Sunset awoke to a softness she hadn’t felt in so many moons she had forgotten it. She moaned, nuzzling her pillow and smelling the scent of orange mixed with ink and enjoying the smooth texture of her cotton and silk pillow cases. Only a small part of her brain was awake, so she decided to ignore it and keep sleeping.

She felt shuffling behind her, and she was immediately forced awake. What on Tartarus was that? She opened her eyes with a start and sat up, becoming alert so suddenly her head started spinning. Still, she powered through and looked to her side to see what the disturbance had been.

It was Twilight.

Relief washed over her, then was immediately replaced by a violent and very confusing heat that began in her chest and quickly spread to her cheeks, and her stomach felt like she'd swallowed a swarm of parasprites. Of course she had let Twilight sleep on her bed with her. It had been the only option, seeing that there wasn’t anything else, and her bed was big enough to comfortably fit five ponies. She had begrudgingly accepted that fact last night, and she regretted it now.

Especially when her heart fluttered at the sight of the sleeping unicorn.

When she had gone to sleep, she had hoped that her sudden infatuation for Twilight had been a simple confusion within her mind, what with all the mixed feelings running through her head, such as excitement at being back, fear of being caught by the princess, and adrenaline for sneaking around the palace at night. She had reasoned that her finding Twilight so attractive had happened simply because she was the first pony Sunset had seen in thirty moons. But apparently, she wasn’t so lucky.

The only word in Sunset’s vast vocabulary she could use to describe Twilight’s sleeping form was ‘adorable’. Her messy mane covered half her face, but Sunset could still see her slightly open mouth, and her soft breathing moved her chest up and down in slow, gentle motions. Her hooves twitched slightly in response to whatever she was dreaming about.

Sunset watched her for a long while, her entire focus quickly centering on Twilight alone. Even before becoming Princess Celestia’s personal student, Sunset had never cared about other ponies. She had nothing in them that she needed or wanted. Not their money, not their connections, and most definitely not their looks. Sunset had only ever cared about knowledge and power, both magical and political. She had her sights on princesshood and had no interest in pointless socializing.

That is, until she’d been forced to interact with Twilight on a mostly weekly basis. Well, ‘forced’ was maybe a bit too strong a word. ‘Compelled’ was probably more appropriate. Regardless, she had spent over two years interacting with Twilight, and she had to admit she hadn’t hated it. No, she had actually enjoyed herself. Twilight hadn’t cared if Sunset had power or connections, she had only wanted to share knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

When Sunset tried to remember the past years with Twilight, she could clearly picture the times they spent playing their instruments in duet on Twilight’s birthday. Or when they had gone to the amusement park. Even their trips to the beach came to mind. And of course, their many, many study sessions. Sunset was surprised by the realization that she liked spending time with Twilight, regardless of what they did. At some point during the past year she’d stopped seeing Twilight as a means to an end, and, even if unbeknownst to her, started seeing her as a friend.

And now she found herself attracted to her.

Twilight murmured something. Sunset yelped and pushed herself back so fast she fell on her back, then rolled over and fell to the floor. Ignoring the pain on her side and the painful thundering of her heart, she got to her hooves and took a peek. Twilight was still asleep. With relief washing over her, Sunset decided to get the day started. She eyed the solar clock above her desk. Princess Celestia had raised the sun not too long ago.

Sunset walked into her washroom and took a moment to let the nostalgia wash over her. Marble tiles decorated the floor, with a large red fluffy rug spread in the middle of the room. The sink was also made of marble, though the cabinet was made of dark wood. A large mirror above was held on a golden frame. A small set of three-step stairs led to the bath, which was wide enough to fit three ponies comfortably. However, Sunset set her sight on the toilet, which was hidden by a large panel made of frosted glass.

She had missed squat toilets so much.

After relieving herself, Sunset used her magic to open the bath’s faucets. While she waited, she rummaged through her cabinet, pulling a toothbrush and some paste, which she was reasonably sure were new. When she finished, she set up the mane-care products on the sink and some hoof polish. She was thankful to find her favorite brushes in the sink’s drawer.

“Sunset?”

Twilight’s groggy voice sounded so low and far away, Sunset knew she was still on the bed.

“In the washroom!” Sunset called before she opened the door with her magic. “Come on in.”

