The moon shone over the city of Canterlot, casting its dim light over the stone buildings. Over the city rose a castle of marble masonry, whose high spiraling towers loomed the rest of the city as silent observants.
Within the highest room of one of these towers, unlike its sisters, a small near imperceptible light shone. And it was amidst the near total darkness that a small unicorn filly sat alone.
Twilight took a slow, deep breath. She kept the air in her lungs for as long as she could before slowly letting it out, but she still wouldn’t dare open her eyes.
As long as she kept her eyes closed, she thought to herself, she could pretend that the cause of her uneasiness was no longer in front of her and that everything was alright. She would open her eyes and see there was nothing there to be worried about. Yes, she’d will it out of existence. She’d think that there was no problem at all and the problem would cease to exist as a result, it was as simple as that.
Twilight opened one eye with such caution that it seemed she feared a fierce predator would pounce upon her at the slightest provocation, eager to rip her apart and feast on her remains. Finally, she opened both eyes and looked straight ahead of her.
The blank piece of parchment stared back at her.
Twilight let out an annoyed grunt, “I should have known it wouldn’t work. This is the last time I listen to Shining!” She raised a hoof and brought it down on her wood desk with as much force as her small arm had, “Law of Attraction is a bunch of ponyfeathers…”
She looked at the parchment in front of her once again and her mouth twisted into a grimace.
“Alright, alright, alright,” Twilight said as she tapped her hooves on her desk. She then jumped from her seat and walked towards a full body mirror next to her bed, “Twilight, it’s already late and you have to start writing this report!”
She looked back at the desk, the light from the oil lamp casting an orange glow over the wall. Twilight glared at it.
“You are not going to let a measly book report best you,” she whispered to her reflection, “you’re going to get back to that desk and you’re going to write the best assignment Princess Celestia has ever read.”
With as much decisiveness as a young filly could have, she strode back to her desk and sat on her chair. With a strong nod she levitated her quill, dipped it in ink and stared forward.
The blank piece of parchment stared back at her.
She blinked.
“What is wrong with me today?” Twilight said as she let the quill drop back into the inkwell.
Twilight pressed her hooves against her tired eyes, all while her mind dodged thoughts about the late hour and the creeping coldness.
How had things turned out like this? It was a simple book report, like the dozens she had written before. There were even times when she’d write three book reports, five essays, and one monograph in a single weekend, not to mention all the assorted reading she’d program in-between.
When Princess Celestia had assigned her to read a book about Saddle Arabian history, little Twilight thought it would be a piece of cake. Read, take notes, re-read, summarise, organise the ideas, write, edit, re-write. She had the process so ingrained in her mind that she could do it with her eyes closed and had indeed done so on occasion with what she considered acceptable results, calligraphy notwithstanding.
However, this time had been different.
A thorough read on her history book ignited her hunger for more information about the faraway lands of Saddle Arabia. She had read more books about their history, their culture, their fables and tales; and before she knew it, the sun had set while she was deep within the pages of Daring Do and the Arabian Neighs.
Twilight couldn’t help but let out a guilty groan, knowing that it was her own fault and lack of control that led her to her current predicament. Still, she had to at least pretend to look at the bright side. Surely all the books she had read will help her write a more thorough and in-depth report, right?
Right?
She shook her hooves and stretched her back until it gave a satisfying crack. If this is how things were going to be, Twilight needed to take it more seriously. Once again she levitated her quill, dripping the extra ink off, and carefully bringing it over the parchment.
“Okay, Twilight. Time to start,” she said out loud, not moving the quill.
“Any time now,” she said, still not moving the quill.
“I know the ideas are about to arrive,” she said, the quill immobile.
Silence.
The blank piece of parchment stared back at her.
“Time for a break!” Twilight said, a little bit too eager, as she dropped the quill back into the inkwell and jumped from her seat. “Yup, a break is just what I need to clear my mind.”
She walked, or rather trotted, towards the kitchen with a stiff smile on her face. After several hours of doing nothing but reading, the little Twilight thought, she should probably go grab something to eat. Maybe a cold glass of milk, too.
Yeah, she’ll do that. And once she got her energy back, she’ll come back right away with her mind fresh and renewed, and she’ll tackle that pesky book report.
She could feel her left eye twitch.
“No, stop that,” she chided herself, “you’re just going to get something to eat and you’ll feel better.”
She realised that what she just said sounded more like an order rather than a reassuring thought, but chose to focus on the blank parchment in front of-.
“Fridge!” She said, her eyes wide open. “Blank fridge. Ah, I mean white fridge...”
Twilight smacked her face on the door, thinking about how she had come to this point. With a defeated sigh, she opened the fridge and took out whatever seemed appetizing without paying too much attention.
