They lay on the bed on their bellies with their forehooves hanging off the edge, a hoof’s width separating them. To Cadence, the distance seemed like a chasm, but Twilight needed it to feel safe while navigating risky relationship waters. She also knew that Cadence would rather be in contact and must have restrained herself.

She appreciated the gesture.

To reciprocate, she moved her left forehoof to hold Cadence’s. “What you were so worried about before, was it me?”

“Mostly. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. I promised Shining I would be happy. Maybe I could go out and find ponies their true loves, but I did that because of what Shining and I had. Feeling romantic love caused my cutie mark to appear. I lived with it for so long that I forgot what it’s like not having it. I need it, Twilight. I need it more than anything.”

Twilight felt like she was missing something important. To look at the situation from a psychology standpoint tempted Twilight; its cool, impersonal way to evaluate things had provided her with a fallback in other times of crisis. She knew Cadence wouldn’t appreciate it in the way she did, so she tried the opposite approach.

“Are you worried about not being loyal to Shining?”

“I suppose I am. No,” Cadence said, narrowing her eyes, “actually, I’m not. Building a relationship with you would probably be more loyal to him than not, but it seems like it devalues both relationships by jumping between them so fast.”

“So, what, waiting some arbitrary time period prevents that?” she asked, and the feeling of missing something important grew. “If you wait a year, does that fix it? What about if you only wait a year less a day? What about one day less than that? Or one less than that? Maybe I should even be asking about waiting a century and taking years off that. I mean, after all, what’s a year to us?”

The question rang in Twilight’s ears. A mental connection snapped into place. Neither of them had to worry about watching the other waste away, an opportunity she hadn’t thought to consider before. It had only required Shining’s death to become possible.

Cadence cut her response short as Twilight’s ears shot up, twitching, before they flopped back down. Cadence nuzzled under Twilight’s chin and asked, “Are you okay?”

She didn’t answer but swallowed and tried to get her mind back on track. “Can you honestly say that you would love me if the situation had been better? Do you think the good times and the laughter we’ve shared would bring us together otherwise?” Twilight knew talking herself into something when she did it.

“Yes to both, Twilight. You’re an amazing mare. A bit high-strung at times, but amazing nonetheless.”

Cadence couldn’t miss the wash of love between them as Twilight nuzzled her back. She sighed and leaned to the right until her wing and Twilight’s touched.

“From small acts like sharing your favorite scones to big ones like getting me so much assistance for Ponyville,” Twilight said, nodding towards the cars with the workers in them, “you’ve been so generous to me while I’ve been here. And you’ve shown me so much kindness, too, with all that you did after I returned. Is that devalued by… what’s happened recently?”

“No, no, of course not.” Cadence moved her head so the back of her neck crossed over the front of Twilight’s, and she rested her cheek against Twilight’s. The shallowness of Twilight’s breath contrasted her racing pulse.

“And,” Twilight whispered, “you don’t think this could ruin the magic of our friendship?”

“It could only strengthen it, Twilight.” Cadence’s worries had evaporated from the warmth flowing through her.

Twilight drew her head back, and Cadence moved hers aside, turning to look back. Twilight met her with a kiss. Cadence melted into it, her eyes closing and her head tilting to the side as her lips parted. Twilight interwove her primary feathers with Cadence’s and took Cadence’s lower lip between her own, sending tingles down her chest. The kiss lasted fully two minutes before they pulled back and disentangled their wings.

“You know,” Twilight said, looking into Cadence’s eyes, “I always thought friends made for the best lovers — though I’m admittedly a little biased in that respect.” She giggled. “And now look at us, Friendship and Love… together?”

“As an expert on the subject, I believe I’m qualified to say… yes. But you can’t dangle something like that in front of me — what did you mean by friends making the best lovers?”

“Oh. Well, that is…” Twilight blushed. “Rainbow was quite attractive back in the day. So a few times with her. Pinkie was insatiable.” She hissed in a breath, remembering. “I had to get out of that after a month. I couldn’t keep up, and that was after I ascended.”

“Whoa. You’re kidding, right?”

Twilight shook her head and mouthed a drawn-out “No.”

“Wow. That mare… Still,” she said, “I feel like there’s an ‘and’ waiting.”

Twilight stared at her hooves. “Ardent Overwatch. I watched him rise to Major, and he caught my, well, my ear more than my eye. He took a multifaceted approach to his field, and he was so passionate about everything he did. I figured that, since I was the Princess of Friendship, I should be able to befriend my guards. He was amazing in so many ways.”

She stopped talking, and Cadence put a hoof on her withers while she waited for Twilight to continue.

“I found myself wondering what color our foals would be, and I couldn’t… All this,” she said, gesturing vaguely with a hoof. “I couldn’t. You’re the braver mare, Cadence.”

“Nonsense,” Cadence said as she pulled Twilight into a hug with her wing. “I’m truly sorry for that. You loved him.” It wasn’t a question. “How long ago?”

