How to Regain a Friend in 60 Minutes
Starlight stared at the door, not yet ready to knock. Twilight had said she just had to make some new friends. That was proving surprisingly easy, mostly when nopony knew what she’d done (Twilight was nice enough to keep quiet about it), but it was the same even in her old village; some ponies were still giving her the stinkeye, but just last week, Double Diamond had offered take her out to the mountains to try skiing. Once she’d gotten the hang of it, she’d actually enjoyed it a bit, although she doubted she’d ever fully get the faceplant grit from her teeth. He’d been better, obviously, but he didn’t speak down to her in the least. It was like the differences didn’t matter to him.
So, yeah, making new friends was going fine. But what about old friends?
It’d taken a few weeks of trawling through old records of every sort: yearbooks, newspaper articles, phone books, but she’d found him. He was way out west, in Applewood. She wondered if he still remembered her. But it was only right that she at least spare him a visit.
She’d prepared her things for a brief trip, but once she’d told Twilight, the latter insisted on going with her. “This is great!” she’d said. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before!” And then she’d dissolved into an excited stream of babble about rekindling friendships and whether their magic was more powerful than brand-new friendships or not and how she simply had to go with her. Starlight hadn’t been particularly fond of the idea, but in the brief time she’d known Twilight, she’d learned at least one thing: never try to stop Twilight from learning something about the magic of friendship.
Starlight raised a hoof, then paused for a moment. She looked over her shoulder at Twilight, who was waiting excitedly, albeit patiently, on the road (and attracting a few stares; princess and all). She nodded vigorously and made a “go on” motion at Starlight.
Starlight sighed, turned back to the door, and knocked three times.
It was a second or two before she got a response. “Coming! Just a minute!” someone called from inside. It wasn’t quite the voice she remembered — it was deeper and a bit huskier — but it definitely belonged to the same pony. Starlight suddenly went a bit weak at the knees.
Panic overtook intellect; Starlight spun on the spot and attempted to take off down the walk. But Twilight magically grabbed her tail and dragged her back. “What are you doing?” Twilight asked. “This is the whole reason we’re here!”
“I can’t do it,” whispered Starlight. “It’s… What if he doesn’t remember me?” She hung her head. “It’ll be like losing him all over again. He was the only friend I had when I was a filly.”
“But he’s not the only friend you have now,” said Twilight. “You have me, and all the rest back at Ponyville. Even if he forgot you — which I’m sure he didn’t-” (Starlight thought that line of thought was more than a bit optimistic.) “-we’ll be here to help you get through it.” (That one wasn’t, though.)
Twilight’s earnest smile was infectious, and Starlight caved. “All right,” she sighed. She headed back to the door, but was stopped halfway. “Um, you can let go now.”
“Oh! Sorry.” Twilight grinned sheepishly, and a hint of red crept into her cheeks as she released Starlight’s tail from her magic. “My bad.”
Starlight smiled back, but it was gone by the time she reached the door. She knew Twilight’s words were true, but she couldn’t shake the nervousness.
That was part of the problem: the nervousness. Not it itself, the presence of it. She hadn’t been nervous while running that town, she hadn’t been nervous while mucking about with time, why was she nervous now? It was just talking to somepony. Somepony she already knew.
Because now you’re the one who can lose something, a small voice in the back of her head said. Before, you were the one taking things away. Now, you might lose your first friend. Forever.
That voice had been popping up more and more ever since she started studying under Twilight. It was annoying, partly because it was almost always right. Like now. It was hard to admit that she’d been taking things away from ponies but was herself terrified of losing things, but that was the bare truth. She hadn’t taken away her own cutie mark, had she? She’d justified it at the time by saying she was the only one who knew how to work the magic, but looking back, Starlight realized she could’ve enchanted the prop Staff of Sameness into an actual Staff of Sameness. Then any unicorn could’ve used it, and unicorns would be equal in that regard, and-
…Wow, she’d been a hypocrite.
She reached the door just in time for Sunburst to open it.
