This story begins with Twilight Sparkle. No not the Princess Twilight Sparkle, Element of Magic. Another Twilight Sparkle.
This will take a little explaining.
The Sparkles, like most other unicorn families in Canterlot had been in residence for generations amongst the city elite. If they hadn't why would Celestia have let Shining Armor marry her niece?
Such elitism came with advantages, but it also came with limitations and expectations. One slightly bizarre demand was that the heir of a unicorn should be named after them. In this practice at least the Sparkles excelled. Twilight Sparkle followed Twilight Sparkle down the generations, each picking up the influence and reputation of their predecessor for better or worse.
And so we finally come to Twilight Sparkle the 36th, mother of the world famous princess, left with a rather curious dilemma.
Twilight Velvet Sparkle, or Twilight Velvet as her friends called her, who prided herself on her forethought and rapid thinking, had planned every detail of her life. What she wore, what she ate, what she studied and even who she talked to and how she responded had to be planned out at least thirty minutes in advance, just so she could make sure that absolutely nothing could possibly go wrong.
She had meticulously calculated every aspect of her life. Every aspect, that was, except her family. How could she have? She'd married a foreign astronomer and had both children ascend to royalty. It was like those dreams the other fillies in her class had imagined up in kindergarten, which she had dismissed as stupid and infantile.
High and mighty as the unicorn families of Canterlot could be, only the very stupid or particularly arrogant would be foolish enough to call themselves royalty.
But that was all side tracking, the biggest problem now was her class. Not the students falling asleep at the back, that was to be expected of ponies taking her classes. Twilight Velvet's voice lacked the normal Elite Canterlot accent and was, as a result, rendered so monotone that it was a wonder any of her class paid attention at all.
No the biggest problem was the questions.
“Mrs Sparkle, what is the magic of Friendship?”
Twilight blinked, dropping her pointer back onto the table and turning to her student, a large blue unicorn mare whose grades remained firmly average in her class, “It has long been claimed by empaths that their magic was strengthened by their friends presence. Given that their magic is emotion driven and their friends presence would both reassure and stress them this seems quite a reasonable hypothesis and has been jokingly dubbed 'the magic of friendship'. In the Preclassical era it was also established- as you no doubt read for me last night,” The silence was not very reassuring. Twilight sighed.
“For those of you that do not know, the Eternal House's mages discovered that far greater spells could be effectively cast by pooling multiple unicorns' magic before incantations were invoked. This was assumed to be a result of intricate harmonics between the casters. This, however was still a product of the unicorns' combined magic and not a separate source of power, so Friendship's innate magical properties are still presuppositions and exaggeration at best.”
“Until last week!” A stallion piped up from the back of the class, Twilight Velvet span to face them with a grimace.
“What do mean young man?”
“Well Mrs Sparkle, it's hard to be a skeptic when your own daughter was coronated for creating such magic.”
“Firstly, coronated is not a word. If that turns up on any of your essays I will deduct points for spelling as well as irrelevance. Secondly, you are making the assumptions I mentioned, the biggest problem with magic is classification. Forms of magic can be almost impossible to distinguish between for amateurs and professionals alike. One would need to devote a lifetime to the study and still could not hope to know them all. Then we meet another problem. How can we know that Celestia's equation of magic with friendship is valid? There are any number of other factors which could create items of power such as the elements in a far more scientifically acceptable manner. At best this is simply the discovery of a new and incredibly exclusive form of unicornian magic that results in elevation to alicornhood.”
The first mare cut her off, “So your saying your daughter's discovery has no actual application?”
Twilight turned on her, her mane twisting into little clumps in front of her eyes that smoldered and sparked, her voice when she spoke was still flat but much,much louder, “GET. OUT.”
The slumbering ponies in her class jumped out of her seats, most of the other ponies flinched as doodles, passed notes and even text books were wrenched out of their hooves. Twilight Velvet's eyes darted from one to another with a speed her daughter would have been proud of. “I would remind you all that this semester we are studying potions and runic cantrips. For those of you that believe that is about analyzing my opinion of my daughter please go and please do not come back. For the rest of you read pages 17-39 of Starswirl's 8th Concordium Unicornia and be I will see you tomorrow. Class dismissed.” And with that she blinked out of existence with a flash, leaving her class to deal with the rain of papers that fell seconds after her exit.
Twilight Velvet reappeared, mane still full of embers, in the rain outside the Three Sisters University a second later and disappeared into a cloud of steam. The feeling was quite invigorating, but for some reason it didn't make her feel much better. Not even the tea she made herself when she reached her home did much to raise the white mare's mood.
