Epilogue: A Further Tale

“Twi...?”

“Huh?”

Her mother had a word for this slow state of mind, back when she was a filly. Not groggy, no—something aggressively cutesy.

What was it?

Oh, right.

“Muzzy,” Twilight murmurs, smiling vaguely.

“I noticed, honey. It’s adorable, as I’m sure you know,” Cheerilee says, appearing in the greyish blur of Twilight’s vision as a sort of big purplish blob with some fluffy pink on top.

Twilight blinks a few times, and the vague shape focuses into the more distinct but no less maroon curves of her wife, standing out boldly against the white walls and pale wood furnishings of their private apartment in Twilight’s tower on the Palace grounds. Through a window behind Cheerilee, the the very tail end of sunset cast the castle in a brilliant display of reds, oranges, and deep bluish-purples.

Being the Arch-Mage has perks, sometimes.

“Oh...hey, Cheerilee...” she burbles, looking around. She’s lying on their loveseat—the one Twilight used to study on as a student, in fact, well-loved in that very special euphemistic sense that means “falling apart and stained, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to get rid of it.”

That’s...good, yes. Familiar.

But even having cleared her head a little, everything seems hazy and indistinct. Cheerilee’s outline still blurs and wobbles, and her voice seems to come slightly before or after her lips move. To be fair, she’s been hung over before, but—

But...

But she doesn’t remember drinking—certainly not enough to lay her out like this. Not that it took all that much, granted, but still.

No, she’s just...tired.

So tired, as if she’s been awake for days. Her eyes ache, and her head throbs urgently. Even her neck is straining to keep her head lifted, as if her skull has been replaced with lead.

“Hi, Twilight,” Cheerilee says, stepping forward and planting a gentle kiss on Twilight’s forehead, letting her nose brush against Twilight’s horn just enough to send a little jolt of happy shivers down the unicorn. “You fell asleep over your notes. Are they that boring?”

“Huh?” Twilight looks down, and indeed, her latest binder full of research notes is lying open across her hooves. There’s even a little bit of drool on the upper-left corner. “Oh. What? No, no, I—”

Cheerilee laughs. “Just teasing. Uh...why don’t you go over them some more, and I’ll bring you some tea.”

Twilight looks from Cheerilee, down to the notes, and back up to Cheerilee. “Dun wanna.”

“Ah, ah, ah, don’t give me that, young mare,” Cheerilee says, raising an eyebrow in a rather peculiar way that makes her seem more like Princess Celestia than ever.

“Dun wanna,” Twilight repeats, pouting. “I’m muzzy. Adorable. Wanna sleep.”

“Twilight, my love,” Cheerilee says, putting a hoof under the unicorn’s chin to draw her gaze upwards. “If I hadn’t learned to resist you being adorable long ago, I would have pounced on you in public on one of several hundred occasions, and I’m fairly certain Her Royal Highness would have Had A Word with me about it.”

Their lips meet, gently, for a moment.

“Hmmph, Her Royal Highness,” Twilight murmurs. “You only call her that when you’re mad at her.”

“Well...right, right..” Cheerilee trails off, looking away for a second. “I would, wouldn’t I, since she’s been working you to the bone lately. Which, I imagine, is why you’re so tired. It’s all well and good to be excited about your research, but I think sometimes she overestimates your ability to keep up with her. We’re not all immortal sun goddesses, after all.”

“So let me sleep.”

Cheerilee smiles. “No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too early to sleep, Twilight.”

Twilight’s ears prick up as she shifts to peek over Cheerilee’s shoulder. “No it’s not. I just saw—”

Through the window, the sun hangs high above the horizon, only just starting to set. The golden accents of the palace gleam bright in the sunlight.

“What the...” Twilight says, but before she could start thinking things through, Cheerilee’s hoof presses her back down onto the couch.

“Twi, honey, just stay with me awhile. An hour or so, that’s all. If you’re good, I’ll put you to bed myself,” Cheerilee adds, with a suggestive little glint in her eye.

A lot of thought passes through Twilight’s mind very quickly. Most of it is memory, because imagination has been pressed to be more exciting over the years.

She purses her lips thoughtfully. “Mmm...well, when you put it that way...”

Cheerilee’s smile broadens for a moment, but her eyes dance across Twilight’s features anxiously. “Maybe I’ll stick around, if you don’t mind. Read that atrocious novel the publishers want me to review...”

“Mmm, sure,” Twilight mumbles, looking down at her notes. Cheerilee climbs up on the couch and cuddles into her, a warm bulk pressing gently against Twilight’s body, with occasional little jabs from the corner of the hardcover book into her ribs.

It’s hard to focus to start out with, but it quickly grows maddeningly difficult. The words swim and blur on the page, her own careful writing seeming almost as illegible as Rainbow Dash’s best penmanship.

Athletic bonus trap weasel? That...no, that’s not right, it’s...um...

The slurry of words is like a grey mush filling her head, threatening to spread all over her mind and suffocate it to death.

Or at least, the death of sleep.

Her eyes begin to close...

“Twilight Sparkle!”

The tone is a very familiar one that has been hard-wired into Twilight Sparkle since she was very young, commanding immediate obedience—

The teacher is talking now, sit up and pay attention!

Even if it is all weird and distorted, as if heard through a pillow or after being deafened by some kind of nearby explosion—a situation Twilight has to admit she is far too familiar with to consider herself completely sane.

Before she knows it Twilight is sitting straight upwards, the sudden movement making her head ache. “Yes, ma’am—ah, er...” She turns, and wilts a little under Cheerilee’s grumpy expression.

“I will not have you sneaking your way back into sleeping all day and working all night, Twilight,” the earth pony says, with a pointed glare. “I didn’t marry the owl, for heavens’ sake.”

Twilight chuckles, weakly. “Uh, right.”

Cheerilee keeps her pinned under the intense scrutiny for a second, before huffing an irritable sigh and looking down at her novel again, frowning slightly. “Read it aloud if that will help.”

“But you hate it when I—”

The elder mare makes a sharp little noise to indicate that she’ll call Pinkie Pie for an impromptu “keep Twilight awake” party if, indeed, that’s what it would take.

Twilight tries to smile, but suspects she’s failing. “Right. Uh...sorry.”

If she noticed this politeness, Cheerilee’s only reaction is to flick an ear in a huffy kind of way.

Squinting down at the pages, Twilight clears her throat and begins.

“Ah...ahem. Let’s see. Experimental modalities suggest that...um...no, that’s not where I was. I was...aetheric banality levels approached maximum when distortion field ratios synchronized their wavelength with the crystal resonance lev—”

“How unbelievably tedious.”

Twilight sniffs, and turns to give her wife a frown. “Look, I know you don’t like—”

And freezes.

The room is dark, drowning in shadows—and more to the point, it’s not the same room.

The only light here is the pale blue glow made by white stone in moonlight, shining in through the tall windows that line this place—more like doors to the open sky than a hole in the wall for looking out of. Blue silk curtains wave gently in a cool breeze like smoke flowing in the air. Beyond them lies only the black void of the naked heavens, punctured now and again by brilliant starlight...

...and the bright white orb of the moon.

Twilight struggles to her hooves—this couch is not her battered, beloved old friend, but rather an elegantly upholstered, complicated thing made of much paler wood. Her notes tumble to the floor. “What? Where...?”

“Tedious,” the voice says again, behind her. Now Twilight recognizes it immediately.

“Luna—Princess Luna,” she says, tossing her head this way and that, peering into the many gloom-filled shadows of the room. “What’s going on? Why I am I in your chambers?”

“So that we can speak in private, Twilight. Why else?”