He looked almost the same, with the fiery-ish mane and tail, the “socks” on his hooves and nose, the dark cyan eyes. But the differences were glaring. His mane looked like he hadn’t combed it in weeks, but it was too shiny to be dirty. Where they’d once been almost the same height, she was now several inches taller than him. His coat was cleaner than it’d ever been when he was a colt. He blinked a few times at Starlight. It was hard to tell if they were good blinks or bad blinks.
“Hi,” she said, waving tentatively. “I… don’t know if you remember me, b-but I’m-”
“STARLIGHT!” Sunburst jumped forward and caught her in a tight hug. “Omigosh omigosh omigosh I can’t believe you’re here!”
Starlight’s worries melted away like ice under a dragon’s breath, and she returned the hug. “Me neither.” She didn’t say anything more; she felt like if she did, she’d start crying.
Sunburst broke the hug. “I can’t believe I haven’t seen you in all these years!” His grin was wide enough to swallow a watermelon or two whole. “I’m sorry but I totally forgot to write to you but then I did and you didn’t answer and… and…” His expression turned to one of surprise as he leaned to one side, looking at Twilight. “And is that Princess Twilight behind you?”
“Um…”
“Okay, we need to talk like right now. You got a minute? I got a minute. Come on inside, I’m free for like an hour. You too, Your Highness!” Sunburst was back inside the house before Starlight could say anything.
Twilight trotted up to Starlight, smiling from ear to ear. “I’d say this is going well, don’t you think?” She entered Sunburst’s house.
Starlight stood outside, breathless. She’d never imagined it would go this well. Sunburst was talking to her like they’d last seen each other yesterday. But did he really miss her, or was it an act? He hadn’t written to her for months once he first went to Canterlot. There were letters later, but she’d just assumed tha-
Sunburst called out from inside. “Well, come on! You can’t just stand outside all day! You like tea? I’ve got tea!”
Her train of thought derailed, Starlight entered Sunburst’s house. It was small, cozy. There wasn’t much in the of knick-knacks, but judging by the walls, Sunburst had taken up painting collecting. The furniture was mismatched in that peculiar way that cared more about comfort than looks. Twilight was waiting on a chair in the living room and looked ready to burst out of her skin with joy. Starlight took her own chair and began chewing her lip.
“Isn’t this exciting?” whispered Twilight. “Are you excited? ‘Cause I’m excited!”
“I- I don’t know,” said Starlight. “On the one hoof, yes, I’m glad he still knows me, but on the other-”
“Tea!” Sunburst entered the room, levitating a tray of teacups behind him. “I know some ponies prefer coffee,” he said as he passed them out, “but I never really got into it.”
“Oh.” Starlight took a sip of her tea; it was good. “Sunburst, listen, I-”
“No, wait,” he said, “me first. Listen, Starlight, I’m reeeaaally sorry that I didn’t write to you that first semester. I’m sorry, I really am, but I, I was a colt in Canterlot and, well, it’s Canterlot. Have you ever been there?”
“Not really.”
“It’s amazing! It has everything! No, really, eeeveeeryyythiiing!” He seemed honest; you just couldn’t pull off that innocent look and talk that fast while lying through your teeth at the same time. Right? “I was just so excited by it all, and I kept on saying that I’d write to you but I never did because I was busy with other things-” Sunburst’s face began falling a bit as his voice slowed down. “-and once I finally got around to it, I felt really guilty, and… and then you didn’t write back, and by the time I came back home for summer, your family had moved and you were gone.” He looked down at the floor. “I missed you. I missed you a lot. And I thought you missed me too, but when you didn’t return my letters, I th-”
“No!” yelled Starlight. Both Sunburst and Twilight jumped; she flinched and lowered her voice. “No, i-it’s my fault. You were off so quickly and you were so happy about it, and then you didn’t write, I thought you’d forgotten me. Mom kept pestering me to write a letter, but I…” She sniffed. “I don’t know. I was young and stupid. I guess I was just bitter. And when you did start writing, I never looked at them. I thought they were just excuses, not actual apologies. And then Mom got a job a few towns over that spring. We moved, and I never bothered to tell you and never looked back.” She sniffed again. “Sorry.”
