Twilight Sparkle is in Outer Space

by Palm Palette

Rating: everyone
Tags: Random, Pinkie Pie, Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Rainbow Dash, Comedy, Rarity
Length: 4862

Twilight has no idea why she’s in outer space. She would very much rather not be there. In fact, it would be swell if somepony, anypony, would heeelp!

Twilight has no idea why she’s in outer space. She would very much rather not be there. In fact, it would be swell if somepony, anypony, would heeelp!

Good thing Pinkie Pie’s on the job. Wait. Pinkie Pie? She’s doomed, isn’t she?

Published 2018-11-22 14:10:01 UTC
Last updated 2018-11-22 14:10:01 UTC

Celestial Screaming Bodies

Beyond the edge of the sky where auroras shimmer lies an emptiness so profound that it's hard to fathom. Beyond the moon, the sun, the other planets, lies the blackest and coldest of voids, but it's not quite empty, oh no. Outer space is more than just a vacuum. It's full of the wonders of the cosmos. Nebulas, comets, stars, solar systems, asteroids, galaxies, and everything in the entire universe is technically in outer space. Oh, and Twilight Sparkle was there too.

“Why am I in outer space?” she asked, staring with wide, glossy, violet eyes at an endless sea of starry dots and cosmic dander. The full vastness of the universe was laid bare before her. Her legs wiggled, waving freely in the empty vacuum.

“What am I even doing here?” Panic rose as she flapped her wings, and the shifting of her mass made her wobble. She might be drifting somewhere, or she might not. The nearest star was at least ten light years away.

Sweat beaded on her purple hide as she twisted about, slowly tumbling in a frantic, fuzzy, ball of flailing limbs. “Heeelp!” she shouted, her words going nowhere except to her own ears.

“I like rocks.
Rocks are hard.
I like poetry.
Poetry is hard.
Rocks are poetry.
Except they are not.
They are rocks.”

Once it became apparent that Maud had stopped talking and the silence had become awkward, a smattering of light applause filled the clubhouse. Ponies wanly grinned and glanced at the clock on the wall, idly stirred cold tea with soggy straws, and generally wondered how they'd let Pinkie convince them to attend Maud Pie's marathon rockathon, a thousand and one poems about rocks.

“Haha!” Pinkie was the only one clomping her hooves enthusiastically. “That was a great one!” She grinned, nudging her elbow at the seat next to her. “What do you think, Twilight? Wasn't that the best of the five-hundred and eighty-four poems about rocks that we've heard so far?”

Her elbow kept on going, landing not upon the soft body of her fuzzy friend, but upon the vast cold emptiness of the absence of pony flesh. Her eyes widened and she promptly collapsed, landing sprawled-out on the scuffed, grainy wooden floor. “Twilight?”

Getting up, she glanced about, ears swiveling to and fro. Alas, while the clubhouse contained numerous ponies of various shades of sleepiness, none was an alicorn princess. “Oh no! Twilight! She's gone!”

Twilight was, in fact, still in outer space. “Help!” she yelled, continuing to flail in the vast emptiness of the cosmos as she tumbled about. “Heeeeelp!”

“Oh. So that's what a lederhosen dress feels like,” Rainbow Dash said. She adjusted a fur-tight, flush garment cinched about her waist, posing in front of three tall mirrors. The bunched-up fabric swiveled about like a farmer's tutu.

“Mmm, yes.” Rarity squinted through her reading glasses at lengths of measuring tape floating in the air. She used pins to affix paper cutout swatches to a nearby ponequin. “It's such an under appreciated fabric, like a working mare's silk.”

Hopping off the ceiling fan, Pinkie Pie came crashing down on the fashion dais. Her friends jumped, barely avoiding pink elbows as Pinkie dramatically flung her forelegs in the air. “Girls! I need your help. Twilight Sparkle has gone missing!”

“Missing?” Rarity asked. Her eyes darted about as she removed the objects—especially the sharp and pointy ones—from the nearby airspace.

“Yeah! We were at the clubhouse having the most wonderful amazing time while Maud was reading her super dooper whooper marathon poetry about rocks and I don't know why ponies are so mishy mashy about it when it's just so incredible but anyway she was right in the middle of it and read her most epic piece yet and I was like whoot and yeah but when I went to hoofbump Twilight Sparkle she was gone!” Pinkie's chest heaved and she gasped, panting for breath.

