Ponyville mornings in the pre-dawn hours were crisp and chilly, no matter the season, no matter the weather. In a town that thrived on week-to-week chaos, it was a rare constant that Twilight appreciated, even if it made her bunch up for extra warmth as she lay on her belly out on the balcony. Her only heat source was a half-full teacup, stroking her chin with a thin finger of steam. The warmth, and moisture, made her neck perspire, in spite of the nippy weather.
Below her vantage, the town unfolded, a collection of quaint, yet spacious, straw-roofed homes. Ponyville, though bright and lively in the day, was dark and desolate, and a little lonely-looking, before sunrise. Many in Ponyville rose with the sun, but most wouldn't stir for hours to come. The darkness and desolation bothered her little, though – it wasn't her ideal view, but she wasn't up and outside so early just to look upon Ponyville before it woke up. Her balcony had an easterly view, one she'd wanted to take advantage of ever since she'd moved into the library.
For nearly a year, she'd meant to watch the sun rise; for nearly a year, she'd put it off. Now, for the first time in nearly a year, she was actually awake for it – albeit by accident. Judging by the sound of claw-tipped dragon toes click-clacking against the floorboards behind her, she wasn't the only one.
"You're up early," said Spike in a sleep-thickened voice as he stepped onto the balcony.
"Up late, actually. I pulled another all-nighter without meaning to. Whoops." Twilight turned her head to smile tiredly at her assistant. "You are up early. Bad dream?"
"Good one, actually. Ended too soon." Spike grumbled; he rubbed his eyes, and blinked at Twilight, refocusing. "Want me to put some coffee on, or get breakfast going?"
"No, thank you. I'm pretty wiped out – just staying up for the sunrise." Twilight gazed out at the horizon again, sipping her tea. "Wanna watch it with me?"
"Ah..." Spike hedged, rocking back and forth on his heels – Twilight could tell from the creaking of the boards. "I dunno... it's kinda cold out, isn't it?"
"Said the guy who can breathe fire," Twilight teased. She shifted some of her weight onto her side and curved her body, forming a crescent with a crook just big enough for Spike to nestle into. "C'mon. If I can handle it, you can handle it."
With a sigh, Spike relented, tromping over and settling down in the space Twilight made for him. Twilight beamed at Spike, and floated her teacup toward him in a silent offering; he rejected it with a polite shake of his head.
"Your loss," Twilight murmured, swirling the teacup and taking another sip. "It's the Princess's own blend."
"I'm more of an orange zinger kind of guy, personally. But, uh, you do you, Twi." He patted Twilight's flank. "That's one heck of a view, huh? Different from Canterlot, though."
"Mmhm." Twilight sipped, smiling against the porcelain as the last of her tea drained into her mouth. "It's an easterly view. We never had that in Canterlot."
Spike blinked up at her. "Never? Really?"
"My bedroom window, growing up, had a southerly view – which meant your bedroom window did, too. The dorms at school didn't have windows, and our tower at the castle faced west. So, no, we've never had an easterly view." She looked, surprised, at Spike. "You seriously never realized that?"
"It's not the kind of thing I think about, Twi." He reached up and rapped the side of Twilight's head with his knuckles. "You might be brainy enough to think about every old thing in the world, all at once, but the rest of us aren't so lucky."
Twilight snorted and brushed his hand away, setting her teacup down. "You're such a pain in the butt. I don't know where you get that from."
"Who says I get it from anywhere? Maybe it's just a dragon thing. Maybe all dragons are pains in the butt. Nature vs. nurture, and all that." Spike chuckled, then sighed. "Anyway, that's not really what I meant when I said the view was different."
Twilight quirked an ear at him. "Oh?"
"Yeah, I meant it's..." Spike laced his fingers together and pressed his thumbs against one another. "Back in Canterlot, you could step out on the balcony, and it was like... all of Equestria spread out below you. The forests, and the hills, the mountains off in the distance – heck, on a clear day, you could see all the way out to Gildedale, if you looked hard enough. This one's a lot... smaller. Doesn't give you that same sense of awe. You know?"
"I... guess." Twilight's ear flicked, then sagged. "Is it really so bad, though?"
"I didn't say it was bad, I just said it was smaller," Spike said hurriedly. "Don't get me wrong, it's nice. It's pretty, and homey, and it's a heck of a lot easier to pony-watch from this height. It's just... it's not..."
"It's not like Canterlot."
"...It's not like Canterlot," Spike agreed quietly. His head turned northward, searching in vain for the castle on the peak, but it was hidden behind the dense leaves of their home.
In the distance, the pale light on the horizon shifted in color, from gray to gold. It grew brighter, too, from pale to vivid, and gradually built into a palette's worth of yellow and red, spreading like a bruise into the sky. It wouldn't be so long now.
"Twilight?" said Spike meekly.
"Spike?" said Twilight, looking down at him with an expectant smile.
"Do you..." Spike fidgeted, scooting his tail out from under his body, and draping it over his knees. "Do you, um... do you ever get homesick?"
"Homesick?" Twilight blinked. "For... what, exactly? For my parents' house, for the tower, or just... for Canterlot?"
"Uh... all of the above? But I meant Canterlot in general... mostly." Spike's hands gripped his tail, wringing gently.
Twilight watched him in silence as she formulated her answer, wondering what had brought this on. Did this have something to do with that pleasant dream that had ended too early, or was this something that he'd been turning over in his head for a while now? "I think about it, sure, and there's stuff about it that I miss. Lessons with the Princess, the donuts, holidays with Mom and Dad, the donuts, the castle library... the donuts..."
