Darkness and silence filled Twilight Sparkle’s bedroom as she began to rouse from her sleep. Her slumber felt unusually restful; she was able to easily open her eyes and sit up the moment her consciousness was fully replenished. Looking around the room, few things caught her sight: Spike was asleep in his basket, the moon was high in the sky, her room was in its usual organized disarray.
One thing did catch her eye, however, and once caught her eyes refused to leave it. Perhaps the strangest feeling Twilight had ever felt sprung into her, its focus within her mind and around her head. She felt the emotional tension of panic starting to slowly surge upwards from deep in her chest. Her senses attempted to make her scream, but her throat went dry and her voice was but the raspy sound of air choking.
The thin air around Twilight’s face felt damp and thick, more so than what she knew to be normal. Breathing was a task she had to focus on for fear of becoming unable to.
The figure that formed in front of her window was the ever-so-familiar visage she woke up to see every morning. The purple eyes glowering back at her, illuminated by the moonlight, reflected anger and annoyance on a level Twilight rarely saw in this pony. The normally bright smile usually worn was replaced with a grimace, which warned of potential wails of frustration.
Much of the surroundings appeared to Twilight only as different shades of midnight blue, each of them darkened to in their own fashion. Only the area around the other mare had any detail within itself, and all of the detail lay within the window, all too perfectly diffusing and re-reflecting light for its impure entrance to the room.
Attempting to think resulted in confused, disruptive logic Twilight herself didn’t even understand. Even the simplest of thoughts, such as “I’m right here, so I can’t be right there” were greek to her no matter how hard she tried to decipher the situation she awakened into.
“I’m right here, so I can’t be right there.” Funny how much sense the thought made to her, though it really didn’t work in her mind. Perhaps because the thought gave her reason to fear the other mare in the room. She feared her, of course, but not for that reason. Never for that reason. She knew why she was terrified, but she didn’t know what about it terrified her.
The reason for her terror was not knowing what she was looking at. The mare before her was Twilight Sparkle, but it couldn’t be, because Twilight Sparkle was herself. There couldn’t be two. Or could there?
Twilight Sparkle was a filly who was taken under Princess Celestia’s wing as her student to learn magic other ponies never even dreamed of.
Twilight Sparkle was a mare who focused so intently on her studies she found no time for even friendship.
Twilight Sparkle was a mare who focused so intently on her friends, she sometimes scolded herself for not taking care of her studies.
Princess Twilight Sparkle was a mare of respect and reputation, holding a position of great importance and responsibility.
The mare in Twilight’s room started to approach her, her expression becoming calmer, more relaxed. Her eyes closed as she stood by the bed. Twilight panicked.
The mare wasn’t her. She was her. But was she she? Twilight’s thoughts were far too scrambled for her to delve into the mental depression of existential interior conflict. All she knew, in the end, was she was sick of staring at… herself.
Letting out a sigh of exasperation, Twilight turned herself the other way and got up out of bed. She expected the loud creaking and shuffling to wake Spike up, but the baby dragon remained snoring, just turning over as Twilight cautiously tip-hoofed around him. Muffling her clops, she walked over to the window.
Judging from the amount of timid blue light being cast onto the walls around her, Twilight had expected the moon to be full, but was surprised to find a waxing gibbous proudly levitating among the stars. In fact, as Twilight glanced around, things seemed darker outside than they were inside.
Turning around, Twilight’s room was… darker. The silly thought occurred to her that the moon had gone through more than half of a cycle in the time she took to walk around the room. She wasn’t exactly Rainbow Dash, but such an idea was completely preposterous.
On Twilight’s bed, the other mare was lying down on her back, almost appearing as though she’d just sat up. She, too, was looking around the room, completely innocently… despite being a total imposter and trying to sleep in a bed she knew didn’t even belong to her.
The stupid wannabe turned her head to Twilight, an expression stricken of terror and surprise evident on her face the moment she noticed her. Her eyes wide, her mouth ever-so-slightly opened… Twilight noticed the air around her getting heavy and moist again, humidity making it uncomfortable to breathe once more.
She gave up, surrendering her gaze to the floor and closing her eyes. No longer caring to hide her hoofsteps, every scuffle was audible to Twilight until she reached her bed and climbed into it. She expected to be lying next to her imposter, but was surprised to find empty space.
Twilight looked around the room, curiously. Nowhere to be found. Noticeable to her was everything she’d seen before, the blue-lit walls, the darkened corners, the moonlit window, Spike sleeping in his basket… no Twilight Sparkle.
Except she was Twilight Sparkle, and there was one of her in the room.
Only one.
She wanted to keep it that way.
Sleep came in only minutes, though only depending on one’s definition of “sleep.” Twilight realized upon opening her eyes she was asleep the entire time.
The tired grogginess everypony feels when they wake up early in the morning was felt by Twilight at last, rather than a numb alertness which only ensured she would be able to fear her doppelganger…
…Her doppelganger.
Uncertain was Twilight about what her doppelganger meant in her dream, if it was even a doppelganger. No, she knew this wasn’t the case. It was her.
Stating her dream was a meeting between her past self and her future self was a silly understatement to make. Instead, she believed it to be a meeting between her current past self, the pony she was before she became the pony she was going to be, and her future current self, the pony she would once be - both were Twilight Sparkle, though they were different ponies. The dream slowly evolved, and Twilight had become her current future self, the pony she had become after being her current past self, and she had been looking at her past current self, the pony she was before. Two different ponies. Or, technically, four different ponies.
Four different ponies that were all afraid of each other, whether they knew it or not. Naturally only two of them met, but they all knew each other. Why would they fear each other? There is always said to be a lingering discomfort in the idea of changing the pony you are, the scariest thing a pony can do is change themselves… even if they know it’s for the better.
Twilight Sparkle, the mare who valued books over friends, never would have wanted to become Twilight Sparkle, the mare who valued friends over everything else. She would have been terrified of the idea if she saw it coming… but it still happened.
Twilight Sparkle, the mare who valued her friends over everything, would never ever want to become Twilight Sparkle, the mare who valued books over friends. Would she suffer the same fate, though? Change, despite the desire not to?
Twilight stared at the ceiling of her bedroom, the light of the sun starting to slowly leak in through the window.
She sighed. “Come on, Twilight. It was just a dream, right…?”
Just a dream, it was. It couldn’t have possibly held any more meaning than that… could it?
