Twilight Sparkle, P.I.

Dear Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship,

I write to you in hopes that I can fix what your assistant and mine had done, so that my present is not yours as well.

It only took one mistake, one slip of the mind. I had saved the world with my friends numerous times before, and now one young dragon’s naivety and my own carelessness erased that from time. It was supposed to be routine trip through time, as insane that may sound. I had to see how life was 200 years ago—and not trough the books, as I feared they might not tell the whole story. Call it me maturing, or maybe just becoming paranoid, but recently I had begun to see the history books as only one part of the puzzle, and a small one at that.

The trip was surprisingly uneventful, given the chosen moment in time. Even though we had gone to a Ponyville that had just survived the largest flood in its history, the ponies greeted us with open arms and shared what small amount of fresh food and clean water they had. It was a real lesson in how a society built on the idea of mutual care and respect can survive even the toughest of times. Thanks to my research we blended in perfectly. The attire was era-appropriate, my speech patterns fit the time and place of Ponyville at that period, and even Spike was fitting in. But I digress; now it all counts for little to nothing.

Sadly, my assistant brought with him, by mistake or simply out of his lack of knowledge about time and space, a book about making your own radio. He wanted to make one, and as I gave him the book two days before our trip, he was hardly able to put it down. As I began to open our portal home, on the outskirts of Ponyville, I noticed the book. I scolded him, and my own lack of concentration made the vortex unstable, and the suction it created made him slip and drop the book as he was drawn into it. I tried to grab it, but the force of the suction carried me into the future as well. As we drifted through time, I hoped nothing would change, that the book would simply be written off as witchcraft and burned, or even just ignored.

I was wrong, so very wrong.

We crashed, and it took me a minute or two to regain my composure. Something felt very off, and as I looked around the room, I knew my hunch was regretfully on point. My study room, my castle, it had all changed. Gone were the crystal walls, the detailed ornamented windows; concrete walls and a messy office replaced it. A dim light was hanging from the ceiling, and with it I could make out some furniture, a couple of chairs with a large desk in the middle. I walked to it, and began to read a shiny plaque, the only thing that did not seem to have any dust on it. In stock letters that were cut into the metal, it read “Twilight Sparkle, P. I.”.

That moment of dread will haunt me forever. Spike’s blunder had changed the timeline, it had changed history. My fear was confirmed as I looked outside the window. A sprawling metropolis, with skyscrapers filling the horizon greeted me. Hundreds and hundreds of vehicles were racing across the streets, with ponies fighting the hard rain with raincoats and umbrellas in tow. It seemed dark, cold and unforgiving; nothing like the Ponyville I loved and remembered.

Spike began to panic, and ran across the room like a lunatic. I tried to calm the poor kid dragon down, but then it hit him. Deep down my mind already knew this was going to happen, but I guess I just tried to ignore it. The timeline was catching up with him, and soon he would be a part of it, along with his memories. His young childish body grew, muscles getting toned, as he aged into a young adult. Black jeans, a jacket that gave his sick pack all the room it needed to show off, and some combat boots finished the look. He looked ready to fight, and given the world we were in, that seemed a good thing to have.

I knew that I would be next, so I channeled my magic to save my memories, by writing them into this diary. As long as I manage to write here, I will be safe, and maybe fix this horror that I am sad to call my life now. What came next was both terrifying and strangely euphoric. My own body grew and my wings vanished, making me a unicorn once again. On some level, I did miss the sensation of being a unicorn only, but at that feeling was completely masked by panic. My old-timey clothes become a bizarre mix of tight shiny purple pants, black boots, a fedora of all things, and leather jacket, with a little unicorn tag on the side. After my body had changed, my mind followed suite. New memories washed in, and I cried. Part from the pain it caused, and part from the memories themselves.

My brother’s murder, the way it crushed my mother, and how my father had managed to keep me warm and safe, despite the hardships he had to endure as a husband to an unstable wife. The fact that we never found the killer, the beast that had murdered a teenager in cold blood. I remembered the moment when I vowed to use my deductive skills to help others so that such a fate of not knowing would not haunt their lives every day. All of that was pushed deep into my mind, with every emotion coming in rapid succession. I’m still amazed that I had not convulsed on the floor from a seizure.

I knew then who I was in this world, how the law required I never use magic again, and how I would never see Shining again, if I don’t make this right.

Your friend,
Twilight Sparkle, P.I.