Local

Chapters

Dusk
Pain
Sweat
Panic
Music
Interval: A History Lesson
Candles
Night Owl - I
Night Owl - II
Night Owl - III
Perception
Madness
Islands

Dusk

Somehow even more annoying than the clock's ticking was the way that it didn't mark the hour. If the thing was going to insist on being as distracting as possible, the least it could do is be distracting in an interesting way. No joy sadly. Eight o'clock came and went with no fanfare. No beep, no chime, not even a mixup in the ticking. Spike licked a claw and turned the page of his comic. How many of those things did he even have? Twilight sighed and continued reading. After a few minutes she moved onto the next chapter and sighed.

Five more minutes went by. Twilight sighed again.

"What is it?" Spike joined in on the fun and sighed himself.

"Hmm?"

"I thought we established this morning that this wasn't going to work anymore? Twilight, if something's up just come out and say it."

"I'm just bored," she relented with a humourless chuckle. It was strangely difficult for her to admit that studying was going anything less than completely perfect. In fact, it had taken about forty five minutes of mental preparation. Most of this was spent staring at the clock and thinking about... earlier.

"I would've thought you'd have seen whether Rarity wanted to hang out tonight," he replied, idly toying with the pages, "I thought you said things went pretty well today?"

"Yeah. It went okay,"

"So why don't you go and see if she's free?" he asked. Twilight bristled slightly at his tone of voice. The one you may use to coax a schoolfilly to the correct answer to a trivial problem.

"I already asked Spike," she replied curtly, but if he picked up her tone he gave no clue. Rather he put his comic down and turned to face her. A smile decorated his features.

"Hey well done! You guys hitting the town then?" he asked enthusiastically.

"No she's... we're not going out tonight."

"Ah, well I suppose she's a pretty busy mare. What's she up to?" he asked.

"Well, she never said she doing anything 'per se' but tonight doesn't work for her." Twilight replied. Spike looked at her for a spell, before nodding and turning back to read.

Seconds marked by incessant ticking passed by. Twilight pretended to read her book and Spike pretended to read his comic while each planned their next move. Spike was inscrutable, while Twilight decided on a healthy but forceful 'It's fine Spike, she must just be tired from work'. Yes, very good. Gracious and showing emotional and social maturity. All she had to do was wait enough time to hit the sweet spot that avoided sounding desperate and preempting whatever Spike was going to-

"So what did she actually say then?" he said without looking up.

Damn it.

"Look, I asked her if she wanted to go out and she asked what I wanted to do. So I told her and then she asked me these weird questions about why I always ordered the same thing from Sunny Pastures. When I replied she just... I don't know. She just said she was taking it easy tonight."

She watched as the dragon took in the information. Something like the ghost of a smirk began to come onto his face but he did an admirable job of quashing it before it became too blatant. He took a deep breath and turned the page of his comic.

"Okay then."

"What?" Twilight demanded.

"I didn't say anything," he insisted, the smirk returning. Properly this time.

"Yeah but you're implying something. Come on, out with it," Twilight demanded, her frayed patience decidedly at the end of tether for today.

"I've not said anything at all Twilight, I'm just reading my comic!" he laughed.

"I know what you're saying!" she growled, pushing her book away, "You're saying that Rarity was testing me, seeing if I was ready for some Ponyville thing. Then what I said about my food made her think I wasn't 'Ponyville Material' or something!"

"Twilight, I am just reading my comic. You're the only one saying anything right now!" he said through chuckling which set the unicorn's teeth on edge. There was more ticking while he calmly read more of whatever stupid comic he'd bought this time and Twilight glared at him. She knew full well this wasn't how it was supposed to go. She was supposed to be the calm and collected one.

"So you're not saying that she was testing me?"

"Not at all! I don't think she would have been some testing you for some 'Ponyville thing'," he replied, "It's more likely she's doing some underground clubbing, or going to a fancy secret restaurant, or having all the coolest ponies in the town round for a secret soiree... so actually yeah I guess I am saying that."

Twilight groaned and slammed her head on the desk. She hated failing tests, she hated it.

"Spike, you're really not making me feel better."

"Never said I was trying to," he winked at her and stuck his tongue out. She resisted the temptation to launch her book at his head. Twilight supposed she was grateful in some way that Spike was enjoying his time here and wasn't experiencing the same problems she was. But then again, it would be really satisfying to hit someone with a book right now.

They fell into their rhythm again, the same one they'd always had. He read, she read. The seconds dragged marked by infernal ticking. Twilight ground her teeth while she thought of all the stopped conversations and strange looks she'd gotten today. All the mainlanders coming out to gawk at the freak fresh from the lifeboat. She thought of tangible change she'd felt the second she'd asked Rarity what she was up to tonight.

She was probably overthinking it. Of course she was! Ponies don't do weird social tests on one another at lunch. The whole idea was madness. They'd have to be someone whose worldview was shaped by the most unreasonably subtle social clues and minutia! Like a would-be Canterlot Socialite...

Celestia damn it all.

She could live with the idea that she might misunderstand or be unappreciative of a tradition. She wouldn't have liked it but she could have lived with it. No, what annoyed Twilight was the implication that she wasn't adventurous enough. Because for the life of her that was the only thing she could see Rarity's questions trying to probe.

"And... what if I don't like what I ordered?"

Nine words. Nine words and she'd been damned.

So she liked Daisy Sandwiches. So she was a slightly fussy eater, she used to subsist on plain food so she could study while she ate and she'd never really broken the habit. There were worse things one could be after all. She might not be the most socially experienced of ponies, but she had faced an old God and wrangled an Ursa Minor within the last three months alone. Not adventurous enough, for whatever Ponyville had to offer?

The same Ponyville that had a local scarecrow hunt every Autumn? The same Ponyville in which 87 year old Brass Watch finding his hat after three weeks was significant enough to warrant an interview in the local paper? That Ponyville? Twilight was at least confident in her ability to withstand whatever activity this town could drum up.

'While newcomers must be cautious, there is something to be said for tenacity. Because while it can come off as invasive should efforts to insert into existing paradigms be too overt, taking an approach, which will inevitably be context-dependent, to more subtly gain entry will be greatly rewarded. Outsiders should never consider themselves intrinsically precluded, rather simply more socially challenged to access greater rewards than initially obvious. An allegory of having to win a race where opponents have a head start is pertinent.' - Intricacies in Equine Relationships by High Noon

Twilight got up and walked over to the window. The sky was dimmed but still held noticeable tinges of blue. They were past the start of Autumn but the weather ponies seemingly hadn't gotten the message yet. Summer remained in earnest, sickly sweet and sticky and hot, just like it was the first day she arrived. She'd wake up tomorrow and her duvet would be sodden with night-sweat. She'd sit in bed for a moment, rubbing the dampened fur on her tummy, then get up to start her day. Then she and Spike would read.

As she waited to read books on her island tomorrow, she passed the time reading books on her island tonight. Books that she knew full well Celestia did not have in mind when she sent Twilight to 'learn about friendship'. Yet every fortnight she was sending the Princess more and more contrived re-imaginings of whatever High Noon or Gold Koi had to say on the subject. Twilight wondered how much of their research involved readings books alone. Whatever lifeboat had brought her here had long left, and the mainland was harsh and alien.

Make it on the mainland or find another lifeboat, Twilight.

"Spike, I'm going to go for a walk."

"A walk?" he asked, as if the very idea was a joke.

"Yeah, are you going to be alright by yourself?" she replied, pointedly not rising to the provocation.

"Twilight, what are you-"

"I'm just going for a walk Spike." she laughed, "Look I'm fine. Obviously Rarity was just tired tonight. I'll do something with her another time. I just... I don't want to sit here reading all night, again."

He looked at her skeptically, eyebrow raised and claw poised to turn page.

"We're not gonna have much more nice weather this year Spike, it's just a walk, okay?" Twilight insisted, "I'm not going to do anything crazy."

"Twilight, try not to worry so much. We've only been here a little while. It'll come around, okay?"

"I know Spike, I'll see you later." Twilight replied before stepping out of the front door. She registered it closing behind her as she stared off into the metropolis. The sun was dipping further with every minute, steadily turning the sky from its greyish blue to a pleasing amber. She didn't wait this time and immediately set out into open waters, eyes fixed on the muted suburban hum of the shore ahead.

Ponyville at night was a lot like Ponyville during the day. Twilight knew this wasn't a terribly exciting assessment but this wasn't a terribly exciting town. So far this had served as a reminder to Twilight of why she didn't take walks very often. No-one to talk to and nothing to do save for trotting around aimlessly.

The streets confused her and it didn't take long for her to start to sweat. After enough time's putting on a show so that she could at least tell herself what she had done constituted a short walk by some vague definition of the term, Twilight found herself in front of The Royal Cross.

It was a charming and rustic little pub that she and the other elements had found themselves in a fair few times. Twilight had two choices, go home and read until she was tired or go in and hope she saw someone familiar in there. The streets were even more sparse than usual tonight, maybe this was where every one was? Maybe they were all at some 'Ponyvillians-only event'? The same one she could have gone to if she'd just thought before saying what she'd said to Rarity? Twilight slumped and made her way inside.

She really hadn't known what she was expecting, but bustling centre of merriment The Royal Cross was not. She counted five ponies among the various tables. And aside from one couple who weren't even looking at each other, let alone talking, everyone was sat far enough away from one another to unambiguously show this was not a time for socialising. The only benefit to this was that no-one even noticed she'd come in, meaning she could simply slip away without-

"Hey! Hey! It's me remember?"

She certainly did. Twilight's stomach dropped and she wondered whether she'd recently angered some vengeful cosmic force as she was confronted with the sight of Snowdrop, and only Snowdrop, tending the bar. How could it possibly be legal for someone of her age to be serving drinks unsupervised?

Small towns.

"Hi Snowdrop," Twilight said flatly, "Do you work here as well?"

"Well not really, it's a favour for my dad, because he knows the owner Mr Cask, and Mr Cask and my dad aren't available tonight so they asked me to run the whole pub!" Snowdrop beamed.

"Wow, that's um... quite something!" Twilight offered with a forced grin. She was hardly old herself but Snowdrop's mannerisms made Twilight feel like she'd suddenly had a babysitting role foisted upon her. She was trying to ingratiate herself to this town. Simply turning tail and leaving now the 'barmaid' had directly engaged her in conversation was likely to do the exact opposite.

At the very least, the fact that Ponyville's empty streets hadn't translated to more ponies in the Cross meant there was plenty of room for her to sit somewhere other than up at the bar with Snowdrop. Still, the thought niggled at her. Through the sheer force of routine in this town Twilight knew for a fact that the streets were conspicuously vacant for this time, and there were precious few places ponies could go at night.

A flash of Rarity's confident grin and her own stupid responses rose, coupled with the idea of some incredible event she was missing out on. She pushed in down near-instantly but it still fouled her mood. Twilight knew she was being ridiculous, oversensitive, delusional... and yet.

Where is everyone else?

She levitated a menu and scanned the cocktails, realising far too late that she shouldn't have gone to an old-fashioned pub if she was fancying a cocktail. As some consolation the guest ales looked very nice. She spooled through them until she found her choice and looked up. Snowdrop had been staring at her the whole time with a toothy grin.

"Umm... one chocolate wonderland please?"

"That's a porter," Snowdrop replied, noticeably proud to know this, "My dad is a big fan of those but I always thought they looked like black coffee. I mean, when you think of beer you think of golden and fizzy not black and flat haha but there you go."

Twilight stared despondently at the young girl who showed absolutely no sign of stopping her bizarre treatise on porter ales, a term she seemed to be using for porters and stouts interchangeably. But, the white noise-effect of her prattling at least gave Twilight a moment to connect the dots. As well as the town and pub being conspicuously free of life tonight, Snowdrop's father and the pub's owner were unavailable tonight too.

Of course, it was highly unlikely the two were related. Why even think they were?

"Snowdrop," Twilight said, caring little for how she'd cut the girl off, "You said your dad and Mr Cask were out tonight. Can I ask where they are?"

"Why?"

Interesting. Smile stretched a little further, pupils displaying slight constriction, hoof wiping glass slightly more intensely. It wasn't blatant, in fact it had been surprisingly reigned in for someone like Snowdrop, but to anyone who knew anything about body language, which Twilight regrettably did after all her ponderous reading about relationships, the girl hadn't liked that question. Normally Twilight would have been a lot more considerate, but tonight the defensiveness got on her nerves.

"Well, the town seems a little dead tonight. Is there anything happening?" Twilight asked. The teenager rolled her eyes back and forth in an overdone gesture of thoughtfulness which just made Twilight more angry. Finally, her eyes snapped back to Twilight's and her expression turned to one of poorly-veiled smugness.

"Where you think they are?"

"No Snowdrop, this isn't some game I'm trying to play with you," Twilight began. She was done with subtle back-and-forth, it was time to go all in. "I was just wondering whether something was on tonight that I didn't know about. Clearly though I shouldn't have asked so I'm sorry."

"I wouldn't say that you shouldn't have asked," she giggled snobbishly, "More that-"

Several glasses hit their respective tables in unison and the temperature of the pub seemed to drop. Twilight cocked her head to get a better view behind her, and found no-one was watching them. Instead they all stared straight ahead. They didn't drink, they no longer read their dogeared book or local paper. It looked like someone had hit pause.

But they weren't blank, there was thought behind those eyes. It would have been ridiculous to suggest that all of the ponies in the bar were focused on them without trying to make it obvious, but it really seemed like it. It had really seemed like it at lunch as well. The thing with thinking that an entire room full of ponies is covertly watching you is that you will really do much of anything to get them to stop. It's a nauseating feeling, and it was no different now.

Earlier, she'd just wanted to get back to normal, but now Twilight forced herself to steer into the skid. She clenched her teeth, refusing to back down. When she turned back to Snowdrop, the mild confrontational front had given way to something entirely different.

"No! No no of course you can ask... um... Well they don't tell me much with how young I am! They just said they were off out!" she leered at Twilight with a veneer of overly friendly desperation.

No, wait. Not at Twilight. Snowdrop wasn't actually looking at her. Instead her eyes drifted just off to the side, and her rebuttal seemed to be addressed to the pub. Twilight turned around in time to catch five pairs of eyes abruptly snap from her and back onto their drinks. The tension was becoming unbearable. High Noon was right, no use in pushing too hard. Canterlot wasn't built in a day after all.

All of this was exacerbated as Twilight felt an unease that angered her by its very superfluous presence. Because she was obviously being ridiculous. Because the only alternative was that Snowdrop had just come close to telling her something she really shouldn't have, something the ponies in this bar actively didn't want Twilight to know. Just how seriously could this town take their little secrets?

"Sure Snowdrop no worries, have a good night," Twilight gave her no time to carry on this insipid display and hurried to her table. It was easier to feel mad than worried, it made her feel less vulnerable. If they wanted their little secrets their could bloody well keep them for all she cared at this point. But, she wasn't going to leave. She had paid for her drink and she was going to enjoy it. How scandalous it must have been to see the element of magic, and Princess Celestia's very own personal student, drinking by herself. She chuckled at the idea of horrified tabloid headlines proclaiming she'd gone off the rails.

If only any tabloid in the entirety of Equestria was actually remotely interested in me, that is.

Twilight enjoyed her drink, but without a good book or conversation she rapidly became bored. The pub being essentially empty aside from Ponyville's weird sentinels didn't exactly help matters. However, when she was done she decided she wouldn't capitulate to the atmosphere and to treat herself to another drink. Her mild tipsiness cultivated spite.

It whispered in her ear that she was as entitled to be here as any of them and that they needed reminding of that fact. She walked to the bar with her head held high. She acted with confidence she didn't actually possess. At the bar, her exchange with Snowdrop was a lot less drawn out the second time. She ordered another of those nice chocolate porters, Snowdrop pulled the pint and bid Twilight enjoy it. That was it. But she was sweating. Now of course it was very hot still, but Twilight hadn't seen her sweat before. Not once. Why now?

When Twilight sat back down and the boredom reached a fever pitch, she resolved to busy herself with a little pony-watching. Now this was made hard by how dull the other patrons were and how no one else had entered the pub since she arrived. But Snowdrop was at the bar, cleaning glasses. Her wide-mouthed grin was far too large to be even adjacent to natural. It creeped Twilight out. More than that, it fascinated her.

For a second, she almost felt like she'd got a peek behind the curtain. She was sat, calmly drinking with the rest of them. The one who felt out of place and nervous was behind the bar, trying for all the world to seem like she felt fine. Was this was it was like, to hold the power of someone else's social standing in the motion of your calm sip of a pint? To lay judgement as a single organism, homeostasis of observation rendered in the simple gesture of putting your book down? Right here she felt like she fully glimpse the mainland. Like she could peer from the shore and lay scorn on the lifeboats at sea, wracked by waves she'd never know.

It sickened Twilight.

She finished her second pint and decided it was time to leave. She really, really wanted to leave now. She stood and immediately wobbled. How strong was that stuff? Why didn't they put ABV's on the menu, was that really so much to ask? Just because everyone presumably was childhood friends with the pony who made the stuff? Well she wasn't. Snowdrop looked her in the eyes, and there seemed to be some pleading behind the mania. Some secret message written in the spiderweb of veins. Not a single pony in the pub even looked at Twilight or Snowdrop, and for a brief moment Twilight could see herself in that young girl.

But it wasn't quite enough to convince the unicorn to remain. She'd enjoyed her drink, she'd enjoyed her second. Staying now out of further spite felt like it was letting them win. Or was it the way the fur on the back of her neck stood on end? Did it even matter? The result was the same. She was leaving.

Twilight made her way to the door, and stood to monitor the scene for a couple more seconds. Snowdrop was looking out to the seated ponies now. There was a clock ticking in the background. An old but strong looking green stallion took a languid sip of his pint. Snowdrop's eyes watched him intensely. He kept going, his eyes remained on his paper as motions in his throat marked each patient swallow. He finished it and regarded the empty glass neutrally, adding a gasp of refreshment for good measure.

Snowdrop's eye twitched.

Whatever trance had fixed Twilight to that spot, the sound of his glass hitting the table shook her out of it. She left the pub. The night air was hot and there was no-one around, just like when she'd come in. And as much as a weaker part of her felt she should leave that place as fast as she could, her legs would only carry her at a languid, defiant pace. Let them stare.

Twilight was too far away to notice when a green hoof slipped out of the threshold and pulled the pub door shut. For a brief moment the Royal Cross was totally soundless. Then, despite not a single patron or barmaid having left, the door's lock softly clicked shut.

Pain

When Twilight woke up, she got a measly few seconds of peace before some unknown assailant brought down what must have been a 3 kilo lump hammer on her head. She groaned and clutched her temples. The room swam. She opened her eyes and then shut them immediately against the brightness of ten million suns. From the distinct lack of comfort and stiff pains in her back she could at least ascertain that this wasn't her bed.

Over the course of several minutes Twilight managed to properly open her eyes, finding herself on one of the library settees. Why the hell was she here, and why did she feel like she'd just lived through eighteen sequential brain surgeries? She rolled over as much as her nausea would allow her and saw the two bottles of red wine with less than half a bottle's worth left between them on her table.

Oh.

Had last night really been that boring? Her mouth felt like it was lined with toilet paper and, even in this much less cramped room in which she'd slept with no bedclothes, she was still damp with sweat. She looked down to see a piece of ruled paper on her tummy, and cringed at the way it peeled from her coat when she retrieved it.

'Hey Twilight, good 'walk' last night? ;)

Me, Pinkie and Rainbow went to the arcade, I think we can go one day without opening the library. We would have asked you whether you wanted to come but...

Well anyway have a good day!'

She scowled at the letter, half from embarrassment and half from more general hangover-induced irritability. Did it make her a bad pony if she secretly missed the days when Spike acted like a nervous foal instead of this annoyingly always-correct ball of sarcasm? Right now she didn't care whether she was a bad pony or not, she just wanted to stop feeling like death.

Twilight squinted and tried to think about what had gone on yesterday. She'd gone out, met Rarity for lunch, things had gotten a little strange, she'd come back here to study and then... gone on a walk? That didn't sound like her. It didn't matter, it'd all come back to her at some point, it always did. Such was the dictionary definition of a blessing and a curse.

She sat up at a glacial pace, then rewarded herself five minutes of sitting very still with her eyes scrunched up while the room stopped with its incessant spinning. Eventually, she managed to get to all hooves and trudge to the kitchen. One, two, three, four glasses of water were all drained before her mouth began to regain some semblance of actual moisture. With step one, 'prevent imminent death from dehydration', complete Twilight could focus on step two. Getting showered and her teeth brushed before anyone she knew came by and discovered the sweaty, halitosis-riddled, wine-stinking embarrassment.

Twilight looked at the stairs and mentally braced herself for the journey. Taking a glance through the kitchen window she could see the air shimmer with a summer that still hadn't seen fit to end, and all around the library was an expanse of grass that separated her from the rows of cottages. The gentle breeze made the green pasture dance. It looked like waves.

Twilight sighed.

Once showered the unicorn felt life return to her body. Granted she still had a thumping headache and was prone to recurrent episodes of overpowering nausea, but even this was an upgrade on how she'd awoken. Twilight looked at her bedside clock as she towel-dried her coat, and grumbled in annoyance when she saw it was half twelve. She hated oversleeping.

Once she was finished, and looking more presentable, she trotted downstairs and found her mess from last night suspiciously minor. Whenever she woke up with a hangover it was generally divvied up into a few discrete categories. One, she'd been out with the girls and had too much. High on the endorphins left over from whichever of Ponyville's handful of establishments open past midnight, this would usually lead to a minor mess as she knocked over a few things on her way to bed.

Two, she'd gotten really into her studies and stayed up into the wee hours. To unlock some creative energy and add to the excitement she'd cracked a bottle of wine. This would create a bit more mess in the form of screwed up paper and illegible research notes that only made sense when partially inebriated.

Three, another book from one of her favourite series had been released and she'd had a few celebratory glasses that turned into many celebratory glasses. This would invariably create an unholy mess in the form of mindmaps, noteboards covered in webs of string and indecipherable flow diagrams as she let her fandom get the better of her.

So where was the mess? Her most anticipated literary releases had hit something of a drought at the moment so that wasn't it. There were no books or notes around and, considering how she'd felt when she'd woken up, she thought it very unlikely she'd had the presence of mind to put her study materials away. So that wasn't it either. Finally, she was acutely aware that her social prospects had been slim at best last night.

But still she'd apparently decided to drink almost two bottles of wine. Seemingly after this walk she'd inexplicably thought it a good idea to go on. What on earth had happened then? She'd remember, she always remembered. But why hadn't she remembered yet? Sweat beaded on her brow, her heartbeat sped up, she felt on the spot. Like something was watching her. But it was so stupid! Why should she feel so anxious?

Oh Celestia. You did something embarrassing, didn't you?

And as the worry reached a fever pitch, something in her peripheral vision snapped her out of it. Twilight's eyes flicked over to the door and she saw a letter on the ground. That hadn't been there when she woke up, she was sure of it. Consciously aware of her own relief at the distraction, she trotted over and immediately clutched her banging head. She then tiptoed over instead. Twilight decided that levitation probably wouldn't help matters, electing instead to very slowly stoop and grab the letter.

It wasn't in an envelope, it was just a folded sheet of paper. When Twilight opened it up she saw calligraphy so fancy that it almost sang at her.

'Hi darling,
I stopped by but I think you were in the shower. Wanted to know whether you wanted to do lunch again? I had so much fun yesterday! If you're interested just come by the boutique.
-R x'

Twilight lowered the letter and scanned the room, totally pristine aside from the bottles and slightly messed-up settee. She did want to go out. She didn't want to sit here all day alone. She didn't want to have to keep trying to remember what had driven her to have so much wine last night.

By the measure of her infuriating ticking clock, it was coming up to quarter to one. At roughly half past the slow drip of 'regulars' would begin. The more literary inclined of Ponyville's octogenarian population round to peruse books and subject Twilight to dull, idle gossip, sure as death and taxes. Mrs Candlewax would stop round first, she always did. Then Mr and Mrs Sandlewood, Big Scoop, Caramel Glaze and Sugar Glaze and so on and so forth. They'd stop by one after the other for the next few hours like clockwork, Twilight often wondered whether they'd formed some sort of orderly, elderly line outside the library.

They'd probably be the only customers the library would get. It was part of their routine. More than that, it was part of the Town's routine, because if Mrs Candlewax didn't come round for twenty minutes everyday then Bronze Strike at Ponyville's resident greasy spoon, literally entitled 'The Greasy Spoon', would have the to rejig her rolling booking for late lunch. Then who knows how they'd make it work at the salon?

So much knock on, so much in the way of preserving the natural schedule of the small town. And here was Twilight, the lynch-pin of it all, the librarian expected to keep it all chugging along while ponies whispered and stared, while they wouldn't let her off her island. Of course she couldn't go to lunch today, Ponyville needed her to keep the ship going after all. Just like she was expected to. Just like Night Owl had done before her. She wondered for a second whether her predecessor was happy with this arrangement.

With a scowl Twilight strapped on her saddlebag and put the 'closed' sign in the window. She stormed out of the library, slamming the door behind her.

What is wrong with you?

What was wrong indeed. It was sweets, nothing sinister, nothing evil, it was literally just sweets. The window display had caught Twilight's eye on her way to the boutique. She hadn't quite been able to take her eyes off it.

It was horrible.

It wasn't a discernible pattern, neither discrete shape nor symmetry could be picked up in the chaotic swirls and non-euclidean lines of confectionery. Colours shifted before you were even aware of it, design was noticeably present but pointedly insane. This was no aesthetic accident. A mind had clearly created this with intention. With drive. Twilight supposed that made it worse.

Was it the hangover that made the display seem so shockingly unpleasant that Twilight could barely look away? Or was the hangover amplifying said qualities in the confectionery's arrangement? Twilight's headache was so much worse now and the nausea crashed in waves. And yet, even knowing that she could feel so much better if she'd stop staring at it, Twilight remained rooted in abject horror. It gave her flashes of a drunken anger, a hoof rubbed through lines of chalk.

"Darling?"

She snapped towards the sound of the voice. Rarity was stood to her side, sunglasses cocked up onto her head showing the confusion in her expressive eyes. Confusion and... amusement?

"Like my display that much dear?" she asked without laughing. Why wasn't she laughing? Twilight thought she was being playful, she sounded like she was trying to cover up how funny this was. Why would she need to cover it up? Couldn't they laugh together?

Am I really that pitiable?

"You made this?" Twilight gasped, feeling like she'd nearly drowned.

"Of course darling, I was talking to Bon Bon about it yesterday... is that not why you stopped here?" Rarity asked, again seeming to suppress a desire to grin.

"Yeah! Yeah of course I did. Sorry Rarity I just...," Don't tell her you got drunk for the love of Celestia. "Long study session last night?"

"Study session eh?" Rarity quipped, a raised eyebrow conveying her clear disbelief.

"Sure was!" Twilight trilled, then winced at the volume of her own voice. Rarity kept staring, Twilight felt too hot. She looked around in an attempt to seem nonchalant, but she ended up looking too far up and had to immediately shield her eyes to the glare. Even someone like Twilight would've been able to tell what was really going on here, Rarity probably had it worked out from the first word out of her mouth.

"Well darling, I always found the best cure for 'Long study sessions' was a lunch as big as it is unhealthy," she said with a wink, not waiting for permission to put a hoof over Twilight withers and usher her away from the sweet shop. She chattered away in Twilight's ear, who found herself embarrassed at the way Rarity seemed to consciously lower her volume.

Twilight craned her neck around to get one last look at that window display. Even at this distance, she found her stomach churning again as she saw it. It was a pattern that shouldn't have been, and it reminded her of something.

Everything she creates is usually so beautiful. Why would she make that?

Just before they were too far away to make out detail Twilight saw something behind the sweets, something she didn't notice before. It was understandable, the coiling, headache-inducing tangle had been the only thing worth looking at after all.

So Twilight could only hazard a guess at how long Bon Bon been peering out from within the shop. Her eyes locked on Twilight's and an unsettling smile on her face.

Twilight rubbed her thumping head and once again made a genuine stab at reading the menu. When the words wouldn't focus and it felt like someone was punching her in the eyes she let it fall to the table and groaned. The one time she wanted to order something different to her usual and her brains were too fried to even let her read. Why didn't she know? She'd been here so many times. Sunny Pastures. Back to Sunny Pastures. Always, inevitably, perpetually back at Sunny Pastures.

Rarity hadn't stopped talking, Twilight suspected she was just trying to fill to space. She was clearly more than aware what the librarian's issue was and likely knew she didn't want to talk. So instead she took on that duty herself. Twilight was grateful. Granted, she wasn't listening to a single word Rarity was saying but she was grateful all the same.

"Ah! I think we'll each have a cola darling." When had the waiter turned up?

Twilight pulled her head up and squinted to make out the form of their server. With a fair amount of relief she recognised that it wasn't Snowdrop. She was certainly in no mood for the overly chatty filly. In her stead was a bleach white pegasus who seemed to be about the same age as Twilight. They were scribbling down their drink order and staring at Twilight. Their face betrayed no discernible emotion. She'd normally attempt to make some polite conversation but today she didn't quite have it in her. She couldn't really blame him for staring.

"Another daffodil sandwich for you today darling?" Rarity asked.

Not this again. How many times would she be damned to live through this infernal little quiz? She didn't want to repeat whatever mistake she'd made yesterday, but she literally had no idea what else this place did. Aside from Rarity's order from yesterday and ordering that would have been about the most pathetic thing imaginable.

She didn't know whether it comforted her or not that the chances were she'd end up getting to replay this situation a thousand more times. By the law of averages she'd get it right at some point. But then would Ponyville accommodate change? She didn't fancy her chances, least of all at this cafe. It was more likely they'd all make the same mistakes in the same place until the day they died. Wasn't that what ponies did here?

Twilight supposed it was fitting, considering how she felt, that they'd ended up at Sunny Pastures. After all, there were about five places they could go total and this had been the nearest. That would have been it. Rarity saw what a state she was in and decided to take to the nearest place. This was in no way a comment about Twilight being boring and one-note and so congenitally unadventurous that she couldn't handle going to a different restaurant.

Actually, Twilight didn't know whether that was actually better than the worry she had, because she knew that wasn't true. She was fully aware she wasn't unadventurous and if her friends thought she was then she could always show them how wrong they were.