“No, hey, don’t be sorry,” said Sunburst softly. Setting down his teacup, he left his chair and sat down on the floor in front of her. “Hey, it’s not your fault. I should’ve written, but I was too caught up i-”
How could he blame himself for this? Starlight cut in. “And I don’t have any excuse like that, so it is my fau-”
“You were just a filly at the tim-”
“Yeah, but you were a co-”
They both stopped talking as Twilight cleared her throat. “I can see where this is going,” she said, “so why don’t we just say it’s fifty percent your fault and fifty percent your fault and neither of you’s completely to blame?”
Starlight opened her mouth, but Sunburst cut her off. “Sounds good, Your Highness.”
Twilight cringed a tiny bit. “No titles. Just Twilight. I hate titles.”
“As you wish, Your Twilightness.” Sunburst returned to his chair. “But,” he said to Starlight, “I suppose it’s not all bad. I made lots of new friends. Still missed you, of course,” he added quickly, “but, I mean, I met some of the other unicorns there. One of them even helped me get my current job.”
For the first time that day, Starlight realized she was curious about what Sunburst was up to. Somehow, she’d never found out in her trawling. “Oh? What’s that?”
“Special effects supervisor. I-”
“Special effects?” asked Twilight. “You mean for theater?”
“Yeah. Why?” Sunburst suddenly looked really defensive, with his narrowed eyes and ears slightly back.
“It’s hard for me to imagine someone graduating from Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns,” said Twilight, “and then doing nothing more than theater effects.”
Sunburst scoffed. “Nothing more? Have you seen the kind of effects they do nowadays?”
“No.”
“They’re complex. It’s not the kind of thing just anyone can do. You have to know a lot about magic to keep it all from crashing down.” Sunburst looked away and rubbed the back of his neck. “Plus, my grades weren’t the greatest,” he muttered. “They were… eh, alright-” He wiggled a hoof halfheartedly. “-but nothing that special.”
Trying to keep Sunburst and Twilight from going at it any more, Starlight cut in. “So,” she said quickly, “what exactly do you do?”
“What it sounds like, mostly. I supervise special effects.” Sunburst shrugged. “I make sure all the spells are working properly, that they don’t interact with each other in weird ways, timing, that sort of stuff. On the side, I sometimes develop stuff of my own to use. Like, a few months ago, I came up with a ropeless harness — got a lot of orders for that — and, ooo! Why don’t I show you?” Sunburst shot out of the room and shot back in a few seconds later with a firework.
“This is my personal favorite,” said Sunburst, rubbing it affectionately. “Fireless fireworks. You can set them off inside without any risk of something burning. Watch.” The tip of Sunburst’s horn glowed; suddenly there was a fuse burning, the firework was pointed at the kitchen, and Starlight and Twilight were hiding behind the couch.
In the enclosed space, the bangs and booms were almost too loud to bear. Sparkling balls of various colors ricocheted madly around the kitchen for several seconds before eventually burning themselves out. But when Starlight mustered up the courage to peek around the sofa, nothing looked damaged. Nothing even looked like it had moved. If she hadn’t seen it for her own eyes, she wouldn’t have thought any fireworks had been set off at all.
Sunburst grinned. “See?” he said. “Perfectly safe, as long you don’t try to stick it in your mouth. Reuseable, even.” He pointed at a slowly-regrowing fuse. “That was a big one for me; I didn’t want to have to keep making new ones every time I needed one. There’s a few kinks to work out still, but they’re all polish. Different types of explosions and burning and whatnot.”
“Wow,” said Twilight. She left the safety of behind the couch to take a closer look at the firework. “And you made all this yourself? Impressive.”
“I know.” Sunburst set the firework aside. “So, enough about me: what’ve you been up to? How’d you get to be best buds with a princess?”
The bottom dropped out of Starlight’s stomach and she blinked a few times. She’d known the topic would come up eventually; she just hadn’t thought it’d be this soon or this direct. She quickly glanced at Twilight, who looked just as panicked as Starlight felt. The whole time, Sunburst was staring interestedly at her.
