Nine years.

Nine. HECCIN years.

That was as many as three threes.

Holy crap.

Three threes? Such an immense number befuddled the mind.

Twilight slowly lifted her face from the horse-shaped indentation she'd made on the liminal space formerly known as Her Desk. It had been quite some time. Again. Though, she swore she'd gone through this experience more than once before, snapping back to reality after spending so long writing and all. Maybe not. She didn't bother checking.

She rose from her chair, unkempt wingfeathers scratching against the weathered varnish of its armrests. A loud exhale escaped her, accompanied only by the reverberating crack that rung out as she flexed her spine.

"Spike?" she pushed the door open. "Spike, are you there?"

The hallway was empty.

"Spike?" she repeated, pausing at every door the little dragon could conceivably be hidden behind. It had been ages since she truly walked her castle's halls. The muscle memory just wasn't there anymore.

"Spike?" she nudged another door open, forcing her muzzle through the opening and peering inside.

Sure enough, this one was Spike's room.

Abandoned.

Apparently.

Her eyes flit between the unkempt piles of... unidentifiable things littering the floor and his own desk. Clearly, he must have been in a hurry to lea--

"Wazzup, Twi?"

If it weren't the shock itself that nearly killed her, then the bloodcurdling scream she let loose at minimum shredded her throat.

"What's got you all worked up? I was just getting a snack from the kitchen," Spike crossed his arms.

"I-I thought you--" Twilight looked between him and his unkempt room. "But it's so m--"

"I'm a dragon, I hoard things," Spike pushed the door open wider and entered. He hopped onto his bed, taking a bite out of the cookie he held. "Anyway, is there something you want?"

"I..." Twilight paced her words, her breaths still frantic and heavy from the earlier surprise. "I need you to find me something to do."

Spike snorted. "As if I haven't heard that plenty enough now. Maybe try reading a book?"

She shook her head. "No, no more books. I've read them all."

"Figured. That's what you said the first time anyway. Go write then, shoo," Spike waved her off. "It's what you always end up doing anyway whenever you come to me asking what to do. Don't you have, like, taxes or something to file? Or are you just the type of monarch where you take but never give?"

Twilight ignored the entire second half of what he said. "Thanks. Really. I hadn't considered writing. I think?" She paused for a moment, trying to remember what she'd done for the past nine years. She was pretty sure all that time was spent faceplanted in that horse-shaped hole in her desk. "What should I write about?"

The sound of Spike's facepalm tore her back to reality. "Think Twilight, think. You've been doing this for a whole nine years and counting. To the day. Just do what you've always done. Listen to The Voices™ and hallucinate something while draped haphazardly over your desk at unnatural angles that for sure couldn't be comfortable even for a corpse."

Twilight blinked slowly before raising a thumbs-up with a wing. She lit her horn and vanished.

For eons, Twilight sat in the corner of her bedroom, staring out the window overlooking Ponyville.

The Voices.

Spike said to listen to them.

Unfortunately, all of them were currently telling her to burn down Ponyville.

At last, a stray through wandered into mind. A slim, shady smirk spread across her face as she lowered her head. Yes, I know exactly what I wrote there.

"What if..."

Author's Note

i have no idea when or if I'll stop lol