She set down her quill and stared at the ledger on her desk. There was a neat column of numbers running down the page. Just like every month they detailed her expenses, and just like every month the numbers were itemized, with a total at the bottom. She flipped through the ledger to previous months, comparing the numbers.
Keeping track of the bits she spent was not something she did because the money was important to her. Twilight did it because money was important to other ponies, and it seemed like the type of thing a responsible adult ought to do.
Looking through the numbers nothing looked too unusual. Perhaps some other pony might think she was spending an exorbitant amount on writing materials, books, and telescopes, but it was nothing too unreasonable. Everypony spent money on the things they liked. The only oddity would appear when a pony considered what was absent from her expenses.
Since moving to Ponyville the row marked “clothing” had consistently contained a “zero bits” entry. Rarity insisted on making all of Twilight’s clothes and routinely refused payment. “A pony of your stature wearing my designs is payment enough,” she would insist. Twilight knew that was not normal. Most ponies had to buy their clothes.
Of course, clothing was not the only row with that terrible “zero” in it.
Twilight did not pay rent or any sort of mortgage. Her tree was technically owned by the state, and as far as Twilight knew, nopony had ever questioned Princess Celestia about her student moving into the town’s library.
What sort of pony lived in a library? She loved her home and everything that it was, but it did not seem like a normal thing. Often times she wondered if the distinct lack of patrons was because ponies were intimidated by entering what was essentially her home. Twilight wondered how frequently ponies used to check out books before she had moved to Ponyville.
Travel was another row that was often zero or close enough not to matter. For as much as Twilight traveled around Equestria, the number should be far greater. Just her weekly trips to and from Canterlot for magic lessons should have contributed a sizable sum. But the Royal Guard did not charge when they were transporting a pony on the behest of the Princess, and apparently it was “only fair” that the crown compensate her travel expenses when she was on “matters of the state.”
Apparently much of what she did fell into that later category.
They were not the expenses of an grown mare living on her own.
She was supposed to be an adult.
When she was a foal it made sense that her parents took care of her. Her family was not wealthy, she did not always have the newest toys or clothing, but her parents had made sure that she had everything she needed. That was just what parents did. However, she remembered as she got older becoming distinctly aware that the other ponies in her classes no longer had allowances. Their parents stopped paying for them to go see the latest plays or to go out to eat.
It did not really bother her until some time after she had started her university level classes.
They had all sat down, her parents and herself, and had a heart to heart. Twilight had been the one to instigate it, and she did not know if the conversation would have ever come otherwise. The decision was that it was time for her to start taking more personal responsibility. Nothing really changed, but it was nice pretending that it would.
For a brief, glorious moment, Twilight even started looking for a part time job. Even after all these years, she had no idea what she might have actually ended up doing, but she had at least felt like an adult while looking. It probably would have been boring and awful, almost certainly a waste of time compared to her studies, but it would have been hers. Then the Princess heard what she was doing.
Twilight was never brave enough to explain why she was looking for a job, and the Princess, bless her heart, had assumed that Twilight simply needed the bits. Celestia never asked about things like that. So Twilight started receiving an educational stipend. That was the year the Princess started paying her to be a student, and Twilight became perpetually trapped in the strange holding circle that her life had become. Even as she entered her graduate level studies, Twilight still suckled on the teat of those who raised her.
Moving to Ponyville had seemed like it might be a step in the right direction. She did not have palace staff doing her laundry for her or tidying her room. She was finally out on her own. More than anything else, it was something new. It was the type of thing adults did.
It had been scary as well. Ever since becoming the student of Princess Celestia, Twilight just assumed she would become a magi, or magical researcher. Perhaps she would end up as professor at the Academy. As she got older she decided she would end up in whatever role the Princess thought she would do the most good. It was not really a decision, but it was safe. “Be a student until the Princess comes up with something for you to do.” That had been her plan in all of its elegant simplicity.
Ponyville had thrown all that out the window.
Twilight was forced to finally start thinking about what she wanted out of life. That was an adult decision with all of the important ramifications that were entailed.
She thought she liked being a librarian. She enjoyed it, even if she was not particularly good at it. Twilight looked around at the piles of books not on their shelves. However infrequently it was, whenever a pony would come in looking for a book they would struggle to decipher whatever sorting system Twilight had adopted that week. Twilight, herself, was likely the only pony in Ponyville who could understand half of the books on the many shelves she had dedicated to magical theory.
And nopony ever seemed to like her book recommendations. Rainbow Dash counted as her only success.
