“Twilight?” Night Light said, opening the door to his daughter’s room.
Twilight Sparkle’s ears perked up. She set down her assigned reading on non-equilibrium thermodynamics and stretched. It was almost noon and she hadn’t left her bed—Saturday mornings were prime reading times, after all, as were pretty much any other time on any other day. “Yes, Daddy?”
“I picked up your glasses today,” Night Light said, telekinetically lifting a flat black case out of a thin plastic bag. “Would you like to try them on?”
“Uh huh.” Twilight hopped down from her bed. “Do I have to weaw them?” She had some difficulty enunciating the ‘R’ sound and ‘L’ sound, though she was well aware of this phonetic error and had been doing her best to correct it.
“Yes, honey, we’ve talked about this.” Night Light lifted the glasses out of the case, checking the lenses to make sure they weren’t cracked. “The eye doctor said far-away things are fuzzy for you. These will make them less fuzzy.”
Twilight stayed silent as Daddy inspected the magic glasses. The fuzziness hadn’t bothered her in most of her classes, since she usually sat in the front row and had a good view of the board. But the eye doctor insisted, and so did Daddy and Mommy. Less than a week later, Daddy had picked up the brand new pair. Twilight recognized it as the pair with the thick black frame that made her look at least three years older.
Night Light rubbed some dust off of the lenses with a thin cloth. “Just remember not to break them, all right?”
“Aw wight,” Twilight said. She sat down, waiting until Daddy was ready to put them on her.
Night Light held out the glasses in his hooves, reaching out to Twilight’s face. She shrank back at first, nervous that they would feel weird, even though she had tried dozens of pairs not one week ago and eventually got used to the feeling. This moment felt so monumental, though. Her very first pair of glasses. Summoning a heap of courage, she closed her eyes and let Daddy put them on.
“They rest on your snout, right here,” he said, making sure they fit snugly on her nose. “Too tight?”
In truth, they were a little tight, but not too tight. Twilight would’ve shaken her head if she wasn’t supposed to keep still. “No,” she said.
Night Light smiled, wincing a little. “Well, how are they? Look around and tell me what you think.”
She opened her eyes, surveying her room. It took a minute for her to get used to everything feeling a bit farther away. However, everything was crystal clear now and much better than before. She hadn’t realized how bad her vision was.
“Daddy, they wowk!” She kept turning. It was almost like she was in a different room. The posters on her wall about pony anatomy and circuit diagrams and thaumaturgic calculus were all sharp now, and she could read the smaller print with ease. “I can wead my postews now!”
Another thing she realized was that her glasses were barely noticeable, too. The frames lay in the corners of her eyes, and nothing got in the way of her sight like she had feared.
Then, looking at Daddy, she noticed something odd. He was sweating and looking sick. Her eyes widened. “Daddy?”
“Mmph,” Night Light said. The sight of her daughter so happy in those glasses was creating warm and fuzzy feelings in his heart. However, the warmth and fuzziness was a tad too strong, and his legs weakened.
Twilight’s heart skipped a beat. “Daddy? Awe you okay?”
“It’s great, honey,” he said, panting. “You look great. Urgh, oof.” Gripping his chest, he collapsed on the floor with a moan.
“Daddy!” Twilight scurried up to him and poked him, but he was out like a light. She gaped, fearing the worst.
Twilight dashed to her meticulously organized toy chest and grabbed her play stethoscope. She ran over to Daddy and set the diaphragm close to the right side of her father’s sternum to make sure his circulatory and respiratory systems were functioning properly. Through the ear thingies, she heard the distinct thump-thump, thump-thump of a heartbeat.
His heart was still beating, and he was still breathing. He hadn’t undergone cardiac arrest—just fainted. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation was not necessary.
“Phew,” Twilight said, setting her toy stethoscope down. Daddy hadn’t died, at least, but he still lay unconscious on her bedroom floor. Twilight stared at Daddy. Her book on common medical procedures didn’t tell her what to do with an unconscious pony.
Mommy would know. Despite not being a licensed practitioner or a registered nurse, Mommy knew pretty much everything.
“Mommy!” Twilight called, galloping out of her room and down the stairs. “Mommy mommy mommy mommy mommy!”
“What is it, honey?” Twilight Velvet said, putting some recently purchased groceries away. She levitated a watercress bunch and a jar of dill pickles into the fridge. The store was out of bread-and-butter pickles this time, but it wasn’t a big dill anyway.
Twilight skidded to a stop, almost slipping on the kitchen’s tile floor. “Daddy fainted!”
“What?” Velvet said, turning around. “Where, Twilight? Oh goodness,” she said, buckling under the immensity of her daughter’s adorable bespectacled face. “Oh dear. Oh.”
“Mommy? Awe you aw wight?”
“Oh gosh. Oh goodness.” She slipped to the ground, out cold, just like Daddy. The watercress in her magical grasp dropped to the ground.
Twilight watched, cress fallen. Mommy had blacked out. Daddy had blacked out. Her only relative left was her older brother, and though he tended to be more annoying than helpful, she had little choice at this point. “SHINY!”
Shining Armour ran in from the living room. He was annoyed enough that his sister’s yelling had interrupted his favourite anime, Halfmetal Physicist, so whatever it was Twilight was raising a rumpus over this time, he wanted to get it over with. He stopped when he came into the kitchen and saw Twily, immediately feeling light-headed.
“Oh, sweet meganekko,” he said, slumping against the wall. “Twily-chan. What have you done?”
Twilight’s lips curled in a pout. “Shiny? What’s wong?”
