Author's Note
This is part of a larger series I was commissioned to write. While the chapter is self-contained, the previous chapter stated that the father of Twi's foal is Pony Joe (a request made by the commissioner).
Enjoy!
Looking Ahead
Even with the curtains drawn, sunlight began to fill the room like water in a tub, tinted a rich purple by the cloth covering the windows. A line of unobstructed sunlight fell over the bed in the center of the room, curving and distorting as it ran across the form of the sleeping pony beneath the covers. The pillows had fallen over most of her face, obscuring all but her nose and the tip of her horn. One of her legs hung off the bed, twitching every few seconds as if she was trying to kick something. She slept in the top right corner of her mattress while the rest of her large bed was covered in scattered books, scrolls, quills, and paper.
Twilight took a deep breath and turned slightly in her sleep, bouncing the mattress beneath her. A stack of heavy tomes, which had been balancing precariously on the edge of the bed for the past few hours, finally lost their balance and toppled to the floor one after another, sounding out three loud bangs in quick succession. Twilight’s ears flicked as she jerked awake. She made a sound halfway between a snore and a shout and sat up from her bundle of pillows, scanning the empty room around her with one eye cracked open.
“Buuhumbmmpmm…” She said, her sleepy mouth acting on its own. “I thought therewuzz…somepony…buhh…” Twilight sniffed, scratching the top of her head with a hoof, then realized she was talking to nobody and flopped back down onto her pillows. She frowned and tried to get comfortable, but there was a large, firm cushion pressing hard against her stomach and between her legs. After wiggling fruitlessly for a few minutes, she grumbled and threw back the covers to toss it aside. But, in her sleep-drunk confusion, she blinked dimly down at her own rounded, bulging middle, heavily pregnant with her son, that was the real culprit of her discomfort.
“…Oh, right.” Twilight giggled to herself and stroked her belly gently, wondering just exactly how tired she could be to forget her own late-term pregnancy. The foal turned slightly and began kicking, making the surface of his mother’s belly bounce and shift slightly. Twilight propped her head up on the pillow and watched her stomach move with a gentle smile on her face. The feeling tended to get old after a while and she was often tempted to cast a sleep spell on her own belly to keep her foal from kicking so much during the day, but in the mornings, after waking up from a long sleep, Twilight loved to watch and feel her baby moving inside her.
She froze as a sudden, strong ‘pop’ sensation came from inside her and, in the dim light of her bedroom, watched as a slight glow pulsed from her belly before fading away. Twilight bit her lip and waited anxiously to see if it would happen again, but relaxed after a few minutes of silence. The baby books told her that feelings like could happen to more magically-sensitive unicorns as their foals unconsciously practiced using magic in the womb, but it happened so frequently it was starting to become worrisome. The books assured that the foal’s magic was never strong enough to cause any harm to the mother before birth, but that was assuming the mother was a unicorn. Twilight was an alicorn, now, and conceived her foal as one. What kind of magic could he have inherited if he could use it so much before even leaving the womb?
“Take it easy on me, little guy,” Twilight whispered to her belly, touching her hoof to where the colt was pressing his against her uterine wall. “You’re almost ready. I’ll teach you everything you want to know about magic once you’re out of there, okay? You’ll be the best spellcaster Equestria’s had in centuries.” She paused, thinking about the foal’s father and the pragmatic approach he took to using his magic. It was just a tool to Donut Joe, a way to make himself and others happy, and he was perfectly fine with it. “Well, only if you want to be.” Twilight added, shifting slightly to curl around her belly. “You can be whoever you want.”
Once I think of name, Twilight thought to herself. She grimaced and began chewing anxiously on her bottom lip. There was a scroll on her desk across the room with dozens of colt names scrawled down, then angrily scratched out with a quill a moment after they’d been written. There were stacks of old census records going back decades, marked with scraps of paper and bookmarks to names she’d considered for her foal.
“How can I think of a name if I don’t know who you’re even going to be?” Twilight lamented to her baby. “Well…I guess the same way literally every other parent has, but they didn’t need to worry about their foals being royalty.” She clenched her teeth and grunted as she sat up on her haunches on the bed, her belly settling on the mattress below her. “The name has to be perfect.” The baby kicked hard against her, protesting at being moved so suddenly. She winced at the kick, but smiled to herself while stoking her round middle. One day he’d be a prince. Maybe even king. But before all of that, he was her foal. Her baby. Her son. And that would never, ever change.
Twilight shuffled across the sheets, knocking another pile of scrolls to the floor, and carefully climbed down onto her legs. The bottoms of her hooves instantly throbbed in sore pain and she winced as the heavy weight of her belly shifted to hang below her, where she could already feel the strain on her back. She could probably find a spell to ease the strain of her pregnancy, as mother unicorns had done for thousands of years before her, but keeping it up would just drain her already limited reserves of energy and wear her out too quickly. Maybe she could come up with something more efficient, but her mind was already being pulled in dozens of directions at once. It was easier just to endure it. After all, it was just a pregnancy.
Twilight stepped back and, out of habit, used magic to make her bed and levitate all the scattered books and papers to a nearby chair, where she was absolutely sure they’d just end up scattered on the bed again by the end of the day. While smoothing out the bedspread, a downy, purple feather slipped from below the pillow and drifted to the ground. Twilight absentmindedly picked it up and frowned at it, shifting her wings on her back. Even after so much time, she still hadn’t gotten used to not technically being a unicorn anymore, which felt more strange than being a princess.