Ponies were supposed to be good at their jobs or they would be fired. Twilight knew that she was not a good librarian, but she also knew that she would never be fired. The library would remain her domain as long as she wished it. However, despite how bad Twilight was at managing the library, she liked it. She wanted to embrace the life of a librarian and make it her own. Twilight could imagine herself doing that with her life.
It was not an exciting dream, but it was her dream.
She did not know how much librarians got paid or how it compared to her stipend, but she at least felt like she was doing something to earn the money Celestia sent her each month.
Of course that had all changed earlier that year.
Twilight flipped to the point in her ledger where she stopped keeping a running total from month to month. There was no more row for “income” after that month, nor did she have a row for “savings.”
She was a Princess now.
Princess Celestia had explained that Twilight now had access to a “petty cash account.” Just how many bits she could spend and still have it count as “petty” Twilight had not yet determined. She did not even know if there was any sort of limit. Perhaps she could just drain the treasury dry. Neither did she know what happened to bits she did not spend.
Somehow the numbers had become meaningless.
The questions had not seemed important compared to others at the time. Things like, “Bwa? I have wings now?” had mostly occupied her thoughts. Now it seemed so silly that she had not asked. Of course, she could not bring herself to ask Princess Celestia six whole months after her coronation. She would need to admit she did not know the first thing as to what she was supposed to be doing with her life. She would need to explain that she had been living a whole half a year without any sort of real budget.
Becoming an alicorn had destroyed her dreams of independence.
She was a princess now, and that meant she would be taken care of. She did not have to worry about the things that other ponies did.
Twilight looked at her ledger. She was still just a foal, and as far as she could foresee, she would remain one.
When fillies grew into mares they had to start worrying about things and taking care of themselves. She had never done that. She did not know if she could do that.
“Twilight, dinner will be ready soon,” Spike called from downstairs.
Twilight winced at the words and wanted to cry. She could not even feed herself. It was such a basic thing that any forest creature learned to do when they left the nest. Yet, she could not cook, and if Spike did not remind her, she would even forget to eat.
Spike would remind her to sleep and to go outside. Spike made sure she bathed and brushed her mane. The only reason the library maintained even a semblance of order was because of her assistant. A creature more than a decade younger than her was at least a decade more mature than her.
Twilight was an invalid not fit to be left to her own devices.
Twilight wondered if there was any escape, but did not think so. Luna had led a rebellion and tried to banish the sun forever. She got sent to timeout for a thousand years and was now back as if nothing had ever happened. Twilight had almost destroyed Ponyville with her “want it, need it” spell, and in return she was rewarded with less work.
Rarity, ever perceptive Rarity, had come to Twilight afterwards. She was worried that Twilight had seen the new arrangement as a punishment, with the Princess taking away her friendship reports, as if her reports were the only letters between her and the Princess. There were essays on magic and papers on history. There was the occasional, but regular, letter just talking about their days, and of course there was their play-by-mail chess game.
No, it certainly was not a punishment. Celestia did not punish. She nurtured and taught. She always encouraged. Princess Celestia was just trying to make Twilight’s life easier. The Princess had always pushed Twilight to do better, to be better. Whenever Twilight fell, Celestia was there to pick her up. Every failure was transformed to a lesson.
Most fillies eventually had the training wheels removed. Adults had to learn from their failures. There were no do-overs.
She walked over to her window and set her head down on the sill. When Twilight rolled her eyes she saw the box of her newest acquisition, an Orbiz Three Thousand Telescope, with doubly polished mirrors. She had seen it in the store while shopping for more parchment, and it had gone in her basket without a thought.
She wondered if she would open the box and assemble it. There would be that momentary thrill as it came together, the same thrill she got when she purchased it. But then it would sit there by her window. It would be a tossup to decide if the telescope would see use before she bought another. There was supposed to be a new model coming out soon with a gold plated eyepiece.
Either way the telescope would be a reminder. Eventually it would be moved to a balcony or another window, and then later to a box in the basement.
She knew responsible ponies did not impulse buy telescopes, but they made her happy. Or perhaps it was not quite happiness, but they made her feel something.
Twilight pulled her head off the window sill and let it fall against her chest as she curled up on the floor. She needed to listen for Spike coming up the stairs. Twilight did not want him to see her balled up underneath her window. Somedays she just wished she could curl up and cocoon herself in blankets without worrying about what somepony else might think.
Spike would immediately jump to the conclusion that she was sad or upset, and while that was not too far from the truth, it was not particularly correct either. Twilight just felt empty. Like there was something missing.
Sometimes she wondered if it was her love life. Ponies were supposed to fall in love, get married, and have families. She had just never felt the urge to pursue that, and it made her wonder if something was wrong with her.