The biggest issue for her though was not her class, not really. Twilight Velvet would have loved to pretend that she was angry because of some inattentive university students but she was far too clever to fool herself like that. No her problem was her daughter.
She'd left the envelope hanging on the noticeboard of her home even though she'd memorised every word.
'Dear Mr and Mrs Sparkle
It is my great honor to congratulate you on your daughter's success. Twilight has been a joy to teach over the years and I have become used to her surpassing my expectations no matter how high I set them, but I must still admit to being pleasantly surprised by her achievements.
It would be remiss of me to ignore the support and dedication required to raise not one but two exceptional young ponies. As a result I extend my congratulations to you and an invitation to the coronation of your daughter, to be held at midday on Tuesday at my residence in Canterlot.
Your friend
Princess Celestia.'
There followed the general slew of titles, other signatures and seals, but the name Twilight Velvet had wanted to see hadn't been anywhere among them. In all the excitement of realising that the system in which they lived was not, in fact, a monarchy and the title of princess was actually completely arbitrary, Twilight Velvet had still been unable to ignore it.
“Why didn't she just tell us herself?” The thought had been meant to stay a thought but Twilight had always had a habit of thinking aloud.
“Aha, at last we return to reality,” Her husband laughed from across the table. Twilight blinked, wondering where the last hour she thought she had had before her husband had stopped stargazing had gone, “So dear, what is the worry de jour?”
Twilight Velvet smiled. Her husband was just the sort of eternally confident, politically overactive pony that Canterlot society hated. She often wondered if that was why she had married him. After all Nacht Licht (or Night Light as he now called himself) was brilliant, but hardly better than her at the niceties of high society. Unfortunately that made him too smart to be fooled by 'It's nothing' and too dense to give up. “It's Twilight, dear.”
Night Light nodded, “I know I've been doing a lot of thinking about her since...” He trailed off. Twilight Velvet knew what he meant, it was strange to think of their daughter with wings, after all the years of seeing her as a little foal, excitedly babbling about the last airship she saw, or the last thing she read or a hundred other things. It had seemed inconceivable back then that she would meet Celestia more than once or twice, let alone become her student. Night Light had acted as if it was a forgone conclusion that she become Celestia's protégé, but he was always exaggerating for the sake of his own ego.
“Dear, you're staring into space again.”
Twilight jumped out of her thoughts, “Sorry. I know I should be proud but, I'm just worried. Twilight's making a change that, if Celestia's right, rewrites around half of everything we believe about the world and achieves an unheard of act of switching five ponies cutie marks (that alone deserves an essay or two) and she doesn't tell us.”
“If you're worried about your little pet theories, you can always just write a book explaining why you're still right. It's what all your colleagues are doing right about now.”
“No, no, it's just... She never writes anymore, neither of them do. We got a letter at Hearth's Warming, and on your last birthday but...”
Night Light nodded, “She's got her own life. Just think how we would have felt if our parents had barged into everything we did.”
“I'm just remembering a little filly who cried when we wouldn't let her sleep in Spike's room when he was teething.”
“And if you try even harder you'll remember a little baby that sucked her hoof and you worried would struggle at magic school. But Twilight isn't either of those anymore.”
There was silence for a few minutes as Twilight Velvet tried to think of a way passed that one. When she couldn't she voiced her next worry, “I also thought about her wings, are we sure she's ours?”
Night Light blinked, “She's yours. I would have thought you'd remember that pretty vividly.”
Twilight Velvet sighed, “I know, I know but think about it, neither of us have power. She was teleporting before she was old enough to take the train alone. She doesn't panic like I do and there are spells that-”
“Can magically create a child which isn't biologically their parents'. I know, you checked for them while in labor if I remember right.” Night Light smiled, “We've both worried this before but the truth is that little Twilight is ours and she's incredible. Both my Twilights' are incredible. That's all that matters. Yes you worry, you both worry- and don't say she doesn't, you saw her when they gave her three hours to plan that second wedding. You're a pair of obsessive worriers and I wouldn't have it any other way. I married you, I love you and even if our kids don't write I know they love you too.”
He squeezed her hoof and she smiled. It had been quite a while since Night Light had been that sweet, “Thank you dear. I guess I'm just a bit overworked lately. It's a lot to adapt to.”
“If you're so worried about Twilight why don't we visit her? Just drop in to see how she's going and meet those friends of hers she talks so much about in her letters.”