Twilight shifted her weight, feeling her heavy belly rock slightly beneath her. Dropping the feather to the ground, she glanced back at her bulging sides, her mind inevitably drifting to her son. Would he be born an alicorn? If he was, he’d have his entire life to learn how to use his powerful magic and wings, things his mother still found difficult to grasp. She felt a hoof poke her in the ribs. So many ‘ifs’ and ‘maybes.’ If only she could just get a hint of what was to come.
A set of hooves marched past her door, their clopping echoing off down the hall. Once her pregnancy had progressed far enough, Twilight’s brother and sister-in-law had sent a contingent of guards and assistants to her castle, which felt a little condescending, even if the intentions were good. She’d personally layered the castle with so many magical barriers and wards that the air itself seemed to shimmer and crackle with energy. A few extra guards tramping around wasn’t going to make much of a difference.
Twilight levitated her to-do list in front of her face, keeping one eye on it as she crossed to the doorway, her belly rocking slightly between her legs. She was marking off yesterday’s itinerary with a quill as she pulled open her heavy bedroom door, but stopped and glanced at the figure standing in her doorway.
“Mornin’ Twi.” Spike, her dragon assistant and oldest friend, was leaning against the doorway and very conspicuously blocking it. He twirled a smokey ruby leisurely in his fingers, then bit it in half with a crunch of his powerful, draconic teeth that were literally harder than diamonds. He glanced up at her with his green, slitted eyes with a smug expression she couldn’t interpret.
“Uh…Good Morning, Spike,” Twilight responded, cocking her head to the side. She didn’t usually see Spike in the mornings until breakfast was served, so finding him posted outside her door was out of the ordinary. She took a step forward, but he didn’t move.
“Whatcha up to?”
“Uh…gestating, I guess.”
Spike made a face and shuddered at the word, which only made Twilight smirk.
“You sleep okay?” he asked, raising an eyebrow, then cocked his head and glanced around to her swollen belly. “How’s the baby?”
“As well as I can,” Twilight sighed. “He’s fine, but a little over-active at night.” She noticed that Spike was nearly at eye-level with her, even as he was leaning against the doorway. He was still young, by dragon standards, but was growing taller by the year. Dragons grew bigger and more powerful with greed and by amassing hordes, but their natural growth was more stable, if much slower. It’s what made large, adult dragons so unpredictable; they could either be a patient, wise being hundreds of years old, or a greedy beast given into their base instincts. Twilight was quietly very proud of Spike for taking the high road.
“It must be weird,” Spike noted, narrowing his eyes as Twilight’s belly shifted from the movement of her foal.
“You get used to it,” she shrugged. Twilight took another step forward, but Spike still didn’t move. “Excuse me.”
“Where ya going?” he asked before popping the rest of the gemstone into his mouth and chewing with a sound like tectonic plates grinding together.
“To the throne room?” She frowned down at Spike. “To my throne room? There’s work to do.”
“Not for you, Twi,” Spike said, tapping a finger to his nose. “It’s all taken care of. You’re on mare-ternity leave.”
“It’s all taken…” Twilight’s jaw fell open in shock, but a moment later was screwed up into a scowl. “Spike, cut it out. I’ve got a kingdom to run, now. I can’t afford to take time off.”
“Not up to me,” Spike said. He took a deep breath, the coughed a flash of green fire into his hand that took shape into a scroll. He pinched the end and opened it with a flick of his wrist, holding it in front of Twilight’s face. Before she read the body of the letter itself, her eyes fell on the shimmering, magical crest and signature of Princess Celestia that adorned the bottom.
“’Take time for myself...’” Twilight read out loud from the letter. “’Focus on getting things ready for the baby…family getting bigger…the strain pregnancy puts on a mare…’” She re-read certain lines a few times, as if she couldn’t quite process them the first time, then glanced away from the letter with a helpless expression on her face. “What…what does this mean? Does she think I can’t handle the kingdom anymore? Did I do something wrong? Maybe I haven’t been keeping up with things like I should have.”
“Twi, calm down,” Spike said with a stern voice that had calmed many, many of Twilight’s panicked moments. “I think it means that you’re ten months pregnant and Celestia thinks you need a break. And I think so, too.” The dragon rolled up the scroll and made it vanish with a puff of flame. “That’s why she made me the official Princess Twilight Sparkle Pregnancy Assistant. The ‘PTSPA.’ The ‘Puh-tiss-pa.’”
“You made that up yourself, didn’t you?” Twilight said, flatly.
“I mean…yeah…but still! She asked me to keep an eye on you! You’re getting pretty big, after all.”
“I’m not that big,” Twilight huffed as she pushed past Spike and waddled into the hall. She felt the sides of her belly brush uncomfortably against the sides of the doorway, but pretended she didn’t.
“You think so?” Spike said, easily keeping pace with the slow-moving princess and patting the side of her belly. “’Cause I think you’re bigger than Cadance was around this time.”
“Well…so?” Twilight snapped, blushing. She huffed and panted as she shuffled down the hall, finding she couldn’t move anywhere near as fast as she wanted to. Spike kept up with her easily with a leisurely walk. “It doesn’t mean I can’t do my duty! It doesn’t mean I can’t be a princess!”
“You’re taking this too personally,” Spike sighed. Twilight quickly veered to the right down a separate hallway. “Hey! Twi! Where are you going?”
