Drabbles in Equestria

Daylight

"Why do you care about peasants, sister?" Celestia hissed scornfully. A few thousand years old, and a teenager, she stood half a head taller than her barely pubescent sister. "Let them sleep during your night! What else do you expect them to do?"

"They worship you as a god."

"We are gods. We are the last of the gods, dear sister." Celestia stalked circles around Luna, the latter of whom kept her eyes trained on the former. "The rest fell when you were barely born, and our powers make us great. We control the day and night - and in so we control the crops and the ponies. Is the power of a god not enough for you, sister? Must you be comforted by their praises? Will nothing else soothe your pride?"

Luna bared her teeth. "Says one whose pride has never been harmed. You ought to be humbled into sharing the glory." She grinned maliciously. "Dear sister."

"Do not test me," Celestia whispered. "You're a filly, yet. You've barely earned your mark. Do not think I will let you take anything that is rightfully mine."

"The daylight cannot last forever, Celestia." Luna spun from her sister, unfurling her wings to fly to her castle. "beware, you prideful mare. The night is rising."

Flirty

Spike snickered, walking by Twilight with a stack of books in hand. "Hey, Twilight, you special somepony is here. Want me to leave you two alone?"

The purple unicorn flushed, glaring at him. "I do not have a special somepony! I now you mean him, and I don't like him! He's just a nice stallion who sometimes-"

"Hello, Miss Sparkle," said the stallion in question. He was a Ponyville local unicorn who had been coming to the library on a weekly basis, and often left with a copy of whatever book Twilight was reading at the moment. Rarity said he was plain, but his thoughts of Starswirl the Bearded's final thesis made Twilight's heart flutter. "You're looking nice today. Did you do something with your mane?"

She giggled like a schoolfilly. "Really? I haven't done anything. Same as always."

He grinned. "I guess you just look this nice every day."

She blushed, ducking her head. "Cut it out."

"Well, it's true!"

And, from upstairs, Spike groaned, "For the love of Celestia! Will you two just date already?"

Memories

For the longest time, Spike considered his memory a gift.

Spike's favorite memories were of him and Twilight, soon after the dragon had hatched. Although the first week was blurry, and he remembered only the scent of Twilight's family and Princess Celestia, and Twilight's warm body next to his whenever he slept. As time went on, he remembered Twilight singing him to sleep, something she did even as he got older and the occasional nightmare haunted him. He remembered his awkward, stumbling steps as he tried to walk, and Twilight's giggles at how strange it was to find a creature who took weeks to learn to stand.

Languages, though. That he impressed her with. It was a dragon gift to learn tongues quickly. he was playing with words at two weeks old, rolling the sounds over his tongue, marveling at how these noises could be matched to tangible things. At three weeks, he was making sentences, and Twilight was teaching him to write. He loved how proud she had looked as he wrote in neat, almost printing press perfect handwriting.

After that, Spike remembered nearly everything, everything he paid attention to. It was another one of the dragon's gifts, to remember how perfect Rarity looked in the moonlight, how applejack's muscles rippled as she bucked trees, Pinkie's laugh, Fluttershy's gentle touch, Dash's sonic rainboom and...Twilight. His dear adoptive sister Twilight. He remembered every last thing about her. All of it stayed with picture perfect clarity in his mind.

When the last of his dear pony friends died, his memory became a curse.

Art

Rarity was quite delighted to have Twilight as a friend. After all thse years in uncultured Ponyville, she finally had someone who she could go to an art gallery with. She had hoped that Twilight, being from Canterlot, would appreciate fine dining and dancing and fashion, but that hadn't been the case. Still, she was more than happy to attend the Houvre with someone other than a paid tourguide to keep her company.

Funnily enough, Twilight seemed to know more about the art than the tourguides had. Rarity learned things about the artists and their motivations that captivated hr and left her staring at intricate swirls of paint far longer than she ever had before. it made her feel so wonderfully cultured.

"Don't you just love the art museum?" Twilight would ask at the end of each trip.

Rarity always did.

Guilty

Celestia woke to a young Luna in her doorway, her first full night after the Elements of Harmony ha saved her from hr own greed and hate. Her mane and tail still a soft blue, her magic not yet so strong that it leaked out to turn her hair into the night sky. She was so small, so fragile so...not the sister she remembered.

"Tia," she whispered, her voice even and controlled. "I murdered."

The elder alicorn stiffened.

"Not now. I mean when I was her, Tia." She swallowed. "I killed stallions and mares and foals. I tortured them. I...I...oh, Tia, the things I've done."

They raced to one another, clinging desperately to each other. No tears fell, but their voices cracked and shook as they gasped out confessions on tortures and murders, of war and sickness, of droughts and tsunami's. They comforted one another over the atrocities they had caused in the name of pride and selfishness.

They shared their guilt.