While Pinkie was raving, Rainbow Dash darted behind a mirror and promptly reemerged sans one chafing, pink dress. She tossed the garment in a crumpled heap. This elicited a light glare from Rarity, who otherwise kept her eyes on the frothing pony, who almost smacked Rainbow in the head.

“Whoa. Calm down, Pinkie,” Rainbow said, bobbing her head to avoid a wild swing from a pink hoof. She flew up to get out of range. “What is this about?”

“What is it about? Why, only the most important thing ever! Twilight knew just how important Maud's poetry marathon was. She promised she'd be there for the whole thing, and now she's not.” Big, blue eyes started welling up with tears.

“Wait. That?” Rainbow asked. “You mean that thing that's as dull as rocks?”

After a snort and jutting full-body glare from Pinkie Pie, Rainbow flew a little higher.

“Uh. I mean, I'm sure it's interesting, and I totally would have been there, but I had way more important things to do,” Rainbow said.

“Speaking of important things, Twilight is a princess. Maybe something came up and she had to go?” Rarity said.

“Well, maybe, but she wouldn't have left right in the middle of things without telling me first.”

Rainbow Dash nodded. “Yeah. That doesn't sound like her.”

“Are you certain she didn't just go to the bathroom?” Rarity asked.

“Pfft. Don't be silly.” Pinkie waved a hoof dismissively. “Everypony knows that princesses don't potty.”

“Uh...”

That's when Pinkie gasped. Her eyes widened, and she stared up at the high ceiling. “Oh no! I think I figured it out. Twilight vanished because she's in outer space!”

“What?” Rainbow Dash's face wrinkled as she scrunched it up. “That's ridiculous.”

Panting for breath, Twilight Sparkle had stopped screaming, but she hadn't stopped tumbling through the infinite, black void. “I can't believe I'm in outer space.” Slowly spinning, she watched the same spiral galaxy drift past her field of view endlessly, over and over again. “This is ridiculous.”

“Rainbow, just because she's Pinkie Pie doesn't mean that we should dismiss what she has to say.”

“Yeah, I know.” Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes anyway. “She was right about those Parasprites, though. So...” She scratched her head, then looked back at the pink pile of pout. “Pinkie, even if Twilight is in outer space, what could we even do about it? It's not like I can just fly off the planet and go looking for her.”

“Well, duh,” Pinkie said, then started pacing back and forth. Her hooves rang against the tiled floor like coconut wind chimes. “If we want to rescue Twilight, we'll have to approach this logically. We need a solution that's down to earth. Hmm...” She scrunched up her muzzle as she paced. “Based on what I know, the most logical thing to do would be to get as bored as possible.”

“What? Bored?” Rainbow asked.

“That’s logical?” Rarity asked.

“Yep!” Pinkie stood up and clacked her hooves together. “Ab-so-lute-ly-feak-ing-bored.”

Both her friends shrugged. Rainbow Dash flew down and pointed. “Are you talking, like, watching paint dry bored or...?”

Pinkie stiffened and she shuddered. “The clones. The clones...”

“Okay, so maybe not watching paint dry.” She landed and rubbed her chin. “What about, um, watching grass grow? That seems pretty boring.”

“Hmm. I don't know.” Rarity pulled in a rack full of sleek, leafy green dresses. “I've found such wonderful inspiration while watching grass grow. That's not really boring at all.”

“Wait. Seriously?” Rainbow Dash walked over and hoofed through the items. She lingered on on lined with sapphire beads, squinting so hard that her eyeballs nearly touched her nose. “I can see the resemblance to an unshorn lawn, but what are gems for?”

“Oh this one?” Lifting it off the rack, she levitated it next to a window and drew back the curtains to let a ray of sunlight hit it. It dazzled and gleamed, sparkling vividly. “They capture the essence of morning dew burning away in the early dawn hours.”

“Wow that's bright.” Rainbow Dash covered her eyes, rubbing them with the tips of her wings. “Heh. Only you could find a way to make watching grass grow somehow not be boring.”

Rarity put the dress back, shuttered the window and rolled the cart away. “Hmm, yes, but I'm not really sure I'd phrase it quite like that. I was... admiring the natural splendor, mesmerized by picturesque beauty, dazzled by stalks that danced with song upon an ephemeral breeze. It just so happened that what I was looking at was, well, grass, and it was growing at the time, so...”

“Uh, girls, that's fascinating and all, but it's not really helping,” Pinkie said.