“Throne room,” Twilight grumbled. “I need to check on the map.”
“It’s taken care of! I already said, that didn’t I?”
“By who?”
“Starlight Glimmer, of course. And-”
“What?” Twilight stopped in her tracks, staring at Spike in disbelief. “By herself?” She shuffled her wings, then gritted her teeth and marched her heavily pregnant body as fast as she could move it toward the throne room.
“No! Not by herself! That’s what I was-” Spike sighed dejectedly as Twilight waddled down the hall, her pregnant sides swaying with her canter. “Maybe that’s what they mean by ‘hormones,’” the dragon said to himself.
With a sudden pop of compressed magic, the double-doors to the throne room burst open to an irritated Twilight marching into the room. The seven thrones were empty, but the map in the center of them was lit up and shimmering with magic, showing a real-time, holographic image of Ponyville and the surrounding countryside. Glimmer was standing at the edge of it, frowning and peering down at the tiny buildings and the mouse-sized ponies that walked between them. As Twilight walked into view, she glanced up at the princess, then at the map, then at the princess again before smiling guiltily.
“Uuuhhh….He-Hey Twilight,” Glimmer said, carefully backing away from the map. “Did you sleep okay?”
“Well enough,” Twilight sighed, keeping in mind that the decision wasn’t her student’s fault. Still, she couldn’t mask her irritability. “Did Celestia send you a letter? To take over my duties?”
“O-Oh well… she did, actually.” Glimmer shifted, her hooves clopping quietly on the floor. “She thought you might need some time off since you’re so far along, now. I uhh…I didn’t really agree that I was the one to take over but…well, she’s Celestia. You don’t exactly say no to her.”
Twilight blinked at Glimmer, reading her face, then sighed and lowered her shoulders.
“Well…that’s true. I just wish she’d talked to me first.” She paused, choosing her words carefully. “Starlight, don’t take this the wrong way, but…you’re still a student. This is hard work for my friends and I together, let alone you by yourself.”
“That’s why I’m here!” called out a melodic voice from the hallway behind them. Twilight jumped, then turned just in time to watch her sister-in-law, Princess Cadance, trot into the throne room with a cinnamon roll in her mouth and followed closely by Spike and her young alicorn daughter, Flurry Heart.
“Cadance!” Twilight gasped. Before she could approach, Flurry made a happy squealing sound that might have been an attempt at words before darting beneath her mother’s legs and galloping toward her aunt.
“Be gentle!” Cadance called out as Flurry ran in circles around Twilight. “You’re aunt’s going to have a baby soon!”
“She’s no trouble,” Twilight said, her bad mood beginning to lift at the sight of her chubby-faced niece. She winced at shifting her heavy weight, then knelt over to nuzzle Flurry affectionately. She could feel the lowest curve of her belly touching the cold floor below her and her knees trembled with trying to hold herself upright. The little alicorn fluttered her wings like a bumblebee and made happy, squealing baby noises. Seeing Flurry Heart made Twilight that much more excited to have a baby of her own.
“She’s getting so much bigger,” Twilight said while straining and standing upright. “She couldn’t run that fast the last time I saw her.”
“Yeah, she’s a handful to keep track of. Especially when she practices with her wings,” Cadance laughed. “Your poor brother can’t do anything about that.” Flurry backed away and walked around Twilight, then sat on the floor and stared wide-eyed up at her aunt’s pregnant belly, sucking on one of her hooves absentmindedly. “That’s your cousin, Flurry!” Cadance cooed, trotting closer and nuzzling her daughter. “Aunt Twiley is going to have a baby.”
“She’s curious,” Twilight beamed, shifting her wings aside to better show her rounded middle to Flurry. “Mmph, he’s kicking. Let her feel.”
With a glow of magic, Cadance lifted Flurry off the ground and held her closer to Twilight’s belly, which was thumping slightly from the kicks of her son. Cadance guided her daughter to touch Twilight’s taut middle. Flurry’s eyes widened as a look of confusion came over her face, but she turned back to her mother and aunt, who were both smiling down at her, and started to giggle at the movements her cousin made inside Twilight’s womb.
“He’s a kicker,” Cadance noted. “Flurry was pretty well behaved up until the end. Walking around helps rock the baby to sleep when they won’t calm down.”
“Thanks, Cady, I’ll try that.” Twilight watched as Cadance set down Flurry on the floor, but the baby alicorn continued to curiously watch her aunt’s shifting belly. Twilight and Cadance shared a smile, but the pregnant princess suddenly remembered she was supposed to be angry and barked at Cadance, “Hey! What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Oh uhh…Well…Twiley…Celestia and Luna and myself all thought you might need help keeping up with your Friendship duties now that you’re so close to your due date. Shiney can take care of our kingdom by himself for a while.”
“Wh-Wha-But-I-Did she-Wait-” Twilight spluttered, her eyes flitting from side to side while she shuffled in place.
“I told you she wouldn’t take it well,” Spike groaned sardonically as he hopped up on the arm of the nearest throne.
“It’ll be fine, Twiley,” Cadance said, smoothly. “Glimmer and I are going to be working together so she can show me the ropes of how this all works. I’m the princess of Love, remember? That’s…kind of similar to friendship, right?” Cadance shrugged with a sheepish grin that reflected her unshakable confidence. Twilight envied her of that.
