Among other things, I'm opening the door to fanfic commissions, which I have previously turned down.
Intro to a story I'm not finishing · 1:11am Dec 31st, 2013
The crowds had long since dispersed, but the castle was still alive with the hum of constant actviity. Even as decorations fit for a coronation were being packed away, the business of government still needed attending to. A few pokey revellers commisserated and shared hopes for the future as nobles streamed in and out, making the harried cleaning crew dodge in and around the herds as they hurried and meandered through the castle grounds. It was chaotic at first observation, but there was an underlying logic and uniformity in the chaos. These three groups danced, and she amused herself by freestyling a swarming algorithm to predict the path of any group, for when it is half-till-midnight in Canterlot, the night life consists of dwelling moodily and charting graph nodes in your head.
When a familiar face popped up in the crowd, she lifted her head for just a moment, straining her neck over the edge of the roof, hoping she would be seen, hoping one of them would wonder why she was all alone on the rooftop in the middle of the night. But no matter who she waved to, they always looked back down again; her friends palling around with each other, the staff getting back to work, the revellers roaming in search of a snack table that hadn't been demolished, the nobles preening in hopes of currying favor with this pony or that. She thought she had chosen the most visible point in the city, but although she had clear vantage over all of them, not one of them so much as met her gaze.
She was distant from them, she realized, and not simply in a sense of measurement of distance. Despite being in plain sight this entire time, splayed out over the edge of the roof half-out of her coronation dress, not one met her gaze. If she stripped down out of her gown entirely and danced in view of all the world, she could hardly draw their attention away. And not once did she have to look down, truly; once she had graphed them, the algorithm told her enough about equine behavior to predict their movement. With a little bit of feedback and observation of edge cases, she could roll on her back and watch the stars twinkle listlessly, run the numbers in her head, turn back over, and know exactly where each group would be before she looked down over the palace. She did, a few times; a few adjustments to some constants fixed what few outliers she found.
But the damned algorithm wasn't even necessary because even as she made it more and more accurate, no possible permutation would lead to them looking up and seeing her anyways.
And so, the recently crowned Twilight Sparkle poured herself another glass and continued to get properly tossed, in plain sight of but ignored by the whole of Canterlot, as logic and wine revised her figures. It really was a very good wine; Luna herself had reccomended the mark and year, before taking a rather large decanter of the peary nectar for herself. The youngest princess took another slow sip and watched from her quiet spot on the roof as Luna flitted from one group to the other, seemingly hellbent on maintaining the festivities on her lonesome. Even now, as she watched the alicorn blink and fly about, Twilight knew the moon's princess was actively ignoring any signs of fatigue in her subjects, continuing to dance and laugh and sing with any stallion or mare brave enough to try to keep up. After all, it had been quite some time since her night had seen quite so much activity. Luna, too, had not looked up afterwards.
Her beloved teacher was in the crowd as well, and still looking as elegant as when the night started, her gown scintillating in her sister's moonlight. For perhaps the second time, Twilight was watching Princess Celestia in her native element; the sun princess had immediately identified the three groups, and through the gentle art of distraction and dissembling, was able to cause the three to blur. A courtier or laywer would speak with her and soon find themselves with a pushbroom helping to clean up the confettti. A reveller would hit on Celestia brazenly and openly, to which she would react with restrained positivity - as she relied on the drink in their system to loosen their tongues, convincing her subjects to speak politics with her without everyday social mores to hold their tongues, and leaving them in a contemplative state. And janitors and guards alike would ask Celestia for assistance in performing their duties, only to find that by royal decree their duties now included providing backup for Luna's bawdy ballads or assisting in the dissemination of the remaining snacks. No matter who sought to place their hooks in her or what their reasons were, the Princess always had a way to step aside, mystifying her subjects while remaining wholly unfettered. Princess Celestia was not a factor in the equation - she was the variable Twilight Sparkle sought to solve for. In a purely platonic way, Twilight told herself.
However, Celestia had not looked up either.
Twilight watched the moon lazily pass its zenith, measuring the time in radians. After she mentally calculated a suitable dropoff in the population of the graph, she turned over slowly, wanting to see if her newest iteration of the algorithm had produced a more accurate model. Yet, somehow, no matter where she looked, there was no pony to be seen; the entire party had disappeared. There were only graphs with edges whose weights were slowly shifting in the moonlight, and nodes whose values made up neat integer matricies of ponies sorted by race and role. Odd, her model indicated there was going to be a division by zero error there very shortly -
With a nonplussed fuschia pegasus mare trapped under one wing and a nervous pink unicorn stallion hiding under the other, Luna laughed victoriously and blinked away, surely to continue the festivities in a more private location.
The mage bit her lip, and watched nervously as she looked over the party, daring it to get her math wrong - begging for even one node to vary from her model. Not even the small amount of satisfaction she could satisfy from her continued accuracy would calm her heart, as even as she solved for f(t) where t=now, she was already calculating the limit of her function. Her eyes danced from group to group, damning each correct estimate as she solved for C. Math couldn't lie; it could only show the continuance of existing patterns. So, she took the limit of her equation and asked it the question that had been on the back of her mind for years, allowing t to approach one... a hundred... infinity. But nowhere, nowhere, did C intersect with TS.
Of course, there was a much simpler answer. She could just fly down, walk up, and talk to her. After all, she was a princess now; what pony could deny her her wishes? But the analytical part of her mind betrayed her with simple, alcohol-fortified mathematics. There was no way for her to predict what to say or do, for Celestia's heart was an unknown; even though she imagined Celestia's heart to be warm and inviting and loving and infinite, she had never seen Celestia romantically open up to any other pony. This made the odds incalculable, and what she could stand to lose was incredible. She couldn't wager her heart on such mathematics; that way madness lies.
With a growl, Twilight Sparkle threw the wine bottle off the roof (the ensuing chaos handily charted by her model by adding another node that was weighted in favor of the castle staff) and alit. She wasn't quite sure how to use her new wings yet, but since plain numbers showed her that there wasn't a future here, all she wanted to do was be somewhere else. And soon, she was.
...Well. This would be interesting to see written. Nice to see what you put up at least. Thanks.
So when can we expect a follow up to "Pushing his Buttons"?
Filmed in Math-o-Vision.
A shame this won't see the light of day. I'd ask if it's up for adoption, but I wouldn't be able to do this story justice. My oeuvre is decidedly less brooding and lovelorn; I'd try and make a happy ending of some kind. Or insert an inappropriate Pinkie Pie.