An unknown sensation

Halfway through the night, Twilight put aside the quill. Spike'd have been faster, but she wanted to personally write that letter.

"Dear Princess Celestia,

I have been fairly inactive for some time now and I apologise. I did learn a lot about friendship in the meantime though.

For simplicity and structure, I'll just start from the beginning. Back just when You had sent me that 'invitation' to do the finals, remember?

That letter had done something to me. I don't know fully understand it, but I was suddenly suffering from a fairly heavy insomnia.

But it also put me under stress. I have hardly been to Canterlot since You sent me here to Ponyville.

Even worse than that I was returning to a place I had not visited for more than one day at once for such a long time was the renewed need to prove myself.

I can't remember when the library became the only one that could teach me. And now I should know all that a fully educated unicorn would at their finals?

How could I be sure not to fail completely while not showing off with my talents? What if anypony had heard the tales of how I saved their sorry rumps twice, if not more often?

How would I survive the time without my friends?

Now, somehow, I managed to balance out talent and cover, which You provided for me. That solved the first two questions.

Before I could find an answer to the third one, a new problem came up, which called for the assistance of my friends more than ever, and I hate my body for bringing that up, even right then.

Right as I was trying to cope with the stress, I noticed a lack of emotional binding. I mean, I've got Spike, the other Elements, most of the ponies in Ponyville... Yet, I was missing someone.

Someone to bring all that troubled me to. Someone that would share my joy as well as my grief and my bed.

What an awesome problem to have right before more than two months of work far away from anything you really know, right?

Ironically, it was my friends' attempts to cure my insomnia that caused this. Well, they managed to get it away.

I think maybe some of the stuff from between Applejack and Rainbow Dash leaked over to me. Who knows. I know I don't.

I am rambling over tiny details. So let me move on to more relevant stuff.

I went to the School and did my finals. That sounds unnaturally short, but it about sums it up.

While I was there, I also discovered Glimmer in my mind, but she was nothing like what she really was. A figment of my imagination, animating the picture of a pegasus I had received through Clairvoyance with missing data.

I knew how she looked, but little else. What was missing was filled up with... Something. I am not sure where that sadistic personality came from. She claimed it was my own.

Maybe it was. I wouldn't know. What I did know was that she organised what visions of the future I received. I asked You about that topic already if I recall correctly. She refuses to sort my memory.

I met somepony else during my brief time at school that would also become very important to me.

Her name is Midnight and I am in love with her right now.

I can't help but feel that she has something dire to hide, but Midnight refuses to speak about it.

That solved the fourth problem, with the third automatically undoing itself as I could return to Ponyville.

Maybe I should be more direct. I've learned that, no matter the circumstances, one should always keep their eyes open and give everypony a chance, as even more than a wonderful friendship may come from that.

I could add that the help of friends is always in good will and that they can't be blamed for any problem that'd follow from it, but I already knew that since my first day in Ponyville.

So, in order. I returned to Ponyville where Midnight followed me to. As friends, back then. Although, looking back, she might have had a little crush on me already.

Things moved so quickly. I attended the wedding of Applejack and Rainbow Dash. Right after, I got heavily sick with the seasonal pony flu.

I was the only one in all of Ponyville that did. Fortunately, I had made friends with Midnight, who had nothing to do in her occupation as a nurse, and thus cared for me almost all day. As a good friend would.

I got better soon, but not before rushing to the clinic in an ill haste and almost by accident admitting to Midnight that I had grown quite fond of her.

Glimmer changed in that time. At first, she was pushed out of my mind almost completely, and replaced by an image of Midnight, who was sometimes even Midnight herself through some kind of common subconscious thing.

Magic. Don't try to explain that.

But she returned. Glimmer was worse than before. Through something I named the Bleeding Effect, I felt exactly the same when she showed me a vision as I did in that vision.

As I received hundreds of bits of information daily, she could exploit that to put me to sleep with a sequence of me doing so.

I didn't understand her reasons.

Eventually, things cleared up. I was shown that, indeed, Glimmer had lived. She had been there for me since the beginning of my life. Like Princess Cadance, but earlier.

But before long, Glimmer was hit by a lightning bolt and fell to her doom while I was still watching. Good thing is, she proved that flying through thunderclouds IS dangerous. Bad thing is, she died.

She's telling me not to be so dry about her death right now.

So, I did what every filly would, I repressed and forgot about those things as soon as I could. But the memories were still there, and Glimmer showed them to me.

I understood. This was not an enemy at all, but an old friend, returning from the grave to assist me.

Funnily enough, what I wrote earlier about the lesson I had learned about friendship applies here too.

That's about what has happened to me since my last real letter. I have much more to tell You, but this is already much longer than I meant it to be. I don't want to waste Your time.

Your faithful student

Twilight Sparkle"