“It’s…No…Ugh…” Twilight shook her head and sighed dejectedly. “It’s not that. I think you can do it together. I know you can. But…” She glanced back at her bulging sides and sighed again. “I didn’t want getting pregnant to interfere with any of my duties as a princess. And if even Celestia thinks that it’s too much of a burden for me to handle…”
“It feels like a huge blow to your confidence,” Glimmer finished, as she knew the feeling all too well.
“I don’t want her to lose faith in me just because I’m having a foal. I can handle it. I know I can.”
“Twi, c’mon,” Spike said from his chair. “Nobody doubts you. We all know that you can do it by yourself, probably better than anyone else. You’d work all the way until the baby comes without complaining…but that’s not a good thing, yknow?”
“Take it from another mom,” Cadance said. “Take the last month off. You’ll be happy you did once your water breaks. It’s not just for yourself, you know?” She leaned over and pressed the side of her head against Twilight’s warm belly, “It’s for my little nephew, too.”
Twilight blushed at the attention being paid to her pregnant belly and shifted in place.
“Well…I guess…maybe I can leave it to you guys for a while…” Twilight said. “At least until the foal comes.”
“Trust us, we can handle it,” Glimmer said, confidently.
“We’ll have to,” Cadance nodded. “Since all the other Element Holders are having foals of their own all at the same time, too. We’re on our own.”
“I’ll be here if you need advice!” Twilight remarked happily before drooping her head. “I don’t really know what else I’ll do…”
“Relax!” Cadance said, leaning to pull Twilight in for a wing-hug as best she could with the belly in the way. “Take it easy! Make sure you’re totally refreshed before your foal comes.”
“My foal…” Twilight repeated under her breath. She hated calling him that. It felt so detached and dispassionate. Maybe she could finally take extra time to come up with a name for him. “Cady? How did you come up with Flurry Heart’s name?”
“Hm? I don’t know when, really. I just had the idea when I was a filly and the name stuck with me. I had the name in mind for years for when I’d actually get to have a foal of my own.”
“Oh…well, it’s a nice name,” Twilight said, trying not to frown at how unhelpful Cadance’s answer was. “Well…I guess I’ll…leave you guys to it, then…” She started to waddle toward the door, glancing back every few feet as if afraid the throne room would fall apart the moment she left it. “If you need my help I’ll be…in my room, I guess. Just…waiting for the baby to come…You know where to find me, right? Down this hall and to the left, the big double-doors with my cutie mark on them? You remember?”
“We got it, Twilight,” Glimmer said.
“Okay…well…just making sure…” Her stride had slowed to a shuffle. “I mean, if you want me to, I can take care of the first few issues on the map just to show you guys how I do it.”
“I think we’ll be okay,” Cadance said, watching as Twilight neared the door.
“Well if you say so…b-but you don’t know Ponyville as well as I do so maybe I can stay and just show you around-”
Spike rolled his eyes and hopped off the chair and jogged up next to Twilight. He patted her rounded side, then gently led her out the door.
“C’mon, Twi, let’s get breakfast. You’re eatin’ for two, right? You probably need it.”
“O-Oh...well yeah, I’m pretty hungry…Oof! I think the baby is, too, actually…”
Spike stopped in the doorway and locked eyes with Glimmer before mouthing ‘I’ll take care of her’ without a sound and shutting the door behind them.
Twilight sat in the castle dining hall, stroking her belly with a far away look in her eyes. The cooks and assistants Cadance had brought over were busy making her breakfast in the kitchen, so there wasn’t anything for her to do but sit at her place on the table and wait. Her foal kicked out against her hoof, but she ignored it and stared down at her long to-do list she’d compiled at the beginning of the week. With her quill, she started slowly crossing items off her list, one by one. The scratch of her quill tip against the paper was agony to her ears as, one by one, all her duties and invested time and carefully -planned schedule collapsed before her eyes. By the time her breakfast was ready, a bowl of cinnamon oatmeal and a plate of fruit, there were only three items left to do: set up the nursery, make out a birth plan, and think of a name for the foal.
As important as the three tasks were, the sight of so many of her duties crossed out and relegated to someone else was enough to make her nauseous. It was either that, or too much cinnamon in the oatmeal. Twilight sighed and pushed the bowl gently to the side and devoured the bowl of fruit. She didn’t have much of an appetite, but it was mostly to satisfy the foal, who got a little too ‘kicky’ of his mother didn’t eat breakfast. Once the meal was reduced to a plate of stems and seeds, Twilight’s energy began coming back to her and she began to experience a ‘second-wind’ of motivation. Flipping her notebook to a new page, she hunched over it and began to write furiously, stroking her baby belly as if the foal inside would give her insight.
By the time the sun had fully risen, Spike walked into the dining hall to find Twilight frantically scrawling on her notepad with a quill, nodding and muttering to herself. The bowl of oatmeal was untouched and cold.
“Twi…” Spike said once he was close enough, “You’re not working are you?” He gripped the edge of the table and stood on the tips of his claws to try and read what Twilight was scribbling down.
“Nope,” she said, flatly, without any word of explanation.
“Well okay…but it doesn’t really look like you’re relaxing, eith-” Spike was interrupted by a stack of papers thrown into his face before they scattered to the floor.
“Oh! Sorry,” Twilight grinned sheepishly. She grimaced as she carefully climbed down from her chair, making sure not to scrape her belly on the corner, then sighed deeply in relief once she was on all four hooves. “I need you to go into town and pick up some things for me.”