On second thought, if it wasn't just simple distance, she outright hoped Rarity thought that. Because the idea that this was it, that her life in the one place she'd ever had true friends was going to be a series of dinners at the same place, eating the same food and feeling the same, ever-present alienation made her want to hyperventilate.

She'd probably erred in leaving the house, she felt a million times worse after the walk. It was very difficult to get her head in the right state. She could hardly say she needed more time to read when she couldn't even read at all. But just before the pause became unbearable the answer screamed out to her. Rarity had given it to her only ten minutes ago.

"Rarity," she groaned while attempting to affect some pretence of casualness which only served to make more obvious the state she was in, "You said you knew the best cure for... anyway. Dealer's choice."

Was that something ponies said? Was this the right context? Am I trying too hard?

It seemed to work in any case. Rarity gave her a playful grin and set her menu down. She propped her head on both forehooves and stared at the unicorn. It almost seemed like she was getting the measure of Twilight.

"A deep-fried hayburger, blue-cheese and barbeque sauce and twice-fried chips for my friend here. I'll have the same."

The waiter noted this down and wordlessly took their leave. Rarity kept peering over at her friend, while Twilight didn't even bother attempting to chat. Rather she slipped into an almost trance like state. Suspended on the precipice of feeling tolerable above the chasm that was publicly vomiting.

The waiter's dull grey hoof abruptly slammed down her pop in front of her with enough force to make her cry out in shock. Twilight's face burned red as she scanned the garden only to find that no-one had noticed the outburst. Aside from Rarity and the waiter over at ground zero of course.

Not quite ready to meet Rarity's eyes after yet another embarrassment, Twilight grasped her drink in both forehooves and took several gulps. Ice cubes bunched against her upper lip and the tangy liquid burned the inside of her mouth. And yet as she drank more and more the fog in her head finally started to clear. Nausea was chased away and replaced with genuine appetite. Maybe it was ridiculous and over-dramatic but Twilight felt reborn.

"Oh Celestia," Twilight gasped, "That's amazing."

"Haha, that's because it's full sugar darling." Twilight laughed, Rarity still had her head propped in both forehooves. The waiter had gone.

"By our god, you really need that!" Rarity giggled, "So what were you studying last night darling? Fermentation products?"

"Yeah yeah fair enough," Twilight relented with a wave of her hoof, "I suppose I didn't exactly hide it well."

"Well I hope you're not so delicate that you can't make it out tonight?" Rarity replied.

"Tonight?"

"I suppose you've not spoken to any of the girls today. Rainbow got a letter this morning confirming her place in this year's 'Best Young Flyers' competition! We were planning a few celebratory drinks! I think we're starting at the Royal Cross but I'm sure we'll be able to convince everyone to move onto somewhere a little more exciting."

Twilight involuntary winced at the word 'drinks', something she was certain wouldn't have gotten past Rarity. Tonight, she couldn't think of anything she wanted less than to do more drinking. Still, given her recent complaining of the lack of things to do in Ponyville, it seemed hypocritical not to snap up an offer of a night out. In any case, the Royal Cross was a nice pub... wasn't it? She felt hot again, the thought of going to the pub made her nauseous.

Have some more to drink, Twilight. It's just the hangover.

"Sure Rarity I'd love to!" She made herself to sound as cheerful as possible, then winced at the high pitch of her own forced enthusiasm.

"Have a few more sips of that and then you might end up meaning it darling," Rarity replied lazily.

"There's not much that gets past you is there?"

"Well I'm a bit smarter than I look dearie." said Rarity, looking down at her drink to take a sip. Twilight watched her for a moment.

"Why?"

"Hmm?" The seamstress cocked her head up, large blue eyes searching, "Why what darling?"

"Well, saying you're 'smarter than you look' is just saying you look less smart than you are. Why do you think that?"

"Well I... hmm," Rarity began but faltered. Her brow creased as a forehoof fiddled with her straw. Twilight allowed herself some slight satisfaction at finally stumping the seemingly unflappable unicorn.

"I suppose ponies don't tend to think of fashionistas such as moi in terms of their intelligence Twilight. I need to look beautiful and sound cultured, but not so cultured as to be intimidating or unapproachable.. A sort of faux-sophistication that can be achieved by needlessly inserting words like 'Moi' into otherwise normal sentences. It's hardly my favourite part of my job, but there you go."

"So why do it? I thought you always said the first rule of fashion is 'go your own way'." Twilight pointed out, to which Rarity laughed, with a striking hint of bitterness .

"I do say that darling, but the problem is that there is in fact as many 'first rules of fashion' as there are ponies who work in the fashion industry. For better or for worse my industry is one in which walking the walk is very much dependent on talking the talk."

"Tonnes of ponies looking at you in a way you don't want... doesn't it ever get to you? A fashionista can be fiercely intelligent, an entertainer can be a reclusive introvert," Just say it, what's the worst that could happen? "A librarian can be adventurous."

If there was any recognition of significance in this statement on Rarity's part, she did a good job hiding it. She did a good job hiding most things really. Instead she leant forward, affecting a flirtatious, dreamy look.

"Oh darling, you think I'm 'fiercely intelligent'?" she purred.

"Well I can't think of anyone else I get this level of verbal sparring practice with.. maybe Spike." Twilight replied. Their waiter walked up with a trolley and placed their plates down in front of them. She barely registered the pegasus' hooves setting her cutlery and napkin down as she stared, transfixed at the enormous burger. The pop must have done its job and banished Twilight's nausea since her stomach growled appreciatively at the sight.

"So many complements today dear, was I wrong to tell Snowdrop we weren't on a date yesterday?" the seamstress teased, totally unfazed by the waiter's presence. Twilight was only half-listening at this point, she couldn't wait to tuck in. Still, she didn't want to be rude, and she absentmindedly grasped around for some kind of reply.

"Any idea where Snowdrop is today? I haven't seen her."

Background noise only became conspicuous in absentia. Twilight knew this, it felt like second nature. The ponies around them didn't seem to act any differently on the face of it, they carried on looking where they had been looking previously. But when you scrutinised, they had stopped eating, they had stopped talking.

It reminded her of her last visit to Sunny Pastures, but last time they seemed to stare. Today was more insidious, they were trying to watch her without watching her. Why? She hadn't done anything weird, she'd only said...

Snowdrop.

Why in Celestia's name would mentioning that empty-headed teenager lead to anything of consequence? Surely it couldn't, so logically it wouldn't. But then why would asking Rarity if she was doing anything lead to a group of random ponies acting like this? It was sadistic, if this was truly the villagers punishing her. Keeping her behind the two way mirror and glaring through, every word another unknown misstep.

"Why dear? Looking for her?" Rarity's voice was like the eye of a of a hurricane. Muted yet full with an assurance Twilight could only grasp at. She was once again untouched by the stillness around them. Her intimidating confidence back in full force as the waiter dutifully topped off her drink. Twilight watched this stranger fill Rarity's glass perfectly to the brim without ever needing to look, watched the restaurant's patrons act out their disturbing, soundless marionette show.

She watched Rarity, a Venus fly trap blooming from a crack in endless, featureless concrete, shining so hard it made her eyes hurt. Was it possible for someone to be this beautiful and for it to terrify her as much as it did now? Or maybe it wasn't possible for someone to be as beautiful as Rarity was without it being terrifying. The base of Twilight's skull itched.

It must have been the hangover, that was the only explanation. Whatever placebo effect her coke had had on her was banished and she was thinking silly, stupid things about everyone around them when the much more likely reality was that they simply didn't care about Twilight. She wasn't someone who subscribed to foolish hysteria. Celestia had always taught her better than that.

What I wouldn't give to have you with me now Princess.

"No haha it's just, I thought she worked here and I... erm... just haven't seen her today," Twilight replied to Rarity's question after far too long a pause. Her head must have been worse than she'd thought, to let her imagination get the best of her this much.

But why wouldn't it? Because here she was again, thinking malformed thoughts in Sunny Pastures cafe. Eating with Rarity, frozen in a summer that would never end. Not developing or growing as she thrashed against the limbo she couldn't escape. A limbo that never grew or developed either. All the while did her square peg rub and splinter in a hole she'd never fit. Paralysed and laid bare before the crowds by her own words, desperately trying to sound out a language she'd never know. Rejected from the host, forced back into her lifeboat and knowing all the while how little any of them probably cared and how they couldn't be looking over and how it was ridiculous and all of it, always at Sunny Pastures Cafe.

"Rarity... I'm sorry to be so rude," Twilight exclaimed abruptly, rummaging around in her saddlebag for her share of the bill, wheezing with inexplicable and crushing breathlessness, "I think I might take this home if that's okay. I'm still pretty out of sorts and I don't think I'll be very good company."

"Oh?" Rarity looked at her with eyes that contained no where near the level of concern her voice seemed to contain, "Well if you think that's for the best dear."

The waiter wasted no time in seizing her meal. They rooted around in their trolley until they found the requisite materials to box it up, which they did very expediently. Or was mechanically a better descriptor? Twilight placed her money on the table and tactfully declined Rarity's polite offer to pay. She surprised even herself with how quickly she got to her hooves and collected her food. She just wanted to get home, she really wanted to get home.

Must have been the hangover.

She and Rarity bid their goodbyes after Twilight agreed to meet her at Carousel Boutique before they went out tonight. She hurried out of the seating, keeping her eyes forward. She pushed stupid ideas of ponies stopping eating to watch her out of her mind. She was being silly.

I am being silly.

"See you later darling!" Rarity called after her, and Twilight turned to give her a wave. The seamstress didn't wave back, but she was eating so Twilight didn't mind. How she managed to make scarfing down such an enormous burger seem so refined and graceful utterly mystified Twilight.

Other ponies in the garden carried on with their day, as they clearly had always been doing. Why would they be doing anything else? No one payed her any mind, aside from the waiter who was still by Rarity's side. The same waiter who hadn't said a single thing throughout the entire meal. The same waiter who had replaced Snowdrop.

They stared at Twilight and she stared back. Twilight couldn't help but think how striking they looked as their deep red coat shone in the afternoon sun.

Sweat

Looking at Carousel Boutique, Twilight tried to shake the weird feeling of déjà vu.

After she'd left the restaurant and gone back to the library, she had eaten her meal and spent the rest of the afternoon in and out of a restless sleep. Her dreams had been disjointed and vague. She couldn't remember any specifics now, only vague fragments filtered through a lens of delirium. She could, however, remember that they had all been nightmares. The room had been so hot, she had been drenched when she awoke.

Memories of the previous night were fleeting and still eluded her. She had at least finally recalled going for her walk and ending up at the Royal Cross, but nothing after she left for home. The obvious answer was that she had been so bothered by everyone's bizarre behaviour at the pub that she'd cracked some wine, and this would have been nice to settle on. But Twilight was a scholar, and she didn't cast judgement from incomplete data sets. As such, she'd wait until the rest of the night returned to her. It would come back, it always came back.

Once Twilight had managed to fully recover there had only been time to have a brief shower and make her mane at least adjacent to presentable before rushing out to meet Rarity.

The walk over was better than usual. It was a Friday night, and even in a place like Ponyville it meant the town was livelier. She had even managed to avoid getting lost in Ponyville's winding streets, and quickly found herself stood on the shore peering at Rarity's island. Moving toward it felt like something that needed surmounting, like actually going out to sea. Twilight didn't really understand why that was, she'd been here plenty of times!

She'd been here...

Music was playing from the inside of Carousel Boutique. Rarity, ever the teenager at heart apparently, liked to blast it when she was getting ready, necessitating Twilight to knock constantly for several moments. Eventually the message seemed to get through and the door swung open to reveal Rarity, makeup perfect, dress tasteful, expression confident. Compared to the dressing gown-clad mare still obscured by a facemask that usually opened the door on such occasions, this was quite the seachange.

"Hey Rarity! Ready to go?" Twilight beamed, determined to be better company than she had been earlier today.

Rarity didn't respond, instead she gave Twilight a long look up and down, lips pursed and mind clearly whirring.

"Darling... are you surprised that I'm already ready to leave?" Rarity asked, eyes still scanning Twilight.

Can she actually read minds?

"What? Haha what do you... okay yeah I'm pretty surprised," she gave up on the lie before it had even fully had chance to begin.

"And why do you think I am ready so uncharacteristically early, darling?"

"Erm... this is the time we agreed on?" Twilight offered lamely. The look in Rarity's eyes told her that this was not the reason. In fact, based on where said eyes were currently focused the reason seemingly had something to do with Twilight's mane.

Oh no.

Before the unicorn could much as blink, Rarity had telekinetically seized her tail and was all but dragging her up the stairs. She found herself swiftly bundled into a pitch black room she hadn't entered before. As soon as Rarity shut the door she bundled Twilight into a chair and flicked the lights on. She was sat in front of an enormous set of mirrors. so many that Twilight could nearly see all the way round to the back of her head.

"I only ask for fifteen minutes," Rarity began, speaking too quickly for Twilight to interject with her usual litany of protests, "Fifteen minutes and I'll only do your mane. No makeup, no dresses, and if you don't like it I'll put it back."

Despite herself, Twilight grinned. It felt good to get back to some semblance of normality after the last couple of days, and what could be more normal than Rarity begging an obstinate, unyielding Twilight to accept a makeover. But normalcy could also be overrated, and sometimes required a twist of the unexpected. So tonight Twilight would relent and accept the offer. They weren't stuck in the same cafe, she wasn't being pricked with stares she wasn't even sure were real. They were in a room Twilight didn't even know the boutique had and Twilight was letting Rarity work on her hair.

This is okay Twilight, this is what ponies do.

Rarity stepped forward at Twilight's approval with a matching smile, briefly appraised the current state of Twilight's mane and then got to work. When she wasn't overcome with excitement like she had been when they first met, Rarity had a stunningly gentle touch. At first Twilight had been watching what she was doing in the mirror but after a short while her eyes fluttered shut and she allowed herself to just enjoy it all. Rarity hummed while she worked. Some disjointed, unsettling melody. It might have scared Twilight if someone with a less pleasant voice had been humming instead.

But it wasn't, it was Rarity, and she had a lovely voice. Made for singing and soothing.

After far too little time that gentle voice stirred Twilight into opening her eyes. When she saw her reflection her breath hitched. Rarity had always corrected ponies when they said her special talent was making dresses. In fact, her special talent was creating beauty, and while Twilight had never really been one to focus on her physical appearance she couldn't deny Rarity's obvious skill. Because staring back was a poor imitation of the utilitarian look Twilight had always adopted. Staring back at her was someone beautiful.

Did it make her a hypocrite? Did it undermine her lifelong assertion that she wasn't concerned with her looks when Twilight felt her eyes mist slightly? Did it blow open the small cracks of insincerity, the needles of repressed sorrow whenever she tried on a new dress to find it didn't fit, the slight of betrayal whenever someone agreed with her about not caring? Even as she tried to find the shame Twilight found it totally overshadowed. Because Twilight believed that beauty was subjective. That the important vector was the self. She believed everyone who believed they were beautiful by its definition, and it was a sad thing to have never felt beautiful yourself.

"It's like you said before, darling. A fashionista can be fiercely intelligent," Rarity wrapped her hooves around Twilight's neck and nuzzled her face against her cheek. She stared at Twilight's speechless reaction in the mirror with a tender smile, "But I prefer to say that a librarian can be stunningly beautiful."

How had Twilight ever thought Rarity's beauty was terrifying? She could barely remember now as she looked at herself near-reborn, as she looked at Rarity's expression and saw nothing but kindness and encouragement. She was beautiful for all the reasons she wasn't scary. How stupid of Twilight to not see it earlier.

"I... I," Twilight faltered, shamed still by the lump in her throat, "I guess you could do my makeup?"

"Really darling? Oh thank you so much!" Rarity giggled excitedly. Right then and there, Twilight loved her for that. For allowing her the pretence, even if both knew it false, that this was Twilight doing her a favour and not the other way round. Once again Rarity got to work, her deft and gentle touch tantamount to a massage rather than a makeover.

When Rarity stirred her again, though she was more beautiful still, Twilight didn't experience quite the same overpowering rush of emotion. It was contentment after the honeymoon now, no great shock but rather a blooming joy that lasted twice as long. She stared at herself long past the point of what she may have of once considered decent, transfixed by how Rarity had remade her.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"You're very welcome darling," Rarity replied, stroking her cheek with the back of her forehoof, "I'll meet you downstairs when you're ready. Be careful when you open the door though, some clumsy unicorn left a dress hanging up that you'd look amazing in! Oh the nerve of some ponies!"

Twilight giggled as Rarity left. She stayed there for a moment or two, still awestruck by how good Rarity had managed to make her look in less than half an hour. She resolved to make sure she got a picture of herself tonight. Seeing her all dolled-up, out enjoying herself with her friends would mean the world to her parents. To hell with it, she'd put on the dress too. Twilight spun around on the chair and, after a second's recognition, felt her excitement give away to something else.

The swirls and contortions of that awful confectionery display flashed through her mind, a horror that a beauty like Rarity shouldn't have even been able to fathom. She remembered those chalk drawings too, that had kept catching her eye at lunch yesterday. A sickening bastardisation of shape and space, insanity made art. She finally made the long overdue connection between them that her hungover mind hadn't managed earlier. It was hard not to as she stared at the enormous painting of it hanging on Rarity's wall.

There was a muted sense of satisfaction from having solved the mystery. The picture was clearly some local custom, something the citizens were familiar with. Why else would it reflect in Rarity's work, as well as be hung here and graffitied all around town? This was overshadowed, though, by her instinctive revulsion at the design. If there were any objective standards in art, this was surely an affront to them. Twilight walked over to the dress and began to slip it on. There was no reason she could offer for the way she felt watched by that picture. Her mind flashed to her hoof covered in chalk, to the taste of blood in her mouth. Her breathing felt shallow.

This wasn't how the night was supposed to go. There was to be no more fixation on these silly ideas of staring eyes and unheard whispers. She deserved a night off. Why couldn't she just have one night off? Why couldn't the looks stop? Why would the summer not end?

Why won't you stop doing this to yourself?

"Oh Twilight dearie," Rarity called from downstairs, "Would you mind popping down."

Twilight gave herself a once over in the mirror, noting mournfully the way her excitement had been stolen by the coiling monstrosity behind her, made worse by her knowledge there was no need to feel this way. Because Spike was right, there was nothing wrong with the town.

That's just a different way of saying the problem is you.

She dragged herself with legs that felt like jelly and began the march downstairs. When she got there Rarity was waiting for her with an excited smile devoid of any gentleness and warmth. It was calculating, near-predatory. It made Twilight think of Sunny Pastures.

"All ready?" she asked, the fake sweetness making Twilight feel like a child. She only nodded in response.

"Good! But just before we set off, can I show you something dear?"

"Sure." Twilight replied after a brief second's hesitation.

"Great," Rarity trilled, either not noticing or not caring about Twilight's sudden change in demeanour. Instead of producing anything to show, however, the seamstress simply took off out of the boutique, leaving an increasingly confused Twilight to follow. When she passed the threshold Twilight could see Rarity walking round the exterior of the boutique.

"Come Twilight, it's just round here." Her voice sounded like she might burst into laughter at any second. Twilight didn't feel like Rarity would be laughing with her. And it was so stupid to be concerned about what she was about to see. She had no reason to be concerned, and forced herself to march on with confidence. When Twilight caught up, Rarity was stood near the bushes by her house and was staring down at something.

"Now what do you think happened there, Twilight?" the voice was patronising, it was a tone you'd use to coax a foal to finish a maths problem. It shocked Twilight. The change in her own mood was at least explainable if irrational. Rarity's seemed utterly without reason. She looked to where Rarity was gesturing and found a flattened area of her bushes. Like someone had trampled it.

"I... I don't know Rarity." Twilight replied, cursing herself for failing to keep the shake out of her voice. A shake that baffled her for its needlessness.

It's not needless, you've already worked it out. You know what you did.

"Really? Now that is a curiosity dear. I thought you were the problem solver in our little group! Do you want to know what I think happened?" She didn't give Twilight a chance to respond before pressing on, "I think someone was outside here, hiding in my bushes! I know, it sounds positively scandalous! Such a lovely town and there's someone, dare I say, spying on me? Why I can't think of a single pony who would, and I know everyone who lives in Ponyville."

Twilight wanted to cry. She wanted to go back to the library. She never wanted to see the library again. Because she always remembered, aside from when she didn't, and the shame felt like it was enough to kill her. She still didn't remember her walk home, but she remembered her feelings of loneliness and resentment. The unshakeable suspicion that everyone else was out somewhere having fun, while she was left to chart unfriendly waters in her lifeboat. Springing leaks and cast adrift. Laughed at from the mainland.

There was precious little in the way of other explanation. She'd come here, she'd actually peered through the window, crouched in the bushes, spying on her friend, like a freak. And worse still, said friend had apparently noticed.

Just then, Twilight remembered her nightmares had been about music.

Rarity threw a hoof around her withers and pulled her in close, it could have even passed for friendly if not for the vice-like grip she maintained.

Celestia she's strong, how can she be so strong?

She babbled for a response before Rarity shushed her and started to stroke her cheek, the act all the more poisonous for its void of tenderness she'd shown before.

"Oh Twilight darling, I'm flattered you're so worried for me but I really don't think there's any need. Probably just some teenagers playing a prank. Even if it was somepony sticking their nose where it didn't belong I shouldn't expect they'd be back anytime soon. They were very lucky no-one saw, and I don't think that luck would extent to a second visit. After all this is a small town, a decent town... it's very hard to keep secrets."

The grip around her tightened just before the point of pain. Twilight's eyes found Rarity's, she didn't need to be a socialite to hear the warning in her voice, to see it in her glare. It only lasted a second before Rarity roughly let her go and Twilight had to work very hard not to stumble to the ground.

"Anyway darling, enough of all that dreadful business. It's already forgotten if you ask me. Shall we?" She didn't wait before trotting off into town, leaving Twilight to gather herself. There was such confidence to the way she walked. She never looked back once, like there wasn't a doubt in her mind that Twilight would follow her.

Twilight took one last look at the impression in the bushes, burning red with moist, sticky embarrassment. She could have wept for the shame. But more could she have wept in frustration for the life she desperately wanted and didn't know how to get, in resentment for the rotted lifeboat she dragged, or in grief for the loss of the simple tenderness of a makeover between friends.

Twilight scowled as she knocked back the drink. She sucked air over her teeth while the liquor burned. She wasn't one of those ponies who claimed to like the burn. Who likes the sensation of their throat being burned? No one did, obviously. Liars said they did.

"Woah there sugarcube, be careful there. Ya'll don't wanna end up with a sore head tomorrow!" Applejack chuckled, prompting Twilight to turn and glare at the group. Pinkie, Fluttershy and Rainbow were all peering over, wide-eyed and not bothering to contain their shock. Applejack, however, just looked mildly amused. Twilight wondered why for a second until she saw it, a white hoof on AJ's shoulder. Her eyes traced it and found Rarity, grinning at her through smoke-machine fog and pulsing strobes. The Twilight that met that gaze had a sore head and an intoxication she couldn't take, caught in the bushes like a child.

Twilight hated it here.

She gave a lopsided, insincere smile of acknowledgement before doing another shot.

"Sooooo..." Rainbow began, swivelling her body but keeping a concerned eye on Twilight, "Are you guys all gonna be there for the competition?"

Twilight let their conversation mingle in with the thumping bass until both were indistinguishable. When she had started walking over with Rarity after their little 'chat', she had been mortified with shame. But as the journey progressed and Rarity recounted boring, idle gossip about various Ponyville residents, she had started to wonder whether this was the correct response.

Fear for their friendship? That definitely seemed apt. Was Rarity actually threatening her? Her grip had been strong and her tone of voice very much that of someone who shouldn't be messed with. But still, unlikely. A much better explanation was that she was simply annoyed and telling Twilight to back off and stop skulking in her bushes, which was a fair request to make.

Regardless of what had the most deserved place, emotions were not rational actors. As such, Twilight stewed in what her heart had arrived at. Suspicion and anger.

She did not come to conclusions based on incomplete data sets, and so far all she had was Rarity showing her a trampled bush and claiming someone had been spying on her. But just because Twilight was minus one drunken memory, it did not inherently make that pony Twilight.

Rarity's reaction was some evidence in favour of the spy theory. But if Rarity had actually seen her, why wouldn't she just come out and say it? Why all the word games? Twilight knew that she would be worried for a friend who did such a thing, not angry at them.

Unless said friend had seen something she didn't want them to see. Something the whole town was keeping quiet on? Something that outsiders weren't welcome at. Not to say any of this was concrete, of course. Twilight preferred to consider it keeping her options open. And the option that kept shouting out was that Rarity was not above misleading and intimidating Twilight to keep her away from the trail.

It was also nicer to think that instead of herself as some creepy voyeur. But that didn't factor into her decision-making. She was a scholar, she knew how to be objective. It didn't even enter into it.

It didn't.

Maybe sadness had a place in all this, too. After all they had been through, whatever little secret this town apparently had still seemed to be an insurmountable obstacle to fully connecting with Rarity and settling into her new home.

What about Applejack? She too had lived here her entire life, would she have the same insular pushback against Twilight? Potentially.

This wasn't even mentioning the anger, and oh Celestia was there anger. They had all faced down the worst Equestria had to offer, and yet Rarity thought Twilight was so yellow to be frightened off by just a stern talking to outside her house. What made her more annoyed was the fact that it had basically worked for a minute there. But what made her the most annoyed of all was exactly what she'd been told outside Carousel Boutique. She was the problem solver, and she was utterly lost on this one.

What in Tartarus is going on?

They had left the Royal Cross after only one round of drinks and, just as she predicted, Rarity had successfully steered them towards an inarguably more exciting venue. The Salt-Lick. It was one of Ponyville's very few clubs. The only place one could go for a drink and a dance with friends without having to contend with the incessant warbling of mobile disco operators and beer-soaked carpet.

And yet, it was still piercingly loud. Too loud to hold an actual conversation. It was more like stolen screams through musical lulls to the point that all wit and nuance was drained, leaving only utilitarian grunting in an unbearably hot prison ponies pretended to like. Twilight chuckled bitterly to herself as she wondered whether she had just described The Salt-Lick or the whole of Ponyville itself.

So, she drank. Despite being consciously aware of how poor a coping mechanism this was, it was a lot easier to allow herself to withdraw into an intoxicated, sulk than to continue to despair. Better the alienation she decided on than the one they imposed, Twilight thought to herself.

"Oh darling, I can't imagine how happy you were when you got the conformation!"

And there was her voice again, the biggest mystery of all. Twilight turned and watched Rarity, taking some small pleasure in turning the tables on the observer for a change. She was listening to Rainbow excitedly chatter about getting the fateful letter that morning with what looked to be genuine interest. But more than interest, there was affection.

Twilight knew there had been affection as well when Rarity had made her look beautiful earlier. There had to be. She could change in a matter of seconds, but surely Twilight couldn't be so poor a judge of character that Rarity could have been lying this whole time? Sure Rarity couldn't be so good a liar for that? A pony that could fake such a thing would be a monster, and Twilight knew Rarity wasn't a monster. For a second, her eyes flicked to meet Twilight's. There was no surprise or questioning at being stared at. It was like she knew Twilight had been looking at her the whole time.

Who was she kidding? Of course Rarity had known.

Dominance in the situation fully wrestled back, the seamstress looked back to Rainbow. Her grin now imbued with cocksure smugness. And even now, with Twilight as angry as she was, the way Rarity moved was hypnotising. She really was grace given form. Rarity had described herself as smarter than she looked, and to many this was true.

Twilight had always assumed judging someone's intelligence by their appearance was a terrible thing, and had therefore assumed Rarity didn't like that ponies often underestimated her mind. Maybe she had been looking at it all wrong though, maybe Rarity didn't resent ponies treating her as some empty-headed socialite. Maybe she preferred it.

Because empty-headed socialites weren't capable of subterfuge, and idyllic little towns didn't have secrets they kept from outsiders. And Twilight knew she shouldn't still be drinking, but someone as analytical as her knew her own limits. She wasn't paralytic by any stretch. She was looser, less inhibited. This was what the rational part of her was scared of.

Because small towns couldn't possibly have any dirty secrets, it was ridiculous. And even if they did, scared little librarians couldn't possibly have the gall to uncover them regardless of the reactions she got. Not possible at all.

Twilight downed another shot. It was nicer to think of herself as being thrown off the trail instead of peering through windows, and it was nicer to think of herself as pushing against these efforts bravely instead of lonely and frustrated and desperate.

But as she knew, this didn't enter into it.

"So how's everyone's week been so far?" she exclaimed over the music. From the expressions her friends gave her, it was pretty obvious she'd just interrupted an ongoing discussion. But considering she'd spent the entire night in an antisocial funk it was also unlikely that any of them were going to shut down her first genuine offering of conversation. So each clearly made their peace with abandoning the previous topic and started to recount their assorted normal Ponyville weeks.

Fluttershy had been looking after her animals as usual. Rainbow had been tending to weather duty and practising her aerobatics as usual. Pinkie had been baking and planning parties as usual. Applejack had been working the farm as usual. Even at their relatively early stage of friendship, Twilight could have pretty much predicted their answers verbatim. But she wasn't really listening, instead she was focusing on Rarity, tracking the minutia of her facial expressions and soft vocalisations of humour, sympathy, surprise.

No one could be that good of a liar. It had to be real. But then, so had been the note of threat when she spoke to Twilight by the bushes earlier.

"It's very hard to keep secrets."

"How about you Rare?" Pinkie chirped.

"Pretty dull I'm afraid dear. I've had a large order in from some anonymous client in Canterlot. Between us and the wallpaper, I'm pretty sure the only reason they wanted to remain anonymous is so I couldn't warn any other designers how obscenely large their commissions are! So I've been slaving away into the night, just me, Opal and enough silk to cover the whole of the Everfree. We fashionistas truly lead glamourous lives."

The group chuckled affably at her story and superficial small-talk appeared poised to reclaim the night.

Do it.

"Were you really though?"

And of course the atmosphere of the club cooled, what else would she have expected at this point? But this time Twilight was ready, and she was drunk, and she didn't care anymore. So she kept going on despite Pinkie's and Fluttershy's look of mild surprise. Despite the tensing of Applejack's shoulders, despite the look of abject horror Rainbow shot at her. Despite Rarity's raising of one questioning eyebrow, the single thing closest to making her wilt.

