"You are an inspiration to us all, Twilight."

Those had been the words Princess Celestia had told her the day she became an Alicorn. The day Twilight had ascended to a level of existance she had never believed was possible, and had earned herself wings and a title as princess of the very thing she had been tasked with studying in the first place. never in her life had she thought that she would become an alicorn, especially not of a subject as both vague and comlicated as friendship! How was she supposed to preside over such a thing, considering she herself wasn't perfect in the subject matter?

It had been almost a week since that day, and Twilight was faring no better now as she was the day it happened, as she had spent the last six days tearing apart her home/library for source material.

"I need every book I've got documenting Princess Celestia's rule for the past milennia." Twilight muttered, though more to herself in a state of near permanent stress she had been under recently than to anyone in the room. "Any sort of detailed recordings of her major decrees and actions when in the face of national struggles or crisis, something to help reference what I'm expected to be doing from here on out!"

Levitating several books into a big stack of books, Twilight turned her gaze from the now empty bookshelf before her to the next one beside it. Just as her horn sparked up to repeat the process, Twilight's focus was torn from her thoughts as a voice picked up from behind her.

"Do you really need this many books, Twilight? I know your worried about making the princess proud and all, but surely you have enough?"

The newly appointed alicorn stopped her spell as her left eye twitched slightly. Turning around in a swift one-eighty Twilight lowered her gaze to her assistant and brother-figure Spike, who seemed way to relaxed for her liking considering all that happened this week. Granted, he wasn't the one with the title, but he had to know how this was affecting her!

"It's not about simply impressing Princess Celestia anymore, Spike!" Twilight exclaimed, her brow creasing as she brought a hoof to her head to suppress a growing migraine. "I was thrusted into this role with little to no preperation or warning, and I have no idea when I will have to act on my title as a princess, or what it even means to be one! Sure I've looked up to the princess as my mentor for years, but I never actually thought about what it took for her to be the pony she is or how she's able to cope with the stress of ruling a nation until now!"

Seeing Twilight's evident stress levels hitting an all-time high, Spike lets out a sigh and closes the distance between himself and the alicorn, hugging her by the foreleg still on the ground as he looks up at Twilight with a soft smile that he hopes is as disarming as he feels it is.

"Then maybe instead of looking into a hundred or so books on how other ponies saw and interpreted her rule, why not send her a letter about this or even go visit her in Canterlot and ask her yourself? You know she'd be more than happy to listen to you, Twilight. Especially since she's the one who thrusted this upon you and all by sending you that book in the first place."

Twilight opened her mouth to say her usual retort about how busy the princess was and how she'd rather not bother her, but for once the words seemed...wrong. Something deep within Twilight, something completely foreign to her, was telling her that Spike was right. After all, she was called a princess by Celestia herself, surely that would allow her to drop in unannounced if needs must, right?

These new sort of thoughts and feelings both surprised and even scared Twilight a little, as they had been slowly coming up more and more as the days have went on. Other than with her wings, had something deep within her shifted somehow? Making how she views her relationships with others change in some degree? She didn't exactly feel the urge to make her best friends bow to her whenever she entered a room or anything like that, but Twilight couldn't help but admit she felt...closer to the princess of the sun now...perhaps it's some sort of almost primal nature that came with being an alicorn? Some sort of even standing despite the difference between her and Celestias experience as alicorns?

"I..." Twilight trailed off, glancing past the dragon and to the three stacks of books beside them. Each one seemed to almost reach the ceiling, and a quick glance to the bookshelves around the librarys common room was all it took for the mare to realize she had three shelves worth of books in those stacks.

"Ok...maybe I did go a bit overboard." Twilight admitted sheepishly, laying her head on top of Spikes as she let out a surprisingly deep sigh, a weeks worth of stress coming out in a single breath. "It's just...I wish I could've known beforehand this was going to happen. "You know I don't like to be caught off guard, and so does the princess."

"Maybe she wanted to make sure you'd tackle that book with a level head?" Spike suggested, nestling his head into Twilights neck as he let the mare use him as an impromptu headrest. "You might've blown things out of proportion if the princess would've told you the results of using that book she sent you. I think she simply wanted you to tackle it like you would've any other problem without that extra stress to throw you off your game."

"I guess...Still, I'd like to have been not left completely in the dark." Twilight whispered, taking a deep, sobering breath before pulling back and looking down at Spike with a smile that would not have appeared moments prior. "Thanks, Spike. I don't know how I would've handled all of this without you being here to keep my head on straight."

Curling up his claws into a thumbs up, Spike took a step back and pointed it at himself with a big cheesy grin.

"That's why I'm your number one assistant, Twilight!" He proclaimed before he dropped the bravado and gave the mare before him a nod. "Though...you should let the princess know how you feel, and not through a letter. We've seen enough friendship problems to know these sort of things need to be worked out as soon as possible and through an in person heart-to-heart."

Twilight gave a single nod andsmiled as her horn sparked up, causing two of the three stacks of books to fly out and return to their rightful places on the shelves. Walking over to remaining shelf Twilight levitated a single book down from the top, glancing at it's title once before turning back to Spike with the book in her magical grasp.

"I'll keep these books out for some light reading later." Twilight said, ignoring Spikes face-palm as she made her way towards the stairs. "While I could probably go straight to Canterlot now and see the princess, I'm still going to send her a letter and see when she'd want to see me about all of this."

After all, despite the feeling in her gut of equality among the other princesses Twilight seemed to have at the moment, the mare still believed in the decorum of manners and respecting the teacher-student relationship she had with Celestia. And there was no way she was going to barge into her mentors workspace and demand an audience, no matter how important she seemed to be now.

Shaking his head with a smile, Spike realized this was probably the best he was going to get in this situation, and followed the mare upstairs, eager to assist her anyway he saw that she needed.

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Outside of the library and across the street stood a cloaked figure. Leaning against the wall of the building behind him, the stranger watched the massive tree before him for a moment before kicking off the wall.

"So this is the residence of the newest addition to the Equestrian Pantheon? I'd say I'm surprised, but Alicorns always seem to have a flair for the unusual, don't they?"

Walking up to the library, the figure let a bony hand trace across the hem of his robes as the other laid softly on the bark that lined the residence walls.

"I wonder what she's going to be like?"

Retreating his hand to his side the figure turned and walked back onto the road, glancing to the side as he saw a rainbow blur shoot straight through him, flying down the road at mach speed without a single notice of the interaction.

Waiting for his form to stop rippling, the figure pulled a rolled up piece of parchment from his robes and unrolled it slighty as his gaze went over it.

"I'll give her a few days before I introduce myself. Better for her to be more acquantied with her new role before I bring down the hammer of mortality." The figure spoke as ponies passed by, unaware of the creature looming in their wake. "Now, let's go check up on the Apples. While it's shouldn't be her time just yet, it would be best to see if anything has changed in that old grannys health to change that."

Putting the parchment back within his robes, the figure flicked his wrist as a staff appeared in his hand. Though crafted mostly of Willow bark, the top had a boney claw sealed to it along with a single ruby gemstone engraved in its palm.

With a single tap of the staff, the ruby glowed an eerie light as the figure vanished in a swirl of shadows, leaving begind nothing but a rush of chills in the bodies of the ponies who were nearby when he departed.

Author's Note

So, uh....tada! Here's my first touch into storywriting. The next chapters will be longer, I just felt like this was a good starting point for now to introduce things.