“Some things,” Spike huffed as he gathered the pages and flipped through the list. “This looks like half the furniture store.”
“Well, only one half of it,” Twilight said. “I’d go myself but I need to get my rest, obviously.” The pregnant princess shrugged while tapping her belly for emphasis. She winced at another sharp pop from inside her as the foal practiced his magic in the womb, but tried to hide that from Spike.
“This’ll take me all day,” Spike grumbled.
“Not if you go now. You’re the ‘Puh-tiss-pa,’ right?” Twilight paused, then leaned in close to him and spoke under her breath. “This is important work for the future heir of the throne. I can only trust you with this, Spike.”
“We’re just setting up the nursery, though,” Spike said, raising an eyebrow. He’d begun to see through Twilight’s attempts to appeal to his sense of duty.
“Uh…well yes, but…Okay, it’s just the nursery, but I need your help to put it together! I can’t have your nephew sleep in a box, can I?”
“I’m the one that slept in a basket at the foot…” Spike trailed off, his expression softening as he glanced up at Twilight. “…Nephew?”
“Well…yeah?” Twilight said, her turn to be confused. “What else would he be?”
“But…but I’m not…I’m a dragon, though.”
“And?” Twilight said, giggling before leaning over and nuzzling Spike’s scaly cheek with her own. “If anyone’s my little brother, it’s you. You were going to be ‘Uncle Spike’ the moment I found out I was pregnant.”
“Aw c’mon,” Spike said, turning away from Twilight and conspicuously wiping the back of his hand over his eyes. “Don’t…Don’t s-say stuff like that this early in the morning…”
“Well, it’s true. So Spike, can you please do this? If not for me, then for the baby? You can help design the nursery.” Twilight glanced back at her belly as the foal kicked. “I don’t really know what a little boy might want, y’know?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Spike said, turning around once his eyes were sufficiently dry. “I can take care of that, no problem. Count on me.”
“I will,” Twilight beamed. Her horn glowed purple for a moment before an enormous sack of coins dropped out of thin air and into Spike’s arms, knocking the wind out of him. “This is the baby fund. Everything in red ink is the most important and the priority descends from there: from red, to blue, to black. Try to get everything in red, most of what’s in blue, and some of the things in black if you have time. Don’t spend more than half the budget. Got that?”
“I think my lungs just collapsed,” Spike wheezed as he tried to carry the heavy bag of money to the door. “Y-You can count on me! Uncle Spike will be right back!” Twilight watched the young dragon nearly topple over under the weight of the money, but then quickly regain his balance.
“I thought I was the one that was supposed to be getting emotional…” Twilight smirked, touching her belly with a hoof as if to check it was still there. All of a sudden, she felt a surge of hunger well up from inside her, her appetite returning with a vengeance. With all the fruit gone, she glanced over her shoulder at the bowl of cold, three-hour old oatmeal with a hungry smirk.
Twilight waddled back into her room, shutting the door behind her and sighing dejectedly. Once she was up, she wasn’t used to going back in until the day was over already. Going back inside reminded her of her days before moving to Ponyville, where she’d lock herself in her room for days on end to read and avoid the rest of the world. They were habits she didn’t want to fall back into. Maybe, in some sense, it was a good sign she was going stir-crazy staying in the castle for too long. At least she wasn’t isolating herself anymore.
“You probably know what it’s like being stuck in one place for too long, don’t you?” Twilight said to her foal. Instead of going to her bed, Twilight cantered slowly and easily across the room to the wide, full-body mirror she made little use of. Stepping into view, she stood transfixed at her own reflection, her eyes following a line from her hooves to her back to, inevitably, the heavy, gravid shape of her own pregnant middle.
So much was different, now. Her face, her head, her eyes staring back at her were all familiar, but the wings on her back and the foal in her belly were all new, unexpected directions her life had taken. She remembered sitting on the floor of the library when she was a filly, flipping through books and scrolls and pretending to read the more complicated words, deciding new and exciting things she’d do with her life when she grew up. That quiet, socially awkward little pony had grown into the princess, heavy with a foal, that stared back at her from the mirror. No matter how much magic she studied, how much she knew about the mystical weaving of the universe, there was no greater mystery than the track of someone’s life and which path it would take.
“I wonder where you’ll go,” Twilight said down to her belly. “Who will you be?” She sighed dejectedly, then said, “What’s your name?” The foal kicked and turned over, as if answering the question in a way Twilight couldn’t quite understand. “Help me out here, okay?”
Twilight shuffled on her uncomfortable hooves, then walked toward her desk and away from the mirror, watching with a blush how her belly bounced and swayed beneath her when she moved. Using her magic, she lifted one of the census books from the table and carried it back to the bed. However, halfway across the room, she stopped as she felt a strange, warm tingling around her belly. Glancing back at herself, she squinted and was able to see a blue-tinged aura around her middle, just barely visible in the dim light of the room.
With a surge like electricity, the aura around her belly lit up into a bright, sky-blue glow. The book ricocheted out of the grip of Twilight’s magic and was sent sailing across the room. It hit the pillows on the bed hard enough that, if it had only been a few inches higher, the heavy tome might have put a dent in the wall.
“Wow,” Twilight gasped, watching as the light faded away from her stomach. “The baby books didn’t say anything about that…” She waited for the tingling feeling to fade as the foal turned in her womb, sleepily. “Maybe I should write that down…” she idly thought while trotting across the room.