Twilight spins on her hooves to face the voice, and there is the Princess of the Moon in all her glory—barely half a meter away. The unicorn scrambles backwards with as much dignity as she can muster so that she can look up into the princess’ sly smile rather than at her chest.

“This is a dream, isn’t it,” Twilight growls, hoping the embarrassed blush she feels burning on her cheeks wasn’t showing. “I must have fallen asleep...”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps you’ve just woken up from one. Who can say, with dreams?” Luna says, in a familiar tone of distant enigma. After a heartbeat, she grins. “Aside from myself, of course.”

“Well, say, then.”

Luna just sighs. “When did you get so...boring, Twilight?”

“What?”

“Like this,” Luna says, strolling forward with easy grace. With a gentle ring of magic, the research notes spring up from the floor and present themselves for the princess’ inspection. Luna’s face falls into an exceptionally expressive look of intense apathy as the pages whirr and flicker in front of her. “Words, words, words, words....words.”

Twilight bristles. “So?”

The princess rolls her eyes. “So?” she mimics, mockingly, her tongue lolling out stupidly as she speaks.

“Luna, I’m really not in the mood for this,” Twilight says, intentionally dropping the honorific. After all, she was slightly less under Luna’s hoof than the average Equestrian, for a whole lot of really good reasons. “I’m leaving.”

“Oh, Twilight, don’t be like that.”

“And what am I being, exactly? Boring?”

“Mmm, you said it, not me,” Luna replies, grinning.

“If you think I’m boring, it shows you don’t know a whole lot about me, I have to say,” Twilight says, her mind privately tossing up a few selected memories for review in case her confidence in this point found itself wavering under the mocking gaze of a more or less literal goddess.

The folio of research notes snapped shut, and Luna’s grin faded into a somewhat more pleasant smile. “Well, that’s just it, Twilight. I, above anypony perhaps one or two, know very well that you...” Luna leans down and whispers into Twilight’s ear. “Are most definitely not boring.”

There’s something about the way she says this which—

Twilight shudders.

Which makes me want to get away from her. Now.

“Luna. Princess. Please. You’re making me uncomfortable,” Twilight manages, hating how pathetic that sounds even though it is as true as anything. She turns away, closing her eyes tight and chewing her lower lip.

A hoof falls on her shoulder—gently, to be fair, but still.

Twilight spins, indulging anger to burn away her nervousness. “Don’t you dare touch—”

Celestia recoils, eyes wide with shock.

“P-princess!” Twilight says, stunned. “But...but I...”

“Honey, what’s wrong?” Cheerilee asks, stepping forward. “You, uh, zoned out there, for a second.”

Again Twilight finds herself throwing her head back and forth to get her bearings. The action draws attention to a heavy weight on her shoulders, and she grasps at it—finding only the heavy white cloak of her position as Arch-Mage, held in place at the throat, as always, by the brilliant star sapphire Spike had given her (by his own admission, reluctantly) from his nascent hoard.

The princess’ private study is as bright and airy as ever, even with the windows shut against early evening. A fire burns merrily in the fireplace behind Celestia and Cheerilee, who are peering at her fretfully.

“I’m sorry,” Twilight says, bringing a hoof to her temple, massaging away the sudden ache. “I didn’t mean to...er...”

The princess settles herself into her usual expression of patient goodwill. “I should be the one to apologize, Twilight. I seem to have startled you.”

“Don’t worry about it, please. Uh...” Twilight looks around, hoping to find any clue about what she was doing here. “What...what was I doing?”

Celestia and Cheerilee share a nervous glance, but then the princess chuckles. “Well, for a moment, you were just standing there stock-still.”

“Before that, I mean,” Twilight says, gruffly.

Celestia nods, smiling in a gentle way that Twilight only knows to be a bit sarcastic because she knows her friend quite well. “Before that, Arch-Mage, you were telling me you had some ideas for new research.”

Twilight furrows her brow. “I...was?”

Sure, why not? Go with that, see where it leads...

“Right,” she adds, nodding seriously. “Right, of course. I, uh—”

Cheerilee steps forward, putting a hoof on Twi’s chest. “Twi. Honey. I think you’ve been pushing yourself a little too hard. Why don’t we just relax awhile, hmm? It’s been a long time since the three of us could just sit down. Just...stay here, with us.”

“What a lovely idea,” Celestia agrees, suddenly. “I’ll get some coffee, shall—”

Almost imperceptibly, Cheerilee shakes her head.

“On second thought, perhaps not,” the princess says, not skipping a beat. “It’s a bit late for coffee.”

Twilight opens her mouth to speak—

And closes it, looking at her companions through narrowed eyes.

For their part, they look back at her, occasionally shooting a glance back and forth to one another.

“Actually,” Twilight begins, carefully, “actually, I think I would love some coffee. I’m feeling a bit worn out.”

Celestia raises an eyebrow, smirking. “Then drink up before it gets cold, Twilight!”

She appends this by discreetly sipping from her own cup.

Twilight’s ears prick upwards as she is suddenly aware of the warmth next to her left arm. Her head snaps down, and there’s a steaming mug of coffee sitting right next to her on a little table—and more striking, it’s half-empty, as if she’s already been drinking.

In fact, she can taste it on her tongue, now that she notices...

She stares at the steam, rising from the cup in weird, swirling patterns. Almost like—

“Diagrams!” Luna says, lamenting, prowling around behind her. “Formulas!”

Twilight stiffens. “Analysis.”

“Analysis,” Luna jeers again, still prowling around the miserably tiny form of Twilight Sparkle. Her chambers seem darker now, the princess’ every movement blurring into shadow as if she has to concentrate to be separate from it. “What good has it done you?”

“It has enhanced my understanding—”

“Understanding!” Luna blurts in a gale of mocking laughter. “No, no, no. Not understanding. Comprehension, perhaps. Systematizing. But understanding? No, Twilight, no,” she says, stopping in front of Twilight.

Her teal eyes bore into Twilight’s, demanding that she yield—

I am the Arch-Mage of Equestria, not some nervous schoolfilly!

“I have done great things, with my analysis,” Twilight says, in a polite but very definite way.

The princess draws back, taking in a deep, hissing inbreath in a strange pantomime of being struck. “Yes. You have. And I acknowledge this freely, because I—a goddess—admire your prowess. I really do.” She leaned down, eyes inches from Twilight’s. “But I fail to be overwhelmed.”

Twilight’s eyes narrow. “I never set out to overwhelm you, Your Highness.”

“Admirable. Still, I feel like impressing me would be something like an accomplishment,” the princess says, smirking. “I am, after all, not without honors myself in the area of magical practice.”

“Neither is your sister—who asked to be my research partner.”

Luna’s expression darkens around a smile. “My sister and I...differ, philosophically.”

Twilight hopes her shrug expresses a more extreme lack of concern than she feels.

The princess of the moon grins. “And yet here you are. Returning to me, my errant pupil...”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Twilight snaps. “Was that you, acting like Celes—like Princess Celestia? And my wife? Trying to fool me?”

“What interest would I have in fooling you?”

Twilight can’t control herself. “I don’t know!” she shouts, trembling in place.

“I know you don’t, Twilight,” Cheerilee says. “It’s okay. Just focus on me. Stay here.”

A hoof caresses her cheek, and Twilight moans in a strange, disturbing mix of pleasure and confusion. “What’s happening to me?”

“It’ll all be over soon,” Cheerilee whispers. “Just stay with me. Here. This is our place.”

Twilight shifts, rolling to face her beloved. The ancient bed creaks beneath them, echoing in the empty spaces of their bedroom at the Ponyville library. “I’m scared. It’s all so confusing...”

