Nopony could say that Twilight Sparkle didn’t have a great many things. Well of course they could, but nopony would really believe it, because she did. Twilight Sparkle had a lot of things that a lot of ponies could only fantasize about.
She had respect. And she had power. Power over magic, and power over ponies. Maybe more than she was comfortable with at times.
She had connections. A well placed family. She’d had the ear of every princess before she herself had ever joined them in that prestige.
And friends. The greatest of friends, more than Twilight Sparkle could have ever asked for or imagined receiving. Yet received them she had, and from then on the world had prostrated itself before her. Nothing was beyond them when they were together.
Twilight Sparkle had a castle. And a town that technically maybe was her demesne, which is like a domain but with better groundskeeping.
What Twilight Sparkle did not have was a bed. And this would have surprised lots of ponies, as even ponies who went without much respect, or power, connections or even alicorn audiences were frequently known to at least have the comfort of their own beds.
But that was what it was: Twilight Sparkle, alicorn princess of friendship, did not have a bed she called her own. Oh, there was a thing, in her castle, a raised dais of sorts in a secluded, crystal lined room that could possibly have been intended to be hers as such, but it was not a bed. Not to her.
Whenever she’d gone there the only feeling she felt was a faint but persistent unease about the place. The magic of harmony had tried, it really had. Every smooth, gleaming corridor and geometrically polished arch leading to the innermost sanctums were a testament to the affectionate efforts of that powerful magic.
If only it had had some, oh...prior experience in the home construction and interior design industries. Twilight wouldn’t have minded at all if the untempered powers that be had, say, subcontracted out to working ponies who regularly built and furnished homes as their professions. Twilight wouldn’t have judged the magic at all.
But no, she had her great big glowy castle thingy sticking up like a very pretty zit from the face of the otherwise idyllic Equestrian countryside. Ponies from the town were drifting in and out throughout the day, snapping photos and generally doing the tourist thing. Twilight didn’t like it, though she understood why they did, and the pretense of something filling this very new, very empty place was some small relief to her.
She hadn’t settled in yet; she hadn’t even really settled down. It’d been a week since Tirek’s conquest had been stopped in its tracks, and that was amazing. A week. It seemed a distance that had to be measured as a whole epoch, that the world had spun on from that event by a million miles. In a very literal sense, it had.
In another sense it felt hardly as if she’d even caught her breath, that if she went out to them, the craters she’d find would still be warm. They weren’t, she knew this but that was how she felt.
So here she was, Twilight Sparkle, in her castle. She still hadn’t taken to sleeping on her sparkly platform. A crystalline mattress, even one as glowy as this, was not about to displace the classical, soft, conventional mattress any time soon. Harmony had meant well, really.
Leaving the seemingly predesignated chambers to gather dust (there was no dust, none at all) Twilight Sparkle had taken to temporary measures. A smallish, boxy room just to the left and round a corner from the main entrance to be exact. That’s where she’d retreated to. Possibly it’d been meant to be a storage room of some sort, but for the time being Twilight Sparkle had instead colonized it with a single monstrous heap of assorted blankets and pillows, all variously thrust upon her in this protracted hour of need by her friends. Applejack had given up the thick and hoof-crafted quilt of her own bed; it brought with it a warm, musty scent in which Twilight found indescribable comfort in this otherwise anxious time.
There were other smells, each wafting across her awareness like the niches in some olfactory ecosystem. Sugar and clean linen, hints of sweat and feathers, the odd strands of hair, pony and otherwise. A tray of crumbs, some on the floor, with a few more surely forevermore mixed into the heap rested a hoof’s groping distance from where Twilight had extricated herself from the pile this morning.
She hadn’t been alone. Pinkie Pie and she had stayed up late, huddled up in the warmth of the blankets and the glow of Twilight’s horn, giggling at all manner of inane and silly things. She had slept deeply, woke reluctantly, and had only been lured away into the reflected light of morning by Pinkie’s mastery of all things baked.
