Late Night

Night Light trotted into his home with a plain brown paper bag. "Guess who just got home from the apothecary?" he sang into the house.

"I'm upstairs!" Twilight Velvet's voice sang out from their bedroom.

Night Light quickly discarded the bag and trotted upstairs. Getting to the bedroom, he showed off his purchase. "Neighagra," he said, showing off the iconic blue vial of stallion enhancement potion.

"Night, you don't really need that," Velvet said. "You're hooves and tongue are all I need."

"It's our anniversary!" he said. "I want to make love to you like the young stallion I used to be!" He popped off the cork and swallowed the potion. After a moment he felt a rush of blood run into his dick, making it swell to a turgid full mast that he hadn't had in years. He felt euphoric. But mostly a little dizzy.

"Night?" Velvet asked in concern. The room spun around Night Light as he began to experience an unsafe drop in blood pressure, and he collapsed on the floor. "NIGHT!?" Velvet leaped out of bed and rushed over to him on the floor.

"I just- wanted- to make- love- to you- one last time," he wheezed. His breaths were coming in short, shallow gasps. It felt like an elephant was standing on his chest. His heart bounded in his chest, beating erratically faster and faster until-

"Night!" Velvet screamed. But the darkness was already closing in around the edges of his vision. He was gone long before the paramedics even arrived.

~

At the funeral, the kind words of her friends and family gave no comfort to the inconsolable widow. That night, Velvet's bed was far too large for just one pony. The portrait of her late spouse stared at her from her nightstand. She flipped it to face down, unable to bear looking at it any longer. She howled out her woes into the empty home until she cried herself to sleep.

She awoke in the middle of the night to a noise coming from the kitchen, downstairs. Without a stallion in the house, she felt terribly vulnerable. She quietly walked downstairs, with her magic at the ready to defend herself against a home invader. But as she looked around, she saw no sign of forced entry. The doors and windows were all still closed and locked. The teleportation wards were still intact.

A tiny piece of glass crushed under her hoof. She looked over the kitchen floor and saw the remains of the broken potion vial. She thought she had thrown it away, but perhaps she had left it on the counter and it rolled off. "It must have," she reasoned to herself, grabbing the broom and dust pan to sweep up the broken bits of glass.

She turned off the kitchen light and went back upstairs. She turned on her nightstand lamp to settle back into bed. Night Light's portrait stared at her. She had flipped it down earlier, she was sure of it. Perhaps she flipped it back up in the middle of the night when she wasn't fully awake. "I must have," she told herself. She flipped the picture frame down again and went to sleep.

In the morning, the picture was upright again. She remembered waking up to clean the broken glass, but nothing else. Though she couldn't really trust her own mind in her emotional state. She put the picture away in the nightstand drawer.

But it would not be the last time she saw it. That evening, when she went to bed, it was back out on the nightstand. Velvet felt a chill run up her spine. She had been awake and home alone all day. She knew she hadn't done it. It had to have been somepony else. She checked all the doors and windows again. They were all still closed and locked. The teleportation ward was still intact. Nopony had teleported in or out of the house that wasn't on her whitelist. And that was only three unicorns. Herself and her two children.

She messaged Twilight Sparkle and Shining Armor to come see her as soon as possible. Just two days after the funeral, they came at once to help their grieving mother. But instead of a weeping widow, they were met with a mare scorned. And Tartarus hath no fury like it.

Velvet scolded them, "One of you is playing a prank on me, and I find it to be in very poor taste!"

Twilight and Shining were both equally confused. Velvet explained what had happened. About how the picture kept returning to her nightstand.

"Maybe you are doing it in your sleep?" Twilight suggested.

"That was what I thought, but it happened during the day when I was awake, too!" Velvet said. "I've searched this house from attic to basement. Nopony broke in, or teleported inside. The doors and windows are locked and the ward is still up! And you two are the only other ponies on the ward white-list! One of you must have snuck in and messed with the picture to prank me! And it's not funny!"

"How could you!" the siblings both accused each other. "It wasn't me!" they both denied.

"Mom, you must be imagining things," Twilight said. "You... are getting older-"

"Do not patronize me, Twilight!" Velvet snapped. "I may be a grieving widow, but my wits are as sharp as they've ever been. This isn't the onset of dementia! I am being messed with and I will not stand for it!"

Twilight sighed. "Alright, look, I'll add a modification to the ward. So that the next time Shining teleports in here-"

"It wasn't me!" he defended.

Twilight continued. "The next time a certain somepony teleports in here, their cutie mark will appear on the refrigerator. Okay?" Twilight's magic manipulated the ward. She walked outside and locked the door behind her. She teleported back into the kitchen. Sure enough, her cutie mark appeared on the front of the refrigerator.

"Neat," Shining remarked, doing the same thing. Sure enough his cutie mark appeared on the refrigerator.

Velvet did the same, marking it with her own.

"If anything else happens, please let me know," Twilight said. "But remember, we're on your side, Mom."