Cheerilee just smiles, and leans forward...

The kiss is wonderful—as if they’ve never kissed before. Cheerilee’s lips move in perfect time with Twilight’s, shaping and conforming to her every impulse; pushing, when she wants to be kissed, and accepting, when she wants to press forward herself. In perfect time their mouths open and let tongue dance across tongue, each moaning into the intimacy.

Automatically, Twilight moves her hooves across Cheerilee, relishing in her hoof rising and falling along her beloved’s curves. The shape was familiar, comforting...intoxicating...

The smell, the taste, the sound of her...was everything Twilight needed.

“More,” Cheerilee whispers, as they pulled their lips apart to take in deep, gasping breaths. “Twilight, stay with me.”

“As if you even have to ask...”

Suddenly everything is new again. Her shape, her form—suddenly, they all smack of the unfamiliar. New territory, untested and unconquered, heady with the mystique of the novel. Cheerilee moans as Twilight buries her muzzle in the elder mare’s neck, gratefully taking a mouthful of her sweet-smelling mane and twisting...

It’s sweet and perfect and triumphant, like that very first time, so many years ago. When she’d claimed, and been claimed, by this mare, who fit her so perfectly...

She can feel a pressure on her head, next to her ear—

“Tell me, Twilight, about...your first time.”

“Mmm...you know about it,” Twilight mumbles. “It was with Rarit—”

The voice is wrong.

Twilight’s eyes snap open, and she stiffens, realizing that she was swaying in delirious pleasure in the middle of Luna’s chambers as the princess prowled the shadows around her.

Luna, retracting from Twilight’s shoulder, looks down at her with eyes glittering in amused delight.

“Not that. I know all about that...you were, after all, trying to impress me with it.”

“How dare y—”

“And I was impressed. You were...admirably assertive,” Luna continues, ignoring Twilight’s indignation. “And admirably focused on the pleasure of somepony else. But—no, Twilight, not that first time.”

Twilight rises to all four hooves, tensing unconsciously. “My first time with Cheerilee, then?”

Luna grins. “No, no, no. Even I respect that it is a memory for you and her alone.”

Twilight rolls over in the bed. “And don’t you forget it!”

“All right, all right! Forgive me for asking!” Celestia says, laughing. “I was just curious if it was as...lighthearted as this is turning out to be.”

Twilight stares.

Celestia is...smaller, like she usually is when she’s being relaxed and informal. Her mane is bedraggled—more importantly, it is in a state where it could be bedraggled, a strikingly short bob of straight, brilliant pink strands, splayed across her face as if somepony had ruffled her mane playfully..

And she’s laughing, delighted, looking at Twilight with open affection, and—

Um.

And the look Cheerilee gives me, right after I make her c—

Twilight blushes furiously.

A hoof falls across Twilight’s side, and Cheerilee’s voice whispers into her ear. “Don’t be rude, Twilight, it’s not like it’s some great secret or anything.”

“It...what? What...?” Twilight babbles, turning to her wife, utterly perplexed.

Cheerilee suddenly looks concerned. “I...Twilight, is it? Oh, heavens, I mean, I’ve talked to Lyra and Bon Bon about it...and Rarity, and Fluttershy...”

“What?!”

Celestia begins laughing, loudly. “What have you gotten yourself into, Cheerilee...?”

“No, no, wait,” Twilight manages. “I guess I don’t...no, it’s not...” She looks from one mare to the other, both smiling at her hopefully.

One mystery at a time, I guess...?

“What’s she doing here?” Twilight asks Cheerilee, indicating Celestia.

The two other mares look to each other.

“Do you...not want me here?” Celestia asks, the barest hint of hesitance tainting her usual serenity like ink in water.

Twilight rolls over, and is shocked to see the princess’ face—one which, while sometimes hurt or sad, is always at least sure of what it feels—looking uneasy.

“No, I—well, it’s not that I don’t, it’s more that...” Twilight manages.

“I can leave, if it would make you more comfortable.”

“No!” Twilight blurts, before clapping a hoof over her mouth.

Celestia gives her a strange little smile of mixed knowing and something like gratitude.

“I mean...stay if you want to, obviously,” Twilight mutters. “This is a dream, after all.”

“Is it?” Cheerilee asks.

There’s something in her tone—something pressing, something desperate—that makes Twilight pause before responding. But it’s not enough to change her answer.

“Yes.”

“Then it’s a good dream,” Cheerilee says, insistently. “I’m happy. Celestia is happy. We just want you to stay here with us.”

Twilight gives Cheerilee a very unique desperate look, trying to convey that she’s a little disturbed to not only have her cake but be in bed with it and Cheerilee at the same time. “It’s not that this isn’t, you know, interesting and all, but—”

And then Celestia bites her ear.

Gently—but that’s the point.

“Sorry, Twi, I told her about that,” Cheerilee says, grinning broadly in a way that is obviously not apologetic in the least.

Twilight can’t say anything, not while teeth are so delectably dancing across the sensitive skin right near the tip—

Cheerilee’s lips meet hers, for a long, breathless kiss.

“Just stay with us,” somepony whispers. Her voice is beautiful, distracting, obsessing, a siren call. Twilight struggles to obey it, but there’s something nagging at her—

“Don’t we have a lot to talk about?”

Luna sniffs. “That’s the trouble with you, I think,” she says, not entirely unkindly—it’s as if she’s speaking about a friend who has a peculiar and specific blindness to a certain aspect of reality. “You trust words. Talking. Blah, blah...blah.”

“What?” Twilight gasps. The sudden absence of hooves grasping her makes her feel more naked than she’s ever been, which is kind of silly, of course, since she’s usually nak—

Focus, Twilight. This is some kind of trick!

“Words, Twilight, words!” Luna says, the research notes leaping up in front of her again. “Diagrams! Shapes! Explanations! Is that all there is for you anymore? Is that all magic is to you?”

“N—no!” Twilight manages.

Suddenly, Luna is looming over her, towering above her. Her dark coat blends into the shadowy chambers, the light blurring around her until she seems like a wave of darkness threatening to drown her. Twilight tries to back away, but there’s nowhere to go, no ground to cover, no place to run—

“I know,” Luna says.

Trembling, terrified, a little filly in the grasp of a being she has no real ability to comprehend quails beneath an all-consuming shadow—

But there is a light in that shadow, lurking up onto Twilight in the dark.

“There are some things I cannot suppress,” the glowing shape whispers. “Forgive me.”

The voice is so familiar, so trustworthy, so intimate—

“Cheerilee?” Twilight asks.

“I’m here,” Cheerilee whispers into Twilight’s ear, giggling at the mistake.

A hoof falls across her, and Twilight is suddenly aware that she is being embraced, tightly, from the side, by a very familiar pair of hooves as they lay on their bed in Canterlot—the bedroom lit only by starlight, gentle and familiar rather than cold and distant.

Her wife’s voice sounds in the darkness, modulated heavily by concern. “Are you alright? We know, this is...a lot. For me, too. And for her...”

Twilight’s gaze moves down...

Celestia, lit by the ethereal glow of her unconquerable power, looks up at her with the same gentle, loving smile Twilight had learned to unreservedly love decades ago.

“Stay with us,” Cheerilee whispers, nuzzling Twilight’s ear.

“This is a dream,” Twilight murmurs—it must be.

“Then I hope it’s a happy one for you,” Celestia says, as she lowers her mouth to kiss the inside of Twilight’s thigh. “Stay and enjoy it with us.”

Twilight closes her eyes. “Yes...”

“I don’t really need you to tell me about it,” Luna murmurs from behind Twilight. “I can tell you.”