Twilight yelped right before a thud resounded within the room. Some shuffling later, Twilight finally managed to get up and walk towards the washroom. She kicked back to finish untangling her leg from the sheets and offered Sunset a smile from behind askew glasses.

“Whoa, I’m sorry,” she said. “I slept way better than I thought. Your bed is so soft I feel like I slept on a cloud.”

Sunset snickered at Twilight’s wild bed mane. “Well, that’s because it’s a cloud.”

“Oh, that explains… wait, what?”

“Packed cirrocumulus wrapped in pegasus-treated cotton fiber, pressed into a rectangular shaped quilt,” Sunset explained, smiling at Twilight’s progressively more bewildered expression. “Yes, Twilight. You literally slept on a cloud, or as close as non-pegasi can.”

Twilight’s mouth moved silently for a few moments. “I’m really in a magical world…”

“I guess being a magical unicorn isn’t enough for you?”

“I’m a unicorn?!”

Sunset blinked. “You haven’t noticed? Take a look at the mirror.”

Twilight walked up to the sink and jumped a little to place her forehooves on the surface, looking at herself in the mirror. “Whoa… This is freaky.” She tapped at her horn and immediately flinched in pain.

“Yeah, hooves are hard. Try not to knock on your horn until you learn how to control your strength unless you want a massive headache.”

“Duly noted,” Twilight said, falling back on four hooves. She looked at the slowly filling bath. “Did I interrupt you?”

Sunset stepped towards the bath, closing the faucets. “No. I was actually about to wake you up. Let’s take a bath.”

Twilight blinked. “Together?”

“Unless you want to try on your own? It took me a whole week to learn how to properly take a shower as a human.”

“No, well, I mean…” Twilight groaned nervously. “How do you even do anything with hooves?”

“With practice,” Sunset said with a smirk. “Don’t worry, I’ll just brush you.”

She let Twilight into the steaming bath, which was only half full. The bath was enchanted to maintain the water’s heat at the perfect temperature, and Sunset sighed happily as her fur was soaked. How she had missed this feeling. After Twilight settled inside, Sunset opened a second faucet, which activated a showerhead located in the ceiling, raining hot water on them.

“Ohhh,” Twilight cooed as the water hit her. “This feels amazing.”

Sunset levitated her fur brush and started working on both Twilight’s body and her own at the same time. The split concentration wasn’t enough to ignore the situation, so Sunset forced herself to focus on literally anything else. She thought about going through her room to record what she had available and what she could take to the human world. She thought about what stores to visit when going into the city. She thought about where to eat. And she still thought about the fact she was brushing Twilight’s pretty fur.

Twenty minutes, lots of brushing, blushing, and a quick rinse later, Sunset used a pair of fur dryers on her and Twilight. Sure, their furs would be a bit unruly, but she absolutely refused to dry Twilight with a towel. Her heart would explode if she did.

Sunset did help with brushing Twilight’s mane, discovering that it was very easy to work with. She felt very jealous of that fact, since Sunset always had trouble with her mane, even in the human world. Since she didn’t want to spend hours brushing, she did only the bare minimum, then used a red lace to tie her mane into a ponytail. It wasn’t the most original style, but it’d have to do. Plus, it’d give her another level of disguise without actually having to dye it as she had originally planned.

With their general grooming done, Sunset returned to her room proper and used her magic to pull a large chest from underneath her bed. It was a boring looking box made of wood with golden corners and a faux latch.

“What’s in there?” Twilight asked.

Instead of replying, Sunset channeled some mana through her horn. The chest’s latch was just there to dissuade the maids from attempting to open it, since there was no key. The thing keeping the chest closed was a mana sensitive lock spell. Only Sunset’s mana signature could unlock it. With a click, the chest’s lid jolted. Sunset levitated it to open it completely.

She smiled at the sight. Golden bits lined up in tall stacks, occupying about a fifth of the chest’s area.

Twilight breathed out. “What’s all this?”

“Some spending money,” Sunset replied. There were about fifty thousand bits in there. While a small fortune in its own right, it was a sort of readily available emergency fund in case Sunset wanted to experiment with expensive materials. The rest of her money was in her personal vault at the bank, which would have required her to expose herself and possibly alert Princess Celestia.

