I sat in the chair at my workplace - our dining room table. For some reason, despite having a perfectly good desk, it felt better to be at the long table that had seated all of our friends at several times through the last few years. It felt right. I tied my hair back and stared at a blank piece of paper, tapping the pencil against my lips as I thought. This had to be perfect, and I had no intentions of rushing it through.
Twilight as fast asleep in the other room, exhausted from a day full of running back and forth from one doctor’s appointment here and another in Equestria. Considering the fact that our child carried genetic information from both human and Equestrian DNA, we had considered it a good idea to have professionals from both sides keep an eye on her along the way. Four months in, and I still had a hard time believing it at times.
I started brushing the pencil across the page, lightly putting out a rough shape of my mental image onto the page. I could hear Spike snoring lightly in his bed and the soft hum of Ray’s heat lamp under that. All was right tonight in my little world.
The pencil made soft little scratching noises across the page as I sketched out the final lines for my drawing. I looked at it for a moment before erasing some with a soft rubber eraser designed for artists. A slight change in direction for the erased lines and I felt better about it already. I went back over the rough lines with firmer strokes, defining what would be the final dimensions of the subject.
I leaned back a moment and rubbed the center of my forehead. I was still getting minor headaches from the incident a few months back, but they were getting less frequent. A good sign, according to Princess Twilight. It meant that the final few bits of the healing of my horn were finished. It was the psychic equivalent to the itching a scab made before peeling off naturally.
I leaned forward again, taking a sip of the tea at my elbow. I could taste the subtle hints of peach in this, a nice cheery change of pace for me. I tended to take it strong, bracing, and with a hint of cream and sugar. Ever since Twilight had gotten the hang of brewing Equestrian tea she had been experimenting with flavors and infusions. Her culinary mastery had amazed me at every turn; finding vegetarian alternatives to dishes that were designed to be made with meat, new spins on meals, even a fairly competent replication of daisy sandwiches with human-edible plants. Her one failing was the inability to make a hayburger, but it was ok.
I loved her anyway.
Small details began to take shape with the stroke of a firmer leaded pencil. A line here, a curve there, a hard angle there, all giving form and definition to what had been a flat, 2-d image moments ago.
Spike’s breathing changed tempo and I glanced over at him, seeing him on his back with feet kicking in his sleep as he chased something. Probably squirrels, or maybe Fluttershy.
I smirked as I thought about the differences in the worlds. Spike the Dragon had chased Rarity’s affections for some time and still carried a small torch for her in his heart. Spike the dog, while having a fondness for our Fashionista, obviously enjoyed his time with Fluttershy far more.
I switched to a pencil with a finer point and began to draw tiny little details in the face of the figure I was bringing to life on the page. The quirk in the corners of her mouth, a dimple and the slight smattering of freckles.
I went over a few of the lines again before getting up to stretch my legs a bit. Sitting still for long periods of time made me antsy and restless. It was a large contributor to my dislike of holding court and standardized testing. I just didn’t like to feel cooped up, especially when I was a student at Celestia’s school I would often go out and wander the gardens between classes just to do something other than sit around.
After a few moments of wandering - and smiling fondly at the pictures scattered about our condo - I sat back down and took up a fine-point pen and went over the lines I had drawn in pencil earlier. The form was easier to see now, but it still had the various hashed out sketch lines on it, making it seem a bit cluttered.
A firm and long session with the eraser settled that score. Soon, only the inked lines remained, a few hints of shading evident. I slid the piece of paper into the feed port of our small all-in-one and scanned the image into my laptop’s imaging program. I went and began adding layers to the image and settled in for the process of coloring girl I had just drawn. Each layer was for a different element: body, clothes, hair, eyes, and ambient light. This way I could see how various colors worked together without having to redo entire sections. I could instead just undo a single layer. I did have to trace the lineart again, but thanks to a tablet that Twilight Velvet had gotten me last Christmas, it went fairly quickly.
Soon, coloring, shading, and rendering were complete. It felt like I had only been sitting here a few minutes but I could see the sun starting to lazily raise her head from her slumber through a window. I would probably pay for this later today and have a lecture from Twilight, but it was important to me that this be done and the only one to do it right was myself.