Twilight climbed onto the bed, feeling her bump brush against the sheets beneath her, and heavily flopped onto her side, the weight of her pregnancy finally being relieved from her hooves. She shoved a pillow beneath her neck to prop up her head as she opened the census book, turning the pages with magic while lovingly stroking her heavy middle.
“Okaaaayyy…let’s go back…hmm…how about fifty years ago? What kind of names were those?” Flipping back to the middle of the book, the first name her eyes fell on was ‘Onion Breath.’
“…Well, they can’t all be winners.”
The others weren’t much better. Ponyville had been a rural community for generations and many of the residents were simply named after what they did without much variation. Some were pleasant, like Applejack’s ancestors, but most were simple and uncomplicated. Twilight frowned and flipped the pages forward until she’d arrived closer at the present day. While there were some interesting variations, most of them were for mares, while stallions and colts bore names like ‘Chicken Chaser’ or ‘Sturdy Brick.’
“This isn’t working,” Twilight sighed as she carefully set the book on the bedside table. It was from the library, after all. “These are too straightforward. You need something…mystical or…illustrative.” The princess wiggled her pregnant body so she could look over the end of the bed. She wasn’t about to make the effort to climb to her hooves again, so she peered toward her desk until she spied an old tome lined with gold and bound with purple cloth.
“There!” Twilight smiled, levitating it from the middle of the stack and dropping it beside her on the bed. It was an old encyclopedia of famous mages and unicorns throughout history. She was bound to find something fitting for her son in there, even if she had to combine names.
“Maybe I can name you after the famous alchemist…uhh...” Twilight squinted at the book. “…’Illustrious Haze?’ What does that mean?” The foal kicked her sharply, as if in protest. “Okay okay, not that one. Then umm…Oh, how about the astronomer that first mapped the constellations!” Twilight flipped to that section of the book and found the name. “…’Sky Eye?’ Why do I not remember these names being so…stupid?”
Twilight flopped back on the bed and tried to get comfortable (which was nearly impossible with such an advanced pregnancy) while flipping through the book, examining every other name from cover-to-cover. As brilliant as those ponies had been, their names weren’t up to the same standard.
“This is ridiculous…” Twilight grumbled as she slammed the book shut and rolled onto her other side. “How hard is it to name a foal? Other moms do it all the time!” She frowned and tapped her hooves against her belly. “I guess…I’m scared of messing it up. Naming you is important and it’s the first thing I can do for you as your mother. I want it to be perfect. But…” Twilight groaned and buried her face in a pillow. “How can I come up with a name when I don’t even know you, yet!?”
Her voice was drowned out in the cushion of the pillows, but it echoed in her ears, the words bouncing around the inside of her brain.
“…Yet…” Twilight repeated to herself as she sat up. “I don’t know you yet…But I will.”
She sat up on her haunches, her belly bulging out to the sides, as she thought, swishing her tail across the bed thoughtfully.
“Yes…yes yes yes yes!” Twilight squealed in delight as she excitedly clicked her hooves together. “Why didn’t I think of this before?” With new-found energy, she crawled off the bed and onto the floor, stumbling slightly as her center of gravity shifted. The baby squirmed in discomfort at being tossed around so much, but Twilight ignored it as she waddled to the closet and began digging through her piles of books and scrolls and clothes for what she needed.
“Here!” she chirped excitedly, carrying a silver box from the closet and setting it on the desk. “I thought I’d left this in Canterlot.” She took a deep breath before pushing aside the latch and reverently opening the box, her wings trembling in excitement. Inside was a small, rectangular mirror set into a frame with diamonds surrounding it. Runes etched in silver flanked the sides and the magic contained in the artifact made it shimmer slightly, as if it could vanish from reality at any moment. With her magic, Twilight lifted the mirror out of its box and carried it to the bed, careful not to bump it into anything.
“Okay…okay…how do I do this…” Twilight muttered to herself as she climbed onto the bed with the mirror. She propped it up on a pillow and sat staring at it with a frown of concentration. She closed her eyes and used her magic to probe toward the mirror. In her mind’s eye, she felt the artifact as a deep void in the air, a magical sink that drew in energy. If she wasn’t careful, it could drain her magic completely.
Fortunately, Twilight was a skilled magic user, even when she was a unicorn. With the abilities and deep magical reserves of an alicorn, she was a challenging foe when it came to the mystic arts. She took a deep breath, then began to focus her energies into the mirror, probing forward with magic like she was crawling through a small, infinitely long tunnel. The mirror was a relic from centuries ago, but hadn’t aged a day in that time. Created by a long-forgotten, but clearly powerful magic user, the mirror was their personal scrying device and had become ‘unbound’ in time, creating a channel between the present, the past, and the future. Celestia had made use of it only a few times in her long lifetime, due to the incredible amount of energy it took to use, especially to see into the future.
I don’t need to go very far, Twilight thought as she took deep, soothing breaths that she’d learned in her birthing classes. Just…twenty years or so. Maybe less.
The mirror fed on her magic, using it to follow the path she cut through time. Twilight could catch glimpses of herself, from behind her own eyes, in places both familiar and far-away. She stumbled through time like being carried down a river, feeling ‘thin’ points where she could just barely push through.
Twilight winced quietly. Casting her magic through time took immense amounts of energy and concentration, and she’d just nearly ‘slipped’ and broken her focus. She felt the foal kicking inside her as if from far away, like an old memory. She looked for any ‘dip’ in the time stream that indicated a significant event. Emotions from her future selves flickered in and out of her mind: joy, sorrow, fear, and anger at events yet to pass.