Pinkie Pie hadn’t stayed, so Twilight was alone for the moment, but soon enough she would come back, her or another. Twilight suspected that her friends had talked amongst themselves and in their understanding had agreed to continuing these supposedly spontaneous nightly sleepovers.
For the moment though, she was alone with her thoughts and her oasis of soft things.
This was the only room in the entire castle that had any smell to it at all. Resting her eyes, she browsed through each scent as if they were familiar titles on a shelf, and she need only flick open the cover to immerse herself in a living memory.
It was only a metaphor, now. Prior to Tirek’s usurpation of Equestria it never had been. Never. Not once. For all the span of her life before that moment Twilight Sparkle had always had literal shelves covered in literal books, and every minute of it had been awesome. But now? Now it was only a metaphor.
Those times when she found herself particularly anxious she felt she could almost catch the smell of burning, though; it was always just around the next corner or through the next door.
There was a lot to be thankful for, she knew. Tirek had amassed incredible magical potential. If he hadn’t been a selfish, evil creature and an eminent threat to Equestria, Twilight Sparkle would have been academically infatuated with the learning potential the dark centaur presented. But he had been selfish, and evil; an eminent threat, and she’d had to deal with it in less than scholarly terms.
Twilight Sparkle stood in what was one of the castle’s larger, but just as empty, spaces. It’d be a cellar or basement of sorts, whatever she chose, when she was ready. What she would have had; though, given the choice, were her books. All the books, even the ones that technically had belonged to the library and by extension the public, were hers. As their librarian, they were hers to keep.
Had been hers. And she hadn’t been given that choice. Tirek had seen to that. She doubted he’d known or cared about the particulars of why destroying the library-tree would hurt her, only that it would.
And had.
The tightness in her chest was broken by Pinkie Pie’s wheeze, a gut-wrenching drawing of air that the mare took as she slumped through the archway. Her side, glinting with hints of sweat, rose and fell.
Twilight rushed to her. “Pinkie!”
“I’m back,” she said weakly.
Squeezing a hoof under her chest, Twilight helped lift Pinkie to her hooves, brushing at her sides with her wings. “But you only left a little while ago!”
Pinkie Pie nodded with a note of pride even as she shivered with exhaustion. “Ta-da.”
“I don’t-”
Pinkie giggled, which lead to coughing, which lead to a renewed fervour to breath. “All the way there. All the way back.”
Realization dawned on Twilight Sparkle. “You ran? The whole way?”
Pinkie nuzzled her mane against Twilight’s neck as her breathing, while still heavy, finally started to calm down. “And did my morning work! It’d be really silly just to run there and back.”
Soft. Fudge and icing sugar. Still hot from her run, and smelling salty-sweet. Twilight took it in. “Oh Pinkie, you didn’t have to do that.”
Pinkie gasped, jumped free of Twilight and shot upright. “Course I did! You were getting mopey again, weren’t you?”
Taking a step back, Twilight waved her hoof, dismissing the notion hurriedly. “What? I-”
Pinkie Pie cried out and flung her hooves around the alicorn. “You totally were! Stop being sad! Stop it!” Gasping, she called out over her shoulder, “Boneless, where’s my backup? Boneless? Boneless II The Second, I need backup in here pronto!”
Twilight giggled as she delicately detached herself from Pinkie’s grasp to turn and gesture the blanket hoard. “Boneless II The Second is still in there somewhere, I think.”
“Ah,” Pinkie Pie nodded with serious approval. “Holding the fort. Good work, Boneless. Keep it up!” Instantly she turned back to Twilight. “So what’s the plan, chief?”
“Plan? No, there’s no plan.” Twilight stared with longing at the colourful, messy pile. “I thought maybe I’d walk the halls a bit more today, learn my way around this castle a bit better.”
“Try again.”
“What did you say?”
“Try again,” Pinkie chirped. “I meant plan as in fun, not, you know, stuff. So try again. What’s the plan, chief?” she sing-songed, dramatically gesturing Twilight to carry on; if not with the tune, than at least the spirit of cheer.
Twilight felt rather put on, staring at the ground, her hooves, the far wall, the ground again. “Oh. Well, in that case. Um. I don’t really know. I don’t really feel like doing much of anything, to be honest.” She sat at the edge of her blanket heap. “Sorry.”