"Last night I went for a walk and stopped in for a spell at the Royal Cross. Considering how boring it was tonight I'm sure you can all imagine how boring it was when it was basically just me in there!" Twilight laughed, but it didn't matter. All that mattered was that Rarity wasn't smiling anymore. She didn't look angry, mind, but she was clearly paying very close attention to what Twilight was saying. They all were paying quite close attention. Twilight felt the last vestiges of her rational mind, weakened by liquor and anger and fear and shame, begging her to not do this.

No use being sober now. Sober Twilight wouldn't do this, she'd keep us going back to Sunny Pastures every day for the rest of our lives. We will not let that happen. They want it to be them against you. They're not above playing dirty, so play dirty.

"But I couldn't help but notice that there was no-one around! And when I asked you what you were doing yesterday at lunch you seemed to react strangely. Like there was something I shouldn't know! So, were you really just working last night?" She cared little for her wide eyes, or the ill-proportioned stretch of her manic smile, or the way her strained laugh was devoid of any humour. The others could think what they would, this wasn't about them. If Rarity was alarmed by the brazen call-out, violating not only all laws of early friendship but also the insular moratorium on mentioning this Town's bizarre behaviour, she didn't show it.

"Sorry dear, nothing as exciting as that I'm afraid," she replied. The warning edge from before was absent with suspiciously little to replace it.

"Yeah Twi', Rare's from Ponyville. We don't play all them fancy Canterlot 'social games' with folk down here!" Applejack laughed. It didn't seem genuine, though. It was overly insistent. Twilight turned to her and shot a look that asked why she was intervening at all? Nothing was wrong, they were all just talking after all.

"Haha guilty! We definitely do that in Canterlot! So much it's made me a bit of an expert actually, and it really seemed like that was what was happening yesterday!" she bit back, faux-pleasantness lacing every word.

Prove me wrong. Prove that didn't happen. I dare you. I dare anyone to even try.

"So what was going on Rarity? I promise not to tell. Was it some secret fashion thing?" Twilight giggled, push it further, let it all out, make them know you see them all, "Or maybe some special Ponyville tradition?"

"Now hold on!" Applejack yelled, all-together too angry for what she should have thought was going on, "Rare said she didn't do anything of the sort. You can't go accusin' folks of lying' when-"

A single. raised white hoof cut her off, and Twilight wondered why she even stopped at all? To be so worked up then halt with a single gesture. It didn't seem right. Nothing seemed right.

"For the life of me darling, I really don't know what you mean." she looked down, demonstrably in no great rush to defend herself, and took a long sip of her cocktail. After a couple of seconds her eyes flicked up again, decidedly sharper than before, "I really didn't mean to give off the impression that I was hiding anything. Did it really seem like that? Are you sure?"

For one word could have so many interpretations, the linguist in Twilight would have sang. Was she sure that something was happening at the boutique? Of course she wasn't. She was intoxicated and desperate, and she was overplaying her hand. Bluffing with the suggestion of deeper knowledge. She was consciously aware of this even as her frantic mind raged against it's known constraints.

But, was she sure something strange was going on? Of course she was. She might not exactly be a social butterfly, but she wasn't lying before. One does not get raised in the country's centre of conversational sparring and civil subterfuge without getting a decent handle on the way it's all done.

There was only one question Rarity was actually asking. And it was because Twilight was upset, and she was drunk, and she was tired of being treated like she was the strange one in this town full of ponies forever dancing around smoke and mirrors, made insultingly blatant for how relentlessly boring Ponyville was in literally every other respect. The way they treated her with a distaste they made no attempt to hide, how they reminded her she was not a part of them even as she marched in step with their constant repetition and aversion to change. Swept with the tide as it's unwilling prisoner, lifeboat dashed on the rocks of the shore.

It was because of all these things that Twilight had forgotten that background noise is only conspicuous in absentia, and that for last few minutes she had heard Rarity perfectly.

The music was no longer the thumping, overblown par for the course at the salt-lick. It was a skeletal, minimalist beat. Hardly conducive to a fun night out, but that didn't matter. Because no one was dancing. Some were looking down at their drinks uncomfortably like Pinkie and Fluttershy. Most, however, were staring right at her. They wore the same expression Applejack had been for this conversation. Brow furrowed, eyes wide, like she had just accidentally stepped on a grave.

Rarity, as usual, was totally unique. She leant back, relaxing in her chair and drinking the last of her cocktail. Her expression assured, baiting, beautiful, terrifying. She didn't look like the tender-hearted, lovably dramatic seamstress Twilight thought she knew. She looked like a queen. The second she set the spent glass down it was scooped up and replaced with a full one.

Twilight looked around Rarity to see not one, but three dutiful waiters. Two pegasi, one red and one white, and a grey earth pony. All were staring at her, and suddenly she was terrified beyond her own ability to reason. She recognised the waiters, had one of them served her at lunch? There was something she knew without really knowing, and it was pleading with her to shut her mouth. Rarity took another sip, on no one's clock but her own, and let out a brazen gasp of dramatised refreshment. Twilight thought back to a few minutes prior, about the utter ridiculousness of her intoxicated self-confidence that a club-night accusation would be enough to blow the lid of whatever the hell this even was.

This assuming something was even happening. Everyone could clearly hear their conversation. They could be looking at a scene, not because of a conspiracy theory concocted by a mare swimming along the edges of madness. Maybe she really had spied on Rarity. Maybe they were all staring at the creepy voyeur as she drunkenly railed against her friends. Maybe a painting on Rarity's wall was just a painting. But surely it couldn't all just be her?

A raised eyebrow hadn't been quite enough to make Twilight wilt.

"So darling, are you sure?" Rarity asked again, her eyes merely one set in a sea.

Now Twilight wilted.

"Am I...? I... uh..." Twilight spluttered, hot sticky anxiousness flushing her face, no idea how to get out of this, panicking.

"Geez Twilight! How many of those have you had?!" Rainbow guffawed. Twilight turned to her, speechless. Rainbow laughed, and behind it she seemed to beg. Take the lifeline.

"I uh... I guess too many?" Twilight offered weakly, throat like dry paper.

"I'll say! I've forgotten my fair share of parties but I've never invented one before!" Dash laughed. It was slightly strained and lacked the certain je ne sais quoi of her normal laughter. If Twilight had noticed that, Rarity definitely would have.

Don't question it. Don't get in your own way. Laugh with her.

"Haha, wow am I really that off the mark?" Twilight exclaimed. Rarity said nothing and Twilight chose to take this as an answer in the affirmative, "Sorry Rarity, I guess I've really been letting my mind run away with me. All these strong drinks probably don't help."

"I don't think we have quite the same stringent licencing laws as they do in Canterlot dear," Rarity's measured reply came after a slight pause. Never would Twilight have thought there could be a situation where she'd be relieved to hear that interminable music start up again, but she could have cried with relief when the DJ reached the end of the current track and put something a bit higher energy on.

The night finally began to continue, and atmosphere eased. But it didn't recover fully. Fluttershy seemed to be avoiding conversation with Twilight, while Pinkie excused herself to head home and get an early night which was possibly the most conspicuously out of character thing she could have done. Rarity kept herself busy chatting with Rainbow, and the two appeared to be getting on perfectly well.

Applejack was listening to, but not partaking in, their conversation. No, she was clearly watching Twilight closely since her eyes flicked back to Rarity and Dash every time Twilight looked at her. Dear Celestia, she really was atrocious at lying. It was almost insulting actually. But, of course, it made sense, Twilight had just had an embarrassing outburst. Who wouldn't stare? Who wouldn't peer from their windows and whisper of this was what she was?

"I'm just gonna go the little fillies' room," Twilight announced, affecting a pronounced slur in the hopes that appearing more drunk than she was might ease some troubled waters. After all, who could be mad at the harmless, sloshed mess? She pushed herself up, finding the 'act' of being drunk was coming too easy to be as put-on as she'd initially intended. Who cared though? The effect was the same, and she was not interested in method over result at this point.

She pushed through throngs of ponies, back to their dancing, and felt more alone than ever. The musk of bodies writhing and stewing in sweat was near-primal. All the while would the dancers pause and watch the islander as she pushed further into the heart of darkness. Near the edge of the dance floor, a stallion had his lips buried in the crook of his mate's neck. The two of them shone, but it wasn't a glow. No, this was an oily sheen of perspiration. He pulled back, and the other stallion opened his eyes and they gazed at one another.

The larger of the two licked his lips, his cocksure grin and teasing eyes swam with amusement at the light blush decorating his partner's face. But while he blushed, the smaller seemed like his embarrassment was somewhat put-on. It was a good story in the service of greater flirtation, and who could blame him? Why not invent a more engaging story than limit yourself to the sad truth? The truth that your partner no longer gets your heart pumping, or the truth that there was no great conspiracy and these villagers just hated Twilight?

Twilight could certainly sympathise, she loved a good story.

Then they turned to Twilight, and that depth of feeling was instantly replaced by a blankness, tinged with slight xenophobic revulsion. But she saw it less in the smaller stallion. Though he clung onto his mate for dear life, there was something approaching sympathy in his eyes. A yearning perhaps to even reach out? And Twilight took it in, with the faint registration of his wings. Born and raised in Cloudsdale probably, so far away from here.

She wondered if he struggled like she was struggling when he first came here. If she asked him would he tell her that they all eventually let you in on the secret? Or would he tell her that there was no big reveal, rather the slow acceptance that's just how this place was? Would he caution her to find something to cling to here, that the mainland was in fact just a different kind of sea? Twilight's best guess was that he'd tell her that after months of creeping anxiety and boredom and fear, it'd only taken the last couple of days to ramp everything up and finally snap her in two.

Their embrace tightened, and the sympathy vanished. A less composed, braver mare would have shoved past them on the way to the toilets, but that side of Twilight had learned her lesson. She simply slunk by with her head bowed. A great story indeed it would have made, to proudly show them all she was unbowed. But what were the point of stories for an audience who didn't listen, or by an author who didn't know where the fiction even began anymore?

Panic

When Twilight woke up, the room was sweltering and she felt like she was choking. She took deep, desperate breaths. She needed to get more air in the lungs. But this air was hot and stale. She knew she'd had nightmares again, but couldn't remember the specifics. But it had been about music, she knew it had been about music. And she was drenched in sweat, her duvet clung to her and wouldn't let go. She thrashed around to get it off, it was smothering her.

Her heart was hammering in her chest. It was boiling hot. She was covered in sweat. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't get the bedclothes off. She couldn't escape. She couldn't escape. She couldn't escape.

"TWILIGHT!" Spike yelled as he pulled the duvet off, "What's wrong?!"

She was in her room, she was with Spike. It was so hot, just like it had been the first time she ever set hoof in the town. She wasn't in her lifeboat anymore, but she wasn't on the mainland. She was in Golden Oaks, her island. It didn't matter if it was cursed. She was okay here, at least for the time being. Twilight caught her breath and got her bearings.

"It's nothing Spike, I'm sorry for worrying you. I just had some bad dreams," she rasped.

"I'll say," he replied, "You were talking in your sleep all night."

"What did I say?"

"Oh... nothing really. You were just sort of mumbling. You sounded terrified though! I couldn't wake you up at all!"

"Mumbling what?" Twilight pressed.

"Nothing! Just like, random words and stuff. I couldn't make sense of any of it and I was tired and-"

"Well why bring it up then?" she snapped, then immediately regretted it when Spike looked hurt. Of course he would be, he didn't understand. Not even Twilight understood.

"Spike... I'm sorry. I'm just stressed at the moment," It wasn't a lie either. He smiled, though she could tell it wasn't genuine. He reminded her so much of herself in that moment, every time she had put a brave face on the hurt of exclusion came rushing back in startling clarity.

"It's fine!" Liar. "I... Twilight can you tell me what's wrong?"

"I just told you Spike," she insisted, "I'm just stressed."

Liar.

"Well, just try to relax then, yeah?" he said, smiling kindly, "I've made breakfast so come down whenever you're ready."

"Okay Spike," he started towards the door, but Twilight called out, "Spike... I don't thank you enough for everything you do. I hope you know I appreciate it."

"Haha come on Twi', it's just some breakfast," he laughed, and she laughed with him. It wouldn't do to worry him anymore.

She rose from the bed, cringing at the sodden mess she'd left behind. It was so hot, so hot and there was nothing to be seen outside. Save for rows of cottages shimmering in the heat, separated by a sea of grass. She'd get up tomorrow and it would be the same.

Making her way to the shower, she recalled the events of last night. While Applejack's offer of 'help' had been indeed incredibly patronising, it may have not been as out of the ordinary as she'd thought at the time. Twilight had been drunk. Not blackout drunk, but certainly drunk enough to attempt the outright insanity of directly accusing Rarity of lying.

Once in the bathroom, safely behind a locked door, she turned the knobs and sighed as the water cleansed her coat. Rivulets of water washed congealed sweat from lavender fur, and Twilight felt like she'd regained some semblance of control and normality. She should feel happier than this. She'd found out Snowdrop was okay, and had something approaching a genuine conversation. A conversation that implied Snowdrop wasn't too happy here either.

But she'd been drunk, and if she was right...

Until last night, she hadn't really engaged properly with the idea that everyone in the town could be actively working against her. And last night she had been intoxicated, unable to genuinely consider the implications of her suspicions. Suddenly, she was falling back against the tiles in an effort to steady herself. She was trapped, between living in a place that hated her, having lost her mind or the big secret being nothing.

And it didn't feel like there was a way out. Because it couldn't be nothing, but she really didn't want to be insane, yet she hated the stares. Where could she go? What could she do? It dawned then, on Twilight as she showered, what couldn't sink in last night. That she was utterly, totally alone, with no way out and no way forward. She at least had enough time to stumble out of the shower and toward the toilet before she vomited.

She grasped out for the sink, then pulled herself up when she'd got a hold. Looking at herself in the mirror was a shock. She looked thin, stretched out, her eyes had dark circles underneath. Last night, when she'd come in and stumbled to bed, Twilight had decided to commit to the idea that she wasn't insane. Push forward, forge a hypothesis to investigate and stop changing your research question. But scholars did not make conclusions from incomplete data sets, and that was all she had.

It seemed like a joke now, as she finally realised how the town did it. It bombarded you with such unrelenting confusion and anguish that you have no choice but to shut down entirely. Every time she made some headway and got a step forward, she'd be beaten two steps back. So, the simplest solution seemed to be to stop caring all together. And when you didn't care, you didn't need to change or evolve. That was the story of Ponyville, and it was looking like that would be the story of Twilight. Because anything was better than this.

And for a while she stayed, peering into the mirror. Neither her nor her reflection dared make the first move. As if these were the last few moments of being truly herself before the protective apathy claimed her. As if there was still anything of herself to lose. But it didn't really matter in the end. The shower continued, and its mist eventually fogged the glass. Until she couldn't see herself at all.

Twilight sat reading, listening to the clock. She'd buy a new one when she next visited Canterlot. She'd go to Canterlot soon. Definitely.

Breakfast had been eaten in a strained silence. Twilight was sullen and withdrawn, and Spike had clearly wanted to reach out and ask her what was wrong. But, no matter how smart he was, Spike was still very young. He clearly lacked the ability to sort out a problem this serious. He was used to dealing with the smaller anxieties in life. Twilight didn't even know how she'd be able to describe this problem to him.

So she'd not said and he hadn't asked. Now they sat there back in their routine, the same one they'd always had. She read her books on her studies, he read his comic. For hours. They'd done nothing but sat here and read for hours and hours interspersed with occasional trips to the kitchen. It was so hot, she was still sweating. The shower had been pointless. So much of it was pointless actually. She showered this morning, and was sweating now regardless. It had been like this since the moment she'd arrived here.

"Coming up to half one Twi'," Spike blurted out. She could hear the sting of worry in his voice.

"...Okay?"

"Mrs Candlewax should be by soon, should we get everything put away and ready?"

Of course, how could she have forgotten? Life went on regardless of her problems, and now she'd face the next few hours having to endure the conversation of ponies who clearly didn't like her but had no better option. Spike set away his comic and began to check over the shelves. As if any of the would actually take any books out. After a few moments there was a knock on the door.

It was a public library, she didn't need to knock. Why did she always knock. She wasn't popping round to visit her friends. She stared at Twilight as much as the others when it suited. She was not Twilight's friend. Her heart was hammering away in her chest. The same feeling she'd had in the shower was back. The feeling of being trapped like a rat in a room rapidly filling up with water.

"Hey Spike," Twilight called out with a forced smile, "What do you think would happen if we just didn't answer it?"

"Haha, I think she'd keep knocking until we did," he laughed in reply, before moving to answer the door.

"Spike. Don't answer it."

"What? Twilight we can't just refuse to open up. We're the town's library. Don't get me wrong yesterday was fun but you know, duty calls and all that."

He carried on stepping to the door. He wasn't listening to her. No-one was listening to her anymore. They all thought she was stupid or hysterical or insane. And it was so hot. How could it still be this hot? The summer was over now, why wouldn't it cool down? Why wouldn't anything change?

"Spike, please don't," she begged, her voice starting to crack.

"Twilight, what's wrong with you? I can't help you if you don't tell me. Is it still the ponies treating you strangely? I told you, it'll come around in time. We've not been here all that long. You can't expect everything to change so soon."

It was like nails down a chalkboard, like he'd picked the worst possible thing to say. To taunt her with the preposterous idea that anything could change in a place like this. But she was so hot and so angry and so scared that she didn't say anything, and for a moment it looked like he might cry. In frustration or in anguish, who could say? She gave him nothing, and as such he shook his head started towards the door again.

She still fought even though she knew it would be so much easier to just stop caring. She wished she could stop caring. But it was so hot, and she was drenched in sweat and felt like she was being dragged from her lifeboat, off the mainland and pushed beneath the waves. When he reached that door and opened it, it was like everything began to play out in slow motion for Twilight.

From behind it, the sun rushed in. The sky was piercingly blue, not a cloud was visible. And there was Mrs Candlewax with her insincere grin that said she considered this place beneath her. And behind her was a sea of grass. And behind that was Ponyville. Rows and rows of cottages that she couldn't tell apart.

Why the thought of putting up with her usual bout of listening to pensioners moan about their trivial problems nearly made Twilight vomit, she couldn't be sure. Maybe it was something to do with knowing that all day, as she smiled and nodded, she'd be wondering whether they hated her, or thought she was cursed, or thought she was insane.

Three months. It had taken three months total. Three months of stolen glances and blatant stares and whispers and grins and sweltering, never-ending heat for her to finally not be able to do it anymore.

Mrs Candlewax was sweating in the heat. She busied herself with liberal waving of a small hoof-fan, as if that would actually cool her down. Her gaze was focused on Twilight. It was a snide look of opportunistic glee, clearly Twilight was good enough to rant at if not to actually allow to be a member of the town. But then that look was changing to one of shock. Twilight didn't see the process complete, she slammed the door in the old mare's face and then bolted it shut for good measure.

"Spike!" she wailed through sudden tears, "I said NO."

Twilight didn't wait for the inevitable fallout. Instead she rocketed up the stairs, failing to fully understand or stop herself from crying. She got into her room and shut the door before collapsing against it. It was like this morning only so much worse. She couldn't breathe, she was choking to death. She was pouring with sweat, the air was poisoning her.

While she gasped for breath, she also couldn't stop herself from crying, leading an increasingly severe feedback loop of unbridled panic. All Twilight could do was curl into a ball and try to focus on anything other than how much she felt like she was dying. She thought instead of her breaths, wild and rasping and incomplete. After a while she managed to fall into some semblance of sleep, but it wasn't restful.

The whole time, she dreamt about music.

"Darling?"

Twilight jolted awake, painfully smacking her head on the door in the process. There was a few seconds' confusion as she recalled why she was on the floor of her bedroom. When the penny dropped she slumped in embarrassment and sorrow. It always came back to Twilight. Of course a gossip like Mrs Candlewax would have ensured the whole town had heard about her little outburst by now.

"Twilight, it's Rarity. Can I come in?" called a voice from behind the door.

Ah. So that was what had woken Twilight. That was everything she needed, Rarity seeing her lose control yet again.

"Oh, hi Rarity," Twilight called out, "Is there anything I can help you with?"

Pathetic.

"Darling I want to help you," Rarity replied, "Please just let me in so we can talk."

Cornered. Twilight could either let Rarity in to see what an absolute wreck she was. Or, she could decline and look even more unstable for it. With a sigh, she opened the door to find a very concerned looking unicorn staring back at her. But Twilight had already plastered a wide grin on her face.

"I'm not sure what you mean Rarity, I'm totally fine!" she assured. But Twilight wasn't able to keep the break out of her voice for even one sentence. And she might have fully held it together, were it not for Rarity stepping forward and pulling her into a soft hug. That was when Twilight's body vetoed her wishes, and she slumped into the embrace and began to openly cry.

And even though Rarity was the pony Twilight might have been the most upset with, it didn't change the fact that she was sad, and scared, and she needed a hug. Sometimes things didn't have to be more complex than that. She tried to say something, anything. She tried to say she was sorry, to tell Rarity to leave, to plead with her for honestly, to ask Rarity to tell her she wasn't insane.

"And where is he now?"

"I gave him some bits and sent him to that arcade."

"Hmm," Twilight replied, pausing to take a sip of her tea, "He shouldn't have come to get you."

Once Twilight had managed to calm down the two of them had gone downstairs. The sun was already dipping below the horizon outside. Twilight had slept and cried longer than she thought possible. Rarity had made her and Twilight both a peppermint tea, which they each sipped awkwardly. Whichever versions of themselves had bantered so effortlessly at Sunny Pastures Cafe were totally absent now. Twilight wondered faintly how much else of herself she'd lost since moving here.

"Darling, he had the fright of his life! He said after he talked to Mrs Candlewax and closed the library he went up to talk to you, but that you weren't replying. He tried for hours before coming to me."

"I know what happened Rarity, I was there for a lot of it," she lied. She had barely been aware of anything in there, "Did he say why he came to get you in particular? I mean, Pinkie is the closest to the library."

If Rarity was offended, she didn't outright show it. She took a measured sip of her tea. She knew exactly why he had fetched Rarity. They both did. Twilight imagined she'd muttered a lot more in her sleep than he had let on. Because through the flashes of music, Twilight remembered flashes of those blue eyes in her nightmares.

"I think he might have just been a little frazzled dear. He's worried about you. I am as well, I know you're not feeling great at the moment."

"Rarity, I'm not-"

"Smarter than I look, remember Twilight?" Rarity interrupted. She leant forward and took Twilight's forehooves in her own, "I'm not asking you a question, I'm telling you that I know."

"What makes you think I'm not doing too well?"

"I've seen it for weeks now, all the girls have." Rarity nearly pleaded, it looked like she was on the verge of grabbing Twilight with both hooves and shaking her, "You're getting quieter every day. You don't get excited like you did when you came here... and then there was yesterday. Please, be honest with me darling."

"And why should I?" Twilight snapped, pulling her hooves back.

"Because I'm your friend, Twilight, and I'm trying to help."

"That's as maybe, but what I want to know is why I should be honest with you when you're not honest with me?"

Rarity looked at her and sighed.

"What do you think I'm not honest about?"

"Don't do that. Don't act like I'm being ridiculous. You know they stare at me, you stare with them."

"Twilight, I told you last night," Rarity urged, frustratedly pressing the bridge of her muzzle with a forehoof, "It's just some superstition! I know it's silly but small towns are like that. There's local traditions and legends which go back farther than even Granny Smith can remember. But we respect them anyway."

"So that's it then. That's why you, my friend, stare with them?"

"Wha-,"

"I couldn't care less about the ponies in this town thinking I'm some interloper Rarity," it was a lie, something Rarity would have doubtless been able to tell, but she persevered anyway, "But you do it too. You look at me like I'm a moron and this is all just some game."

Rarity bowed her head. She picked up her tea and stared into it for a moment.

"I know," Rarity began, "And I owe you an apology."

That was unexpected. Over the last few days, Rarity's demeanour had always been one of self-assurance and mild amusement. Now, she seemed a shadow of that at best.

"I honestly didn't realise, not until last night, how much you've been struggling dear. I suppose you arrived from a place I always dreamed before... all this. Canterlot, a lady of the court, personal student of Princess Celestia."

"It's really not all that Rarity." Twilight mumbled, not liking the dreamy way Rarity referred to it all.

"I never once claimed to be coveting or jealous, Twilight. I love it in Ponyville, my place and purpose is here, and I thank our God I was born here but I still sometimes imagine what could have been. We all do, don't we? I was, and am, fascinated."

Twilight nodded, but didn't try to interject.

"So suddenly a mare from Canterlot arrives, and she's smart and witty and provides conversation I can really get my teeth into. I'm competitive, Twilight, and there's not much in the way of exchanges one can really win around here. You gave me that, and I let the idea that all of our conversations were contests to win blind me to the truth that you were, are, suffering here.

"I shouldn't have done that. It was selfish of me to not see how bad you felt. I didn't know ponies were staring at you as much as you say they are. I should have paid more attention," the seamstress sounded close to tears herself at this point. And Twilight thought again that it must be the truth. No-one could lie that well, "And I should have told you about the rumours about the library before. I honestly didn't know it was bothering you this much... I'm so, so sorry."

Twilight had read a story when she was younger, about a stallion who started developing paranoia and lost his mind. He started to think the authorities were spying on him, reading his post and watching him sleep and recording his dreams. And throughout the whole story, his friends and family thought he was just insane. They'd plead with him to see sense, to go get help, but he wouldn't have it. And Twilight read this story assuming the stallion was insane as well.

But then, at the climax, he found the secret room in his house, and they really were spying on him. So Twilight assumed he'd be more terrified than ever. But instead, he began to laugh and laugh. Not because he wanted to be spied on. But because the worst thing of all had been that ponies didn't believe him. So when he found his worst fear he felt only joy, because he was right.

Twilight tried to push this memory out of her mind as Rarity apologised, as she found herself feeling more and more desperate. Because it couldn't be that, it couldn't be just be superstition and a bored unicorn looking for good conversation. But she was not the character from the book. She was not insane.

"Rarity, last night you took me out to show me the bushes. It seemed like you were threatening me. Why?"

Please, just give me something, anything.

"Darling I... I'm sorry for that. I let myself get upset and I shouldn't have."

"Upset at what?"

Rarity looked at her in mild surprise, tinged with a nauseating streak of pity.

"Twilight... I realise I overstepped the mark slightly and that you must have had a few drinks, but can't you see why I would have been upset?"

"Upset at what?" Twilight demanded, despite being fairly sure she knew exactly what Rarity was going to say, "I don't know what you're talking about Rarity."

She made no move to respond, and Twilight was left with only a gnawing feeling of dread in her stomach as it dawned on her that she was going to have to say it herself.

"You think you saw me looking through your windows? Is that it?"

"...It was a neighbour who saw you, not me." Rarity admitted with a grimace.

"Oh Celestia," Twilight moaned and buried her head in her hooves. While she'd suspected this had been the case, at least up until now there'd been the plausible deniability of it not being outright stated, coupled with her distrust of the town. Now though, she just wanted to crawl into a hole and die, her anger quickly discarded and replaced by hot-faced embarrassment.

"Dear it's already forgotten," Rarity said hastily, "I came here to apologise to you, not admonish you. I shouldn't have had such a kneejerk reaction, it's clear you weren't in the best frame of mind. I should have asked you if you were okay, not gotten mad."

"What was happening that night Rarity? What were you doing?"

"Twilight-"

"I'm not the sort of pony who would just peer through their friend's windows. Something had to be going on. I'm not gonna get mad, Rarity. I don't care what you were doing, I don't care if there was a party for everyone in Ponyville but me, but it had to be something." Rarity looked increasingly despondent, and made to interrupt before Twilight carried on anyway.

"You think I'm not doing good? Well, you're right. I'm not doing well at all. All I see are ponies staring and whispering at me, but nothing ever happens. There's no crescendo or catharsis. I'd almost prefer it if the town just turned out to all be in on some terrible secret and came to sacrifice me at some point, because it would be something. But no, it's just the same day in and day out. So either it's the town, or it's me. And the idea that it's all some stupid superstition... no. That doesn't work. The things I've seen and felt, it cannot be that. I won't accept it.

"But either way, I can't take it anymore. I need to know. Me, or all of you. I've done what you asked Rarity, I've been honest with you. So please be honest with me. What happened that night. Why was I looking through your window?"

So there it was, cards on the table. Every nasty and crazy and pathetic little thought out in the air. For a second, it looked like it could have worked. Rarity wasn't recoiling or laughing. She looked conflicted, looked like she was torn. And she would be, wouldn't she? If she was being asked by a close friend to finally come clean on whatever was going on, she'd been torn between loyalties. Sometimes, though, ponies could be brave. Brave enough to do the right thing. To lean forward, stare at Twilight with beautiful blue eyes and finally tell her...

"Twilight, I'm so, so sorry." No. "I wasn't doing anything that night. Ponies stare because you're new and they're curious, and because there were some rumours about your predecessor. I wish there was something bigger to tell you. I really do but... there's not."

Twilight stared blankly at her tea, watching as little drops of water made ripples on its surface.

"I think I might have cracked." Twilight muttered.

"Oh sweetheart." Rarity walked up to Twilight and pulled her in for another hug. She was so soft.

"I'm so, so sorry Rarity," she said through sobs, "I can't believe I did that."

And she did, didn't she? Because no-one could be that good at lying. It would have been more insane than any of this.

"You've got nothing to apologise for," the older unicorn soothed.

"I think... I think I might need to go back to Canterlot. I've lost myself here. I need to talk to the princess."

"No Twilight," Rarity urged, she pulled away from the hug and Twilight saw the fire in her eyes, "You don't need to go anywhere. You don't need to talk to anyone."

"But she-"

"Twilight listen, you've gone through worse than this. Nightmare Moon was worse than this. A dragon larger than town hall is worse than this. You don't need the princess to solve your problems for you. You can do it yourself."

"You don't understand!" Twilight wailed, "The problem is me, I don't know how to beat that."

"The problem isn't you or them Twilight. This is good news! You know that it's not you, and you know the town. It's solved! The only problem you've got is how to go on now, and the Twilight I've gotten to know doesn't run away from a problem!"

And the more Twilight listened, the more she knew Rarity was right. Finally hearing it in a setting devoid of eyes to stare or conversation to die was the final nail in the coffin. Even if something was actually happening, how would she ever find out if crying her eyes out in front of Rarity wasn't enough? Yet, as Rarity said, there was something freeing in that.