Well, there was nothing to it. Starlight cleared her throat. “W-well, um…”
Ten minutes later, Starlight wanted to crawl under a rock and hide that rock beneath another rock inside a cave, Twilight looked mortified and was extremely interested in a picture on the other side of the room, and Sunburst kept switching between being horrified and some kind of amused.
“And then Twilight said I should try making friends, and now I’m here,” Starlight finished lamely. “I thought I should, y’know, meet back up with you.”
Sunburst coughed. “Hem. That’s, um, well, that’s something, all right. I can’t decide whether I should be repulsed or flattered.”
“…What?”
“You created a cult to get over me!”
“It wasn’t a cult,” Starlight bristled.
“Oh, close enough,” said Sunburst, waving a hoof dismissively. “But think about it: we were such good friends that when you thought I abandoned you — again, I’m reeeaaally sorry — you went and created this… big ideology just to convince yourself that it wasn’t a bad thing. I must’ve been a really good friend.” He preened, then caught Starlight’s and Twilight’s gazes and remembered that, given the context, that wasn’t the greatest thing to be preening about. “Although the whole, uh, the whole ideology itself wasn’t, ah, wasn’t the greatest. And then you went and screwed up time like real bad. That, that wasn’t so great.” He put on his best serious face.
There was something off about Sunburst’s little speech, but it took Starlight a while to put her hoof on it: he had barely said anything bad about her. Yeah, he mentioned that he should probably be repulsed, but from what he was saying, there wasn’t a whole lot of repulsion there. So you ripped cutie marks from ponies and accidentally annihilated all of Equestria several times over through time travel? Well, that’s a bummer. But, hey, that means our friendship had been real strong! That was a lot like Sunburst had been, but this was a bit extreme. Before Starlight could say anything, Twilight spoke up.
“So you’re not mad about what she did?” asked Twilight. Starlight could hear a little bit of hopefulness in her voice.
Sunburst cocked his head. “No, not really. Why? Does it sound like I’m mad? It sounds like the ponies in that village are living normal lives now, so there’s not really much hurt there, and technically, now the whole time thing never really happened in the first place, ‘cause time travel’s all wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey like that, so…” He shrugged. “Yeah, what she did was bad, I’m not denying it, but she’s trying to change, and from the sound of it, it’s like the person Starlight’s hurt the most is herself, and even that’s getting fixed.”
Twilight was smiling again as she turned back to Starlight. “He’s got a point.”
Starlight was silent for a moment, then said, “Why is everypony getting over this so fast?! I almost destroyed Equestria by accident for a stupid petty grudge, and you’re all just a-okay with it? I haven’t even gotten scowled at, for Celestia’s sake!”
“It doesn’t do any good to hold grudges,” said Twilight. “Especially when you’re actually trying to make up and put it behind you.”
“And the last time I saw you,” Sunburst added, “you were still a filly, and I was still a colt. Maybe it’s because I haven’t really processed it or something, but I think the Starlight Glimmer I knew, the one who picked out different bows for her pigtails every day and loved peanut butter and jelly sandwiches like nothing else, is still in there somewhere, and the Starlight Glimmer who was a vindictive control freak isn’t anymore.” His voice was surprisingly soft.
Starlight couldn’t help it. In spite of her mood, she smiled. “Thanks.”
“But now that that’s all done, what’re you doing now? Just studying under Twilight?”
“For the moment. She’s found me a place to stay in Ponyville. And she’s a good teacher. But if we ever get done with it, I don’t know what I’ll be doing after that.”
“You don’t have to know now. I didn’t know what I wanted to do the year before I graduated. Trust me, you got plenty of time. And knowing what I knew about you years ago, I don’t think you’ll have a problem. Have you ever looked at yourself? You’re smart, Starlight.”
“You really are,” added Twilight. “I’d never have thought to have added onto the time spell like that, and the parts you did add are really clever.”
“Those were easy,” protested Starlight. “You just had to follow the original a bit longer, and even then I had to find something more powerful to link it to. Anypony could’ve done it.”