A stallion had kissed her once, much to her surprise, way back in school. It happened too quick for it to leave more than a vague impression in her mind, but she did not remember hating it. However, as far as she knew no other pony had ever shown much of an interest. She liked to think that if a stallion asked her out, she would say yes. However, it seemed like so much work to go out and find somepony. It did not seem like a reasonable return on the investment of time and emotions.
Ultimately, she was forced to conclude, that even if her love life was the problem, she did not want to fix it enough to bring about any change. Lethargy was a great and powerful force.
She did not really believe that was the problem though. When she thought of finding a special somepony there was no thrill, even momentary. Her telescopes brought her more joy. It seemed too simple and mundane, and she liked to think she was a more nuanced pony.
Fillies were supposed to develop an interest in relationships as they grew into mares.
Twilight had always worked under the assumption that she had limited time in the world and so each moment needed to count. Each second had to be productive and propel herself towards something, even if she was not sure what it was. That was the point of all of her checklists and schedules. As long as she stuck to them, she would end each day as a better pony than the day before.
She would learn something new and experience something different with each sunrise. There were accomplishments, small and large, each week.
Yet it seemed like she was running in place.
Of course, her old assumptions about how the world work no longer seemed to apply.
She use to have one great reprieve from the stress, one thing that she could look forward to.
One day she was going to die.
She did not want to die. If she did there was a simple solution. Certainly, she thought about what it would be like to be dead, but what pony did not? At least she hoped it was normal, and not just another horrible thing to add to the list. Death was not something she looked forward to, but the knowledge that one day death would come for her had been a blessing.
She had known that a time would come when she could hang up her saddle. She would have passed all her tests, and her checklist would be clear. Her legacy would be secure and she could go to wherever it was ponies went to when they died: maybe the great pasture in the sky or maybe oblivion. She did not know, and it did not really matter.
The important thing was that there had been an end.
The Princess had taken that one shining beacon away from her.
Twilight was grateful, of course. Immortality was a great gift. There would be no limit to what she could learn and what she could accomplish. Her growth would never need to know an end. But where was the pressure? Why was she even bothering? What was the point of her checklists if there would always be tomorrow to get to it? She could always push things off to another day and know that she would live to see that day.
She wished that she could claim that her unease came from the dread of having to watch all of her friends grow old and die, but that was not it.
Perhaps it made her a bad friend, but she knew they would all die eventually anyways. Statistically, magically powerful unicorns tended to live longer than other ponies, and if her grandparents or great grandparents were anything to go by, Twilight would have always had a long life ahead of her.
Her working assumption had always just been that she would outlive her friends, anyway.
Age spells were on her “to learn” list after all.
She would miss her friends, but that was not what would grind her into dust.
It was going to be the monotony.
The hope of something new in death, of a release, had kept her going. She had known that one day there would be an end.
Could she live for a thousand years feeling empty?
Maybe she could if she had some hope that things might be able to get better.
Not for the first time she considered writing a letter to the Princess, THE letter to the Princess.
Celestia would not judge her. She never judged. She would tell Twilight kind words.
There was a chance that her words would just make things worse. They often did for Twilight. However, maybe if she was finally honest with her mentor she would receive true help.
Twilight could not imagine what that help might possibly look like, but if she could then she would not be stuck in her predicament in the first place.
She would not write the letter of course. She never did, and she did not think she ever would. That kind of open and raw honesty was something Twilight did not think she was capable of.
Adults were capable of being honest, even if it hurt.
However, even if she did want to write the letter, Twilight did not want to get near her desk again. There was a letter there from a familiar address, and just looking at it would drain everything she had. Twilight knew what the contents of the letter would be. Her mother was wondering if Twilight had gotten her last letter. She wanted to know if Twilight would be attending her uncle’s birthday party.
She had received the first letter last Tuesday. Today had been the last day to send her response by regular post if it was going to get there before the party.
Twilight wrote to her mother on the first and third Monday of every month precisely to avoid this type of thing. Any letter she wrote now would need to be filled with apologies and banalities about her week. She would have to include a little story about something she had been up to or else her mother would feel hurt. But then she would not have any material for her biweekly letters.
Twilight loved her mother. She loved talking to her family. She just hated writing to them. The Princess was about the only pony Twilight could stand to write to or receive letters from. With any other pony, there was just too much pressure.
She wanted to go to her uncle’s party; Twilight loved her uncle. However, there was only one way out of the situation now. She would need to miss his birthday and claim she had never received either letter. The lie would allow her to avoid the awkwardness that would come from having to explain why she had to send her response by overnight mail.
Dodging responsibility was not something adults did. Adults owned up to their mistakes. Lying to get out of trouble was something little fillies did.