“Maybe I have to tackle this problem in a different way,” Twilight said as she cut open a loaf of bread and stuffed it full of her fridge loot. “Maybe I should just write whatever comes to mind and then try to edit it into something better.”
Twilight heard the sound of the ticking clock on the wall.
“That should work,” she muttered to herself before taking a big bite out of her sandwich. Her odd-tasting sandwich.
In hindsight, maybe making a leftovers sandwich wasn’t the best idea. Specially once she considered that she hadn’t cleaned the fridge for over two weeks. “Nervousness doesn’t lend itself to the kitchen, duly noted.”
Twilight frowned as she poured herself a glass of milk to wash out the aftertaste of the leftover concoction. Was she making too big a deal out of this report? It was, after all, just a three-thousand word essay on Saddle-Arabian history. Introductory paragraph, spend a couple of body paragraphs going over the major points mentioned in the book, and wrap it all up with a nice--
The clock on the wall stopped ticking as a little bird came out of a little door above it and sang an off-tone melody. It was midnight.
Twilight’s pupils shrunk as a chill went down her spine.
She had seven hours before she needed to wake up. If she could finish her essay in one hour, she could get at least six hours of sleep. That should be enough to get her through the day.
After downing the rest of the milk in a single gulp, and storing the sandwich in the fridge for future disposal, Twilight ran back to her room, and jumped back to her seat. This was it, she was going to power through her block and write this report.
She brought the piece of parchment closer to her with her hoof, while her magic enveloped the quill in a lavender aura that jerked it out of the inkwell. Her lips formed a thin line as her stare became more intense. With a quick motion, she brought the quill to the parchment, and readied herself.
The blank piece of parchment stared back at her.
Twilight could feel her left eye twitch.
How? Wait, no. Not ‘how’, why? Why was this happening? Twilight could breeze through written reports, essays, or whatever, why was she stuck on this dumb assignment? She was better than this! She wasn’t going to let something as simple as homework bring her down. She was going to push through, finish this essay, go to sleep, and wake up refreshed and ready to greet another day of learning, or her name wasn’t Twilight Sparkle!
She stared at the blank piece of parchme--
“Titles!” Twilight suddenly exclaimed as her scowl turned into a grin. “I can do titles, titles are fun, easy, and they don’t try to bring me down.”
Moving the quill to the top of the scroll with both eagerness and finesse, Twilight wrote a sentence in large, bold letters that marked the beginning of her report.
“Ha! Take that, report! Twilight bows down to no homework,” Twilight said before starting to giggle. Breaking her block felt rather refreshing, if she said so herself. Suddenly, all the stress and worrying of the previous hours felt oh so silly. What had been the problem? She just had to wait a little bit and keep going until she managed to get started, and chided herself for getting worked up.
With a satisfied smile, Twilight let out a sigh and looked at the scroll.
The mostly blank piece of parchment stared back at her.
Twilight closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath. She counted to ten in her head. She playfully stomped her hooves on the floor. Cocking her head, she looked at the words she had written in the parchment.
“A Comparative View of Equestrian and Saddle-Arabian Cultures,” Twilight read out loud. She gave an approving nod. Clear and concise, just like a good title should be.
She kept looking at the scroll.
With a flick of her horn, she dipped her quill back in the inkwell and brought it to the top of the parchment, where she carefully underlined the words she had written. Giving an approving nod, Twilight let the quill rest on the side of her desk, and promptly threw herself to the floor.
“Why!?” Twilight cried as she grabbed a pillow and held it tight between her arms. “Why can’t I write a simple report? It’s just words. Words. Words. Words. Words!” She emphasised every word with a punch to her pillow, and with each punch she chipped away a bit of the relief she had felt just a moment ago.
Twilight buried her face in the pillow, allowing her mind to embrace the blankness that was creeping upon it. Blank like the blankness of the parchment on top of her desk, she reminded herself.
“Shut up, brain,” Twilight muttered, her voice muted by the pillow. She continued to lay there, immobile, silent, taking slow, measured breaths.
She then let out a long, high pitched scream that the pillow barely managed to muffle. And then another one. Pausing only to take another breath, she let out yet another high pitched scream.
The process repeated itself several times, until little Twilight ran out of air. She looked back at her desk, and at the oil lamp casting an ever diminishing orange glow over the wall.
“I hate you,” she said, pouting. “I hate you and I hate your blankness.” She straightened her back and crossed her forearms over the pillow.
“And your impossibility in spite of your simplicity,” she said with half lidded eyes, “and your... uh… your…”
Twilight scrunched up her muzzle.
“I hate you,” she said with finality.
Her firmness was short lived, however. For the sense of dread settled back in her once she remembered all that she had to do before she could finally get some sleep. Looking at the clock didn’t help, either.