Pinkie Pie’s silence, in a manner of speaking, was louder than her usual chatty self. Twilight looked up from her figurative navel-gazing to see the pink pony squinting through a tight-lipped, almost angry looking frown.
“This is worse than I thought,” The mare said flatly. With all due seriousness she said, “Mopey and not-do-ee-feely-wanty,” and smacked her hooves together as she took on a look of determination. “Right. Twilight, how do I stop you being sad?”
“That’s ridiculous, I’m not sad,” said Twilight quickly, forcing a laugh to argue her point. “I’m fine.”
Pinkie’s eyes narrowed and there was an audible huff of pink pony breath. Letting herself fall onto the outermost blankets, she rolled herself methodically into a fluffy tube. Her expression did not change through this; though, her hooves just poked out the back. “I hate that word,” she grumbled as she completed another slow rotation, dragging more softness around herself. “Fine. Fine always means not-fine.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
With grunts and wriggles Pinkie Pie struggled to turn herself about in a caterpillar-y manner. “You don’t be ridiculous!” At that the Pie-rrito managed an impressive bend, flinging itself well into the air before burrowing voraciously down into the blanket mound. Bore-ito, in that case? A passing tremor of the mountain and a distant avalanche of pillows announced the passing of the moment.
Twilight Sparkle caught herself smiling, just a little bit, but it was nice. She lifted the edge of her fluffy retreat and peering closer poked her nose into the sudden heady mixture of a dozen subtle, sudden memorable smells. She breathed in the richness of it with a deep breath. “What are you even doing in there?”
“Lurking,” came the muffled reply. “Lurking and thinking. Or plotting. Scheming, maybe?”
Twilight pushed gently through the first layer, a double-stitched, thickly quilted patchwork affair of yellows and blues, the odd misaligned patch of green adding a character to this blanket all its own. “You know you don’t have to worry, right? I’m not sad, really.” Another deep breath; inexplicably soothing.
Twilight was about half ways in now, digging her way forwards by increments as her hips pushed her further in. “How big did we even make this thing?” she mumbled in the warm, inclusive dark.
There was a sort of tectonic shrug that shifted the geology about slightly. “I ‘unno,” Pinkie Pie said simply from somewhere in the depths. “Noone said to stop.”
“I suppose...” Something decidedly un-fluffy bumped against Twilight’s nose. She squirmed to bring a hoof forwards. “I found Boneless II The Second, anyway.”
“Or he found you,” Pinkie Pie said with unnecessary drama.
“Um, no. I pretty much definitively found him. You see, he’s a rubber chicken.”
“Aww, Twilight! Don’t say that. Boneless I turned into a super-duper special Harmony key and helped save the world. The world!” she stressed, “And Boneless II is soon-to-be famous travelling act! So it’s only natural that Boneless II The Second is really anxious to prove himself, too. I keep telling him that it’s alright, though...”
It was hard to know straight from not in here. What with all the folded clumps one had to crawl their way down the natural channels through, like water of the aquifers. For all Twilight knew, she’d turned herself sideways by now. Pushing, kicking and with a generally huffy amount of effort, she dug her way forwards, whatever that forwards happened to be now.
Seconds past in relative silence. Twenty. Forty. A minute. Two. Five. Or maybe it’d only been thirty seconds. In here, without any reference points to time it was hard to tell. Slumped under the comforting weight of blankets Twilight paused and listened.
“You really think I’m sad about something?” she asked, mindful to keep the patch of feathers she’d burrowed her way into from getting up her nose. “Why is that?”
“Not just me,” murmured Pinkie Pie. “It’s all of us. We see it. We feel it. This whole thing has really got you down.”
“It’s not that bad.”
A sudden strength enveloped Twilight. Hooves wrapped around her. The air warmed with the familiar icing sugar scent of Pinkie as she held Twilight. “But it’s still bad?”
Twilight surrendered to the sneak-hug. “I have no idea how you managed to do that,” she murmured. She nestled her head under Pinkie Pie’s chin and rested. “You’re warm.”