“No…” Twilight winced, feeling herself slipping, her focus waning. It was harder and harder to hold the connection. “Little more…just…just a little longer…” Decades worth of time whirled around her mind’s eye in a hurricane of images, senses, emotions. Twilight understood what would happen if she were to lose control within the mirror: all those future moments would collapse on her, flooding her consciousness with the enormity of time until past and future became meaningless. If the shock didn’t kill her, she’d be driven irrevocably insane.
“No!” Twilight shouted, pulling back and snapping her eyes open. She was on her bed, in her room in the castle, her wide-eyed reflection in the mirror staring back at her. Panting and trembling, she touched a hoof to her belly, both to calm her mind and for reassurance she was still in her present time. Her son, her firstborn, was still inside, not yet born. Her muscles sagged, wearily, and she hung her head in exhaustion. Nothing had gone wrong, but it could have been disastrous.
“Well…that didn’t work,” Twilight sighed, disappointed. “Back to the drawing board, I gue-” The pregnant alicorn stopped, cocking her head to the side as she felt that same warm, tingling sensation from her belly. The blue glow she’d seen earlier had begun to emanate from her round middle, but even stronger than before, more stable, directed. Twilight followed the trail of her unborn foal’s magic to the scrying mirror against the pillow and watched it shimmer and flicker like a candle flame.
One of the more extensive books on unicorn pregnancy mentioned that a foal in-utero, while developing their magic, might subconsciously mimic and copy the same spells cast by the mother, but with uncontrollable results. For her baby to copy such a complex and intensive spell before birth was dumbfounding. Twilight touched her belly, marveling at the prodigy she carried inside her before taking a deep breath and closing her eyes as she cast out her magic once more.
She felt the foal’s energy grasping for the mirror. It was strong, but clumsy, without the guidance that years worth of training and practice had given Twilight herself. She pushed forward toward the energy, which gave off the air of sunrise on a chilly morning, and felt it instinctively shrink away from her.
It’s alright, she thought, gently reaching out to touch her son’s magic with her own. It’s alright. It’s me. It’s your mother. I’ll take care of you.
With slight hesitation, the snake-like probe of magic from the baby reached out and touched Twilight’s before the two coiled around one another in a kind of psychic embrace. Twilight gasped, shuddering at the moment of intimacy between her and her baby. She could feel the foals heartbeat in her own chest, feel the warmth of her own womb as if she were inside it herself. The dim flicker of her foal’s consciousness had touched hers and it was difficult to say which sensation belonged to the mother or the son.
Their combined magic began to push toward the mirror, guiding each other into the channel it cut beyond time. Twilight clenched her teeth in preparation, but the strength she shared with her son let them pass through the barrier easily, the buffeting winds of the time stream glancing away from them feebly. Together, they drifted forward in time, winding down paths semi-obscured paths they hadn’t yet taken. Twilight could feel which channels would take her to events in her own future while simultaneously knowing which would lead to her son’s.
She felt the dips and craters in the timeline and moved past them like windows. She recognized the heady pleasure that was her son’s conception, a look into the past. Twilight bashfully steered them away from that memory and passed a glimpse into the future, which she instantly recognized as the day of her foal’s birth. With the size of her belly, she didn’t need a magic mirror to tell her that day wasn’t far off. But beyond these distractions, far into the future, Twilight could see an enormous divot in the flow of time, a deep crater that indicated an important moment. As they approached it, she felt a tug from her foal’s magic as he led them inside of it, spiraling down and flying up at the same time and into a blinding, white light.
Twilight snapped her eyes open and blinked in discomfort, shaking her head as her eyes began to focus once again. She was still in her room, still in her castle, still heavily pregnant. She frowned hung her head, at first thinking that she’d failed yet again before she noticed the mirror sitting against the pillow. Her reflection was gone. Everything was gone. Instead, mirrored in the intricate frame was a colorful, elaborate scene that might have been mistaken for a photograph if it wasn’t moving. From across the bed, she could even hear sounds coming from it. Cheers and music sounded out from the tiny metal rectangle. Twilight scrambled awkwardly across the bed and flopped on her heavy side as she pulled the mirror close to her face, staring into it.
“It’s not a mirror…” Twilight said to herself in awe. “It’s a window.”
The scene was some kind of celebration. Thousands of ponies gathered together in the large, stone hall. It took Twilight a moment to see past the decorations and realize that it was the entrance hall of her castle. The scene stuttered for a moment, going to black for a fraction of a second, before she realized that the mirror was showing the scene from behind Twilight’s own eyes and she was watching herself blink. The future Twilight Sparkle turned toward the door at the far end of a red carpet, expectantly, then laid eyes on Joe, who was standing tall and proud beside her with a little more gray in his mane than he had in the current timeline. He turned and smiled down at her sheepishly. Twilight frowned and cocked her head to the side. If this was her castle, what was she doing in the crowd? Why wasn’t she on her throne, or at least on the podium?
Her question was answered by the sound of royal trumpets sounding out through the hall, silencing the crowd. The doors at the end of the hall opened triumphantly as a procession of guards and walked down the plush carpet down the middle of the hall, surrounding a stallion that stood nearly twice their height. The sun was shining directly through the doorway, forcing the Twilight of the future to turn aside and rub her eyes with the back of her hoof. The Twilight of the present caught her breath and pulled the mirror closer to her face, trying to catch a glimpse of the young foal standing to her future self’s right.