Twilight Velvet nodded slowly and that was it, once her husband got an idea into his head it would be done, no matter where he got banned from in the process. Sooner or later then she was going to visit her daughter, which was long overdue all things considered.
After all they had a lot to talk about...
* * *
Twilight Sparkle 37th was not exactly the first person you'd expect to become a princess. She rarely used her titles, she had spent most of her foalhood with her head in a book and she lived in a library for the rest of it. Yet here she was trying not to crush her books to powder with her now greatly empowered magic. She had learnt about that the hard way on the first day of alicorn hood and lost a window as a result.
Aside from bringing her gradually emerging powers under control, Twilight had spent most of her time since the coronation trying to return her life to some degree of normality and convince the ponies of Ponyville that she had not changed. After all, it got really annoying to have to wait for everyone to stop bowing before you could buy fruit.
Twilight's thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door, she almost reached out with her magic, then stopped and called for Spike. She didn't want to have to replace a door today. She had too much work already.
Twilight flipped a few books passed her and turned to the pile of history, etiquette and genealogy books she'd had Spike find. If she was going to do this job, she was going to know everything about it first. After all, when she stepped out of Ponyville now she did so representing the whole of Equestria. She was not intending to ruin the countries reputation just because she didn't know what fork to use in Zebrakistan.
From outside her room she heard Spike yelling something up to her. He sounded happy though, so it couldn't be too important. It was probably just one of her friends dropping in to see her. Spike would show them in. Until then she settled down with a big book and cup of tea to read about the wars in Equestria's Classical era.
“I always thought you preferred magic books.” The voice that shook her from her thoughts was most definitely not Spike's and sounded more than a little bored, still Twilight couldn't have thought of another voice that would have made her smile half as much.
“Mom,” She spun around to look at the speaker, “What are you doing in Ponyville?”
“Your father suggested a trip. You know if you're really in to dusty histories the Canterlot Library is a goldmine, they even add extra dust.”
Twilight laughed at her mother's joke, “I think these will be dusty enough thanks. Besides I just need these for a little Princess study, this job doesn't end with the wings you know.” And to demonstrate she ruffled her wings.
Twilight's mother blinked a little at the sight of her daughter's wings, “If any one deserves them, dear it's you.”
“Thanks mom,” Twilight smiled snapping her book shut and turning to her, “Why didn't you just call and say you were coming first, I'd of done something with the library.”
“I wanted it to be a surprise.”
Twilight laughed again at that, “Mom, you hate surprises, you're the only pony I've ever met who missed her own surprise birthday party. You never just drop in without weeks of planning, even when Dad brings you along.”
Twilight Velvet smiled just a little, “I am allowed to change once in a while aren't I?”
Twilight raised an eyebrow at that then passed her mother a book, “Well if you want something new a few of the books over there are good.” She motioned to a pile of books beside her.
The rest of the morning Twilight and her mother spent in a way that they hadn't since Twilight was a filly, sitting with each other reading books. They were halfway through the third when Twilight's mother stopped and spoke.
“Twilight I'm sorry.”
Twilight lost interest in the book in a moment, “Sorry for what?”
“That we haven't done this for a while, that we haven't seen each other, that I was a terrible mother.”
Twilight slammed the book closed and gave her mother the sort of disbelieving stare that normally reserved for ponies who told her that Pinkie could tell the future, “Why would you possibly think that?”
“Twilight, when Shining Armour was born I told myself that I'd understand my children, your father and I read every book on child psychology there was. We learnt all the theories and then when he was born...” She sighed, “Your father was always the one who knew what to do when he cried and how to make him laugh and I, I was just there. And then you were born just as he and I were beginning to understand each other. I was no better with you. I tried everything I'd read and you just stared at me and... It wasn't until you were old enough to understand the joys of learning that I realized the worst part of it all. I realized I was jealous of you, Twilight. It was awful. Everything I aspired to, you surpassed. I got into Celestia's school, you became her student! And suddenly you were gone, just when I'd begun to understand you. I know I should have felt proud. Everyone told me I should be so proud. And I was just so scared that fifty years from now no one would remember me as anything but Twilight Sparkle's mother.”
She lapsed into silence for a time and in the gap her daughter pushed close and, remembering how Celestia had comforted her, wrapped one small wing around her shoulders, “Now don't be ridiculous. Yes you might have worried when I was born and you weren't exactly the best with babies,” She smiled, remembering her mother's first attempts to feed Spike, “But you're the one who taught me to read, and helped me get ready for my entrance exam for Celestia's Academy. You're the best mother I've ever had. In fact I think you're the best mother a pony could hope for and don't you ever doubt that for one second.” She gave her mother a hug.
