Reflection

The pink party gal’s party was a total success as far as Mirror knows, he hasn’t had any experiences in these kinds of parties without watching over somebody, namely his twin cousins. But now that he has nothing to do, he’s absolutely stumped on what to do.

Back on Earth, people often never often invite him unless his cousins are what they’re after, leaving Mirror looking after them from the sidelines and keeping him from paying attention to the party itself. It’s always family first.

Because of just that, the party’s atmosphere sends him an itch to just stand at the sidelines and observe; an itch that he is more than happy to comply.

Old habits die hard.

            Seeing the sun lowering from its peak considerably, Mirror excused himself out of the party, “Thanks for the party Pinkie, but I should really get going.” He exited the building and head to his dorm,.

~†~

            After Mirror’s exit, the party started to calm down, hinting the apple siblings to make their exit, “Alright, Big Mac an’ I are gonna head up to the school’s agricultural gardens if ya’ll need us.” followed by an ‘Eeyup’ from Big Mac before leaving for the gardens.

            With the party officially stopped, Pinkie took a second to look at the room before turning into a pink blur zipping throughout the room. Within a few seconds she comes to a stop by Sombra with a clean room and an excited grin on her face. “We need to leave too girls, Sombra promised to help me set up the Sugarcube Corner branch her in campus.” Without any time for a reply, she grabbed Sombra by his collar and dragged him off outside, leaving four mares in the library.

            Twilight, having been left to her thoughts, can’t help but think about Sombra. ‘Why is he still alive? How is he still alive? And why isn’t he hostile?’, but she decided to hold those thoughts; she has utmost faith in her teacher’s decision and the sincere smile she saw on Sombra’s face is a testament of that. Instead, she focused on Rainbow’s behavior at the party, which also didn’t escape Rarity’s notice.

             “Rainbow darling, care to tell us why you can’t take your eyes off our new friend?” Rarity gave her a questioning glance.

            Rainbow froze but answered anyway, “I… I don’t know.”

            Twilight still held her gaze, “What do you mean Rainbow, you were looking at him like he was hiding a knife behind his back.”

            Rainbow winced. She didn’t mean to, but having heard of Earth’s past conflicts burned negative thoughts about Terrans in her mind. If they can produce mass destruction without magic, there’s no telling on what a Terran would do with alicorn powers

            “Give him a chance dear, I don’t know what you think of him but the princess did offer to teach him, and she is a great judge of character.” Rainbow ruffled her wings and walked to the door.

            “Yeah, I’ll think about it, later.” With that she exited the library.

            Rarity waited to make sure her prismatic friend weren’t nearby then adjusted herself on the bench and faced her alicorn friend, “Alright Twilight, spill…”

            Twilight was slightly stunned, “Wha-What?”

            “Don’t play coy dear, you’ve been tense ever since you came back from your office.” Looking at herself, only now did Twilight notice she is clenching her hands. Looking over the rest of her body, she noticed she was sweating. She could feel her body twitching every few seconds as stress racked her thoughts. “Darling please, I know you think that sharing your problems will just be a burden to us, but I assure you that’s what friends are for, isn’t that right Fluttershy?”

            The shy pegasus shifted behind her hair, “Y-yes, we’re here for you Twilight, w-we’ll be happy to help you… I-if that’s okay with you.”

Twilight let out a sigh, her secret was already found out. She was never really good at keeping information to herself. She slumped down in her seat. “Thanks girls, for being understanding.”

“It’s fine dear, now what is causing you to be so high strung?”

Twilight hesitated. “I don’t know how I could put this…” she suddenly found the floor more interesting

“Come on darling, surely it can’t be that bad.”

“It’s not really, the princesses just gave me something to solve. It’s been going bugging them for months now and they can’t make time to continue their research with the papers flooding from Earth.”

“Well, what is it?”

Twilight paused. ‘Is this the right choice? They had said that they’ll help me with this.’

After some thinking she lifted her gaze. “There are reports of something unusual happening to a few Morphs. After the transformation spell was casted to them, they will almost immediately suffer from magical feedback regardless if they’re morphed into unicorns or not, but that’s not the most surprising part...”

She paused with hesitation, but the looks of curiosity on her two friends edged her to continue, “... After recovering from the feedback they will have a mix of the magic of an average gaian and one of the two remaining races. We’ve come to call them hybrids.”

“Is that it? That's not something to be tense about darling." Rarity visibly relaxed, "I suppose it is a little bit of blessing- wait, is Mirror one of them?”

Twilight nodded.

“So, Mirror is not actually an alicorn?”

“Technically, he is, just not fully ascended.”

Rarity motioned her friend to continue.

“According to the princesses data that I ask for,” Twilight blushed at her little confession, “Originally, he was a pegasus-unicorn hybrid: the first morph hybrid that deviated from the others. But then after a while the gaian part of his magic started to develop and the pegasus part began to fade. And I’m almost certain that soon his pegasus magic will disappear fully.”

Crestfallen, Fluttershy gripped her tail on her lap like a vice “Poor Mirror, how is he going to fly when the time comes? He seemed to love the feeling of flight when he told us about his time practicing flying back at the party.” and even though she almost always stay on the ground, still she is terrified of the thought of losing her ability to fly.

Twilight’s mood soured, “I wouldn’t worry about that. There’s something more worse happening to him that losing his ability to fly.” her voice was starting to flatten.

A quiet whimper escaped the meek pegasus’ lips. “Wh-what’s going to happen to him Twilight?”

“He’s going to die.”

~†~

“Come on guys, this rain isn’t gonna place themselves!”

Those words hung in the air above the clouds as the university’s weather team arranged the upcoming storm.

“Fifteen minutes before downpour!”

Patch by patch the pegasi filled the skies above the campus with gray clouds, ready to release their load of water below. Each one of the gray puffs directly being delivered from the great floating city of Cloudsdale as it passes through above them.

“We’ve got ten minutes left. Rest up before we get the clouds going.” Rainbow Dash, captain of the weather team shouted once more seeing as the perfect blanket of rain clouds is already covered her own area of responsibility.

Glancing once more, she spotted a blank hole behind her, “Clear Skies, get me a rain cloud here.”

Answering with an excited ‘Yes ma’am’ the mare flew up the factory to find a cloud, leaving Rainbow to her devices.

She checked down on the clouds getting to ready to take off before she spotted large white wings gliding below the cloud layer, ‘Was that Celestia?’ she checked again noticing the figure’s lack of ethereal hair, ‘That, isn’t Celestia.’

The figure was heading for the patch of trees next to the campus’ edge, ‘Who is that?’ choosing to investigate, Rainbow Dash followed quietly.

The flight didn’t last for long, as soon as the figure reached the mini-forest, it dove down into the canopy, landing on it’s two feet. Now that it stopped, Rainbow finally saw who it was.

“Mirror.” she whispered under her breath

He looked around for anyone near, before going in deeper in the trees with Rainbow tailing him by hopping from branch to branch.

‘What is he doing here.’ She stopped noticing Mirror sitting on the ground a few meters away.

His eyes were closed, concentrating on something… but what?

She was about to ask him, but she spotted it. The change was subtle but was still there, the green grass was slowly becoming darker, as if it’s life was being drained away… and it was.

‘I’ve got to tell Twilight.’

Then came the rain.