Rainbow Dash nodded. “Well, if you want boring things, I thing the most bored I ever was was when I got stuck in detention at flight camp and they made me suck up an entire cloud bank with an eyedropper.” She clenched her teeth and shuddered. “So boring.”

“My. That sounds dreadful.” Rarity tsked.

“Yeah, and that wasn't even the worst part. They thought I was being too rambunctious or something, and whenever I tried to go faster, they stopped me and made me do it over, but like, twenty percent slower! Ugh. It took forever.”

“Um, clouds are like, way up there, and I'm kinda, right here,” Pinkie said, pointing at the ceiling and back at herself. “I mean, that does sound dull, but I'm kinda in a hurry, so...”

“You know, when it comes to things that make me bored, there's kind of a sweet spot for it,” Rarity said.

“How so?” asked Rainbow Dash

“Well, if it's too dull, my mind will wander, and I'll think of things, finding inspiration, if you will. But if it's too engaging, then it's not boring by default. What I really need to get those doldrums rolling is something in between. It has to be engaging enough to hold my focus, but drab enough not to be entertaining in any way.”

“That sounds kinda... specific.” Rainbow Dash rubbed her head. “Can you think of an example?”

“Oh, yes. They print these number games in the newspaper where you have to fill in a grid with digits from one to nine where each row, column, and three by three square contain all the numbers and no duplicates.”

“You mean Su-soo-something? But I thought you liked those.”

“I do normally, but I find that if I try to do too many in one sitting they can get quite repetitive and tedious. I can't lose focus, either, because if I do, I'll make a mistake, and none of the numbers will line up, and I'll have to start the puzzle all over again.” Rarity made a wincing motion and hissed under her breath.

“That doesn't sound boring. That sounds frustrating,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Speaking of frustrating...” Pinkie dragged in a card table and pulled up a chair to it so she could sit down and flop her head on the table.

Rainbow and Rarity continued to talk about things that bored them, but Pinkie wasn’t really paying attention any more. Her eyes glazed over and her lids grew heavy.

Twisting about, Twilight tried to stop spinning, but wound up tumbling faster somehow. “Uugh,” she moaned, feeling slightly greenish while the universe lurched about like a lopsided ballet dancer doing a headstand on a lumpy trampoline. She focused to quell her queasiness, lest her lunch wind up in orbit around her. “They’re bound to have noticed that I’ve gone missing by now,” she muttered, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath of nothing as the tumbling got to her again. “Yeah. I’ll bet that Pinkie’s galvanizing the others into action right now, and not off doing something completely random that has no possible way of helping whatsoever. Eh-heh, heh.”

That exact moment, the hustle and bustle of Cloudsdale's busy streets came to an abrupt halt. Pinkie Pie was right in the middle of a road, buried up to her chin in the gaseous pavement. This left only her head sticking out, with her cheeks baggy and flush with the white, fluffy ground. Several pegasai gathered around, staring at the peculiar sight.

“Pinkie, is that you?” one asked, a freckled cream pony with hair that looked like it fought a watermelon and lost.

“Oh hi, Blossomforth.” Twisting around, Pinkie's face perked up and she put on a big grin.

“Do you need any help?”

“Help? Why would I need—waaaait...” Her eyes went wide and then she squinted, peering around at her surroundings. “Towering white buildings... Confused flying ponies...” She stuck her tongue out, slurping it against the street. “Damp, vaporous soil...” Groaning, she clenched her eyes shut. “My head's in the clouds, isn't it?”

“Well...”

“My head's in the clouds!” Yelling, Pinkie threw her hooves in the air, reaching straight up. “Oh come on! This isn't good enough!” With a puff, she vanished, sinking out of sight.

A short while later, the door chimed as Pinkie returned to the Ponyville boutique. This time, Rainbow Dash was wearing one of the grass outfits that Rarity had dragged out earlier. “Oh hey, you're back.” Once again, she darted behind a screen to shed her garment.

“We can't really help you if you go wandering off,” Rarity said.

“I'm not the one who needs help,” Pinkie muttered. “Twilight's the one who needs help. As it turns out, listening to ponies talk about boring things is, in fact, pretty boring, but it didn't work! My getting bored isn't going to save her from outer space.”

“Um, duh. I could have told you that,” Rainbow Dash said. She flicked a twig out of her mane and shook her wings. A few leaves came fluttering down along with a single feather.

