From a young age Twilight had put everything she had on maintaining order in her life. She valued timetables, study cards and scrolls overflowing with notes above anything else, put all her focus on timekeeping and productivity. Time spent wallowing in the clouds therefore, was not time well spent. It should have brought her at least a little joy to see them lined up so squarely - anchored in their place like large airships mored in their expansive harbour - but all she could focus on was the blood rushing through her ears and chest, the weight she carried on her back hitting her harder every passing second and the shaken breathing she was desperately trying to even out. In short, she was panicking.
Everything she had worked towards in her life had presented itself at once and she was, in a word, overwhelmed. Everyday for the past few weeks had piled on more work and more tasks to the point where she wasn’t sure if getting everything done in time would even be possible. She’d timetabled it all in of course - an hour for notes on potion making here, two hours to complete the book on legends and myths Princess Celestia had sent her there, short pop quizzes on her study subjects just to keep her on top of it all. But as she sat on top of her tower within the most important part of equestria, she felt her heart sink once again.
The young unicorn had found herself often taking breaks she absolutely did not have time for recently, opting to instead teleport herself on top of the building she inhabited to lose herself way up in the clouds. Sometimes it brought her peace to sit so far away from the rest of the world around her and sometimes it didn’t. More often than she’d care to admit, she’d come to the top of the tower when things had started to overwhelm her. Being the Princess’s personal student had brought her almost as much joy as it had strain and she couldn’t help but wonder if it was worth it to push herself so much mentally. Deadline after deadline, in a constant sea of tasks and assignments, practically drowning in work. She’d often found herself forgetting simple things like meals and silently thanked her parents for allowing her to keep her handy assistant Spike all those years ago, who knows how she’d keep it together without him.
She blocked that thought out as quickly as it came. She was Princess Celestia’s personal student, she couldn’t afford time to worry about it. Sacrifices had to be made in the pursuit of knowledge. And it wasn’t that bad anyway - just a few skipped meals and late nights and missed birthdays. Only a couple of breakdowns a week and when had she last seen her BBBFF or parents?-
She felt her chest starts to constrict again. Images of her life before joining the school flooded her mind, overwhelming her senses and forcing her to slump down and push her head between her hooves to block out any light from her vision. Her brother was so excited for Twilight, her parents even more so. Her last birthday before leaving her childhood home had been full of cake and presents and celebration like her little house had never seen before - it was full to the brim with joy. It made her sick to think about. How many times had she broken the promise to come home for a few days, opting instead for rushed trips behind a mountain of books? It wasn’t that she didn’t miss them - of course she did - she just had so much to do. Always so much to do.
The fog of busy thoughts hung heavy in her head and weighed down her mind, leaking in and tainting the brief happy feeling she’d got from thinking about her family. She didn’t have time to go and see them within the next few months and nothing stung more than that realisation. Her breath hitched and she blinked back the tears forming in her eyes quickly. She couldn’t cry, she’d have to be back soon.
Twilight shivered as a cool breeze hit her back, prompting her to turn her head up towards the slowly darkening sky above her. All she had to do was remember how to breathe. Easy. Just don’t get overwhelmed, don’t think too hard about everything to do and don’t panic about the time left to do it. Easy.
She took a deep breath and tried to shut off, tried to focus on anything else around her. The slowly darkening sky up ahead, the chatter and noise from the never-sleeping city below, the cool breeze blowing through her tail and mane causing the hairs to tickle her back. Anything else. She started to count slow and steady back from thirty in her head, matching her inhales and exhales to the numbers until she hit zero and then starting again until she was calm enough to start to move around.
The roof wasn’t the sturdiest place to be but it held her weight well enough when she began to raise herself from her perch, aching limbs making their presence known with a dull ache and a few noisy protests. She didn’t know how long she’d been on the roof in her fog but she figured it had been long enough that a certain dragon would have started to worry already, but she couldn’t find it in herself to go. Going back inside might have meant a shelter from the cold that had begun to bite at her hooves but it also meant stacks and stacks of work to do and notes to write and schedules to rearrange. She knew realistically she couldn’t run forever though - so with just a few more minutes to breathe in the fresh air and shudder at the tasks waiting for her at home, she lit up her horn and focused on the location she dreaded the most.
Home.
Author's Note
Short story for practise