Sharing the Night: Chapter 1
Twilight Sparkle’s back itched. If she was Pinkie Pie, this would mean it was her lucky day. Since she was not Pinkie Pie, it just meant that she needed to take a bath and have Spike dust the stacks again. It was a problem she’d been struggling with ever since she’d moved to Ponyville despite the fact that the Canterlot library had been far superior in dust power and she’d basically grown up there.
Unfortunately, dusting wasn’t going to happen today. The librarian and her number-one assistant had just finished tidying up after a wild night of studying and she thought they both deserved a break; the dusting would have to wait for another time. A bath on the other hand, was definitely in order. Twilight had fallen asleep downstairs behind a pile of books the night before, and an itchy back was only the latest of a long list of reasons she had to clean up and pamper herself a bit. “Eugh... Watch the library for me Spike, I need an hour or two just to soak.”
“Itchy back?” Spike asked rhetorically. "Are you sure it doesn’t mean it’s your lucky day?”
“Spike. If every time my back itched was my lucky day, I’d have found that missing copy of ‘Predictions and Prophecies’ by now! Hay, after all this time I’d probably have spontaneously sprouted wings!”
“You’d want wings?” Spike asked, apparently surprised. "Why?”
“Oh Spike, everypony wishes they could fly,” Twilight stated as if this were a simple constant of the universe. Simple constants of the universe seemed to calm her down. “Well, everypony except Fluttershy anyway. You’ll get wings eventually, and then you’ll see.”
“Don’t remind me,” Spike winced. "You know I hate flying between Ponyville and Canterlot. I want wings like I want the Cutie Mark Crusaders trying to be librarians again... I don’t. What makes you think I’m going to get wings anyway? I didn’t get them when I... uhh... on my birthday.”
“Some day, Spike, you’ll understand that there’s a difference between growing bigger and growing up. You wouldn’t remember, but when I got my cutie mark hatching you and my magic went out of control, your head went right through the ceiling!” she giggled. "–but that didn’t make you an adult. I wouldn’t expect your adult form to look like you did on your birthday any more than that form looked like you did as a giant hatchling.”
“If you say so,” Spike grumbled.
“Anyway, you saw the dragon migration; if any of them had been walking, Ponyville would have needed a lot more than that trench we dug for watching them! Wyrms and serpents are the closest you’ll get to land and sea-bound dragons, but they only have arms—not legs—and they have completely different habits. Face it Spike, you’ve got wings in your future.”
“Alright alright! I believe you!” he groused. “Didn’t I just get finished asking you not to remind me?”
“Oh, don’t be like that! It’s different when they’re your own wings. There’s nothing to be afraid of; it’s perfectly safe!”
“And you know this how?” Spike was not convinced.
Suddenly, Twilight looked away evasively. "I—uhh—Rainbow Dash said so?””
“It’s safe... because Rainbow Dash says so,” Spike repeated flatly. “Really Twi?” Spike didn’t have to clarify his reasons for considering Rainbow Dash the absolute last pony to go to for opinions on safety.
“Oh—fine! I-I’ve had dreams, okay? Dreams about flying. Everypony has them. It’s perfectly normal.”
Spike snickered, trying to hold in a laugh. He was successful, mostly, but the look on Twilight’s face sent him searching for a way to change the subject as fast as possible; his eyes fell to the calendar. “Hey! We’re going over to Rarity’s today, maybe it’s my lucky day?”
“What are we going to—oh right, my winter wrap-up vest. Well, that settles it Spike; it’s definitely not your lucky day either.”
“What? Why?” Spike wondered, worry clear in his voice.
“Because Vinyl Scratch is coming in to pick up those booklets of sheet music she ordered. I’m going to need you to stay here in case she stops by!”
Spike’s only response was a disgusted groan.
“Oh cheer up, maybe she’ll stop by while I’m in the bath,” Twilight pointed out.
Spike brightened up immediately. "Do you think she will?”
Twilight made an apologetic face. "No,” she admitted. She’d never known the mare who went by the name ‘DJ Pon-3’ after dark to be up before noon. She’d never known her to be interested in sheet music either though, so she supposed there might be a first time for anything.
“What do you need done to your winter wrap-up vest anyway?” Spike asked, apparently deciding that if he didn’t get to go, she didn’t need to either. Twilight’s only response was to slam the bathroom door.
Twilight hadn’t got her hour-long soak, but she still felt a million times fresher as she walked into the Carousel Boutique and found Rarity working on some new designs for spring as the tinkling sound of the bell attached to the door announced the librarian’s presence. Unfortunately, no amount of preemptive pampering could make this any easier.
“Twilight!” Rarity beamed, always happy to see her friend. Her keen eyes immediately fell to the saddlebags Twilight was wearing. “Is there something you need? I was just—well, that doesn’t matter. I am always free to help you my dear.”
“Oh, this?” Twilight gestured to her saddlebags nervously. “Umm, no, this is–” Twilight searched for something, anything to get out of the situation she’d just put herself in, but it was useless for two reasons. Firstly, this had to be done. It was embarrassing, but it’d be even worse if she ignored it. Secondly, Rarity had already pulled the vest out of Twilight’s saddlebags with her magic and removed any control Twilight had of the situation.
“Your winter wrap-up vest, dear? Is there... a problem with it? I don’t see any rips or tears, you can’t have worn it more than once so far...” Rarity trailed off, mumbling to herself as she turned the vest every which way, scrutinizing it with the eye of an artist.
“It’s not that, I-I just need–” Twilight stared.
“Oh of course!” Rarity beamed graciously. “You! Need! Accessories!” she sang. "Oh I have the perfect shoes to go with–”
“No, R-Rarity, I–” Twilight stammered, but Rarity was already talking a mile a minute as she shuffled through boxes of things she had prepared. "–I just–” Twilight squeaked, trying to get a word in edgewise. Finally, she simply blurted out “–I NEED IT LARGER!”
Rarity, for her part, only dropped one of the shoes she was holding as she froze up completely. “I—what? I—Oh!” she fumbled, picking up the shoe she dropped. She looked at Twilight’s hooves, then sadly back at the shoes she was holding. “Well, be that as it may... you’re getting shoes too,” she insisted,
“But Rarity, I... fine,” she gave in without much of a fight. Shoes might make this easier, if only for something to focus on avoid the subject of the vest.
“But darling, are you sure about the vest?”
Nope. Shoes didn’t help.
"I mean...” she hesitated, “...you don’t look like you—that is to say, you look wonderful, Twilight! Are you sure you’re just not expecting it to be too—err—comfortable? Fashion is not always comfortable when it’s supposed to show off that wonderful figure of yours! Why, if anything I’d say you look even thinner than you did last year! I mean, look at those legs!”
“You’re too kind. No really Rarity, I mean it. You’re laying it on a bit thick,” Twilight sighed.
“Twilight Sparkle, are you calling me a liar?” Rarity balked.
“Uhh—overly generous, maybe?” Twilight smiled inoffensively, “ ...like my waistline,” she groaned, unable to avoid voicing the sudden simile that came to mind. “The tape measure doesn’t lie, Rarity. I’m... larger.”
Rarity—no longer shocked, but not greatly appeased either—simply stared at Twilight. Rather, she studied Twilight, not looking her in the eyes but everywhere else. Suddenly, Rarity’s eyes went wide and her jaw dropped the teeniest bit before she caught herself. She grabbed the tape measure and spun Twilight around this way and that, measuring everything and everywhere the dressmaker could imagine, sometimes several times just to be sure. “Twilight Sparkle!” She gasped. “You are larger!”
Twilight’s expression was flat. “You don’t say.”
“No! You don’t understand!” Rarity implored. "You’ve grown! You’re taller! Your legs are longer! It’s only just a bit, but these eyes of mine can tell! Dear, I had no idea you were still growing! A bit of a late bloomer, I suppose? Oh, you shouldn’t feel bad about it at all!”
Twilight was speechless, not that it stopped her from trying. "What? I—but—I’m not—I shouldn’t be—!”
Rarity put one hoof on Twilight’s shoulder consolingly, trying to calm her down. “I know it’s peculiar darling, but like you said: the tape measure doesn’t lie. Why, even your horn is—”
Twilight jumped and spun to face Rarity with a shocked and betrayed look on her face “My—Rarity!” she balked. "You measured my—!” She couldn’t even bring herself to say it; she tried again. “What are you doing measuring my horn?! No, wait—why do you even know how big it was before?!”
Rarity, for her part, simply ignored Twilight’s reaction completely despite having been interrupted. “Now, you just leave yourself in my hooves, darling. I’ll fix this vest right up! Oh, I wonder if I could change the cut just a bit... No, I don’t think the mayor would like that, it is a uniform after all... Oh Twilight, you’ll just have to let me make something else for you sometime soon.”
“I—uhh—” Twilight paused, then sighed, completely disarmed by her friend’s enthusiasm. "Sure...” she conceded. “Just... stay away from my horn,” was all she could say.
Walking home in the snow, Twilight wasn’t quite sure how to explain what had gone down at the Carousel Boutique. She really didn’t think Rarity was lying—especially after being called on it—but it just didn’t make any sense either... did it? How could she suddenly be growing again? Was she eating healthier now? Not really. Sure, there was an abundance of fresh vegetables in Ponyville thanks to the surrounding farms, but there was also an abundance of cupcakes and apple pies from her friends, two in particular. “So—much—pie,” Twilight groaned, almost queasy from the sheer memory of it. No, she was definitely not eating healthier.
What then? Was Rarity right? Was she just a ‘late bloomer’? The idea didn’t really sit right, but she had to admit it made about as much sense to her as any other explanation she should come up with, and some of the things she came up with were outright ridiculous. ‘Twilight’s miracle workout!’ she pictured a poster saying, ‘Schedule your appointment with Rainbow Crash today!’
Twilight stopped mid-step and blinked. Where had that come from? As if Rainbow Dash crashing into her all the time would... what? Stretch out her spine or something? That would require a trip to the chiropractor, not your friendly neighborhood fashionista, and she would never call her friend Rainbow–
“Look out!”
CRASH!
“Oh, heya Twilight,” laughed the blue pegasus awkwardly. "You know, that felt softer than usual; have you gotten... uhh... gotten... Twi? A-are you okay?”
The last thing Rainbow Dash saw before being flung all the way back to her cloud-home with unicorn magic was Twilight Sparkle with a stark-white coat and flaming mane of fire... upside-down in the mud and snow. The last thing Rainbow Dash had done before getting flung all the way back to her cloud-home with unicorn magic, was laugh.
Twilight righted herself with a sigh. She would have to apologize to Rainbow Dash later and explain that she’d just been caught at a bad time.
Well, she would explain anyway. She might not apologize.
Twilight’s whole left side was covered in ice-cold mud that sloughed off with each step she took back towards home.
“Hey guys, look! It’s Twilight!” yelped a bubblegum-pink voice directly to Twilight’s left.
“Well hey there, sugar cube,” said a second, standing next to the first.
“Oh... Hi there,” said a second-and-a-half voice hiding behind the second.
“Perfect,” Twilight intoned flatly to herself. Doing her best to keep exasperation out of her voice, Twilight turned to her friends and smiled. "Hey Pinkie Pie, AJ, Fluttershy. What’s up?”
The silence was deafening. After an eternity of silence, Applejack spoke up. "Uh, Twilight? I heard you stopped by Rarity’s today. It seems that y’all got a little–”
“–fat!” Twilight barked at Applejack, finishing her sentence. “Yes! Okay! Fine! I get it! Twilight Sparkle is getting pudgy! I can’t believe she told you!” Twilight screamed in shocked disbelief.
“...mud,” Applejack finished belatedly, after Twilight got finished yelling. “Y’all got a little mud there on yer... all over, actually. Ah jes thought you’d got another one of those mud-mask things done at Rarity’s and fergot to wash off.”
Suddenly all the paranoia, anger and frustration building up in Twilight evaporated, leaving the lavender unicorn slumped to the ground with a groan, banging her head into the dirty snow-covered road.
“Oh—well there’s yer problem,” Applejack said in sarcastic epiphany. “C’mon girl, get up,” she encouraged as she and Fluttershy lifted Twilight up onto her legs and Pinkie Pie licked Twilight’s face, then started spitting. Twilight didn’t even respond, but Applejack was vocal enough for all three other ponies. “Pinkie Pie! What in the hay did y’all do that fer?”
“I was hoping we had some more chocolate rain!” Pinkie Pie beamed in cheerful explanation. "But no, it’s really just mud.”
“Uhh—thank you for clarifying that for us all, Pinkie Pie,” Applejack said with... a modicum of honesty, at least. "Honestly girl, ah bet you’d lick the princess jes to see if her mane tasted like rainbows—and you don’t even like rainbows!” she declared with a huff. “Now come on, let’s get this one home.”
“If you can still carry her,” the depressed mare bemoaned.
Twilight didn’t say a single word to Spike as she stumbled into the library and straight across to the bathroom while covered in mud. In her defense, it was unlikely that Spike would have heard a word she said, incapacitated as he was by roaring laughter. She didn’t say anything to Vinyl Scratch either, who had indeed arrived for the sheet music she’d ordered and was now biting her hoof and tearing up. Things only got worse when Twilight slammed the bathroom door shut with all her magic, only to have it break and fall back out of its frame. The laughter from outside echoed through the bathroom, prompting Twilight to pick the door up with magic again, slam it back in place and seal it like there was a dragon on the other side; which of course, there was: a laughing one.
Twilight sighed contentedly as the bath filled for the second time that day and steam began to fill the room—then suddenly her ear twitched at the sound of some indistinct noise. It was nothing in particular—just the usual sounds of a city coming in the small bathroom window—but Twilight’s eyes widened in panic and snapped to the small window, sealing it with magic as she had the door. She jerked her head back and forth, searching the room for anything else that needed sealing, but found nothing. Dissatisfied, Twilight threw her head back and cast her magic out in every direction. Her magic spread outward like a sticky bubble inflating to fill the tiny space, covering every wall, every single nook and cranny and sealed the entire room from the outside world.
Huffing and puffing, she brushed her messy mane out of her face, stepped into the tub and sank into the warm, scented water. Finally she could relax, and she would at last get her hour-long soak. Slowly, she cleaned herself of all the dirt and grime of the last several hours and as she did so, all her anger and frustration began to melt away.
She would really need to apologize to everyone, she decided. She had been way out of line. What she’d heard from Rarity wasn’t even all that bad. Strange, yes, but Rarity had deemed it an improvement and Twilight had already learned to trust the fashionista’s judgement—and doubly so not to talk about it behind her back. As she was mulling over ways to apologize to each of her friends, she drifted off to sleep in the tub and had the most wonderful dream ever.
The dream was very simple. ‘No,’ she’d tell Spike later, ‘it was not a dream about flying.’ It was sort of like those dreams where you just endlessly dream about not being able to get to sleep—but instead of anxiety she was filled with a sense of endless serenity and calm.
In her dream, she was floating in the ocean—or maybe it was a very large lake. The surface of the water was glassy smooth and ice cold, and she felt like she’d never wanted to be anywhere else. It was night time and the sky above her was a featureless black void like a giant velvet canvas. There was no sun, no moon, no stars, just the endless black of night.
For the longest time the peace of the endless night was enough for Twilight, but eventually curiosity tickled her ears and she began looking around. She was floating on her back in the still water, so she had to crane her neck to look around. In every direction, all she saw was empty space all the way to the horizon. Just as she was about to give up, she saw a glimmer out of the corner of one eye. Sitting up in the water, she looked down into the ocean and gasped... It was full of stars.
The sight of it shocked Twilight awake, though for a second she wasn’t so sure she was awake. The bathroom was pitch black, and the tub water, ice cold. For a second, she even thought she could see stars in the water, though she then realized her teeth were chattering, and the stars in her vision didn’t go away when when she screwed her eyes shut. ‘That’s bad, right?’ she asked herself rhetorically, reaching for the edge of the tub to pull herself out.
She had obviously stayed in far longer than was healthy, and as if that wasn’t bad enough... Twilight’s back was itching again; in fact, it felt uncomfortably matted right out of the tub. ‘Figures,’ she sighed, but the edge of her earlier frustrations was gone. Waking up in ice water aside, she did feel better somehow. She felt a lot better, actually. Wrapping herself up in a large, fluffy towel, Twilight unsealed the door back to the nice, warm library and opened it.
The sight before Twilight wilted her burgeoning spirit. Standing in front of the content-but-damp unicorn were five impatient ponies and one nervous baby dragon.
“TWILIGHT!” they all shouted together, scrambling around to hug her.
“We were so worried!” said one pony.
“I wasn’t worried!” insisted Rainbow Dash.
They were, apparently, not at all mad at her erratic behavior—or the fact that they’d just group-hugged a wet unicorn. Of course they weren’t mad; they were her friends after all.
Spike on the other hand was still nervous, and now she could see why. He was holding a letter from Princess Celestia. Twilight wasted no time extracting herself from the embrace of her friends, and scooped up the letter with her magic. The letter had already been opened, which bothered Twilight, but she was the one who had sealed herself in the bathroom for... how many hours had it been, exactly? She’d noticed it was already dark out, so it had to have been a while. Twilight unrolled the scroll and read.
“My faithful student Twilight Sparkle, Please look outside.” Signed HRH Princess Celestia of Equestria.
Princess Celestia had just lowered the sun for the day, and was sitting down to sleep when the clopping of hooves and a pleading voice interrupted her peace and quiet.
“Tiaaaaaaaa——” implored the voice from down the hall.
It was Luna, of course. Her sister’s voice was not exactly one easily forgotten—or easily ignored for that matter, given its usual volume—but even if she hadn’t recognized the voice, Luna was the only one who called her ‘Tia’ and she was supposed to only do it in private.
The younger princess burst into Celestia’s room and suddenly froze. Quietly, she shut the door behind and chewed her lip nervously, suddenly not so eager to talk now that she had the chance. “Umm... Sister...” she started after a long pause. If the Royal Canterlot Voice had an antithesis, this was it.
“Yes, Luna?” Celestia asked. Eternal. Patience.
Luna averted her eyes from her older sister. “I... I hath lost something,” she said meekly. “It is... a lot of somethings, actually.”
Celestia smiled warmly. “Did you misplace the sixth century tax laws again?”
Luna was shocked at the suggestion. "I didst not,” she insisted hotly. After a moment, she looked down at her hooves sheepishly. “It is far worse than that—and it is not any of the records,” she admitted.
Darn, the elder sister groused inwardly; some things were better off lost, and the old tax laws Luna was intent on studying were some of those things. Perhaps next time she would hide them in one of Luna’s couches. Regardless, Celestia got up out of her bed and walked over to nuzzle her sister. "It’s okay, Lulu. You can tell me.”
Luna chewed her lip, looking up into her older sister’s eyes. Hesitantly, she mumbled so that only the two of them could hear “I lost the stars.”
Celestia—to her credit—did not bat an eyelash, though her voice was less reassuring. “The... stars.”