She could not even write a Tartarus forsaken letter to her own parents.
It was her least favorite sound, the squeak of letters being pushed through the mail slot. Everytime she heard it, her entire body tensed up and her breathing quickened. Every letter was another obligation. Every letter she waited on was an explanation she had to give. She could only fabricate excuses so many times before the ponies on the other side of the mail would begin to catch on.
It was no surprise that she had not heard about Shining’s wedding until the moment before it happened.
During her university level classes, many of her fellow students would frequently spend the weekend getting drunk. She had asked a “friend” once why she drank. The response was “to have fun.” Another pony had once told her that it makes it easier to “hang out,” and yet another had called it “social lubricant.”
She had always looked down on those ponies as if she was somehow better than them. It seemed like there must be something categorically wrong with your life if you needed to be under the influence of some chemical to enjoy yourself. If a pony needed to be drunk to enjoy her friends, maybe she had the wrong friends.
But maybe they were onto something.
Twilight certainly was not having fun with her life.
Or maybe that was what it meant to actually be an adult. Maybe everypony was empty, just like her, and they simply found something to fill the hole so they could pretend it was not there. Perhaps they drowned their pain in banal pleasures until it stopped screaming for attention.
Not for the first time, Twilight considered going out to a bar and getting a drink. She had only ever had two glasses of champagne in her life, both at weddings, and both as part of ceremony more than anything else. She wondered if the alcohol would dull things, or if it could shut down her mind.
She did not dare pursue that experiment. Twilight looked at her obsessiveness and wondered how far it was from addiction. If she found something that could relieve her emotions, could she ever let it go?
It was ridiculous was what it was. She was literally living her dream life. She was an alicorn princess living in a tree full of books. Twilight had six amazing friends and great relationship with her lifelong mentor and another princess that now considered her to be an honorary sister. She was a national hero and skilled at nearly everything she put her hoof to.
There was nothing for which she lacked.
Anypony would be happy if they were in her hooves.
And still she was empty.
Twilight closed her eyes.
If she went to sleep now, the day would at least be over.
Twilight shook her head.
Twilight sighed and wiped at her eyes. Slowly she uncurled herself to stare at the ceiling. Spike would be calling her down soon. It was a surprise he had not already. Perhaps he knew that she needed time. Sometimes she underestimated how much he really picked up on.
There was a meteor shower tonight, and she was supposed to hang out with her friends to star gaze. Twilight glanced at the new telescope. If she had not wasted the last hour brooding, maybe there would have been time to assemble it.
It was probably for the best though. She did not think her friends would be able to tell the difference, but one of them might realize it was different. Even a simple comment of “that’s a nice telescope you have there,” would make her feel obligated to explain that there was nothing wrong with her old one. And Twilight did not know where that explanation would end.
She did not even need the stupid thing. Her magic picked up the box and flung it away from her. There was a tinkling sound as she heard a lense shatter.
Twilight was just a child throwing a tantrum.
She did not really want to get up. She could tell Spike she was feeling sick and send him out to the hill to meet with their friends. Of course, then she might have to worry about them coming to see how she was doing. Worse, if they did not come she would just wonder why they did not care enough to check on her.
It was stupid. If she told ponies to leave her alone and they ignored her she would be upset. If they listened to her she would be equally upset.
Telling the truth, that she simply did not feel like hanging out, was not an option. Somepony would ask why, and Pinkie would almost certainly try to cheer her up. Twilight would then need to either acquiesce or risk hurting her friends’ feelings.
If she stayed home she would be miserable all night. However, she would not need to pretend. Spread across her bedroom floor, she could wallow in peace, save for the occasional sound of Spike in the kitchen. Alone she could be honest.
Ever so slowly, she rolled over onto her hooves. Twilight knew that she would enjoy spending time with her friends if she forced herself to go. That was the key. That was why she really had all of her checklists and schedules. She knew that if she forced herself to go through the motions that one day they would stick.
That was supposed to be how things worked, wasn’t it?
If she was going to be unhappy either way, she might as well be unhappy with her friends. There would be no fulfillment with them, and she would need to put on the mask, but it was better than her dark room.
She just needed to keep telling herself that.
Maybe tomorrow she would grow up.
Author's Note
So wlam recommended that I read Unwell. I have not yet done so, but based on the context of the suggestion and the first have of the story description, I felt compelled to write this before hand. I've written (am writing) a fair bit of Twilight being crazy under extreme circumstances that I wanted to write a story exploring her normal eccentricities before reading another fic that sounds like it does the same.
I should mention that parts of this fic are semi-autobiographical.