“What? No. It would have worked, but I just wasn't bored enough. I don't think I can get that bored, knowing that she's out there floating endlessly in an empty void.”

Rarity rolled her eyes.

“So like, I don't want to be a downer, but it's been a while and can ponies even survive in outer space?” Rainbow asked.

“Whoa, don't write Twilight's orbit-uary yet. She'll be fine so long as we save her.” Pinkie plodded around, pacing again. “We just have to figure out how.”

“You mean like, building a rocket ship?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Are either of you rocket scientists?” Pinkie asked.

“Um, I have no idea how to make a rocket get off the ground, but I'm sure I could make it look fabulous,” Rarity said.

“I think Angel Bunny plays that Kerbunny Space Program,” Rainbow said.

“No. What we need is a plan that's guaranteed to work. What we need is something that cannot possibly go wrong in any way, shape or form.” Pinkie froze, gasping in a huge breath of air. “I've got it! I know exactly what to do!”

Still floating throughout the endless cosmos, Twilight was now surrounded by a rapidly expanding sea of feathers. She'd found that she could alter her momentum by tossing them with her magic, and used this to her advantage to bring her tumbling to a minimum. All it cost her was a sore, itchy wing and a bit of pride.

She groaned, watching her down spin away until it was smaller than the pinpricks of the billions of stars surrounding her in all directions. “Let's see; if I was going to look for a missing pony, the first thing I'd do is check the usual places.” Her violet eyes reflected spiral galaxies in bright splotches on their glossy surfaces. “Okay, so this is definitely not a usual place. Dowsing spells are really complicated, but... Oh! We're connected to the Cutie Map by the Elements of Harmony! I bet Starlight could use that to form a flawless seeker spell! It's perfect!” She grinned.

The universe did not grin back.

“Well, finding me's just the first step. Hmm... Starswirl the Bearded's good at portal spells, though he's only used them to banish things. I'm sure he could figure something out, and Celestia and Luna both know a lot about space. Plus, there are ponies like Moondancer and Sunburst, who are both really good with magic. Heck, if I had access to the Canterlot archives, I could probably figure out something too.”

She paused, watching the stars burn. One twinkled as a stray feather briefly obscured its light. “It might be scary out here, but I can rest assured knowing that a lot of brilliant ponies are working their hardest to come up with a plan to rescue me.”

“My plan is brilliant! We must stuff Twilight's castle full of plastic playpen balls!” Pinkie declared.

“Um...”

“What?”

Neither Rarity nor Rainbow Dash thought that made one lick of sense, but they both decided to go along with it anyway. For one, it really was quite preposterous to think that Twilight would be quietly listening to dull poetry one moment, and be randomly tumbling in outer space the next. They each thought that this was more a prank that Pinkie wanted to pull on Twilight for leaving abruptly, but things still didn't make sense, like, why did Pinkie try to get bored first, and why tell them that Twilight was in space instead of just asking for help with the prank?

Rainbow Dash flew up and stuck a hose in one of the windows while Pinkie turned on a ball blower. Thousands of brilliant, colorful billiards bounced and bowled down crystalline corridors. Inside, Rarity helped direct them into the rooms, arranging them so that each one had its own color. After an hours worth of work, they'd mostly filled the trunk-shaped entrance part, with all the rooms stuffed to the ceiling and the hallway up to Rarity's knees.

There had to be some reason for doing this.

“Maybe the balls are like, little planets or something,” Rainbow Dash said, “and by putting them all in one place we're, um, increasing the castle's gravity, which will pull Twilight down from space, and, um, something.” She scratched her head.

Rarity eased herself out the front door while she still could. A few colorful balls poured out behind her, which Rainbow Dash collected and tossed back in a window. Pinkie had run out of balls and was out getting more.

“I don't know, darling. I think they're more symbolic. The sky is like a hollow sphere, made of a whole spectrum of colors. So that means, um...” Her eyes creased like an envelope. “A lot of skies is like a lot of space, right? So if space is in Twilight's castle, and Twilight's in space, then Twilight would be in her castle.”

“Wow. That almost makes sense.” Rainbow Dash chuckled under her breath. “It's better than my dumb idea. It makes me wonder what Twilight would come up with.”

Twilight was, of course, pondering outer space, because, well, it was a really fascinating subject, full of wondrous mysteries. The cosmos harbored many secrets such as the origin of the universe, the true nature of dark matter, the enigma of life itself, and why Twilight Sparkle was out there floating in the middle of it for no apparent reason.