Lost in the throes of ecstasy, Twilight can’t possibly care less where she is or who is speaking. All there is are the words, every one true and beautiful. “Then tell me.”

“I can see you, as a filly,” the princess of the moon says, in a silky whisper. “Leaning over stacks of books, just as you do now.”

“Yes. Just like that...”

“You only understood one word in three—these were advanced books, full of long words and complicated diagrams. And you were sure, absolutely sure, that if you could even begin to understand, the world of magic would be open to you.”

“More...”

“And you tried, didn’t you,” Luna says.

“Oh, so hard. My horn ached, every night...”

“But you just couldn’t make the pages move. That was the first test. To make the books obey. They were the first guardians, the first secret.”

Twilight’s eyes slam open. “Yesssss....” She locks Luna in her gaze. “More.”

“Please,” Cheerilee begs, beneath her. “Twilight, be here with me...”

Twilight wraps her hooves around Cheerilee’s neck and thrusts, as she has so many times, but now—

“It wasn’t the words that made the pages move,” Luna says.

“No,” Twilight rasps.

Celestia, panting harder than Twilight has ever imagined, holding her in a smoldering gaze, draws a hoof along her chest—and then down, further, towards that wonderful, private ache...

“I wanted this, so badly,” Twilight moans.

Luna nods, smiling in a knowing sort of way. “You burned for it. It had to happen. It had to.”

A hoof pulls Twilight away from the smirking princess and suddenly, a secret, private wish is being fulfilled, filling her with a bright, brilliant sense of wonder. Celestia kisses her, hard and firm and above all with overwhelming desire; as they pull apart, Twilight breathing hard, their eyes meet and it becomes unnecessary to actually say: It had to.

“You’ve done so much for me, Twilight Sparkle,” Celestia whispers into another kiss. “I want you here, with me. With us. Stay with us.”

As if to reinforce this, the wonder of Celestia’s kiss is suddenly accentuated with the familiar, but unbelievably comforting feeling of Cheerilee reaching around her, stroking her back, whispering loving nonsense into her ear...

“As you wish,” Twilight managed.

Luna nods enthusiastically. “Exactly. In the end, it wasn’t the words that made it happen. In fact, in that moment, what did you say? As that page turned?”

Beneath Twilight, Celestia throws her head back, her mind lost in ecstasy, and as beautiful as she always was, the height of her pleasure made her shine with delight. Twilight feels the princess clench down on the tendril of magical power thrust deep into her—

But no, it’s Cheerilee, not just once but dozens of times, every time Twilight used that fundamental part of herself to make her beloved wife scream with desire, tremble in delight—every time she’d felt the thrill of power, of being submitted to, of Cheerilee not just enjoying but wanting her Twilight to have her, to be her beautiful, powerful lover—

No. That’s wrong.

It’s both of them, wanting her, desiring her, needing her, speaking together, in one voice—

Stay with us.

Especially now. We love you. We want you. We’re all togeth—

“What is it you said, you felt, as you triumphed, that very first time...?”

She’s cold.

Lost, and so, so alone, where just a second ago, the two most wonderful creatures she has known were making love to her—

“Well?” Luna asks, sickly-sweet.

“I...I don’t remember what I said,” Twilight admits, honestly.

Luna gives her a look that said something like well, we can’t all be goddesses I suppose, but you’ll do. “The exact words aren’t really important, anyways. It’s what you felt.”

Suddenly Twilight is seven years old again, and a page has just flipped in front of her.

She’d wanted it, so badly. She’d just...made it happen.

The books had just confused her, scared her—and honestly, made her feel a little stupid. She’d grasped, at some length, a few basic ideas, but that wasn’t enough for her to really understand.

She was sure that if she studied for years, she’d understand a sentence of them, but that was years away and she wanted to be magic now.

So she’d stared at the page, willing it to move. Just...feeling it, holding it in her magical grasp until it felt as much a part of her as her hooves were. Wanting it, so badly. Remembering how beautiful the Princess had seemed in her unbelievable power—and more importantly, in the ease and skill with which she’d wielded it.

This was a filly who had not yet been chosen, who had everything to prove, who didn’t know she was powerful—

And the page had moved.

She’d just...felt the right way to do things, and her mind had caught up with it. In retrospect, it seemed so simple, although if you were to ask her how she’d done it, she wouldn’t be able to explain it in words.

It just was.

Because she wanted it, and she’d made it happen.

The charts and words would come later.

A grown mare’s lips form around the words of a filly.

“I did it.”

Not: I did it.

The it is not, in fact, the thing. It is the I, the she, the her. The Twilight Sparkle.

Luna’s smile grows broad and wide.

“Yes, you did. And in that moment—”

“I still haven’t done half the things I knew I could, that I wanted to, in that moment,” Twilight whispers. She feels a tear growing in one of her eyes. “I’ve never felt that way ever since. Not once.”

The princess raises a hoof to Twilight’s cheek, and despite her mind begging her to move away, she doesn’t; something about the princess’ solemn expression says she’s in safe hooves. “That’s why I hate your charts, Twilight Sparkle, and your words, and your experiments. I don’t deny they teach you a great many things, but...there’s something they can’t give you, if you cling to them. They take the magic out of magic...and the romance out of romance.”

The hoof on her cheek draws away. Twilight suppresses a need to whimper and grab at it, draw it closer to herself—accept it, utterly.

To accept why she kept coming back here, to this frightening place, when such beauty and gentleness awaited her elsewhere.

“Cheerilee is my wife,” she mumbles. “And Celestia is my—well, my best friend. My teacher, my princess...” She trails off, looking for the right words. “They have taught me everything about love. But...”

Now, suddenly, she’s much younger, drunk for almost the first time, at the Winter Ball, alone...and there—cool, powerful, mysterious—is Luna, princess of the moon, standing half in shadow.

Alone...for now.

Luna raises an eyebrow, smirking. “But...it was Luna who taught you about desire.”

Twilight blinks a tear out of her eye. “Yes.”

Here, perhaps, in dreams, she could safely admit this last, terrible secret; the one she had so carefully kept unstated, even to herself.

Not some silly, easy thing like that she still loved Luna, who had abused her trust and toyed with her for months. Not that, never that—she’d never really loved the princess of the moon the way she loved Cheerilee—or Celestia, for that matter. She’d obsessed, and desired, but never loved.

No, it’s worse than that.

It was that only Luna really understood that deep down, Twilight was on fire.

What is love without passion? Study, without drive and ambition? Life, without boldly stepping forward, every moment of every day?

Cheerilee saw it in little bursts and snatches, usually in bed, and loved it in her. Spike and Celestia, too, and the girls in Ponyville, when she was really on a roll doing research or saving the day. Heavens, everyone in Ponyville, now and again...

But Luna had seen it right away, and always saw it, and had tried to nurture it, had wanted it...trying to cultivate, when you got right down to it, nothing less than a kindred spirit.

She’d never said so, even now that they were slowly repairing their friendship and trust. It was conveyed in glances, and in comments, and in little understandings, which came more and more frequently as Twilight got older and Luna grew more at peace with herself. They didn’t need to say anything; they already knew.

It scared Twilight. It was so powerful, so intense, so out of her control...and to make Twilight more like her...

She knew firsthand how cruel Luna could be. How arrogant, how preening, how vain and furious and terrible. She had faced the Nightmare, and then gone one better and endured Luna at what Celestia had privately confessed to be about as capricious and unpredictable as the ever-mercurial princess of the moon had ever been, in all the centuries she’d known her.

