So I went back to writing. It's what I did. I typed idly to my online friends, telling them about things. I'm not sure they believed me entirely... But I told them.

"So, if I drop offline a while, you know why..." I leaned back at the words I had typed, considering them with a soft hum.

Big Twilight let out a similar hm. "Your device." She pointed at the screen. "It's already so removed. That may be in our benefit?"

9 PM]David Silver(He/Him): So, I've been hesitating to mention this, but I have Twilight here, watching me type. She can see the words I'm mashing, but I'm not letting her type, as I'm in the middle of writing an update too.
[7:31 PM]RadicalDishonesty: oh?
[7:36 PM]David Silver(He/Him): She said something about typing through dimensions? So she wants to get home, and she plans to use me to do it.
[7:37 PM]David Silver(He/Him): So, you know, if I fall off the Internet, you know why.
[7:38 PM]Dim Lib: Oh dear
[7:38 PM]Dim Lib: I know an elven witch and a pixie that could help get you back if needed David
[7:38 PM]Dim Lib: :Arywuv:
[7:39 PM]David Silver(He/Him): I'll hold you to that, but this is Twilight. Will I want to escape is a big factor, yeah?
[7:40 PM]Dim Lib: If escape isn't wanted I'm sure we can arrange to get you back in touch with us on the regular then.
[7:41 PM]David Silver(He/Him): That's what Twilight seems to be hinting at. 'electricity is very small' being what she was getting at, with the smaller the easier for cross-dimensional stuff.
[7:41 PM]Charlie Noone: You obviously have not tried to build a sensory dreprivation chamber with a mirror ball, because you ignore your friend who keeps saying he knows how this works. Silly Charlie...
[7:46 PM]David Silver(He/Him): I'm not sure where you're going with that.
[7:46 PM]David Silver(He/Him): That won't help me get there, or back.
[7:47 PM]David Silver(He/Him): But I did want to get it out there, if things go awry, you know why. You can let my poor players know what the heck happened.
[7:49 PM]Charlie Noone: The trick is to get the discordant sounds tosych up with the lights. It actuallly does work.
[7:50 PM]Charlie Noone: And the chamber has to be isolated from other sensory input.
[7:50 PM]David Silver(He/Him): Your words are English, but the meaning is something else.
[7:51 PM]David Silver(He/Him): Anywho, just wanted to leave a warning instead of just poofing abruptly.
[7:51 PM]David Silver(He/Him): Oh, one thing.
[7:51 PM]David Silver(He/Him): No promises... But should I be asking if others can come?
[7:52 PM]Charlie Noone: I mean, that's how you build a time machine. It's worked at least twice that I know of.
[7:52 PM]David Silver(He/Him): Oh, right, warning, this isn't cartoon Equestria. Think more Everglow Equestria, horses that look and need to do horse things to keep on horsing.
[7:53 PM]Charlie Noone: That makes zero difference.
[7:55 PM]Charlie Noone: Twilight will not take my advice... prolly because I am insanely tired. It's crazy late for me,
[7:56 PM]David Silver(He/Him): I don't know what you're saying. The look she's giving me implies she doesn't either.
[7:59 PM]David Silver(He/Him): Anywho, figured I'd check. (back to writing)

"How so?" I alt-tabbed to my story and got to typing away at it. "That sounds like you have an idea."

"I do," sang out Big Twilight. "The less information you're trying to get through a dimensional barrier, the easier, and that--" She pointed to the keyboard. "--is about as small as it gets. What you're sending is just electric magic, and not much of it."

David alt-tabbed back, adding that little fact to the ongoing chat. Twilight hiked a brow at the conversation. "I can't say I understand all they're saying... The words, individually..."

"I get that feeling." He switched back to his words, working on his update. "Just felt rude to vanish on them. I try to take my responsibilities seriously."

"About that."

"About that!" squeaked up the smaller Twilight. "What about your mom?"

"That was what I was going to ask." Large Twilight tossed her head towards the door to the room. "What about her?"

"What about her?" Things grew quiet as I typed. "Not the right answer?"

Large Twilight shivered softly. "That was... cold. Aren't you worried about her?"

I sighed, ceasing his typing to put his hands flat on his desk. "She did a lot for me. She created me, and raised me for 6 years, and another handful on the other end when I got here."

I leveled a finger with Large Twilight. "It went downhill from there. Her world shrank by the year. And my world got swept with it. I am only here because I didn't have the guts to run like my brothers did. She will sit on me until the day she dies. That will be the first day I first truly know freedom as an adult. The very first."

With a thump, I leaned back in my chair, back howling with fresh pain. "Dang it... Everyone around me approaches me because, ultimately, they want something, and that something isn't just my company."

Large Twilight raised a hoof slowly. "I want many things, but..."

"Not you." I put a hand on her head, ruffling before I realized she was the larger one, not the smaller one. "Sorry!" I yanked my hand back. "Didn't mean anything."

Large Twilight smiled despite it. "I am charmed, and pleased. It means you aren't angry with me. Kindly, in the future, ask, but I understand why you did it this time, and forgive you."

"Not sure if you're paying attention..." I resumed typing busily. "But this story involves you."

"It does?!" She flared her cloth wings wide. "I thought it was just another fanciful tale. Magic in their own way, but..." She leaned in for a better look. "How does it involve me?"

