Silver bore the cooing form of Clear Twilight. Beside him, Night carried Morning Glory. Both had a little saddle that the little ones rode on. He couldn't help but smile as he thought of how they must look. It was simply too adorable. "Alright, so we just have to go right on in, relax, and try to approach Starlight without scaring her away. We're not here to judge her."
Night gave a little nod. "I'm not entirely comfortable with visions and dreams, but I'm here for you, and Celestia--"
"Sunny."
Night paused a moment, then shook her head. "Right, Sunny. She seems to think it's just as important, so if we're doing this, we'll do it right." She bumped lightly against Silver. "I won't mess this up."
The smiling unicorn out front perked as they approached. "Good evening! What a charming young family. Do you have a reservation?"
Silver nodded to the unicorn. "We should be under the Watches."
The unicorn lowered his eyes to the writing before him before glancing back up. "Here we are! Please, follow me." He turned and led the way into the eatery.
As they went, both spied Twilight laughing and joking with a table full of unicorns. Silver recognized them all as background ponies. Silver was sure he'd met one of them not long ago. Colgate? They didn't pay attention to one another for long and the waiter brought them to a table. "For you. We'll have foal seats brought out for you in just a moment, and your waiter will be right around to take drink orders." He dipped his head low before he scooted off back towards the door, leaving them.
Night hopped up onto the plush seat designed to be large enough for a pony to sit naturally and comfortably. Her sharp slitted eyes wandered the room, taking in the details. "Do we know what she looks like?"
Silver hopped up across from her and gently lifted Clear from his back, giving her a nuzzle before moving her towards a chair in his silvery magic. "I do. I know exactly what she looks like." Before he could set Clear down, a unicorn with a big smile approached.
The mare set down two high chairs. "Here you are! What can I get for you today?"
Soon the foals were situated, as wriggly and eager to explore as they were. Night nodded to the waiter. "A round of water to start, and how about a sampler tray as an appetizer?"
"Oh, I love that. Sometimes that's my entire lunch." The waitress smiled that bright smile of hers and was soon gone off to fetch the order.
Silver chuckled a little. "Smooth. I would have had to study the menu a bit first." He looked around a moment, and there she was. He could see her distinctive mane rising above one of those menus, her horn also poking free. He leaned in closer and voice lowered to a whisper. "She's just over there."
Night glanced before looking away sharply. She gave a stiff nod as the waiter returned with water and Night busied herself with a few sips.
Silver looked to his wife curiously a moment. "I just noticed, you recovered from that really well. I mean, not a bit of literal babyfat on you."
Night blinked with surprise. "Do humans not do that? I paid my price. Just about a year of increasing fat, I'm not keeping that." She snorted softly and took a deeper pull of water. "Even if you do like it."
Silver felt his cheeks warm. "No! No, not like that. I'm attracted to my wife being a miracle, not my wife being fat for the sake of being fat." He reached with his magic, raising her chin. "You're a wonderful and breathtaking pony, Night."
Night smiled a little before gesturing with her head faintly. "Let's keep our senses on the objective, hmm?"
Twilight and her group suddenly rose up and began moving for the door in a giggling mass. Fortunately, she seemed absorbed in her friends and didn't notice Night or Silver in the eatery, nor did she notice the stalking Starlight who had been there with her.
With Twilight gone, Starlight slid to her hooves with a scowl. She started for the door herself, only to pause. "What are you looking at?" She was looking at Silver and Night directly.
Silver's mind went fast, the dangerous kind of fast that results in ponies slipping and falling down stairs. "I was captivated."
Starlight blinked in shock. Night did the same. Between the three of them, there was an awkward moment of silence. Starlight gave a nervous little laugh. "You're a bold one, making a move on a mare while seated ac... Are you two married?" Her eyes darted from Night to the foals and back, trying to piece together what was going on.
Night clicked out of her shock and began to move quickly on her own, trying to match her husband's dangerous mental rate. "Oh, yes, but I did promise him he could look. We were considering a herd."
Starlight's cheeks began to burn. "You're joking... You're not joking..." She approached a few steps though rather than fleeing. "Why would you be attracted to me? I don't have anything." She thrust a hoof at where Twilight was. "She took it all away from me!"
Silver felt the tension melt away a little. This was exactly where they wanted to be. "Want to tell us about it?" He gripped an unused chair and brought it into place. "Please, join us."
Starlight glanced away and back. "I'm not that kind of mare..."
Night flashed a gentle smile. "We're not that kind of pony either, please. Have a seat, tell us what has you so upset. No obligations."
After a moment of hesitation, Starlight hopped up, joining them at their table. "If you talk to 'princess' Twilight about this..."
Silver raised a hoof and made a motion over his heart. "What you tell us will never reach her ears. We're here for you."