“And this?” Twilight asked.

“This is part of what we came for,” Sunset replied. The rest of the space in the chest was taken by a stack of large boxes, each divided in nine sections that opened by sliding the lids. Inside each section there were many different kinds of high quality magical reagent gemstones of many different sizes and shapes. She opened a few so that Twilight could see. “With these, we’ll be able to build a better Enchanter in no time.”

“Whoa…”

Sunset smiled smugly. “And the books in my shelves are all about magic. We’ll have to sort through them to decide which ones to take back with us, but we won’t have to search for bookstores anymore. That saves a lot of time.”

Twilight’s grin faltered at that. “Oh. That means we won’t be going into the city, right?”

That made Sunset’s grin widen even more. “So you did want to treat this as a vacation!”

“N-No! That’s not…”

“Well, fortunately for you, we still need to go to the city proper,” Sunset said. “Even if we dress as maids, using the staff cafeteria would be too risky, and I’m guessing you don’t want to spend two days without food. We’ll use some of this money to eat out.”

“Oh, that’s, uh…” Twilight said, clearly struggling not to look too happy about it.

“Besides,” Sunset continued. “It’ll be worth it going to the city anyway. You’ll get to see something that the human world doesn’t have.” Since she’d seen the general schedule for the palace staff, she now knew the exact day they had arrived. “You’ll get to see an Equestrian Winter Wrap Up.”

“A winter what now?”

“The last day of winter,” Sunset replied. “Ah, but I think it’ll be better if you see it with your own eyes. Trust me, you’re gonna love it.”

And on that point, Sunset reached out with her mana and opened her wardrobe, searching for and levitating several pieces of winter wear onto her bed.

“What’s this for?”

Sunset lined up a bunch of boots on the floor. “You don’t notice because the palace’s temperature is regulated, but it’s still winter, and it’s very cold outside. And even if it weren’t, we still need to hide our Cutie Marks, but we can’t go around wearing maid dresses outside the palace.”

Twilight nodded as she stepped next to the bed and eyed the clothes. They were mainly just coats and scarves of different colors. Sunset had always favored practicality over fashion, after all. It didn’t take longer than ten minutes for Sunset to choose their clothes. She then stuffed them into her old saddlebags, along with some bits from her chest.

With that taken care of, Sunset levitated the rest of her clothes back into her wardrobe. She walked to the space in front of her bed, eyeing it carefully, then nodded.

“I’m going to create a beacon,” Sunset said. “Give me a few minutes. I need to concentrate for this.”

She didn’t wait for Twilight to reply, but the other girl’s silence let her know she had heard her. Sunset took a deep breath and started channeling mana through her horn.

Teleportation was one of the most difficult spells any given unicorn could learn. It required a high level of skill creating the uberly complex circuitry, the ability to calculate spatial coordinates with a glance, precise control of mana flow, and a larger than average mana pool. It was so difficult that it was an optional spell to choose for the graduation exam at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. As it was, there were less than twenty known unicorns in all of Equestria capable of teleportation, only three of which could do so without beacons.

On a technical level, teleportation could work with coordinates gathered at a glance. That is to say, it was possible to cast it as long as the destination was on sight. However, that became increasingly unreliable the farther the destination was, and could lead to very unwelcome results. Teleporting to locations not within sight almost always ended up badly.

Beacons had then been developed to assist with and solve those issues.

First of all, Sunset created an enclosing cage, much like she’d do with an enchantment, however, instead of it being the size of the object to enchant, it occupied a circular area three hooves in diameter and five hooves in height. She attached the base to the floor. The next part was to calculate the measurements within the enclosing cage and translate them into fixed coordinates, which she then saved into a storage array.

Next was building the circuitry for a detection spell to work within the enclosing cage. It would detect empty space as cleared, and anything going inside the area would be recognized as an obstacle, and its dimensions measured. If it was a small enough object, it would be possible to teleport around it. But if the obstruction was too big, she would be safe deciding not to complete the teleport.

The last part of the beacon was a relay spell. It would be connected to her horn at all times, requiring a negligible amount of mana. The relay spell would tell Sunset all the parameters of the beacon, both the coordinates and whether it was safe to teleport.