“All of them.” Luna nodded, stirring her ethereal mane which was indeed now an empty blue void.
“All... the stars,” Celestia repeated.
“Every—last—one,” Luna confirmed.
“Luna," Celestia asked with eternal patience. “What are my little ponies all over Equestria seeing in the sky right now?”
“...my wonderful, beautiful moon?” Luna suggested in a wilted voice.
“...and?” Celestia prompted.
“...lots... and lots... of black," Luna finally admitted.
“Horseapples," Celestia swore, gracefully facehooving.
“W-what?! No! I would never–! Tia, that’s disgusting!”
Twilight was torn between immediately doing as the letter from her mentor instructed and the fact that it was still the middle of winter and she was sopping wet and wearing a towel. If Twilight walked out into the windy street in front of her Library as she was, she was liable to end up reliving her experience with the cockatrice—only as an ice sculpture this time rather than stone. No one would simply tell her what was going on, but Rarity insisted it could certainly wait until Twilight was ‘decent’ and sent her upstairs. Twilight tried to tell Rarity that she’d decided to heed the letter after all, but once Twilight had voiced her concern there was no taking it back and no stopping the fashionista.
As much as Twilight appreciated having such good friends, her curiosity had been piqued. As soon as Twilight got to her room and shut the door behind her, she immediately crossed over to the window next to her bed and swung it open. The sight... was magnificent. Later she’d feel guilty for thinking so, but with nothing else in the sky Twilight thought the moon looked twice as large. She immediately remembered her dream from the bath and the feeling of endless peace she’d had...
Suddenly, there was a ‘fwomph!’ from behind Twilight that launched the towel she was wearing clear across the room. Twilight spun around in panic to face—nothing—and in the process managed to bang her wing on the window frame. “Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow——what.” Twilight froze in mid-panic, then slowly, carefully looked over her shoulder. Wings. Twilight had two full-sized pegasus wings attached to her back and they were both fanned out to full extension like she’d seen Rainbow Dash do whenever she got excited or surprised. One of the wings also hurt like the dickens, but that was suddenly a minor concern as far as Twilight was concerned.
Twilight’s eyes widened, and all of a sudden, everything fell into place. “Oh—no-no-no-no-no-no!” she told herself. “This—can’t be good. What do I do?” she asked the empty room, “Panic! This is a time for panic!” she answered, channeling Fluttershy whose problem-solving methods were looking awfully good to Twilight right now. Rushing to crack the door open, Twilight shouted “SPIKE! SPIIIIIIIIIIIIIIKE! I need you to come up here for a second!” and then slammed it back shut. Quickly, she grabbed the towel from across the room with her magic and dried herself off as quickly as she could without being too rough with her tender new anatomy. She was just about done when Spike knocked and entered the room without waiting for an answer.
“Geez, what is it Twilight? Fluttershy told me not to let you talk me into drying you off with dragonfire again no matter how much of a hurry you’re in; not after what happened last time” he insisted. “Oh hey, nice wings. I guess you remembered you have a spell for—wait—is that why you were such a mess earlier?” he snickered. "Did you try to fly and end up in the mud?”
“No, Spike,” Twilight answered, unamused.
Spike grinned. “I think you did! I didn’t notice them when you came in, but I was–”
“Spike! No!” Twilight corrected, insistently. “I didn’t use any spell! These just appeared while I was in the bath—I guess—and now I’m in big trouble!”
“So...” Spike started, “...it really was your lucky day today, and wings just... sprouted out of your back?”
“Yes—wait—no! Spike, this isn’t lucky! This is bad-bad-bad-bad-bad! Celestia is going to kill me!”
Spike looked concerned. "Twilight, you’re... not making much sense. D-do you want me to go get–”
“No!” Twilight insisted harshly. "No getting anyone!” she shouted, manifesting a large crossbar across the door that quickly fell shut. Pausing a moment to think, she sealed the room from sound as well. “Spike, listen to me. There is no such thing as a winged unicorn. It’s not genetics, it’s magic,” Twilight explained. “All ponies have their own unique kind of magic. Unicorn magic is expressed outward through the mind and the horn,” she recited as if from a book, “giving unicorns the ability to perform conscious magic known as spells. Pegasus magic is expressed outward through the wings and body, allowing them to fly and interact with the weather–”
“–wait, you said all ponies have magic, but earth ponies don’t!”
“Earth ponies do have magic, Spike. Earth pony magic is mostly expressed internally, and it’s what makes Applejack tough enough to buck apples all day all year, and it makes Pinkie Pie... well, it makes Pinkie Pie Pinkie Pie. The point is, nopony’s magic is just in their horn or their wings or their body, and you can’t just overlap things and expect them to work out any better than if you shoved a clock into a train and expected it to run on time! Wings and horns are only parts of completely different kinds of magical systems!”
“But–” Spike started, trying to work this out. “–I thought you didn’t get anywhere researching Pinkie Sense? If you knew Earth Ponies have magic, then why–”
“I... didn’t know," Twilight mumbled under her breath and through clenched teeth. “I didn’t know, okay?” she admitted, looking away from Spike. “I’d only ever studied unicorn magic! When Princess Celestia pointed it out in her next letter I—I just wanted to crawl under my bed and–!”
“So that’s why you–” Spike started, then changed the subject at a glare from Twilight. “–that’s why you... are saying you’ve just spontaneously transformed into something that’s not a unicorn, not a pegasus and not an earth pony?”
“Yes, Spike,” Twilight confirmed. "Somehow I’ve become–”
“A fruit?” Spike suggested
“Ye—No! Spike! What has the horn of a unicorn, the wings of a pegasus, and–and–probably enough internal magic to—I dunno—make them immortal and more?”
“Oh man, I’m really bad at riddles...” Spike grumbled. “Umm... give me a minute... I think I’ve heard this one before...”
“An alicorn, Spike!” Twilight squawked. “Like Princess Celestia!”
“Oh! Well... what’s wrong with that? Isn’t that great?”
Twilight facehooved. Right, she hadn’t explained the most important part. “Look—Spike—alicorns like Princess Celestia are really powerful. So powerful they can do stuff like raising the sun and moon. I just spent–” Twilight glanced at the clock on her dresser “–five hours dreaming about stars, I wake up apparently an alicorn, and–” she stomps over to the window, slamming it fully open. "–and now—now the stars are missing! It’s obvious! Somehow I... I stole the stars!”
“What,” Spike said flatly, cocking his head to the side and confused as heck. “Aren’t you kind of jumping to conclusions there, Twilight?”
Twilight sighed, exasperated. “I am not jumping to conclusions. It’s called... being smart!” she insisted. “Ohhh–” she groaned, “–too smart for my own good! Or... too powerful...? I didn’t try to steal the stars, it just happened! I don’t think that counts as being smart. I didn’t even get a chance to be smart, and now the princess is going to banish me from Equestria! Or throw me in a dungeon! Or banish me and then throw me in a dungeon in the place that she banishes me to!"
“Oh come on Twilight.” Spike rolled his eyes. "Didn't you learn your lesson about that kind of thing with Fluttershy and Philomena?”
“Spike! This is not the princess' pet bird who turns out to be immortal! This is me causing eternal night! ...or eternal... whatever you call no stars in the sky... there isn’t even a name for it! It’s me mucking with the fabric of the universe! This is exactly what got Luna–OHMYGOSH! The moon! She's going to banish me to the moon!"
“She's NOT going to banish you to the moon, Twilight.” Spike facepalmed.
“Oh no, you're right! I didn't mess with the moon, I messed with the stars! What's it like being banished to the stars? Would she just pick one at random, or do you think she'll let me choose? Oh, I hope I get to choose! I don’t think any of them have postboxes, but maybe I can say you were my accomplice—oh no! The mail! I have to answer Princess Celestia before she gets suspicious!’
“I think you’re about four hours late for that, Twi.” Spike rolled his eyes. “Here, I’m supposed to give you this one once you’ve gone outside,” he explained, handing Twilight another open letter. “Now come on, open this door so we can explain what’s going to everyone else. You know, your friends. The ones who’ve been waiting here for hours just to see if you’re alright?”
“Oh, right,” Twilight said, unbarring the door unconsciously as she began unrolling the second letter. "Wait–no!” she hissed, slamming the door shut again. Thankfully, she hadn’t dispelled the silencing seal yet. “No telling anyone about this! No one!”
Spike looked like he was going to argue, but he’d just about had enough. "Ugh, fine!” he said, throwing his hands up into the air. “Fine! You just go out there and tell them... whatever you’re going to tell them! I’m going to bed. This is all giving me a headache. I’ll stay here tomorrow too, someone has to watch the library, and I am not lying to the princess.”
“The princess? What?” Twilight was confused.
“Just read the letter and go,” Spike growled. Twilight would have sworn he’d been taking staring lessons from Fluttershy, from the look he gave her.
Twilight sheepishly backed out of the room and shut the door quietly—then she yanked it back open and jumped back in the room. “Wings—right,” she said, gasping for breath. Spike was rolled over in his basket with his back to the door and said nothing. Twilight yanked the first thing she could find out of her dresser with magic, pulled it on and left Spike in peace.
“My faithful student’s faithful assistant Spike, I’m sorry to hear that my faithful student Twilight Sparkle has ‘barricaded herself in the bathroom with magic.’ I understand the compulsion and envy her for having such a wonderful assistant that she can do so when needed—though I must admit, her timing is poor. In truth, we have no leads on the matter of the missing stars at the moment, so please let her relax for tonight. Knowing my student, she will wish to come to Canterlot to help investigate as soon as she sees the sky. Let her know I will be happy to receive her and any guests tomorrow, after a good night’s rest.” Signed HRH Princess Celestia of Equestria.
Twilight was mortified. Forget the stars, Spike had told the princess about her locking herself in the bathroom! She was so embarrassed, she thought she would–
“Twilight darling, what are you wearing?” cried Rarity in shock as Twilight rounded the doorway from the stairs to the main room of the library.
Twilight blinked. What was she wearing? She had to check. It was a loose black sweater. The sleeves of the sweater were stretched out long and she hadn’t even got them all the way up past her hooves, so she’d been walking on them. “Oh this?” she asked, nervously pulling the sleeves up past her fetlocks. “This is... what I normally wear. At night. In the winter. When no one is around. It’s... it’s my favorite thing.”
Rarity—for her part—was scandalized. Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes, Applejack didn’t see anything at all wrong at all with it, and Pinkie Pie nearly pulled it off Twilight with her teeth because she thought it looked like licorice.
“I... like it,” Fluttershy said meekly, rubbing her hoof on Twilight’s shoulder. “It’s so soft... and good for hiding.”
“O—kay!” Twilight beamed nervously, trying to change the subject. “So... how about those... stars...” Twilight had thought the awkward silence couldn’t get any worse; she was wrong. "...guys?”
Applejack was the one who finally said what had to be said. “Look, Twi. You know that every one of us is here fer ya when you need it. That’s why we’re here... being here fer ya and all...”
“You... don’t want to come to Canterlot with me.” Twilight deduced.
“It’s not that we don’t want to, sugar cube. You know how happy Rarity was the last time the princess put her up in the castle, but you’re going because you got a job to do. You won’t have time fer any of that and we... Well we all got jobs to do ‘round here so when the time comes and you do find out who’s behind all this, we’ll all have the time to come be the Elements of Harmony or whatever.”
“I... yeah... I guess,” Twilight capitulated. There was only one problem; she wasn’t going to ‘figure it out;’ she already had figured it out and she was determined to keep it secret! If she didn’t even have her friends for support... she didn’t know what she’d do; she didn’t know when she’d even see them again—if she ever saw them again. If Princess Celestia found out what she’d done and banished her to Alnilam (the star she was thinking of asking to be banished to,) the implications were horrifying. Abruptly, Twilight felt a sudden empathy for what had happened to Princess Luna.
“Oh come on!” came Dash’s rough voice. “You’re not feeling guilty for being so awesome the princess wants your help, are you? I mean, if you were any more awesome, you’d be me! –and you don’t have the flanks for that, sorry Twi but it’s the truth.”
“I... Yeah, you’re right, Dash. Thanks.” Twilight smiled, feeling heartened despite her insincerity.
“I’m always right,” Dash assured her, checking out her own flanks.
“I mean about the—oh, never mind,” Twilight sighed and rolled her eyes and everyone laughed.
Twilight apologized to everyone (except Rainbow Dash) and assured them that she was fine and she’d just been a little out of it earlier. Applejack mentioned that she really should be getting home since farm ponies usually rose with the sun, and Twilight finally showed everyone out with a sigh of relief.
Or so she thought. Apparently she had two stragglers.
“So?” challenged Rainbow Dash. Fluttershy was trying to look as small as possible behind her, which was difficult with Rainbow Dash hovering a few hooves off the ground.
“Rainbow Dash, I am not apologizing for flinging you home.” Twilight rolled her eyes.
“That’s not what I’m talking about—and you didn’t fling me home, you shot me through my home and halfway to Cloudsdale.”
“I—what? Oh, well... sorry for that I suppose” Twilight apologized weakly. “Now can you go? I have to get to bed so I can go to Canterlot in the morning.”
“Fine,” Dash said, appeased. She began to flap over to the door but was stopped by Fluttershy, who had Rainbow Dash’s tail in her mouth and was gesturing at Twilight with her eyes. "What—oh, right! That’s not why we’re still here! Twilight Sparkle, you’re going to tell us why you have wings and why you’re hiding them.”
“I... have what now?” Twilight said nervously. She was trying to put up a convincing front when Fluttershy nudged her in the ribs with one hoof just so, causing one of Twilight’s wings to reflexively pop straight out under the sweater. Suddenly, the lavender alicorn was gripped by a horrible sensation of claustrophobia as she beat her wing back and forth, trying to right it inside the sweater. Before she realized it, she was scrambling both wings in panic and writhing on the floor until she could get out of the cashmere monstrosity that imprisoned her.
“S-sorry” Fluttershy apologized to the ruffled alicorn who had ended up—none too happy—sitting on her haunches with the sweater in front of her, hooves crossed, hair mussed, wings fanned out messily and a pouty look of indignation on her face “...but you shouldn’t wear things like that over your wings, it’s a really bad idea... You could hurt them.”
“Twilight,” Rainbow Dash lectured, “you can’t hide wings from a pegasus; they’re the first thing we look at on a pony. Now come on, spill. I knew something was up when I crashed into you today. You felt really light and fluffy like we do; I thought you’d just gotten a new shampoo or something, but that obviously wasn’t it, was it? Fluttershy’s eyes are like a doctor’s or something, so you can’t hide anything from her either. Heck, I bet Rarity would have seen through you too if she could have brought herself to look at that horrible thing you were wearing. Tell—us—what—is—going—on!”
Twilight’s lower lip quivered a second as Dash stared her down and Fluttershy continued to look guilty and sorry for what she’d done. It was a hallmark of how keenly Dash’s words had struck home that Twilight didn’t even register that the blue pegasus had uncharacteristically referred to herself as ‘fluffy’. Finally, Twilight just flopped forward with a sigh, and told them the whole story.
“O-oh... Wow...” Fluttershy mused. “I—I really don’t think Princess Celestia would banish you anywhere. You made an honest mistake, and she always seemed really nice.”
“You guys can’t tell anypony,” Twilight pleaded “please?”
“Of course we won’t Twilight,” Fluttershy assured her. “It’s not our place to say anything; but you really should tell her yourself. Princess Celestia is your mentor, don’t you trust her?”
“Of course I—but I–” she stammered, staring at her hooves, “–I just... can’t.”
“Maybe after you talk to her you’ll realize she only has your best interests at heart. You’ll have lots and lots of time for that, since you’ll be faking all of the help that your dearest, most beloved mentor is personally counting on you for,” Fluttershy suggested, eliciting a wilted cringe from Twilight.
“Dash?” Twilight asked, turning to the blue pegasus to escape the sad, disappointed looks Fluttershy was giving her. "You won’t tell anyone, right?”
“Hey, whatever you want Twilight,” Rainbow Dash assured her, already distracted. “I just didn’t like being left out and lied to; I’m good now.”
Subtle, Rainbow Dash was not; Twilight’s head drooped with shame and she groaned. She couldn’t respond to that; she couldn’t even look her friends in the eyes. Eventually her head drooped so low her body had to follow with a flop, and she just curled up on the floor with a sigh.
“I... I think... we should go,” Fluttershy suggested. The guilt-ridden alicorn didn’t answer at all.
“Yeah, uhh... okay,” Rainbow Dash ceded, one hoof on the door. “See ya Twilight. Um, good luck.”
“Bye Twilight,” mumbled Fluttershy.
“Do you think we overdid it?” Dash whispered as the two pegasi let themselves out of the library.
“Maybe...” Fluttershy admitted in equally hushed tones, just before the door drifted shut.
Sharing the Night: Chapter 2
The feeling of the wind rushing over Twilight Sparkle’s wings was glorious. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine that she was the only pony in the world. She had learned not to close her eyes though, because if she got too distracted her wings would start lifting her up out of the chariot in which she rode. It would be difficult to explain to her escort—or Princess Celestia for that matter—how a mere unicorn had drifted off into the sky and got caught in a bank of clouds. Still, the view over the golden-armored shoulders of the pegasi guards had its own appeal, so she was no less happy to keep her eyes open.
By all rights, Twilight could have been—and should have been—still panicking. She was after all, flying straight to the only two ponies in the world who could uncover her crime—specifically for the purpose of helping them solve said crime—and she really had no idea whatsoever what she was going to do about it. The only thing that kept Twilight from panicking at the moment was the fact that she was fairly sure that ponies only had a certain amount of panic in them, and she would simply implode if she carelessly spent it all before she even arrived. That—and the early stages of sleep withdrawal.
After Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash had left the night before, Twilight had gone up to her stargazing balcony and tried to put the stars back with no success. It felt to her as if she could have sooner joined the Wonderbolts with her new wings; at least those she could move, if clumsily. She was so lost for ideas that she had even gone back down to the bathroom and checked just to make sure the stars weren’t floating in the tub where she’d thought she’d seen them when she awoke from her dream. Sadly, the tub had only held murky water and bits of lavender detritus which she’d then pulled the drain on.
The only place Twilight had been successful was in finding a better way to hide her new wings; after her experience with Fluttershy the night before, she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to wear a sweater again, be it made for pegasi or not. What she found was the perfect illusion spell that could make her appear as if she were another type of pony. She’d had to cobble together her own version of it since unicorns had no need to disguise themselves as unicorns, but that at least was the kind of work she was used to and enjoyed. It wasn’t for nothing that magic was her special talent—though even so it had still taken her all night to perfect the spell.
Of course, it had occurred to Twilight to look for a spell to remove the wings completely; invisible wings were still a liability after all, especially when they seemed to bristle at the slightest provocation. Such a spell would have required a lot more effort of course, but Twilight suspected she’d have been able to use any unicorn magic she came across with relative ease now. In the end, she hadn’t even looked. She’d found the idea inexplicably distasteful from the start, and now she understood why; though she’d had her wings for less than twelve hours, she wouldn’t trade this feeling for the world.