Maybe now, she could get back on track? Maybe the stares wouldn't bother her anymore, maybe they'd even begin to stop. Because she'd finally had a conversation with Rarity devoid of playful one-upsmanship or subterfuge. That had changed, so maybe other things could as well. To think she had allowed herself to become this deluded really, really hurt. Twilight relied on her mind. However, it was grounding to know that even she had limits. Maybe instead of catastrophising and telling herself she'd lost her mind, she was allowed to be a pony who just got too stressed.

When a friendship starts to move past its initial phases, ponies don't tend to report one single event that was the turning point. Relationships are more fluid than that. Instead, friendships are made significant by so many little moments in time, that one day a pony may turn around and wonder how things seemed to change so quickly, and how they ended up with someone so close to them - A Meditation on Love by Sunbather

"Rarity, I-"

The door burst open to reveal Spike. He scanned the scene, looking quite uncomfortable at having interrupted.

"Oh hey! I just... um..."

"Spike it's okay," Twilight interjected, forcing her voice to regain some stability, "I was just going to show Rarity out."

Rarity whipped her head around and looked at her in confusion, but Twilight just flicked her eyes to the door.

"Oh, yes, absolutely! I hope you had a nice day at the arcade Spikey! I'll see you soon."

Twilight was relieved Rarity hadn't argued with her. They quickly finished off what was left of their tea while Spike got to work tidying up the library. It had been left in a bit of a state earlier. Both unicorns stood and made their way to the door, and the second they got out into the humid night air Rarity spoke up.

"Darling, please let me stay with you tonight! I don't think you should be alone right now."

"Rarity it's fine," Twilight replied, "I'm not going to run off in the night back to Canterlot."

"But are you-"

"No, I'm not okay, Rarity. This is really hard," Rarity moved back as if hurt, her ears pinned back, "These last few days have been so up and down and barely even know what's going on anymore. But I'm better now than I was before. This has taken its toll though. I just need to think some things through."

"But I don't mind staying Twilight!" Rarity insisted.

"I know you don't, but I do. You have your own life to live, Rarity. And I know you're happy to stay because we're friends, but let me do something for you. It's the least I can do after... what I did."

"Don't you think immediately taking all this on yourself is just going to make you feel worse darling?" Rarity said, nearly on the edge of pleading now.

"I just need to think some things through Rarity. I'll be okay tonight," she said with a smile. It was a small and tired one, not at all bereft of pain, but at the least this one was honest. And it was, though she was embellishing the truth a little. She sincerely didn't want to burden her friends any more right now, but she didn't want to think things through at all. Tonight, she wanted to read her books with Spike, for them to eat some junk food and laugh.

Because she was in the eye of the storm at the moment, and she knew the pain was coming. When she woke up the next morning, sweltering and damp with sweat, she'd have to wake up in a Ponyville that still didn't feel like home, in a mind that still felt broken, with no theories of deep secrets for anaesthetic. And she'd deal with it, even though it might be hard. But she could at least deal with it then, not now.

Twilight waved at a still concerned looking Rarity as she took off into the night. When she disappeared from view, Twilight turned back to Golden Oaks, her own little island. But instead of heading back inside, she found her attention was caught by the window. She forced herself to walk right up to it, trampling her own bushes in the process, and peer through at Spike. She cringed. It wasn't a pleasant thought. To imagine herself doing this at Carousel Boutique.

But she focused on the dragon, her nearest and dearest friend, as he walked around tidying up. Carried on stubby legs, his gait closer to a waddle than she'd ever admit or he'd ever accept. She hadn't been very good to him today, but she would in the future. She'd make sure she was.

Twilight turned around to head back indoors, but found the act quite difficult now she was in the bushes. Without a place to put her hooves that wasn't covered in foliage, she stumbled around then eventually lost balance and toppled over. It was good that the cottages were far away from the library. It would have been pretty embarrassing for someone to see her like this. Crouched in bushes, almost like she was hiding, and staring out into the night. And then it hit her.

For the first time in months, Twilight felt cold.

It didn't matter how long, days or weeks, but it came back to Twilight. It always came back to her. And suddenly it all made sense, the trampled bushes, the flash of her hoof in chalk. Her nightmares, always about music she couldn't remember. Because without fail, it always came back to Twilight. And as she was sat in those bushes, every moment from after she left the Royal Cross came back. She remembered being huddled in Rarity's bushes. But worse than that, she remembered why she'd been huddled there, and why she'd drowned herself in wine like a mare dying of thirst.

She should have known, really. Change was in short supply in Ponyville, and the idea that Rarity could come around and fix everything was absurd when scrutinised. Any calm she'd arrived at after talking to Rarity, any feeling of turning a page and actually moving on was a distant memory now. Things didn't change here. They might fluctuate briefly, but they always returned to the zero state and that was where Twilight was now.

As she huddled there, too shocked to move, Twilight felt scared again.

Music

Two Nights Prior

The night air seemed to make Twilight's tipsiness more severe, and whatever display had gone on back at the Royal Cross had made her mood even fouler. She didn't know what little game they'd been playing, but it wasn't funny.

So here she was now, trying and failing to make for home. The fact remained, however, that Ponyville was no simple beast to navigate. Most towns and cities are designed with the intention of making them easy and efficient to traverse, but in Ponyville of course things had to work differently. Whoever designed it, if there was any conscious design at all, had seemingly done their level best to make it as chaotic and insane as possible. Worst of all is that they had succeeded.

Lanes went nowhere, streets coiled around back into themselves. Landmarks were in punishingly short supply, forcing one to have to get a handle of the minutia of how row after row of totally identical cottages could vary. A crack in the wall here, a differently coloured door there. It was annoying enough when completely sober. Natives could track these streets without even conscious thought, but Twilight could scarcely forget how far from that she was. No one would let her.

After nearly an hour's worth of traipsing around, she finally found somewhere recognisable. The local book shop. It was one of the very few places she didn't feel constantly alienated. The owner never stared at her when she went in to pick up something new to read. He was always kind, and would tell her on every visit that she reminded him of someone who used to live in the town. From here, Twilight could confidently navigate her way home. And she was going to do just that until she noticed it.

On the shop's side wall was a chalk drawing. The same infernal design she had seen earlier today on the fountain and at Sunny Pastures. Its very existence annoyed her. It couldn't have meant anything, it was barely one step above mindless scribbling. She lifted a hoof and tried to trace the lines to work out what it was supposed to be, but each time she got lost or mixed up.

What annoyed her most, however, was the active awareness Twilight had that she was making excuses. It was the same drawing, no matter how insane. She'd seen it three times throughout the day. Of course it meant something. It was insulting to her own intelligence to keep up this wilfully ignorant charade. She cocked her head to the side, and noticed that on the ground nearby were some faint chalk hoofprints leading from the drawing.

She could head home now and go to sleep, just attribute this to some stupid joke among some bored teenagers. After all that's what it probably was. Some irritating piece of vandalism that kept cropping up and disrupting the idyllic town. The fact that it meant something in no way implied it meant something important. Of course, everyone in Ponyville would likely have something to say about the graffiti. She could even ask one of her new friends to explain it her tomorrow. There was no rush to learn the ins and outs of this town. As Spike said, it'd come in time.

In the meantime she could wait again, marking time with lonely nights and uncomfortable days. Sweltering hot and alien. She'd wake up covered in sweat and eating the same meals at the same placed. Not included fully, but tolerated as a bystander. Not even included fully by her friends. Friends who weren't doing anything tonight. Friends who couldn't be. Friends who wouldn't lie to her.

I should really just go home.

She swiped at the lines with a forehoof, smearing them and ruining the grafitti before starting after the hoofprints.

Following the trail took Twilight on a winding path through the streets for all of about two minutes. When they ended, it was not in front of some shady building or secret town gathering. The ending was unceremonious, and was simply due to whoever she had been following walking through a now slightly chalky puddle. It would have been thrilling to imagine this pony had done this on purpose to cover their tracks, but Twilight knew full well a town as boring as this would have no such level of genuine intrigue occurring.

So much for her little detective adventure then. All she was no was a precious few moments further from home, and pouring with yet more sweat. She seethed at her reflection in the water. The academic in her tried to draw an allegory between this and her whole life in Ponyville. The following of yet another bland, dead spark of interest to her continued detriment.

But, when her breathing calmed, Twilight began to hear that there was something out there. On the air were the first sounds of life for hours. The night was still relatively young, and she'd still seen not seen one other pony on the streets. Was this where they all were? Eager for distraction from the latest failure, she trotted through the puddle herself, and in the direction of the source of noise. The cottages weren't as dense around here. So it didn't take her too long to track the source of the noises. When it eventually came into full view, Twilight's heart sank.

Carousel Boutique was lit up as Twilight peeked out from behind a cottage. It looked like on offshore lighthouse. A muted cacophony of voices swelled from within. It sounded busy in there. Twilight had really wished Rarity had just been telling the truth at lunch. But this was not the sounds of someone taking it easy for the night. And she'd known all along that it couldn't be as simple as she'd hoped. She hadn't wanted to admit it, but she'd known. And was there any beauty more bittersweet for a scholar than having a hypothesis that terrified them be vindicated?

Maybe it was the frustration of not finding out (and clobbering) who was putting up all that stupid graffiti, Maybe it was how tired she was of the stopped conversations, the funny glances no-one made any attempt to hide. Like she was this amazing curiosity, this outsider. Maybe it was a desire to formulate a letter to Celestia? About the time she went over and above to fit in in her new home? Finding what Ponyville was really about by spying on her friend. If anything she could at least be better prepared the next time one of those insulting tests came along, as if whatever quaint tradition they had here needed a test. Maybe it was the burning embarrassment and regret over her stupid answer about the dandelion sandwich.

Whatever the reason, Twilight found herself stalking towards the boutique in a wobble of tipsy indignation. She was tired of acting over enthusiastic, tired of pretending not to be bothered by the stares. She could live in a lifeboat, she could live on the mainland, but she was tired of living on an island. She crossed the grass ocean and made it to shore. After a cautious glance around, Twilight snuck into the bushes for a closer look.

She knew what she was doing was creepy and emotionally unstable. But 'not adventurous enough for Ponyville traditions' had gnawed at her that whole day. It didn't matter whether it had been explicitly said, the implication had been clear. If it wasn't, she'd hardly be hiding in the bushes right now.

Is this what some unadventurous bore would do, Rarity? Just because I like my books and my dandelion sandwiches, it doesn't make me boring. It doesn't. It's this town that is boring. It's all of you.

She wasn't snooping, that was the important thing. This wasn't out of some pathetic desire for gossip and forbidden information. She was seeking closure, there was a big difference. If Rarity was having business contacts over, then fine. If this was some secret gathering of mysterious town elders, then fine. If she had all Twilight's other friends around in some incredible sleepover from which she was the only one excluded, then fine. But she'd know, one way or another she would know. She rose up to take a look through the window.

The curtains were all drawn but silhouettes flitted around behind them. She couldn't hear defined speech, but there was the characteristic non-specific hum of conversation. Was this it then? The big secret she couldn't find out about? The soirée that the dandelion sandwich-loving freak apparently wasn't good enough for? She seethed, grinding the dirt beneath her with a tense fore-hoof. And just as Twilight neared an edge you couldn't come back from, as she turned around and resolved to go knock on that door and demand Rarity tell her what is was she was apparently not ready for, she heard the laughter.

It was mirthful, genuine, good-natured. It was the laugh of someone at a party. Behind the laughter was the kind of jovial background music you have on at a party. This was just a party.

What in Tartarus am I doing?

Rarity could have been having family over, this could be some gathering for local fashion bigwigs. Maybe that's what Rarity's question was about. Seeing how Twilight was on the spot, something that would inevitably happen if she was at some swanky fashion party. Maybe the question was nothing at all. Most importantly, though, was that she and Twilight had only been friends for a handful of months. Easily a short enough amount of time for her to justifiably maybe want to do some things with a closer group of friends. Of course, it stung that Rarity had clearly lied. But could Twilight really begrudge her that?

This wasn't her, this wasn't how you made friends. She imagined what the princess would say if she could see her now. How disappointed she'd be. Twilight burned with shame, hopeful that no unseen observers had witnessed this embarrassing episode. She would take a stealthy glance, make sure no-one was around then make for home and never speak of this to anyone. Not to mention pray Rarity never found out.

And just as she was about to put her plan into action, the noise of the party stopped.

She stalled, waiting for it to go ahead again. Maybe someone was giving a hushed toast? She was aware of her breathing, the way the foliage brushed her coat, and still nothing happened. Time stretched on, it must have been up to five minutes now, and nothing happened. Why was nothing happening? What was going on in there? There wasn't even the sound of movement, it sounded like the world had been put on pause.

Twilight was starting to get weirded out, and once she'd passed that she started to get unsettled. This wasn't normal, this couldn't be normal? Could it? She knew these fashion parties could get quite strange. It would have been ridiculous, but not beyond the realms of reality for someone to have announced that everyone standing silently was some new, in-vogue parlour game.

But it would have been ridiculous.

She couldn't move, it was too risky. There was a chance, a slight but still possible one, that someone inside would hear her. So she was pinned here until whatever this was came to a close. She was directly beneath a window, but facing away from it, and not knowing what may have changed was like torture. She remained frozen between horror at being discovered, and her mind screaming at her to turn around and look.

What if they're all staring at you? What if that's why they've stopped. What if you turn around and see something worse? What if you see nothing at all?

And just as the need for something, anything to break the oppressive lull reached a fever pitch, the sound of hoofsteps drifted through the foliage. Twilight forced her breathing to remain even. The reality of potentially being caught literally hiding in some bushes still outweighing the growing nausea at the persistent stillness inside Carousel Boutique.

The hoofsteps grew louder as the pony, no wait... ponies, approached. There were clearly multiple footsteps. A couple of light sounding ones with at least one heavier set mixed in there. Twilight chewed the inside of her mouth, she desperately wanted to leave this bush, but now these new arrivals added a second problem.

She couldn't go until the party had resumed, and not if there was any chance they would see her. They were taking their time as well, but then who had somewhere they desperately needed to be at this time of night? All the while, Carousel Boutique was completely silent. But Twilight knew there were ponies in there.

She'd heard them talking so she would have heard if they'd all suddenly rushed into another room. She'd have heard if they'd all gone upstairs. She'd have heard if they'd left. They must have been in that room, all still and silent but breathing and blinking and thinking. All aware of what they were doing, for minutes and minutes. Maybe they were all at the windows now. Maybe if Twilight turned around she'd see eyes peering at her from the boutique's ever window. She almost wanted to cry, this felt wrong. So, so wrong. She wanted to leave.

Oh Celestia, please make it stop.

The hoofsteps got closer.

From her prone position in the bush, she watched as the night-walking ponies went by. They were closer than she'd first realised. From where she was Twilight could have reached out and touched them. There were three in total, one red, one white and one grey. They walked leisurely and then they stopped. Directly in front of her. Twilight held her breath and waited for the accusations to follow. The only rational explanation was that she'd been seen.

But, as was becoming a sickening theme, nothing happened. The hooves remained there, and there were still no sounds from inside Carousel Boutique. Twilight forced herself to keep her breathing shallow and even. They must have known she was there. There was simply no way they wouldn't have seen her if they were this close.

Or maybe they were preoccupied with looking at something else. Namely whatever was going on inside Carousel Boutique. Maybe the curtains were open now, and these three bystanders were rendered mute with terror at whatever they saw inside. Maybe they were waiting for her to just come out of her own volition. She should do that. Fair play, she'd been caught. Time to give it up, time to come out. Never mind the fact that every instinct screamed that this wasn't normal.

She remained still.

Suddenly, the sounds of music from within the boutique resumed. Only this time, it was much louder than before, and it was no longer normal party material. Now the get-together was soundtracked by one of the most awful things Twilight had ever heard. It was without melody, consistent rhythm, joy.

Essentially anything one might love about music was something that this piece seemed to gleefully lack. Harsh staccato notes pushed their way into Twilight's ears, its beat changed on a bar by bar basis. It sounded like someone had managed to condense the sound of insanity into pure noise.

All the while, those hooves in front of her were totally motionless. Surely they heard the dissonant music, surely they saw her. What was going on? What on earth possessed Rarity to allow that music to be played at her party? Twilight's heart hammered as the tension frayed her mind. This was so stupid, and yet here she was getting actual tunnel vision because of music induced stress.

But the sound.

It was like trying to listen to fifteen simultaneous foreign languages and decipher meaning when you only knew a few phrases in one. It was the sound of waking up to three new rows of inflamed, bleeding teeth in your mouth. It was the sound of finding a loved one not breathing. It was the sound of watching the flames after you'd set alight your childhood home. It was the sound of watching a friend drown and not making a move to help them. It was the sound of watching yourself decay.

Twilight bit the inside of her mouth until it bled.

Why weren't those hooves moving? Twilight fought to keep her breath quiet. Saline sweat stung eyes she couldn't wipe. Rear hooves dug into dirt, anything to work the tension from her body. The noise from inside wouldn't abate. She was going to crack. It was so utterly awful, she didn't know sound could be this bad. A thousand instruments crashed and played over one another without the barest pretense of cohesion. Twilight wanted to chew her tongue out.

Why wouldn't these ponies just leave?

Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, the interlopers moved on with the same taunting calm with which they'd arrived. Twilight gave it an admirable, though nowhere near sufficient, period of time before she pulled herself from the bush and sprinted away. Whatever tipsiness cultivated by her earlier nightcaps seemed a hundred fold worse. She fell several times in her panicked rush back to the mainland, terrified the verdant waves might pull her under.

She made it into the folds of cottages and leaned against a wall, struggling to catch her breath again. She managed to brave a look back at Carousel Boutique. Lights that seemed comparatively dimmed from before still filtered through the curtains, which remained mercifully closed. The sibilant screech of tinnitus masked her hearing for a second, though through it she could swear she could make out a chorus of screaming, malicious laughter. Her heartbeat roared against the still night.

Then at once, the sound of the boutique's front door shutting cleared everything. She could hear again, and she heard nothing. The music wasn't playing anymore and nothing was filling the vacancy it had left. For a second Twilight wondered whether it had ever been on at all? There was still no apparent movement from behind those curtains. Where had those three ponies gone?

It was all too much for her right now. Twilight's eyes bulged, head twitched, and then she doubled over and vomited. She brought a shaky forehoof to her brow to cleanse it of sweat, she then lowered it to wipe the caustic filth from her mouth. Twilight shut her eyes for a moment, allowing her breath to steady and the burn in her throat to subside. A gentle, soundless breeze cooled sweat dampened skin, her tongue worked to clear teeth of bile. Out in the night, distant wind chimes tingled.

As she stared at the ground, though muffled behind those windows, Twilight heard Rarity's distinctly musical giggle. She snapped her head up and didn't find any sign of her friend. In fact there was very little difference in the scene she saw, save for the fact that every single light in the boutique had gone out.

Interval: A History Lesson

Princess Celestia read silently, trying to keep the look of amusement off her face. Her student, a lavendar unicorn filly of eight years old, had deigned to write her a formal, or her best approximation thereof, letter of apology. The document went to great pains to stress that the experiment that had preoccupied her was of great importance. Celestia's eyes flicked to her student, and saw the filly's eyes immediately rush back down to her book.

"Twilight," the princess began, "I formally accept your apology, please let this trouble you no further."

Twilight beamed in response, and then seemed to get back to properly concentrating on her reading. The letter had been in response to Twilight getting so caught up on some extracurricular work that she hadn't finished the reading assignment yet.
Said assignment had been a history tome, one of the most exciting in Celestia's collection. While she didn't want to coddle her students, she did have to admit that even the sharpest eight year old wouldn't quite have the appetite for the more academic pieces for a good few years.

How much more did Twilight have to get through? Twelve pages. Of a three hundred page book. As far as Celestia was concerned, there was no apology necessary, but she allowed the child her pretence. Besides, the letter contained one single important truth. Twilight's experiment, which metals did magnets stick to, was important. Not for the future of Equestria, mind. This information had been freely available for centuries now.

No, it was the fact that Twilight had decided to perform it in the first place. Most experiments children of her age were interested in were about explosions, funny smells and pretty colours. Nothing as dry and dull and genuinely useful as magnets. It was this which highlighted Twilight's two key strengths.

It was true that she was gifted. The filly was demonstrably a capable mage and budding scholar. But this was an aptitude that all in the school possessed. It was the prerequisite for entry, but not, in Celestia's experience, the predictor of how well one would perform.

Twilight's two most important qualities, was that she was not the most gifted student here, and that she was working hard enough to potentially become so. Her surge in the entrance exam had been impressive, but not earth-shattering. There were foals younger than her who's surges had obliterated wings of Celestia's palace. So waking up a dragon seemed a bit paltry in comparison.

In the initial tests that each student faced upon admission, Twilight had done well, but not blindingly so. She was smart, but there were students who were just naturally quicker, cannier, who's minds were simply able to access a level that she could not.

Yet.

Celestia didn't pick many students to tutor personally, and Twilight was one of them not because of any natural ability. It was because of drive, tenacity. She refused to be left behind, and was willing to work thrice as hard as other students to get where she wanted to go.

In a few short months, Twilight had been rising to the top, matching students who should have been leaving her in the dust. And while Celestia was no fool to think that merely hard work could allow you to rise above all ingrained limitations, she also didn't think that innate skill would carry you the whole way. It needed someone who could marry both, and it seemed Twilight was that pony.

So that was why she was here now, when they weren't. Because she simply wanted it more.

"Okay Twilight," Celestia began when Twilight finished her book, "Would you like to tell me what you thought?"

"Well, I liked the king a lot!"

"I thought you might!" Celestia replied warmly.

"He seemed really smart and kind, I didn't like Astral Queen though. She was mean."

Celestia would have rolled her eyes if not for her years of diplomatic experience. It was worth remembering that Twilight was still a child after all. Things that were obvious to her would far from it to Twilight.

"And why was that?"

"Well," Twilight began, brow furrowing in concentration. It was a humourously grown-up habit, and it always made Celestia want to giggle, "Why wouldn't she leave him alone? She would always be sending her armies to try and fight him and take control of the empire. I think ponies should get on, not fight each other."

"I agree with that Twilight. The problem is that Astral Queen this book refers to is me,"

Twilight blanched immediately and her mouth bobbed, like she couldn't find any words.

"So... you... the armies... the king..."

"The king depicted here is King Sombra, he was a tyrannical despot who lived in obscene luxury while presiding over a nation of slaves. He had anyone who dared speak against him killed, and he attacked Equestria many times. Put simply, Twilight, he was a very evil pony."

"But... the book said-"

"You're right Twilight!" Celestia exclaimed with genuine excitement, "The book said the complete opposite! Why would it do that? Actually, I know another question which might help us here. Did you read who the author of this book was?"

"Yeah! It was Midnight Shade! He was an adviser to the king!"

"Very good Twilight. So the simple fact, is that the book is telling you one thing, and I am telling you another. What does that mean?" Celestia urged.

"Well," the filly responded, dusting the floor with a hoof and looking uncomfortable, as if she had to say something terrible, "It means one of you is fibbing."

"You're right Twilight, one of us is indeed fibbing. So how are you going to find out who?"

The idea that her teacher, the apparently perfect princess could be lying seemed to terrify the foal. And while Celestia felt bad for stressing her out, she also needed her to grasp this. It was crucial for any scholar.

"Well... I know you, Princess. You're always so nice to me, I don't think you'd lie," Twilight said, her cheeks flushing with the stress of the abrupt difficult situation.

"I'm glad you feel that way Twilight, but I gave you this book and told you it contained history, and now I'm telling you it contains lies. Either I'm lying now, or I was lying then. The only thing you know, Twilight, is that I definitely lied to you once."

Twilight puffed out her cheeks in frustration, her brow knit even harder. Celestia let her think a little while longer before finally intervening.

"Don't worry Twilight, I won't keep you in suspense. The easiest way to find out would be to look through these other books. If you did, you'd find that no one ever knew who this Midnight Shade character was. He is only ever mentioned in the book you have there. Further to this, Sombra never had any advisers. He wasn't one to share power. The truth is that Midnight Shade was an invention of the king, and that book was something he wrote himself."

"But why would he lie?" Twilight asked.

"Maybe he wanted to make himself look better and everyone else worse. I think it's because that was how he actually saw his reign. It's not very common that you find ponies who are truly evil Twilight, most of the time they act that way because they think they're doing the right thing. If he were here now, he'd probably accuse me of being the evil one."

"So what's the truth?" the filly posited, and Celestia smiled.

"I can tell you what my truth is Twilight, and you can tell me yours. A lot of the time we'd probably agree, we'd agree that the sun rises every morning, as an example. But sometimes we might not, and that's okay. The lesson I want you to learn from this, little one, is to never accept the easy answer. If you think something's wrong, then pursue it. And if you think something seems too easy, then pursue it harder.

"While you don't need to prove the sun will rise tomorrow, what of a thousand years from now? Ten thousand? Your eyes and books can lie to you, my faithful student, but a mind like yours is a special thing. I hope you never stop using it."

Twilight looked at the ground for a little while, processing everything the princess had said. Finally, she piped up.

"If my books and eyes, even my friends could lie to me princess, why couldn't my mind do the same?"

"You're right, even the mind can fool oneself," Celestia said, gently stroking her student's mane. It was a startling astute point for a foal of her age to make, "But you of all ponies Twilight? I think you'd recognise if your mind was fooling you. I think you'll work to make sure it never does."

The lesson was learned, and Celestia cancelled the rest of the session's work in favour of sharing some tea, much to Twilight's delight. She sometimes worried she pressed her prized pupil too far, but a mind like Twilight's, such a perfect balance of enough natural talent and enough drive, was a strong thing. It would take quite a formidable mind to ever truly overcome it.

Equestria was large and old, nearly all of it was mastered and settled. More than this, though, it was kind. Celestia had little fear of any subjects truly trying to do her student harm. But still, the land had its secrets to this day, and the princess couldn't think of anyone better than Twilight to uncover them all.

Candles

A lavender hoof hung above a door. Twilight stopped short of pushing it open to catch her breath. She needed her heart rate to slow, needed body heat to disperse. The question currently preoccupying her was the one that hadn't left since she arrived in Ponyville.

What was she feeling?

Was she scared? Yes, but she wasn't solely scared. In fact, Twilight couldn't even be certain that she was mainly scared. There was anger in there, too, coupled with disappointment. The fear was particularly interesting though, multi-faceted and shifting. She scholar in her wanted to study it. She was scared at the town, scared of being right. And yet, with all she saw, all she remembered, she was terrified of being wrong. Maybe most of all.

She thought again of tearfully apologising to Rarity, and the fury spiked and sharpened. Twilight could see her now, veiled by thin curtains but projected onto them by low lights. The hum of background music overwhelmed by the way they all laughed as Rarity told them how she'd actually gotten Twilight to apologise to her.

And then it crystallised, became lucid. Twilight knew what she was feeling most of all. More intense than anything was the sadness. Even when she was happy, she didn't remember the last time she hadn't felt sad. Her hoof lowered onto the wood, apparently satisfied with this crushing realisation, and Twilight opened the door and walked back into the library.

As soon as that door opened, Spike was there. All reassurances and simpering, stuttering. His sweaty nervousness, intrinsic to his juvenile form, was obvious in a way that Twilight had never seen before now. Why hadn't she properly realised before? She lived with a child.

"So, did you and Rarity have a good time today?" He asked, wringing his little claws. He was always so eager to help. But Twilight was scared, and angry, and above all she was sad. She didn't want someone to help her right now, she didn't want to talk to anyone. She wanted to simply go upstairs and sleep, and hope her dreams, for once, weren't consumed by half-remembered flashes of music that sounded like insanity.

"Yes Spike," she responded simply, and went to make her way upstairs.

"Twilight!" he called out after her, "Are you okay?"

"Yes."

"It's just... you know? What happened today?"

"I'm fine Spike."

"But you don't seem it, you don't seem like you've gotten any better," he whined, and she turned to face him.

He looked at Twilight with the same look Rarity had worn before leaving. Like she was made of porcelain, like she would flip out the moment he said something wrong. A pity steeped with poorly-concealed trepidation. It was the look you gave a child, prone to tantrum and slow to thinking. Like she wasn't thinking clearly.

Like you're insane.

"If I'm telling you that I'm fine," she snarled, startling him, "That means I'm fine. I don't need you trying to look after me like I can't look after myself. Amazingly enough, I've managed this long, I think I can keep it up."

By the time she'd done, the ghost of her screams danced around the now still air, reverberating from the walls. There was the pronounced feeling that something had just died. Their distance felt exaggerated. Her throat felt scratchy and her eyes slightly watered.

How loud were you shouting?

Spike looked stricken, and some smaller part of Twilight still safe in her lifeboat prayed he'd have the sense to just leave it there. Maybe then Twilight could storm off to sleep, and be able to make amends in the morning. Maybe then there would be some chance of retrieving whatever had just been wounded. But more than anger or fear, Spike just looked worried. More worried than ever, like a parent's worry. He looked sad.

It enraged her.

"Twilight, this isn't you-" he began, and it was like the microsecond's worth of stationary contemplation after you did something you couldn't take back. Because then Spike was cut off when Twilight started to scream again.

"And what would you know about that? What do any of you know about it?!"

"Any of who?" he spluttered desperately.

"Don't play games with me, Spike. Isn't it amazing, truly astounding, that I can't fit in here while you can? You're off with all the girls, at that arcade with Rainbow or simpering to Rarity..." Twilight paused, and her eyes narrowed when a horrifying thought occurred to her, "I don't know why it didn't cross my mind before? That you could be in on it too?"

"In on what?! Twilight you're scaring me," he babbled.

"I'm scaring you?! Am I scaring you, Spike?! You want to know what it's like to be scared? Really, truly scared?! Fear's when you're convinced you're losing your mind, when your whole life depends on that mind. When your supposed friends make you think you're going insane. And now you're telling me I'm not myself, I'm not thinking clearly, I'm mistaken, like someone who's losing their mind. Is that it, Spike? Am I insane?" she spat, storming towards him, "That's what this has all been leading up to, hasn't it? Every time you lied to me."

"Twilight," he started, gesturing for her to calm and affecting a careful tone which only served to infuriate her more, "Please, when have I ever lied to you? When did I ever-"

"BECAUSE YOU TOLD ME IT WOULD GET BETTER!" she shrieked, upending a nearby table with a flash of her horn, "How about it, Spike? You still think there's no problem here? You still think this is all just going to sort itself out? The train's leaving the station, Spike. Last chance now, because I know there's something happening, I always remember. And I know you're smart. I know you're not going to miss things you don't want to miss. So, who is it then? Them or me?"