They both hugged her and left by the front door, leaving Velvet's mark upon the fridge.

Velvet went back upstairs that evening and put the picture back into her nightstand drawer. For the last time, she imagined.

~

It was just after midnight when Velvet's head popped off the pillow with a start. Her heart was racing like she had just awoken from a nightmare she could no longer remember. She looked over at the nightstand. Night Light's portrait looked back at her. She slapped it away in anger and stormed downstairs. A chill ran up her spine as she was struck with a horrifying thought. What if she was wrong? What if when she got down there, her cutie mark was still on the fridge? What if she actually was losing her mind?

She walked into the kitchen and froze in her tracks. Her eyes went as wide as dinner plates. The kitchen felt as cold as the frozen north. Her breath appeared in front of her as puffs of fog as her trembling voice whispered into the room.

"Night Light?"

The cutie mark of her late husband lay emblazoned upon the fridge.

Twilight Sparkle and Shining Armor stood with their mother in her kitchen the next morning. They arrived by her specific instructions not to teleport inside. Neither of them scarcely able to believe their eyes. The cutie mark of their dead father was on the refrigerator.

"Maybe you flubbed the spell?" Shining asked.

"No way. It's a simple ward modifier," Twilight said. "This is impossible."

"Maybe it's really him!" Velvet said with hope.

"Mom, I was at the funeral," Shining said. "I buried Dad myself."

"Maybe it's his spirit," Velvet said. "I could swear I felt his presence last night!"

"Mom, you know there's no such thing as ghosts," Twilight said.

"Do you remember when I told you there is no such thing as Windigos?" Velvet said. "And what you told me?"

Twilight sighed, recalling the memory. "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Twilight's mother stared at her, resolute in her conviction. "Fine," Twilight huffed, "I will go to the library and see what I can find out."

Twilight and Shining combed through the spell books in Celestia's library, but turned up nothing. Most books about death were self-help books about coping with loss. "I'm not surprised," Twilight said. "Most magic concerning the dead is outlawed black magic."

"Yeah, but we're not trying to do necrophilia," Shining said.

"You mean necromancy," Twilight said.

"Why? What did I say?" he asked.

"Uh... never mind," she said.

"My point is, we're not trying to bring Dad back from the dead, we're just trying to talk to his ghost," he said.

"Well there isn't any spell books about either of those," she said.

"What about in the restricted section?" he asked.

Twilight shot him a look. "How do you even know about-"

"Cadance told me," he said.

Twilight huffed and rolled her eyes. "Fine, we'll check."

Twilight led Shining to the secret entrance at the back of the library. She had only ever been in the restricted section a couple times before when Princess Celestia had shown her where it was. The books within were ancient at the youngest. Most were older than the castle they were housed in. Some were older than Canterlot itself. Some were older still, from a time before recorded history. A dark time of barbaric savagery and wild magics. The books were bound in the tanned bovine skin. Twilight was afraid to even touch them.

Princess Celestia had seen to it herself that the very worst spell books were destroyed in the Great Purge, lost to the sands of time and memory, when the first laws of magic were laid down at the dawn of a more civilized age. Twilight was normally against the destruction of books and knowledge. But she was wise enough to understand that some things should best be forgotten forever.

Knowing this steeled her nerves. The fact that these books had not been turned to ash centuries ago meant that they couldn't be that bad. Shining just shuffled his hooves and waited while Twilight flipped through a few of the books. Twilight's Oldé Ponish might be a little rusty, but his was non-existant. To him it just all looked like scribbles.

"I think... I think this might be it," Twilight said.

"You found a way to talk to Dad?" Shining asked.

Twilight squinted as she read through the dead language. "This.. would be the spell," she said. "I doubt it will work, but I think I know a way around it."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Well, we need to so a séance," she said. "Like a... magic ritual to talk to the dead. And as the caster, I would act as a medium. Er, like a mouthpiece for the ghost to speak through."

"So Dad would be talking through you?" he asked.

Twilight read over the passage again. "Yeah... that's how it supposed to work. But..." She trailed off. And then her eyes lit up with an idea. "But even if it doesn't work, I could still pretend that it worked, and talk to Mom for Dad and tell her whatever she needs to hear to help her!"

Shining scratched the back of his head. "I don't know Twi. You saw Dad's mark on the fridge."

Twilight shook her head. "Yeah. And just because I haven't thought of a reasonable explanation for that, doesn't mean there isn't one. For all we know, Mom could have tampered with it herself."

"You really think Mom would do that?" he asked.

"Mom isn't herself right now," Twilight said. "She's in mourning. Maybe she's doing this subconsciously to try to get some form of closure. Maybe it's a cry for help, or attention. And if you play along with me, we can help her with this. Besides, what's the worst that could happen?"

In the room full of forbidden spell books, the candles flickered and dimmed for a moment. Shining felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up from a cold chill running up his spine. "Are you really going to say that in this room?"