To Twilight’s disappointment, the chariot had to reach Canterlot eventually and when it did, there was a stone-faced guard waiting for her. The face was a face she was familiar with, but it was not unique; all of the guards possessed it. It was a face they gave Celestia when a filly Twilight was hiding behind them and covered in priceless pottery-dust that used to be priceless in quite a different manner. It was a face that said they had bad news. It was a face that said something was wrong.
It was a face she’d hoped never to see from this side.
Luna squinted blearily at the sunlight shining on her face through a crack in her heavy black curtains on the west side of her room, resisting the urge to push the loathsome ball of fire down below the horizon several hours early. In truth, she would have had a hard time of it even if she had tried, and she had no desire to spend another thousand years on the moon anyway. How Celestia had managed to raise Luna’s moon for a thousand years, she had no idea. She settled for yanking the curtains shut with her magic.
Luna had not slept well that day. She had tried to bring out the stars all night, but there was nothing she could do; they just... were not there. Staring up at that great blackness had been horribly unnerving; she had tried pulling her moon closer to fill it up, but it hadn’t helped much and she just couldn’t shake feelings of guilt, loss and loneliness over it. Celestia had clopped Luna on the head, told her it was not her fault and reassured her that they would find her stars, but the feelings remained. It wasn’t that she thought she should have been able to stop... whatever had happened; it was just that it was her night sky. It was a part of her, she was responsible for it, and it was wrong. She should have been able to reach up and fix it but she couldn’t. Even after Celestia raised the sun—hiding Luna’s shame for the day—the sense of wrongness pervaded.
Unfortunately for a certain lavender mare, this desire to see things set right did not extend to getting up on time when she was miserable.
Twilight glowered at the prominent silver moon inlaid on the large double doors of dark lapis lazuli in front of her. She wasn’t angry. She didn’t know what she was feeling, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t anger—despite the invisible wings bristling behind her. “I will be happy to receive her and any guests tomorrow,” Princess Celestia’s letter had said, but when Twilight’s chariot had finally touched down in front of the palace, the elder Princess had not been there. That was five hours ago, and Twilight still had not seen hide nor hair of her mentor.
The guards had been singularly unhelpful. They told her that Princess Celestia had cancelled court until further notice—and everything else, for that matter—and disappeared. She was believed to still be in the palace, but all business was being forwarded to Princess Luna... who was asleep. Princess Luna had been asleep when Twilight had arrived, and she was still asleep now as Twilight haunted the space in front of her private chambers. As Princess Celestia’s personal protege Twilight enjoyed a free run of most of the palace, but this did not include the ability to barge into a Princess’ bedroom and shake her awake—she knew this from experience.
Very specific experience.
Very loud experience.
Finished with her periodic glowering, Twilight lowered her gaze back to the book she was reading. She had grabbed every reference book on alicorns and celestial magic she could find in the palace library and piled them up here—directly between the two Princess’ chambers—and gone to work. Now, Luna was half an hour late getting up, and Twilight was almost done with all of the books she’d found.
Twilight was not angry. She had no reason to be angry. In fact, she was quite sure that this was exactly what she wanted—to be ignored by her beloved mentor and completely at the mercy of a nocturnal princess’ schedule. If she never managed to actually see the princesses she was here to avoid helping, she would be much less likely to end up banished to Procyon (she had changed her mind about the star she wanted to be banished to.)
If Twilight had been angry—which she was not—it would most certainly have been because of the books she had arrayed in front of her which were quite simply, rubbish. Absolutely useless. She had gotten nowhere with them... though technically, this was also exactly according to plan as she had not actually intended to uncover anything with her research. Still, even if she wasn’t going to uncover any great truths that pointed to her sudden alicornification, the books could at least deign to be interesting. They were not.
Well, that wasn’t true. They had been interesting at first. Twilight had been in complete rapture at the absolutely beautiful, perfect celestial system laid out in the first book she’d read. The second book had been similarly fascinating, and the third and the fourth and so on. Sadly, they were all completely different.
This was not entirely unexpected, and Twilight had continued to find interest in each new theory, hoping to reconcile the basis for their conclusions with her own experiences and see if she could form a better hypothesis on her own. Regrettably, none of the authors of the books she was reading had any basis for what they’d written. They had all just taken the conclusions they liked and started hanging ideas off of them in hope of reaching a solid foundation below; a feat none of them had achieved.
Twilight took another moment aside to glare at the blue and silver door in front of her, she couldn’t possibly imagine that the authors of these books had any trouble at all getting information out of Equestria’s sole alicorn sisters.
But no, lack of any sort of actual information was not what would have made Twilight angry (if she had been angry, which she was not.) Any theoretical incensation would have in fact been caused by the ways the books were not different or baseless. The conclusions these books each came to always seemed to have implications beyond the subject in question, like old pony tales each with their own little heartwarming moral—if you find ideological manipulation heartwarming. It was clear to Twilight that each and every book here wanted something.
These books—this entire pile of books—was a collection of political and theological detritus littering the history of Equestria. Their authors were each just using the subject as a medium to push some unrelated ideological agenda. The idea of it made her want to just—a hoof slammed down onto the book Twilight had open in front of her, crinkling up the page. For a moment, Twilight simply reveled in the book getting what it deserved—then she looked up and realized the hoof was attached to a princess who had yet not had her coffee.
Twilight Sparkle was not angry
She was scared.
“Gone,” Luna stated flatly, staring into her coffee cup. The lavender mare across from her nodded in nervous silence. “But there is no sense in that! Why wouldst our sister simply vanish in such a way—and now of all times?” Luna scowled. To Twilight’s delight, the princess seemed to have cured herself of the traditional Royal Canterlot Voice. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the traditional Royal Canterlot Morning Breath, and her diction was as early-modern-Equestrian as ever; a potent combination to be sure.
“Well,” started a sheepish Twilight. “They didn’t see her leave; she could be here and... err... hiding?”
Luna simply sighed in silence at that while Twilight busied herself fidgeting with her own cup of coffee, which she had politely accepted but didn’t dare drink despite her lack of sleep the night before. If exhausting one’s natural reserves of panic caused ponies to implode, she was relatively certain that caffeine would be no less than catastrophic.
“So,” Luna started, suddenly sounding a little sheepish. “Twilight Sparkle.” Twilight nodded at this, and Luna continued “We have heard of thy exploits. Our stars; we understand thou–”
Twilight imploded. That was it. She was completely out of panic; she had no more to spend. Imploding—she noted—was dark and wet and warm and could use some dusting
“–thou likest them?” Luna finished, lifting her gaze from her coffee cup to find nopony across from her.
Luna peeked quizzically under the small coffee table at Twilight, who had an upended coffee cup trembling where it hung on her horn as she shook in blank terror. "Twilight Sparkle... art thou afraid of us? Did we not solve this last Nightmare Night? Neigh, thou were never afraid of us to begin with, so why dost thou tremble so?”
Twilight opened one eye and looked up at Luna; she looked sad... and disappointed. Suddenly feeling bad, she jumped to her feet, “No!—Princess, I—” Thunk; a sharp pain split Twilight’s skull and she fell back to her knees, cradling her head. She had forgotten she was hiding under the table. She felt a drop of warmth drip off her nose and thought she was bleeding, but it turned out to be the last of the coffee from the cup dangling on her horn, which she then sheepishly removed.
Luna silently slid the table to the side with magic and placed a soothing hoof on Twilight’s throbbing head. “We didst not think we should have to go through this with thee of all ponies...” she sighed. “Celestia says thou art the only pony she can get to stop bowing at her constantly. We had hoped...” suddenly, a shadow of insight crossed her face and she wilted, looking a little embarrassed. "Ah, of course. Thou fearest the whirlwhind thy actions hath sown; not that of deeds long past, but follies more recent.”
Twilight’s eyes snapped open as she found one last ounce of panic to burn, but the mischievous smile on Luna’s face silenced her.
The moon princess knelt down across from Twilight, the action making her look a little less intimidating. “We are forever in thy debt for standing with us against the Nightmare; nothing could sour our image of thee, not even this. Thou–” Luna paused, consciously changing her diction in an effort to be believed, “You have nothing to be afraid of, least of all from me.”
Twilight was utterly speechless; panic and fear blown away by astonishment at the moon princess’ sudden knowledge and understanding of her crime (and the Equestrian language, but that was beside the point). “You mean... you knew...? You... you really forgive me?”
The smile that spread across Luna’s face was shy and embarrassed with a bit of guilt; it was utterly unlike anything she had ever seen on Celestia’s peaceful face. “In truth, I am shamefully gladdened by thy shortcomings in this matter. It heartens me to think that we are not so different, you and I.”
Twilight’s jaw dropped. The princess knew Twilight was an alicorn like her? She wanted this? “I... wow. Princess. I had no idea you felt that way. So you mean... from now on...?” Twilight Sparkle. Her. In charge of the stars. Forever? Twilight swallowed anxiously, not sure if she could really do it... but the look on Luna’s face made her want to try.
Luna nodded bashfully, “I know Tia already thinks of you as more than a student; I would be glad if I could at least call you a friend.”
“I... Yeah,” Twilight said, beginning to feel the beginning of a smile. For the first time since the stars had disappeared, she felt hopeful about the future. Maybe, she thought with guilty audacity, in a hundred years or so Luna would even call her ‘sister’. “I think... I think I would like that.”
Suddenly, the door clacked open, and in strode a certain large white alicorn with her own cup of coffee. “Princess Celestia!” Twilight exclaimed ecstatically, rushing forward to nuzzle her heretofore absentee mentor. Then, the floodgates opened; “I’m so glad to see you! Where were you? I am so, so sorry for stealing the stars! I didn’t mean to do it and then I couldn’t fix it and I spent all night worrying and panicking but Luna already knew and she said it was okay and that she was happy about it and she asked me if I’d do it from now on and I said yes and she wants to be my friend and I said yes to that too so please oh please don’t banish me to the stars oh but if you do banish me to the stars please please please pick Alioth I think that would be nice but not as nice as not being banished of course.”
There was a crash as Luna’s coffee cup slipped from her lips and shattered on the ground. “We—wait—what? When didst—”
Princess Celestia—for her part—radiated eternal calm. “Twilight, that all sounds very interesting—and I do care—but you’re dripping coffee on my... everywhere.”
Three ponies—each covered in differing quantities of coffee—entered Celestia’s private bath. More accurately, Celestia entered her private bath while levitating the two smaller ponies with her magic and ignoring Twilight’s initial protests that a criminal like her shouldn’t be allowed there. The bath was large enough for three ponies of Celestia’s size, and certainly—the reigning princess had said—would do for the three of them.
As the most coffee-drenched pony in attendance, Twilight was plopped down into the bath first followed shortly after by Luna, who was still running over her conversation with Twilight again and again trying to understand where it had all gone so wrong. Twilight wanted to join her, but she didn’t have that luxury; she was busy going over all the possibilities of what would happen now since it was apparent Luna had not forgiven her—or had any idea what Twilight had been talking about at the time. “Apodis, Sirius, Canopus, Shedir, Acrux...” she listed under her breath; her idea of all the possibilities was rather narrow, consisting entirely of various stars to choose from.
“Now,” Princess Celestia said, settling into the bath herself and massaging her temples with her forehooves. “Twilight, my faithful student; calm down. I am not going to banish you to the... stars.”
“...you’re not?” Twilight asked, wary of misunderstanding the consolations of another princess today. “The moon, then?” she suggested, a little disappointed after she’d gotten so invested in choosing a star.
“Twilight...” Celestia smiled reassuringly. “You know that I value your diligence; in all the years you’ve been my student, I’ve never once doubted you... but believe me when I tell you that no matter what you read in those books you left outside my chambers that this problem with the stars is not your fault.”
“...books?” Twilight only blinked at Princess Celestia for a second. “Oh, those,” Twilight groused sourly. “That’s not what I–”
Celestia put a hoof up to silence her. “Not—your—fault,” she insisted. “Twilight Sparkle, you are quite possibly the most powerful unicorn I’ve ever met–”
“I’m not—I’m–” Twilight started, before being shushed again.
“–but no unicorn, no unicorn can have done this, least of all by accident. It’s not about raw power, there are simply things that only Luna or I can do. For this to be your fault, you’d have to be–”
Two lavender wings splashed up out of the water, suddenly visible. "–an alicorn?” Twilight suggested.
For the first time in at least a century, Celestia’s pleasant mien failed and her mouth dropped in astonishment, staying there for a very long time.
“So... Vega?” Twilight suggested.
“I am still not banishing you anywhere,” Celestia sighed—sighed! It was as if once her mien of distanced calm had cracked once, she didn’t care any more. “Not for taking a bath, here or in Ponyville,” she clarified. “In fact, you’ve done nothing wrong.”
“...done nothing wrong?!” Twilight and Luna both shrieked in unison.
“I—but I—” Twilight stammered.
“You decorated the night sky as you saw fit. You did your job,” Celestia stated simply.
“Her job?” Luna balked. "But Tia, that is my job! It is my sky!”
Celestia shrugged, giving her little sister a wan, helpless smile. “Not any more, it seems.”
Luna just... stared at Celestia in horror. She worked her mouth like she wanted to say something, but nothing came. Finally, she turned and stomped out of the room; Twilight thought she heard the princess of the moon—the princess of only the moon—give out a sob from somewhere down the hall.
Twilight started to go after Luna—to try to make this right—but she didn’t know how. “How could this happen?” she pleaded as she turned to Celestia, needing to know. It was Twilight’s fault Luna was crying... It was Twilight’s fault a princess was crying... Somehow when Twilight had been imagining the consequences of her so-called ‘crime,’ she hadn’t thought they’d bring out the big guns. Disappointment, sure; banishment, of course; tears? Oh Luna, not the tears!
Celestia looked askance from Twilight, as if she didn’t want to answer... then finally lowered her head and admitted the truth. “I don’t know, Twilight.”
Suddenly, all the books Twilight had left outside the princess’ chambers made much more sense. “You... you don’t know how any of it works, do you?”
Celestia shook her head. “Luna and I were both born into Discord’s reign. We never knew the last generation; we earned our cutie marks when we discovered we could raise the sun and the moon. Discord didn’t even care until... much later. You know the rest.”
“That’s... it?” Twilight looked distraught. “Wait, if you never knew any other alicorns, that means...”
“Yes; we were born as two ordinary ponies—to ordinary ponies—and became alicorns when we first learned of our connections to the sun and the moon. What happened to you is... normal, I believe; but I do not know why it happened.”
“But I’ve had my cutie mark for years!” Twilight countered, looking for some flaw that would make giving Luna’s stars back the right thing to do—as if that would also somehow make it possible.
Celestia simply cocked her head to the side, looking at Twilight’s flank. “It looks accurate to me.”
Twilight twisted around—and around and around and around—looking at her cutie mark, scared that it might have changed; it had not. Adorning Twilight’s flank was a pink six-pointed star surrounded by smaller white stars. “What—? No! The stars represent the spark of magic!”
“They do,” Celestia confirmed. "Is it so hard to believe they might also represent stars?”
Twilight flopped down with a groan and buried her face in her hooves, dizzy from chasing her flank. “I can’t believe this is happening! I can’t believe... that there are no answers! Why did you even ask me to come help ‘investigate’ this if you already knew the books were all useless?”
Celestia knelt down in front of Twilight and nuzzled her comfortingly. “There are more creatures in this world than alicorns that can interfere with our jobs," Celestia clarified. “Discord for one, though I did suspect it might be another alicorn.”
“If you suspected, then why...?” Twilight prompted.
Celestia gave one of her warm, peaceful smiles—but having now seen Celestia’s more natural expressions, it looked mischievous to Twilight. “I never said we’d be investigating here,” she clarified, then looked guiltily at the door Luna had left from and sighed wistfully. “I cancelled everything. The three of us were going to get out of here... find some dragons to talk to... visit the old castle... see what we could uncover. There are creatures and places in this world that are older than Luna and I; older than Discord. A lot of it is... unreliable—twisted by an age of chaos—but this was important. It still is important. I still want to go, but... I may have been too blunt with her. That... was foalish of me.” Standing up, she declared “I should go talk to her.”
Celestia made to walk towards the door, and was stopped by a tug on her tail which Twilight had in her mouth; truly, the walls had come down. “I... think it should be me,” she suggested. Celestia was surprised, but nodded and stepped out of her way. As Twilight left Celestia behind, her mind was racing—wishing she knew what to say to Luna—yet somewhere in the back of her head, she was also filing away the information that Celestia did not in fact taste like rainbows.
Twilight regretted her decision the moment she left Celestia behind. She hadn’t changed her mind about needing to talk to Luna; it had just occurred to her how colossally stupid of her it was to expect to be able to do so. The lingering not-at-all rainbow taste in her mouth aside, she still wouldn’t be able to bring herself to force her way into Luna’s chambers unwanted—and where else would a crying princess go?
The moon princess wasn’t going to make it that easy for Twilight, however; not easy to give up on, or easy to catch either. Luna’s chambers were open, but empty save for the usual royal appurtenances including what she considered an inordinate number of couches. Twilight had just stopped to straighten the books scattered around the hall and collect her thoughts on where else to look when she heard a tiny sniffle and froze. It had come from Luna’s chambers, she’d thought. Silently, she peeked her head back into the chambers she was sure were empty. After a long, breathless pause, she heard it again; it was coming from the window.
Twilight craned her neck out the window, finding nothing as expected; the princess of the moon was probably on the roof. “Wings. Right,” she sighed. “I have wings too,” she told herself. "I just have to... use them. Somehow. Real easy. Perfectly safe.” She had pretty much mastered folding her wings back up after periodically finding them open... this was just like that—but faster—right? Hesitantly, she gave her wings a good strong flap and crashed into Luna’s nightstand, scattering everything on top of it including a number of old scrolls on tax law.
She really hoped she hadn’t broken anything important as she extracted herself from the nightstand. “Good news: the wings work,” she whispered to herself, acutely aware that the princess could have heard the racket she’d made. “Bad news: Flying inside is hard.” Logically—Twilight thought—this meant she was good to jump out the window.
Backing up all the way back to the hallway, Twilight tucked her wings in, ran through Luna’s bedroom, launched herself through the window and spread her wings. She even remembered to flap as hard as she could; once. One flap was all it took for her to achieve disaster; Rainbow Dash would have been proud.
Twilight’s flap was good, straight and level; mostly. Regrettably, it was also very strong; strong enough to flip her head over hooves back the way she came. A second before Twilight would have hit the palace wall, instinct took over; it had to be instinct, because Twilight’s brain had gone totally blank the second she had passed through the window and wondered what the hay she was doing. Twilight’s eyes rammed shut and she teleported the only way she could; straight up—or down, from her perspective. This maneuver did not in fact prevent her from crashing into the palace; but it did grant her a softer landing.