"It's your world." I kept writing busily. "The only way I'n going to get the details down is by working with it. Writing a story set in your Equestria feels like the way to go."

My keys clacked steadily as paragraphs detailing Twilight's Equestria spilled forth - fresh pages filled with produce carts, clothing boutiques, and cafes lifted straight from her wistful wandering accounts. Even impromptu worldbuilding carried me away from lingering frustrations into lands alive with magic, untouched by earthly burdens.

"What do you think so far?" I asked during a brief pause for fingertips, spinning the screen her direction.

Big Twi leaned in, tongue poking from her plush muzzle as she scanned the manuscript in progress. Little Twi hovered eagerly behind her shoulder to sneak her own peek.

"You have the geography of Canterlot's markets perfectly placed!" Big Twi gushed enthusiastically. "Why, reading this passage I can practically smell the baked goods and bloom perfumes in the air!"

Her praise brought an embarrassed chuckle as I rubbed my neck. "Well, you set the scene extraordinarily well. I'm just regurgitating details - though glad they ring true..."

"Are we characters too?" Little Twi suddenly chimed in hopefully, waving a hoof between herself and her twin.

I smiled and gave her soft head an affectionate pat. "But of course! What's a pony tale without its most important magic of friendship?"

Large Twi nudged little Twi back. "About that. This is quite good, excellent, but it's varying. You can see anything, so you... see anything. You're taking liberties. This is my world. I need it to be perfect, or I'll end up in some other world." She crossed her arms with a soft huff. "Please omit any flights of fancy. Permission to revise?"

Huh. I didn't generally have an editor. "Well, okay?" I pushed back from the desk. "Go ahead. I'll read what you did and work from there."

"With pleasure." Large Twi's horn glowed as she floated the keyboard into range of tapping with a combination of her plush hooves and her more precise magic as she erased bits and added other bits.

Little Twilight hopped up and flew to my shoulder. "She didn't mean it."

"Mean what?" I gently stroked the back of the little Twilight. She was simpler to get along with, I decided. She was simpler...

"She didn't mean to push you like that..." Little Twi touched her nose to my cheek. "She's just stressed out... I understand that."

Stressing out was a Twilight thing, I decided with a smile. Of course Twi would know, large or small. "That does mean you won't be in the story."

"Yes I will." Little Twi sat on my shoulder. "I'll be with you, when you go. Then I'll be in the story."

I chuckled at that. "Point..."

Little Twi nuzzled against me contentedly as we watched her bigger self intensely edit away, magic sparks flying in tempo with her rapid hoof strikes against the poor keyboard. I had to suppress another chuckle - even plush, Twilight wielded a red pen like no pony's business.

Still, I felt a small twinge of hesitation knowing she was divesting the draft of my imaginative flourishes. I created worlds for a living - having a backseat driver of dream crafting, however well meaning, was an odd sensation. This was meant be my conduit to focus...

As if sensing my hesitation, Little Twi patted my arm gently with a tiny hoof. "Creation should be collaborative don't you think?" she offered softly. "Your visions shape the realm, hers ground it..."

I blinked, tension easing at the simple profundity offered from such a small friend perched upon me. Collaborative creation bridging realities...how fitting for a princess of friendship.

I smiled and scritched Little Twi behind her ears. "You always were the wiser Twilight deep down you know."

She giggled, leaning into the touch before meeting my gaze thoughtfully. "Then together we will melt away the dark..."

The familiar words kindled long dormant memories of a lonely boy imagining himself a magic user with an internal system complicated enough it felt like it worked. Complex enough he got his friends into it, before they got bored and stopped without ceremony.

Good times...

"Editing done?"

Large Twilight set the keyboard down. "Please re-read the chapter and take note of my edits."

So, I did just that. I read through carefully, noting where things had changed. It was a good reminder in a way. I wasn't writing a story for fun. It wasn't creative writing. It was a test. And we were waiting for an A+, or it'd be an F. One or the other.

No room for flourishes there, just the facts that led directly for Twilight's home and, with it, perhaps a world that wasn't drowning in pain. That would be nice.

I nodded thoughtfully as I reached the end of Twilight's revised draft, eyes lingering on her insert describing intricate star alignment patterns unique to her Equestria's celestial sphere. Meticulous details down to exact magical wavelengths pulsing from each constellation.

Clearly Twilight was leaving nothing to chance in ensuring absolute accuracy, her changes transforming fanciful flourishes into an academically rigorous dossier of home reference coordinates. Cold, clinical facts for a textbook interdimensional chart rather than a story menagerie.

I supposed such hyper fixation made sense given the monumental stakes. Without total precision guiding my imagination, her one chance to leap dimensions into a welcoming hug rather than howling void could be lost in chaotic variability.

Still, I couldn't shake a lingering wistfulness for what creative magic we were leashing. The sanitized world on the page now felt drained of much intrinsic life that first called from foreign soil. Streamlined to mechanics alone absent the soul.

But, I reminded myself, the cold facts governerd the same world I lived in. A thousand cold facts led to a wonderous place, full of life and love and people living their lives.

The howling void of random change led, eventually, to all that I knew. The same void would take it away again.

It from that same void, the one I could reach into, that I hoped to pull Twilight's world from.

I had one chance.

Author's Note

Don't mess it up, David. What would you do?

Join the special community of folks who like my stories and/or get your own here at atreon!

Don't want to do an ongoing thing? You could

Join my discord to chat!