Twilight Velvet blinked back tears, she couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so wretched, “But I should be proud of you and here I am, wishing I had wings too and-”
Twilight folded her wings back and grimaced, “Mom, when I passed my exam for Celestia's school what were your first thoughts?”
“Photosynthesis.”
“After that.”
Her mother smiled at the thought, “I was amazed by how powerful you'd become, and I was happy for you. All that hard work you'd put in had paid off and you were getting the same brilliant start I had. I only began worrying later and... Twilight can you just let me apologize for-”
“No.” Twilight cut her off again, “You didn't think for one second about yourself, about how you'd just been turned into a tree and how terrifying that was?”
“N-no.” Twilight Velvet started uncertainly for once, “I didn't think about that until later, I was just thinking about you.”
“Then I don't think we have a problem,” Twilight flipped her book back open, “You thought some things you didn't mean to and then you worried too much about them and made everything worse. Don't worry, it's hereditary.” Her eyes scanned each page until she found her place, “When I got like that I almost destroyed the whole town... again. Now come and look at this, there's a fascinating chapter on Chancellor Puddinghead.”
Twilight Velvet wiped her eyes dry and moved to stand next to her daughter. She wasn't sure if she believed everything the alicorn had said but it was comforting to know she was forgiven.
It was mid-afternoon when the two Twilights finally finished reading and left the younger's room to search through the rest of the library. Spike and Night Light claimed not to have noticed their absence. Neither of them really believed that, but the lack of interruptions was appreciated. Then they sat down to dinner and all problems were forgotten.
Twilight's father was the sort of man that could make buying a telescope sound like a world domination scheme (he had plenty of both) so he did most of the talking. They caught up, they laughed and they reminisced.
After sunset though they said goodbyes. Twilight by this point was holding back tears, she hadn't realised how much she'd missed the two unicorns that had brought her into the world and kept her out of that highbrow nonsense most little foals of the Canterlot elite were suckered into.
“I'll write more,” She promised when they turned to leave, “I'm sorry I didn't, I just didn't want to worry you, but since that didn't work I might as well fill you in on all the really boring details.”
“No, no.” Her mother smiled, “Just the normal boring one's will do. And any more ursas of course. Oh that reminds me,” She rooted around in her bag for a second, producing a small box from which she fished a little stuffed toy.
It was a small donkey in a polka dot dress with a little crown, blue buttons for eyes and a straggly woolen mane. Twilight burst into a laugh on seeing her, “Miss Smartypants!”
“Princess Smartypants.” Twilight's father smiled, “We thought you could do with a new one sweetie, I used the same pattern as the last one and your mother made the extras.”
“She comes with a genealogy,” Twilight's mother levitated a few scrolls out of the same box, “So you can trace her family lineage and line of succession and,” More scrolls followed, “Lots and lots of paper work. Celestia assures me that should be quite sufficient to keep her busy for a while. Do look after her and, if you have any other little...”
“Breakdowns?” Twilight supplied.
“Yes. If you do please remember, we're always there for you, just don't leave us in the dark.”
“I won't. And if you guys need any help with anything,” She gave her wings a flap, “Well I can be there pretty quickly now, so I'm sure I can work something out.”
Her parents smiled and like that they were out of the door and away.
It wasn't until she was on the train home that Twilight Velvet thought of it. She was pouring over a book on the history of a few buildings in Canterlot and the idea was suddenly there. The Three Sisters university, where she taught, had been named in honour of the unity between the three types of pony. Its symbol originally representing earth pony, pegasus and unicorn together in harmony but over recent years ponies had taken to painting the sisters different. Some painted famous ponies, some painted themselves, most though painted one sister as Celestia, one as Nightmare Moon (or even more recently Luna) and the third as Faust, Discord, Cadence or any others depending on their politics. She wondered if in a few weeks Twilight might join the others as the third sister and then another thought occured.
“Dear,” She tapped her husband next to her to make sure he was still awake, “Do you still know those ponies you ran those anti-royalist demonstrations with back when Twilight was younger.”
Night Light frowned, “Yeah. They all got rather worked up over Shiny's wedding. Why?”
Twilight Sparkle 36th smiled, “I think we need to show Twilight a little more support than we have in the past. It won't take them much time. Just tell them to meet near that delightful statue outside the university and tell them to bring some purple paint.”
Author's Note
Something I've had stuck in my head since season three ended, written quickly (for me). I'd like to know what everyone thinks. So enjoy and R and R.