“Wah—!” Crash. Luna never knew what hit her. Logically, it would have had to have been some part of Twilight—several, at least—but for Luna it had been just a flash of light followed by a crash with hair hooves and wings everywhere as the two rolled up the incline of the roof and settled into a pile of pony. “I... do believe that thou art not very good at this, are thee Twilight Sparkle?” Luna stated sourly, spitting tail out of her mouth; her diction slipping back a few hundred years in her distress, Twilight noticed, though at least the royal ‘we’ had not returned. She supposed stealing a princess’ stars evidently put you on a more personal level with them—if not necessarily in a good way. Luna was unspecific as to what exactly Twilight was not good at—and the lavender mare would have very much liked to know, given that she could think of quite a few just this moment.
Twilight said nothing as the two alicorns slowly untangled themselves in an awkward silence broken only by the occasional sniffle or sob from the princess that stretched on long after they’d arranged themselves side by side on the rooftop. They sat there for a long while, watching Celestia’s sun hanging in the mid-afternoon sky until Luna finally broke the silence.
“I guess this answers my question,” she sniffed. Twilight was about to ask for clarification when Luna continued. "When I asked if thou liked my stars. Tia is right; they are thine now, and the universe would not be so cruel as to give them to a pony who did not appreciate them. I must have looked pretty foalish to you.”
“I don’t think I was capable of that particular emotion at the time,” Twilight assured Luna sarcastically. "I don’t think I was capable of any rational thought–” she explained, then caught her heart in her throat as she heard the words that came out of her mouth. "–not–not that it would have been rational to think you a foal princess,” she spat out, backpedaling in panic.
If Luna was bothered by Twilight’s gaffe, she didn’t show it. Eventually Twilight’s breathing calmed back down, and she began to hoof around for something to fill the silence... There was really only one thing to say; she hung her head in resignation, “I’m sorry.”
Luna gave a sniffle and steadied her voice, trying to sound calmer than she was. “It matters not... I do not care.”
Twilight opened her mouth to respond, then hesitated. Did she want to call the princess on such an obvious lie? She had to. “You can’t tell me this isn’t bothering you.”
“I care not that thou art s-s-sorry” Luna clarified bitterly, a little bit of venom creeping in between her sobs as she failed to keep her voice steady. “Thou shouldst not have come here. T’was a mistake.”
Twilight shook her head sadly and reached over to put a comforting hoof on her shoulder. "I don’t believe that for a second.”
Luna looked over her shoulder at Twilight with tear-filled eyes twisted into a scowl. "–and that is why it is a mistake, Twilight Sparkle. Thou came here expecting to be able to just... say some nice words and make it all better. Thou understandst nothing,” she growled, shaking Twilight’s hoof off violently. The lavender mare was at a loss for words.
“Thou canst not apologize for this; thou canst not make this right!” Luna sobbed. “The stars were a part of who I am! I poured everything I was into the night sky, Twilight Sparkle. I put so much of myself into it that when the little ponies turned away, it broke me! I did horrible, horrible things because they didn’t appreciate it! I hurt ponies, I hurt my sister because they didn’t see what I saw!”
“I–” Twilight started—standing up—but Luna didn’t even notice; it didn’t matter anyway, Twilight wasn’t sure what she could have said.
“–and then!” Luna exclaimed. "–then I spent a thousand years on the moon! A thousand years—! For a thousand years the stars were all I had! –and–and if not for them, I would still be trapped up there!” the princess was crying freely now, every word growing sour in Twilight’s stomach. She knew better than to say anything to interrupt the princess.
“–and now! Now that part of me is g-g-gone Twilight Sparkle. GONE! Thou canst not comprehend how it feels to have a part of thy soul taken by some—some ignorant little filly—and—and—and thou didst not even try. Wert thou thinking of me when thou came here? No, thou were thinking of thyself. All I am to thee is a guilty conscience.”
Twilight couldn’t say anything. Her stomach was lead, her lungs were iron, and her heart was being crushed between the two. She wanted to hug the crying princess, but she couldn’t move. She wanted to comfort her and say everything would be alright, but she couldn’t breathe. She wanted to tell Luna she was wrong about her, but... she couldn’t. Celestia help her, she couldn’t say it.
It would have been a lie.
Nothing Luna had said was anything Twilight didn’t already know, but she’d had to be told anyway. The princess was right; Twilight hadn’t been thinking of her. She thought this was her fault; she thought she had to fix it; she’d tried to apologize away the guilt, but Twilight’s guilt wasn’t why the princess was crying. Twilight’s guilt was her problem, yet she’d brought it here to the pony who was hurting the most. She’d made this about her.
She was wrong, and it hurt.
“Clop off, Twilight Sparkle,” Luna mouthed under her breath through gritted teeth. If Twilight heard her, she didn’t register it; her brain had joined the crushing hole growing in her chest.
“CLOP—OFF,” Luna snarled angrily in Royal Canterlot Voice, incensed at being ignored as Twilight simply mouthed wordlessly at her in stunned silence. The princess of the moon dropped her gaze, shoulders shaking with angry sobs as she tried to collect herself; failing to do so, she threw her head back up to face the ex-unicorn and—at a volume as far above the Royal Canterlot Voice as the Royal Canterlot Voice was above normal pony speech—shouted one last “CLOP——OFF!”
By the time Twilight’s mind caught up to the present, Luna was gone from her sight; the castle was gone from her sight; the mountain was gone from her sight; all she could see was blue.
She felt like she was floating through the sky.
She was half right.
“Dear Princess Celestia; today I learned that I’m a horrible, selfish, inconsiderate pony... and I have a lot more to learn about friendship,” Twilight groaned as if she were dictating a friendship report—though she was making it in person.
“I’m concerned, Twilight," Celestia told her as she knelt down close beside Twilight, who did not really notice the gesture.
“Do you think she’ll... be okay?” Twilight asked hesitantly. She meant it to sound hopeful, but all that came out was helpless guilt. She disgusted herself.
“I mean about you," Celestia clarified, nudging Twilight with her shoulder in a friendly manner.
Twilight turned to Celestia in panic, “Me? What?—! I’m fine!” she insisted awkwardly. “Really!” She felt bad enough about taking her guilt to Luna—she didn’t want to distract Celestia from her sister’s problems too.
“You got shouted off a mountain and didn’t spread your wings to save yourself," Celestia reminded her.
Twilight winced. Sure it sounded bad when the princess put it like that. “I... would have gotten around to it... eventually... You didn’t have to–” she suggested unconvincingly, appearing to immediately find great interest in her hooves.
“–no, I didn’t have to. You would have been fine, but you didn’t know that," Celestia explained. “I think you should go home and relax, Twilight. You are high-strung by nature; all of this has taken its toll on you as much as her.”
Twilight gaped at the Princess. "You can’t compare my problems to hers! She–”
“She is being just as selfish as you were, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You both have the right. Her wounds are old, yes, and this can’t be easy for her—but yours are fresh, and they can hurt just as much. Do not worry about Luna; she is managing, and she has you to thank for that.”
“Me?” Twilight balked. “–but I—I probably made it worse!”
“You and all of your friends,” Celestia explained. “The elements of harmony alone could not have freed Luna from the darkness that had taken root in her hatred and jealousy—as you should know. When I wielded them against her, all I could do was... seal her away. It was through the six of you and your budding friendship that she was able to let go of those feelings and the darkness they carried. She may not show it now, but she is grateful for what you did for her. After Nightmare Night, I think she even saw you as something of a role model.”
“A role model?” Twilight balked at the idea. “–but she’s a princess, and I’m... I’m me! I mean, helping her talk to people is one thing, but just look at all the things that I—”
“—nopony is perfect, Twilight, you should know that by now. Seeing somepony fail, yet refuse to give up can be more inspiring than a thousand perfect princesses—especially to someone who has failed and can’t move past it.”
“‘A thousand perfect princesses?’ You mean...”
Celestia gave a small cough and straightened herself a little awkwardly. “It is... difficult for me to help her, being the pony who banished her and took her place all those years ago. We act sisterly enough most of the time, but we don’t talk about this. It is... not my place.”
“–but surely you’re still better qualified than me!” Twilight insisted in denial.
“Oh, I’ve done this and that,” Celestia gave a wan smile. “I may have lost a few copies of your friendship reports somewhere around the old tax laws after she started taking an interest in you.”
The gears in Twilight’s brain skipped a tooth at that. “W–what?” she sputtered, then the gears went into overdrive to chew on this little tidbit of information. Ah, of course, Luna had said over coffee. Thou fearest the whirlwhind thy actions hath sown; not that of deeds long past, but follies more recent.
“You... you didn’t!” Twilight gasped accusingly her mentor. “Not the one about the want it/need it spell...!”
Celestia’s only response was her usual look of eternal patience and calm—that is, the one Twilight was coming to associate with mischief.
All the air left Twilight’s lungs and she slumped down. “You did,” she said with finality.
“You have to admit, Twilight, that that report in particular would be of particular interest to her,” Celestia noted. “–if I were to have indeed selected specific letters for such a purpose and not just to distract her from how ponies fifteen generations ago were taxed.”
Twilight going unhinged in the head for her mentor’s approval? A spell for gaining the love and adoration of ponies gone wrong, threatening all of Ponyville? –and Celestia... Celestia had come to fix it all and give Twilight the dreaded ‘I am not angry, just disappointed’ speech...
“Yeah, uh, I... guess I can see that being somewhat relevant,” she sighed, completely ignoring the remark about taxes. “I don’t think it matters anymore anyway, I think she hates me now—and if it makes her feel better, I hope she does. Compared to her, I–”
“Like her, you have had your whole identity thrown into question," Celestia admonished. “Unlike her, you haven’t even slept. You’ve been on edge for almost an entire day now and awake even longer, you’ve been entertaining paranoid delusions that I was going to banish you, you’re terrified of everything and believe it’s all your fault and you even convinced yourself you could lie to me.”
Twilight blinked at that. That was kind of insulting. “Hey, I can–”
“You are a terrible liar, Twilight,” Celestia interrupted with piercing finality.
Twilight knew better than to argue the point.
“You are going to need time to process all of this,” Celestia explained. “If you aren’t convinced by your failure with lying, your failure with Luna or your failure with gravity—then let me point out that just moments ago you suggested hate would make my sister feel better. Listen to me, Twilight Sparkle—trust me—you aren’t thinking straight. You need to come to terms with this as much as she does, and I will banish you from Canterlot if I have to.”
“Banish me?!” Twilight gasped. “C-c-c–” she stuttered in panic, before blurting out “Cor Caroli!”
“–to Ponyville, Twilight. To your friends—who you will tell about this,” Celestia insisted.
“Oh,” Twilight said, trying not to sound disappointed. Disappointed...? Maybe the princess was right; maybe she wasn’t thinking clearly. “S-sorry... I... I’ll try to calm down,” she said. “But... can I go back to Ponyville?” she asked meekly.
Celestia raised one eyebrow. "I believe that is what I said, yes.”
“But... but don’t I have to stay here and... and... become a princess?” Twilight squeaked. “–or something like that?”
Celestia couldn’t help but indulgently crack a smile, and suddenly the mood in the room was several shades brighter. “...now where did you get an idea like that, my faithful student?”
“Oh... Umm...” Twilight looked askance, then suggested “I-it just seems sort of... logical?”
“I didn’t think you read those kinds of books, Twilight,” Celestia grinned.
“I—well... you know... a little,” Twilight admitted, trying not to see how amused her mentor is; alicorn books were usually romantic power fantasies for teenaged fillies who thought that Celestia would swoop down one day and recognize how much harder their life was than that of all their peers, bestowing them with immortal princesshood so they could be apart from the society that spurned them and have their comeuppance, after all. “It’s just... I am your student, you know,” she explained. “Some of them are even based on me—one is even called Twilight—it’s... bad.”
“Do you want to stay in Canterlot, be a princess and lose all your friends?” Celestia asked.
Twilight’s head drooped. “No,” she mumbled quietly.
“Then no one will make you,” Celestia said as if it were the simplest thing in the world—which apparently it was. “Luna and I don’t rule Equestria because we are required to as alicorns, Twilight; we rule Equestria because we built it—and we built it because it is what our little ponies needed after Discord. I cannot promise you that ponies won’t treat you differently now that you are an alicorn; I cannot promise that they won’t look to you for leadership—many in Ponyville already do. What I can promise is not to let my burdens complicate your life–” Celestia paused, “–any more than normal.”
Twilight cocked an eyebrow at that last addition.
“You are still my student,” Celestia explained with a simple smile. “–and a bearer of Harmony. I cannot promise there will not be more ornery dragons in your future.”
“What does Spike have to do with—oh. Oh. You meant—err—nevermind.” There was a pause, and she sighed. “Normal,” she said, thinking about it. “Normal sounds... good,” she affirmed with a smirk. “Those novels... don’t usually end well.” Slowly, the light mood drained out of the room as if it had never been there. Twilight resumed studying her hooves, glancing up at Celestia sheepishly. “Um...”
Celestia turned away from Twilight. "–and that’s not the only thing you need to ask about them,” she stated gravely.
Twilight nodded her head, but remained silent for a moment longer. “So...” she finally started, hesitantly. “Immortality.”
Celestia nodded in silence, composing herself. “It’s... not as bad as they make it sound,” she said, though the wistfulness in her voice rendered it somewhat unconvincing. “It is not as if the years will go by any faster than they already do; you will have all the time in the world for your friends, and the friends after them—and there will be friends after them, I assure you. Friends are what make it all worthwhile.
“When ponies imagine immortality, they imagine what it would be like to grow old and not die. They look at old ponies who have lost much, who are spent and who welcome the end with a healthy appreciation for their life; they imagine that eventually the pain of loss becomes too great for these ponies to handle and they imagine how horrible it must be to be denied release.
“Now, a life well lived is a beautiful thing—and to be proud enough to think it complete is enviable indeed—but as much as I wish it weren’t so, many of those old ponies who greet death with a smile have not lost half so much as some a quarter their age. It is pony nature to grieve and move on. You will be sad, and you will remember your friends forever; you may never have the same kind of friends again, but when the time comes, you will not be left an old mare with nothing left before you.
“Immortality is not an eternity of looking back and regretting all the things you could have done; as an alicorn your past will always be finite, your future infinite. Mathematically, you could even say you will always have your entire life ahead of you.”
Twilight wasn’t sure exactly what to say. The words made a nice speech and all, but she wasn’t entirely convinced. Celestia wouldn’t lie to her... but there was no doubt the purpose of her mentor’s words was to cheer her up.
Eventually, the silence stretched on, and Celestia chose fill it. “I take it you’ve never spoken to Spike about this...?” she probed.
Twilight shook her head. “We’ve always avoided it,” she mused. “Just yesterday morning we talked about him eventually growing wings; it didn’t come up that I’d be... gone, by then.”
Celestia nodded. “You shall never have to have that talk, now; and you will never have to leave him. Not just Spike, but Luna and I will also always be here for you.”
Twilight frowned, furrowing her brow. A picture formed in her head, and she looked up at her mentor. “You said it’s not so bad—that friends make it worthwhile—but for the past thousand years...” she started, leaving the question unsaid.
Celestia looked away, not wanting Twilight to see the shadow that fell over her expression. “I have had Equestria to care for—and you, and others before you.”
Twilight didn’t want to say it, but she couldn’t help herself. “–but Luna...”
Celestia’s head dropped and she was similarly compelled to finish the thought. “Luna had the stars.”
Twilight said nothing. The hole she had felt in her chest on the rooftop was back, and it hurt.
“Twilight,” Celestia urged. “Twilight Sparkle, look at me.”
Twilight didn’t want to—she was afraid there might be tears in her eyes—but she did as she was told.
“Listen, Twilight,” Celestia stated firmly, looking her straight in the eyes. “Listen to me. Do not worry about Luna. The stars are not gone. They’ve simply changed hooves—and I am going to teach you to bring them out.”
Sharing the Night: Chapter 3
Twilight Sparkle’s eyes were solid black; even Celestia thought it was creepy—though she didn’t say so. “What do you see?” She probed her young student, who sat next to her on the balcony outside her chambers a while after dusk.
“It’s night,” the younger alicorn told her. “The sky is empty and black. I’m floating in a still ocean full of stars. The ocean and stars go on forever. It feels... calm.”
“It should,” Celestia nodded, unseen by her pupil. “You said you’re floating in an ocean... can you see your tail?”
“Of course I–” Twilight started, then a look of confusion passed over her unseeing face. “I... no, I can’t.”
“How about your mane?” Celestia continued knowingly.
“No... wait, yes!” Twilight responded, her countenance brightening. “It’s... My mane and tail are there, but they look like Luna’s; like they’re a liquid slice of the night sky. My mane is... longer. I can’t find the end of it; it just flows down into... the... water.”
A smirk found its way to Celestia’s lips, but she didn’t let it enter her voice. “Perhaps then, you would like to amend your original statement?”
“I...” the lavender alicorn started, but she had no words for the enormity of this implication. “I’m floating in an ocean of magic—my magic—and it’s full of stars?” she suggested, but the description still seemed... off.
The princess of the sun nodded to herself, then continued on to explain. “Not exactly. An alicorn is more than an immortal pony with the magic to control celestial bodies. We don’t know how or why, but from the moment you became an alicorn–”
“Luna said–” Twilight interrupted with an unsteady squeak. “She called it a piece of her soul. She meant it literally.”
Celestia shifted in place uncomfortably; she had been trying to get Twilight’s attention away from the princess of the moon. With a sigh, she nodded, “Yes. For all intents and purposes... You are the stars now, Twilight; this is what it means to be eternal. I told you that you would have been fine falling off the castle, and while that is true of any Pegasus, it would be true of you even were you lacking that particular magic. The stars will not die from simply falling off a mountain.”
Twilight said nothing at first; if the look in her eyes could have gotten any more distant, it would have. The elder alicorn understood her pupil’s mind was racing to fit this new piece of information into the puzzle she had been given, and sat patiently.
“But–” Twilight started suddenly as Celestia could almost see the gears in her student’s mind jam on something incongruous. “You said you didn’t know the last generation of alicorns; that implies there was a last generation—and something happened to them! If you’re the sun itself, how is that even possible? If that’s true... What kind of power—what kind of catastrophe could destroy something like that? I know you said you were born into the reign of Discord... but I don’t think it could have been him.”
There was a long pause as Celestia sighed and leaned over to rest her head on top of Twilight’s; her student had become so very good at asking all the hard questions. “I wish I knew. You are right, of course, it is not Discord’s style.” Celestia frowned, wondering if that was really all she could contribute; it felt hollow. “Luna and I are only in our second millenniums... I know we must seem so old to you, but compared to the age of the world... we are all children wandering blindly through this life with no idea what came before. That—I think—was Discord’s greatest crime; the incidental murder of history performed with cotton-candy clouds and show tunes.”