Starlight tilted her head a little. "For some reason... I believe you." She let out an explosive sigh. "Fine, you want to hear my sob story so bad, you'll get it, but no complaining." She suddenly grabbed Silver's glass of water and swigged it down. "Now where to begin..."
Night smiled a little. "The start is always a good place."
Starlight suddenly put both of her hooves on the table. "Wait, I don't even know your names!"
Silver pointed at himself. "Silver Watch." He pointed to Night. "Night Watch." That hoof kept moving to his foals. "Morning Glory and Clear Twilight."
Starlight frowned at Clear a moment, but the foal just giggled at her. "She doesn't look much like Twilight. She's an earth pony."
Night rolled a hoof. "She doesn't own the word. Clear Twilight is named after a perfectly clear twilight evening, where the sky is so pure and empty, with not a cloud in the way of seeing."
Starlight smiled a little. "Right, of course. I'm Starlight. Starlight Glimmer. I used to have a purpose, and friends, and a home..." She looked down a little and went quiet.
Silver reached across towards Starlight and pat her shoulder. "What happened?" He knew what happened, but simply speaking of it would not work well.
Starlight scowled. "That stupid Twilight and her friends came. They destroyed the society I had worked so hard to make... Ungrateful ponies! I brought them happiness! Equality! Justice, true justice!" With every emphasized word she drove her hoof into the table, becoming more irate. Her fury abated a little as the waiter returned with their sampler tray and set it out in the middle of the table.
Night took a snatch of food and nibbled on the savory morsel a moment before she spoke, "Sounds rough. What was this 'society' you made?"
Starlight thrust a hoof at Night's flanks. "See that?"
Night glanced back. "My cutie mark?"
Starlight nodded. "More like your shackles. Your 'cutie mark' says what you have to do. It separates ponies. It says hey, you, you're better than this other pony. Hey you, you shouldn't be around this pony, you should be doing something else." She scowled a little. "What does yours mean, for instance?"
Night glanced at it again a brief moment. "It told me that I like examining things closely." Her slit eyes narrowed a little. "I'm good at figuring out the odds and seeing things from other angles."
Starlight rolled a hoof. "And I bet you had friends as a foal you don't talk to anymore."
Night opened her mouth as if ready to deny it, but a second thought reached her and she stopped. "I... actually, there is one."
"See!" Starlight clopped the table before taking a snack and chewing it angrily. "Cutie marks drive ponies apart, and keep them apart. I had a utopian society, where ponies were all equal to one another. Nopony had to be the best, or worst."
Silver set a hoof gently on one of Starlight's. "Until Twilight came."
"Exactly!" Starlight heaved for breath, but seemed to be calming down. "Exactly... Look, I shouldn't be venting with strangers like this."
Night suddenly joined in, resting a hoof on one of Starlight's. "Oh, no, you can share. It's alright. Sometimes a pony just needs somepony to talk to."
Starlight seemed to war internally with taking up that offer or fleeing. Her eyes settled on Silver's flank. "So, what about yours?"
Silver perked his ears. "Huh? Oh! Mine's about spell making."
Starlight sat up. "You make spells?"
Silver bobbed his head. "I sure do! Name any two spells and let me go."
Starlight raised a brow. "You're kidding..." She suddenly produced a spellbook from her pocket and laid it on the table. "Any two? You're just bluffing to look good in front of your mare."
Night snorted softly. "Afraid not. He doesn't show off for me like that. He should."
Silver hesitated a moment. Was that part of the act, or genuine? He decided to shake it off for the moment. "Really, pick two." He pointed to her book.
Starlight licked her lips before a calculating grin came over her face. "Well, alright then. Let me pick the perfect two to test with then..."
The arrival of destiny/typos.
That seem to happen a lot.
"Really, pick two." He pointed to her book.
Starlight licked her lips before a calculating grin came over her face. "Well, alright then. Let me pick the perfect two to test with then..."
be vary vary carful me thinks something smells fishy and it is not the sampler on the table.
I am sure Night Watch will spot this or I am hoping she will.
eyes to writing - eyes to the writing
It seperates ponies - It separates ponies
*****
I enjoyed this chapter. Events are moving along, and there is a cautious feeling to Silver's approach that I appreciate, given the metaknowledge from reading his story so far. Night Watch also seems to appreciate being trusted to be involved and seems to want to be further involved with Silver and his talents.
Also - Best. Behaved. Foals in a restaurant. Ever.
We see what you did there, Silver. Clever pony.
7091437 They're such darlings! You can see why Silver loves them so much!
Mission: Confide with Starlight is going smoothly so far.
Nothing could go wrong from here, right? We have this in the bag!
7091489
hmm..typos everywhere..
hmm...i think i typoed the typo..