“And you’re sleepy. But sad, too. Weepy-sleepy.”
Twilight Sparkle yawned. “Mhmm.”
She lay like that for a time, not quite thinking and not quite sleeping, Then: “Ow. Ow!”
“Sorr-rry-y!” Pinkie Pie stammered, her body flinching and convulsing. “It’s a doozy! It’s a doozy!”
Twilight huddled up under the erratic blows as the Pinkie Sense played itself out.
“Left knee... other left knee... ear lobe?! Scratchy eyelash... kicky leg... tholoffy tppthonng...”
It ended, or possibly continued, with a case of hiccups. “Oh!” Pinkie giggled as she bounced into Twilight. Another spurious hiccup came as a jolt that Twilight could feel all along her back and tightly pressed wings. “Wow!”
It took a moment’s concentration for Twilight to get her thoughts back together. Crackling and popping, both ponies disappeared in a flash of sparks to be deposited neatly in the clean, sterile air on the clean, sterile floor of Twilight’s large, empty castle.
Twilight grumbled for a second; she didn’t like this, and she had been very comfortable. But something had annoyed her even more than that. “Pinkie, ponies don’t have ear lobes.”
“I know! But what am I supposed to call the standy-uppy bit? Wait, no! That’s not important!” Pinkie Pie was like an explosion trying to stand still. She grasped at Twilight’s face and, smooshing up the alicorn’s cheeks, brought their faces close together.
“Think about the doozy, Twilight, the doozy! What did it mean?”
Twilight struggled to get away and, if possible, breathe.“You mean you don’t know?”
“Oh! Wait, yes! Yes!” Pinkie Pie drew a rib-creakingly deep breath and turned a seemingly random direction. “RARITYI’MBORROWINGYOURWORDOKAY?” She turned back, heaved another quick breath and drew herself up again. “Iddeeaaa!” she cried.
“We’re going to get you back your books!”
“What?”
“All those old books you had at the traders’ fair! Oh, it’ll be super fun, trading that and this for this and that and winning them all back one by one. That’ll be sure to cheer you up!”
The mare held her smile, but in the protracted silence it creaked uncertainly.
Twilight Sparkle’s bangs fell over her face, and the rest of her sagged. “Pinkie Pie...I kept all my old books, remember? They were in the library. In the basement, just by the stairs. I’d still been meaning to unpack them again.” She shrugged and grimaced. “Not that it matters much now. I’m sorry, Pinkie.”
“No, no no no no,” groaned Pinkie, catching her temples in her hooves with every utterance. “She kept those books, you pink dummy!” she growled under her breath. Then she gasped. “Twilight! Don’t go! Just wait, give me a chance. I know it’s the right idea!”
Twilight blew a puff of air that brushed her mane from her face. “The doozy told you that?”
“Yes!” Pinkie Pie wailed. Twilight recoiled. It worried her to see the carefree pony work herself up so much about something.
Pinkie Pie growled. Grimacing, she fell to her back, clutching at her head as she rolled side to side. “Books books books where have I seen books books seen books Twilight’s books books for Twilight Library books her library books what’s that thing.”
Then Pinkie wheezed a great intake of air, her eyes shining, her rocking stilled instantly, inertia be damned. “The thing, Twilight! That place that’s the thing! Quick, you have to tell me. Oh what was it, with the ice cream and you dressing me up and the hide-and-go seek!”
Twilight frowned. She was more than a little concerned. Pinkie Pie could get so invested in things. And for all her doozies and good intentions, it wasn’t helping. Tirek had happened, it was already done with. The dust (there wasn’t any, but still) was settling, supposedly. “Do you mean the Starswirl the Bearded Archives?” she asked warily.
Pinkie Pie nodded with desperate, frantic breathlessness from the floor.
“Those scrolls aren’t mine to take, you realize? I can’t just take someone else’s things to replace the ones I’ve lost. Least of all from the Royal Archives.”
Pinkie Pie was red in the face, her cheeks bulging as she flailed upright. “Not those, you numpty!” she boomed. “The time-travel spell!”