Spike looked over the floor. The table had been where she and Rarity had just had tea. But now the pot, cups and saucers were shattered. They'd been a moving-in present from Rarity. Twilight would have been able to fix them if she wanted to. One simple spell, and they'd be as good as new. She didn't think she would, though.

"Twilight, what are you asking me exactly? I'm sorry you're in pain, I really am... but there's nothing happening here," Spike said, his tone pleading, "All I want is for you to feel better, but if you're asking me to back up these... 'theories' of yours... I just can't. I wouldn't be helping you. It's not you Twilight, and it's not them. It's no-one."

If before, the distance had felt exaggerated, it was now insurmountable. They stood apart, kept separated by the shards of something beautiful that Twilight had destroyed. Something that Rarity had brought here. Something that could still be fixed if she just changed her mind.

But that's how they get you, isn't it Twilight?

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Twilight replied.

Twilight squinted in the gloom. With only candles for light, her work was slow and laborious. She'd initially tried to use her hornlight, but found that had quickly lead to headaches and even less work getting done. Leaving the cellar door open would have helped but... that wasn't really an option.

Over the last week Spike had taken over running the library during the day for the customers, while Twilight busied herself with the long-overdue cataloguing of all their basement stock. There had never been an actual discussion that had lead to this. That would have required them to actually talk. Instead, Twilight had woken up the morning after their disagreement at two in the afternoon. Whether she'd simply slept through her alarm or whether it had never gone off was a mystery she didn't have the drive to solve.

When she'd gone down, Spike was already serving the customers. Meaning she got fixed with not one, but two stares. One uneasy, cautious. The other inscrutable. So she'd gone down to the cellar, and Spike had left her meals by the door, and that was how it had gone. Spike, motivated by a duty unknown, to her or to the town, kept everything in check. In her more remorseful moments, Twilight wanted to cry for him.

In her darker ones, she wanted to scream.

Traitor, turncoat, mainlander.

Down here was slow, unsatisfying work. But she didn't mind, it needed to be done. Endless checklists and stock crates, oceans of text. There was a muted sense of satisfaction, though it was quashed by a single thought about the world outside. She used to think she was safe on her island. But she was wrong. Not when the mainlanders had got their hooks in.

So instead, she stayed in her bunker, and for once cursed the breadth of her vocabulary. Because a part of her knew that 'staying here' wasn't what this was at all.

Cowering.

The door opened, and Twilight flicked her head around. That hadn't happened before. Normally, if Spike was dropping off some food, he'd give a couple of curt knocks then leave so Twilight could collect it herself. The light was dazzling, and she squinted until her eyes adjusted. Hushed voices fluttered down, too scrambled on arrival to discern what was being said. Eventually they stopped, and she caught a faint glimpse of Spike, looking down at her.

Was it the time alone, the fraying of her mind with stress, that meant she couldn't even tell whether his expression was concern or contempt anymore? Was it the same that stopped her from telling which of the two she felt in return?

"Twilight, a few of us are going to Sugarcube Corner," Rainbow announced, startling Twilight. She turned to see how close Dash had gotten without her even noticing. And when she turned around to look up at Spike again, the doorway was vacant. She wondered whether he'd even been there at all.

"I think you should come down with us," Rainbow continued, and Twilight's head snapped around.

"What? Come where?"

"Sugarcube Corner," Rainbow repeated, looking at Twilight worriedly, "You know? Like I just said?"

"I'm fine."

"Twilight-"

"It's a rumour about the library. It's all in my head. Ponies aren't staring. I'm mistaken. It's just nerves. It's just stress... right? I can get all this at home, Rainbow. I certainly don't need to go down to Sugarcube Corner for it."

Rainbow shifted uncomfortably. She looked like she was desperate to say something, but the moment passed quicky.

"Look Twilight, you can't just stay in your cellar forever. Sometime or another, something's gonna give. Might as well be now," she said frustratedly.

"What clipped your wings, Rainbow? Do you think I'm stupid?" Twilight snapped, "I thought you were all 'spirit of adventure', and you're just rolling over? You disgust me. Even more than all the mainlanders. At least they stick it. But you just let them do whatever they want. And I could at least understand with the others. Fluttershy is scared of her own shadow, Pinkie thinks she can fix the whole world with one of her infantile parties. But you?

"You were supposed to be better than all of this," Twilight continued, "You were supposed to be smart, capable, able to overcome everything. You're the personal student of Princess Celestia. But you just hide out in your little cellar and close your eyes and put your hooves over your ears and hope and pray your stupid, deteriorating mind can come up with some quick fix, but it can't. You're a coward, and a hypocrite. And I hate you, Twilight."

"Twilight, are you alright?"

Rainbow's words snapped her out of the... daydream? Hallucination? Was there a difference? She thought it was something she should really research when she next had the time.

"I'm sorry I just... not been getting much sleep." Twilight replied, steadying herself on her desk.

"Twilight, look, I know moving here can be... hard. I really do. But this isn't helping you. Hiding down here, cutting yourself off from the world isn't helping you," Rainbow urged, then spoke up again as soon as Twilight's gaze wandered back to her desk, "Hey, remember the first night we met? Going into the Everfree? We found that manticore, didn't we? And once Fluttershy had calmed it down? What did we do?"

"Nothing," Twilight replied, confused with the sudden change in topic.

"Why? If it got provoked again, it could've killed someone. So why didn't we do something? Why not kill it before it could kill someone else? Maybe we knew that leaving it in the forest, where it wouldn't come across ponies anyway, was the best thing to do. Maybe it wasn't worth the fight?"

"Rainbow, what are you trying to tell me?" Twilight said, and she wanted to cry. Because she knew what Rainbow was trying to tell her, and she just wanted it to be said. To move past all the code and sneak and mindgames.

Just say it.

But this was Ponyville, and in Ponyville things were slow to change.

"I just..." Rainbow bit her lip, and it looked like the stress was going to crack her until the dam broke. But whatever lake it had once contained was long sapped dry, and she just slumped.

"Just... come and have lunch with us, Twilight. Please."

When she stepped into Sugarcube Corner, Twilight immediately clamped her teeth down on her tongue. The pain was sharp, piercing, and it gave her some distraction. Because Rarity was at the table, talking happily with Applejack and Fluttershy. Then, when her eyes trailed over, languid and self-assured, they met Twilight's.

Her expression was like Spike's had been. That patronising, overdone pity that made Twilight want to shriek. Was it even insincere? It would have been easy to assume that Rarity was simply taunting her, or covering her tracks. After all, when she'd last seen Twilight, she'd received an apology from a mare that thought she has lost her mind. But where did the games even end anymore? Was the trick of this place that it made her torturers pity her even as they wound the rack? Twilight hated that thought more than anything.

The light blue wing on her back gently urged her forward with Rainbow, straight into the chorus of meaningless platitudes. How great it was to see her, how had she been, how good she looked. She took her seat, responding with simple grunts.

"So Twi'," Applejack began, "What have you been up to lately?"

A dimming, subtle and only apparent to a trained ear, took over. When she first arrived, Twilight wouldn't have even given it a second though. But she was practised now, her ear was well trained. She turned in her seat, and took note of the eyes flicking away from her like cockroaches scuttling away from light. What had she been up to? Were they that interested? That worried she hadn't believed their little story about a local fear of a cursed library?

Twilight turned back around.

"Just busy at the library. There's a lot of stock in the cellar I've never gotten around to going through." she replied, and picked up a menu to look over.

"Well make sure you don't hold up down there too much, darling. It's important to take a break."

And there it was. Twilight was thankful she was holding a menu. Because as soon as Rarity's voice rang out, she was back in the bushes, trembling, only one further fright away from pissing herself. It was like it was hard-wired into her by now. Reacting like a dog to a master's whip. She disgusted herself.

"I can't wait for this!" Rainbow piped up, filling the silence that had developed, "Training for the young flyer's competition has really been taking it out of me."

Under the table, Twilight felt something on her leg. She looked down, and saw Rainbow's hoof. She watched Dash continue the conversation animatedly, distracting all the attention away from Twilight. Keeping them from needling her, from pushing her until she broke. And when that hoof gave her a reassuring squeeze, as if to remind her that she wasn't alone, Twilight felt nothing.

She dropped her menu and looked around the restaurant, registering the eyes that flicked away from her again with a muted sense of disappointment. Finally, she met eyes that didn't flinch. No, they locked with her. Two pegasi and an earth pony. Nothing on their table, no menus, just staring brazenly. No care for stealth or subterfuge.

Just like that night last week when they'd stood there, right by her in the bushes, as the music played. Reminding her she was seen, that she was known and that she was so utterly, hopelessly small. She didn't want to give them the satisfaction of knowing how much they terrified her. So Twilight turned back around to see the excited reactions of her supposed friends, enraptured by Rainbow's exuberant story.

But one pony wasn't paying attention.

Oh, they were trying to seem like they were. Granted this wasn't the cocky smirk of their past interaction, but Rarity's eyes would flick over to Twilight every so often. Checking what she was doing, checking whether Twilight had bought the story she'd heard last week. That she was some insane voyeur, living in a 'cursed' library.

And suddenly it all seemed so clear, how little energy Twilight had for playing these games anymore.

Twilight pushed her chair out, got up, and began to walk towards the door. Rainbow's story died off as suddenly Twilight found herself the centre of attention again. But she didn't care. They could do their little routines and intimidation tactics. She was done. Even as her heart pounded, even as she affected a calm she didn't truly possess to keep them from seeing the storm of fear and anger and residual, compulsive need to unravel this whole... whatever it was.

"Twilight-"

"What Rainbow?" Twilight interrupted, preempting whatever hidden show of 'support' Dash had next, "Do you have something you want to tell me?"

Then the eyes slid off Twilight, onto the pegasus, and Rainbow wilted. Her mouth opened and closed, looking for all the world like a filly with stage-fright. Because there was nothing to say, nothing to placate Twilight and the mainlanders both. Maybe a week ago, Twilight would have managed some denial, some rationalisation. Maybe at the very least, a laugh at the absurdity of it all.

As it was, she simply turned and walked out of the restaurant, leaving them all to continue the pantomime.

When Twilight reached the library, she found that some prayers could still be mercifully granted in this town. The main room was totally empty. She had a clear shot to the cellar. No forced interactions with customers, no reminder of the void carved between her and Spike. Twilight rushed towards the door, only pausing when she saw the meal left by Spike. She went to collect it, but stopped midway.

Twilight snorted, stepped over it and shut the cellar door behind her.

Once inside, she lit a candle with a small flare of magic, then walked over to the desk and looked over her checklist again. A whole week's work, and she'd only managed to cross A and B off the alphabetised list. Any thought of grand plans to unravel the grand conspirator that had arisen during her walk home were quickly eclipsed by the comfort of busy work. Because this was important too, right? Not everything in her life could be about this town. Sometimes she could just stay in the bunker, because the bunker needed tending to as well.

She grit her teeth and carried a candle over to the box of books she'd been working on. All C titles, books about cities, cyclones, comets. All important, all bigger than this town, all useful. And if Twilight didn't have a real home anymore, if she didn't have the friends she thought she did... if she didn't even have her assistant anymore, then by every bone in her body she was going to be useful.

I'm not hiding. I'm not afraid to face my problems. The work needs to be done.

She squinted, holding the candle closer to the books as she tried to pick out anything useful in the gloom. Maybe if she could use her hornlight without getting a headache, it would be quicker. But it was too much busy work, wasn't it? Too much concentration to use her magic at the same time. Never mind that she used to be able to do work ten times as demanding as this while sustaining magic that put a hornlight to shame.

But just keep on pretending it's not getting to you. All that stress, rotting away your mind and your skill. It's a good thing you're down here now. Shadows like it in cellars.

Maybe if she could just open the cellar door? Just a little? Maybe if not for the risk that she'd have to see Spike and deal with not knowing who between them was the monster.

She squinted in the gloom, trying to make out titles of books. C books, the third part of her checklist. But she couldn't see anything because these candles were just too dim and she was too stressed to focus and she couldn't open the door and she could see any titles of books about cakes or cats or crepes or clarinets or cleaning or concentration or cardiology or currency or clinical psychology or cauldrons or cysts or carrots or control systems or churches or crustaceans or carbon monoxide or coeliac disease or corsets or courting or canons or cauliflower or chariots or chitin or canines or COWARDS.

Twilight screamed and threw the candle on the ground. She then turned and kicked the box. It didn't move, so she kicked it again. Then she kicked it again and again and again until the wood was dented and fractured. She gasped for breath, trying to calm down. The candle had gone out, and she scrambled for it in the dark but couldn't find it anywhere.

You're lost down here. You put out all the lights. You don't have any other way to find your way around. Not the candles, not the world outside. Not even yourself.

Twilight nearly broke, she really, nearly, did. Because if the candles didn't work, and she couldn't ask anyone outside, and she was too stressed to do it herself. How could she possibly light the way?

And down there, to her shame, she very nearly missed the obvious answer. Until it came to her, down in her bunker. Because the candles had turned on her, the outside world didn't care, and she was half mad with stress to the point where she just couldn't make light the way herself. She couldn't rely on herself. So she'd do what she always did.

She'd tell the problem to go to hell, and do it herself anyway.

Twilight spat and ignited her horn, groaning defiantly through the resultant headache. Then she intensified the magic until it was too bright to even keep her eyes open anymore and still weathered the agony crushing her skull. Just to show she could. Just to remind everyone who exactly was in control here.

Twilight lowered the magelight to a more reasonable level and then stood. When she opened her eyes again, the room was aglow, every box and book title rendered in a detail she'd nearly forgotten existed. A few metres away lay the candle. She walked over to it, paused, and then stamped on it with a forehoof. It felt good.

Change didn't happen quickly in Ponyville, it was incremental. So while Twilight was still down in her bunker, and she was still in pain, her breath settled again. The headache got more bearable with each passing moment. She turned back to the box of books, but found her attention drawn to something behind it.

So huddled in gloom she'd been, Twilight hadn't even realised how big the cellar was. She didn't think she'd ever actually seen the walls properly, before now. So it stood to reason she'd missed it. The photograph someone had pinned up. She walked over, affecting a caution she couldn't quite understand.

When she reached it, Twilight found her hornlight dimmed. It was a polaroid, like the ones she saw in the salt lick. Except this time, there was no pony caught in a snapshot of their night out. It was a picture of Carousel Boutique. Like Twilight had seen it last week. Dimly lit, quiet, horrifying.

'I hope you had a good night!' sang out Rarity's ornate script, marking the border of the photo, and something about it made Twilight feel small. For a moment she wondered whether this was another sickening trick, but the ink was fading, this was old. Months at least. Whatever it meant, it predated Twilight significantly. She looked around the cellar, checking she was still alone, before reaching and pulling the photo down.

Twilight yelped and jumped back when a panel of the wall came down with it. She looked around again, but the cellar was totally normal. She could even hear Spike moving around upstairs. Whatever was happening, this was certainly not some trick set up for her. When the dust had settled, and Twilight had calmed down, she peered into the hole left in her wall.

She reached in with a forehoof, and was shocked when she realised how deep it went. By the time she felt her hoof make contact with something, her face was nearly pressed up against the wall. She pulled it out, and after brushing the dust off found herself with, what else, a book.

She frowned, fear now fully given away to confusion. This was short lived though. Because once she opened the front cover and began to read, any calm was lost to her once again. She brightened her hornlight, ignoring the resurgent headache to banish all darkness fully. For some reason it felt important as the page's contents dawned on her.

Chaotic scrawls, notes begun and abandoned halfway through. In the centre of the page, one of the only things not hastily scribbled out, 'I am not insane' had been inked by what must have been shaky and desperate hooves.

But one thing, seemingly from a happier time, remained, untouched by the madness. The interior cover had a neat, golden indentation. It reminded Twilight of something she'd do, it made her want to cry. And any relief or camaraderie was overwhelmed by pity for a mare hunched in the bunker, half mad with stress, from a time before.

Personal Diary of Night Owl, Golden Oaks Librarian.

Night Owl - I

And so now I come to some malformed understanding,

An appreciation for every broken part of me,

Intimate,

The pain is blinding,

The pain is scalding,

The pain is all-encompassing,

For my museum of dead trees holds knowledge,

But no wisdom,

And I’m left wondering, eternally,

All this for a dance?

All this for a song?

Anything?

At all?

Test one.

Test two.

It seems like the train ride wasn’t wasted, right?

Oh, yeah, no-one’s gonna respond. Maybe force of habit when it comes to speaking out loud catching up with me there, haha.

So, introductions might be in order, I suppose? I’m Night Owl, and, as of Monday, I’ll be the new Ponyville Librarian! I’m 26, and I just moved from Trottingham… and immediately this feels awkward. This isn’t how ponies actually introduce themselves. But then I’ve never written a diary before.

Ugh, anyway, the new job!

I’ve been looking for a position for months now. It’s strange, you’d think there would be more opportunities for a librarian in the bigger cities, but it’s not the case. See, those institutions are much bigger, more established. All the ponies who work there are experienced, years in the business.

Unfortunately, ponies like me usually have to move to some small town for a few years, then another one, then another one. Honestly, it’s rare to find a job in a city library until after, like, your fourth job. But I got lucky! I will be running the library here! Not just an assistant, or a stockist. No, I’ll be doing it all. And yeah, I mean, it’s scary. Of course it’s scary, but it’s, like, good scary, you know?

Oh, haha, yep. Really need to remember this book isn’t gonna respond to me.

Unless I…

No, no that would take far too much spellwork, and I’m not gonna have that much free time soon! I only had time to learn this one because the train ride was three hours! But mum had always told me that keeping a journal was good to keep your thoughts in order. And I have terrible hornwriting, so, why not learn a spell that transcribes my voice to writing? And, I don’t know, maybe it feels more… honest?

I don’t know why this would even be a consideration, though. It’s not like anyone’s gonna be reading this. I don’t even know why I did an introduction before. Everything I said, I know. I know who I am, I know I’m a librarian. Now I’m wondering whether I need any of the big parts of my life in here at all. Maybe journals aren’t for anything deep, maybe they’re for the minutiae of your day to day life that you might forget.

But at the same time… I guess a part of me hopes that someone will read this one day. That I’ll end up as someone whose life was worth reading about. Even if it’s just one other pony. I know that being a librarian isn’t exactly the most important job in the world. But, isn’t that what everyone wants, in a way? To be someone who’s name means something, even if it’s after you’re gone.

I, uh…

Wow, I got a little emotional there, didn’t I? I don’t… I don’t really know what came over me.

Maybe it’s the move. Maybe it’s the fact that… well, I mean I’m grateful that I’m gonna be running the library, don’t get me wrong. But, being here all by myself? After living with mum and dad for so long? I guess I got comfy. And no move, not even ones to important new jobs or picturesque towns, are comfy.

I’ll… I’ll get used to it. It’s an adventure! And, besides, the town seems lovely! I can’t believe how much cleaner the air is here than Trottingham! I couldn’t believe when I got here that the library position would be vacant. I would have thought this would be a perfect place for an older librarian to stake their claim and never move.

But no! Apparently the previous librarian actually resigned. That’s what they told me in the interview! And, I mean, I don’t know other ponies’ circumstances, obviously. But still, when I was walking through the streets, looking at all the houses, taking in the air.

When I got into the library, all the beautiful wooden shelves and space for reading, for discovering, I could only think one thing.

Why would anyone ever wanna leave a place like this?

Dear diary.

Wow, that sounded weird to say out loud, haha. I think I might give that part a miss from now on.

Anyway, tomorrow’s the big day!

Saturday was, like, all unpacking. I guess you don’t really realise just how much stuff you end up bringing with you to new places. It took me hours to actually get everything of mine set up and in its right place, and I’m pretty organised as it is.

Well, actually, I’m very organised. I mean, I’m a librarian, it kinda comes with the territory.

But even after all of that unpacking, I still would have had time to go and grab dinner in Ponyville. See some of the sights, maybe have a couple of glasses of wine somewhere. Maybe talk to some ponies?

But then, I saw the shelves.

It was like, I don’t know what the previous librarian was doing. I don’t even know if I’m sure it was the previous librarian did this. I can’t imagine any librarian would. Maybe the townsponies have been using the library and just didn’t know how to actually sort the books?

It was utter chaos. There wasn’t the faintest rhyme or reason to any of it. Sorting it took me twice as long as it did to unpack all of my stuff. By the time the books were back in their correct places, it was past midnight.

I used my whole first Saturday here, putting books in the correct order. And I know the point could be made that, as a librarian, that’s something I should expect, but it doesn’t mean it didn’t leave a bad taste in the mouth. This was the weekend to be something before I was the town librarian. To leave an imprint aside from that.

I’m so glad I arrived when I did now. I had originally been planning to turn up today. Imagine that! I would have arrived exhausted from the train ride, then would have had to unpack, then would have had to sort all of the books back into a presentable order. There probably wouldn’t even have been enough time left to go to sleep!

It was mum and dad who convinced me to travel before the weekend, actually. They said this would happen, that I’d regret it if I didn’t give myself the weekend. And, I knew they were right, deep down. It’s just…

I guess I didn’t really wanna leave them. I’d been with them for so long, it felt like it had become a big part of me. Like I wouldn’t be the same pony if I was somewhere else. Though, at the same time, I also knew that I needed to leave. I kinda felt like being there was…

Well, maybe ‘killing me’ is a touch grandiose?

But then, is it?

What even is it to be killed, to be alive? I guess there’s a comfort in living death. In limbo, in suspension. There’s a comfort in the assumption that you’re comfortable, to wear the clothes of someone happy and assume they’re yours even still in the dearth of any compelling reason why.

But there’s fear too, fear in allowing yourself to be comfortable. I should be working a good job, I should be living my best life, what if you’re comfortable not doing that? What does that make you? I know consciously that I forced myself to abandon that comfort, to affect the mindset that being there was killing me.

And now I’m here. In an exciting place where I can make new friends, with a good job, where I can finally change.

And, it’s a beautiful town.

And I’m so far away from anything that reminded me of that suffocating, terrifying, hateful comfort that permeated my life. The acceptance of not allowing anything external to define you but your own contentment, even when you resent not being someone bigger and braver and you hate the fact that you don’t care...

Haha, why am I crying?

Maybe…

I…

I think I should probably get some rest, and stop thinking about this.

I… it’s going to be a big day tomorrow...

Memory of Summer,

Eternal return,

The shameful ascent back into the womb,

Living death,

Waking sleep,

Umbra, the deepest part of the shadow,

The darkest part of the shadow,

Live in it and know the brilliant blinding addiction to nothing at all,

Like a dream,

Waking dream, forever dream,

Like someone pushing your face into a pillow,

Stop to breathe,

Stop,

Breathe,

Stop,

Breath,

Stop,

Stop.

So, today was my first shift!

My first shift as a fully fledged librarian! It was great! I was so helpful. I had quite a few customers, more than I would have expected given the size of the town, and each one of them took out something. I made sure I was available for any questions, that I was polite and friendly.

So I’d call that a resounding success, wouldn’t you?

Oh, yeah, you’re a book. Maybe I’m just a little… starved of conversation, haha.

Hmm. You know, it’s a good thing that this spell doesn’t record tone, otherwise you’d probably be able to hear I wasn’t being… entirely truthful. Which is strange because, why would I lie? You’re a book, nothing more. Maybe it’s something to do with that hope I keep returning to, that someday, someone other than me might read this and be inspired.

But then, maybe it’s only to do with me? Maybe it’s the fact that when I read this back, I can pretend through the false tone that I was truly stimulated by conversation. That the day went perfectly. After all, what’s more important, how the day went or how you remember it later on? The memory can be something utilitarian. Is a lie that consoles not better than a truth that mocks you?

I guess… what I’m saying is...

None of them talked to me. I mean, they said the odd thing. They made small talk with me. But the whole time it seemed like they were trying to avoid me. Like they’d consciously avoid making eye contact.

I mean, It’s fine. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Maybe they liked the old librarian a lot and just need some time to adjust. But… a town like this? I would have thought it was a place where everyone knew each other. All leaving doors unlocked and village fetes. It’s like, back in the city, there were tonnes of ponies everywhere, but I never really felt like I’d properly known any of them outside of my friends.

Even though there aren’t even a hundredth of the amount of ponies here, I thought I’d have so much more chance to meet new friends.

But no, they all just avoided me and…

Well, I feel a bit crazy even saying it outloud but, like…

It seemed like they were looking at me. Not making eye contact, but waiting until I’d looked away and then peering over. I caught, or at least I think I caught, some of them turning back to their books the second I looked back in their direction. Like they were trying to stare at me in secret.

And, it makes sense I suppose. Once again, I am the new pony in town. Maybe they wanted to try to get the measure of me, maybe they just wanted a look. I mean, it could be that them not staring directly at me was them trying to not make me uncomfortable. It could very well be a good thing!

It’s just… it didn’t really feel like a good thing.

Anyway, blegh. Don’t wanna talk too much about the bad stuff on my first day, I’m sure it was nothing anyway. And there was plenty of good stuff too!

No, the day was far from all bad actually!

Work might not have been all I was hoping, but on the bright side, I think I’ve made a new friend after all!

I went into the town centre to have a look at the markets. I’d seen them yesterday, but as it was Sunday they’d all been closed down. But today, it was so vibrant. The sheer colour of everything. The hollers and cries of all the traders, beckoning me and anyone else who could hear to choose to spend our bits with them.

It was busy, but it was nothing like the clamour of the city. There, it feels impersonal, random. Like we’re all simple particles in imprecise Brownian motion. But here, it’s calculated and organic. Here it was like we were all cells in an organism, ultimately independent but inherently steered towards the common goal of the market’s ecosystem. One pays, one buys, one is paid, and the next day everything continues again in earnest.

Well, that was how it looked anyway. I think I’m still waiting to fully assimilate into the organism. I think that I might be a foreign body still. And what’s the word for that…

Infection?

…

Anyway, I uh…

Hmm…

Someone came to talk to me while I sat at the fountain. For a moment I thought she might blind me. It was the sun’s glare reflected off her pale coat. Objectively, even in the most cold critical analysis, she was inarguably beautiful. And she was the sole pony out of the whole ecosystem to reach out and talk to me that day.

To talk to me.

Her name is Rarity. She was so nice! It was like she knew exactly what I needed, like she’d been able to identify I was a newcomer instantly. Thinking about it, she probably did. After we’d talked for a while, she said she’d come to the library to visit tomorrow! And when I watched her walk away after we were done, everyone had something to say to her. All the market stall owners called out in hello, everyone wanted to stop her for a chat.

So yeah, the day didn’t have the best start. But if a pony like that, a pony that looks like she might be the heart, or brain considering how our talk went, of this system, wants to be friends with me?

Not even considering the fact that they’d probably follow her lead, that if she came and spoke to me in the library, the others in there might open up too, it means it’s not fundamental. It means that I’m not just someone who’ll never fit in in this town, because she is part of the town. She seems like one of the parts of the town.

And if one of the parts of the town is coming specifically to my library tomorrow, to specifically see me, doesn’t that mean I could one day be part of the town? Doesn’t that mean that, rather than infection, I could be transplant? I could be something new that assimilates, that improves the larger body?

Haha, I don’t know, I’m rambling I guess.

I was never really a biologist, in any case. The nuts and bolts of it always left me somewhat cold.

No, I’ve always been more at home with books, in books. I guess that’s left me with a tendency to dramatise. To see myself as a part of a story, hoping to be a protagonist in a world where everyone is their own protagonist but only a background character in the worlds of nearly everyone else.

I don’t know what will happen after tomorrow, the world of stories would suggest it could be a turning point. But then, I’m not a biologist, I’m not a scientist. I don’t really think about things in total realism. ‘Crushing realism’ as I always described it.

...still rambling though, haha.

I guess those are all thoughts for tomorrow, we’ll have to see whether my life is gonna be fiction or non-fiction then.

On a lighter note, I don’t think I’ve recorded it here yet! So, considering I’ve moved somewhere new with a new job, I thought I could do with a new hobby. You know, something to mark the change.

I was considering trying something like painting, but honestly I've never been too good at that haha. Last thing this place needs is a bunch of terrible canvases done by yours truly. No, like I said, I'm someone who lives so much of their life in books. So, I thought to myself, why not try to write some of my own?

So, I've started writing poetry!

Night Owl - II

Okay, first off I want to apologise.

I don’t know if books have feelings, but I feel like assuming they definitely don’t might be unwise for a mare in my field of work. So yeah, I apologise for not writing in you for over a week. But I swear I had a good reason.

Rarity.

I’ve seen her nearly every day this week. We’ve been out to eat, she’s introduced me to her friends, taken me to the local clubs. She even gave me a makeover! I don’t think I’ve ever looked so good in all my life.

Needless to say she made good on her promise to come to talk to me at the library after that day when we first met. And it was like… her presence makes the town different. As soon as she walked in, bright eyed and calling my name in that sing-song way of hers, all the other ponies in the library seemed to brighten up. They spoke to me more but like, properly spoke to me. No more of that curt shop-talk from before.

They asked for my opinion on books, not just where they were. They asked about me, not just the library. It was like, maybe if you think of the town as some far-off island, then Rarity is a port. She’s the way by which you actually enter the new land.

No no, that sounds wrong. It was more like…

It was more like she’s a lighthouse. She guides you, she keeps you safe. And if you’re out at sea and all you can see for miles around is some far-off, high-up light ripping through the clouds… It’s as much terrifying as it is a lifeline. There’s something irresistible about lighthouses, but as much for the way they help you as their mystery.

And once you get to the shore you can look up and some of that mystery ebbs away but, like, it never truly goes, does it? Because then you look up and you see the high tower you can never go in and you can’t help but wonder…

Is it really just a big lamp up there? Is that the source of the light? Or is it something at once more beautiful and terrifying up there than you could ever imagine. And then you go to your new home and try to forget, if not for the light shining through your window every night from the beach.

It’s strange, but that feels like a more apt description of Rarity. Because she might have helped me more than I could express, she might be lovely and kind, someone who’s really trying to be my friend. But still, there’s something unknowable about her. It feels like she always has the upper hoof, always has an ace up her sleeve.

It’s intoxicating.

No wonder so many ponies in the town tend to gravitate to her. She bends that gravity because you always want… No, you always need to know more. You need to know what she knows, need to try to glimpse that mind as much as you can.