Twilight frowned; the black pits of her eyes making the expression look downright dreadful. “If what came before Discord... killed... the last sun—or at least the sun’s soul since we still have a sun though I suppose it could be a new sun–” she said, rambling as she tried to wrap her mind around the concept of being a celestial body and that celestial body dying. “–maybe... maybe he did us a favor,” she suggested weakly. “I mean, I want to know, but at the same time...” she sighed, trying to put her feelings into words. “I don’t. I really don’t. I think... I’m afraid knowing would change everything.”
Celestia said nothing, and the two of them simply sat there leaning on each other as Luna’s moon crawled higher into the empty sky. Twilight was right, of course. If there was a power like that somewhere dormant in Equestria, Celestia really didn’t want to know either—but it was time she had to try to find out anyway.
Eventually, Twilight felt a wash of cool night air rush in where Celestia’s head had lain and heard her mentor stretch. She felt obligated to follow suit, but floating there in the sea of stars that was... herself... she found it unnecessary. The feeling of calm she felt surrounded by the ocean of her magic was almost addictive for somepony like her; staying calm was not something she was especially good at, as recent events had proven. Celestia seemed to recognize this, as she gave a polite princessly cough to break Twilight out of her reverie.
“Come on now, Twilight,” she said chidingly, with a hint of amusement in her tone. “The stars are not going to raise themselves.”
In her own little world, Twilight facehooved.
“That was a joke,” the elder alicorn stated with some disappointment. “–because you see the stars—that is to say, you—are going to–”
“–yeah, uhh... I got that. Thanks, princess,” she said in a flat, unamused tone. An awkward silence filled the balcony for a brief moment, and Twilight thought that if she could see Celestia, she would have had that sad, disappointed look of hers, but she wasn’t sure why. She must have been mistaken though, because soon enough the elder alicorn continued on in her scholarly tone.
“Now, you may recall that the legend of the ‘mare in the moon’ states that Luna and I use our ‘Unicorn Powers’ to raise the sun and moon; you know enough now to realize this is incorrect, but not why or how.” Twilight nodded at this, listening intently as she heard her mentor walk behind her as she spoke. “The reason this is incorrect is that you will not be using your magic at all to bring out the stars; not in any way recognizable as ‘Unicorn Magic’ and certainly not any kind of telekinesis.”
Twilight quietly digested this information for a moment and frowned. “–but Princess,” she interjected, “when you raise the sun at the Summer Sun Celebration, your horn glows; I’ve seen it!”
“Good,” Celestia answered, a bit of pride in her student showing through in her voice, “Yes, and that is likely where the mistake originates, but that magic is not for raising the sun—not directly.”
Twilight felt queasy. “–but that’s what got me interested in magic in the first place!” she balked indignantly. “Watching you raise the sun... It was just a filly fantasy, but I thought it would be the best thing ever if I could do something like that.” She felt almost betrayed; lied to. It didn’t change the fact that she liked magic, but she still felt like she’d just been told out of the blue that Starswirl the Bearded wasn’t real.
While Twilight despaired, the clopping of Celestia’s hooves around her had stopped momentarily. “Really?” the princess asked with distinct interest. “I am flattered, Twilight, but this is a rather curious turn of events, don’t you think?” The sound of Celestia’s hooves resumed their pacing behind her. “You earned your Cutie Mark—six stars, I might add—as a direct result of trying to emulate my raising of the sun; and now here you are fulfilling almost that very filly fantasy.”
Twilight blinked. She hadn’t thought of it like that. In fact, she hadn’t thought about having wanted to raise the sun as a filly at all since this whole thing started. She’d been complaining about how unfair all of this was since the beginning, saying that she’d never asked for this, that it was all some giant mistake, when it really was a literal dream come true for her. She hadn’t said outright that it wasn’t her fault, but that was what she meant every time she apologized. That was why Luna was so mad, she remembered. They hadn’t been real apologies at all, just Twilight whining her way out of the blame.
‘Ungrateful whelp,’ she pictured the moon princess snarling at her. Ungratefulness; that was her new guilt. She set it next to the others—soul-stealing and insensitivity—and moved on in her lesson with a sigh.
“If the magic you use at the Summer Sun Celebration isn’t for raising the sun, what is it for? Do you use levitation to match your ascent with the sun?” she suggested.
“No, after a thousand years of the celebration, I have that part of it well enough practiced. Rather, recall for me what it took for you to enter this state you are in, where you can see and feel your celestial form.”
Understanding dawned on Twilight immediately; she had spent over half an hour trying to recover her calm enough to see the stars again, and that was with Celestia by her side and encouraging her. It was no wonder she’d been unable to fix things on her own. “You use a spell to get like this?” she suggested.
“Not directly, but yes,” her mentor answered. “It is a simple spell of calming tuned precisely to what is needed to enter the celestial state.”
Twilight remembered her own thoughts about the state being so addictive and couldn’t help but wonder if she hadn’t just heard some great state secret; what was Celestia known for, if not her Eternal Calm? What if it wasn’t real? She imagined this putting a final nail in the coffin of her filly fantasies about magic, but the word ‘ungrateful’ loomed over her thoughts; her filly fantasies were alive and bucking. Bucking her, specifically. In the head. She didn’t have time to dwell on it any further as Celestia continued explaining the raising of a celestial body.
“Once the celestial state is achieved,” Celestia lectured, “the raising—of the sun in my case—is more like learning to move an appendage you haven’t had before rather than any sort of telekinesis; if you have too much difficulty, you may find it useful to think back to the recent experiences you’ve had learning to move your wings.”
Dryly and a tiny bit bitter, Twilight imagined telling her mentor that her flying was the last thing she wanted to emulate. The first time she’d tried to use her wings, she’d crashed into Luna’s dresser and then the moon princess herself soon after. Who knew what would happen if she botched raising the stars like that? She’d seen the damage a single fallen star could do—what if she dropped a bunch of them? What if she dropped them on the Griffin Kingdom? She could start a war—or end one, she supposed. It didn’t go unnoticed to her that while her unnatural calm kept her from panicking over the prospect, it didn’t seem to do much for her mood; her thoughts were getting a little dark.
The lavender alicorn shook her head, doing her best to focus on the puzzles at hand rather than the pile she was making for herself. “Wait—I sort of understand that—but if that’s the case then how did you bring out the night for the last thousand years? The moon and stars aren’t part of... of you,” she asked, perplexed.
“It was not easy," Celestia sighed a little sadly; the subject of Luna’s banishment still seemed to be a difficult subject for her. “Remember again, that I could not raise the sun at all while she refused to put away the night.”
Twilight’s brow furrowed. "If you couldn’t raise the sun with the night in the way... but you could once Luna was... gone... wait–” she paused to look blindly incredulous at the starry space in her vision where she thought the princess was. “Do you mean to tell me that you haven’t been bringing out the night all this time? –that you’ve just been pushing it around with the sun?”
“Do not tell Luna,” the elder alicorn whispered, tickling Twilight’s ear with her sudden close presence, “but she is exceptionally heavy.”
Twilight—again—facehooved in her private little world of stars. “–and,” she started, a certain resignation in her voice, “–the story of Hearth’s Warming Eve? How did the unicorns do it?”
There was a rustling next to Twilight as Celestia shook her head. “I don’t know, Twilight. The story of Hearth’s Warming Eve was old when I was a filly. I can only presume that it took place in a time when there were no alicorns for the sun or moon, and no Discord, who liked to cycle day and night at random. Clearly though, the presence of Windigos in the story implies that chaos was on the rise.”
Twilight sighed. Every time her mentor said those words—’I don’t know’—it disturbed her.
“Now,” Celestia instructed. “Let me see you bring out the stars.”
Twilight was about to object when she was surprised to realize that she felt like she actually could—maybe—feel the vastness around her as something resembling a part of her. She gave it a little nudge, and the entire ocean of stars... tilted, as did Twilight’s stomach. Scrambling to right herself—forgetting that the whole ocean of magic was ‘herself’—she only managed to flop over and lose herself beneath the churning surface. There was a brief moment as she drifted that she felt there was no up or down, no here or there—then everything seemed to right itself. Unsure of where she was in the sea of stars, she cracked her eyes open to check, then widened them with a gasp. The surface was right there—below her—and beyond it, Equestria stretched out as far as the eye could see.
‘This isn’t some vision or dream,’ Twilight realized, all her troubles forgotten. ‘This is real. This is now. I’m looking down on Equestria from the stars... because I am the stars.’ Suddenly it all felt so real. She searched the landscape below and found Castle Canterlot; she found the wing where the the princess’ chambers were; she found the balcony where she and Celestia had sat down to have their lesson... and they were still there. Not only that but the empty black pools of her eyes looked really creepy—she thought—which brought her to realize that she could see it all clearly from her place miles or more up in the sky. She wasn’t really sure how high up the stars were, actually, and they stretched on forever behind her; in front of her was Equestria and she was just... everything else. She had no sense of scale, it all just was.
Her special talent may have been Magic—or being the stars maybe, she supposed she didn’t even know for sure any more—but her methodology was Science, and the first scientific method anypony learned was simple: poke it. She looked down to where her body was, and she reached out as if to touch her cheek. At first she felt a tickle of magic under her hoof as it passed through her face and she thought she must be intangible, it was a queer feeling, and she couldn’t help but giggle. She pulled the hoof back and the giggle caught in her throat. There was a hole in her face where it had dissolved under her hoof like so much stardust. Worse: the hole was spreading; its edge dissolving like a sugar cube in hot tea. In the blink of an eye, the rest of the body was gone with a sedate, glittering sparkle.
Twilight’s heart beat wildly in panic; what had she just done? Then, she realized she had a heart that could beat wildly, which was good. Immediately after, she realized she had gravity, and crashed down onto the marble balcony with a soft thud and a kerfuffle of feathers. “What–” she squeaked, scrambling to look up at Celestia in cold, clawing fear. “What in the bucking hay was that?!” she gasped. "That wasn’t teleportation! My body just... dissolved! In front of me! I watched it happen!”
Celestia reached her hooves around her student and hugged her tight. “Shh... Calm down, Twilight.” she cooed, stroking the young alicorn’s mane which had retained its starry appearance after being cut from the sky. “Yes; a small, vestigial part of you turned to stardust and starlight when you re-manifested here and it was no longer needed. It has now gone to rejoin the rest of you in your sky—which I must say is beautiful, Twilight.”
Momentarily distracted, Twilight’s spirits rose in expectation as she turned and realized that yes, she had done it; she had brought out the stars. Look, right there is—wait—suddenly her eyes widened and her stomach sank. She dropped back onto her flank as she stared up into the sky in utter despair. "The–the–” she stuttered, crying out “The stars are wrong!”
“They are all wrong!” bemoaned the navy-blue alicorn who was staring up at the night sky with nothing short of horror. “What didst that treacherous filly do to my stars?” She wasn’t sure ‘treacherous’ was truly the right word for Twilight Sparkle, but it was how she felt, and the moon princess was if nothing else, a creature of emotion.
She had sensed the magic of the lavender alicorn fill the sky as she abruptly flooded night with stars. All of Luna’s life, it had been herself filling the entire night sky; last night, she’d been alone, a tiny moon in a yawning empty void; now, Twilight Sparkle filled her world. The princess of the moon had come out onto her balcony expecting to see her familiar stars cradled in someone else’s magic; instead, she felt as if a crowd of strangers stared back at her from the sky. “What happened?” she shouted at the night sky; it didn’t answer, it didn’t know either.
Stomping back to her chambers with a scoff of disgust, she threw herself down on an antique fainting couch with midnight-blue upholstery. It was all just too much for her; she didn’t understand and she didn’t want to understand. She wanted it fixed. The thoughts in her head sounded like those of a petulant child and only served to make her angrier.
It didn’t help that this was hardly the first time she’d thought those words since her return and she was even beginning to tune them out herself. Why did ponies have to speak differently now? What was the point? Why had they done away with the abacus? It was a perfectly serviceable tool. What was the point of building another castle? Wasn’t the old one good enough?
Wasn’t she good enough?
Bitterly, she marveled frustratedly that she could feel so old and yet act so childish about it. She almost missed being Nightmare Moon. Where was the cold hate; the diabolical mischievousness; the mad vision that had coined the word ‘Lunacy’? She had told Twilight on Nightmare Night that the loss of her ‘dark powers’ was a good thing—and it was—but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d lost more than that. She felt so tediously, mind-numbingly sane, and now sanity just would not shut up about her incessant whining.
Yes, she was the princess of the moon. Yes, she’d always thought about herself that way; always felt the moon was the seat of her consciousness—but that didn’t mean the stars weren’t a part of her! It didn’t mean they didn’t matter to her! If they weren’t, she wouldn’t be so upset! If they didn’t, she wouldn’t feel like she’d lost everything she’d ever cared about! This was how she felt and nothing would change that. The moon was herself, but she’d loved the stars more than anything.
‘So go back outside and enjoy them,’ said the whisper of a voice named sanity.
“No, no, no, no, no!” Celestia’s student shouted. “Argh!.”
Twilight had promptly forgotten all about the apparent destruction of her mortal body and now shook her hooves in vexation at her stars. She’d demanded Celestia teach her the calming spell immediately; it wasn’t working. In fact, it was probably doing her more harm than good.
A flash of magical light splashed out of the young alicorn’s horn and her eyes went black again. “You! You look sort of like Polaris! You go over—AUGH!” Another flash of light, followed by another exasperated cry of frustration, “GRAH!”
Celestia wanted to tell her student that the spell was for helping calm her mind—not to replace the need for it—but Twilight knew exactly why the stars kept slipping out of her grasp. It didn’t help her calm down or get the stars where she was actually trying to direct them.
The elder alicorn couldn’t contain her desire to sigh; it had been going so well. She’d had Twilight calm and collected, and all it had taken was... well, it had taken reverting to their well-practiced roles of mentor and student. Inwardly, she resented it a little. It was a step backwards, but a necessary evil, she told herself. Necessary, maybe, but she couldn’t help but feel a little bitter after she’d tried to lighten the mood with a joke and got a ‘Yes, princess,’ in return. Maybe her humor needed work, but the coldness of the response was an unexpected barb.
Maybe it was a mistake not to declare the newborn alicorn a princess right off the bat. No one would have thought it strange at all—in fact, sending her back to be Ponyville’s librarian again would turn more heads—but no, she couldn’t do that to Twilight. Right now, Twilight needed desperately to be in control of her life, not be told what to do.
A little niggling voice in the back of Celestia’s mind pointed out that given control of her life, Twilight had wanted to be told what to do—but she told herself that this was different; this was familiar in ways that wouldn’t last if Twilight were forced to return to the castle and presented at court like some long-lost daughter. Twilight’s general insignificance had protected her from politics as a filly; it would be a disservice to her to change that now just because Celestia wanted her to be more familiar.
She waffled long and hard in her head about her manic student. Eventually, after a long while Celestia realized that the sounds of said student’s mad cursing had gone curiously missing. A quick glance at the sky revealed that the stars were no longer darting clumsily this way and that at Twilight’s insistence, and the elder alicorn dared hope that her student had actually fallen asleep; she was disappointed, but only slightly.
Twilight was breathing hard and her eyes were not the flat black of the night sky, but merely their usual violet color. Further, those eyes were not tightened in distress, but merely squinting blearily at the sky as if she didn’t recognize it—which Celestia supposed she didn’t, since it was still far removed from how Luna’s sky had looked even to the casual eye; stars clumped together in strings and clumps that would be unfamiliar to anyone who had ever seen Luna’s delicate, evenly spaced night sky. Briefly, Celestia considered simply fetching a blanket from her chambers and letting the younger alicorn nod off with her, but she dismissed the idea as selfish; better to get her home while she was pliable.
“Twilight,” she said in her most serene voice, trying her best not to startle the sleep deprived mare.
“Gah!” It didn’t work.
“Twilight, look at yourself... Or rather, stop looking at yourself. Do you recall what we spoke about earlier? About Ponyville? You’ve brought out your stars and they are fine; you need to go home and get some–”
“Ponyville!” Twilight interrupted with a shriek. “Of course! I just bought that special twenty-one-volume uranographers’-edition of ‘The Stars, the Universe and Everything’ to replace the ‘Astronomical Astronomer’s Almanac to all things Astronomy’ that Spike ruined! I can use that for reference!” Before Celestia could say anything, Twilight’s horn flashed, her eyes went black and she immediately became stardust that fwomph’d to the floor like a bucket of sand before blowing away in the cool night air. Celestia had to cover her face to avoid getting faithful student in her eyes, and by the time it was gone... well, it was gone, obviously.
The elder alicorn shook her head, wondering if she could call that success or not, though in the end she supposed it wouldn’t really make a difference. She couldn’t easily follow Twilight to Ponyville until dawn unless she took a carriage or winged it herself, so she resigned herself to letting her neurotic student wind down on her own. Twilight was flagging, she assured herself. She couldn’t last too much longer, and would probably wake up tomorrow to find she’d drooled all over volume two of the compilation she’d mentioned. As for the stars... Celestia was quite sure said compilation catalogued well over two million stars; the alicorn of the stars would get bored trying to reproduce Luna’s night eventually... right?
Well okay no, she wouldn’t, but it was Twilight’s prerogative to do what she liked with her stars; Celestia wouldn’t say anything, even if trying to make yourself pass as somepony else would have been considered vaguely creepy for a normal pony. In the end, the truth was that the new alicorn didn’t really have anything to worry about now. A few days in Ponyville with her friends would help her realize that.
Though her body had dissolved into stardust—and quite abruptly at that—Twilight had not yet manifested back at the library. The moment she’d decided she no longer needed to be at the Castle, her body had disappeared; now she was just the stars. She had no body to distract her—and the idea of that derailed her train of thought completely. For the moment, she forgot entirely that the stars were supposedly wrong; that she was wrong.
The oddness of that thought would have stuck in her mind if she was having it, but she wasn’t. The sleep-deprived mare of stars was finding herself looking wonderingly down on Ponyville. Specifically, she was wondering where exactly the library was; she knew it had to be there somewhere but just this moment that somewhere seemed to escape her—like she’d been reading for several pages, only to look back and realize none of it had actually gotten past her eyes.
The stars twinkled as she giggled at the idea applied to a town. It really was like she didn’t even recognize Ponyville; like she’d never been there before. It probably ought to have concerned her more, but the fact was that the whole thing had a strange novelty to it and she was distracted by the sheer beauty of the town she was seeing as if for the first time.
She had looked down on Ponyville from Canterlot before and had enjoyed how the clear winter nights would make the distance seem to vanish and the lights sparkle like a tiny fairy village sat just beyond her tower window. This was like that, but there was no tower window; there was no Twilight; there was just the great big sparkling night over Ponyville which twinkled again as she giggled in understanding of why Celestia had often found reason to refer to her subjects as ‘her little ponies.’
They really were kind of cute.
The stars twinkled some more and she lost track of time just watching them walking around their little town until slowly the streets emptied and things grew quiet.
As her gaze drifted on over the silent streets, Twilight realized the town looked even more fanciful and magical than it ought to have. There were no impenetrable shadows, no stark outlines. She could see every dark alley and corner with sparkling clarity—all at once—and the darkness held nothing to fear. In contrast, streets that were lit by pony means seemed to have an extra unearthly glow that made everything look misty and dreamlike.