7091489
Considering Silver's record with combining spells, he might create the time-travel spell after all but unlike the one used in canon, this one will be so inefficient, it'll knock Starlight out the first time she tries to use it. I seem to recall Silver making up new spells before and unless they were low-level to start with, the combination tended to be dangerously draining... like juggling bowling balls. One isn't too bad, but add another, and maybe a third because you didn't clean up the messy code?
And doesn't he know what's going to happen? Could he be a devious little brat and put a failsafe in the spell? Or make it so bloated that even an alicorn would have trouble casting it? I guess it depends on how magic-savvy Starlight is; would she be able to understand it or, like most unicorns, just cast what's on the page because she never learned what the symbols mean?
7091572 Ultimately, she has to cast it. Wouldn't making it not work be going against that? She's supposed to cast it, clash with Twilight, and emerge a better pony. He could try to wrestle fate, but the outcome may be much more dire.
7091268
Well do remember the purpose of them meeting her. It's to ensure that she gets her stupid overpowered incredibly dangerous spell that should not ever be cast by sane ponies ever.
Also y'know. There's one in the starswirl wing that does exactly the same thing apparently... but they don't realize that.
7091662 That one has limits. One week, for instance.
7091588
Ehh, I guess you're right. It really sucks knowing the future and being unable to do anything about it... but then Cassandra knows all about that little curse. Right up there with "living in interesting times".
7091760 I long ago forgot about her, but that's quite fitting.
7091588
7091572
I suspect, or I'd like to hope, that the time distortions that occurred in the dream which caused so much heartbreak, may have been due in part to the sloppy combination job he due to his incomplete education. Silver has been training under TGaP Trixie for at least a few months now and has a much better understanding of his magic which, again this is my hope, will result in much less spell slop and fewer time/reality ripples.
7091792
7091760 How quickly you forget, last time it wasn't even Silver. Starlight just grabbed his cutie mark and hacked it all together, hoping for the best.
7091807
Shoot. Perfectly good hypothesis sunk due to bad memory. Maybe it can be salvaged from incompletely burned ashes.
My hope now rests on the spell being better for being created with Silver's cooperation which still brings in his more complete education by TGaP Trixie. A better constructed spell may avoid complications etc.. etc...
Falsification: this hypothesis is false if Starlight Glimmer doesn't ask him to combine those two particular spells and instead waylays him and steals his cutie mark at a later date. It is also false if the author decides to take option C which, given our lack of ability to predict where the story will go before this point, may be the stronger hypothesis.
Hm, I have to admit that Silver and Night are handling this more smoothly than I thought they would. I was sure that they'd approach her directly and try and talk her out of it, rather than taking a subtler tact. This is more cunning than I gave them credit for.
One thing I smirked at was Starlight being intrigued, rather than repulsed, by Silver and Night's "open" relationship. While I question how much the canon Starlight would appreciate that sort of thing, insofar as her character in this fic is concerned, it's rather appropriate. After all, she was the one layering on sexual innuendo and even outright seduction the first time around. So the idea of a multi-partner romance seems like the sort of thing that would catch her eye here. Thankfully, she's not acting lusty though; I never felt that angle worked very well for her (she's almost been more intellectually seductive than sexually).
That said, it was interesting to see her one-up, at least momentarily, Night Watch in terms of philosophy. Technically Starlight is correct in that cutie marks separate ponies by way of making them have differing skills, and so providing unequal ranks in terms of merit (where "merit" is understood as how well they can perform a particular task), since a pony who has a particular talent will perform that talent better than one who doesn't. Where her philosophy has always floundered is on demonstrating why that's a bad thing. Saying that Night Watch had friends as a foal that she doesn't talk to anymore is post hoc ergo propter hoc, since it fails to establish that Night's cutie mark (or anypony else's) was the underlying cause of that.
Unfortunately, this particular game seems to have come to an end just as it was getting good. Silver and Night had an excellent chance to seduce Starlight back into the light - again, with empathy and an appeal to her better nature, rather than sex - but other than portraying themselves as being sympathetic ears (something that was done relatively well, though Night's "we're here for you" was a bit too much too quick; offering to be there for someone isn't something you do for someone you've just met) that seems to have already fallen by the wayside. Instead, we're moving right on to Starlight using Silver as a mechanism to alter Star-Swirl's time-travel spell. A shame; I would have loved to see them using subtlety to gently pull Starlight back over to their side, rather than just keeping destiny on its tracks, as it were.
Ah well, maybe they'll be able to do so anyway?
7091941 We will never know the sexual preferences of any of the little ponies outside of dubious tweets. So hey, it's about as canon supported as it is anything else. We don't know.
Things could go towards the desired route, for sure, leading her towards the path they desire.
How often do things come out exactly the way Silver plans?
I think the best hope that could be carved is that nopony gets hurt and that friendships are eventually forged in the fire of conflict. It may or may not help that Silver still remembers liking Starlight as a pony quite a bit.