But Sunburst was smiling again. “Oh, no, I’ve read about this. Smart people don’t always know they’re smart because they think everyone else has it as easy as them. It’s called the Dun-Crowhop Effect or something.”
“Yeah,” said Twilight, nodding. “Dun-Crowhop. You’re smarter than most ponies, Starlight. You just need to see it.”
Smarter than most ponies. Starlight couldn’t help but think about that. Up north, that’d been what she’d been trying to get rid of. Why couldn’t everyone be as smart as everyone else?
But something Double Diamond had said came to mind; it was how she’d been going about it, he’d said. From his point of view, it wasn’t that everyone was equally good at say, skiing, but they were equally bad at skiing. And for someone like Double Diamond, whose cutie mark was all about skiing, that was miserable. Every time he tried to do what he loved, her artificial cutie mark would make it so that he couldn’t. Just because there was somepony else who wasn’t that good at skiing.
Now that he could ski again, he was doing it a lot. He was teaching her how to do it. And although she wasn’t very good at it, Double Diamond had never seemed to get frustrated. If anything, it seemed like seeing his former tormentor faceplanting every now and then was making it easier for him to forgive her. Even when she wasn’t faceplanting, he was shouting encouragement, praise, or suggestions. Their differences weren’t pushing them apart, they were bringing them closer together.
And here was Sunburst, chatting as if they’d never parted. She’d sometimes imagined getting into the School for Gifted Unicorns to be with Sunburst, but she’d never been able to manage it, and it wasn’t until she was almost grown that she started getting good at magic. Not getting in felt like a mark of shame for her, like she wasn’t good enough. But Sunburst, the one who mattered? He didn’t care. Not in the slightest.
Yes, she was smarter than most ponies. But as long as she didn’t rub it in their faces, that didn’t have to be a bad thing.
“I guess you have a point,” Starlight said. “I just hope you’re right.”
Sunburst looked at the clock and jumped. “Uh-oh,” he said. “I’m late. Listen, it’s been great talking, but I got someplace I need to be, okay?”
“I understand,” said Twilight. She turned to Starlight. “And we should probably get back to Ponyville. I’m sorry we couldn’t stay any longer, but-”
“No, this was fine,” said Starlight. An idea popped into her head. “Hey,” she said to Sunburst, “I’ve got your address, why don’t I give you mine? We can write that way.” She’d quickly scribbled it down on some scrap paper before Sunburst had said, “Yes.”
“Great,” said Sunburst. “Anyway, I really need to get going like right now.”
“Right. Sorry.”
The trio walked from Sunburst’s house and to the street. As Starlight and Twilight went in one direction towards the train station, Sunburst went the opposite way. After a few feet, he turned to the pair. “Starlight. Princess.” He bowed and trotted down the road.
Starlight waved as he grew farther away. “Bye, Sunburst! Thanks for letting us stay over!”
“No problem! Thanks for coming! Bye! Hope you visit again sometime!”
“Me, too! Bye!”
“I’ll write within the week!”
“Okay!”
Right before he turned the corner, Sunburst couldn’t resist one last shout. “And if you don’t get the letter, don’t go forming any cults again!”
“No promises!”
And he was gone.
Starlight sighed wistfully. She’d forgotten how much she liked Sunburst. He hadn’t changed all that much, actually. He still talked fast. He was still overeager to please. But the differences seemed to fit. He now had a setting other than “high”, for starters. And she wouldn’t have thought he could sit still long enough to hold a job, but somehow handling special effects seemed to fit him. She liked the changes, but still: Sunburst was Sunburst, and nothing would change that.
“That went well,” said Twilight happily. “Well, I knew it’d go well, but I didn’t think it’d be so easy. You know, we should probably write down updates on this every week. There isn’t any hard data on this, even though it’s probably really common, so we should account for…”
As she rambled on, Starlight could only say, “Yeah,” and hope the week wouldn’t be too long.
Four days later, Starlight got Sunburst’s first letter.
She wrote back immediately. A rekindled friendship was a powerful thing.