“Was that him?” She asked herself under her breath. Without finding an answer, she watched through her own eyes as the procession neared the end of the line, the guards marching in order near her, close enough to hear the metallic clink of their armor. At the end of the row, they stopped and the stallion approached. He was somewhere between the height of Luna and Celestia with a long, pointed horn that seemed sharp enough to pierce metal. His coat was a calm shade of blue, like the sky above the ocean, but his eyes were the bright orange of a sunrise. A regal cloak was draped over his back, hiding both his cutie mark and whether he had wings or not.
“Oh…oh Celestia…” Twilight gasped, hugging her legs to her belly. “Th-That’s…that’s you…that’s you!” She stared wide-eyed at the image of her future son, baffled at the idea that the little kicking foal in her belly was the same pony.
The tall stallion stopped in front of the future Twilight and looked down at her with a calm, relaxed look in his eyes that likely came from Joe. He leaned over and affectionately nuzzled her.
“Are you nervous?” Twilight heard her own voice ask, but with a different sound to it.
“Nah,” the stallion said in a youthful male voice before shrugging and adding, “Well…maybe a little.”
“I was too,” the future Twilight said. “But all you really have to do is sit there. Pick ponies out of the crowd to smile at. They love that.”
“They already love you, kid,” Joe said. “All you need to do is show up and you’ve already got ‘em.”
“Don’t mess it up, okay?” said the small colt to Twilight’s right, a short little unicorn with a silver coat and a slight lisp.
“I won’t, you little punk,” the stallion smirked, tapping a hoof to the little colt’s head. He paused, turning around to look at the crowd as if amazed to see them there.
“You okay?” Joe asked. The stallion nodded, then leaned down to Twilight again.
“Mom…I think…” He hesitated while speaking quietly to the future Twilight. “I think I remember this…It’s like a memory of a memory, like I read it out of a book.”
“I do, too,” she said. “I think I’m watching right now. From the past, before you were even born.”
Twilight’s heart skipped a beat in her chest.
“You were still pregnant with me? How do I even remember?”
“It’s complicated, I’ll tell you later tonight.” The future Twilight leaned up and kissed her son on the cheek. “Just go do your best. I love you. Both of me.”
“Well, that’s pretty nerve-wracking,” he sighed with a nervous smile before standing up tall and walking to the throne set high above the crowd.
As he walked the rest of the distance, the Twilight of the future turned to a small saddle-back and pulled out an object wrapped in delicate cloth. Carefully unwrapping it, the glint of the scrying mirror shined in the daylight, the same one Twilight was looking into in the present. She held it in front of her face, revealing an older, more mature Twilight Sparkle with longer hair, a few wrinkles next to her eyes, and a calm, self-assured smile. She winked slyly into her reflection, which was obviously meant for herself in the past to see.
“Does this mean I gotta be nice to him?” asked the little colt to future Twilight’s right. “’Cause he’s a prince or whatever?”
“You need to be nice to him because he’s your brother,” Twilight said.
The pregnant, younger Twilight’s breath caught in her throat. Brother?
“Whatever,” the colt huffed. “Just cause he’s got a throne doesn’t make him not a big jerk sometimes.”
“You remind me so much of your uncle, sometimes,” Twilight said.
“Which one?” he asked.
“Both of them.” Future Twilight’s gaze turned down to the barely noticeable curve to her middle. “It’ll be nice to have another girl around the house, soon.”
Present Twilight nearly fainted.
The sound of more trumpets silenced the crowd as Twilight turned to watch her son take the throne. He seemed composed and calm, but the tapping of his hoof told both the Twilight of the present and future how nervous he was. A guard in gold armor stepped forward and cleared his throat before unfurling a scroll.
“Ladies and Gentlecolts!” He called in a loud voice. “We are gathered here today to celebrate the royal coronation of the new Prince of Friendship…” The royal guard paused for effect, then finished in a loud voice, “Prince Daybreak Gleam!”
The crowd roared in cheers and applause. Then, as if on cue, the mirror flickered and the scene vanished, leaving Twilight in stunned silence of her room.
“…Wow,” she breathed under her breath, as if not to disturb the quiet. She turned down to her belly, picturing the tall, elegant stallion from the future as a tiny little foal nestled in her womb.
“…Daybreak. Daybreak Gleam.” Twilight chuckled as Daybreak gently pressed a hoof against her, as if in approval. Twilight agreed. It was perfect. “I think we’ve got a lot to look forward to, together.” She cradled her belly and a tear dropped from her eye. “I can’t wait to meet you.”
Twilight and Daybreak both jumped in surprise at a loud knock on the door.
“T-Twi!” Spike shouted from behind the door in a desperate voice. “I got the stuff! Open the door!”
“Take it down the hall to the nursery! On the left!” Twilight called as she shuffled off the bed, more careful than ever not to jostle the foal in her womb. “I’ll be there in a minute!”
“Okay!” Spike grumbled behind the door as he thudded off with the sound of a wagon behind him. Twilight stood in the quiet moment, thinking about the future Prince Daybreak. The present Prince Daybreak prodded her in the ribs from her belly and she giggled happily.
“Hey, Spike!” Twilight called out as she waddled down the hall after him. “You’ll never guess who I just met today!”