No, I don’t have a perfectionist streak, thank you very much. I just knew what I wanted and could get it done faster and better than some hired artist from the publisher. While I was sure they would be quality graphic designers and I had liked the samples I had seen, something told me that they wouldn’t be able to capture her the way I wanted her. She was my creation, and at least the first image of her should be by me.
A pair of hands slid around my shoulders and a puff of warm air slid across my neck.
“You know,” the voice of my wife breathed into my ear. “Haven’t we talked about staying up all night working?”
I chuckled and took one of her hands in my own. “Yes, we have,” I agreed. “And all three times have been about you working round the clock. This would be my first infraction.”
She huffed, but I knew through the bond it was in amusement instead of annoyance. “How did you sleep, anyway?” I asked as she came around and sat in a chair next to me.
“No worse than usual,” she said, brining one leg up and massaging her foot. Despite numerous offers from me to do so, she had always insisted to do it herself. The last time I had tried I wound up hurled away by a blast of her magic. It had been erratic for a few months now, and while the Princess said it was likely a well-known occurrence in a percentage of Unicorn pregnancies, I was sure it had to do with her mood swings. Sunshine was good at putting on a rational and logical face, but I could feel her emotions through the bond. They weren’t wild and extreme like the stereotypical depictions, but they were there. And Twilight had become a little more powerful with her magic since we started dating and especially after our marriage. And since magic was able to be colored by emotion, there were a few times she had subconsciously pushed me with her telekinesis.
She always apologized and I never blamed her for it.
“Back still aching?” I asked, taking her hand as she returned it to the table.
She nodded, running a hand through her much more manageable bedhead. I was mildly jealous that she could pull a brush through her hair in the mornings easily. Sometimes mine needed to be rescued from the wild mess mine was in the mornings.
“Both doctors said it was likely the fact that I’m carrying a little higher than usual, but in another month or so it should be better as the child grows a little more.” She reached over and took a sip from my mug before her face screwed up in disgust. She spit the mouthful back into the mug.“Ugh, it’s cold!”
“Of course it is,” I said, taking it from her. “It’s the same one you made when we got home from your parents. And aren’t you supposed tp be avoiding caffeine?”
She crossed her arms and glared at me over the top rim of her glasses. We both knew I had her, but she had to get the last word in. We had rubbed off on each other in a lot of ways, through our bond and over the years together. After a moment, she sighed and gave the laptop a slight turn towards her and looked at the final image on the screen.
“So,” she said softly. “Is that her?”
I nodded. “That’s her, all right.”
“She looks a little different than how I pictured her,” Twilight said, tracing a finger along the lines. “A little more innocent, and certainly younger than I thought.”
“Well, if you want me to be honest,” I said. “She’s just the first attempt.” I laid my hand on the final draft of my manuscript. “I didn’t want the heroine of ‘Dawnguard’ to be some prophesied chosen one. I wanted her to be like we were. Just a kid that stepped up when situations called for it. Starry Sky is supposed to be the everyman, the audience proxy.”
“In case you forgot,” Twilight said slyly. “We kind of were called by destiny to be a handful of heroes.”
“All the more important that she not be,” I said. “Look, you’ve read it, your mom’s read it, Azure and River have read it, and so has Princess Twilight and even Rainbow Dash read it, and she’s hard to get interested in something not Daring Do. No one has made complaint about her being a normal girl.”
She leaned over and set her forehead against mine in such a way that our noses touched, a soft smile on her face.
“I’m just glad you’re happy with it,” my love whispered. “You’ve put a lot of work into this and I’m proud of you.The college is offering to print it on demand and the samples you put out there have generated a decent following.” She kissed me gently. “But, since the offices are closed today, and you’ve been up all night, I think you should take some time and rest. It’s not a good idea to run yourself ragged.”
As she stood, she gently pulled on my arms. I allowed myself to be pulled to a standing position and reached over to close my laptop, the wistful face of my first original novel’s hero smiling at me for one more moment before vanishing.
“I suppose you’re right,” I said as we headed back to the bedroom. “I’ve done all I can for now. And a nap sounds good right about now.”
It took a few minutes to get to sleep, but I was content. I was happy. The light breathing of my wife, the sound of the refrigerator condenser, Spike’s snoring and Ray’s heat lamp, and the slight hiss of traffic on the road outside. It was familiar, it was well known to me.
And surrounded by the sounds of my world, I drifted off to sleep.