But aside from all that...Luna was beautiful in her passion. Powerful, majestic, and utterly, undeniably, irresistibly attractive, personally and...otherwise.

“You already knew the truth, before that first kiss,” the princess says, as solemn now as she ever got with Twilight. “Without desire, without passion, without wanting, there is nothing but dry, boring words describing what is; but with it, everything is magical...because it’s about what could be. And everything that happened made you remember so hard you can never forget, now...”

“Yeah,” Twilight says.

She looks up into Luna’s eyes.

“But you would say that...being me.”

“Haha, you got me!” The seven-year-old Twilight Sparkle in front of her grins, hugely, revealing a missing tooth. “Want to play again?”

“Maybe some other time,” Twilight says, smiling back. “I think there are some ponies waiting on me.”

• • •

Voices:

“She’s coming out of it.”

“What? How? You said she was—”

“Cheerilee, it’s not an exact science.”

“What? Why not?!”

“Possibly because I haven’t had the time over the last thousand years to make it one. Now pray stop complaining, she’ll be conscious soon enough—”

“Too late,” Twilight says.

Besides the weird grey-white blur in front of her, the most immediate sensation is that her throat and jaw are sore—clearly, she’s been sleeping with her mouth open.

Or screaming.

One of the two, anyways, she thinks, as she wiggles her jaw to try to make it less stiff.

This time, her blurry vision blinks away quickly, and Cheerilee’s bright, smiling face makes an immediate and welcome appearance. “Twilight! Oh, Twi, honey—”

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Twilight says, rolling to sit up on her rump.

She’s in one of the magical dynamics laboratories in the Academy—a familiar place, after many long hours slaving away at one of the work stations. She is herself lying on the broad surface of the resonance analysis array, and as she looks up at the complicated diagnostic device with its bizarre prism of carefully-cut gems pointing down at her, she is forced to admit it’s much more comfortable to be the researcher than the subject.

Celestia and Cheerilee are standing next to her, both smiling with relief, while a little ways off—

A little ways off, Luna skulks behind the controls, her eyes hidden by a huge pair of smoked lenses for reading the spectral readouts. Even with her eyes covered, her expression betrays a certain amount of irritation.

Her immediate environment more or less nailed down, the recent past starts catching up with Twilight, and her brow furrows.

“I was...I brought in an artifact one of the students found on a dig, out in the desert...”

Luna begins to say something, but Celestia cuts her off with an irritated tch.

“That’s right, Twi. Go on,” Cheerilee says, encouragingly, putting a hoof on one of Twilight’s.

Shapes, motion, colors, all in a blur—

Twilight’s ears prick up. “There was a matrix cascade—”

“I don’t know much about that, but I do know this object cursed you. Like it was meant to do to anypony attempting to manipulate it,” Luna says, striding forward in a rather huffy way, using magic to set the glasses aside and thrust a suddenly-familar engraved cylinder in front of Twilight in one graceful but unquestionably definite motion. “Do you know what this is?”

Twilight looks down to it, and then back up at Luna. “Um...no. Thus, the analysis.”

The object spins, revealing an unmistakable symbol carved deep into the grey stone.

“It’s mine,” Luna says, with a grin.

Despite a new flood of curiosity that Luna had to be deliberately baiting, Twilight knows that was about all she is going to get.

“Right,” she says, grinning helplessly. “I suppose I should have realized.”

“You should be thankful I’m not the only pony who is old enough to remember what a mindlock curse looks like, I suppose,” Luna continues, idly looking over the object as Celestia gave Twilight a look that quietly begged her to indulge her younger sister’s flippant tone. “I had hoped these two could keep your mind occupied long enough for me to safely sever the connection between you and the Oniero—”

She pauses, and grins widely at Twilight’s sudden show of alert attention deflating into grumpy disappointment.

“Ah, you won’t catch me that easily, I’m afraid, Arch-Mage or not,” the princess of the moon says, playfully. “The point is that it seems you weathered the curse with your mind more or less intact despite their apparent inability to keep your attention.” She spares the exciting-looking array currently looming over Twilight a moment’s glance, silently questioning the state of that mind in general.

Twilight nods, more or less because she had nothing to say to that, really.

“This kind of negligence is unlike you, Twilight,” Luna comments, looking her up and down with a little sniff. “I can’t imagine you didn’t think to consult Celestia, if not me.”

Twilight shrugs. “I can’t say you’re wrong.”

“It reflects poorly on you,” the princess adds, in a speculative tone of voice.

“You’re probably right.”

Luna frowns. “Hmm...”

She spares Twilight one last little look—a bit questioning, if Twilight is any judge—and turns to her sister, talking about something else—

You saw something wearing my face, didn’t you, Twilight...?

Cheerilee notices Twilight stiffen, and squeezes her hoof as she clambers up onto the slab beside the now-tense unicorn.

I can see it in the way you look at me, Luna continues.

Twilight sighs, gently, and gives Cheerilee a weary smile.

Yes.

There’s a brief pause as Luna’s eyes—apparently disinterested—flicker back to Twilight’s for the space of a heartbeat.

Nothing too...aggressive, I hope.

‘Healing’ is the word for their relationship.

Privately, Twilight remembers the nervous, awkward princess she’d first met that Nightmare Night all those years ago—the one she’d known before things got...weird. She’d been sad, and lonely, and in retrospect really didn’t know what to do with herself—she just wanted to be Luna, but didn’t know who that was.

Twilight smiles. That pony might never show her face that openly again, but she peeked out from behind the Princess of the Moon from time to time...

She waits until Luna glances towards her again, then:

I thought I was alone with...something. Like a memory of you. But I was just alone with myself.

“I can sympathize with how trying that can be as few others would be able,” Luna says, keeping her eye on Twilight even though this statement was apparently addressed to Celestia.

Twilight just nods, very slightly.

Next to her, party to a conversation she knows is happening but cannot hear, Cheerilee sighs through the tolerant smile of an earth pony forced to endure magical companions for any length of time and rests her head on Twilight’s shoulder.

Luna gives her sister a bright smile and turns to address the room. “Well, now that this is all taken care of, I’d like to return to my rest, if you don’t mind. I’m sure you three have things you’d like to discuss...”

“Indeed,” Celestia says—in a rather prim sort of way, Twilight notices. The sort of statement that’s a gentle shoo out the door.

The younger alicorn raises an amused eyebrow, but merely nods her head graciously. “Sister. Arch-Mage. And Ms. Cheerilee, of course,” she adds, bowing politely despite Cheerilee’s customarily suspicious expression as she returns the greeting.

Luna’s eyes meet Twilight’s for the briefest moment as she turns to leave.

Perhaps we’ll discuss what you experienced someday.

Twilight thinks about it for a moment and feels a faint grin crawl across her face.

Someday.

Luna is already halfway out the door, but she pauses to smile, very slightly, over her shoulder, before vanishing into the corridor.

That leaves Twilight with her wife and her princess.

Celestia is smiling in a patient sort of way that suggests to Twilight, after years of dealing with her, that she knows there’s something to be discussed but is happy to wait until Twilight is good and ready to talk before they do so.

Cheerilee, on the other hand, is—well.

For all that her wife is cuddling her in honest relief, there’s an indescribable sense of young mare march upstairs this very instant to it which Twilight has always found difficult to disobey. Similar thoughts are swirling around Twilight’s mind for more or less the same reason that sometimes when she had racy dreams, she felt the need to act on them when she woke up.

Which asked some entertaining questions about Her Royal Highness, now that Twilight thought about it...

So the real question here, in fact, was:

What do I really, really want, right this very second?

That, though, was pretty easy.

“Coffee.”