Twilight whinnied inadvertently, her wings shooting right up autonomically. “The time-travel spell?! You’re not seriously suggesting-”
A rush of air brought the mares nose to nose. “I am so super duper double dipper breakfast cereal serious right now,” said Pinkie with chilly flatness. In her more usual tone, she bounced and pleaded. “Come on, Twi. That’s the idea, I know it is! You do the thing, then we grab the books and” - she giggled - “book it!”
Each way Twilight tried to go there was Pinkie Pie, bounding in front of her. Their hooves clicked and scraped along the immaculately shiny floor of crystal, crunching the occasional crumb too. “No, that’s absolutely crazy...”
“So absolutely crazy that it might just make me say a cliche?” Pinkie Pie snortled. “It totally almost did. Now that’s crazy. Oh! But it really will work, too! Really, it will!”
“It’s still no, Pinkie! Really, time doesn’t work like that! You can’t just do what I think you’re suggesting!”
Pinkie Pie sidled up to Twilight, snuggling herself well under Twilight’s wing. “You’re right,” the mare purred. “I probably can’t. Probably. But you probably can. Besides, how can we know that we weren’t already going to have had a time-travel book rescue that already hasn’t happened yet but will have had happened five minutes from last week once you just say yes come on Twilight plllleeeease!”
Pinkie was prostrated on the floor pleading her case. Twilight hugged her gently, laying a hoof on her shoulder. “Look, Pinkie. I appreciate you trying to help. I really, really do. And I can admit that...all that stuff you just said is possible, in so much as any theory on how time works is possible. I don’t know.” She scowled, and spoke from the bitten down corner of her mouth. “Of course, some of my books had some fascinating notions...No,” she growled. “No,” she reiterated, more softly. Then she sighed.
“I can’t just use time travel to get the things I want.” Giving doe-eyed Pinkie Pie a hug, Twilight marched herself right back into the expansive blanket-nest.
Ten seconds later, she reemerged.
“I can totally just use time travel to get the things I want. And I really, really want my books back,” she growled.
“Oh, oh, remember the part where you blew up a mountain? Do it like that! But with less mountain blowing upping.”
Twilight took to an empty bit of floor. She stood firmly, her horn up and wings open. There was a sound almost but totally unlike silence - a very loud sound outside of audible frequencies. As it rose it became like a groan, rising and falling, perhaps swinging between closeness and a great distance. The air shook visibly, and lines of coruscating sparks spun around. Magical breezes tussled Twilight Sparkle’s hair.
A sudden impact nearly toppled her. “I’m coming too!”
Two eyes of blinding brilliance looked back in frantic exasperation. “Pinkie, no! This spell is difficult enough-” the alicorn grunted as Pinkie straddled her, waving one hoof in the air, leaving swirls through the gathering magic.
“Pfft, ‘difficult!’ Just work that alicorn mojo, girl! Let’s do this!”
It was either abort the spell and push Pinkie away, or Twilight could, as had been aptly stated, work ‘that alicorn mojo’ and actualize the spell. She had all of a split second to decide, and with the magic reaching its critical threshold there was no time to deliberate.
With a flash and a lingering cackle, they disappeared. It would have swirled the dust, if there had been any to swirl. A few blankets were ruffled, though.
With a flash and a delighted cackle, they appeared. It would have swirled the dust, and did, lots of it, so that Pinkie Pie’s cackle quickly became a choked hacking. She flopped to the floor, wheezing and giggling. Wiping at herself, she only stirred the dust up more.
“What a ride! Five minutes from now totally was last week! I called it! I am a super good persuader-pony, aren’t I Twilight?”
An airy, translucent stream of energies connected Pinkie Pie to Twilight, and her to the still-churning rift. From the look of Twilight, however, that was the least interesting thing. “We’re in my tree,” she said in awe, her voice resonating a little supernaturally. “We’re actually in my tree.”
A low rumble shook the floor and knocked Twilight from her reverie. “The fight. I’m fighting Tirek right now. We don’t have much time.”