“No, nothing’s wrong, it’s just, urgh.” He panted, sliding down to the floor. “Too… kawaii…”
Twilight watched in horror. Her whole family had passed out. She considered calling for an ambulance, but if her medical procedures book didn’t cover this, then the medical ponies might very well just shrug, turn around, and go home, if they hadn’t already fainted upon arriving.
There was only one other pony left to turn to. She was the ruler of Equestria, Twilight’s personal mentor, and she knew almost as much as Mommy did. She could fix anything.
~ ~ ~
“Pwincess Cewestia!”
Twilight ran through the streets of Canterlot, shouting Celestia’s name. She knew that Celestia could not hear her from this distance, as the sound waves would dissipate far before they reached the castle, but it accounted for the possibility that Celestia was not in the castle and somewhere in town. Plus, Twilight was scared and screaming felt natural.
Merely by glancing at the little filly with glasses running by, throngs of ponies swooned and fainted in her wake. Twilight found she was being chased by the thud-thud-thud of unsuspecting civilians incapacitated by cute. This only made Twilight run harder and yell Celestia’s name louder.
Soon enough, she neared the castle’s gate. Twilight, while screaming and sprinting up the road, noted that the palace looked much clearer now, and gained further appreciation for her glasses.
The palace guards let her past, and then subsequently fell unconscious. The clatter of metal on tile echoed through the castle walls as guard after guard looked in Twilight’s direction and surrendered to the cuteness. Twilight ignored this, instead focused on finding Celestia.
There were three places Celestia was prone to be: the throne room, her study, and the royal bakery. She checked the bakery first, but there was no sign of her, and before Jolly Fondant could tell her where Celestia was, he fell face first into the princess’s half-eaten Saturday Seven-Layer Sponge Cake. More disheartened than amused, Twilight ran out and continued to search.
She burst into Celestia’s study. The princess sat on her sofa, bottle-feeding Spike his daily regimen of liquefied crystals. Celestia glanced up, smiling when she saw her literal rocket scientist of a student. “Twilight, hello. I love your new glasses, they make you look at least three years older.”
Twilight would’ve thanked her and emphatically agreed with this statement, had half of the city not keeled over at the mere sight of her. She stood in the doorway, confused as to why neither Spike nor Princess Celestia was showing any sign of fainting.
Spike, being fairly adorable himself, was immune to her power. However, the effect was delayed on Celestia, and she did eventually experience an onset of vertigo. “Oh. Oh wow.” She felt the blood drain from her head as she began to tilt forward. “Twilight. Dear me.”
“No!” Twilight said, reaching out a hoof. “Not you too!”
Celestia raised a wing in front of her eyes, shielding herself from Twilight. “No, it’s okay, Twilight, I’ll be fine. Just take your glasses off.”
Twilight cocked her head. “My gwasses?”
Celestia felt a pang just from that cute little question. “Yes, Twilight, please take them off. Only for a minute.”
Clinging to her glasses, Twilight lifted them up off of her nose. Daddy had said not to break them, so she set them down on the ground gingerly. Backing away from them, she looked back up to her mentor. “They’we off.”
Carefully, Celestia lifted her wing. There sat Twilight, looking so afraid but ever curious, her glasses resting on the carpet in front of her. Celestia suppressed the urge to burst out laughing. “Twilight Sparkle, you are simply too cute to wear glasses.”
Twilight wasn’t quite sure what that meant. Was it her glasses that caused all those ponies to faint? She stepped back, her ears falling flat-back. “I’m sowwy.”
“It’s quite all right,” Celestia said, grinning. “You couldn’t have possibly known. Nor anypony, really.”
Twilight nodded, looking down at the glasses. If she couldn’t wear them, her posters and the castle and pretty much everything else would be blurry to her. Twilight drooped. She’d have to keep sitting in the front of the classroom forever. What if the legendary back row was as fun as it was rumored to be?
Celestia brought up a hoof to her chin as she considered Twilight. She tried, and failed, to hide a smile. “I don’t suppose you’d like another homework assignment?”
Twilight looked up. Homework did tend to cheer her up, after all. “Okay.”
“I’d like you to invent a way to correct vision without glasses.” Celestia cradled Spike as he settled in for a nap. “Do you think you’d be up to the task?”
Twilight shifted and thought about it. She had been itching to read up on ophthalmology since she had gone to the eye doctor, and now was a better time than ever to apply that research. “Uh huh,” Twilight said.
“Are you sure? It’ll involve a lot of research.”
This was a given. “I’m suwe.”
~ ~ ~
“And that’s how I invented contact lenses.”
Spike yawned. “Y’know, Twilight, for a bedtime story, that one was pretty far-fetched.”
Twilight pulled down her eyelid, ready to remove her other contact lens. “It was all true. Well, I might’ve exaggerated the consonant mispronunciations, but other than that, it’s not historical fiction.”
“Right. Just fiction.” Spike curled up in his bed. “Night, Twi.”
“Good night, Spike.” Twilight smirked. Then, once she was sure he wasn’t looking, Twilight whipped out her old glasses case and put them on, examining herself in the mirror.
To this day, it was a mystery to her. She still didn’t know why seeing something cute would invoke involuntary blackouts in ponies. Since arriving in Ponyville, she had been curious about the scientific cause. She’d tried wearing her glasses that morning in front of Rainbow Dash to see if they still induced their incapacitating effect, and though Rainbow didn’t faint, she did act rather strangely, giving her a smooch on the cheek at one point.
Rainbow Dash. A smooch. This might require further experimentation.
But, tomorrow. Twilight crawled into bed, placing the glasses back in their case. She settled in, pulling the sheets in closer. She would have to be more careful this time, but certainly another Canterlot-scale disaster was unlikely.
Twilight yawned. Very unlikely.
Author's Note
Preread by NotSoSubtle