The magical feel of the scene left her wondering if there was a more esoteric side to her being a part of the night. Was she just a pony who happened to also be the stars in the night sky, or would she also have powers over shadows, dreams and the creatures of the night? Would she hear ponies wishing on her stars? No, she told herself; the princesses had never had those kinds of silly powers. Celestia had told her once that she had magic related to her special talent like any normal unicorn, and she simply possessed the power and experience to bend it to almost any need. With this in mind, it didn’t take long for Twilight to think she understood the phenomenon.
Starlight. That was the answer. Wherever her starlight touched, she could see. It was weak, but ever present, shining down from every point in the sky. Every pinprick of light was like another eye and the clarity of her vision seemed to be proportional to the amount of her starlight something received. She could see inside some buildings, but only just. The interiors were fuzzier and fuzzier the more her light had to bounce, even—or rather, especially—in bright lamplight, which seemed to somehow provide its own interference. It occurred to her somewhat belatedly as her gaze wandered over sleeping ponies that she was invading their privacy and probably ought to stop—and only then did she realize that her drifting attention had brought her to look in on a most peculiar scene taking place in none other than the library she’d been looking for.
It was difficult to make out since the library tree was not deciduous and the leafy cover was quite good at catching and blocking her light even in winter, but it appeared to be Spike, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy sitting around a card table... playing poker.
Or trying to, anyway.
Spike and Rainbow Dash were too busy arguing over poker rules to notice when the starry black circle of sky visible through one of the library’s round windows seemed to push into the room and quietly settle down at the table. Fluttershy may have noticed, but she was too polite to say anything if she did.
“Everypony in Cloudsdale knows it’s supposed to be ‘Ten, Jack, Queen, King, Ace,’ Spike, stop trying to be difficult!” complained Rainbow Dash.
“That doesn’t even make any sense!” Spike retorted with equal fervor. "A jack is a male donkey; it doesn’t belong in a royal flush! Look, I’m dealing, so it’s Canterlot deck and Canterlot rules; ‘Ten, Prince, Princess, Princess, Ace. The princesses are interchangeable—but you can’t use one twice in a straight.”
“Nnnnggghh!” Rainbow Dash grunted, trying to express how wrong that was and failing. “Look. First, that’s racist; second, the Jack is a Gryphon thing or something, okay? The whole world plays with the standard deck, why does the stupid Canterlot nobility have to be different? –and why is Twilight even on the ace for that matter?”
Spike just rolled his eyes and started dealing four hands around the table. “There’s this law that says the likeness of anypony who works for the government is in the public domain,” he recited exactly as Twilight no doubt had explained to him many many times. “–and Twilight is the Princess’ Ace, so there; deal with it. In another month when all this gets out, it’ll probably be changed to princess, princess, princess, and everyone will have to get new decks—again—so we’re gonna use this one while we still can.”
Rainbow Dash grumbled, scooping up her cards with a hoof and placing them in the cardholder in front of her with her teeth a little awkwardly. Like most Pegasi, Dash was used to just sticking them in clouds, so the earth-pony contraption was a little clumsy for her. Surveying her hand, Dash stooped to bend her head down onto the table to look closely at one of the cards. “Well they could have at least done a better job on it then; it doesn’t even really look like her. I can’t put my hoof on it, but...” the blue pegasus looked back and forth between the card and the mare across the table from her a few times, comparing them.
A heartbeat passed, then there was a tumultuous clatter as Rainbow Dash jumped and scrambled back away from the table with a “Wah!” startling everyone in the room but Twilight, who she’d just realized was sitting at the table with them. “Holy—bucking—hay—Twilight!” she said between gasps as her heart ran away without her. “When did you—how did you–” she started, then squinted as she finally actually took in Twilight’s appearance. “Did... did you use Celestia’s shampoo or something?”
Twilight—for her part—looked quizzically at Rainbow Dash as if she had no idea what was going on, then looked down and realized she had a body. “Oh! Oh hey,” she giggled. “I’m here! That is so weird,” she beamed in happy amusement, “I don’t feel like I’m here.”
Spike, Rainbow Dash and Flutteryshy all looked at each other in concern. “...Twilight? Hey, Twilight, are you okay?” Spike probed. When she didn’t respond, he carefully set down the deck of cards and got up to nudge her in the ribs.
The sleep deprived alicorn’s only response to being poked was to fall out of her chair giggling, clutching her side, “Hee—hehe—hahaha!” she laughed, then got distracted looking at something on the ceiling.
“Oh. Oh my.” Fluttershy waved a hoof slowly in front of Twilight’s eyes, watching as the sleep deprived mare tracked it... poorly. “She looks... delirious. Does anypony know if she got any sleep last night?”
Spike looked away guiltily, “I, uhh... I dunno. We had an argument and I went to bed early. I sleep longer than her, so...”
Fluttershy studied the floorboards for a moment, then met Rainbow Dash’s eyes knowingly. The two of them had left their friend with a guilt trip, but now it was coming back to bite them.
“Maybe the princesses were just sharing the royal moonshine?” Rainbow Dash suggested halfheartedly, distinctly uncomfortable with the idea that she’d been anything but attentive of their friend. “I mean, who knows what they do after hours up there?”
Fluttershy bent over to sniff at Twilight’s breath—sending the prone mare into another fit of ticklish giggles as their noses touched—and shook her head. “Let’s just get her up to bed,” she said, rolling Twilight over so she could pick her up from behind and fly her up the stairs to her bedroom. The door closed after her with a click, and after a moment there was a surprised, muffled squeak from the butter-yellow pegasus.
“Wait!” Rainbow Dash shouted up the stairs. "What about the bet? –and the hair! Is nopony else wondering what’s up with her hair? There are stars or dandruff or something in it! She might need a shower!” There was no response. She stood there awkwardly for a few minutes before it was clear that Fluttershy had elected to watch over their sleeping friend and wasn’t coming back out.
Spike had vanished, leaving his ridiculous deck of cards on the table; awkwardly, Rainbow Dash looked at the front door and considered going home, but sighed in resignation. It wouldn’t mean as much as it would have yesterday, but she could sleep on the couch for one night to be there for Twilight. Resigned to her fate, she walked over to the familiar shelf of Daring Do books and hoofed one down; being the loyalest of friends was hard work.
“Is the filly gone?” Luna asked with a sour petulance as she heard hoofsteps that could only be Celestia clop quietly into the moon princess’ chambers.
“She is,” came her sister’s simple, aloof reply. That was Celestia, never rising to the bait. The clopping stopped as the older sister lowered herself next to Luna’s couch and gave her a nuzzle.
“Good. I do not think I could have sat with her at breakfast; not even for those ‘waffles’ the chef makes,” she stated dourly. Celestia gave a light chuckle at that, prompting Luna to crane her neck to look at her in confusion.
Celestia gave a wry smile. “Oh, I very much doubt Twilight will be awake for breakfast—even your afternoon breakfast. Knowing her, she’ll be out for at least sixteen hours; she hasn’t slept, you know,” she mentioned without much subtlety.
Luna frowned, unamused. “Thou art trying to excuse her actions by implying she was not of a right mind; it is not going to work.” It didn’t work, she told herself, though given a fair chance she might have felt a tiny bit guilty for yelling the filly off the roof. “She is an adult and will have to learn to take responsibility for her actions, deprived of sleep or not.”
“–an adult, you say?” Celestia smirked. “I was under the impression you thought of her as a troublesome filly now; quite the change of opinion from last night.”
“She is a an alicorn filly; it necessitates a certain maturity,” she groused unconvincingly. She’d walked right into that one.
“Now that you mention ‘her actions’, though,” Celestia started in a tone that clearly declared she needed no such prompting, “Since she left, I’ve been thinking. You see, she and I talked a bit about how she got her cutie mark.”
Luna craned her neck again to look at her older sister; she couldn’t help but be a little interested in the ungraceful change of subject, even if she’d rather not think about her right now. The japes were over; this was what her sister had really come in to talk about.
“It seems she got her cutie mark from wanting to raise the sun,” Celestia offered wonderingly.
“Congratulations, thy student of ten years loves and idolizes thee,” replied the bitter midnight blue mare. “I shall get the pink one to throw thee a party.”
“Don’t you think it’s rather interesting?” Celestia suggested. “You see—and I haven’t mentioned this to her yet—I don’t think this all happened just yesterday afternoon; I think it’s been going on longer than any of us realized.”
Luna furrowed her brow. “I do not see what thou art getting at, Tia. I had the stars still when I put them away yesterday.”
“Perhaps,” her older sister observed cryptically. “–but... That’s why I have to ask. What did it mean, ‘The stars shall aid in her escape?’”
“...thou shouldst not put so much stock in the wording of prophecies,” Luna asserted carefully after a pause, but the brilliant white alicorn refused to be deflected.
“Lulu... just tell me; did you—specifically you—regain control of the stars or otherwise arrange for them to be in a position to break you free?”
Luna was hesitant to answer. “I do not like what you are suggesting,” she stated.
“Luna,” Celestia insisted.
“...no,” she finally admitted. “–but that doesn’t mean anything; it was bound to happen eventually. As it is, it took a thousand years for them to align by chance.”
Celestia shook her head. “I don’t think they did; I think that through the act of anticipating it, she set you free.”
That night, Twilight fell into the deepest kind of sleep that only ponies who’ve spent the last thirty-six hours awake can achieve; not only that, but she was doubly blessed with the unexpected warm, happy contentedness of having somepony wrapped up in her arms.
It was a great disappointment when—in the middle of the night—she felt that pony squirming to get free and she reluctantly moved herself to oblige them before drifting back into her coma-like state. This was a source of considerable confusion when she finally awoke and found her arms wrapped around Fluttershy; Fluttershy was the wrong pony. Still half asleep, she looked around the bedroom, blearily searching for somepony white, round and with a mass of roughly eighty quintillion tons.
Sharing the Night: Chapter 4
“That’s no moon," Twilight thought through a haze of sleepiness. It was a pony; it was in fact, Fluttershy. Unlike Twilight, she seemed to be happily wide awake as attested to by the great big teal eyes that blinked calmly not more than six inches from Twilight’s face. “...Fluttershy,” she stated flatly.
“Um—yes, Twilight?” came the butter-yellow pegasus’ immediate chipper response.
“...why are you in my bed?” she asked, –and why was I expecting somepony else? she added to herself.
“Oh. Umm... You came home late last night acting delirious,” the pegasus mare explained. “Rainbow thought you were drunk, but I’m pretty sure it was just sleep deprivation. I brought you up to bed and—umm—you were very forceful. It’s okay though; you were so into it, I just couldn’t bring myself to stop you.”
Twilight stared at Fluttershy for a moment. “–by which you mean that I used freaky alicorn-earth-pony strength to wrestle you into bed and cuddle you like a teddy bear. A platonic teddy bear.”
Fluttershy blinked. “Yes, that’s what I said.”
Twilight let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. Celestia was right, a good night’s sleep did wonders for panic attacks.
“But—umm—Twilight?” Fluttershy asked sheepishly.
“Hmm?” the sleepy mare responded vaguely.
“The stars in your mane are very nice to watch, but can we get out of bed now? It’s four in the afternoon.”
“–wha?” Twilight blinked, realizing she was still holding the yellow pegasus in a vice-grip. She jerked her hooves away with a start and reflexively shoved Fluttershy out of bed in panic; the confused pegasus made a warbling, thumping squeak as she rolled across the floor and slammed into the bedroom door.
“Ohmygosh! Fluttershy!” Twilight gasped, covering her mouth with her hooves. “I’m so sorry!” she apologized as she jumped out of bed to help her yellow friend—but the maltreated mare was already stumbling to her feet no worse for wear beyond a passing resemblance to a certain mailmare. Apparently pegasi really were light and fluffy enough to fall off mountains—or out of beds—and be fine. She wondered why she’d never thought about it before.
As Fluttershy stabilized herself on the door her stomach rumbled, much to her embarrassment. “Oh—umm—I’m sorry. It’s just that I haven’t had breakfast,” she explained. “–or lunch, or—um—anything at all, actually. Since last night, I mean.”
Twilight facehooved, glancing out the bedroom window to see that it was indeed late in the afternoon. “Augh, Fluttershy, you could have just woken me up,” she shook her head. “Come on, let’s get something to eat; I’m starving too.”
“Oh no, Twilight; I couldn’t have done that,” Fluttershy insisted sweetly as she stopped leaning up against the door for support and opened it.
Twilight sighed as she followed the pegasus out into the stairway. “You really should have; I thought you learned to stand up for yourself even without being mean about it?”
“Oh, no, Twilight," Fluttershy repeated apologetically. “I mean I really couldn’t have. That is to say—umm—I tried. –and Spike tried. –and Rainbow Dash tried too. Your eyes were all black and it was like you weren’t even there; we were really worried, but a doctor would have seen your wings and—um—Spike said it was probably some alicorn thing.”
Twilight’s face flushed a bit in embarrassment. “Oh... yeah, uhh, sorry. That was...” she started to explain, but hesitated. Nopony knew that the royal sisters effectively were the sun and moon. She hadn’t been asked to keep it a secret or anything, but... well, it was one thing to just grow wings and a princesshood one day—ponies knew how they were supposed to respond to princesses—but it was something else entirely to point up at the stars in the sky and say ‘See that? That’s me. Go ahead and wave, because I can see you.’
“...some alicorn thing, yeah,” she finished lamely. “It’s how I control the stars,” she continued as truthfully as possible; she wasn’t trying to keep anyone in the dark, after all. Another glance outside confirmed that the stars had been put away properly. “I guess I managed to do it in my sleep,” she noted as way of explanation, vaguely remembering the feeling she’d had of the moon trying to pull itself out of her... embrace? “–with some prompting,” she added cryptically.
“So,” Fluttershy prompted as they entered the main room of the library where Spike was visible shelving books and the sound of turning pages came from one of the couches. “You worked everything out with the princesses?”
Twilight sighed. “Yes, everything is...” she started to say everything was fine, but it wasn’t, really. Luna was most definitely not fine. “...in the open,” she finished.
“See? I told you she’d be fine,” Spike noted with barely disguised pride in his judgement as he spotted her and set down the book he was carrying.
“Yeah yeah,” came a rough voice that was unmistakably Rainbow Dash from the couch. “So, how long?” she asked mercilessly.
Twilight blinked. “What?”
There was a paffing sound as a Daring Do book snapped shut and she poked her head over the back of the couch to look at Twilight seriously. “How long after you saw Celestia did it take you to fess up.”
“Umm...” the lavender mare delayed, looking away. “W–why?”
Dash leapt over the couch and flopped a sack of bits on the table.
“You... you were betting on me?” Twilight balked. “Dash!”
“What? Come on, how long?” she repeated as more bits found their way to the table.
“Um... specifically Celestia?” the alicorn asked evasively.
“Yeah,” Dash confirmed.
Twilight’s head drooped until her mane hid her eyes from view. “O–oh... Umm...” she counted in her head. “T-two or three...”
“Hours?” Dash suggested dubiously.
“Minutes?” Spike chimed in hopefully.
“...seconds,” Twilight admitted.
Dash facehooved audibly. “Augh! You... you...” the rainbow-maned mare grimaced. “Damnit, Twilight! Couldn’t you have held off for five measly minutes?”
“Five minutes? You bet on five minutes, Dash?” Indignation quickly replaced embarrassment. “Thanks for the vote of confidence!”
“Hey!” Dash shouted. “I’ll have you know that was the longest bet, Twilight! I believed in you!”
Twilight blinked as she processed that, “wait, then who–” she started as she turned to see Fluttershy scooping three bags of bits into her saddlebag with one wing.
Caught in the act, the butter-yellow pegasus gave a shy, innocent smile that almost seemed to squeak as she made it. “A–anyway,” she stuttered, then hurriedly spat out “I really should go check on my animals thanks so much bye!” in one long pileup of words before disappearing out the door in a puff of wind that would have made Dash proud... when she was five.
The lavender mare facehooved, then something suddenly crossed her mind and her head perked up. “Wait, there were three bags of bits. Where did Spike get–” suddenly, she noticed the baby dragon was no longer shelving books. Indeed, he seemed to have gone missing entirely. “Spike?” she called. “SPIKE! SPI—KE!” she shouted, but he had apparently got while the getting was good. “I won’t forget about this, Spike!” she informed the library in general. “I know where you live!”
The lavender librarian sighed and flopped down at the dining table, cradling her head in her hooves in exasperation. Actually she was kind of glad Fluttershy and Spike had skipped out on her, she needed a little bit of peace and quiet.
“So, uhh...” came an awkward voice.
Right, Rainbow Dash was still here, she reminded herself. So much for peace and quiet, she thought, but Dash actually looked kind of serious as she sat down at the table next to Twilight. “What is it, Dash?” she asked tiredly. “Got any more bets I should know about?”
“Well I was really wondering about your mane...” Dash suggested at first, but hurried on after a look from Twilight. “–but, uhh, I really just wanted to ask... you’re not just here to pack up and move back to Canterlot, are you? ...‘cause that would be totally uncool.”
Twilight couldn’t help but let her lips curl a bit at the reminder that she had friends who really did care. “No Dash, I’m not moving to Canterlot. Celestia says I don’t even have to be a princess.”
“Oh, cool. So, everything’s good?” she asked.
“...not really, no.” Twilight sighed as she finally had a moment to review everything that had happened yesterday. “I screwed up, Dash. Luna and I got into a... not a fight, but...”
“Is that what that was?” Dash asked wonderingly.
“Huh?” Twilight asked, bewildered.
“Clop off’” Dash quoted, making the quotemarks with her hooves.
“...you heard that, huh?” Twilight asked rhetorically, sinking into her seat to hide her embarrassment..
“Twilight, they probably heard it in the Griffon Kingdom,” Dash asserted.
“Oh Celestia I hope not,” Twilight balked. “That would be... unfortunate.” The Griffins always were easily offended. “–anyway,” she bore on, “it’s not just that. You might not have noticed, but the stars are all messed up for some reason—I’m sure Luna’s ecstatic about that too—and we still don’t even know anything about why this even happened.”
“Yeah, but who cares about any of that?” Dash dismissed in a carefree tone.
“Uhh—I do?” the alicorn pointed out affrontedly.
“Yeah, well, stop," Dash insisted. “Those are Canterlot problems. What does it matter right now if you pissed off Luna or if Luna pissed off the birdies?”
Twilight was unconvinced and unamused. “–and the stars?”
Dash shrugged and leaned back, “eh, everypony was probably getting bored with the old ones anyway—and if they do complain, you should tell them to stuff it. You might not have noticed, but from where I’m sitting it looks like the stars are yours now, Twilight. All the astronomology nerds in the world exist just to tell you how cool they are, not what to do with them.”
Briefly, Twilight wished she lived in the same world as Rainbow Dash. “It’s not that simple,” she moped. “Sailor ponies use the stars for navigation, Dash! I can’t just take that away!”
