Starlight breathed a heavy sigh of relief as she yanked the last sticky note from the tip of the six-pointed star atop Twilight’s castle. The note that read “High Point of Castle Star” -- followed by its exact height in every measurement she had been able to think of at the time -- mocked her as she crumpled it up and magicked it into nothing. That’d show it.
She glanced briefly at the setting sun and frowned. It had taken her almost a full day to go around the entire castle and take down all the notes she had pasted up before. The hardest part was remembering which rooms she had gone in before and after the madness had set in. The second hardest part was keeping up this self-levitation long enough to nab the ones she had placed outside the castle.
I just don’t understand what went wrong! she thought to herself as she began her descent back toward solid ground. It was such a simple plan. I just needed to put up a few notes so I could make my way around the castle easier. There was nothing in it about having some sort of... manic episode!
“All done?” Twilight asked, emerging from the castle just in time to see Starlight touch down gracefully on the front lawn.
“Yes, that should be all of them. I think. Or maybe ‘I hope’ is more accurate here. I’m sorry again, Twilight. I don’t know what came over me. I didn’t ruin anything of yours, did I?” Starlight asked, ears pinned back against her head.
“No, nothing’s ruined. Don’t worry about it!” Twilight replied. She was taking this whole thing rather well, all things considered. “Though I think I can see why I found you broken down on the library floor. You managed to get through three whole books labelling each individual paragraph on every single page before you ran out of notes.”
Starlight winced. “I’m honestly glad I don’t remember much of what I did, in a way. It all sounds so… tedious.”
“The only problem being that we’re going to be finding notes you forgot about and missed for pretty much the rest of forever,” Spike added, hopping down the steps to join the two mares. He handed Starlight a small yellow note. “Like this one.”
Starlight groaned and tore the note -- “West Wing Hallway #6, Window #2” -- to shreds with her magic. “Yeah, that’s going to be fun. I’m never going to live this down, am I?” she asked as the others watched the pieces float gently to the ground.
“Probably not.” Spike nodded. “But hey, at least now you have a story to share with good ol’ Sunburst next time you write to him! I’m sure he’ll get a real kick out of it!” he added, receiving only a comically large frown and a harsh tail flick from Starlight.
“I’m not telling Sunburst I went crazy and wasted hundreds of sticky notes labelling the entirety of the Princess of Friendship’s castle. I’d rather he actually want to talk to me, you know?”
Twilight grinned slyly. “He already knows you tried to use advanced time travel magic to go back into the past and destroy Equestria, and he still seems plenty willing to talk to you. I think you’ll be just fine on that front, Starlight.”
Starlight opened her mouth to reply, but found she really had nothing to say. Twilight had a pretty solid point. Before she could closer her mouth, however; she let out a long and pointed yawn. She covered her mouth with her hoof. “Wow. I’m kind of exhausted. Weird, seeing as all I did was walk around. Maybe cushy castle life is making it hard to stay in shape?”
“Try carrying around all of Twilight’s books all the time. That’s how I get my exercise in these days,” Spike suggested dryly.
“Hey! You’re the one who keeps volunteering to help, Spike!” Twilight responded, a little too defensively. “Anyway, Starlight, maybe you should just turn in for the night? I have some reading to catch up on, but I don’t have any lessons planned until next Thursday, so you’re free to sleep all you want until then.”
“I don’t think I’m going to need quite that long, but I’ll take you up on that offer. Good night, Twilight. And good night to you too, Spike!”
Twilight and Spike returned Starlight’s well wishes and waved as she went back into the castle first and headed to her room. The one good thing that came out of this experience was that Starlight was pretty sure she could walk from the front door to the residential wing blindfolded.
As Starlight entered her room, she finally realized just how tired she was. Her bed looked more inviting than any she had ever seen before. She could practically hear it call to her. “Come to me, Starlight,” it whispered in its sweet, alluring tone.
Just before she could leap into its soft, downy embrace her attention was suddenly stolen by something else: a blank sheet of parchment laid out on her desk. An unfinished -- well, unstarted, really -- letter. One that Starlight had been trying to pen for almost a week now.
Spike’s earlier words echoed in her head. “At least now you have a story to share with good ol’ Sunburst next time you write to him!” Starlight pondered the thought for a few minutes and smiled, shaking her head. Might as well just get it out there before *he does.*.
A few steps away from her much desired bed and Starlight stood at her desk, quill and ink pot already set and ready to go. Her smile widened as she used her magic to dip the quill gently into the ink and got to work.
“Dear Sunburst,” she read aloud as she put the words to the page. “It’s your friend, Starlight Glimmer. I’ve been meaning to write to you for a while now, but the last few days have been pretty weird. You’ll never believe what I did. Or maybe you will? Well, anyway, it all started yesterday morning, during breakfast…”