She sighed, holding up a hoof and twisting it back and forth. “Neat space fact: despite popular belief, outer space is not actually cold. Temperature is a property of matter, and since space is absent of matter, it doesn't really have any temperature at all. Of the few particles actually out here, most of them are quite hot. This is because they tend to come from the surface of stars or violent explosions or jets. However, space is such a good vacuum that they're spread out so far that they can't heat anything up by conduction. A thermometer placed in space would simply measure the balance of temperature between radiation absorbed from starlight and the radiation the thermometer itself gives off. If it happened to be far from any star or galaxy in the intergalactic medium, its equilibrium temperature would match the cosmic microwave background, and that is, in fact, really cold.”

Twilight blinked, staring into the vast twinkling starscape of the endless cosmos. Shifting her leg altered her momentum, and she tumbled a little faster.

“Neat space fact: space suuuuuuuucks!”

“Only one floor!?” Pinkie's left eye twitched as she stared up at the towering structure of Twilight's castle. The enormity of the structure seemed to laugh at her feeble effort to fill it.

“Sorry, Pinkie, but those are all plastic balls in Ponyville.” Rainbow Dash wiped some sweat off her brow.

Rarity squinted while peering at the lowest row of windows. She used her magic to shutter the curtains, hiding the colored balls from sight. “Don't you think that's quite enough, darling? Anypony who opens the front door will get buried, and we'll have to clean this up eventually, you know.”

“No! It has to be full! All the way to the top!” Pinkie's voice nearly cracked she yelled so loud.

“But we're out of balls.” Rainbow Dash pointed at an empty sack to help make her point.

Pinkie snatched it and climbed up a ladder to a second story window and tossed it in. “It doesn't matter! Just grab something, anything! We need to fill this place to the very brink!”

Rainbow Dash and Rarity exchanged a worried glance, but they didn't question Pinkie. That pony was too hysteric to reason with. The best thing they could do was to humor her until she calmed down, hopefully before Twilight's castle resembled a Thanksgiving turkey.

With Pinkie Pie darting about, carrying odds and ends of all shapes and sizes, other ponies got curious and eventually joined in. None of them really knew why Pinkie was stuffing Twilight's castle, but they didn't really care. It was a Pinkie thing. They took the opportunity to offload their old junk, such as scratched sofas, broken lamps, old boxes of threadbare clothing, moldy bales of hay, whatever. It didn't matter. Pinkie took it all, carried it up makeshift scaffolding, and tossed it in one open window after the next.

The castle's second floor filled up, then the third. It groaned from the weight, swaying and listing like no castle ever should, but still Pinkie went on, stuffing it for all she was worth.

Twilight started laughing, and not a healthy laugh at that. It was a soul-crushing I-can't-believe-I'm-lost-forever-in-outer-space kind of laugh, sounding much like a series of wheezing coughs and sniffling sneezes. Well, okay, it was either a laugh, or she encountered an incredibly rare and very specific type of space dust.

There's a rather peculiar and somewhat contradictory phenomena that happens to space travelers. See, outer space is so vast that it's said to be infinite. If the universe is truly infinite, though, then everything possible should exist somewhere, and anything that can happen will happen. So if something exists, that means it's also possible that this thing could cross paths with the space-goer. Thus, if something can potentially exist, then there's a surprisingly high chance that a pony floating in space will encounter it, even though space itself is mostly empty.

Once Twilight's heaving calmed down, she let out a very long groan. “Ugh. I can't believe it. There's literally nothing for like billions of miles in all directions, and I get hit right in the face by the one space-sneeze cloud in the entire universe!”

The scaffolding hastily assembled around the castle creaked and groaned almost as much as the overburdened structure itself. Almost all the way to the top, windows were shuttered, barely holding back the mounds and mounds of pure junk stuffing each floor.

Pinkie Pie was working on the attic, with a feral grin on her face. She threw in a box and pulled a cord, causing an inflatable raft to pop open in the middle of the room. With junk haphazardly placed in precarious positions, this was followed by a series of crashes, tinkles, and clunks.

Rainbow Dash cringed at the expensive noises. “Pinkie. That's the last room. Don't you think that's enough?”

“Not quite. There's still some room left. Give me more stuff.” Deadly serious, Pinkie spoke in an even tone, with a brow furrowed like an iron waffle.

