A Kindred Spirit

Surprisingly, after having spent the day exploring the castle in a brisk walk, I... wasn't tired! Perks of being an adult, I thought to myself, a faint smile lighting my face. Since it was evening, and I actually wanted to talk to somepony (See, I'm getting better with the new pronouns), I started for the courtyard where the princesses raised and lowered their respective heavenly vessels. Celestia finally got me to loosen up enough so that I could speak to her as a friend, and Luna and I had already got way deep into emotional support stuff, so I felt comfortable being around the sisters. By using my newfound knowledge of the castle and its layout, I quickly reached the courtyard; in time to watch again the siblings' extreme expression of magical power.

Since Celestia basically put a tiny valve in the magic pressure vessel inside of me earlier today, being in the thick magic-laced air coaxed a bit of my own aura out through my breath. I noted it; a lot like a mirage, with a very faint additive glow of silver. I was still in wonderment that I had this packed away, but it only struck me if I let it; I was a pegasus now, proof enough of its existence, and also of what it could do. The princesses approached me again after their work was done, and they apparently noticed my fascination with the emanations of magic in my exhalations, for Celestia said this:

"The magic-breath thing"--I could hardly resist snorting at hearing the normally formal-speaking princess say that--"is going to come back now. It'll probably only happen in the presence of very powerful magic, very weakly when you're asleep, and very brightly when the barrier is about to break." Good, a warning sign of when that's going to happen, I noted. My response to this was a single, firm nod, followed by, "Good to know."

"Well, I'm off to bed. Good night!" The sun princess took her leave.

Luna spoke now. "Are you tired?" she asked. This caught me a little off-guard.

"Um, no. Why do you ask?" I was perplexed at first, but then realized--

"I thought it'd be fun to if we could do something together," she said cheerily, finishing the thought in my head.

I felt a vestige of discomfort echoing from this morning. So domestic.

"Uh, sure." I answered. "What did you have in mind?"

Luna gave a little shrug. "I dunno." Her eyes wandered upwards. "Play a card game, chess..." I was about to cut her off here, but I didn't. There was a short pause between her saying that, and her expression turning mischievous and her eyes giving me a sidelong glance, ending with "...prank my nephew."

I grinned at the thought of the last, but the second stuck up in the middle. "We can do the last one, sure," I said, returning the look, but now facing her fully, "but did you say "chess"?"

Her eyes lit up at this. "You know of it? Do you play?" I nodded. A competitive smirk now appeared. "How good are you?" I shrugged. "Better than most I play against... but that probably doesn't mean  much, considering you've got hundreds of years of experience." She gave the "fair point" shrug, and I followed her to wherever she would lead me.

It was not a question of if I would beat the princess of the night, but rather of how long I could last before being dominated. We had been playing on a spectacular stone chessboard located on a balcony that was directly beneath her observatory, connecting to a room she said was her study. I naturally played defensively, which aided in my survival time, but Luna's cunning knew no bounds. She had some remarkable way of knowing how to draw my power pieces into some sort of God-forsaken trap of extreme complexity that I could never foresee. Ironically, somehow an air of friendly competition still existed, despite the fact that I couldn't win. Despite her skill, I usually took at least a knight or a bishop, maybe even a rook, before crumbling under her hooves. After we'd both had enough, I brought this up. Luna gave another shrug before saying, "Yeah, well. I'm a little rusty." We both burst out laughing out this, but I was pretty sure it wasn't only a joke. I asked her what the time was (I don't know why; I did not expect her to do the following) and she looked up at the sky and told me it was 11:17. I'm not joking, she said 11:17. I was about to ask her how she knew, but then realized that because she was the night princess, she could probably could tell me down to the second, if I wanted it, the time, just from the position of the moon and stars. Not really knowing what to do next, I asked her what she wanted to do; I think you know the answer.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" I whispered to Luna. I was currently holding a basket full of fake snakes, and the night princess and I were standing outside of Prince Blueblood's window. I was never much of a prankster, but Luna wanted to do this, so I just rolled with it. This would be fun, anyway; Blueblood was so prissy.

"Come on!" she chided, smiling. "Now just dump those through here..." Luna opened up a portal that basically transcended the wall entirely, so that I could just dump them into the room. I did so, and Luna closed the portal. She then used an animation spell on them, as planned, causing all the little rubber creatures to writhe about.

"Wait for it...5, 4, 3, 2, 1--"

A very un-masculine scream rang out from inside the bedroom, and Luna waited another 5 seconds before deanimating the snakes. The scream persisted the whole time. It ended with a very confused noise from the snobbish noble, and then an angry groan promising many an unpleasant thing in the future of the pranksters who did this. Of course, Luna decided to teleport us at this moment, a flawless escape plan.

As we rematerialized, Luna was laughing, and I was steaming, breathing heavily with my legs wide and head down, also laughing, a faint smell of ozone and a silver-tinged mirage hanging in the air. Luna stopped laughing when she saw me.

"Oh no! Are you hurt?!" The concern was apparent in her voice and in the panicked expression she shot me.

"No, I'm fine." I panted, "But please," I gasped again, "lay off the teleports. Twilight explained that my magic isn't contained when I transport like that, and some gets free before I rematerialize. That was before I believed I had any of the stuff... But anyway, it's not exactly pleasant having a magic pulse run full force through everything."

"Oh, I'm so sorry! I should have remembered! Do you need anything?" She was obviously rattled and wanted to help, but I really was just fine.

Recovering now, I tried to stop her fawning; My voice held an undercurrent of firmness. "Luna, it's fine. I'm alright."

"If you say so," she said, obviously unconvinced. "I think it'd be best if you went to bed now." I was not about to argue with this; my mind had been running full strength for several hours on top of a waning energy of my body, and that pulse had taken everything that was left out of me. She hesitated a moment, before asking me, "You know the way?" I nodded. "Alright then," she said, smiling softly again, "See you in the morning."

So, I shambled down to the Princess' bedroom to take a sorry excuse for a shower before hitting the hay (or rather top-of-the-line silk king size bedding, in this case). So ended this day.