“Yeah, Twilight, you can. Come on—really—those sailor ponies still have the sun and moon, they’ll figure something new out in like, a day. It never mattered that some stars looked like a filly’s drawing of a spoon, just where it was in the sky.”
“A filly’s—Dash!” Twilight balked, appalled. “How can you call Luna’s constellations–”
“–Twi!” Dash interrupted. “Luna’s been gone for a thousand years; do you really think she made all that stuff up? If they had ponies like you that liked that stuff back then, Nightmare Moon might not have happened!”
Twilight stopped, started to say something, then stopped again.
“Hay, maybe you should ask her sometime,” the sky-blue pegasus suggested. “–but not right now!”
“Look—fine, Dash. If you don’t think that’s important, what is?” the irate alicorn fumed.
“All you should be thinking about right now is what’s on the other side of that door,” the pegasus gestured with one hoof. Twilight just stared in confusion at the door outside. “Ponyville and three friends you’re still lying to.”
Twilight’s eyes widened a bit in fear, then she simply headdesked. “Thank you, Rainbow Dash—because I needed more to worry about.”
“Hey—I don’t care what you tell Ponyville, but Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Rarity need to find out about this from you and nopony else. Look, you had your little panic attack and everything’s fine now; the longer you leave them out of this and the longer you make Fluttershy and me cover for you, the worse it’s going to get.”
“I know,” the lavender alicorn groused as she pushed her chair away and stood up to stretch. “At least Ponyville won’t be a problem. I came up with a spell last night to make me look like a regular unicorn,” she explained as her horn glowed for a moment and the wings disappeared. “It’s just an illusion, but as long as I don’t pomf anyone in the face on the street, I shouldn’t have anything to worry about,” she smiled proudly.
Dash just stared at her. “Yeeeeah—that’s not going to work.”
Twilight cocked her head to the side. “What do you mean?” she asked, twisting to make sure her wings were invisible—they were, but something else wasn’t. “Aw, ponyfeathers!,” she swore. Her mane and tail remained as they had been since her first manifestation last night—solid magic cut from the night sky itself. Briefly, she wondered if the rest of her was no longer flesh and blood either, but she didn’t have time to continue that line of thought.
“No—no wait—I can still make this work!” she declared with a twinge of mania. “I... I just need a hat!”
“Two hats,” Rainbow Dash noted sarcastically. “One for your head and one for your dock.”
“I... I...” Twilight stammered, trying to figure something out.
“Face it Twi—even if you did that, Rare would murder you the second you walked into her shop—and then she’d feel bad. –and then I’d feel bad for not saving your life by putting a stop to your wacky hijinks.”
Twilight grumbled defeatedly, dispelled the unicorn illusion for the moment—and at the exact same moment, her stomach grumbled angrily as well. “Spike!” she shouted, turning to look into the kitchen. “What’s holding up breakf–” she started to ask, but was stopped in her tracks by the sight of a completely empty room. “Right, no Spike, no breakfast,” she remembered, thumping her head against the doorjamb.
Suddenly Rainbow Dash’s face lit up with a grin. “Oh hey, don’t worry about breakfast—I’ve got that covered,” she said as she motioned Twilight over to the couch. “There’s food from Sugar Cube Corner.”
“Oh thank Celestia!” Twilight beamed happily as she followed Dash out to the center of the library. “You have no idea how hungry I—wait, I don’t see any–”
The next thing Twilight knew, she was being flung at Rainbow Dash speeds out of the library, tumbling head over hooves in the fresh white snow. Just as she rolled to a stop wearing a fresh coat of powder, the library door slammed shut.
Merely dazed and confused from being flung out of the library, Twilight stumbled back to the library door, shaking herself off along the way. For some reason, the door was locked. “Dash!” she yelled, banging on the door. “What in Equestria–”
“There is food from Sugar Cube Corner,” Dash’s rough voice yelled from the other side of the door. “You just have to go get it!”
“What—DASH! You–!”
“I’m saving your life!” the voice behind the door insisted. “Say ‘hi’ to Pinkie Pie for me!”
Twilight thumped her head on the door and sighed, sinking down into a sitting position on the library’s doorstep as she tried to figure out what she was going to do. Unfortunately, it was hard to think with the din of late-afternoon traffic all mumbling and clopping—actually she didn’t hear any clopping. She lifted her gaze to see why, and suddenly realized everypony in sight had stopped where they stood.
–and they were all looking at her.
–and her mane.
–and her wings.
“...oh, horseapples.”
Celestia found Luna in their private dining area miserably poking at a pair of waffles with dark blueberry syrup matching the younger sister’s coat—and mood. “A little late even for your breakfast, isn’t it?” she observed as she poured herself a cup of coffee.
“I didst not sleep well,” Luna mumbled.
“Something on your mind?” Celestia prodded knowingly.
“Taxes,” the weary alicorn deflected.
The princess of the sun shook her head. “Lulu, I know there’s a lot to learn about how Equestria and the language have changed—and that much of it is your stubborn pride—but that is not how you pronounce ‘Twilight Sparkle’ and you know it.”
Luna poked her waffles unproductively with a small silver breakfast fork. “She is excessively clingy when she sleeps,” the princess of the moon explained. “–so much so that it made setting the moon difficult.”
Celestia was inappropriately amused at the image of a sleepy Twilight hanging onto her younger sister like a narcoleptic ball and chain; she did her best not to let it show. “Is that really such a bad thing?”
“Yes!” Luna threw her fork down on the plate and leaned back in her chair with a groan. “Shall we give away... give away your rainbows to Rainbow Dash and see how that works out for you, Tia? Keep her in the same sky with you while she prances about shows them off like shiny new ribbons?” the midnight blue alicorn demanded flippantly, then flopped forward with a sigh. “This is not how I expected it to be.”
“Oh?” Celestia asked indifferently as she blatantly helped herself to Luna’s waffles from across the table and failed to mention that Rainbow Dash would probably be insulted at the accusation of prancing. “Not how you expected what to be, exactly?”
“Twilight Sparkle!” Luna shouted frustratedly. “She just—I just–”
“What did you expect, Lulu?” Celestia asked, arching one eyebrow as she sipped her coffee to wash down a bite of waffle. “You’ve read her reports, you know how she is. She makes mistakes; everypony does. Sometimes those mistakes hurt; it’s part of growing up.”
“I know, Tia, I just...” she didn’t have the words.
“You just didn’t expect her to hurt you,” the elder alicorn suggested.
“...yes. That,” Luna admitted with a reluctant grumble.
Twilight stared in shock at the crowd.
The crowd stared back in silence.
Hesitantly, she found her way to her hooves and took a tentative step forward.
The crowd parted and bowed.
The sight of prostrated ponies disturbed her more than it ever had before when it was her they were bowing to; she tried to draw herself up to shout at them. She was going to yell at them and explain that she wasn’t a princess—that she just wanted to be treated normally—but she just... didn’t have the energy to deal with it right now so she just... she let them do it.
To her everlasting shame, she let them bow and gape at her for now if it would just keep them quiet and let her pretend everything was normal.
Dejected and disappointed with herself, she turned and started walking down the street towards Sugar Cube Corner.
Nopony said anything the entire way.
The bell on the door cheerfully broke the utter silence as Twilight entered the bakery.
“Hey Twilight!” Pinkie Pie beamed from behind the counter. “Wow! You look tired! I bet you’re hungry too! What can I get you?”
“Hey Pinkie,” she greeted unenergetically. “What have you got for somepony wishing she could to do grievous harm unto a friend who doesn’t know the meaning of moderation?” she asked sarcastically.
The pink party pony brightened up and disappeared behind the counter for a moment before popping back up. “Bear claws! Raaawr!” she faux-roared as she waved one about threateningly with each hoof before packaging up the glazed pastries. “Bear claws are super great for nonlethal pony-to-pony combat! Even though they’re called claws, you can actually throw them too which is really really useful against Pegasi! Anything else?”
Twilight couldn’t help but smile at her antics. “Just some orange juice,” she said before taking a bite of bear claw. “I’d like to at least pretend this is breakfast as normal.”
“Sure thing!” the earth pony chirped before dashing off into the back room only to return seconds later walking on her hind legs juggling oranges and singing nonsense to herself as she sliced them in half and tossed them into a juice press with the kind of hoof control only a practiced earth pony could manage. It made Twilight feel a little bit better about being an alicorn as she noted that no matter what magical traits she shared with the three pony races, there were still things she’d probably never be able to do.
Pinkie Pie passed the cup of orange juice to Twilight, who hoofed over some bits and glanced over her shoulder at the crowds outside. Then, the lavender librarian did something she never thought she’d do; she sat down at a table in Sugar Cube Corner to eat during Pinkie’s shift... because it would be quieter and less stressful than the alternative.
A minute or so passed as the freshly awoken mare ate and Pinkie Pie just... hovered expectantly. Eventually the pregnant silence became too much, and Twilight searched her mood for something to talk about.
“Pinkie,” the sullen alicorn sighed. “What do you do when apologizing only makes things worse?”
“Well that’s easy, silly! Stop apologizing!” the party pony beamed in response.
Twilight perked up in expectation “–and...?”
“–and what, Twilight?” Pinkie Pie inquired with a cock of her head, as if the lavender mare had suddenly changed the subject.
“You don’t apologize... but what do you do?” she clarified insistently.
Pinkie Pie blinked. “Do? How should I know?”
“Pinkie, you’re friends with everypony in Ponyville,” Twilight pointed out. “You’re like... The drunken master of friendship! You ought to have some idea.”
“Ooooh,” the pink party pony said with sudden understanding. “Silly Twilight! I’m not friends with everypony in Ponyville.”
That wasn’t the answer she was expecting. “You aren’t?” she wondered in surprise.
“Nope!” she beamed. “I’m friends with every pony in Ponyville! That’s every–” she paused, marking a distance in the air with her hooves. “–space–” she continued seriously, moving her hooves along to the side in starts. “–pony! –and also, every space-pony!”
“...space-pony,” Twilight said with no inflection through a bite of pastry.
“Yeah! I mean, ponies are all different, you know? –so being somepony’s friend is always different too! That’s why I’m every pony’s friend! It’d be really boring if they were all the same! Ooh, ooh! You know what? I know every pony in Ponyville so maybe I can help you! Who are you after?”
Who was she ‘after’? That was a funny way of putting it, she thought. “I just want Luna to... I don’t want her to hate me.”
“Ooh, ooh, you mean the princess?” Pinkie beamed. “That’s easy! Stop making all the kids scared of her on Nightmare Night!”
Twilight paused for a moment with her mouth open, then very nearly caught the last of her breakfast between hoof and face as the two sought each other out like magnets. “Pinkie, I never did that. You did that. I was the one helping her out!”
“Oh, well then aren’t you already her friend?” Pinkie suggested as she took Twilight’s garbage and cleaned up the table.
Twilight leaned back in her chair, searching the ceiling for an answer. “I dunno... I guess?”
“–then she can’t hate you!” the pink party pony grinned as she suddenly pulled Twilight to her hooves. “So cheer up!” Pinkie shook her. “We can’t have you all down for the—uhh—” Pinkie suddenly stopped in mid sentence and let go of the lavender alicorn to look around for something to substitute for what she was going to say. She didn’t find it under the cashbox or inside the donut display.
Twilight just gave a little chuckle and smiled. “Look, Pinkie,” she said, changing the subject for her pink friend. “Thanks for not pestering me about the elephant in the room, really. I appreciate it.”
Pinkie Pie pulled her head out of the cupboard, covered in powdered sugar. “Elephant? There was an elephant in the room?” she asked with a mixture of confusion and concern. “Oh no—did he want something? Mrs. Cake is always telling me to pay more attention!”
Twilight shook her head. “I mean... me,” she said, gesturing to herself; mane, wings and all.
Pinkie Pie was confused for a moment, then gave a short snorting laugh. “Don’t be silly, Twilight! You’re not an elephant! Elephants don’t have wings!”
Twilight just smiled. “Like I said... thanks,” she said, as she made to leave. “Oh,” she paused halfway out the door. “–and what time can I expect the ’–uhh–’”
“Eight o’clock!” Pinkie beamed happily.
“Right,” the alicorn nodded, and shut the door behind her.
She wished she hadn’t.
The crowd was still there.
The door of the Carousel Boutique made a polite pa-tump despite the haste with which it was shut. The mare who had shut it, however, was in a slightly less polite state and somewhat resented the door’s quiet composure. She’d started out walking in simple awkward silence outside of Sugar Cube Corner, making her way towards Rarity’s shop with dozens, if not hundreds of eyes watching her every step in complete silence.
Unconsciously, she’d stiffly started to walk faster; the crowd didn’t follow, but there were always more of them everywhere she went, watching her. Eventually, her stiff walk had turned into a skittish canter as she passed more and more silent faces. When the boutique had finally come into view, her skittish canter had finally blossomed into a full-out nervous gallop until she burst through the door—which is how she’d ended up where she was now; leaning on the inside of said door, gasping for breath and slightly perturbed that it didn’t even have the decency to slam properly.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have a chance to catch her breath before an icy voice came from the doorway that led to the back room.
“You!” Rarity hissed in the third most hostile voice Twilight had ever heard from the element of generosity (the second and first were of course reserved for ex-suitors she had gotten over—Blueblood and Tom, in that order.)
“I am not talking to you until you apologize!” Rarity shrieked in a hurt-sounding voice, staying where she was at the edge of the room.
The lavender alicorn looked back over her shoulder at the door, beyond which a whole crowd of ponies loomed. Of course the news would have outrun her, she reasoned. She wondered if perhaps she should have come to Rarity first, but her stomach hadn’t given her a choice in the matter.
“Well?” Rarity prompted impatiently. “Let’s have it then,” the fashionista demanded, taking a tentative step forward.
Twilight dropped her head down in resignation. “I’m sorry for not telling you about my wings, Rarity. I was being silly and paranoid.”
Rarity blinked. “What? No—let’s have that horrible sweater!” she cried. “Out with it! I want to see it burn.”
“The... sweater? Really, Rarity? I don’t have the sweater with me,” the librarian stated in a flat monotone. “I have alicorn wings,” she paused. “You don’t even care, do you.”
“Oh—err—yes... I’m sorry Twilight—they’re very nice—but you have to understand, a mare has certain needs.” Needs that involved fire, apparently.
Twilight made a noise that was somewhere between an exasperated sigh and a grunt of frustration. “Look, fine. Pinkie Pie is arranging a thing at eight for obvious reasons. If it means that much to you, you can have the sweater then. You can make a whole event of it. You can have all my sweaters.”
Rarity’s eyes widened as she gasped in utter horror. “You mean—there are more of them?!” she cried in revulsion and fell into a convenient fainting couch. “Twilight!” she shouted as she twisted dramatically on the couch, “You cad! You criminal! You depraved madmare! How could you?”
If Twilight wore a watch, she would have checked it. “Are you done now?”
Rarity hesitated a moment to think, one hoof on her forehead. “...yes, I think so,” she confirmed as she swept her legs out off the couch and leaned one elbow on the headrest to actually look at the alicorn of the stars. “You do look rather fetching—perhaps a little ruffled I suppose. Do you sparkle or is that just snow...?”
“You don’t seem surprised about the, uh...” Twilight fanned out her wings and wiggled them; she was getting a little better at the fine motor controls.
“Well—I’m not, am I? I mean, I’m not stupid, Twilight. You aren’t a filly anymore to just suddenly be having growth spurts for no good reason—and then there were the stars, and you came out of the bath with just a towel over your wings. You weren’t really hiding it, were you now?”
“A towel over my...” she repeated distantly, suddenly remembering.
Heck, I bet Rarity would have seen through you too if she could have brought herself to look at that horrible thing you were wearing, Rainbow Dash had said. Well, she hadn’t been wearing ‘that horrible thing’ the whole time, had she? Twilight would have facehooved again right then and there but for concerns that she was beginning to wear a permanent rut into her face by now. “You could have said something.”
Rarity scoffed. “What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t let you think you had secrets?” the white unicorn asked rhetorically.
“A good one?” the young alicorn joked sarcastically in answer.
“Anyway, forget about that. Princess," Rarity stated, enunciating the word like it was the shiniest jewel in a crown. “What’s that going to be like?”
“Oh, no, I’m not going to be a princess,” Twilight explained matter-of-factly. “Princess Celestia offered, but I said ‘no.’ I couldn’t just leave Ponyville.”
“You what,” Rarity asked flatly, one eye twitching.
“Well... yeah!” she declared proudly. “Being a princess just isn’t what I—”
“OUT!” Rarity cried, throwing Twilight back out into the street and slamming the door.
Twilight only remembered her flight from the Carousel Boutique in the vaguest of terms—just enough to wish she’d thought to utilize actual flight, or better, teleportation since her flight was not quite up to snuff yet. As it was she had found herself on her back, surrounded by all those eyes and she’d just... stumbled to her hooves and ran. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew that this was becoming a problem, but right now she was just happy to find herself out on the road to Sweet Apple Acres, blissfully alone.
There was a time when just the walk to Applejack’s farm would have tired her out. As spread out as Canterlot Castle and Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns were, Canterlot was still a city and Twilight had still been little more than a bookworm. She hadn’t exactly been unfit when she came to Ponyville, but the key word of Sweet Apple Acres was, after all, acres. There was, quite unapologetically, a lot of it.
Fast forward a couple years, and now exhaustion was the furthest thing from her mind; physical exhaustion, anyhow. Her mental state was perhaps a little more frazzled than she’d have liked to admit, though she thought she was hiding it rather well. Physically on the other hand, though the librarian had certainly been breathing hard from her flightless flight out of Ponyville, that had subsided and now she just felt... refreshed. Energized, even. Not only that, but for the first time since this had all started, she even felt optimistic despite her frazzled nature.
Her friends understood; neither Pinkie Pie nor Rarity had made a big deal about it at all—not really, if she understood Rarity like she thought she did—and now all she had left to do was to tell Applejack. Applejack was one of the most grounded and practical ponies Twilight knew. This would be simple, easy and quick, she told herself.
In fact, she was almost disappointed when she looked up and realized she was already at the Apple family homestead. She was actually disappointed when she found the Apple family homestead empty, save for a single napping Granny Smith whom Twilight did her best not to disturb.
It wasn’t hard to conclude that the Apples were still out doing... whatever it was apple farmers do over the winter. The Apples weren’t known for being slackers; if there was anything they could do now to make life easier during apple-bucking season, they’d be out doing it. Twilight wouldn’t be surprised to find them down in the cellar making apple preserves, out in the barn getting fresh hay or even managing some sort of secret magical underground apple farm.
Disappointingly, she didn’t find them down in the cellar or out in the barn, and as far as she could tell there was no magical underground apple farm—secret or not. The only things left she could do were to either sit and wait, wake Granny Smith or search the fields herself. She was surprised to find that the last idea didn’t immediately fill her with dread and imagined exhaustion. Actually it sounded like a great idea to her; the whole orchard felt subtly alive to her, and the expectation of having a good run was building into a feeling of—no, wait. Suddenly she had a much better idea.