Expansion

Chrysalis snarled, lashing out with her magic. She grabbed the nearest of the sixteen drones that harassed her, and flung the disgusting male into the wall. It felt food, so she grabbed another, snapping his leg and grinning at the frightened buzz from the rest of the group. They were afraid she would ruin them for mating, their sole purpose, the thing they had come from miles around to do.

"We are not expanding," she hissed.

The males buzzed. "Exand?"

"No!" she screamed. Her body quivered at the thought of carrying children again, of spending another five years with a swollen belly and pushing eggs from her womb. "We are done. There is not enough to eat. Leave."

They buzzed and continued to approach her regardless, and Chrysalis screamed. She fought them, her daughters dragging away the fallen drones to keep their hive clean. The drones attacked desperately,  the need to mat thrumming through their blood. Chrysalis killed them all and stood, unfertilized, in her chamber.

Increase

Celestia sighed. "This isn't...it's not easy to say, Twilight. The fact is, your ability to channel magic has been escalating since I met you. At this point, it has gone so high that any normal unicorn would have perished, and the above average unicorn would have gone mad."

Twilight stared at her mentor, dumbstruck. "So, I'm...'m going to die?"

"No. Quite the opposite." Every so often, in the general population of ponies, an alicorn is born. They start fairly simple, as an earth pony or pegasus, or a unicorn. They begin to excel in the attributes of the race they were born into, then surpass them." Celestia smiled weakly. "You, Twilight, are showing the signs."

"This isn't possible," she whispered, her voice so quiet Celestia strained to hear it.

"In the next twenty or so years, you'll begin acquiring traits from another race. In the twenty after that you'll acquire the final traits. We won't know what order these will come, so it's quite possible you'l have twenty years or so as a talented unicorn, with your earth pony traits going unnoticed."

"Twenty years?"

"That's...a generous estimate," Celestia admitted. "Cadence underwent her changes in twelve."

Silence stretched between them.

"Princess, I would like to be alone," Twilight said quietly.

She waited patiently for her mentor to leave before she dropped her head and began to cry.

Sticking

Pinkie was shaking, feeling cold sweat seep into her coat, her muscles twitching as they set off every warning they could. That had only happened once, when Discord was around. But he wasn't there. Pinkie spun, alone in the dark of her room, desperate to find the source of her twitching.

Pinkamena Diane Pie, you seem nervous.

Discord's voice. She couldn't breathe.

Pinkie is best pony, best for chaos for sure. You don't mind if I hide out in your mind, do you? It's just my way of sticking around.

"You're not real," she squeaked.

Oh, good, you don't mind! Don't worry, dear, you're just a handhold I'll use to climb out of this prison. You won't even know I'm here. Not until I'm back, at least.

"You not real," she said, desperate this time, and Discord did not reply. Her twitching slowed, and Pinkie stood alone in her room, lights turned on, until the morning came.

Leg

The worst three weeks of Big Mac's life was when he banged up his leg. He didn't remember what he had done to it. He hadn't been paying attention until the doctor had said three weeks. That had hit him like an Applejack buck to the chest. He remembered stuttering out an argument, but his parents and the doctor had hushed him, and sentenced him to three weeks of no weight on his right bucking hoof.

Applejack hadn't even ha her cutie mark yet. She was at the age where she was desperate to earn it, and Big Mac jealously watched on as she ran home from school each afternoon to practice bucking saplings. He headed into the house with Granny and Apple Bloom, the latter of whom spent her day sobbing so loud there was nowhere in the house to hide from it. He tried making faces at the filly, and singing, and even rocking her, all to no success.

For three weeks he tried desperately to busy himself, doing household chores and trying to knock down apples y balancing on one back hoof and hitting the tree with his forelegs. He wasn't good at either of them. Big Mac learned fairly quickly that he was a working pony through and though, and that his legs were the most valuable thing he had (aside from his family, of course).

He was never off his hooves for more than a week after that.

Loophole

"But you see, the contract clearly states-"

Oh, sun in the sky, Celestia hated lawyers, especially rich pony lawyers. They spent most of their time looking for ways to give them and their clients tax breaks. It wasn't as if her taxes were excessive, and as far as she could tell, her ponies could see that she put the money to god use. She stared at the lawyer pony and wondered how in Equestria one thousand years of peace hadn't been enough for him to think, "Maybe I should just pay the tax that has kept my fellow ponies happy and healthy for generations. Celestia could use a break. Maybe I should send her a lovely fruit basket and a week off to spend with her recently returned sister."

Thinking of sisters, Celestia looked over at Luna. Ah, yes, she remembered that look. Luna was alternating closing each eye to make the lawyer's image shift left to right. That was one of Luna's tricks to make court pass more quickly. Celestia often wondered if ponies didn't notice, or were simply afraid to bring it up in case they insulted the princess.

"...meaning that my client should only pay thirteen bits of taxes, your majesty. You thoughts?"

She opened her mouth to speak, but Luna was quicker. "We must decline. He will pay the tax as everyone else has done. We do not care what he had invested in."

The lawyer pony scowled. "But-"

The Royal Canterlot Voice boomed, "NEXT."