Cheerilee’s head leaps from Twilight’s shoulder. “Coffee?”

“Uh huh. Dumb magic stuff has been happening,” Twilight says, gently extracting herself from Cheerilee’s hug and hopping to the floor. “I need coffee.”

She strides forward, walking out into the hallway of the laboratory building without a second thought, smiling a little as she hears a brief susurrus of conversation before two pairs of hoofbeats make polite haste after her.

Cheerilee finally catches up as she reaches the door to the corridor that eventually lead to the entrance hall of the Academy. “I suppose this proves I have my Twilight Sparkle back, anyways,” she mutters.

“Heh, yeah.”

“Still, I...well, between you and me, Twilight...” Cheerilee says, a little anxiously, “don’t you think we have some things we should talk about? And do?” she adds, pointedly.

Twilight gives her a look of complete innocence. “What’s that?”

“You mean you’re not...?”

Internally, Twilight giggles with delighted malevolence. This is a very fun game. “Not what?”

Cheerilee’s entire face seems to fall. “Twi, seriously, I feel like I’m going to chew a leg off here if I don’t get lai—” She stops, suddenly, looking around at all the students gazing in awe at the approaching Arch-Mage and the princess trailing in her wake, and chuckles helplessly.

“Well, I am sorry to hear that, but I fail to see how that’s any fault of mine.”

“Hey, I’m not the one who got cursed—”

Twilight pauses, interrupting the meager flow of traffic through the hall, and turns a hurt look on her fretful wife. “I know. I’m sorry. It was very foolish of me. And I was only halfway through that nice sandwich you were kind enough to make for my lunch...”

“I guess I’ll forgive you, this time,” Cheerilee says. “If you’re good.”

“But you know...” Twilight taps her chin in a show of deep thoughtfulness. “It’s almost sundown, now, and I could swear it was noon when I plugged whatever that was into the aetheric resonance spectrometer...”

Celestia’s little grin grew, very slightly. “Is that odd? Are you saying you didn’t experience the passage that much time, yourself?”

“As if I’d assume a one-to-one time dilation in a mystic projection. This isn’t exactly my first day at the Academy, you know,” the Arch-Mage of Equestria says, primly, tossing her head up in a display of supreme haughtiness that would put Rarity to shame. She holds that pose for a moment before opening an eye, and Twilight, Celestia’s faithful colleague and friend says, “Fifteen minutes or so. A very...interesting...fifteen minutes,” she adds, in a noncommittal tone of voice.

“Ah, I...see,” is all the princess says, her eyes wandering off towards nothing in particular.

This is way too easy, Twilight thinks. Should I really be having this much fun watching both Cheerilee and Celestia squirm a bit?

Answer: yes. Very yes.

Cheerilee frowns. “I’m sure the implications will shatter our understanding of magic and propose a new paradigm for the understanding of something polysyllabic for the rest of time, like you manage to do every other Thursday, but I—”

“I believe what Twilight is saying, Cheerilee, is that she’s aware we experienced more time than she did,” Celestia says, as if commenting on nothing so interesting as the weather. “I suspect she’s curious how we spent it, what with one thing and another...”

Twilight shrugs, grinning.

The princess and Cheerilee look to one another—and smile, it has to be said, a little sheepishly on both parts, which is not an expression Twilight sees on the face of the princess of the sun every day. It’s...cute, actually.

Cheerilee turns a helpless grin on her wife. “We were getting pretty frightened, Twilight. You kept fading away, just as we thought you were engaging with us. We tried to keep you calm, but...”

“It occurred to us that...well, maybe calm was the wrong direction,” the princess continued, serene as ever.

Twilight nods. “I see. Occupying my attention, right.”

“Exactly. Perfectly reasonable.”

“And of course, er, Celestia was the one helping me get in touch with you at all, obviously,” Cheerilee says, squirming in place. “I’m, ah, not magic. Of course. Er.”

“So...?” Twilight says, letting the non-question linger in the air.

“So...er...” Cheerilee looks up at the princess desperately and mouths: help me out here!

Celestia takes a short intake of breath, pursing her lips before speaking eyes narrowing as she considered her statement carefully. “I—well, no, we felt that my...participation wouldn’t be...”

“Yes?” Twilight asks, smiling sweetly.

“I feel that this is not, perhaps, the right place to have this conversation,” Celestia says, smoothly.

Cheerilee turns to Twilight, nodding insistently and glancing meaningfully towards the door.

Twilight smiles as graciously as she can manage. “You’re probably right. And it’s delaying coffee, too, and I won’t have that. So let me just ask: whose idea was it?”

Two hooves—one white, shod in gold, and the other bare maroon—snap through the air.

“Hers,” Cheerilee and Celestia say, in one voice.

It is one voice.

Is Luna Celestia’s sister, or is Cheerilee...? And is that a weird question to ask right now?

They look to each other, frowning slightly for just long enough for them to find it absurd and break into helpless grins.

“Well,” Twilight says, her smile growing wry. “That clears that up, I suppose.”

“We were just worried about you, Twilight,” Cheerilee burbles.

“Mmm. So you said.”

Celestia nods sagely. “It was a bit of a crisis moment—”

“No, no, I get it. Completely reasonable. No need to explain.” Twilight looks up at the two of them, feeling boldness swelling in her chest.

Wait wait wait. Am I...am I doing Saucy Look Number Two? To Cheerilee and the princess?

And...is it working?

The princess raises an eyebrow, in a way that makes Twilight think Her Royal Highness didn’t realize she was doing so—something all but unheard of.

I think it is.

Something in her rebels at the thoughts—memory and speculation both—that were now speeding through her mind, but Twilight ignores them, remembering those long nights when she and Celestia and Cheerilee had first opened up to each other. She’d laid back, trying to explain how she felt, and said:

In the end, Twilight, when I lie down and close my eyes at night, even I can’t escape feeling alone, small in a huge world...I’m just one pony. Just like you. The differences only make the similarities more...important.

And how many times had she proven to be just like us little ponies over the years? Even if only to her two best friends, most of the time...? Not least of all in that she’d been the one they went to for marriage counseling—having been married herself what, twenty times now?

It’s not like the princess seems terribly offended—and after all, part of the risk diving into somepony else’s mind like they’d just done is that you expose yourself, as well.

She’s still the princess, though.

A thought occurs. Celestia never did anything by accident, if she could help it.

A grin moves across Twilight’s features.

They brought this on themselves.

Deep down, the fire burns hot.

She rises to her hooves, smiling faintly, and steps forward with deliberate lightness and as much grace as she can muster. Her wife and her princess watch her carefully.

“Thank you. Both of you,” she adds, piercing Celestia with a glance. “For...everything.”

“It was no trouble,” Celestia says, even as ever—but her eyes didn’t move from Twilight’s for even an instant. “I’m sure you would have done the same in my place...”

“Mmmmm.”

Next to the princess, Cheerilee whimpers a bit, growing more urgent as Twilight’s wordless expression of...yes, satisfaction lingers. It’s a sound the younger mare knows quite well, and is always eager to hear more of.

Still, Twilight is forced to admit that as fun as this is, it’s beginning to resemble torture.

Is this really...seduction? I’m just being honest.

But...fair enough, being honest in a sort of...suggestive tone of voice that could turn a weather report into a pressing invitation. She’s only heard it on the tongues of Rarity and Luna, before, but—

She blinks.

No—no. That’s not quite right.

I’ve been like this before, haven’t I?

This is the part of Twilight Sparkle that made Rarity indulge her curiosity, and had made Dash overcome her insecurity and dive in. She’s made monsters bow to her, and made Cheerilee beg for more, as fire like the heart of a star blazed in Twilight’s soul.