She took me out to a local cafe, Sunny Pastures, a couple of days back. And when we were eating and chatting, there’s this confidence she has. Every question I had was answered with a knowing glance, a strategically placed giggle, a wink to disarm. It felt more like sparring than talking at times.

No, that undermines the elegance of it. It was more like fencing. Like a dance where everyone is always trying to gain the upperhand. It was such a rush.

But, like, I also don’t wanna miss out how kind she is, how sweet. How she found out my favourite tea and bought me a lovely tea service as a moving-in present. Of course there’s that mystique to her, but she’s a real friend.

She’s been the best thing about moving here so far because… Well, when she’s not there…

It’s like that feeling you get when you know you’ve offended someone, but you also know that asking how you had done it would make things worse. There’s something about moving through the town. At times, it’s like I’m oil and they’re water.

Like the fabric of the place bends around to keep me external, so that no matter how far I tread into the borders there’s always still a border surrounding me. Like every step I take momentarily drags the stink of the big city with me and corrupts the ground under me and they can all smell it.

But just listen to me. I sound insane.

And yet… and yet. I’m not an idiot. I might be a bit ditzy at times, I know I say ‘like’ too often… but I’m not stupid. I never have been. Sometimes I wish I was, I feel like life would be easier.

Because they are looking. And even though they get so much more cordial when Rarity is with me, enough that I could think for just a moment that I might really be one of them…

They still look.

They still stare.

They still look away when I look back, as if they’re hiding something.

And I really, really wish I was stupid. Because if you’re not stupid, and you think ponies are looking over at you and whispering and watching and muttering. If you walk out onto the balcony at night, and stare at the rows of houses around you that seem almost strategically ordered to leave the library adrift in the centre of a great sea of grass. A lighthouse with no working light.

If you’re sure you’re not stupid…

That either means you’re right, or it means something else.

And I’m not sure which one frightens me more.

...

It’s probably just the stress of moving…

Sure, that’s gotta be it.

That’s what mum would say.

That’s what Rarity’s been saying.

Brilliant white,

Blinding white,

Ivory white,

Off-white,

Unblemished white,

Unbowed white,

White like winter sky,

White like the centre of a blizzard,

White like snowfall upon Cocytus,

White like staring into the sun,

White from blindness,

White from oblivion,

Endless white,

Perfect white,

Same colour as my memories,

Lost in the slipstream of everything I wish I didn’t wish to be.

When I was back in Trottingham, I tended to visit the same places with my friends. We went to the same pubs, the same clubs. There was a familiarity we would gravitate to. But, having been in Ponyville for as long as I have now - coming up to three months this Friday - I’ve realised that not all familiarity is the same.

Because a city like that can be scary. I could have gone to a different club every week if I’d wanted to. But there’s a joy in carving out your own space, your own stake. In a place that will forget you for its sheer size and depth, the attempt to create something that’s yours, even if it’s just the ability to walk into your favourite club with your group of friends and all know exactly what drink you were going to order…

It feels meaningful.

Maybe everyone really wants what they don’t have, that could be the white hot point of truth at the centre of all of this. Because the difference between finding your local clubs, and only having a couple to choose from at all…

It feels overwhelming at times. And suddenly the desire for something new starts to crush you.

The Salt Lick. Maybe it’s called so for the taste of sweat on the air. It always seems so overfilled in there, and why wouldn’t it? Where else would ponies even go? The other club? Which is probably just as packed and heady with pheromones?

The sheer symbiosis of everyone on that dance floor. It’s like it’s one organism, just like the markets. But this time it’s a new feel. A hot, sticky collective of grinding bodies, contrasting with the open pavilion to be filled with the airy concentration of commerce. The Salt Lick is sweat-soaked pandemonium. All the dancers are fixed on the pursuit of contact with another body. Sex-drunk and sweat-soaked and almost deafblind for the throb of the lights and thump of the music and density of the crowd.

Except, of course, for me.

I always seem to have enough room in the Salt Lick. I can swing and dance and stretch my limbs without hitting a soul. It’s remarkable really, how the crowd seems to unconsciously contort to keep me very literally excluded.

And I can have contact if I wish, don’t get me wrong. When Rarity, or one of the other ponies that have come out with her and are charitably calling me a friend by extension for the night, dances with me then we can touch as often as we like.

I can thread my hooves with hers as we throw and pull apart. Sometimes we might be serpentine, rhythmic and pulsing in the creation of some seductive display for the crowd she always gathers. Sometimes, and I don’t think she’d admit to this the day after, we’d sling our arms around each other’s necks and drunkenly, desperately, sing along to the music, interspersed with needy glugs of cider like mares dying of thirst.

And yet, the crowd never encompasses me. Not really.

It’s like walking through a dark forest, the bodies are the trees. And from the gloom between them, I still see the eyes. I still hear the whispers even above the thump of bass. And when I’m there alone, I have time to reflect on whether those eyes and voices are real or not.

Because either they are, or they’re not.

And Celestia save me, I’m not stupid.

So today, on my tenth visit to the salt lick, I told Rarity the truth. The truth that had been growing in the back of my mind for weeks now.

I told her I was thinking of leaving, of going back to Trottingham.

Going back home.

And, in return, Rarity told me to stay. She told me things would get better soon.

She told me about the curse of the library.

Apparently the last few librarians had left abruptly, and in less than pleasant circumstances. Most hadn’t even discussed why. They’d just resigned suddenly and without fanfare, not to be seen in the town again.

And ponies in these small towns weren’t like those in the big cities. It’s the opposite of the desperate fight to leave your mark in the city, against a backdrop that will quickly forget you after you’re dead or gone. Here ponies were forever painting on the same canvas. And on a canvas like this, a single pony could leave a big mark indeed. Those generations, that essence of the dead, was felt through the decades.

This wasn’t the impersonal towers of Trottingham, this was a place steeped in tradition and folklore. This was a place where providence was rarely scrutinised for what it actually was. Nor was pain.

So after all these librarians had seemed to leave so quickly, ponies had started talking. Some ponies had even gotten the notion that there may have been a curse on Golden Oaks. Something that infected each unlucky inhabitant and something that could infect you if you get too close.

And so they all told me, Rarity and her friends, about the way that most ponies knew deep down it was ridiculous. But that there was still some residual unease. And maybe, as a result, the townsponies would stare a little. Maybe they’d whisper as I passed. Maybe they’d take a while to get close to me, because no-one wants to be cursed. Even if they know there’s no curse, not really.

And I smiled and nodded. I sounded relieved when I told them I was glad to hear the problem wasn’t me. I might have had confidence I’d convinced them, were it not for Rarity. Were it not for the brilliant, beautiful, terrible, terrifying spark of recognition and knowing in those eyes. Those spellbinding eyes that seemed to see everything.

And so I made my excuses and headed to the toilets. I hadn’t been lying, I did need to piss after all. But I’m not stupid, certainly not stupid enough to not understand the way that prophecies could be self-fulfilling. How the idea of curses can beget curses. And at once, as I moved through the crowd that never seemed to touch me I understood my predecessor. Some lonely, lonely mare. Sick to death of the way that the crowd would actively move around her in reactionary disgust.

And I tried to shake off the feelings of distrust. That the silly explanation of a ridiculous local rumour didn’t even go half the way to explaining the magnitude of the exclusion. Of the stares and the whispers and the subterfuge and the sneering.

I entered the bathroom stalls tonight with that heavy on my mind, diary. I couldn’t help but laugh at how, despite my worry that they had been lying, that there was something happening here more deep and dark and rotten and warped than I could fathom, and that the curse of the library was just a convenient story to tell to the outsiders who found themselves on the exterior of whatever… this was.

I couldn’t help but laugh because, even if they had been lying, they’d managed to tell the truth. I still can’t help but laugh now, at that and the way I seem to talk when I’m drunk like this. Thank Celestia the spell doesn’t translate all the slurring. But I can see it’s picking up everything else. Self-mythologising again and speaking like I’m narrating the fucking Odyssey.

Maybe I’ve been writing too much poetry.

I took a picture with the camera that was left unattended on the sinks. A local tradition. And I painted on my face my biggest, most desperate smile because that was how I felt tonight. And then I signed my name and wrote ‘Tenth time at the Salt Lick!’ because they couldn’t stop me pinning myself among them when it was like this, when I placed the photograph right in the centre of the crowded wall’s worth of smiling faces.

And still I couldn’t and can’t help but reflect on that truth the whole time. The one that they’d accidentally managed to tell. Because even if their little curse was just something made up for those lucky few despised outsiders…

Who could say that living like this, for whatever reason, isn’t being cursed?

Night Owl - III

Today I went to the market.

I waded through the crowds and it was like they were parting around me. They always part around me. I’ve described this before, you know what I’m talking about at this point. Pages and pages of endless descriptions of the way that this place and I are immiscible.

Sometimes, when I look back at the last few months of entries, half-blitzed on cheap red wine because what else is there to do, I find myself struggling to breathe. But it’s not a lack of breath from panic, it’s a lack of desire to breathe, or maybe lack of drive is more apt. I would have thought that it should be a low, pressing feeling, but it’s stunningly sharp and acute. It feels like an excavation and it feels like that because I realise far from the stares and whispers is the abject lack of change.

I always go to the market, I always find ponies staring at me. I always notice them and have them look away when I look up like we’re engaged in some foals’ game.

And it always keeps going. It never stops. It’s like time simply forgot about me and doomed me to repeat the death march of isolated blatancy down into the town proper. To fetch more quills or ink or more likely wine and chocolate and rich food. I am fatter, I am greedier, I consume more, I stuff myself in a hedonistic rush to dull the muted, subtle knife.

That’s what I’ve noticed about Ponyville. It’s not an ambush, it’s not an assassination. The stares and whispers are attrition, it’s a place that grinds you down because it’s not satisfied by merely making you alienated, it alienates you in a boring way.

For months, I’ve been lonely, I’ve felt rejected, hated. Like the subject of a thousand swirling lies and rumours of curses and interlopers, peered at through frosted glass, through two way mirrors. I’ve felt like I’m losing my sanity until the point that I’m not sure I would recognise sanity were it returned to me and through it all I’ve felt endlessly, interminably fucking bored.

That’s how they win. Because whatever big secret I’m unfit to know. Whatever unspoken agreement there might be, I think the boredom has ravaged my mind to the point that I could never unravel the riddle were all the pieces presented to me.

But today?

Today, when I went to stock up on the necessary booze to get me through another night of this, I looked around for a moment. And I don’t even really know why I did it? I guess there’s still the temptation to check that it’s still happening. And even that is dull. In some ways that’s the greatest trick of this place. The absolute rejection of change stops you from even getting used to what’s happening. Boring with the added sting of hope that maybe this time someone would stop and smile or not look at you at all.

And wouldn’t you believe it.

Today, something changed.

Because a set of eyes did remain locked on mine. A set of unmistakable, blue eyes, piercing through the crowd like a lighthouse through fog.

She was staring at me with that look of perfect, self-assured calm she always has. Like there was no way I could have missed her. And she was right, wasn’t she? Of course I was going to see her.

Because out here in the sea, she’s been my life raft. She’s been the sole thing that has provided some link to this place. Some tether to keep me grounded and she always comes up to say hello when we see each other because we’re friends.

But today, she simply gave me that cocksure gaze of hers, an eyebrow raised and smirk knowing and teasing. And before I could call out to her the crowd flowed in like liquid and swallowed her, stealing her away.

And then she was gone, and I was alone again.

She’d seen me. She knew the way I was struggling at the moment with crowds and stares and loneliness because I’d told her this so many times.

I’d confided in her and she had simply evaporated back into Ponyville. It was the most beautiful, agonising reminder of where she came from, and where I came from, and where we were, and who we were.

I’m home now. Of course I’m home because I’m writing in this diary again, the thing they’ll read when I finally crack and see all the frayed scribblings of the delusional mess I’ve become. And they’ll analyse it and say ‘Poor Night Owl, she couldn’t take the strain and boredom and the loneliness and the second-guessing and the alienation and the secrets and whispers and stares and she simply cooked up some ridiculous scenario about the town all peering at her and hiding some grand secret because the alternative was that all along the problem has just been her.’

‘And who could take that?’

And maybe they’d be right?! But, the funny thing is, to the delusional mare, it doesn’t matter whether it’s real or not, it feels real. And that means it’s real to me.

It is real.

I am not stupid, I have never been stupid.

I cracked open my wine the second I got in, the sun hadn’t even gone below the horizon yet.

I sat down and really analysed everything going through me right now.

Because something different had happened at last! The sting of an active betrayal is so wonderfully blatant amid the muted backdrop of grey, boring loneliness. An act of genuine antagonism in the middle of all this pedestrian disdain? Some fleeting moment of apparent acknowledgement that something is happening here? That there is some great secret as opposed to simple contentment to leave me shut out and helpless?

It was like a knife in the chest. Like a white hot serrated-edged blade directly into the heart, cauterising and reopening wounds with every micrometre of movement. It left me breathless, it left me grasping my stomach, tears streaming down my face and heaving with laughter.

Because it was horrific and it was different. It was the first time in months I hadn’t been bored, and it was worse than boredom had ever been.

I’m still chuckling now. I’m still crying.

Maybe she had other things to do? Maybe she didn’t even see me? Maybe she wasn’t even there at all? Maybe I’m not here?

Maybe none of this is even real?

And that makes me laugh even more, because that’s how they get you, isn’t it Night Owl?

I wonder what they’ll say when they read this.

Too little sanity, too little grip.

Too much self-mythologising.

Too much poetry.

I need another drink.

I read the labels of wine bottles,

Before I take out corks,

I can’t shake the sophomoric tendency to compare the red to blood,

I can’t place the tastes,

I read the labels of wine bottles,

In some desperate attempt to see what other ponies can feel,

I read notes about muted tones of berries,

Dark notes of chocolate and vanilla,

Summer fruits and cultivated grapes,

I read the labels of wine bottles,

Before I knock back glass after glass,

Quicker than could ever leave any taste,

Because I’ve tried too many times,

I’ve tried to find the notes from the labels,

I’ve tried to hunt down the subtle flavours,

But all is lost to me now,

I wonder if it could have ever been found,

Maybe my taste buds have all gone,

Burned away by attrition,

Maybe I was simply born without them,

I can’t taste anything other than wine,

Some bitterness that I don’t understand how others can find deeper meaning in,

I read the labels of wine bottles,

Because I want to know what others have,

And I look at them tasting wine,

And wish that everyone would be like me,

I read the labels of wine bottles,

But I only drink to get drunk.

When I was younger, I remember the way I used to interact with ponies. I don’t think I’d recognise myself if I were to somehow visit her. I wonder, so often, what she’d think of me now? In some ways I thank Celestia that I changed. What the hell would we even be if we stopped evolving when we were sixteen, or eighteen, or twenty?

But then I think back to my days at university, and to how assertive I could be. I remember arguments where I used to really stand up for myself. I remember the way I used to bristle until I’d gotten my point across. A big part of me wonders these days whether I’m glad to be different now.

My whole life has vanished in the fog of memories that I’ve lost. I am astonished by how fragile we are. I marvel at how flimsy the museum of my past experiences is, and how it all collapses into unreliable anecdote and embellished fabel. Like a folk story. Like the poems passed down by aural tradition by our forebears around weak fires they conjured to stave off the jaws of bears.

My whole life has felt like the last eight or so years for so long. And, in all that time, I’ve always felt like I was living on borrowed time. Like I’ve been constantly near-death. How in the world did this get so fragile? Where are those stories from when we were young? Of amazing careers and fulfilling social lives?

Where did it all go?

To anyone who might find this journal, amid the remains I worry I might leave, you might be wondering what in Celestia’s name the relevance of this aside is.

The answer is all too simple.

I’m drunk again.

Of course I am.

Of course I am.

And yet, I still meant everything I said. I have felt like I’ve been in the crushing suffocation of the sarcophagus of near-death for so, so long now.

The question, though, is when should you be concerned? Is it when you feel like you’re skirting the edges of life, or is it when you no longer care thatyou are? There is an exhaustion to self-examination.

Panic that life is nearly over. Relish that life is meaningless pain anyway, and Ponyville is a monument to meaningless pain.

Life is a speck of dust on a stray sunbeam. I am Night Owl. I am nothing. All I am is all I’ve ever been constrained in this form. I am drunk again, I am panicking, I am terrifyingly physical, I am nothing but the dream of a slumbering madman.

Why won’t it stop? Why will it never start?

The thing with a diary is that I am, I was recording it all for myself.

Why would I need to note down the minutia of feelings I’ve been dealing with for years now? For someone to find? To inspire anyone with my litany pedestrian neurorses that everyone else would already be familiar with?

Don’t make me laugh.

I was a confident young mare.

I am a shell of a grown-up now. A shell of a whole pony, so lacking in the drive that I see in everyone but myself. They would have strode up to the ponies who stare and ripped off whatever mask obscures the nature of this place.

It’s a truly brilliant pain, to realise you’re the problem,

Because I’m Night Owl, and I couldn’t possible leverage any greater understanding of this fucking hell hole. Because it is. Ponyville is a nightmare, its residents are nightmares in turn. The only refuse is this island, this port in the storm, and isn’t that hilarious? That they make the isolation the only safety you have? They alienate you, and make you crave it. Surely there has to be some appreciation for their sick, disgusting methods around somewhere?

Maybe, among all the indictment, I could provide that much-needed credit for all the evil they’ve worked. I feel like they deserve it.

I worry I deserve it.

Rarity’s transition from friend of mine to subtle, grinning maleficent presence dancing in my periphery was as flawless as one would expect from her. As she could only ever be.

I recall a story of a pony who was lost in a land they could never understand. Hopelessly tossed by the riptide of the thrall of those who called it home. Mad Hatters, Red Queens, a cursed wasteland beyond a looking glass of clawing madness. I remember a grinning, feline creature, wide eyes and predatory smile lasting long after its body vanished against the backdrop, leaving only the blight of the nightmares it inspired steeping in its grinning expression lasting long after all physical memory dissipated.

Does that make sense? Does that story even exist? Does my story even exist?

I am Night Owl.

I was a somebody.

I self medicate with booze.

Why do I get like this when I’m drunk? It’s pathetic. It’s the only time I feel like a real pony.

My friend has fucking abandoned me. I don’t remember the last time she actually properly spoke to me. She is a chameleon of eyes, something more akin to smoke than an organic being with flesh and veins and sweat and blood.

Ghostlike, a phantom. A mind-reader, exquisitely homing in on the exposed bits of my guts nearest the nerve.

I guess that’s how Rarity feels to me these days, as her tangibility becomes smoke between mad grasping hooves and all that’s left is the pain of her teasing glare.

The town is insane.

Rarity is composed, mocking. She vanishes into crowds and bites her lip, almost sultry were it not for the pain left in her wake after she dematerialises. She is insane.

And, dear diary, I worry that I’m insane too.

Isn’t that the funniest thing you’ve ever heard?

This is a dream about dying of thirst in an oasis,

This is a dream about never having been born,

About living forever and ever,

This is a dream about your pain,

It is a drop in an ocean,

You are nothing but a drop in an ocean,

You are nothing but a whisper in a cyclone,

This is a dream about dying,

This is a dream about the aftermath of your death,

This is a dream about the pathetic, animal imperfection we all thrash around in,

This is nothing but a vision,

This is nothing but a fleeting thought,

This is only the lingering pain that life represents,

This is nothing but a dream about the unimportance of it all and the twin comfort and fear that induces,

This is me,

This is Night Owl,

Keep it on the up and up,

Maybe one day I’ll be there with you,

I’m away now.

Hello.

I don't know why I said that, there's no need to introduce myself, this was the kind of thing I got over right when I started writing like this.

And yet, here I am again. Isn't that fitting?

But anyway, I should probably get to the point. I'm so sick of talking, I've talked enough already.

I'm tired of writing this diary.

I read through a few of these entries tonight.

I’ve not been able to get any wine. I just didn't feel like I could face another trip into that narket. I feel like I’m sober for the first time in so, so long.

I’ve made a decision, it feels significant.

Tonight, I’m going to go to Rarity’s house and ask her, point blank, what’s happening here.

I’m going to ask her why she’s started staring at me too.

Why all the times we talk, she feels insincere and mocking.

I’m going to ask her why she doesn’t seem to like me anymore.

I’m going to go to Carousel Boutique, and I’m going to get my answers no matter what.

And you know what? While I wouldn't say I feel good, I feel like I've made some kind of progress.

It feels like the end of something, maybe even like a beginning.

It feels like I might be about to come to some kind of understanding about this place, about myself.

After all, they can’t take anymore from me.

I’d say wish me luck, diary, but you’re just a book.

This whole time, you’ve only been a book.

There's never been anything between us, this was never a conversation. This was a mare by herself, talking to no-one.

It's all just words on a page.

I guess that means that all I’ve written in you is just a story now.

I hope there’s some happy ending to be salvaged in all this.

I’ll be seeing you.

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⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

There is nothing for us here.

Get out while you can.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Twilight stared at the final page of the diary.

It was a harsh deviation from the pages she’d been reading. Night Owl’s transcription spell, potentially in some reflection of the fraying of her fraught mind, had been getting increasingly harsh and ragged in its writing.

Ink blotted the pages, margins were full of frantically scribbled, paranoid notes.

And then, apparently after she’d gone to see Rarity that night, the final page was neat, composed. Two sentences, directly telling Twilight to do what she’d feared she had to.

To run away from Ponyville.

She placed the diary down gently, terrified of damaging this account by a pony that felt so much like her sister now, and reached a hoof to her cheek.

She immediately felt the tears that had been running freely from her eyes.

Twilight thought back to that famous conundrum, the one that had been coming to her more and more frequently these days.

What if there was a paranoid pony, who thought the whole world was watching them? Who thought everyone was in on it, spying on them and plotting against them?

What would they do if they finally found the room with all the notes on them? All the plans everyone had been making? What would they do if they finally found irrevocable proof that they were right. If the terrifying conspiracy that occupied their thoughts in every waking moment was one hundred percent true?

Would they be happy, as the story always seemed to go?

Or would they be terrified and feel small, wounded by the realisation of all their worst fears?

The thought stayed with Twilight long into the night.

Perception

Twilight dreamed of a mare like her. Only closer than ink in something as consciously cliched as a tear-strained diary could ever conjure.

Less like smoke, more like meat, all wrapped around a skeleton perceptible underneath skin. Something you could touch, could speak to, could reassure and coddle and love.

Twilight dreamed of being so much closer than she’d ever been to the mist under which a mare nothing like her hid, cruel eyes and cruel tongue and cruel smile. Tickling breath making Twilight squirm, peering into the infinite possibility of the world that lived in the mirror. The Twilight that stared back had been given a makeover, and Twilight remembered distantly that she’d cried like a child when she’d seen this.

She also remembered faint stains on the glass. Fog from a shower’s aftermath and hooves that try to scrape it away, marring the surface and leaving a signature of imperfection. The act of attempting to clean leaving it dirtier and dirtier and dirtier still. When did she start dreaming in writing

Maybe that mare that was nothing like Twilight was a little bit like Twilight after all.

But she digressed.

Oh god, had she digressed.

Did she do anything else?

But still, she digressed.

Twilight dreamed mainly of that mare like her.

Twilight dreamed of being able to run hooves through her mane and tell her for just one second that it would be alright. They both deserved that, she thought.

Twilight dreamed of that mare asking whether Twilight thought she was insane. She dreamed of having to listen to all the nails and hornets and shards of gore-slick broken glass emptied from the holes in a freshly trephined skull.

She dreamed of looking into those eyes dilated by milk-bottle glasses and being the cause of wetness when she admitted that yes, you are insane.

You are insane.

They’re all insane.

Everyone who’s ever lived is fucking insane.

What the hell was Twilight meant to say to a mare just like her?

What the hell was a mare just like her meant to say to Twilight?

That there is nothing for anyone here?

To get out while she could?

Maybe that mare that was just like Twilight wasn’t too much like Twilight after all.

But she digressed.

Twilight mainly dreamed of finally being close enough to hurt a mare just like her.

Being able to tell her that she was insane.

That mare would have probably believed her, none of the intellectual, academic indignance laced through Twilight since she was a child. Her dusty, inkstained birthright.

Maybe that mare wasn’t as much like Twilight as she thought.

But she digressed.

Back to thoughts of clamping her metaphorical jaws onto a cheek and pulling until skin tore and capillaries leaked her lifeforce and tempted Twilight’s tongue with a forbidden, coppery rapture. Being close enough to destroy. Being close enough to touch that meat that was the totality of her. Something a pony could scream at and make weep and weep and weep then lean forward grinning madly to lick the tears off their cheeks.

Gods, was there not some rapture to be had in that?

How pleasurable life might be if you could just hurt others without caring about it. Could you imagine such a thing. Twilight thought that a mare nothing like her, who might be more like her than she thought, had tried to teach a mare that was so much like her, who might be nothing like Twilight in the end, that very lesson.

Neither of them seemed to understand the other in the end.

Maybe there were no mares like you, Twilight.

She certainly hoped there weren’t.

Maybe she’d learn those lessons if she stayed here.

Maybe she’d become like the rest of them.

Maybe she’d become something no-one could scarcely imagine, even in the darkest, loneliest moments. Even in the misty, cubist ephemera of nightmares.

Twilight felt the meat of her tangible self form a subtle, sordid smile at the thought.

Even through the kaleidoscope of a dream, Twilight already knew that when she woke up she’d worry about what kind of pony that made her.

“Twilight?” came a voice from the top of the stairs, which was petulantly ignored.

Her cheeks burned as she heard Spike mutter a small ‘for god’s sake’, before calling out once more.

This was pathetic. Even in the current situation, this was pathetic. She wasn’t supposed to be in this position. Spike was supposed to be the one who needed guidance, coaxing, discipline. She was supposed to be the adult. She was not supposed to hide away in a depressive sulk, unshowered and enfeebled by her fraught, malfunctioning mind.

And yet…

Twilight shut Night Owl’s diary, and then did the same with her own, before swiveling on her chair to face the door.

“I’m fine, Spike, okay?” she replied. The air remained pointedly stationary, coloured only by the amber light from upstairs slicing into the muted cool tones of that of the cellar. It was almost comical in its blatancy, a clear lure, temptation with memories of warm libraries and warm ponies, warm conversations, warm food.

Like a return to the oblivious swaddle of the womb.

But Twilight had left home when she was still a child, her only permanent residence being the state of her being. No dormitory, no royal apartment, no library. Not really. So she pulled her blanket over herself tighter, and remained silent, defiant of how much he clearly wanted her to elaborate.

Defiant of how much she just wanted him to say something comforting.

Neither acquiesced for a short moment.

“Can I… can I come down?”

“Don’t worry,” she said, haste betraying her clear discomfort at the prospect, “I was… uh… about to come up anyway. I’ll meet you up there.”

Twilight flicked the door shut with a flare of her horn, but was careful to not seem like she was slamming it in Spike’s face… not that a part of her didn’t want to. But she wouldn’t stoop to it, she wouldn’t give him any ammunition to take off the island.

She thought back to a whelp, slick with the amniotic leavings from the egg she’d shedded for him. She remembered how he sucked on his own tail, coiled in on himself against the world she’d revealed for him.

And Twilight sniffled, and realised the thought of slamming the door on his face actually made her want to cry, regardless of what he’d said. Regardless of how he’d told her how he didn’t believe her, how nothing was even happening here… and maybe he was right.

Not factually right, but maybe to him, that was reality. Did that make him right, or wrong? Were those who’d lived their whole lives watching nothing but shadows on the wall of a cave wrong to say that those shadows were all there was in the whole world? Because that was their world, and this might be Spike’s.

But there was always the opportunity that… whatever this was, that he was in on it too. Maybe he laughed at her with Rarity whenever he slinked off to fawn over her while she ignored him and worked on her dresses.

Twilight looked at herself in a nearby mirror, and for a moment felt a stab at horror at the gaunt, tired face that stared back. The eyes pleaded for some release, some catharsis, maybe absolution? The twitching muscles and spiderwebs of capillaries haloing jaded irises begged her to remember that Spike was still a child, the burden of his species’ long life extending his infancy long beyond what his mannerisms would imply.

She wondered how many scholars and pioneers looked in disgust at what their necessary self-neglect had done to their bodies, their minds, their relationships, and wondered whether it was worth taking an easier route.

Maybe it was worth going upstairs and having breakfast with Spike.

Maybe it didn’t matter what he knew, or didn’t.

She pushed the chair away from her desk and crept towards the stairs. It would have been so easy, so punishingly, horribly easy. Twilight touched the door, and felt the warmth of everything that used to feel like home bleeding through, contrasted with the damp chill of the cellar.

She pressed her body against it and remained there for a moment. She imagined it was how Spike felt, all those years ago. The warmth of the only home he’d known being taken by the massive, uncertain place he’d suddenly found himself in. That Twilight had taken him to.

Good god, how she wanted to just sit there and eat breakfast with him. Or dinner, or lunch, or supper. She wasn’t quite sure, she hadn’t been sleeping too well these days.

“...I don’t think…”

Twilight’s ear flicked, there were voices coming from the other side of the door.

Of course, it could have just been library customers, but they seemed to be speaking in consciously hushed tones.

Like they didn’t want Twilight to hear them.

“... she doing?”

“She’s just about to come out of the cellar, and she’s been down there for days now.”

“Would it be better if I stayed or left?”

“I… I think you should leave, being honest. I don’t mean to be offensive I just… I mean she’s taken this long to talk to me, if there’s anyone else… it might be a bit much for her?”

“No no, I understand completely, look after her and make sure to reach out if you need anything darling.”

Twilight felt the last of the warmth from the world outside leave the door, leeching out into the cold safety that ensconced her. And all at once, the world was cold again.

“Twilight?” came Spike’s voice from outside, “Are you coming out?”

And it would have been so easy to just accept that Rarity was a concerned friend coming to visit, and Spike was just talking to her about Twilight’s wellbeing, and that there was nothing else going on here. And it would have been so easy to just open that door, and sit with Spike for half an hour, hadn’t he earned that?

Hadn’t she earned that?

But that’s how they get you, Twilight.

Twilight locked the door, and walked back down the stairs to her desk.

Any comfort in this world was the comfort we made, that’s what being a scientist was. Being a scientist, a scholar, was carving out your own slice in the universe and wrestling some sense out of the writhing madness. And you had to be ruthless, you couldn’t give an inch.

And Twilight would not sacrifice her slice of predictability, sheltered down here as she was from the raging waves seeking to topple her island, for the pretense of a normal breakfast.