Pinkie Pie was up in a flash, albeit a very dusty one. “Right! I’ll grab-”
Though her eyes were suns and her horn ablaze, Twilight Sparkle’s smile was affectionate. “No. I’ve got it from here.”
It started in silence, at least, silence from the two ponies. At the very edge of hearing there came a sound. A popping, a fizzle; the sound stars would make at the very moment they become visible in the evening sky. Twilight’s magic grew brighter, and the sound louder, more frequent, until it was a single unbroken cacophony of sparks.
“Oh, wow,” Pinkie intoned as something tumbled past her side. She had seen Twilight levitate books before, levitate them by the dozen, even, but this... She pressed herself up against the wall to make way for the procession.
Books trooped steadily through the air, streams of hundreds that flowed into rivers of thousands, all converging over Twilight into the rift. As Pinkie Pie watched, a box shivered and tossed open its flaps. A trickle of books floated up and joined the exodus.
Another distant quake shook the library.
“Uh, Twilight?”
“We’re nearly there!” The basement had been emptied, but more still floated down from upstairs.
Another quake. This one nearly knocked Pinkie Pie off her hooves and split the air with an angry roar. “Twilight! The next one blows us up! I don’t want to blow up!”
“There!”
Pinkie Pie scrambled at air, and before she knew it she was flying headlong back through the rift. “You have to come too!” she cried, shrinking into a tiny, distant speck.
Twilight Sparkle hesitated only a moment. She lowered her head and whispered, “Goodbye. And thank you.” Wiping at her drippy nose, the alicorn ascendant let the airy tether jerk her back like a bungee cord.
In the gap between times she felt by a pinched-off bit of fire and lightning. When the rift spat out Twilight Sparkle and fizzled out completely, she was singed and more than a little sooty.
“Twilight!” said Pinkie Pie as she scooped the alicorn up in a crushing embrace. “You were cutting it close!
“I’m starting to think that the time-travel spell doesn’t let you do it any other way,” she said, more than a little muzzy. “We did it,” she mused.
“I know! How crazy was that?”
Twilight was shaky now, in her legs and in her mind. “Crazy enough. Too crazy. We shouldn’t have done that at all.”
“But we did, unless you want to go back in time to stop ourselves from going back in time?”
“NO! No. Just...no.”
“Great, because look!” Pinkie gestured with an expansive sweep of her hoof. “Look!”
Gone was the crystalline floor from which they’d started. In its place were books, stacks and stacks of them, a topography with valleys and hills, plains and precarious peaks; it made for a continent of words.
Pinkie made a sneaky grab at the nearest. She flipped through its pages. “Ah,” she said sagely. “It’s pinna, not earlobe. Pinna. Thank you, dictionary,” she said, patting the book gently as she put it back.
Twilight’s wings were hanging loose. She sank to her backside and dragged a hoof across her forehead, brushing her spell-frazzled mane back. “Wow.”
Pinkie Pie grinned. “I know, right?”
“Wow.”
“Eh, Twilight?” said she, nudging the alicorn in the side.
“It’s...it’s...” Twilight’s jaw set, and she stood up. “It’s going to take me days, no, weeks to organize and reshelve all these!” she growled. “There’s going to have to be shelves, firstly, and filing, and let’s not even talk about my old shelving system, what was I thinking? I have to get started right away!” The alicorn took two steps and slumped, but was readily caught by Pinkie Pie. “Okay,” Twilight Sparkle murmured into Pinkie’s coat. “in a little bit. That was a lot of magic, after all, even for me.”
Pinkie Pie was beaming with joy. “Yep! Just enjoy the moment for now. This time you have enough time to take your time. Besides,” she winked slyly, “I think I know a few ponies who’d be willing to help.”
Twilight huffed a weak chuckle, breathing deeply of that old-book smell. “How are we possibly going to explain this to them?”
Pinkie Pie giggled, shedding dust everywhere. “That’s easy, silly! We’ll just say that it was Twilight Sparkle being Twilight Sparkle!”
Author's Note
Something that took longer to write than it should have, but was nonetheless satisfactory. Much better than the orginal draft, that's for certain.