This was the part of Twilight Sparkle that made a page turn.

And yes, it’s the part that made me be stupid because of Luna, but...still.

I don’t have to be afraid of it—as long as I’m aware of it. In control.

After all...it’s not asking me to do anything I don’t want to—which can be a problem, I guess.

But not at the moment, I think.

Heh.

She gives her poor victims one last, lingering smile, and turns away slowly, sauntering towards the huge doors to the campus grounds in an expert way that would have stunned Rarity to see in bookish Twilight Sparkle. She can almost feel Cheerilee’s hungry gaze as she doesn’t quite catch up.

“I’ll see you two when you’re more...sated, then,” the princess says, behind them. “Some...coffee sounds very pleasant to me, too, just now...”

Twilight is tempted to roll her eyes—euphemisms, especially sexual ones, always sound awkward and obvious when Celestia tries to use them, too much like direct lies for the princess to be entirely comfortable. She was the soul of honesty and discretion, and right here is where those two aspects of herself ran into each other headlong.

Let’s just be straightforward, in our minds if nowhere else, and admit that when your brain’s been having sex for hours your body is going to want to join in one way or another, eh? Just between us mares.

She pauses, and glances over her shoulder, sultry look turned all the way up to eleven. “I’m sure there’s more than enough room for you at the tower...if you’d care to join us.”

It’s a purr, more than a spoken word. Anypony else would have just melted on the spot; Cheerilee certainly struggles not to. But this is the princess, for whom nobility and composure were first nature, so—

One of Celestia’s ears flaps—just once.

Twilight has to fight hard not to let a smug smile spread across her face.

Well, that more or less settles that.

But...teasing is one thing, being honest is another.

Because she is, deep down, honest and loving, and because nopony knows that better than her that want and need are very different things, even though they look alike, Twilight adds: “Only if you’d be comfortable, of course. I know you’re particular about the, ah...the company you keep.”

There’s a brief moment of hesitation, which seems sort of heavy—a familiar sensation for Twilight. She feels like this is a moment where the universe is really paying attention, to see which direction it’s going in.

Celestia looks away for a moment, pursing her lips pensively. When she returns her gaze to Twilight and Cheerilee, it’s as calm as a storm looming on the horizon—quiet now, but give it time to really get in gear...

“It felt a bit rude to just invite myself along, you’re quite right,” she says, grinning. “But since you asked so nicely...”

• • •

Her mother had a word for this, back when she was a filly. Something aggressively cutesy.

What was it?

Oh, right.

“Canoodling,” Twilight murmurs, smiling vaguely.

Celestia pauses mid-sip from a mugful of coffee, her ears pricking up in alarm. “Hmm? What’s that?”

Her head resting against Celestia’s side, Twilight swirls the dregs of her own mug, watching it swill around the bottom, its rhythmic orbit affected in an interesting way as the rise and fall of the princess’ body changed the angle of the bottom of the cup—

When did you get so boring, Twilight Sparkle?

She chuckles, a bit ruefully. Honestly, she can’t even focus on this?

“Canoodling. What we’ve been doing.”

“Was it?”

“Mmhmm.”

Twilight looks up at Celestia, who is giving her a very knowing smile indeed.

“Well, you learn something new every day, they say. Several things, if you’re very lucky...” The princess takes in a deep breath, pursing her lips thoughtfully. “Sounds...zebra, to me. Something you picked up from Zecora, I take it?”

A half-hearted grunt attracts their attention to the other side of the bed, where Cheerilee is staring straight up at the ceiling through half-lidded eyes, her features spread in a grin so lazy it was probably set that way. “Mmm. Nah. ’S one of the goofy words her mom made up when she was a filly, I bet,” she manages. “Like ’muzzy’ and ’floop-de-doo’.”

“Oh, Cheerilee, thank goodness,” Celestia says, evenly. “I thought we’d lost you.”

“What?”

The princess clears her throat. “’Oh heavens, oh heavens, I’m dying,’” she recites, in a startlingly accurate copy of Cheerilee’s breathless moans. “’Do I really get to go to the place for good little fillies before I’ve even kicked the bucket...’”

“Because you’re at your most eloquent dans la boudoir,” Cheerilee grumbles, slathering the fancy with as much sarcasm as possible, which considering it was her speaking was quite a bit.

“I’m merely expressing honest concern. If you’re so stressed after only a few hours, perhaps you need some more regular exercise.”

“Oh, nice. That’s really cute coming from only one in the room for whom breathing is more or less optional.”

Celestia draws up, a hoof leaping to her chest as if she were tremendously insulted. “I happen to like breathing. I find it very relaxing.”

Cheerilee just grunts.

“Don’t be mean,” Twilight says, giving her wife a weak little kick in the butt. “It’s cute. And so was my mom.”

“Whatever you say, beloved.”

The princess nods. “Canoodling. Mmm. I like it.”

Cheerilee rolls her head over and gives Celestia a look. “Don’t you take her side.”

Celestia just shrugs, although her broad smile widens even further as Cheerilee blows a raspberry at her.

Twilight swallows the very last of her rapidly-cooling coffee and sets the mug on a bedside table, next to a long-since discarded crown. “Mom always used to tell Shining not to think about canoodling when he and Cadence were watching me—you know, when I was too young to be home alone after classes? She didn’t want him to give off the wrong impression.”

The princess narrowed her eyes. “Prudent, as she always was. But knowing Mi Amore Cadenza as I do...” She tilts her head curiously. “Presumably she wanted Cadence to like him. That’s what I thought, anyways—”

“Mmm, well, you remember that day when I showed up asking a lot of really specific questions?”

Celestia’s eyebrows raise. “Ah, yes, I do. I suppose for all his sterling qualities, he’s never been very good at taking advice. Not even mine—I have to give him orders, it’s so embarrassing...”

“And someone’s a bit of a light sleeper, you know,” Cheerilee mutters. “When she bothers to sleep at all.”

“Indeed. Curious, too,” Celestia says, raising an eyebrow at the unicorn in question. “Insatiably so, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“Oh, definitely.”

Twilight settles back down against Celestia, humming happily and closing her eyes. “Any and all complaints can be submitted, in writing, to the Arch-Mage’s inbox at the Academy. I promise I’ll only use them to get the fire in my office started if it’s really cold out.”

Celestia clicks her tongue. “A model of administrative efficiency.”

“Very generous!” Cheerilee adds, chuckling.

Twilight takes a deep breath and lets them get on with it. Sometimes the two of them just needed to indulge themselves in complicated and lengthy exercises in the art of conversation. They took such pleasure in saying things cleverly...

Letting the animated back-and-forth fall into a sort of dull, pleasant background of white noise, Twilight let her mind drift. The rhythmic rise and fall of Celestia’s body was like a tide drawing her out into a sea of contented, gentle relaxation.

So.

That had all been very...

Hmm.

Words weren’t coming to her. Maybe the other two, busily discussing the possible etymology of Twilight’s mother’s silly little words, were taking all of them up.

Uhhh...nice? I guess?

Yeah, sure, whatever you say, Fluttershy...

It was...different than she had expected.

Er...not that I’d really—expected to be here, but, er—

There is a momentary squall in her sea of contentment as she navigated the choppy waters of admitting, in the privacy of her head, that this had sort of always been there as something that, er, she wouldn’t exactly say no to in a hurry if it seemed like it was going to happen.

A distant memory struggles to the surface, splashing for attention.

The very first time she’d really let herself fantasize, all those years ago...these two had been there. Prominently.