I think we all know we’re a bit beyond that now.

So Twilight did what she always did in this situation. She retreated to the one comfort zone that nothing could ever take away from her, not matter what.

Because Twilight had been learning a new spell.

And now she was going to try it.

She steadied herself on the corners of the desk. This was not something trivial, especially for someone as malnourished and sleep deprived as Twilight was at this moment.

But then, that was no reason to stop, was it? What harm could this do that hadn’t already been done?

Maybe Twilight needed to unlock the door before she began, just in case she passed out. After all, Spike would still come and help her, if she really needed it…

Twilight kept her eyes away from the door, and didn’t touch the lock.

She bit her lip, and winced as the magic in her horn began to steadily increase. It was a tricky thing, to gather up all the energy needed ahead of discharging it for a spell. Because it wasn’t like other tasks. This wasn’t like gathering up all the dynamite needed to blow through a wall, you needed more finesse than that, more specificity. You needed the right kind of dynamite.

And in the all the cells of the fluted alicorn atop her head, Twilight gathered the specific magic she needed.

The room’s temperature increased, it became uncomfortably bright, every fold and ripple of the minerals in her horn chorused as the energy continued to increase.

It sounded like screeching metal. It sounded like a dying star. It sounded like rocks cracking underneath the earth.

And though the heat was agonising, and the lights bouncing off the walls were searing her eyes, Twilight didn’t stop. She didn’t stop until she finally hit that sweet spot, that nearly imperceptible biting point that a lifetime of studying magic had taught her to just be able to feel, on instinct, like a sixth sense.

Twilight finally released her spell, and the energy dissipated with no bang, rather a slight fluttering of silvery light, with no sound whatsoever. It enveloped the books on her table, and the diaries of both Night Owl and Twilight Sparkle shuddered for a moment in the grip of the spell.

Twilight slumped on her chair, coat slick with sweat and lungs shrieking for oxygen as she tried to recuperate composure enough to actually check how successful her spell had been. It took her a while, longer than it should have.

She hadn’t wanted to speak with anyone, and so had been sneaking up to get food and water from the kitchen in the middle of the night, and every subsequent day she would curse herself for not getting enough. She was running on fumes, the fact she’d managed to do this at all had been a minor miracle.

But sure enough, it looked like it had paid off. Because when Twilight was finally able to start breathing normally, and her vision sharpened from the unfocused fog it had degenerated to, she saw her desk.

And there was nothing on it.

She reached a tentative hoof down, and sure enough felt the sturdy hardcovers of two diaries, now vanished from sight. The light bent around them, making it look to all the world like there was nothing there at all. But Twilight knew better. She knew exactly what was there, she knew she was looking at them right now.

And she knew that if these books had eyes, they’d be looking right back at her.

This was powerful magic, even for her. She’d had to keep practicing as much as she could physically stand.

After all, she needed to enchant something much bigger than two diaries.

Madness

Twilight was 14 years old.

Well, no she wasn't. She was 24 years old and sat in the piss-stinking toilets of a club she hated. But in said toilets, she was 14 again, listening through the door as some ponies walked in. She had known then they were older than her, their gait, voice and dialect enough to flag them as sixteen at least. She had always been perceptive, there wasn't much arguing against that.

14 year old Twilight hadn't been listening because she was nosey. No, she had been listening because of a hypothesis she had. It was that the other children were laughing at her, saying hurtful things behind her back. She had seen them peering over, they would giggle at unheard jokes they'd refuse to repeat, the teachers looked at her sympathetically.

And, though it provided little consolation to the filly, her hypothesis turned out to be totally correct. The ponies outside her cubicle did laugh about her, and made nasty comments. They mimed her voice as a nasally and high-pitched sound, bereft of its kindness or intelligence. They'd never been interested in getting to know her, she was the personal student of the Princess, that meant she was a stuck-up, arrogant brat. They seemed to hate her.

She'd gently sobbed in the toilet for hours until one of the teachers found her. Unwilling to admit the truth of the matter, Twilight had feigned truancy and received the sole detention of her entire academic career for her troubles.

Twilight bit her lip, straining to pick up conversation from the ponies who had just stumbled into the toilets. From what she got they were discussing the DJ and her choice in music, and why said choice in music was terrible. They were clearly sloshed, pretty much everyone who had entered had been in the same state.

And 24 year old Twilight wasn't listening because she was nosey. No, she was listening because of a hypothesis she was rapidly losing faith in, that she was starting to resent. She was listening because she was desperate for the bitter vindication she had gotten back then. Because if she just got some confirmation that it wasn't all her, she could deal with the terror of living in a never-changing, insular little backwater like she got over the pain back then.

It made sense that no-one was saying anything incriminating, they had all seen her enter these toilets and she had clearly not left. A town with the level of borderline incestuous closeness that would necessitate the organisation she was implying would not be tripped up by something as pathetic as hiding in the toilets. But she was sick of getting nothing, and she could hardly claim ponies acting weird was evidence of some vast conspiracy. She wanted something concrete. She wanted to know what was going on and wanted to know now. She deserved that much.

She bit her lip and felt her eyes tear up in helpless frustration as the interlopers, like all their predecessors, left without saying anything out of the ordinary. When they had gone, she let out a wail that sharply hurt her throat and punched the wall of her cubicle. She leant her head back against cool tile and tried to calm down. Her heart thundered in her ears and her breath quivered with periodic repressed sobs.

She wanted to be 14 again.

The absurdity of all this wasn't lost on her, and, in spite of everything, she eventually started to laugh. In all her desperation and wondering whether this town had some enormous secret, all her terror at the idea that she could just be going insane with isolation and crushing, soul-destroying boredom, there was something that stuck out. Her whole theory basically hinged on the town being mad. Because to hide things from outsiders and stare when they asked questions, to covet your mind-numbing routine and so pathologically fear change as to threaten those who would shake things up even a little you would have to be utterly and completely insane.

But if she was wrong...

Then she'd been seeing venom where there was none. She'd been imagining false plots against her, hidden gatherings and veiled whispers. If she was wrong, then there was only one mad-pony here. Picture that, the one lunatic seeing madness wherever she looked. The irony was delicious, even if it was poison. So she laughed, bleakly freed by the sheer ridiculousness of her situation.

Twilight licked her lips and steadied her breath, attempting to return to some semblance of stability. She looked over at where she'd punched the wall, noting with muted disappointment she hadn't even made a mark. One thing she hadn't noticed until now, however, was the interesting substitute for graffiti the club had. Rather than illegible scrawl, there were multiple photographs pinned up.

There was quite a significant number of them now that she had seen them in earnest. The format seemed to be to pin the picture up, then write the names of those shown with their date of visit to The Salt Lick. She scanned them, consciously grateful for something to distract her from her creeping instability.

It wasn't long before Twilight found one of her friends. Two of them in one go, in fact. Rainbow had a foreleg thrown around Fluttershy's shoulders, a characteristically brash grin on her face. Fluttershy was smiling too, but demurely as contrast to Dash's confidence. The light blush and sparkle in her eyes all pointed to her clear enjoyment of the contact. Thinking about it, they reminded Twilight of the stallions from before.

She registered the date as being from six years ago. That was certainly surprising. Aside from knowing that Rarity and Applejack were the only two of them to have lived here all their lives, Twilight didn't know how long the others had been here. She would never have pegged either pegasus as having lived here that long.

She became less and less aware of her sweaty, dishevelled state as she continued to scan the vast array of photos. Twilight was fascinated by the sea of familiar and unfamiliar faces, especially considering the latter dwarfed the former. Pinkie was in several pictures, though never in the foreground. Instead she seemed more focused on ensuring others were having a good time, and basking in the reward of a well-earned smile. Twilight felt a slight lump in her throat when it occurred to her just how like Pinkie that was.

Rarity jumped out instantly, her eyes were totally impossible to miss after the interactions she and Twilight had shared over the last few days. She was smiling contentedly with Applejack. Neither of them could have been more than a couple of months past their eighteenth birthday. She seemed to have nothing of her mystique or guile in this image, just enjoyment of a good time with a good friend. Twilight could understand that, and did so with a very heavy feeling of envy.

She wondered whether Rarity looked so different to how Twilight had seen her recently because she was with someone from the town. An insider, a confidant, a mainlander. Or maybe, it was because the town hadn't had the chance to get its claws in yet. That picture was taken nine years ago, that was a long time. But then 18 years was twice as long, and it had only taken three months for Ponyville to take so much from Twilight. Make her tangibly less.

But Rarity was born here, and Twilight wasn't. No-one would blame the host for rejecting the organ, or for killing off an infection, would they? Three months was longer than even 27 years when the mainland looked on you like a cancer. Twilight had worried from the moment she arrived about the crushing feeling of being forever suspended in one state, cursed to repeat the same days out and meals and market trips and mistakes.

Instead, this could be the forever state. The town's aversion to change would infect her as it had everyone and everything else, to the point where she couldn't even change to fit in anymore. Her despair was sharp and immediate, shocking in how it still knocked the wind out of her. It was beautifully, cruelly fitting, the idea of never even being able to change to adapt to the pain.

All these ponies looked so happy in these pictures, and why wouldn't they? Photographs cared not for their suspension. All of them were with friends or family or a lover. Well, all except one. One mare was conspicuously alone. She had milk bottle glasses, and a smile that was wide but slightly strained. It was as if she was angry at herself for not enjoying herself more than she was. Twilight knew the feeling very well.

She felt like she instinctively knew the mare, and it wasn't hard to understand why. Underneath the date she'd written in beautiful calligraphy, underneath the message of 'Tenth time at The Salt Lick!', the mare's signature was there for all to see.

'Night Owl'

Twilight had returned from the toilets to find Fluttershy, among many others, had left. There was a noticeable decrease in the amount of jostling Twilight had to do to return to her seat. This was generally a relief. Though she would have liked to say goodbye to her friends, she also didn't know just how much longer she could deal with the stares. Less eyes was at least something.

But it didn't stop Applejack and Rarity watching her for the entire return trip.

When Twilight got back to the table, the atmosphere was decidedly less amicable than it had been before. There was precious little in the way of conversation, and now that so many bodies were gone and the thick musk of sweat and pheromones lessened. Twilight could smell the nauseating tang of beer soaking into cheap upholstery.

"So, bet you're gonna have to be up early for training tomorrow Dash?" Applejack blurted out, her faux-cheery facade almost comical in its blatancy.

"Nah, if I passed my flight finals on two hours sleep, I can manage a late one tonight," Rainbow replied breezily.

"Wowee! But this is a mite harder than finals ain't it? You sure that'll work?"

"Yeah I'm pretty sure AJ."

This back and forth continued uninterrupted for the next couple of minutes while Twilight watched with unease and confusion. It seemed, really seemed that Applejack was trying to get Rainbow to go home. And madness could be the only explanation, it just hinged on who's madness it was. For her part, Rarity watched the display with what looked like growing irritation. It was annoying to hear AJ needle Dash so much, after all. Finally, Rarity plastered a smile on her face and interjected.

"Applejack! If Rainbow isn't worried about staying out a little later tonight, then you shouldn't be either. Okay?" Interesting. No 'we'. Whatever little game Applejack was playing, it was one she was playing alone. AJ looked near-stricken, and apologised to them both in a very unnecessary and overdone way. This only served to increase Rarity's ire.

Look at you, sitting here pretending a bit of drunken disagreement gives your insane ideas any credence.

Twilight had spent a lot of time in her own head recently, and, though it was clear it wasn't doing her any good, she couldn't help herself. She analysed it all regardless. And while the truth of her situation still eluded her, it was actively shocking in how it all still hurt. So much so that Twilight felt her eyes mist when she saw Dash's look of wistful resignation.

It was the worst thing she had seen all night. Because in spite of everything she still wanted more than anything to make it work here, and that look confirmed something her worst instincts whispered at her at her most vulnerable. It was the confirmation that the peak was insurmountable, it didn't matter how long, nor how hard she tried.

Rainbow's eyes were those of someone who had accepted, against their best hopes, that this would always be an obstacle. Whether the town was hiding something, or whether interlopers simply could never fit in, it wasn't something that went away after six years. And Celestia, did Rainbow look tired. Twilight's eyes watered against her wishes in mourning for the Rarity who had treated her so tenderly before, who had touched her cheek and called her beautiful. Because none of this was fair. She didn't know what she was doing wrong and no-one would tell her.

But Twilight didn't worry about ending up like Rainbow Dash. How she would have loved to end up like Rainbow Dash, someone who could push past this sufficient to force Ponyville to be her home. No, she was terrified because she knew she wouldn't, because Twilight was the personal student of Celestia, and she couldn't let it lie. It wasn't in her nature. The truth was that she was Twilight Sparkle, and that this was a problem, and she had to solve it. It was who she was. She had to know whether it was her, or everyone else, or nothing at all. Even if part of her was screaming that it would cost her ponies she had come to love.

And in spite of everything she did love Rarity. Especially when Rarity saw Twilight's tears, and her expression gave way to genuine concern. When she abandoned her tactical distance and asked Twilight, voice flushed with affection once again, why she was crying. Twilight was so scared of losing them all, more than she was scared of being insane. Surely someone with a voice like that, maternal in its tenderness, and eyes that conveyed such depth of care couldn't be capable of hating for just misguided attempts to make this town a home? Surely the stakes couldn't be as high as all that? Surely this was a teething issue, not one of an outsider versus insider caste?

Twilight dabbed her eyes and rose above it as best she could. Scholars of her calibre divorced themselves of preconception, and didn't let silly emotions like the bleeding and screaming of her heart get in the way of finding out the truth. Because Twilight knew she couldn't stop herself anymore than she could stop breathing.

"Rarity, what happened to Night Owl?"

As Twilight had sadly come to expect, Rarity's expression of care did indeed vanish. But instead of her signature intimidating calm, Rarity simply looked mildly taken aback. Whatever dancers remained, and had heard, looked at Rarity instead of Twilight. Their glances didn't linger either, these were split second looks of confusion. If Twilight hadn't been expecting them to react she probably wouldn't have noticed at all.

She imagined Rarity had forgotten. Of all their interactions recently it must have seemed totally insignificant. But it always came back to Twilight, one way or another.

"Wow that's really fascinating Rarity! So... I never heard of the pony who had the library before. What happened to Night Owl then?"

"Twilight dear, I feel you're reaching a little for things to talk about."

Maybe it wasn't important at all? Ponies moved jobs and towns everyday. The overwhelming likelihood was that she had just moved on naturally and Twilight had filled that void. But then, why not just say that? Was it really reaching to be interested in one's predecessor? Could it in fact be that the poor mare was so unable to live in a town that could never be hers, and friends that would never open up, that she was as good as chased out? Was she literally chased out? Did she find out some things she shouldn't have?

Was that going to happen to Twilight?

"That's little out of the blue darling, why do you ask?" Rarity asked, seeming genuinely baffled for the first time in essentially ever.

"Well," Twilight chewed over some words, concocting a verbal formality to accompany the look she was giving Rarity. You know why I'm asking. "I've heard ponies talk about her, it seems like ponies liked her a lot. I was just interested in where she ended up going."

"I... I confess I don't know dear. Night Owl was a dear sweet thing, but one day she just left without really telling any of us why. It was quite odd," the seamstress replied, drawing agreeing nods from both Applejack and Rainbow.

Huh, that was a lot easier than expected.

The most unexpected thing though was Rarity's eyes. They flitted between Applejack and Rainbow as the conversation evolved, rather than fixing on Twilight. The seamstress, over the last few days, had shown herself to be someone who liked secrecy, but only overt secrecy. How did the saying go? 'It's not the perfect crime unless you get the infamy as well'.

Rarity seemed to like holding an unknown hand, but she wanted her opponent to know she'd stacked the deck. This, however, didn't fit into the modus operandi. Now she just seemed genuinely lost as to why Night Owl had left, apparently in a hurry. To think there was something that happened in this town that Rarity didn't know about. It might have been the strangest thing that Twilight had seen yet.

"I mean the library obviously isn't my scene but she seemed nice," Rainbow began, pausing to take a swig of her drink, "I didn't find out she'd gone until a week later when Cloudchaser told me. It was weird."

"Some ponies even got the idea the librarian position was 'cursed', dearie, if you could imagine such a thing. If you've noticed ponies..." Rarity said, twirling her hoof idly while searching for the words to continue, "Sort of staring, that might be why. It's pure nonsense of course, but pure nonsense a fair few believe."

No.

"Hahaha what Rarity? Are you telling me you don't believe in 'The Curse of Golden Oaks'?!" Rainbow laughed, adding in a ghostly moan and twiddling of her hooves for good measure.

"Honestly darling you're too much sometimes," Rarity giggled.

No, that could not be it

The glances, the stares, the sting of constantly being made to feel like an outsider. It could not be due to something as stupid as ponies believing the library was cursed. But wouldn't it make sense?

Rarity was holding some townspeople-only party and they didn't want the cursed librarian spoiling the fun. She was annoyed earlier because you trampled her bushes, not because you'd uncovered some grand secret. Why would Cheerilee want to take a class of foals to the haunted library? And the staring... How sickeningly fitting, though, that in this of all places, the grand secret turned out to be nothing.

She really didn't get it. Did they really think they were that stupid? It had to be another game, but Rarity always, always let you know she was playing. Even if it made perfect sense, even if the more sinister elements she had seen could be explained away by the gradual loss of her mind, it couldn't be that. No. It fit too neatly. It was too cut and dry. She wasn't insane. She wasn't that insane.

They're lying to you. They're lying.

"Didn't sit right with me, gotta say," Applejack grumbled, "If you're leaving your home, you should at least let folk know."

"Maybe it wasn't." Twilight mumbled,

"Damn girl I've heard louder field-mice, what you say there?" Applejack laughed.

"Maybe it wasn't her home," Twilight repeated, "Plenty of ponies live here Applejack, doesn't mean Ponyville feels like home to all of them."

Applejack looked genuinely taken aback, and was clearly struggling to respond. But whatever burst of apprehensive determination had given Twilight the strength to ask about Night Owl had clearly been acute, not chronic. She was tired of verbal sparring for one night. She was tired of a lot of things actually. So she finished her drink, waved the empty glass for emphasis and walked off to the bar, leaving a spluttering Applejack behind her.

"Okay there, you're alright sugarcube." Applejack said gently while helping Twilight while they left the club. Twilight grit her teeth, the gesture was unneeded and quite frankly insulting. She had not had that much to drink and was perfectly capable of walking unaided.

"Okay girls, I'll get this one home." Applejack called the others while Twilight fumed. She did not need someone to patronisingly speak for her when she could do so for herself. She would have told Applejack as much were it not for Rarity's interjection.

"Why that doesn't make any sense dearie, Sweet Apple Acres isn't even in the same direction as Golden Oaks. If you'd like to act the gentlemare, however, I certainly wouldn't pass up an escort. There's something I need to talk to you about anyway." she trilled with a flutter of eyelashes.

"Well... I'd feel mighty more comfortable if Twi' got home-"

"And I'm sure Rainbow and Twilight are more than capable of getting to their respective homes unscathed. This is Ponyville Applejack, what are you expecting to happen?" And for the briefest second, the mask seemed to slip and Twilight saw terrifying, aggressive mania in Rarity's smile. Of course, though, it was so quick as to have never happened at all. Maybe it was the curse of the library getting to the seamstress. Twilight would have spat had she been alone.

Applejack's shoulders slumped. She let go and started to trudge after Rarity, who of course hadn't waited before setting off. Both mares called their farewells as they took off down the street. Twilight watched them go, Rarity exuding confidence even at this distance, even with her back to Twilight. And all the while, the unicorn bit her tongue as she prayed that something, anything would happen.

Burst into sprints, scream at one another, scrawl that awful symbol on a nearby wall, do something other than walk leisurely into the night, validate me.

But this was Ponyville, and so they didn't.

"Uhm... Twilight? Do you wanna, I don't know, go home?" Dash's raspy voice startled her enough to steal her glance away from Rarity and Applejack. When Twilight turned back she'd missed the moment the night swallowed them in earnest, the street was empty. If only she had a genuine excuse for her disappointment, if only she didn't know with crushing certainty she hadn't missed anything of consequence.

"Sure, let's go."

The walk was a lot shorter than it would have been if Twilight had been left to navigate the streets solo. She still couldn't quite reason the spatial madness that was this town's planning. But she was new, and Rainbow had been here for at least six years, if not more.

"Rainbow, how long have you lived in Ponyville exactly?"

"Coming up on six years now," she replied, "I moved here with Fluttershy after we finished school. We weren't big on the idea of doing the whole long-distance thing and she had been dreaming of moving here ever since she got her cutie mark."

"Oh that explains a lot," Twilight preempted Rainbow's question as she continued, "I saw a picture of you two in the bathroom, it looked like you were pretty close. So how long have you two been together?"

"Not for a long time now," Rainbow replied, but Twilight was relieved to hear she was laughing, "We've stayed great friends but we didn't even last a year after moving here. We were eighteen, no one realises just how bad they are for each other at that age. It's all deep love and destiny and then you live together and realise you've not got even a tenth of the romantic compatibility you thought you did."

"So... why are you still here?" Twilight asked, quickly clarifying when Rainbow abruptly looked at her, "Don't get me wrong, I don't want you to go anywhere it's just, if you moved here to be with Fluttershy, and aren't 'with her' anymore, what made you stay?"

"I... uh. Well... it's a nice town, isn't it?"

Really?

"Yeah... I'm really liking it here too! It's just, thrill-seeker like you. I didn't think somewhere so quiet was your scene?"

"That's me," Rainbow muttered, eyes forward, "Full of surprises."

They were very close to the library now, and what remained of the walk was done in silence. When they arrived, Twilight half expected Rainbow to leave as fast as she could. Instead, the pegasus turned and lingered at her door.

"So," she said with an awkward smile, "Back to the cursed library?"

"Haha yeah, at least there's no one out here to stare at me!" Twilight laughed. It wasn't genuine, and she was pretty certain Rainbow knew that.

"Good night Twi'," Dash said, and prepped her wings for a takeoff.

"Except," Twilight called out, making Rainbow pause, "...they stare a lot Rainbow, do you think that's because of this rumour?"

Just be honest with me, please.

"Well yeah... what else could-"

"And they stare all at once, all together. They stop talking and they stare when I say something out of turn, or ask certain questions. And wouldn't it be great if it was because of some silly myth about Night Owl? Because then I'd know, and I wouldn't have to worry about whether it's just me, or whether it's all of them. And sometimes it feels like I'm going mad because I'm so, so sure it all can't be just some silly story but nothing ever happens here, nothing ever changes... So, do you think it's because of this rumour?" Twilight babbled, breath running low by the end.

Rainbow simply looked at her for a while, and Twilight honestly didn't know what she wanted her to say. Would she rather be right, and know that either her new home was actively hiding something or she was incompatible outside of Canterlot? Or wrong, and the whole thing attributed to outlandish superstition exacerbated by her loss of the mind that had always set her apart? And Twilight hated being wrong, but she hated the stares.

"I still care a lot about Fluttershy. Not romantically, but she's my oldest friend and sometimes she needs someone to look after her. When she's scared, I can be there to help her. And for that, I'd stay somewhere that isn't 'my scene', or somewhere that doesn't feel like it's home... or somewhere that won't let you feel like you're home. Because I can deal with it, and she can't."

"But what-"

"Of course it's just because of the rumour Twilight. Isn't it all so obvious?" Dash sighed, and took off before Twilight could ask her more.

Twilight sat on the grass, not wanting to head inside just yet. She followed Rainbow's shape and, just like Applejack and Rarity, she disappeared without ceremony. The gulf between Golden Oaks and the cottages felt wider than ever tonight, and it was still so hot. She didn't cry, she'd done that far too much recently. But Twilight knew that whatever had happened to Night Owl, the town was right about one thing.

She was cursed.

A noise stirred her, and she turned to see a lone figure, several metres away. A light blue unicorn from what Twilight could see. She didn't look very old, and Twilight faintly recognised her. In fact, she clearly recognised her. The last time Twilight had seen her was when she had stared, petrified, over a pub full of calm, normal looking patrons. A fear Twilight had experienced herself so many times.

And then, Twilight had gotten so caught up in her pathetic little sleuthing adventure she'd forgotten to ever clarify whether this defenceless teenager was okay. Even after what had happened at lunch earlier. Even tonight, she'd asked about a librarian she'd never met, and hadn't spared a thought for the living, breathing pony she saw until right now.

"Snowdrop!" Twilight called out to her, sloppily getting to her hooves. The figure turned and the two locked eyes, then Snowdrop smiled. It was really her, she was unhurt, happy and looked completely normal. Though Twilight didn't feel she deserved to feel relieved when she'd never had the basic decency to spare a thought the teenager's way, Twilight felt relieved all the same.

"Hey Twilight!" Snowdrop chirped, "Guess who had their first big night out?!"

It wasn't hard to guess. The teenager was absolutely caked in makeup, and it wasn't applied very well. She began to launch into a diatribe about the under 18's night she'd been to at The Message In The Bottle, a truly awful little club not far from here. The idea of a bunch of children gathering to drink mocktails and revel in adolescent drama would have made Twilight cringe if she hadn't internally chided herself. She listened as patiently as she could while waiting for the moment to interject.

"Hey Snowdrop," she managed to get in, and Snowdrop didn't seem offended at the interruption, "I'm sorry about the other night, at The Royal Cross. I should have stayed. I shouldn't have left you there."

For a moment the world stood still. Snowdrop looked uncharacteristically thoughtful, and Twilight tried to push down her shameful desire for the girl to say something had happened. That she had been threatened or beaten. She had precious little avenues of vindication left, but even she wouldn't let herself stoop to wish harm on someone so young. The moment didn't last long at all, though, and Snowdrop let out a snorting laugh.

"Geez Twilight, thanks but I'm a big girl, I can handle being left alone!"

"But... but you looked so frightened."

"Yeah, I was nervous! I was looking after the whole pub!" She laughed, and it was Twilight's laugh. The laugh of someone convincing them-self it was funny, "And my dad can be such a hard-case, getting mad at me for not doing things right! But, I'd never looked after the whole pub before, and I was nervous because it's such a big responsibility. Especially if someone comes in who's never been to the pub before! How are you supposed to handle that, how would it be my fault if I did something wrong?!"

What had started as dismissive reply to Twilight's concern had become something else entirely by the end. Snowdrop was smiling, but it looked like she may cry at any moment. Twilight felt like she could cry with her.

"I think you shouldn't listen to them Snowdrop. I think you did a wonderful job looking after the whole pub." Twilight said as kindly as she could. Snowdrop smiled gratefully. Her lip wobbled for a second, and her next train of thought seemed to have a couple of false starts before she spoke up.

"Hey Twilight, when you were in the city growing up, did you ever meet anyone from towns like here?"

The correct answer would have been that she had never met anyone from town like here before she moved. But Snowdrop was a young girl and something was wrong. And not everything had to be deeper than just trying to make someone feel better.

"Yeah Snowdrop, I met plenty."

"Well, it's getting pretty late! I should head back home," she began, voice tinged with a worry that should have been superfluous under different circumstances.

"Sure, sure. Just, before you go, have you ever heard about Night Owl's curse. You know, the one ponies supposedly think effects the librarians here."

"Cursed library?" Snowdrop chirped.

"No Snowdrop, you have, haven't you? Everyone in Ponyville has." Twilight urged, forcing the teenager to understand without explaining. Of course she'd get it, she had to get it.

Let me help you.

"Oh... Oh maybe it's something my dad hasn't told me about! I don't think he'd want to scare me with anything like that! Better watch out Twilight! Going back to the cursed library!" She replied, and Twilight let out a tiny sigh of relief.

"I will, safe trip back Snowdrop."

Of course everyone in Ponyville had heard of the curse. Rarity had said it for all to hear tonight. Nothing was solved, everything was still as confusing as ever. But after her talk with Snowdrop which in all her time in Ponyville seemed like the most honest she'd had, things felt a little better. Even though neither had said anything, they'd said a lot. Maybe somethings did eventually change here. Even though the cards were stacked against her, maybe she wouldn't end up like Rainbow or Night Owl.

Twilight turned back to Golden Oaks, the cursed librarian heading to bed at last. And as she walked back she faintly remembered how she had been wrong when she was 14. Not about the nasty comments, but about the girls themselves. They hadn't been older than Twilight. They'd been the exact same age.

Islands

Twilight opened her eyes. It was eight o'clock in the morning.

She peeled her duvet off her damp coat. Ponyville was currently in the throes of a particularly intense and annoying heatwave. She ran a hoof down her tummy and cringed at the feeling of moisture. Back in Canterlot, her tower had enchantments woven into the stone which kept the ambient temperature in perpetual perfection.

Golden Oaks didn't have that.

"Spike," she began, rolling out of the sodden bedclothes and ambling to his basket, "Come on, busy day ahead of us,"

"Hmmm... no." He muttered in retort, pulling his blanket over his head. She looked over to the window. It was wide open to compensate for the heat, yet she heard absolutely nothing from outside. All she could see was the blue and white of cloud-speckled sky. She could be in the middle of the sea and the experience wouldn't have changed.

Maybe Spike was right about that whole 'busy day' thing. Yet, she persevered regardless.

"Come on Spike, ponies are depending on us. We're not in Canterlot anymore."

LOCAL

A Suburban Horror

Once Twilight had actually managed to get Spike up, it had been off to the shower to cleanse her coat of last night's perspiration. After she was done, they'd both enjoyed some cereal. High in fibre at Twilight's insistence, and higher in sugar at Spike's. She had planned out her study schedule for the whole week, as usual, so once their meal was finished the unicorn settled in for another morning's reading and note-making while Spike sorted out the library. As usual.

They settled into their customary pleasant rhythm. This library, however, was so much smaller than her old tower in the castle, and it wasn't long before Spike was done and set to lazing with one of those comics he was so fond of. The clock ticked patiently on the wall. Why the previous librarians, whomever they had been, had bought a ticking clock was truly beyond her.

In their first week here, she tried to buy them another one only to find there wasn't a single shop in town which stocked them. So it was now a choice between going further afield or ordering one in the post.

Twilight leant her head on her hoof, took her eyes off the sentence she'd been rereading for essentially the whole morning and stared at the door for a spell.

