Scales (Interlude)

The filly's small form shifts into some inscrutable posture. Her hooves tremble with ten thousand different emotions, each faint and distant as a star. With grave force of will, her taut, fraying vocal cords shiver into motion, betraying her skeleton-thin reply.

"...What does it feel like? What does it feel like?! It feels like... nothing. It feels like nothing at all!"

Princess Celestia rolls her weight onto her fore haunches and squints, unsure exactly how much distance separates the two of them.

"...I'm truly sorry to hear that, my little pony," she admits. "I regret that it's not what you'd hoped. But what, if I might ask, might those hopes have been?"

The filly shakes her head, gently freeing dingy purple locks to sweep across her eyes "I thought... I think I thought I would feel... different, somehow. Altered in some kind of way I could look forward to. But it... just feels like some of my coat mutated in color," she says, flatly. There is silence for a spell. "...I don't know what I wanted it to be, I just... really needed it to be something. For some internal candle to flare up, something to pull me towards being a normal pony."

The Princess takes a breath, and poises herself to continue. "This mark signals only the beginning of your adulthood." All visual features aside from Twilight have slipped away from her, but something could be at hoof's length and she wouldn't know in this lighting. "You've just demonstrated a truly awesome magical talent, the likes of which we haven't seen in one so young since Star Swirl." She opens a circuit through her horn, and reaches out to assay the room's topography. "You passed, Twilight. You've just guaranteed your admission to the most prestigious magical and scientific academy in the modern world." Her magic finds no purchase as far as her mind can grasp. "Twilight Sparkle, tonight has scored lines on you along which your fate will be cut." Even the floor beneath her hooves affords nothing for her magic to brush against. "How did you expect this moment to feel, my little pony, if not like there was a great missing passage in the libretto left unwritten?"

"...There's probably something to that," replies the foal. "I never could be satisfied with a book until she knew how it ends."

The Princess raises an eyebrow. "'She?'"

Twilight Sparkle nods. "Me."

"...How are you feeling, my little pony? Are your thoughts... unclear?"

"Only vacuously so."

Celestia frowns. "...I'm afraid I don't—"

"Princess, do you know where my parents are? I have to tell them I passed the entrance exam."

"...Twilight, my sweet filly, when you focused your magic so intensely—"

"But when they see my cutie mark... I've been waiting so long to be wrong about being... hollow, or whatever I am. And I have to explain that the universe agrees with her?"

"There many things your mark could mean, Twilight; I ask you not presume to understand it after just a few minutes." Princess Celestia notes Twilight's eyes as dreamily winced shut, and considers her options. She would much prefer to know exactly how much danger this young filly is in before she acts, but is searching for a reason to delay a magical response.

"Twilight, I need you to relax your magic—"

"No, no! ...Princess, don't go, she's crumbling, she can't control herself, stay stay stay stay—"

"I'm right here, Twilight," Celestia's voice breaks. "Your eyes are closed, but I'm right here."

Her eyelids screw tighter.

Princess Celestia's horn begins to glow a dull white. "Open your eyes, Twilight." She starts counting her heartbeats. "I am asking you to open your eyes."

Twilight is silent, still as a stone.

The Princess asks, slowly, firmly:

"Do you remember who you are, my little pony?"

The eyes open, though it's too dark to make out where they're looking. The small lavender creature reconfigures her features into an uninterpretable expression, and turns her neck to where the floor should be.

A long second expires.

"Yes, my little pony, I believe I do," she affirms.

Six. Celestia blinks. "...Good," she says. Seven. The Princess of Equestria's voice is level as she proceeds: "And what, then, is your name?"

The foal's eyes close once more, but this time, gently, with no resistance.

Though nothing can be marked as reference, Celestia can't suppress the feeling that the surrounding void is expanding.

She sees the tip of her glowing horn stretching imperceptibly away from her vision.

She turns her eyes back to the filly, but they slide off the edges of her portrait, tracing along her hairline and the thin frame of her mouth.

The foal's ears swivel down to lie compactly against the neck, as a sword might slide into a sheath.

The Princess' magic embarks for the filly, resigning her horn to darkness in its absence.

A mouth opens to speak.