Luna had been, too—of course she had been, at the time. But as much as the dark, alluring princess of the moon, it had been a white hoof and fluffy pink curls that had been pushing her to the edge until her untimely interruption by a certain young dragon.

So, yes, let’s just...let that be the case.

They were the most important ponies in her life, after all, and that was a competitive category if ever there was one. Her mentor/role model/best friend/colleague/lover—

Her ears pricked to attention automatically.

That is going to take some getting used to.

As if she’d heard this, Celestia adjusted herself very slightly so that she was even more comfortable as a huge, hyperintelligent, demigoddess-empowered throw pillow.

Let’s just pare this down to the essentials, shall we?

Her best friend, and her wife.

Twilight’s eyes slowly meander their way over to Cheerilee, who’s sitting up now, chatting animatedly with the princess about something so derivative of their original topic it may as well have been random. The earth pony’s ears prick up, suddenly aware of the attention, and she spares Twilight a huge grin.

Once upon a time, she would have been pretty wound up about something like this. But...

Celestia was her friend, too, after all. They were close—too close, it seemed sometimes, when the two of them could read each others’ minds and hassle Twilight into doing something she didn’t really want to without skipping a beat, or something like that.

What was I expecting, anyways?

...solemnity. Gravity. A sense of...hugeness, being overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all, of being with her, with both of them...

In retrospect...when did you get so boring, Twilight Sparkle?

After all, Cheerilee long ago taught you one of the most important things about sex: it’s probably a good sign that things are going right if everypony’s laughing and smiling.

Physical pleasure is pretty easy—Twilight knew that very well at this point. But the pleasure of seeing Celestia smile—not at her, or Cheerilee, or at anything in particular, just smile because she was here, with two ponies she cares about, and she was happy, she felt good and safe and loved and was having fun, pleasuring and being pleasured in turn...

And next to her, Cheerilee making some kind of sarcastic comment, and Twilight’s laughing so hard she can’t concentrate...

Not that, you know, the physical stuff was, you know, bad, or anything, but...

It was...nice.

Better, in fact, than she expected—but exactly what she wanted.

“Twi?”

The sound doesn’t register, at first, until a hoof gently touching her chest startles her out of her happy reverie.

“Huh!? What—”

Cheerilee gives her a wry look—but there’s a little concern hidden in it, too, peeking around the corners. “We thought we were losing you again for a second there, hon.”

Twilight blinks a few times, scrambling upright so she’s sitting more upright. “What? Oh...no, I was—er. Just thinking.” She glances up at Celestia, whose pleasant smile is as calming now as it has always been. “It’s been a busy day.”

“Pleasantly so, I should think. Or hope, perhaps, might be the better word,” the princess says, with a serene little nod.

Twilight almost laughs at the sudden, absurd awareness of what was hidden in Celestia’s words. Insecurity? From her? About this!?

“If there’s a word to correct in that sentence, it’s ’pleasantly’.” Twi reaches behind herself, awkwardly, with a hoof and just taps the princess’ shoulder in play-chastisement. “Understatement, you know?”

Celestia’s smile warms. “Forgive my lapse. Is there something in particular on your mind?”

Twilight opens her mouth to speak—then her eyes, staring at the back of the door, find the source of a lot of recent anxiety. It felt good to finally point hoof at the culprit, after all this stress.

“That,” she says, pointing at the brilliant white cloak of the Arch-Mage of Equestria.

It’s a spectacular garment. Hoof-made, of course—commissioned by Her Royal Highness herself from nopony less than Lady Rarity of Ponyville to replace its predecessor, made for older and more...sizable ponies, such that a unicorn as petite and slight as Twilight Sparkle could have used it as a blanket if she’d been able to stand the smell. Made from the finest fabrics Zecora had been able to get from her native lands, its edges delicately embroidered in silk thread magically interwoven with gold...

Far too fancy for somepony like Twilight Sparkle, for whom practicality was the very first and basically only measure of quality in a garment.

But she isn’t just Twilight Sparkle, anymore...

“I suspect you didn’t give me that cloak so it could hang on a peg behind my door while I stood around in a labcoat day in and day out,” Twilight says, matter-of-factly.

The princess sighs, a bit wearily. “I didn’t give it to you, Twilight. You earned it, many times over.”

“Maybe so, sure. But, er...I think I’m beginning to see it’s the sort of thing I have to...keep on earning.” Twilight leans up so she and the princess can share a long moment. “You know?”

Their eyes flicker over to the crown sitting—almost forgotten—on the bedside table.

“I believe I do,” says Her Royal Highness, Princess Celestia, lady of this castle.

Then the moment is over, and Celestia smiles, a bit knowingly. Twilight knows that her friend now understands quite well why she’d been so—and this was the key word—careless in dealing with whatever that artifact had been. “Feeling a little restless, are we? Stuck in a rut, as the earth ponies say?”

Twilight rolls her eyes. “Well, maybe not quite so restless as I was this morning, but...”

“Wait,” Cheerilee says, frowning in a playfully exaggerated way. “Wait, wait, wait. Am I the rut in this situation? Hmmm?”

Celestia shushes her. “Shh. Twilight’s having a moment. A character moment.”

“That’s easy for you to say. She didn’t just call you a rut—”

“Cheerilee, please,” Twilight says, her voice strained by a sudden stab of guilt. “You know that’s not what I meant. Don’t even joke.” Feeling foolish for being this cliché, she sighs and begins to say: “It’s not you. It’s—”

Her wife just waves a hoof irritably. “I get it, I get it. Don’t even finish that phrase or my brain will leak out of my ears. Still, though...what do you have in mind?”

Twilight rises to her hooves, hopping off the bed, so she can touch the cloak—it’s as clean and smooth as the day it had first been slung around her shoulders. Barely worn, ever, and when she had worn it she’d meticulously avoided letting it be damaged or stained in any way.

The page turns...

A seven year old Twilight Sparkle’s eyes go wide with delight, and suddenly her mind is overwhelmed with images, hopes, dreams, ambitions—things she wants to do, and see, and experience...things she wants to share with everypony...

Battles with monsters. Solving problems. Saving the day. Teaching young ponies to be as amazed, as hopeful, as joyous as she feels right now, in this moment, as she triumphs.

“I don’t...remember,” Twilight says, staring at the cloak. “Not all of it, anyways...”

Behind her, Celestia and Cheerilee share an amused, yet puzzled look—but it’s fine if they don’t understand right now.

They will, someday.

“I’ve studied magic—a lot of magic,” Twilight says, suddenly conscious of just how much that had been now that she thought about it all at once. “But...”

She turns back to them, smiling hugely. Her chest feels like it’s going to burst with excitement.

“I’ve studied magic, but I don’t know if I’ve made the world a more magical place, if you see what I mean,” Twilight says. “Maybe I want to think about that.”

Cheerilee smiles—a little sarcastically, yes, taking some amusement in Twilight’s tendency towards grandiose statements—but with open and overwhelming affection. Next to her, Celestia’s eyes beam with pride.

“But that’s going to take some time. For now...” Twilight sighs, smiling. “For now, I think I need some rest.”

“It has been a long day, hasn’t it,” Cheerilee says, yawning a bit theatrically.

Celestia just smiles and shifts her position a bit to make room for Twilight between them.

Twilight snuggles in between the two and throws her head back against the pillow, ignoring for a moment that it’s still a bit damp with sweat.

Two pairs of hooves loop over her, and she smiles.

“No matter where you end up going with this...” Cheerilee whispers, tapping Twi’s chest—her heart. “Stay with us.”

On the other side, Celestia just squeezes her gently.

Twilight grunts an amused little laugh.

“Oh, no,” she murmurs. “You two keep up.”