.

“Perhaps… Yes, I think so. I believe it would benefit your education if I spent some time teaching you the art of deception over our years together.”

A bit off-put, Twilight asked, “You mean like lying?”

“There is a time and a place for lying, Twilight, but lies are like an open wound. They fester and grow the more important they are, and they often become difficult to manage. While they do have their place, it is far better to rely on ponies making their own ill-formed conclusions from the truth.

“But there are many other means of misdirecting ponies, including a few tricks of the female persuasion I will not teach you until you are much older.”

Hurrying along, Luna said, “But that is neither here nor now. As much as I would love to begin our lessons immediately, I’m afraid that I am quite unprepared. It has been a long time since I have taught anypony, and I will need to get myself organized.”

“Are – are you going to leave? I know you said you have other ponies waiting for you… I know, but…but I really don’t want to go back to my dreams. I don’t want to worry that this isn’t real, even for a second. I – I just–”

Luna scooped Twilight up with her hooves and pulled her in for a hug.

“My dear Twilight, I will stay with you until you awaken anytime you wish. Your dreams – sweet or otherwise – will never be able to torture you again.”

“Thank you,” Twilight whispered. “Thank you so much.”

Luna said nothing, choosing instead to tighten her hug and rub Twilight’s mane.

“It’ll all be okay, Twilight. I’ll never leave you to twist in the winds as my sister would.”

And unbeknownst to Twilight, Luna’s face and grin could be described only as exultant.

Author's Note

Hey, not dead (9/13/17). I've read through this entire story and performed minor edits now that it's finished (I say without having posted the last chapter) to make it all fit together better. The earlier chapters have more significant deltas, but overall, the story is largely unchanged for it. There were a few chapters I wanted to edit more extensively, but what's done is done and cannot be undone.

Well, there is the backspace key...

Anyway, if things look slightly different, it's the world that's wrong, not you. You know, probably.

Chapter Twenty Five - Twilight's Fate

The End

Author's Note

I thought I would go on a bit longer, but this seemed as good a place to end as any. But fear not! There will be a continuation starring alicorn Dash, and I promise it will contain absolutely everything that will hurt you and make you cry. I expect the next chapter to be out tomorrow or the day after.

Enjoy your April. (This was, of course, an April Fool's Day joke, if the link here did not make it obvious)

I have been informed that the image is by Cosmic Unicorn, who appears to be quite talented.