One early morning Twilight is woken up by the sound of somepony knocking on her door. To her surprise she finds Rainbow Dash on the other side, only the mare seems off. Disgruntled and panicked, the more she talks, the more Twilight is convinced there's something wrong. What happened to her?

Cover art generously provided by the wonderful Angelic Flight over on DA. Go give her some love.

!!WARNING!!
Spoilers in Comments. Read before the story at your own risk.

EDIT: Now with a Youtube reading! Link
EDIT: Now with TWO Youtube readings! Link #2

Not every part of a relationship is a fairy-tale romance.

All of them. Every pony. They're all sad.

Proud winner of the "most controversial" award of the June 2016 Writeoff competition.
It did not make the finals. This made some voters sad.

Twilight Sparkle's wildest dreams have just been met, and exceeded. Due to an unexpected magical outburst during her entrance exam to Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, the Solar Princess herself took an interest and took Twilight on as her personal student.

This was a pleasant shock for Twilight and her family. However, a few months later, a less pleasant shock would reach Twilight in the form of Celestia returning to Canterlot with a new daughter, a freshly adopted pegasus filly named Rainbow Dash. As the two get to know each other, Twilight can clearly see something eating at the self absorbed and competitive filly's mind.

To make matters even more confusing, Princess Celestia is now hiding something. Twilight dares not question it, but it is quite clear that Celestia isn't being wholly open with anypony about her decision to adopt some random orphan.

Could the answers have something to do with the cryptic dream Twilight had the night before she met Rainbow Dash?

**Apparently, this was featured on August 12th, but I slept through that brief window. All the same, I am flabbergasted and humbled!**

Cover Art by the wonderfully skilled Novaintellus

Now with a TV Tropes Page.

Twilight isn't having a very good day. An experimental spell blew up in her face, an army of changelings is attacking Canterlot, and she just died. Yet somehow, it looks like it's going to keep going downhill from here.

Given the chance to correct what's gone wrong, Twilight swears she's going to fix all this even if it kills her. Which it will. Frequently.

Cover art by Pixel Prism
Spanish Translation
Series TV Tropes page

This story is a sequel to Winds of Change

Changelings have always been a secretive race, shrouded in mystery and keeping to themselves, staying unnoticed and in the shadows, feeding where they could and avoiding discovery at all costs. When Chrysalis made peace with Celestia, the veil of secrecy and subterfuge was shattered, and thanks to Twilight's efforts, the other changeling queens can no longer remain hidden.

Of course, Twilight is more than happy to leave the tricky diplomacy to Celestia. She's having a hard enough time dealing with her own amorous changeling queen and her new personal pegasus guard competing with her.

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Cover work done by the talented Jazzy. You can find his works here and his stream here.

Editing work provided by Snoodude and MisterGunpowder.

Failing once in her attempt to take Canterlot and failing again in her attempt to take down Twilight, one would think Chrysalis would have cut her losses and let things be, but the queen has once again appeared, this time in broad daylight with no disguise and no army. Her weapon of choice? Diplomacy.

Now Twilight is having to deal with the changeling queen, but surely putting up with her antics will be worth the knowledge she's willing to provide about her mysterious race and the potential undiscovered agents still within their midst...right?

Takes place before Magical Mystery Cure and diverges from there.

With thanks to MisterGunpowder for proofreading and editing.

Revision History:

05/09/2015: Chapter 1 updated with millions of little corrections.
05/20/2015: Chapter 2 revised and edited with another million small and large corrections.
06/12/2015: Chapter 3 given a thorough editing and revision.
06/23/2015: Chapter 4 taken to the gutter and edited twice to be sure.
07/14/2015: Chapter 5 thoroughly brutalized with the editing stick.
08/03/2016: Chapter 6 finally edited. Yes, I'm still alive, dammit.
09/29/2016: Chapter 7 fell out of the editing tree and hit every editing branch on the way down.
10/26/2016: Chapter 8 has emerged from the editing emergency room.
11/17/2016: Chapter 9 found and edited. No casualties reported.
11/30/2016: Chapter 10 treated for whiplash after lightning fast editing.
12/22/2016: Chapter 11 edited. Chrysalis shot first.
01/17/2017: Epilogue edited. Time to hit the cider.

This story is a sequel to Utaan

Rainbow Dash traverses the perils of the Dark Side of the world to reach the Midnight Armory.

Cover art by Dafaddah