It was a violet night. The sky's navy blanket, spotted by white freckles of starlight, captured the horizon and me with it. Midsummer heat pressured me on all sides, taking the feeling of crisp breath away from me, and all in all, it was a pleasant night.
Pinkie was on her couch, half-asleep. It was maybe eleven - not late for a young pony like myself, or like her, but we'd watched the sunset that day, setting our internal clocks sympathetic with nature. The whole day had drawn languidly to its close since we'd spent it with one another: after lunch together, we'd retired to the riverside, far from the madding crowd, and may have dozed off a bit in the shade of an afternoon hickory tree. From there, we traipsed lazily in tandem step to Pinkie's apartment, where she didn't mind if I read aloud. We made dinner, just soup and sandwiches, while we bounced between wordplay and sweet nothings and quiet intimate kisses. No urgency. No strain. It was as though the day had passed while I was half-asleep.
I took the moment to steal away. She saw me, and heard me, and may have asked where I was going, but I must have murmured that I would be right back because I wasn't followed. Go, go, go, said the bird, pushing me with some force into the capturing blanket of night. It was the right time to go, when we had begun to overlap half-asleep with half-asleep. But as I left, she watched me with her ephemeral blue eyes. I have a suspicion that she knew where I was going.
I retreated into the dark night, taking my time as I passed over Ponyville's cobblestone roads. I retreated through certain half-deserted streets, occupied only by the buildings that I had come to know over these years which in the night felt solid and impenetrable. I retreated over the broad stonewrought bridge that spans one of the many farmer's tributaries that embrace the town, and I looked over into the dark water but never stopped. I retreated into the deep secluded recesses of the copses of country hoofpaths, and I retreated from Ponyville with no wounded conscience.
Without question, I was enjoying the night. My walk was long and silent; I breathed slowly, cheerfully accepting my role as the midnight stroller. But there was something undigested at the back of my mind that the day, with its gentle, corrosive waves, had exposed. I didn't know the question yet. Once I had learned the question, I could go about answering it.
When I left the bosky shadow of an evening hickory tree, I saw motion on the path below me, and looked up to find a lonely cloud drifting mindlessly forwards. I don't think I hesitated before I levitated up to it and worked a silent spell on myself to make the two of us compatible. The dark canvas of sky stretched endlessly upwards and outwards as I laid back on the cloudbank, as though I was no nearer to it. Then, I was struck suddenly as I came upon two bright white stars in proximity. They saturated the sky in small circles around them and cruelly evoked her eyes.
At a time, those piercing eyes did not affect me. I saw them childishly, refusing to grasp them for what they were. A gradual disgust grew upon me as I watched these two stars; to think there was a past in which I could easily and arrogantly avoid her eyes. I hadn't seen them grow soft or bright yet. I hadn't yet seen them shimmer with implacable emotion as I told her I loved her. I hadn't yet felt them quench the darkly-burning violet conflict that sometimes constricted my chest. This impossible past, where the ice of her eyes was not refreshing. Yet how simple it was.
The sky at night is closer to violet than blue. Violet is one of the two powerful bookends of our colour spectrum, the fading burning dregs of blue. It's held in concensus that violet is blue and red mixed together - an honest passion, red-hot and true-blue. It isn't. My colour is blue's shadow.
"Having fun all alone?"
I started, and turned to the edge of the cloud. The voice's familiarity and impossibility clashed in my mind for a moment. "Pinkie?"
Her head and hooves were reaching onto the cloud, and she hadn't yet looked at me. I stood and lifted her as quickly as my magic would allow, holding her in midair like a divine ragdoll. She struggled to put her hooves on the cloud, and I watched as it began to hold her weight. "You can let me go now," she said, and I did. In retrospect, I'm terrified at how quickly I obeyed.
I didn't ask how. Instead, I sat as she did and stared at her, her head in profile lit only dimly by starlight. "... When did you start following me?"
"When do you think?" At this, she met my gaze. Her eyes were flame; blue incense, sacred to the night. My thoughts here blurred. "Ever since you left like that. You've never just disappeared into the night before."
"Sorry," I murmured in reply, and I think I may have lied. "I wanted to be alone for a moment."
"I thought we were going to spend the whole day together," Pinkie returned with a prodding smile. "It's not midnight yet."
Pinkie's arrival cut through the deception of the thrush as though I was pulled from a fog. "Sorry," I repeated, and finally told the truth.
"You can be alone whenever," Pinkie said, her voice barely a whisper, and she shifted closer to me. Her physical contact was overwhelmingly tender, treating me as though I was porcelain. At that connection, the bird died without ceremony; it had sung its solitary song and no living thing had heard it, and now it had died. "You can be alone reading in your library, or in bed, or whatever. You do that all the time anyway. But I'd like to be with you." She leaned in to kiss me, a swift and energetic flare to detail her presence. "At least for right now," she added, as though telling me a secret. Then she kissed me again.
I felt myself reciprocate, felt the blush pink rise to the surface and cover me, cover us both. I'd opened the door to the rose-garden as though it had never been opened before. I was renewed that night in a fashion I didn't know I needed, and I kissed back, the past impossible and the future immutable. The skylark had buried the thrush.
At some point, we both found our way to the ground. I have no recollection of how this happened, and my recollection of the events themselves are faint at best. But the renewal remained even as we began our slow walk back through the tedious, winding streets of Ponyville, even as we fell back into our circadian cycle of conversation. "I love you," Pinkie had said as we stopped to speak on the bridge. "I couldn't let you just wander off alone - well, not without telling me where you were going."
Her eyes cooled me as I met them. I settled into the phrase before I spoke it: "I want to marry you."
I remember she froze, and her mouth opened as though in shock, like she wouldn't believe she was the glue that held us - me - together. I smiled broadly, knowing at my core that this was inevitable, and then as I watched her body language haltingly begin to agree, I embraced her. There's no way to overstate that this strange atemporal sliver of a night was the best of my life.
I've never asked her about the cloud. This marks the first and last time I will discuss this memory. It lies buried in the past, where it ought to be; I'm content to allow it to restore me in my subconscious, and I hope it never rises to the front of my mind again.
I would like you to officiate the ceremony.
Ever your faithful student,
Twilight Sparkle