When she was done creating her beacon, Sunset let out a sigh and stepped back. The connection with the relay spell was a bit distracting, like a constant buzz at the base of her horn, but she would eventually get used to it to the point that it would get unnoticeable until she actively recalled it. She took a moment to marvel at how easy casting spells came to her now that she had her horn back. She'd thought so last night, but being in the human world really was crippling. Hopefully she'd be able to solve that particular issue soon.

“Alright,” she said, feeling a bit winded. “Let’s get ready.”

“Huh? Wait,” Twilight said. “What did you do?”

Sunset chuckled. “You can’t see it, but there’s a teleportation beacon in here. I’ll use it to teleport us back here when we’re done in the city. We won’t have to sneak into the palace again.” She’d have to make another one in the city, but that was for later.

“Wait, teleport?” Twilight grabbed Sunset’s face with both hooves. “You can teleport?!”

“Uhh, yeah,” Sunset said, her heart beating faster at how close she was from Twilight’s face. She pushed Twilight away. “I’ll tell you how it works later. For now, let’s dress as maids again. It’ll be a long way out of the palace.”

Once again dressed as maids, Sunset adjusted her saddlebags on her back and led Twilight through the palace’s halls. There were many more guard patrols, but just like the previous night, they simply assumed they were carrying off one task or another. Even other staff members didn’t give them much trouble. Of course, if they came across somepony who cared to pay attention and recognized Sunset, that would be a really big problem.

So, in order to avoid that as much as possible, Sunset took a long detour through the less transited areas of the palace, carefully navigating her way to the public-open zones and even going back and taking other halls if she thought she recognized a face. It took them the better part of an hour to reach the ground floor of the south wing, one of the only areas where it was common to see palace staff and regular ponies cross paths.

Making sure nopony was around to see them, Sunset entered one of the public lavatories, Twilight in tow. Luckily, it was empty. Without wasting time, she removed their maid outfits —blushing intensely when she did so to Twilight— and pulled out the clothes she’d stored in her saddlebags.

For Twilight, she had picked an open coat a shade darker than the blue of her mane with white, fluffy cuffs and collar made of wool. It had been designed with a split tail that could be clasped in place around her hindlegs, which meant that it wouldn’t lift in the air, since Twilight’s tail would be free to move around. Sunset had also picked equally blue winter boots of a low cut, a baby blue scarf she left loose, and a light yellow knit cap.

Sunset herself was wearing a dark green fluffy coat with the same back clasp as Twilight’s, green high cut boots, a red scarf, and red earmuffs. Both of them, however, still wore their necklaces. Sunset had considered removing hers now that she could manipulate the stupid hook with her magic, but decided against it.

Their change in wardrobe done, Sunset put the maid outfits back in her saddlebags. She would dispose of them later. She hefted them onto her back and went out of the bathroom.

“Hey,” Twilight whispered. “I can understand why they wouldn’t recognize you with the maid outfit. But, won’t they do so now that you’re wearing normal clothes?”

Sunset smiled. “I never wear anything unless it’s a formal event. And I hate the cold, so I never went outside the palace during winter. Technically speaking, me wearing anything and going outside is a disguise in itself.”

“Ah.”

Just as she said, no pony paid her any mind as she walked about. Even if Princess Celestia was away and day court had been canceled, ponies still waited around just in case she returned. The small crowd was perfect to conceal themselves. Sunset wanted to laugh at how easy it was to move around the palace without being noticed. Another part of her decided she needed to do something about it when she became a princess.

When they crossed the entrance gates, Sunset laid eyes, for the first time in thirty moons, upon Equestria’s Canterlot. The frontal garden of the palace was only decorative, so it wasn’t very large, which meant that it was easy to see where the palace ended and the city started. Said city was covered in a thick layer of white snow, and ponies walked about their business wearing warm yet overly expensive clothes. Sunset took a deep breath of chilly air, and despite loathing how it felt in her lungs, she relished the scent of pure, unpolluted air.

She looked at Twilight, who was staring ahead with her mouth hanging open. “I think it’s finally appropriate to say this,” she said, then waited for Twilight to look at her. Sunset grinned. “Welcome to Equestria.”

Author's Note

First morning cleared successfully. Next mission: observe Winter Wrap Up. Will Sunset clear this level?

If you liked it, please do leave a comment! I thrive on them!