That won't help keep Starlight calm and cooperative, however.
7092553
You say that, but I remember how a certain background pony on Hearts and Hooves Day was "strangely obsessed with tubs of jelly."
Checkmate.
7092571 So he likes his collection of exotic jellies and jams from across the world! Stop stereotyping him! A pony can enjoy the smooth and squishy texture of jelly without being sexually attracted to it. Sheesh.
7092571 Oh, did you see today's blog?
7092582 I may have missed it; let me take a look.
7092582 dang this is unusal
7091941
Except that in the Silververse Canon it's already been shown that, especially in Silver's case, ones cutie mark may make it easier for a particular pony to perform a particular task, but not better than one who has honed their skills over time. Silver can combine spells faster than a magician that's been studying for their entire life, but not necessarily more efficiently. His talent seems to give him a shortcut in the process that might take a regular pony a lifetime, but that lifetime spent on the one spell means that it's as polished as it's possible to be before it's put into use. It's the classic quantity vs. quality debate. In the example above, the determination of 'merit' is subjective to the needs of the individual.
How is this germane to Starlight's social hypothesis? It demonstrates that, in the Silververse, the cutie mark gives a pony direction, but it's still that pony who decides what they wish to do and how their special talents allow them to pursue their goals. Of course Starlight has very strong evidence that cutie marks DO enslave the ponies that wear them in the season 3 finale, 'Magical Mystery Cure', which is why it personally left me pretty cold, ascension or no.
7092903
I disagree, because I think that you're misinterpreting the nature of Silver's cutie mark. That is, it's not a question of whether or not Silver is faster at combining spells, nor more efficient at doing so, but that he's able to come up with the inspiration necessary to perform such innovation not only spontaneously, but do so without any difficulty. In other words, his special talent is that he possesses intuitive innovation where spell research is concerned. How that innovation is then utilized in a practical context is another question entirely (hence his trouble with the magical alphabet, etc.). Hence, labeling this as an issue of "quality vs. quantity" strikes me as misstating the fundamental premise - it's not about the number of spells that can be generated, nor how refined they are, but rather it's about the ability to easily come up with (workable) ideas that are normally extremely difficult to imagine, let alone conceptualize. In that regard, Silver's special talent does make him better than a pony without that talent but has trained themselves over time in that particular craft.
With that said, I disagree with your entire second paragraph - that a cutie mark gives a pony direction, but doesn't necessarily decide what they want to do and how to make use of their special talent, is a characteristic of the source material (e.g. the show) rather than being anything intrinsic to the Silververse. To that end, I likewise don't agree with your take on the events of Magical Mystery Cure. If anything, that episode showed demonstrably that the ponies weren't "enslaved" by their cutie marks; even when they had a different cutie mark, the Mane Six's special talents were still what they had always been, hence why Rainbow Dash was still an excellent weather pony even with Fluttershy's cutie mark, Applejack was still an excellent farmer even with Rarity's cutie mark, etc.
Insofar as this relates to Starlight, she's the one who's operating under the premise that because a cutie mark grants merit in a particular task, that merit is necessarily divisive in nature. Where her philosophy doesn't hold up is with the second half of that presumption, since simply being better than others at something doesn't intrinsically become a source of conflict. Hence, Starlight has no evidence whatsoever - either in the source material or the Silververse - that cutie marks are at all "enslaving" anypony, let alone holding them back from "true harmony," etc.
Everyone is equal. No wings, no horns, everyone is an Earth Pony and lives in the Everfree Forest. Everyone, because cant have gender inequality also, so everyone is a asexual slime mould.
Welcome, to The Schmooze. The ultimate Master Of Equality.
Quickest way to get someone with an ego to do something for you, is to do it wrong in front of them, so they then use their superiority to proove you wrong by doing it right.
Suggested spells to combine: cloud walking and shield. This is how Starlight can fly, and it leads to her asking for time travel.
Keep going! ;)
David Silver, yet again I find myself at around 4:50 in the morning, on one of the sequel's to Clueless in Equestria. And yet again am I amazed.
Now I have a feeling Celine won't stay.... :(
Don't leave Celine! Don't let the typos take you! Stay gold!
7093914 Celine isn't the challenge at the moment. We have a dinner with Starlight.
7093914 bro, such a light weight reader, i read every chapter the second it comes out in less that 10 min
Wait wait wait wait! Woah,
WOAH!! YOU PREDICTED CANON! AGAIN!!
Starlight in the recent episode with her in the treebrary where she does the mind control thing. She combines two spells! She learned that skill from silver (or at least that looks like what is going to happen)
WOAH!!!
Sometimes mistakes can predict the future, but your typos created one!
7616430 Some fics are happy just staying in canon...
That is some cheerful water. Also, a mare would be a waitress instead of a waiter, yes?
8891478
Fixed!