“Well, finishing the report before one no longer is a realistic plan…” Twilight said, dejectedly. With little energy, she threw the pillow back to her bed, and slowly dragged herself back to her desk.
“Twelve forty-eight,” she mumbled, “two thousand, nine hundred, and ninety one words left to go.”
The mostly blank piece of parchment stared back at her.
If she managed to finish the report before two, she could still get five hours of sleep before having to wake up. That meant she had little over seventy minutes to write almost three thousand words, or about forty-three words per minute, or one word every second and a half.
The clock on the wall ticked away the seconds.
“I can do it. I can totally do it,” Twilight mused to herself. Giving herself a reassuring nod, she levitated the quill out of the inkwell for what felt the hundredth time that night and carried it over to the parchment.
She idled there, keeping the quill hovering above the surface of the scroll.
“Definitely,” she said, still nodding, “So why aren’t you writing, Twilight?”
She kept her breaths slow and even.
“Just… write,” she said.
Pressing ever so softly, she dragged the quill over the parchment.
“In a similar fashion to the unification of the Three Tribes that led to the creation of Equestria, the territories that compose Saddle-Arabia faced a number of hardships on their path to peace and freedom,” Twilight recited as she wrote.
Twilight removed the quill from the parchment and let it rest back in the inkwell.
She stared back at the not-as-blank-as-before piece of parchment.
“...Five… ten… twenty…” she counted in a low voice. Thirty-five words. She had done it. She had managed to start her report. She got her first sentence and opener done. Her lips trembled again, but not due to dread and anxiety, but rather due to a growing sense of elation and contentedness.
“Finally…” Twilight said with a sigh. She rubbed her hooves against her temples, If she was being honest, writing that sentence helped ease the tension that was growing inside of her, and she hoped that the rest of the report would flow just as easily.
The blank part of the parchment stared back at her.
Twilight felt her left eye twitch.
“I should probably check the book once again, just to be sure,” Twilight said as she brought her saddlebags towards her and took out the heavy tome about Saddle-Arabian history, “This should only take a second…”
Twilight was lying on her back, staring at the clock on the wall, watching its hands move as they chipped away her remaining time.
“Go on…” she said, with a lethargic tone dripping from her words, “I dare you, do it.”
The clock hit five o’clock and her report was still only forty four words long.
Deciding to re-read that book was a mistake, she only fell down the rabbit hole once again and now she was surrounded by half a dozen reference books. Stupid book addiction.
It was weird. Time had passed so fast but Twilight’s mind was lost in a thick fog, lost in a different plane, almost as if it had detached itself from reality and was now ruled by its own concept of time.
Twilight groaned and scurried closer to her bed. She should probably go to sleep now, get as much rest as she could in the few hours she had, and then come clean with Princess Celestia and hope she doesn’t disown her.
Although, to be honest, what could she possibly say? That she was sorry her miscellaneous reading got in the way of doing a simple book report? Not likely. It was magic kindergarten for her.
The filly held her limbs close to her body as she dug her way underneath a blanket.
She was doomed. Doomed. Princess Celestia would surely never forget this. Again, it’s not as if she was plagued by other assignments, this book report was the only thing she had to do yesterday, and the day before. But amidst all her planning and preparation she simply got sidetracked and ended up not doing the report.
Twilight let out a groan.
It was an odd sensation. She wouldn’t exactly call it ‘sadness’, it was more of a heaviness that permeated her whole body down to her core and felt almost as if it was pulling her towards the ground.
“Maybe my mind is so far gone that it has started feeling gravity,” Twilight said in a mock tone, “or maybe I’m just somatizing my anxiety.”
The light of the oil lamp was about to go out, she would have to change the oil later today. She should probably get an assistant. Who cares if she’s still technically a filly? She has studies to focus on, if she had an assistant to help her with more mundane tasks, she could concentrate solely on her studies.
…
Yeah, as if something like that could happen.
Twilight reluctantly shook off the blanket and stepped off the bed. With heavy steps, she walked towards her desk and planted herself on the seat, staring at her unfinished assignment and yes, it stared back.
“I’m a disgrace… I mean, it’s not as if I have no idea what I’m supposed to do, I have the rundown in my head. I know what ideas I should mention first, I know how to segue into each point, and I know how to wrap up everything at the conclusion, it’s just that…” she trailed off. Her words were drained of energy.
Twilight looked down.
“Why can’t I do this?” she said as her voice started to break. The corners of her eyes felt moist, but the flowing tears only served to exacerbate the stinging sensation in her tired eyes.
A sob escaped Twilight’s throat. And then another one. And yet another one came out, until Twilight didn’t feel like holding them back. Her shoulders shook and she had to cover her mouth with her hoof to prevent her anguished cries from disturbing anyone who may hear them.