Her mouth watered, making her frown for just a moment as she reconsidered Spike's offer of breakfast. "But no, I can't say that I get homesick for Canterlot," she finished.
Spike's expression shifted, incredulity distorting his features. "Why not?"
"I dunno. I've never devoted any of my vast braininess to unraveling that particular question. At a guess, though?" Twilight shrugged. "I suppose I just prefer the life I have here to the one I had back there. Staying inside that cavernous tower, alone, all day and night... always with my nose in a book..."
"You still always have your nose in a book," Spike pointed out, poking her.
"Often, but not always. Now I know to come up for air every now and again." Twilight winked. "And although Ponyville's library is impressive enough that I certainly could, I don't spend all my time in it."
"That's... all pretty new, you know? New for you." Spike rubbed his shoulder awkwardly. "You didn't used to mind all that. Being alone, locked in a tower, reading all day every day..."
"I didn't mind, you're right. And yet, if I tried to go back to that life..." Twilight trailed off, looking out at the horizon with her lips tightly pursed.
Spike's hand rested on her shoulder, with a timidness that suggested he was afraid he'd upset her. "Twi...?"
Twilight kept silent for a moment longer, answering at last when she'd collected herself. "I was never happy in my old life, Spike. Content, sure – with the isolation, with the self-imposed loneliness – but never happy. I wasn't, you know, depressed, or miserable, and I mistook 'not being miserable' for happiness. But I could never go back to living that way, now that I've made my friends, now that I know what I was missing out on for all those years."
The mere thought made Twilight's eyes sting – she blinked away tears as Spike consoled her by squeezing her shoulder. "Ponyville's my home, Spike," she said. "This is where I learned to enjoy life. To really live it. By contrast, Canterlot's... just that place I grew up. I can't be homesick for someplace that was never really home."
Spike's hand left her shoulder. "I didn't know you felt that way," he said softly. "I'm sorry."
"There's no need to apologize." Twilight nudged his cheek with her nose. "Do you ever get homesick for Canterlot?"
"...Sometimes," Spike admitted, wringing his tail even tighter. "Maybe. I dunno. I mean... it's stupid, Twi—"
"It's not." Twilight flicked her tail to drape it over Spike's on his lap. "Go on."
Spike's grip around his tail loosened, and his fingers found the strands of Twilight's instead. He stroked her tail gently as he spoke.
"...I don't get homesick for Canterlot, per se. But I think about how much our lives have changed since coming out here. And it's all good stuff, I'm not complaining, but it's still so much change, so fast. I think back to Canterlot, and how different things were from how they are in Ponyville, and I think... like, today we're watching the sunrise from the library balcony, but tomorrow? A year from now? Five? Who knows where we'll be? Who knows how different our lives'll be? How different the world we live in will be?
"So, when I think about Canterlot, I'm not thinking 'hey, life was so much better back there.' I'm thinking about how things were just stable for so long. Change happened, but it didn't happen all at once, like when we moved to Ponyville. There was always time to adjust, to get acclimated. And I wanna know that we're gonna have that here, too – and not just have everything suddenly change, over and over and over again."
Twilight bit her lip. Truth was, she knew how Spike felt – similar thoughts and feelings had troubled her as well, ever since Princess Celestia bade her to stay in Ponyville to study the magic of friendship. Her life, so solid and immutable for so long, was completely upended by that command. And it was the greatest thing that ever happened to her, but something could still come along to irrevocably change her sense of normality again.
She hoped she had an answer for Spike that would come as more than just hollow comfort.
"I understand where you're coming from," said Twilight slowly. "And... I wish I could say that I knew for sure, one way or the other, what was going to come next for us. But even if things do change again, that doesn't have to be a scary thing. If there's anything we can learn from moving to Ponyville, it's that change can surprise us, but it can also be good for us. And it often is, I think."
Spike's mouth twisted skeptically. "Still too much ambiguity for me, Twi."
"Mm. Well then..." Twilight wrapped her hoof around Spike, drawing him closer into the crook of her body. "Consider looking for the constants in your life. The things that'll never change, no matter what."
An arched eyebrow complimented Spike's skeptical expression. "Such as?"
"For one? You and me." Twilight leaned down, and pecked Spike on the tip of his nose. "No matter what happens, Spike, no matter where we go, or how much our lives change, I know – deep down, in my heart – that the two of us will always be together.
Spike touched his nose with a hint of a blush, before smiling broadly and snuggling into Twilight, warm and smooth against her coat. "That's super corny, Twilight."
Twilight snickered, her face reddening. "Yeah, yeah, well. It's a corny morning all around."
Far away, the sun finally crested the horizon. It rose gradually, higher and higher, chasing off the stars and painting the sky in pinks and orange. The straw roofs of Ponyville's houses, so modest in appearance, glittered like gold in the sunlight's brilliance.
"There you are," Twilight murmured. Sunlight kissed her face and washed over her, warming her body all over. "Good morning, Princess Celestia."
"Good morning, Twilight," said a falsetto voice at her side.
Twilight blinked, startled, and looked down at Spike. He was grinning at her. "Got any more of that tea?" he said in that same squeaky voice.
Twilight shoved him, breaking into bubbly giggles. She tried to chastise him, but couldn't form a sentence – she was too overcome with mirth, which only grew when Spike joined in with his own boyish chuckle.
Together, they laughed, and leaned against one another, as the rest of Ponyville rose to greet the day.
Author's Note
I've written multiple stories over the past year about Twilight, Spike, and nostalgia. Fittingly, the first part of this series about season one nostalgia focuses on Spike and Twilight, and is probably the most triumphantly sappy one in my entire literary canon.
Though I guess the jury's out on whether or not it gives anyone season one feels.