Twilight sighed. “Thirty-three and a half years in… four weeks.” She shuffled around to roll to her side and wrapped her forelegs around Cadence. “I can get behind this, though.”

“I’m glad,” Cadence said, smiling. “Is there anything you’d like me to do for you?”

“Mmm, no, not really. I would like to finish telling you the story about Pinkie and the laughing gas. Where did I stop, again?”

“It turned mostly to mumbling after the drag race.”

Twilight tossed back her head and laughed. “Oh, you’re going to love what happened next.”

Surrounded by a weather team and a few guards, Cadence and Twilight soared over a cloud bank outside the edge of town. They rode the thermals over the farm that had belonged to Carrot Top, preparing themselves to release the water to the thirsty soil below. Earlier in the day, they had paid a visit to Rainbow Dash, who had given further pointers to Cadence — along with boasting that she could do weather work better than either of them.

Twilight, sporting a new, streamlined mane cut, directed the operation; the normal weather team hierarchy gained a new top position with a princess around, particularly when that princess valued precision.

She called out directions that the others followed exactly until the cloud conformed to the shape of the farm below them. Cadence hovered over a section of cloud above a pond, as Twilight had told her to do. Moving the massive cloud had taken both a gentle touch to avoid ripping it and raw power to move the many pools’ worth of water. Stopping it had been an equally delicate procedure, one that they had begun at the halfway point of the trip and only finished at their destination.

In a way, it reminded her of using the heart — both were huge, primal forces over which she had mastery. Given where Twilight had been forced to position her, she accepted that her level of expertise for this didn’t match her other abilities. She already wanted to improve it, not just because she had made a helpful impact in a pony’s life but also because of how Twilight had talked about it.

The storm began under Twilight’s watch. In a pattern designed to minimize runoff, the pony and her wingmate in the first of ten sections sent a pulse of magic down through the cloud. Seconds later, the sound of rain reached first that team then Cadence. They used that interval to gauge how long to wait between pulses. After the ponies in the first section had sent out a dozen pulses, the ponies in the second area followed the same procedure, while those in the first section pulled back their output to a drizzle. By the third pair, Cadence decided it was not unlike a musical round.

She fell in love with the idea. With her turn approaching, she mentally prepared, not wanting the song of the rain to be ruined. She imagined that Twilight was not beside her but at some unknown point below her. If her magic wanted to reach Twilight, it would have to spread out.

She counted down until she needed to begin, and when the time came, she flicked her wings up and sent a wave of magic skyward. She fell a short span toward the cloud’s surface, and as she fell, the magic curved out and down — almost umbrella-shaped, Cadence thought. She touched down on the cloud at the same time as her magic, but she sprang back up to repeat the process. Twilight, smiling beside her, put only minor effort into her portion of the work. One of the monitors signaled her that Cadence’s efforts were producing torrential downpours.

After the second time through the sequence, the monitors took on a second role: producing lightning. Each time they dove through the cloud, they accumulated a charge and directed it to the ground with an ear-flattening crash. When they resurfaced, a mixture of smoke and steam rose from them, and they grinned with feral delight that permeated the whole group.

Time became something measured in beats on the drum of the cloud, in strikes of lightning, in cycles of light and hard rain. The cloud’s density also measured time, and when it fell too low, time ran out. It had given all the rain they had designed it to produce.

As the others divided up the spent cloud and brought the pieces away to other projects, Cadence turned to Twilight. Though the work had not been physically demanding, their breath came rapidly. Cadence looked around for more clouds and, finding none, asked, “May we do that again soon? Please?”

As the others divided up the spent cloud and brought the pieces away to other projects, Cadence turned to Twilight. “That was amazing, energizing, and somehow therapeutic — I loved it!” she said and did a loop.

“I’m not surprised. I’ve enjoyed it for years. It’s a great way to relieve tension, isn’t it?”

Cadence nodded. “I feel light.”

“I’m glad!” She turned and motioned with her head for Cadence to follow. “I’ve got one more thing I’d like to show you, actually.”

“Oh? What is it?”

“That’s a surprise.”

“Did somepony say ‘surprise’?” a voice yelled.

Twilight was just about to shush her inner Pinkie when she realized that she had actually heard the voice come from below her. There was Pinkie, surrounded by a herd of her grandfoals, who all jumped about and splashed through the puddles.

“I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow, Pinkie!” Twilight called down.

“Okie dokie lokie! Bye bye, love-birdy ponies!”

“How did she…? Never mind. I know better than that.” She waved to Pinkie then followed Twilight away.

A minute later, they arrived at Twilight’s palace and alighted on the balcony of Twilight’s room. The balcony held only one of them at a time, and Twilight smiled as she entered. Cadence came into the rustic, homey room a moment later. It was a little bit of normalcy in the otherwise opulent castle.

“I forgot how reasonable your room is, Twilight. Not a bit of gold or silver in sight.”

“Actually, there’s some of the latter in the mirror over there. But otherwise, I like it this way. It keeps me grounded at the end of the day. But the surprise is down below, in what I like to call ‘the roots.’” She winked. “’Basement’ is just too boring for what goes on down there,” Twilight said as she led on.

