You Keep Staring Because You Know It Will Move Once You Are Asleep
It was a rose; that was plain to see. It covered the entire canvas of a half-finished painting resting on an easel before her, half of its petals devoid of a much-needed color bath. Twilight kept staring at it, her left eye twitching, as if she was too afraid to blink. Somehow, she knew that if she were to go to bed--especially with the rose unfinished--it might move as soon as she closed her eyes. If there was one thing Twilight Sparkle hated, it was not being in control of things. As an apprentice, it was her life's ambition to fix that.
She wanted to finish her work of art. It was such a simple wish. Many things were expected of her, but this was the one thing she expected from herself. To that end, Twilight sat for a prolonged period of time atop a wooden stool inside the central lobby of her library, staring into her painting, waiting for inspiration to come.
It didn't.
Her nose wrinkled up. Sniffling, Twilight leaned closer towards the artpiece, watching as the reds washed up against the white like crimson waves against an icy shore. Her eyes lingered on the fractured edges of the flaring petals, as if expecting them to move for her, to paint themselves, to make whole that which was devoid of life, warmth, and richness. She ached for completion, to fill the alabaster vacuum lingering before her. But she couldn't concentrate. The buzzing was too loud.
"Spike?"
It was more of a belch than a murmur. Twilight felt hungry; she wasn't sure when the last time was that she ate something. For that matter, she couldn't remember having an appetite. Nausea lingered in her stomach, tickling her lungs like a bad case of the hiccups. She felt with each breath that she might collapse, rolling off the stool like a splintery log.
"Spike?"
Her voice sounded more desperate that time, like an old wagon's wheels creaking at the top crest of a tall hill. Her left eye twitched again as she groaned into the recesses of that dusty repository of books, books, and more books.
"Ungh... where are the thorns? I swear, I most absolutely painted thorns on this thing."
Something echoed throughout the library: perhaps a knocking sound. Twilight's ears barely twitched. She was sitting still and concentrating; she was thinking about the thorns.
She couldn't see them. The petals were in the way, even if they were lacking color. Everything was lacking color. The phantom spectrum laughed at her between the clicks and the knocking and the buzzing. Her nose wrinkled up again. The nausrea returned. She wanted to gag.
Instead, Twilight grumbled the name of her assistant once more.
"Spike?"
She was wincing at this point, like her hooves had been shoved into buckets full of ice. Her left eye twitched like it might pop out.
"Do something about that damn buzzing! I'm trying to paint something here!"
The windows rattled. All morning long, the storm had refused to let up. The thunder was just another thing putting stress on Twilight's concentration. Maybe if she ate a full meal, she'd have the strength to finish the painting, to do this one simple task like so many things she had accomplished for herself or for Princess Celestia before. Still, there was no fighting off this pitiful nausea, this everlasting knot in her stomach.
She recalled having battled all night with her restlessness. She had tried everything, from tossing and turning in bed to covering her face with her hooves. She could have sworn that she slept for hours, but her eyelids were still heavy, just like her cranium.
"I mean it, Spike!"
She rocked back and forth on the stool, hugging herself. Her teeth chattered, adding to the bedlam. The world was a pressurized glass jar of beads ready to shatter.
"Do something about the noise, will you?!"
Twilight couldn't remember her dreams. Flashes of pinprick lights lingered on the fringes of her beleagured mind. Whatever her dreams were about, they had to have been silent--or at least considerably more quiet than this putrid cacophony that was ruining her art.
"My head's splitting apart!"
She ran a hoof through her gray bangs.
"What gives, Spike? I thought you were my trusted assistant!"
There was another knock at the front door. Once again, Twilight ignored it. She only wished she could ignore the buzzing. Her eyes danced over the soft rose petals, the scarlet bands that looped and sloped and giggled at her in gentle waves. The blooming flower was so big, so voluptuous, there was no wonder the thorns were obscured. The rose completely devoured all corners of the canvas. Had Twilight truly meant to hide the thorns? She felt like they were important somehow, but there was no way to display the mere concept of them. The illustrated angle on the rose was at such an awkward perspective, just like she was hovering over it, ready to pollinate, ready to scream.
She whispered instead.
"It's like a tune that I can't get out of my head, but I don't remember hearing it to begin with."
She was starting to get positively frustrated. She knew this. There were many things in life that Twilight didn't understand, but this was one thing that she grasped, one thing she could hold close and cuddle. That and the noise.
"It just..."
She hissed. Her crown weighed a million tons. Her gray eyes spun towards the blank corners of the canvas, as if they were galloping away from her, sobbing.
"It just needs something..."
There was another knock at the door. The buzzing intensified. There was no more ignoring it. There was no more ignoring anything anymore.
"Ungh! I swear to Celestia!"
She hopped down from her stool, nearly slipped, and trotted angrily towards the door. Her nose wrinkled the entire journey there.
"If you want something done, you gotta do it yourself."
With a swift hoof, Twilight flung the door open. Not wasting a millisecond, she growled into the gray world outside.
"Yes?! What in Equestria's name do you want?!"
There was nopony there. Twilight looked and looked, but nothing was amiss. All she saw was the morning stormclouds blistering over endless briar patches, the stone mesas devouring the distant horizon, and the leafless, lightning-burnt trees of everyday Ponyville. Even the deep black pits where right where she last saw them. The buzzing seemed somehow quieter in the frigid air, but she was hardly impressed.
"Hmmm. Figures."
Twilight slammed the door shut and batted an errant fly or two away from her muzzle.
"You can't keep a good library quiet these days."
With a lonely sigh, Twilight turned around, stepped over a flank of purple scales, and trotted back to her stool. Sitting once more before the painting, she leaned her chin against her hoof. She stared and she stared.
"Hmmmm... What does it need... What does it need...?"
Then, for the first time in days, a smile cracked across Twilight's lips.
"Oh, but of course! More red."
So she dipped her hoof down against the floor and got some. The rose finished itself in no time at all.