“Why…” Twilight lamented herself, “Why!?”
That last exclamation came out perhaps a bit more forceful than Twilight realised. Her pursed lips quickly shifted into a tight grimace. Slamming her hooves on the wooden desk, Twilight jerked the quill out of the inkwell and towards the parchment.
“What’s so hard about you, huh?” she spat.
She moved the quill back to where her last line ended, pressed down, and started to furiously write. Words came out at an alarmingly fast rate.
“See!? The first vestiges of what is considered modern Saddle-Arabian culture coincide with the reign of Discord, and the adherence to order during that time set the course for the development of their early cultural milestones,” Twilight mused in anger as she tore through the scroll.
Words kept pouring out of her mind as she mindlessly let her rage control her. The quill danced over the surface of the parchment, almost as a puppet being controlled by an insane puppeteer.
Twilight kept muttering words laced with anger as she wrote, almost in a frantic daze. Every word written felt as if she was purging every bad experience she’d had during this all-nighter: every time she got distracted, every moment of uncertainty, every time her mind went blank, every time the ticking clock sent shivers down her spine.
She didn’t even acknowledge the moment when she reached the end of the parchment, nor did she really notice when she took out another one and continued writing on it. Twilight automatically dipped the quill back in the inkwell whenever the words started to come out lighter, she changed the quill once the tip of the feather broke off and kept writing without missing a beat.
All throughout, Twilight wouldn’t stop talking under her breath, silently cursing this horrid assignment. So what if she didn’t do it? It was just one homework out of the dozens she did every week. Celestia couldn’t banish her for finishing it alrea--Wait.
Twilight blinked.
The full parchments stared back at her.
“Oh…” Twilight said as realisation dawned on her.
While this was an unexpected turn of events, she couldn’t say they were unwelcome. Her little body started to shake again, but not due to suppressed rage and anguish, but due to a fit of giggles that she didn’t bother holding back. She threw a hoof over her eyes as a goofy smile spread over her face. She had acted like such a foal.
“Well, I’m sure I’m not telling the Princess anything about this,” Twilight said as she looked around her room. Her night antics had made quite a mess of haphazardly thrown books, twisted bed sheets, and broken quills.
She looked at the clock on her wall. Just over six o’clock, Princess Celestia should be awake already and getting ready to rise the sun. Knowing that she wouldn’t get any sleep, Twilight thought about cleaning her room until it was time to meet the Princess.
She was about to do that, until a scroll popped into existence over her desk in a puff of flames.
Twilight recognised the Royal seal on the scroll and wasted no time in prying it open. She wondered what was so urgent that the Princess send her a message this early in the day. Smiling, she unrolled the parchment and read outloud.
Dear Twilight, my most faithful student.
Hopefully I’m not disturbing your sleep, and you’ll see this message when you wake up. You know how much I value your education. and as you surely remember, we had appointed a study session for this morning. However, unforeseen complications regarding the court arose last night that I had to deal with immediately.
I hope you can forgive me, but we’ll have to reschedule our meeting for next week. Still, hopefully we can catch up later this evening over a cup of tea.
Best regards,
Princess Celestia.
Twilight kept smiling once she finished reading. She sat there, motionless, as she read and reread the letter. Once she accepted that this was indeed a letter from the Princess and had assimilated its contents, she nodded to herself, rolled up the scroll and left it on top of her desk.
She felt her right eye twitch.
Princess Celestia gave a sad sigh as she watched the scroll disappear. She hated having to cancel an appointment with her dear student, but matters escaped her hooves. Still, she hoped Twilight wouldn’t be too upset, and maybe she could use her free day to go and make some friends with other fillies of the Academy.
“Princess?” Her aide said, trying to catch her attention. “The Saddle-Arabian delegates are waiting.”
Princess Celestia let out a low grumble before standing up and heading for the hallway, “Yes, I’m done here. We shouldn’t make them wait too long.”
The whole court had been thrown into a frenzy when the Saddle-Arabian delegates arrived three days earlier than expected. She had hoped to brush upon the minutiae of their culture as to give them a proper welcome, but her already hectic schedule prevented her from doing so. Which is why she had assigned Twilight to make a report on basic Saddle Arabian culture and history so she could share it with her, but alas that plan had been truncated as well.
"You can't foresee everything, Celestia," the Princess muttered to herself.
“Most issues have been dealt with,” her aide said, reading from a file as she tried to keep up with her, “but they still want your presence and approval in some of the paperwork left , specifically in--”
Somewhere far in the castle, a small anguished cry could be heard, followed by a low thud. Both the Princess and her aide, as well as some nearby guards and servants stood still in shock.
Princess Celestia grimaced. She hated Saturdays.