As they went through the wings of the palace and descended, the servants sketched bows and welcomed them back. Once they passed below ground level, the temperature dropped, and Cadence stuck closer to Twilight. She didn’t need the extra warmth — she had grown accustomed to coldness long ago — but it made for a convenient excuse.

They came, at last, to a vault door emblazoned with Twilight’s cutie mark. At its center, a single hole waited for Twilight’s horn to unlock it. She slid it into the keyway and sent out a burst of magic to activate the door. Cadence thought that the lock might not even need to recognize if the magic belonged to Twilight or not; the amount of power Twilight had used precluded almost anypony else from using it.

Spider web-thin lines of violet light raced from the keyway out to the tips of the star, which glowed in turn. Seams appeared on the door, and it irised open soundlessly. Cadence noticed that it was as thick as she was tall.

“A little paranoid, are we?”

“Yes, and rightly so, I think,” Twilight said as they entered.

Crystals, calculations, displays, and runes covered every available surface save for in a circle in the middle of the room. At its center, connected to a multitude of devices by scores of wires, stood a horseshoe-shaped mirror. A single solid sapphire made up its frame, which had other gemstones studded on its surface and a pair of dragon claws somehow embedded inside it. The viewing section coruscated, and though it wasn’t overly bright, it made Cadence’s head hurt to look at it for long.

“T-Twilight… what is that thing?”

“The culmination of decades of study, collection of materials, and crafting. I based the design on the mirror that brought me to the other world, but its design is far too limited. It was a specific solution to a specific problem. I wanted to generalize it, and I have — this portal will allow travel between any two points in any two universes at any time somepony, or somebody, could want. But I’ve found that there’s one thing even I can’t design around or avoid.”

Twilight paused, and Cadence took the hint. “And what might that be?”

“It can only ever link two places. After that, it becomes locked in, never able to provide travel to anywhere else in the multiverse. This thing has sat in here for five years because I could never decide where to make it go. You’re the first other pony who’s ever seen it, too.”

“I’m honored, but… the claws?”

Twilight sighed. “They broke off in a fight, and I rushed in to collect them. Like I told Spike a hundred times, I need them to provide a focus for the magic that’s required to punch through the very essence of space, but did he ever even let me have his clippings? No!” She shook her head and groaned. “Teenagers!”

“Teenagers,” Cadence agreed. “Twilight, that you’d put me on the same level as Spike… I really am honored. I… I don’t know what else to say.” She nuzzled Twilight’s neck.

Twilight returned the gesture. “There’s one more thing I’d like to show you, too.”

“Oh?” Cadence looked up at her, eyebrows raised.

“Watch.”

She sent magic from her horn into a device to their right, and it lit up, row after row of lights blinking on and off. The glow traveled from it down several wires and into similar devices until the room shone with magic. Each of them had a single unlit wire, which ran to the portal.

Twilight walked to what Cadence correctly assumed to be the master control box and pressed a button on it. As she did, the wires connected to the portal blazed to life, and the frame glowed with unearthly light.

Cadence backed up a couple of steps when the claws began to rotate, moving through the emerald as if it were water. The gemstones along the frame lit up two at a time, starting at the top, as the claws spun ever faster. When they became nothing more than a solid blur, the final two at the bottom lit up, and the claws sank through the frame. A high-pitched whine filled the air, and Twilight’s and Cadence’s ears flattened against their heads. Lines of energy tied the gemstones to the claws, which began to glow. Cadence shielded her face with a wing to watch it as the glow grew too intense.

The claws exploded, taking the surface of the mirror with them and leaving behind a cold wind blew against the alicorns. Their inner ears told them the air pressure in the room had shot up.

Lowering her wing, Cadence looked through the portal and looked down upon a familiar square and familiar crystalline homes. She looked to Twilight. “You didn’t…”

Twilight smiled. “I can’t teleport there and back regularly, flying would take too long, there’s no way I’m taking the train — no matter how nice yours is.”

A single leap took Cadence to Twilight, and she tackled her with a hug. “I can barely believe it! Can we…?”

Twilight laughed and straightened Cadence’s mane. “Of course we can! But first,” she said, affecting an air of refinement, “we must do the official scientific tests required.”

She looked around and found a piece of chalk wedged into a crevice between instruments. Picking it up, she asked, “Will somepony give me a countdown?”

Cadence counted down from ten, and Twilight threw the piece of chalk. It sailed through the air and fell out of sight.

“Perfect!” Twilight hugged Cadence around the neck. “Really, that was just a formality. The air made it through just fine, after all. Shall we?”

“Twilight… thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you,” Cadence whispered, nuzzling her. “A gift like this is one of true love, and love… love is the greatest gift.”

Author's Note

Thanks to my editor, Cynewulf.

If you want to read the clop version too, you can skip up to the different part by simply using ctrl+f and searching for “May we do that again soon? Please?”