"Hey, what are you reading there?"
Twilight looked up from the screen. "Nothing interesting. This short story that's blatantly a poorly concealed metaphor for why mentally disabled people shouldn't be allowed to express their opinions and should be ignored when they do. It's not even that well written." She moved her laptop to the side.
"Oh." Sunset sat down on the chair in front of her, a somewhat blank expression on her face. "Why were you reading it?" she asked after a few seconds of silence.
Twilight rolled her eyes. "Eh. It popped up in the front page and I decided to give it a go. I don't think I'll check out any more from that author, honestly."
Sunset tilted her head to the side a moment. "Wait, what site are you talking about?"
"Well, it's this site designed to publish short stories online, and... Ah, well-" She clutched some of her hair in her fingers "-it's faster if I show you, I think." She grabbed her laptop and turned it around to show Sunset the monitor and its contents.
"Oh, that site!" Sunset said, her face illuminated by the screen. "Yeah, I know it. I read some stuff there too from time to time."
Twilight's breath got caught midway in its path through her throat. "Wait, you do?" She quickly, too quickly for it to not come off as suspicious, turned the laptop back towards herself. "What a coincidence, right?"
Sunset cocked an eyebrow. "Twilight, are you hiding something?" she asked, leaning forward a little.
"Me? Oh, no, of course not, now let me just close this thing and we can-Hey!" Twilight snapped, her arms suddenly caught in Sunset's hands and held away from the keyboard. "Let me go!" she protested, trying to wriggle away from the other's grasp.
"Sorry, Twilight, but that's going to be a no," Sunset replied, giggling to herself as Twilight tried to break free. "At least, until you tell me what you were trying to hide from me, that is."
Twilight pouted and grunted, still trying and failing to move her arms.
Sunset rolled her eyes. "Come on, Twilight. I'm asking politely. You don't want me to force you to tell me, right?" She leaned closer to the other girl. "Or do you?" she added with a smile.
Twilight stopped struggling and dropped her frown. "Not in public, please," she whispered.
Sunset smiled. "Sorry, sorry."
Twilight relaxed. "Fine, I'll tell you. Could you let me go?" she asked, lifting her arms.
"Oh, I'm not sure I trust you," Sunset replied, "but if you really want me to..." She let go of the other's arms with a smirk. "Didn't seem to me like you had the same opinion last time."
Twilight looked to the side, massaging her wrists more out of instinct than anything. "Anyway..." She blushed a little. "So... The thing is I... I sort of... Maybe..."
"Twilight."
"Okay, fine!" she half-yelled. She looked around to make sure no one had turned towards their direction, then cleared her throat. "So..." she began, more quietly, "I... I've been publishing stories on that site, too."
Sunset's lips failed to entirely contain a burst of laughter. "Is that all? And you were freaking out so much over that?"
Twilight looked at her, pouting again, and adjusted her glasses with a hand. "That's not funny, you know?" she grumbled, the altered colour of her cheeks now partially dictated by anger.
Sunset leaned back in her chair and half-smiled. "Yeah, yeah, sorry."
Silence stretched between the two for a couple of awkward seconds, each one of them perfectly aware of what the next question would be.
"So, huh," Sunset tried, moving back forward to sit straighter and looking at Twilight while pretending to stare at an unspecified point on the ground behind her, "what... What stories did you write? Think you can show me some of them?"
Twilight suddenly appeared very interested in figuring out what Sunset was pretending to look at, tilting her head over her shoulder just shy of it looking like she wasn't still focused on the girl in front of her. "I..." She sighed, then moved her hands to the keyboard for a few seconds before turning the laptop back towards Sunset. "Here, have a look for yourself," she said, blood seemingly refusing to leave its newfound position in her face.
Sunset's eyes scanned the screen for a few moments, a smile forming on her lips, until she finally burst out laughing.
Twilight's cheeks suffered another change in tonality, one that, in other contexts the girl was more familiar with, would have been valuable proof that she was getting further away from Sunset, and she quickly snatched the piece of hardware away from the other. She then observed the room around them, and upon concluding that they were in fact being watched by a sizeable portion of all the presents she threw her arms over her head, possessed by the sudden and irrational wish for her own embarrassment to manifest in the solid form of a large rock under which she could safely hide.
Sunset put a hand to her mouth, forcing herself to calm down, and patiently waited for the people in the room to return to minding their own business. "I'm sorry, Twi, really," she apologised, still fighting against a surge of giggles. "I just, hum, I didn't think you were the one who wrote that. I've read all of your stories, as it turns out."
Twilight peeked out from underneath her rock, like a more nervous and embarrassed, less calm and peaceful version of a turtle, and curiously looked at Sunset. "Oh? And... What did you think of them?"
Sunset reclined in her seat and looked up at the ceiling. "Do I have to be honest? I think they're kind of mediocre. Not bad, by any means, and it's certainly not meant to be high literature, but even by the site's standards it's definitely not the best material on there. Enjoyable, but not the first thing I would pick up if I had to choose."
"I... Thanks for the honesty. And yeah, I don't think it's anything that spectacular, but I enjoy writing it," Twilight admitted with a half-smile.
"And that's what's important!" Sunset cheerfully replied, promoting a larger smile to form on the other's lips. "Although," she added with a playful smirk, "I can't help but think about how the author of those stories seemed to be rather passionate about their enjoyment of the ones I wrote on there."
Possibly due to the amount of blood reaching the maximum value allowed and overflowing back to the lowest one, colour drained away from Twilight's face as she heard that. "You wrote... those..." she said in what was likely supposed to sound like a question, and happened to come off as being as close to that as the Sun was close to being a fish.
Sunset nodded, a low hum to accentuate her response. "I think I was going too lightly on you, after all." She got up from her chair and left, giving one final look and a mischievous smile to Twilight on her way out.
Twilight sat there, motionless and almost breathless, barely aware of the flow of time and space marching on around her or of the people curiously waving things in front of her face and wondering if they should call an ambulance. She would later try to recapture her feelings in that moment by writing a story about a man who is executed by being forced to keep eating until he collapses. It would receive average reviews, as usual, with the apparently very positive reception feeling more like a courtesy given the site's lack of in-between judgments other than likes and dislikes. Any story that was fifty-one percent good would get that, because very few would feel like saying it wasn't good, and even if she knew her work was better than that she had learned how to judge a story's reception properly by comparing it to that of truly popular ones. She'd also read quite a lot, which meant she could tell pretty accurately what the quality of her work was. And she wasn't disappointed with it, really.
Sunset stepped out of the building, and walked away along the edge of the street, occasionally giving a passive glance to the five-legged alien creatures that crawled along it and fed off of the residual heat left by the Sun on the asphalt, their bodies standing three metres tall and their green-blue antennae gleaming in the sunlight.