Applejack had told her a short while back that Cheerilee had set a class project on the town's local history. The foals were to trawl newspaper records and write an essay on a significant town event. Twilight knew that the only place in town that would stock such records would be a library. She also knew that Golden Oaks was the best stocked and largest library in the whole town, but not the only one. There was a much smaller, much less pleasant facility across town. Finally, she knew she had not seen a single foal enter Golden Oaks in at least two months.

Twilight estimated, from the amount of ticks she heard while waiting to see if anyone would actually come and visit, that she stared at the door for a good ten minutes.

Maybe she'd buy a clock the next time she visited her parents in Canterlot.

"Spike," Twilight began, not taking her eyes off the door, "Do you like it here?"

"It's a darn sight easier to clean than the tower so I'm pretty happy," he laughed.

She waited a couple of moments before realising that if she wanted this to go further, she was going to have to do the legwork.

"That's nice but I meant here. As in Ponyville."

"Are you happy here Twilight?" he sighed, eyes pointedly still fixed on his comic.

"What makes you say that?"

"Twilight, most of the time I tell you I'm hungry by just saying the word 'food'. We both know I'm hardly the most subtle creature around so if I've not said that I'm unhappy here then I'm clearly not unhappy. So, once again, are you happy here?"

"You know," Twilight chuckled while setting her book down, "Growing up in libraries has made you annoyingly smart."

"Well I learned from the best," he replied, his silence a clear prompt for her to carry on. She took a deep breath

"The other day, when I went to get us some fairy cakes from Sugarcube corner, I walked in and some of the ponies in there stared at me," her words hung awkwardly for a spell. Spike's concentration never left his comic.

"...So?" he finally relented.

"So... it was weird!" she exclaimed, "I don't mean a couple of ponies happened to look in my direction, I mean I saw two different couples stop their conversation and all make unbroken eye contact with me. It was like they were sizing me up. I didn't like it."

"Twilight, we've only been here a few months and the day we arrived a vengeful night god tried to overthrow our government, you can't be surprised that some of the ponies here might find you a bit of a novelty still."

"This would have never happened back in Canterlot!" Twilight retorted, pushing down a sting of annoyance at the way Spike continued to read his comic, "And furthermore, I could take a study break, go into town and grab lunch at a different place every day for a year and would still have a million more places to try! Here it's like ten places."

"Twilight, I've lived with you from the first day you set hoof in Celestia's academy and can count on one hand the amount of times you 'took a study break'."

"Well okay maybe that was an exaggeration Spike. Don't get me wrong, I'm loving it here but it's just... different. I miss the action."

And finally Spike scoffed.

"I'm sorry," Twilight bristled, "Do you think I'm being ridiculous?"

"Twilight, you haven't changed your schedule one bit since coming to Ponyville. You get up, study, eat lunch, lunch that is made by me in this library and not some hidden gem of an independent street food place might I add, and then get back to studying. That right there shows that this isn't about 'missing the action', so what's it actually about?"

"Last time we went out, Applejack told me that Cheerilee had set a class project on the town's local history." Twilight began, "The foals have to trawl newspaper records and write an essay on a significant town event. And considering libraries are the only place they're gonna find all those old newspapers I was really excited! It seemed like a great chance to get the kids interested in history and to learn a few things about our new home myself... how many foals have you seen here in the last few weeks Spike?"

He paused for a moment, eyes swivelled up to the ceiling and mouthing silent calculations. Twilight didn't wait for him to finish.

"It was one, and she ran off when I tried to talk to her. Golden Oaks is the best stocked and largest library in the whole town, but it turns out we're not the only one. There's a much smaller, much less pleasant facility across town. I went there you know? Far be it from me to judge but the phrase 'dusty, unkempt hellhole' sprang instantly to mind. And wouldn't you know, Cheerilee was there with her whole class. It's double the distance to that library from the school than it is to this one. They actually went out of their way to avoid me."

And Spike finally put his comic down. He turned and looked at her with genuine sympathy. She hadn't actually told anyone this yet.

"Twilight... we don't know it was you-"

"Spike, they clearly didn't do it to avoid the library and I know for a fact we have over quadruple the size of archive that the other library does. Doesn't leave us many variables does it?" she spat.

"Why would they possibly be avoiding you? They don't even know you properly!"

"Exactly!" she yelled, "That is exactly the problem, they don't know me at all and they're never going to! The princess sent me here to learn more about friendship, but I think this town is making it harder!"

"How could that possibly be the case?" the dragon scoffed, again. The unicorn scrunched her face up in a rage that she knew, even then, was childish. Still there was something about having her mind stripped so utterly bare that made her feel five years old again. She pulled her book up and read the offending passage aloud.

"'In early stages of friendship activity takes precedence over company since company's importance is cultivated by the very friend-bonding facilitated by activity. To wit, you could have fun with most anyone skydiving or going to an exciting concert, and you could have fun with your closest friends doing most anything. It is for this reason that early stages of friendship involve much more regimented planning of specific activities, which allow for ballast to natural conversational and bonding lulls, compared to the more organic and free-flowing nature of close friendship.' Do you get it now Spike?"

It was good that Spike was now giving Twilight his full attention. It was likely not very good that he stared at Twilight like she had sprouted a second head.

"The point being," she sighed, "In Canterlot I had ponies who I had known for years. But here, I'm only just getting to know everyone, and I'm not going to make life-long friends by grabbing lunch and occasionally heading to the local pub!"

"Twilight, I know this is a new concept to you, but this isn't something you can tackle like a scholar. I've been out to the exact same arcade with Pinkie and Rainbow ten times in the last two weeks and we're getting on great! You don't need to go skydiving with someone to get to know them."

"But the social ballast-"

"Back in Canterlot you spent so much time with your books that you never got to know anyone very well, but you had a million and one rock climbing walls or paintballing arenas to go to so it didn't matter. But here, you've got ponies who really want to get to know the real you. Sure it's going to take a while, but the girls are really popular here in Ponyville. As you get to know them better everyone else will fall into place! So it might be a bit awkward at the start, and there might be a few times that you don't have much to say, but that's normal and it'll give you something a hundred times better than what you had in Canterlot?"

Twilight grumbled something unfavourable, slumped her head onto the desk and stuck her nose back into her book. The pages smushed against her snout making it impossible for her to actually read any of the words. She heard Spike getting up before he gently prized the book from her hooves. Feeling again very childish, she refused to make eye contact. She didn't like feeling like Spike was parenting her, that wasn't the way this was supposed to work.

And yet...

"Spike, I don't fit in here and it's getting harder to pretend I do. I feel... like I'm intruding. Everyone knows everyone and no-one keeps their door unlocked and isn't it all great how small-towney everything is?! Well I'm not from a small town, and half the ponies in this town have already decided they don't like me because of it! I mean, with the girls, we get to go off on all these adventures and I get closer to them through that. But even that isn't enough, so what hope is there with everyone else? How am I supposed to convince them I'm someone worth knowing when they clearly already want me out?"

"Twilight, a crisis is not going to come along everytime you want to get to know ponies better. No one wants to get rid of you! It's a great town, ponies here are just a little set in their ways." Spike scolded, he marched around her desk, putting away her books and quills, while she pathetically protested, "Now, Princess Celestia sent you here to experience friendship and that's just what you need to do. Go do something low-key and relaxing with one of your friends, get out of your head and leave me to read my comic!"

"So I go to Sugarcube corner to find Pinkie or Rainbow and more ponies literally stop their conversations to stare at me?" she levitated one of her books out of his grasp and began to read out loud again, "'Newcomers in existing social paradigms need to exercise high caution about forcing their way into said paradigms when those already within may deem it hostile. For many, tradition and routine are important in their relationships and newcomers attempting their way in can come off rude and only serve to increase their outsider status'. So, according to High Noon, I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't!"

"So don't go to Sugarcube Corner, you have more friends than just Pinkie and Rainbow. And High Noon never lived in Ponyville, they were from Canterlot." Spike growled through clenched teeth, his body conveying clear and growing irritation.

"Applejack and Fluttershy are going to be working right now, they always need notice to hang out." Twilight huffed.

"Well how about Rarity?"

How about Rarity indeed? Of all the friends she'd made in Ponyville, Rarity was the one Twilight was the least sure of. It wasn't that Twilight didn't like her. Quite the opposite in fact, she was possibly the pony Twilight got on best with here. She was smart, insightful and witty enough to have made Twilight actually fall out of her chair laughing one time. But she was several years older than Twilight, she ran her own business and was so much more confident than the bookish unicorn.

Added to all that, every-time they all went out Rarity watched everyone with a gaze that sometimes made Twilight... uncomfortable. Totally indecipherable, her face a mask, but the eyes were so analytical. It made Twilight feel naked, small and unwelcome. It was the feeling she got when all the locals stared and whispered, but multiplied a hundred-fold. Honestly, with all that, it was hard to not feel a little intimidated.

"I don't know if Rarity likes me very much Spike," she muttered.

"Twilight, Rarity loves you. She's always asking after you whenever I go round. 'Oh Spikey darling, you must tell Twilight about this book, you must tell her about our next get together, you must tell her to come for tea whenever she likes, she's such a dearest dearie darling'," he managed to mimic the seamstress' refined accent pretty well, enough to finally get Twilight to chuckle.

"Now, you're never gonna fit in if you've already convinced yourself you never will. Get out there in that town and go spend some time with Rarity. You might find out a lot about both of them." Spike said, all but shoving her out of the library, "And if you do go to Sugarcube Corner feel free to grab some triple chocolate muffins."

The unicorn only just managed to levitate her saddlebags out with her before Spike shut the door. She turned and took in the town. The heat made the air shimmer and obscured the endless cottages. They could have gone on forever. Rows and rows of identical dwellings, the distance between them and Golden Oaks felt insurmountable for a second. She felt so small again.

In fact, Twilight was just about to blow the whole thing off when a couple of ponies waved at her. They didn't need to, but still they went out of their way to be friendly. It was a life preserver in a vast ocean. Small, but maybe enough, She took a resolute breath, crossed the grass expanse to the cottages and was at once swallowed into the folds of the town.

The calligraphy on the sign was so fancy that it felt like someone was actually singing at Twilight.

'Back later!'

So much for getting to know Rarity on a deeper level then. She supposed she could just wait until she returned, but she already had gotten the impression the older unicorn thought her a little young and naive. Sitting around like a lost dog outside Rarity's shop was unlikely to help her shift the image.

The sun bore down on her while she planned her next move. There was something she loved about Carousel Boutique, though it was hard to accurately place. It was slightly removed from the mainland of the cottages in the middle of a fetching pasture of grass, just like Golden Oaks. It also stuck out like no-one's business. Everything from its singular decor to the circular floorplan made it markedly different to the mainland of cottages. It was like an island. It's refinement and the pony inside creating a tiny slice of Canterlot out in this ocean.

Just like Golden Oaks.

Twilight suddenly wanted to speak to Rarity, she really, really wanted to speak to Rarity. She reached out to the piece of paper in the misguided hope that she could maybe glean more information than the two words if she physically interacted with it. And somehow, against all hope, it unfolded. In her haste, Rarity had obviously stuck the paper a little too harshly, obscuring the second half of the message.

'Gone fabric shopping.

Twilight turned from Rarity's island and looked back towards the mainland. There was no-one around and the metropolis stole any noise before it reached her, casting a forceful silence. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. Twilight didn't test the waters this time. Instead she waded directly in, cutting across the grass in the direction of the markets.

Ponyville's markets were its high watermark in energy, which was in of itself unfortunate. This was not some mysterious eastern bazaar, filled with verbose merchants selling exotic goods. This was a quiet, small town affair filled with window-shopping octogenarians. Everything in Ponyville was a quiet small town affair after all, but a quiet small town affair Twilight was on the other side of. Vendors chatted with their locals as she scanned the various stalls. Every once in a while, one would look up at her and their gaze would linger. Sometimes they smiled, often they didn't.

Twilight looked harder for Rarity.

She knew the unicorn was bound to be by the fabric stall, there was only the slight issue of Twilight not knowing who ran said stall or where it was. She felt herself going in increasingly tiresome circles as she passed the same vendor three times within a quarter of an hour. They watched her go by every single time.

Eventually, she found herself at the market's centrepiece. The large statue of Ponyville's founder smiled blankly down at her. The mare was up on her hindlegs and stood alone, surrounded by water on a circular plinth. Twilight let her hoof drag across the water's surface. Her tail beat a nervous rhythm on the ground and her heart ached for the chance to know what that statue was thinking. Islands were lonely places. The founder smiled, and Twilight knew she was lying. She was pretending for everyone else.

Once she was able to tear her eyes away, Twilight spotted some graffiti on the side of the fountain's rim. Street art is a great way to get insight into local culture, especially facets which may crop up in conversation less - From City to Hamlet and Back Again by Jet Stream

Twilight took a closer look. Despite expecting the tag of a gang formed by bored, middle class teenagers, what Twilight found nearly beggared belief. The lines were bleach white and contorted into... something?

It was hard to tell, it looked like someone had set themselves the challenge of drawing a shape that could never exist in their reality and actually succeeded. Angles and edges bisected each other haphazardly, yet seemingly never without purpose. Nothing just ended, it always was in service of the wider polygonal chaos. Trying to trace it was nigh-impossible, it was like trying to stare at an eye floater. How on earth could it have been stationary? What did it mean?

"Twilight!" the unicorn's eyes snapped from the headache-inducing drawing and over to where her name was being shouted. Rarity was making her way over to her current location, waving her hoof and smiling widely. The way she acted was as if she was having difficulty getting Twilight to spot her, as if her extravagant summer hat and saddlebags filled with rolls of colourful fabric didn't already single her out as the most striking thing at the market.

"Hi Rarity! I..."

In friendships both fledgling and old, one should remember that honesty is not always the best policy, a harmless white lie in service of protecting someone or avoiding truly needless bad feeling does not have to be avoided - Intricacies in Equine Relationships by High Noon

"What a coincidence to see you here!" Twilight said jovially, "Let me help you with some of your bags,"

"Oh you're such a sweetheart," Rarity cooed while Twilight unburdened her friend of a couple of rolls, "What brings you to the market then dear?"

"I... I erm... just book shopping?"

"Oh is there a book stall now? That must be new." Rarity replied, leading a few seconds of silence while Twilight tried to formulate something to say.

"Oh Rarity," called out a nearby earth pony mare. She had a light beige coat with a curly blue and pink mane, "Thanks again for helping me organise that confectionery display, I don't think I've ever sold that many sweets in one day!"

"You're very welcome darling, thank you for making such lovely material for me to work with!"

Twilight awkwardly watched the two of them chatting, feeling acutely like she was intruding again. They interacted so effortlessly, like they'd known each other for a lifetime. Twilight supposed they probably had.

"Oh where are my manners? Bon Bon, this is Twilight Sparkle." Twilight came back to reality when she heard her name mentioned and saw that she had become the focal point of the conversation.

"Nice to meet you. Are you taking over from Night Owl? Make sure to watch out for all the old decorations!" Bon Bon laughed.

"I uhm... Night Owl?" Twilight replied, already uncomfortable.

"She's our old librarian dear, big fan of getting the library trussed up like no-one's business on Nightmare Night." Rarity explained.

"Oh! Yeah I guess I am then!" she replied brightly. Too brightly in fact. Noticeably overcompensating by her own estimation.

"Well I hope you're liking it here," Bon Bon said and immediately turned back to Rarity, "Does she..."

"She's new in town darling, all the way from Canterlot."

"Oh okay. Sorry."

Twilight watched them continue. Stuck between relief that she was no longer forced to display her ignorance of local trivia and irritation at being spoken about like an object. As the two of them laughed at another joke Twilight didn't understand, she began to lament the fact that she couldn't just slink away unnoticed now she had half of Rarity's shopping.

"Well I'm going to get off, have a good day! Nice to meet you Night Light!" Bon Bon called over her shoulder as she took off back into the market.

"Don't bother dearie," Rarity whispered to Twilight before she could call out in correction, "Appropriately sweet that one, but a mind like a sieve. Now, how about you and I go and get some lunch? My treat!"

"Oh you don't have to-"

"Nonsense dearie," Rarity trilled, already starting off from the fountain, "It's the least I can do considering you listened to me and Bon Bon for so long, I don't know where my manners have gone this afternoon!"

And she was off, all the while exuding her trademark effortless confidence. She never looked back, as if it didn't occur to her for a second that the younger unicorn wouldn't take her up on the offer and follow. A stubborn, childish part of Twilight wanted to insist she had an engagement she couldn't miss. 'Canterlot Business', she could have said. Why not steer into the skid at this point? But her hooves were already moving. Anyone could say what they wanted about Rarity's innate self-assurance, but they couldn't say that it didn't work.

Night Owl's successor followed like the lost dog she so desperately wanted not to be. She caught up to her new friend and the two fell into pleasantly superficial small-talk. Twilight didn't even take notice of the stall owners as their eyes traced her path from the fountain, and all the way out of Ponyville's heart.

"Sunny Pastures Cafe?" Twilight said, doing a wonderfully poor job of disguising how underwhelmed she was. The cafe was certainly a quaint and charming place, and their food was to die for. None of this was the issue. The issue was that Twilight had eaten there sixteen times in her three months in Ponyville.

"Oh yes darling! It's my favourite place in the whole wide world! It's the only food I ever eat in fact, thank our God they do takeaway!" Rarity babbled with wide-eyed excitement. Twilight stared back and hoped she did a better job at disguising her horror this time. Nothing happened for a couple of seconds' worth of uncomfortable eye-contact until Rarity snorted with laughter.

"Joking dear, but they do do a very fetching black forest gateau in my favourite flavour... 'forbidden by my diet'."

Twilight giggled. It hadn't occurred to her until now that this was the first time she and Rarity had spent any serious time alone with one another, provided the whole 'accosted for a makeover the first time they ever met' didn't count. It was nice. She was remembering all the reasons she liked the seamstress, and thankfully none of Rarity's more... intense qualities had come out today. They found a table and Twilight pretended to read her menu until one of the waiting staff came to take their orders.

"Hello there Snowdrop! How are you doing today?" Rarity greeted the light blue unicorn mare fondly, like she seemed to greet everyone in Ponyville.

"Not bad Rarity! Who's this?" She replied. Her braces added a mote of adolescent sibilance to every syllable, and the way she waggled her eyebrows made her already obvious implication all the more blatant. How old was she? Seventeen? Less than that? It made Twilight uncomfortable.

"I should be so lucky dear," Rarity replied confidently, even finding the time to shoot a reassuring wink in Twilight's direction, "Twilight here is just a friend. I think we're ready to order."

"Sure! What will it be?"

"I'll go for the posy vinaigrette salad and Twilight here will have the daffodil sandwich." said Rarity.

"Great choice, what to drink?"

"A diet coke for my friend, and I'll have... oh hay, let's splash out. Two diet colas and two mimosas please dear."

"I like your style," Snowdrop replied giddily, despite probably never having touched a single alcoholic drink in her life, "I'll have your drinks right out."

She left them to go and fetch the beverages while Twilight tried to figure out whether she should be insulted or not.

Early on in a friendship, one should not be afraid to start as they mean to go on. If one friend oversteps a boundary, setting the record straight allows for an opportunity to put in place valuable precedence for the relationship going forward. Crucially, though, it also gives the aggrieved party a chance to demonstrate themselves as confident, fair and compassionate in their response - Friendship as Art and Science by Gold Koi

"Rarity, I appreciate the lunch, but in the future I'd prefer to order for my-" Before she could finish, a masterfully groomed forehoof was placed gently on her lips.

"If you can tell me now, with total honesty, that you were going to order something else than any dress in my shop is yours free of charge," With that, Rarity withdrew her hoof and waited. Her expression was playful and subtly smug.

"I uh... Oh fine, that was exactly what I was going to get. How did you know?"

"Well darling, many ways," Rarity paused to thank Snowdrop as she returned with their drinks, "Maybe it's my eerie powers of telepathy, though the smart bet would be on the fact that you've ordered the same thing every time we've come here."

"Okay fair's fair. It's a shame though, a lot of those dresses are really beautiful," she relented with a chuckle. This was fine.

Maybe you don't have to take everything so seriously?

"Well darling I'm a gracious winner, come by soon and you can take a dress anyway." Rarity said breezily.

"Rarity I couldn't possibly-"

"Twilight I insist. It's pretty selfish anyway, nothing makes me happier than giving one of my friends a lovely ensemble."

"Do you ever charge anyone full price Rarity?" Twilight playfully scolded.

"Only ponies I don't like darling," the seamstress replied, her voice a theatrically conspiratorial whisper. The two of them laughed.

Rarity grabbed her pop and Twilight did the same. Once each had taken a healthy sip, they set them down and Rarity didn't say anything. She allowed her eyes to wander around the outdoor seating area, smiling at anyone who's eye she managed to catch. Once she was done her gaze came to rest on Twilight. Rarity's eyes were patient and contented, but even Twilight could see the unmistakable twinge of expectancy. She had carried all their conversations so far that day, and now it was Twilight's turn. The only problem was that Twilight realised despondently that she had nothing to say.

Of course that wasn't strictly accurate. Twilight did have insultingly cliched bits of dross like talking about the weather or asking how work was going. What she didn't have was anything of substance. She took another sip of the pop. It was too cold and the bubbles stung her mouth a little, but still it gave her a few more seconds of permissible silence. She looked around their seating area herself. The tables were full of ponies chatting happily. How she envied them right now.

On the stone wall surrounding garden, Twilight spotted an irregularity. It was the same graffiti from before. Well, that was to say it was the same strange shape. It spoke to its sporadic, chaotic form that it looked completely different this time around. But it was the same, exactly the same. Twilight just knew it. Her eyes slipped from the drawing and to the table situated nearest to it. All around the garden ponies chatted happily, but not that one.

That one had three customers, two pegasi, red and white, and a grey earth pony, and they were all looking back at her. Of course it must have looked like she was staring at them when she was taking stock of the graffiti, that was why they must have been looking over at her. But they didn't stop. No-one stopped in fact. Twilight looked at each of them in turn, and didn't know why her stomach started to drop when the beginnings of smiles began to crawl onto their faces-

"Rarity!" Twilight barked abruptly, "Your windows in Carousel Boutique, on the ground floor, they're plexiglass."

The unicorn peered confusedly over her pop at Twilight for a moment, clearly and quite justifiably waiting to see where this line of thought was supposed to lead.

"My my," she said in that tone which made Twilight internally cringe, the one that said Rarity thought she was a child, "Aren't you an observant one."

"No no, it's just... well you always look so good and aesthetics are kind of your whole life. I would have thought you'd have some fancy stained glass windows. At least some antique glass, but plexiglass? It just seems interesting. Is there a story behind it?"

Rarity took a moment, seemingly considering her response. Snowdrop brought them their food and they each thanked her but Rarity's gaze never let up. There was still amusement, but it felt more like that which one would expect between verbally sparring intellectuals when one had posited something new to the other.

"I love my job Twilight, but it relies on me being creative for sustained periods of time and that can be quite difficult. Though hardly ladylike, I can attest that I have been subject to the occasional, though more frequent than I'd like, bout of angry equipment throwing. Plexiglass can withstand impacts better than stained glass windows."

"Is that really the reason?" Twilight asked, giggling when Rarity nodded, "Wow that's really fascinating Rarity! So... I never heard of the pony who had the library before. What happened to Night Owl then?"

"Twilight dear, I feel you're reaching a little for things to talk about."

Oh.

"It's okay, it really is," she soothed, clearly sensing Twilight's worry, "This is new town and we're a new group of ponies! Just... we like you a lot already darling, don't feel you need to try so hard."

"Rarity I..." she grappled with the words, stuck between fear of oversharing and desperation to vent, "I love the town, it's just... I don't know if it loves me so much."

"Twilight! If you're about to recount some scandalous piece of gossip I'm afraid you have the wrong pony!" Rarity gasped, before making a show of getting much more comfortable in her seat and leaning forward, "Okay, now I'm the right pony."

"No it's not that," Twilight replied, her laugh somewhere between sincere and put-on, "It's just... ponies stare. When I walk around and I'm not with one of you girls. I don't think they like me."

"Well... you could be right dear. But it won't be anything to do with you personally! Ponies here are a tight-knit group, and for all the ones who will open up to you right away there'll be two who will take a long time to come around. I wouldn't blame you for thinking it's a bit boring here, but for many it borders on sacred. I've lost count of how many wedding receptions I've seen hosted at Sugarcube Corner."

"I don't think it's boring here Rarity," Twilight protested. Though, true to High Noon's advice, she left out the very important 'always' that should have slotted in after 'don't'.

"Oh darling please," Rarity scoffed and waved her hoof, "I've lived here my whole life and spent my entire childhood wishing to be in Canterlot. I can't imagine it the other way around."

She speared a flower with her cutlery and levitated it into her mouth before daintily chewing it.

"Ponyville is a great place Twilight," she continued, "But it's been here for so long. Long enough to be it's own world, but small enough for us who've always lived here to understand it. I think we're all a little mad if I'm being honest. Those old stories where some intrepid adventurer would find a little village and all the inhabitants would be so alien, they're grounded in something real. But... it's our madness, and as strange as it sounds it could be your madness too if you give it time. I took a long time to work out where I fit in at home, but I might be the maddest of them all now.

"Honestly dearie, I used to look to those mountains and wish more than anything to be in Canterlot. And while I still admire the centres of culture in our country, I don't wish that anymore. I'm happy where I am. Still, when I was younger I'd stare out of the boutique, or 'my auntie's house' as I knew it back then, and contemplate my place in all this for hours. Terribly indulgent I know but I've always been the dramatic sort. Up there, surrounded by so much grass and space, it was like I was-"

"On an island?" Twilight near-whispered.

"Hmm," another piece of salad speared and eaten, "I suppose it was darling."

"But when you're in the city, it's all just sea. And everyone's pulled together by random circumstance and we cling so hard. It's like lifeboats. You know that you could disappear and nothing would change but it's okay because it's the same for everyone in the lifeboat, and everyone in every lifeboat," Twilight said, aching and urgent, "Then you make it to the mainland and everyone has a purpose and a place. And you look out from your island and wonder how you could ever make it work, because you're from a lifeboat.

"You're from a place where any lifeboat could go and no-one would care," Twilight continued, "But suddenly you're somewhere where you're the only one who could go and maybe it'd all chug along a little better if you did... How does someone from a lifeboat make it work on the mainland Rarity?"

"That's a big question Twilight," Rarity said gently, levitating a napkin over to dab Twilight's eyes. Did I start crying? "I think lifeboats are overrated. Here on the mainland we do things a little differently... but I meant what I said. You could stand to be a little mad yourself. It just takes a little time, and an open mind."

Twilight stared into the older unicorn's eyes, suddenly concerned she may have gone a little far.

She isn't judging you, she understands.

It wasn't enough, Twilight needed more.

"Rarity, what are you doing tonight?"

And just like that, all life left the garden.

Background noise only became conspicuous in absentia. Low level conversation gave way to a void, and Twilight could swear the world became a little less colourful. Well, the world minus Rarity. She shone so hard it actually hurt a little. Her concerned interest had all but vanished, and in its place was a familiarly intimidating mask of self assurance. Lid-eyed, gently smiling, spearing and eating her salad all the while. She payed no mind to the rest of the patrons, she only focused on what said patrons focused on.

Twilight.

Looking around nervously, she found herself the unwilling centre of attention. Many eyes were peering over, but the effect was subtle, possibly imagined? To explain away lulls in conversation of course. But she had never been a narcissist and of all the things to imagine...

When she looked away, Twilight could swear eyes flicked to her. But when she looked, patrons messed with their food and stared at dinner guests. Were they pretending to eat? Surely not, why even think it? This could, and probably was, her tired mind overthinking everything.

The source of her dread was more that she hadn't looked at the table from earlier. Nearly against her will Twilight's eyes came to rest on said table's legs. Hooves were swiveled in such a way that they had clearly all turned to face her. Her gaze dragged at an agonising pace up their bodies. She couldn't look away, and she didn't understand why, but she hoped to Celestia they weren't smiling when she reached their faces.

"Twilight darling," Rarity drawled, "What did you have in mind for later exactly?"

The unicorn was given an excuse to turn away from that table and she swiveled back to face Rarity. She was somehow still looking ladylike despite the way she leant her head on one hoof, elbow brazenly on the table for all to see. She drank from her mimosa through a straw in one side of her mouth. She looked like she knew everything that happened in this town, and had all the time in the world to consider it.

"I... I don't know uh... we could grab some drinks or... we..." Why do I feel so on the spot? "We could grab something to eat... you know just hang out?"

"Hang out?" Rarity cooed, the amusement in her voice put Twilight in mind of a cat with a mouse.

"Um... yeah?"

"Twilight, why was I able to order your food for you?"

"Because I always order the same thing."

"Very good. Drink your mimosa dear," Twilight complied without thinking, "So I'm curious, you said you were having trouble fitting in, but this is a town where we're used to doing the same thing over and over. Same cafe, same bakery, same ponies. Why would a pony who always orders the same thing have trouble fitting in here?"

"Yeah but..." Rarity's gaze was unwavering as Twilight spoke, she looked like she was holding herself back from enthusiastically urging the librarian to continue, "I'm from a lifeboat?"

"And?" Rarity said, a near-unnoticeable tinge of mania creeping into her expression.

"And they do things differently here..." Twilight replied, her voice starting to shudder.

"And?"

"And... what if I don't like what I ordered?" Twilight said earnestly, because it was the truth.

Rarity studied her very intensely for a couple of seconds that felt like minutes, before her gaze softened again. She smiled at Twilight with genuine, yet confusingly sympathetic affection. Life and colour returned to the garden. Twilight was no longer the centre of attention, if she ever even had been. Background conversation provided pleasant ambiance. Two pegasi chatted with their earth pony friend.

"I think I'll be taking it easy tonight dear, but we must take a raincheck! I'm desperate for us to eat somewhere other than here, even if the daffodil sandwiches are as good as you say." Rarity finished with a wink, and Twilight giggled but it was slightly forced. They had their food and drinks. Rarity left a note to add it to her tab, and Twilight thanked her.

They even have local tabs for Celestia's sake...

Rarity, ever the gentlemare, insisted on walking Twilight home for which she was grateful. The chattering was leisurely, but depth had stalled since that... moment. Twilight turned back for a second. Snowdrop was clearing their table and looking at Rarity's note. She cocked her head up, made immediate eye contact with Twilight and smiled vacuously at her. She waited for Snowdrop to wave or look away, but she did neither.

Twilight moved closer to Rarity, and didn't back away until the hot, shimmering air had long stolen the shapes of Sunny Pastures Cafe.