“But—”

“More stuff!” Twisting about on the rickety scaffolding, Pinkie pressed her muzzle against Dash's face so hard that their eyeballs nearly touched.

“Okay, okay.” Rainbow Dash shoved off, mourning the loss of her personal space. “But the only things left are those—” she shuddered “—stinky balloons from the exotic fruit parade, the durian-scented green fuzzy ones, and, uh, I'm just saying that nopony in their right mind wanted to touch those things for good reason.”

“I don't care! Give them to me!”

“Well, if you insist.” Rainbow Dash wrinkled her nose, slapped on a clothespin, then pulled out a C-clamp and clamped the clothespin tight. She also wrapped a scarf around her face, then added a gas mask on top of that and put on a hazmat suit over everything else.

Diving down, she returned with a heavily-sealed box thick with tape that was slapped with all kinds of warning labels. Pinkie hadn't even opened it yet, and a rank stench like turpentine and sweaty gym socks was already making her cheeks turn green.

“T-thanks,” Pinkie muttered, sounding congested as her tears clogged her sinuses. “That should do it.”

Alas, as the balloons were artificial, they lacked the juicy, succulent taste that made the durian fruit worthwhile, and tasted exactly the way they smelled. The fact that Pinkie could stand to blow up even one of them, let alone all of them, was a testament to her level of dedication, and the lengths to which she'd go to help a friend.

Drifting endlessly through space, tumbling though the infinite void nonstop without end, was about as pleasant as it sounded. Everything was effected eventually, dust, asteroids, even the stars. This screaming became internalized, released as tiny fluctuations of light. Stars twinkled. Twilight sparkled.

Well, either that or it was the light reflecting off the dust on her sweaty hide. When a pony is left floating in space too long, they start to come up with some crazy theories.

Eyes watering, usually pink skin a pale green, Pinkie Pie pinched her nose and wiped her tongue off on sandpaper after inflating the last of the horrible, durian-scented balloons. Holding the fuzzy thing high, she squished in into the final empty spot at the very top of the attic. With a grunt, she shuttered and latched the window, and at last, Twilight's castle was as full as it could possibly get.

“Aaaah!” Splat.

Somewhat unceremoniously, a lavender alicorn faceplanted on her own doormat. It took her all of six seconds to realize what, exactly, had broken her fall. Staggering to her feet, a manic grin rippled across her face. “I'm back! I'm back! Oh sweet Celestia I'm back!”

“It's good to see you too, Twilight,” Rarity said, trotting up to her friend. “You would not believe what happened while you were gone.”

“Yeah.” Rainbow Dash flew over. “Pinkie Pie kept saying you were lost in outer space. Would you believe it? The things she comes up with sometimes.”

“But... I was.” Twilight's grin faded and she seemed lost in thought. “How exactly did you get me back then? Was it Discord's Dimension Door, or an inverse Stygian banishment, or...”

Rarity raised an eyebrow, while Dash shrugged, wings and all. “Actually, we just filled your castle with a bunch of random junk.”

“What?”

There was a thump and a crash as Pinkie Pie hopped down and part of the scaffolding collapsed. “Yep! We stuffed every last nook and cranny full of plastic balls, balloons, confetti, boxes, silly foam, old pizza boxes, bales of hay, literally everything else, and now you're completely out of space!”

“I'm out of—” Twilight looked at her bulging castle, creaking and groaning and listing to one side, then straight up at the clear, blue yonder. “—space.” She slapped herself in the face, groaning. “A pun? Really?”

“Um, Pinkie. I don't think it works that way,” Rainbow said.

Squinting, Rarity ran a hoof along Twilight's flank, smearing off a light coating of glimmering stardust. “Apparently, it does?”

“Wait. I don't get it. You were really in outer space?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“I, uh...” Twilight looked back up at the clear, blue sky. “It was really space-y. It sure seemed that way.”

“How is that even possible?” Rainbow asked.

“How did you get up there in the first place?” Rarity asked.

“What happened? I'll tell you what happened.” Pinkie jutted a hoof at the purple princess pony. She wrinkled her brow and a deep frown tugged her cheeks down. “Twilight Pinkie-promised that she'd pay rapt attention to Maud's entire poetry rockathon, and then she went ahead and did the one thing that I explicitly told her not to do!”

“Oh, Um... that.” Twilight cringed, scuffed her hooves and looked at the ground. “Sorry.”

“What? What did she do?” Rainbow asked.

“She totally spaced out!”