She looked out over the wide open fields of Sweet Apple Acres and rustled her wings in anticipation. Despite earlier thoughts about the caliber of her flying ability, surely here—she thought—the third time would be the charm.
Stretching her wings out to their full extension sent shivers of relief down her spine. The snow she’d been thrown into twice today had melted off into a simple dewy shine that caught the late afternoon sunset beautifully. Being flung out of buildings had also begun to take its toll on Twilight’s wings, though; they were a bit ruffled. Regrettably, she had only been an alicorn for two days and hadn’t yet had any lessons in wing care. Worse, she hadn’t yet been told why—other than comfort—such care was necessary.
She was about to find out.
Starting with a gulp and a gallop, she pointed herself at the south orchard and launched into the air. Despite a rocky start involving quite a bit of asynchronous flapping to try and level herself off, she quickly found herself airborne, though in no less rocky a state.
It wasn’t that her maltreated wings weren’t capable of providing enough lift; they just weren’t quite capable of providing the same lift—or glide with quite the same resistance. The awkward uneven flapping felt like she was galloping down a hill, never quite able to get her balance but still barely managing not to crash in any spectacular manner. She did come very close to crashing several times, however, only managing to swoop back up into the sky at the last moment. She was so occupied simply staying airborne that the idea of searching for Applejack had left her mind completely. Sadly, Applejack was not handicapped in any such way.
“Get outta here ya thievin’ pegasus!” came a thickly accented voice somewhere in the field below, immediately followed by a whomp and a splat of apple-scented pain in Twilight’s barrel and head. At that moment, nopony could have contested the practicality and effectiveness of apples and apple products as ordnance rated for buffalo, dragons and evidently alicorns. Not only that, but the small sweet fruit seemed to be doubly effective when aided by the stealthiest of stationary combatants, malus domestica.
That is to say, Twilight never saw the apple tree.
Whump.
“Uhh—sis? Ah think ya just shot down Princess Luna.”
Twilight didn’t actually lose consciousness, but there was a distinct period where said consciousness was most certainly misplaced and possibly sent on to Manehattan by mistake, where it had to be sent back by carriage over Equestria’s rockiest roads. When Twilight became Princess, she’d make sure the main thoroughfares got—and then her head cleared.
She felt a bit like a newborn foal as she dizzily propped her legs up under herself and wobbled to a stand. She found it necessary to keep her eyes on her hooves just in case they decided to give up the fight without her, which is how she noticed four more hooves stretched out in front of her; two orange and two yellow.
Then, the ringing in her head died down, and her hearing came back only to be filled immediately by a run-on string of apologies already in progress from one of the prostrated ponies.
“–ah’m mighty sorry, yer highness, ya see I just–”
“–Applejack,” Twilight tried to interrupt.
“–thought you was a friend of mine who’s always–”
“Applejack!” she interjected again futilely.
“–stealin’ mah apples on account of the sunset muddying up yer colors and–”
“Applejack!” the lavender alicorn shouted one last time and was finally successful at halting the torrent of apologies from the bowing earth pony—though not with the expected result.
“Hsst! Quiet down Twilight!” the orange mare hissed to the side sotto voce with her eyes still downcast. “Cain’t ya see ahm trying t’ apologize t’ the Princess?”
Twilight’s hoof only barely twitched. She was getting a handle on her facehoof-reflex.
“Uhm, sis...” Apple Bloom pitched in hesitantly; she’d peeked up at the ‘princess’ like any little filly would have and now she was rising to her hooves, her eyes shocked wide and awestruck.
“You too, Apple Bloom! Quiet!”
“–but sis—that weren’t no Princess Luna ya shot down...” the filly noted with uncertainty in her voice.
Applejack’s downcast face went from worry to outright fear. “Don’t tell me it’s–” She exploded into motion, grabbing Apple Bloom and leaping back from the night-colored alicorn, ready to buck if she attacked. “Nightmare M—Twilight?” she stuttered, blinking in surprise.
Twilight’s face was unreadable, “Yep. Nightmare Twilight. That’s me,” she said intending exasperation and sarcasm; it just came out flat.
Applejack shrank back subtly, worry and confusion clear on her face as she pushed Apple Bloom up on her back protectively. She was... afraid of Twilight? She thought she was serious?
A twinge of guilt tightened in her Twilight’s chest... and a little hurt too; actually, maybe more than a little hurt. “–and by that I mean just regular old Twilight,” the alicorn of the stars clarified meekly.
Applejack was still wary. “–but... y’all got the stars in yer mane and everything...”
“Yeah, umm...” she hesitated, worrying her hoof into the dirt nervously. She didn’t want to make it sound like she was any different. “Luna... won’t be handling them any more.” Twilight blinked as she heard the words at the same time as Applejack. No wait, that didn’t come out right either!
“W-what’d you do to her?” the earth pony accused aggressively, suddenly actively hostile. “If you’ve hurt the princesses...”
“Applejack!” Twilight exclaimed in affront and a little bit insulted. Is that what Applejack thought of her? “I didn’t hurt anypony! Well I mean, I did, but I didn’t hurt her hurt her! If anything she’s the one that bucked me off a mountain!”
“–and that made it right to... to whatever, did it?” the earth pony countered vehemently; her mind apparently made up now that Twilight had—what? Turned villain? This was getting ridiculous.
“Wha—I didn’t whatever anypony!” Twilight shouted, automatically responding to her friend’s hostility without even vetting the words for sense. Why was Applejack responding like this? Didn’t she trust Twilight?
“Oh yeah? Is that what the princesses will say?” Applejack demanded. “Then how come yer here and not in Canterlot gettin’ it fixed?”
“The princesses don’t even know what happened!” she fumed in anger and frustration—at least, that’s what she thought it was. For some reason, her eyes were starting to burn. Applejack. Why didn’t Applejack understand? She was so bewildered that the next accusation came out of nowhere and she wasn’t ready for it.
“So y’all think yeh got away with it, huh?”
“Wh–” For some reason, that poleaxed her. “What? Just—what?” She didn’t have an answer for that. “There isn’t anything to...” there isn’t anything to get away with, she started to simply deny, but there was, wasn’t there? No—it wasn’t the same at all! she told herself.
“No, no! I... This isn’t...” This isn’t my fault, she tried instead, but she knew better. “I... I never...” I never asked for this. Another lie, as Celestia herself had pointed out. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go at all—and why were her eyes burning? “I just... I...”
Oh.
She was crying.
How awkward.
Strange, she thought. Why was she crying? It was awful sudden and she didn’t even seem to be a part of the process, she just wanted... she just felt... actually, she was having trouble putting thoughts together just this moment. For a moment she just... stopped. Tears continued to build up until she could barely make out the antagonistic orange blob that was supposed to be her friend. Eventually, she took a breath, and it came out as a gasp and a sob. Oh—there—now she was starting to feel it.
It felt like she’d done all the math right and come up with the wrong answer.
For a while, Applejack was as stunned and inarticulate as Twilight until Apple Bloom clopped her on the ear from behind. “A-aw shucks, Twi, ah didn’t mean to...” the elder apple farmer apologized awkwardly and emptily.
“Just... stop... please," Twilight pleaded as weak knees buckled under her and she buried her face in her hooves and the snow. “Just let me... I can’t...”
“Twi...” Applejack emoted, hesitantly stepping forward at the sobbing alicorn.
She couldn’t handle this right now. “Just... please leave, Applejack.”
Twilight didn’t know if it was because Applejack’s felt guilty or if the earth pony was just similarly unable to process what was happening—but nevertheless, the apple farmer’s head sank sadly, she turned away and did as she was told; a silent Apple Bloom watching from her back as she crunched away through the snow.
Twilight immediately wished she hadn’t left.
Applejack probably did too.
Neither of them had any idea what had just happened.
“Not that I am complaining, but why didst thou send thy student away?” Luna asked her sister as they sat in the Canterlot Castle throne room between visitants. “She has much to learn still about being an alicorn.”
“That is exactly why," Celestia said cryptically. She motioned at the opulent room where citizens of Equestia would come to voice their grievances and make requests. “To a pony like her, this all seems so... silly. She would hate it.”
“Thou thinkest she wilt find another path?” Luna arched one eyebrow.
Celestia sighed. “Probably not... but this way she’ll understand it. She has to make her own mistakes.”
“...yes because that has worked so well up till now,” the younger alicorn said bitterly.
“You really need to lighten up, Lulu,” Celestia chided, making a show of looking at something behind the younger alicorn “All this grumpiness is turning you gray.”
“Hrmph,” Luna turned her head away stubbornly as she grumped sourly, then did a double at what her sister had said. “Wait—what?”
The crowd was waiting for Twilight when she stumbled hollowly back to Ponyville; she knew they probably weren’t actually waiting for her, but to Twilight they had become just a single annoying entity whose sole purpose was to dog her every step. Okay, maybe she was being unfair; she was upset, after all; she was allowed to be unfair. It was almost sunset and all she wanted to do was to go home, dutifully bring out the stars like a good little alicorn and figure out how she was going to deal with whatever Pinkie Pie was planning in a couple of hours.
If only it were so easy.
Suddenly, without rhyme or reason, the corridor through the mass of ponies she’d been taking for granted did something unexpected; where before it had simply opened in front of her, it had now left one small filly standing in the path.
In her mouth she held a book, a quill and the biggest grin Twilight had ever seen on anypony save Pinkie Pie. The book was a copy of Twilight.
Somehow Twilight knew—she just knew—that there was no potential future that did not involve autographing that book—but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try. She was not in the mood.
“Look,” she sighed. “Listen!” she shouted angrily at the crowd, but it wasn’t quite enough over all the mumbling. She was going to have to—no! she told herself, absolutely not! There wasn’t really another option, though.
“Everypony listen to me!” she shouted in the... not the Royal Canterlot Voice, no, that would be too ironic for what she was going to say. This was the... Ponville Librarian Voice. Yes. That. The traditional Ponyville Librarian Voice. She was starting the tradition right now.
“I am not—I repeat—I am not, nor will I ever be in the expected future a princess or any kind of royalty!” she shouted and a wave of mumbling echoed throughout the crowd... but their attitude didn’t change at all.
“So, please! You can all just go about your business!” she explained quite clearly. There was another bustle of approving mumbles, but it was as if she was speaking another language and everypony was too polite to tell her; they didn’t move an inch. The filly with the book was grinning madly as ever.
Conscious that she was quickly running out of time and just wanting to get on with it, Twilight gave in, yanked the book and quill from the filly and signed it with a plastered on smile and as much faked cheerfulness as she could muster. As the filly cantered happily off back to her mother, Twilight saw the spine of the book and realized it was a library copy. There were not enough facehooves in the world.
If Twilight had expected the book signing to satisfy the crowd and send them on their way, she didn’t know crowds—which she had, and which she didn’t. Suddenly the whole crowd sprang to life and her little corridor of respectful noninterference vanished in a sea of ponies who all of a sudden had questions and requests and... and Twilight didn’t even know what. It was all she could do to avoid getting trampled and reflexively shout whatever came to mind in the traditional Ponyville Librarian Voice, all the while the sun sank below the horizon and disappeared.
“Princess! Why doesn’t your mane billow without wind like the other princesses’?”
“I—it what?”
“Princess! What happened to Princess Luna? Is she dead?”
“No! She’s fine! ...ish”
“Princess! Why aren’t you a princess, princess?”
“Can you even hear yourself?!”
With every question, the sky darkened and Luna’s... Luna peeked up over the horizon. Suddenly she felt like she was being watched, which was rather strange seeing as she was drowning in ponies already, but completely normal for Twilight who had what amounted to extra-sensory perception in situations where she was in danger of being tardy.
Nopony else had noticed the sunset, however, and the crowd continued to press in, raining her with questions like rice at a wedding; some were even asking her about a wedding, though she wasn’t quite sure why. The sky grew darker and darker. She had no choice.
“Will everypony please be QUIET!” she roared in the traditional Ponyville Librarian Voice. “Can I just have FIVE MINUTES to RAISE THE BUCKING STARS PLEASE?”
Silence.
Beautiful awkward worshipful silence.
If there was any time she needed Princess Celestia’s calming spell, this was it. Her horn glowed and she closed her eyes. The crowd disappeared behind a vast expanse of blackness and stars. Being that this was still only her second time bringing out the stars, the process was rough; almost violent. She was sure Luna had a better way to do it—something more gradual that brought them out slowly like Equestria was used to—but all Twilight had figured out and all she had the patience for right now was to turn her celestial self upside down and inside out and flood the whole sky with brilliant lights all at once in a great tumultuous splash. As she crashed back down into her pony self, she kind of wished she could see it sometime; it was apparently rather spectacular.
Faces. Wide, adoring faces. Astonished, reverent faces all around her. Suddenly it hit her; why did she think being a princess or not mattered...? She was the stars. She was an aspect of the night sky. Being a princess was irrelevant; to these ponies... she was a goddess.
Why hadn’t that occurred to her?
There was an expectant pause before the crowd exploded even louder than before with even more crushing enthusiasm—but this time when the impromptu mosh-pit-slash-public-interview crashed together where the lavender alicorn had been standing, it found nothing but stardust.
The early hour made manifesting back at the library difficult; a lot of Celestia’s sunlight was still refracting throughout the sky even after the sun had fallen beyond the horizon, so she had to fight for it. The sunlight seemed to be far more flexible than starlight in that regard; now that she knew what it was, Twilight knew she had actually seen the princess manifest in Ponyville after sunset before.
Regardless, the point was that she ended up manifesting somewhere six or seven shelves off the library floor, came crashing down with a limp flop and just... stayed there. Staring at the ceiling was all the action and excitement she wanted right now. Somehow it seemed the only alicorn magic she was making use of today was pegasi fluffiness.
Speaking of fluffy pegasi, Rainbow Dash was standing over Twilight with a look on her face like she wasn’t sure if she should toss the alicorn in the shower or the rubbish.
“Hey Dash," Twilight greeted numbly without prompting. “I did it. Everypony knows now. Everypony,” she paused a short while to examine a peculiar impulse. “–and every space-pony, I suppose,” she added.
“Space-ponies?” Dash asked; and Twilight was briefly amused at not being the straight pony for once, but it didn’t last. She felt awful and hollow. Crying herself out after Applejack had left hadn’t solved anything, and then what had happened outside... she needed to sort things out. She needed a chance to think.
“Are you... okay, Twi?” Dash asked concernedly.
“No. Look—thanks for watching the library, Dash, really,” she said in almost a monotone voice.
“Hey, no probl—” the proud pegasus began to say, but it was not to be.
“–now, I don’t have a checklist,” Twilight interrupted casually, as if she wasn’t even talking to Dash but writing a note. “–but I’m just about ninety-five percent sure I’m going to lay here for ten minutes, then go up to my room and... I don’t know. Lock up if you’re anxious to leave; I don’t want anypony wandering in off the street and turning my fridge into an altar to the star goddess or whatever. There’s a Pinkie Pie thing at eight. Applejack... might not be coming; I don’t know. I might not be coming.”
Dash was a bit weirded out. “Umm... yeah... okay. I did all my weather patrol stuff this morning, but you know... I haven’t been home since last night. I should really, uhh, check on the... clouds. At my house. –because my house is made of clouds. –and they might float away.”
Dash was lying to Twilight. Badly. Was that how she sounded when she lied? Right now, she didn’t even care. “You do that,” she replied, eyes on the ceiling, unfocused.
Rainbow Dash slowly made her way to the door in awkward silence peppered by several pauses as she stopped to look back at Twilight. “You’re really just gonna...”
“For at least ten minutes, Dash, yes.”
“You’re... sure?”
“Ninety-five percent. Ninety-six. Point five. Two. The other three point four eight percent is I just lay here for the rest of the night. Goodbye, Dash.”
“All...righty then!” she replied, scratching her neck with one hoof before opening the Library door and making as if to leave. Something stopped her at the last moment.
“Oh, Twi! It was a slow afternoon, but I still sold fifty bits worth of books!” she beamed proudly. “The bits are in the kitchen; I couldn’t find your register or whatever,” the cyan pegasus explained before shutting the door behind her.
“Dash,” Twilight addressed the empty room. “This is a library.”
True to her word, Twilight shambled up the stairs to her room a short while later. She was sorely tempted by that three point four eight percent, but she had an odd feeling like she wasn’t alone in the library. It wasn’t Spike; she was used to the various grunts and scratches the young dragon made—and besides, there weren’t any sounds, it was just... a feeling of somepony being there with her.
She’d all but dismissed the idea as she opened the door to her room, but then she took one step into the room and stopped; there really was somepony there.
Actually, there wasn’t, but she could see the moon out her bedroom window and somehow it just felt like she’d walked in on the princess. She hesitated apprehensively for a brief moment, but instead she was surprised to realize that... she was actually sort of okay with this. The door clicked quietly as she shut it behind her and stepped into the room.
She desperately wanted to just flop over in bed and think, but her eyes caught sight of a quill on her desk and stuck there. It took her a moment to realize why, but it came to her quickly enough. Right, she had a letter to write and two last ponies to tell. The weary alicorn pulled out the heavy old wooden chair and folded herself into it with a sigh. First, she took a moment to dread what she was about to do, and then she started writing almost without pause.
Dear Mom and Dad, It has been a while since I updated you on what’s going on in my life here in Ponyville, she wrote easily; she was often better with letters than she was actually talking to ponies in person, and the number of reports she’d sent the princess on deeply personal matters of friendship had helped her open up.
Briefly, she stopped and glanced out the window at the mare keeping her company to consider how those reports had been misused by Princess Celestia, but that embarrassment was a quaint anecdote now. Sitting with her like this—sharing the night as it were, because she was certain now she was actually feeling the moon next to her in the sky—she could almost pretend things weren’t so bad.
No one was screaming, no one was crying, the stars were still wrong but she’d done some calculations downstairs and realized that if she fixed one star every five seconds it would still take her most of a thousand years to make it right. The idea was rather unexpectedly calming, actually. It was something she could do; there was no question, no conflict, and yet it would take so long that it had lost its urgency.
Also she had no idea how to move stars and reference a book at the same time. There was that.
Twilight’s eyes drifted back to her letter with a languid sigh and she set to it, detailing recent events with practiced hornwriting. She was surprised to realize just how much she had to say, and how comforting it was to work with Luna watching over her shoulder. Before she knew it, she had several pages pouring her heart out to her parents, explaining absolutely everything except for anything actually important like the events of the last few days.
She tapped the quill on the paper impatiently a few times at the end of her signature.
Postscript, the librarian added; she liked spelling it out like that, it was classy. I’m an alicorn now. You can stop bugging me about finding a stallion. Not gonna happen. See: Shelf, Dusty. (961). Observations on the Lives of Alicorns (pp. 131-167, Re: immortality and relationships). Canterlot Publishing Commission.
Postpostscript: The rest of the book is somewhat relevant as well.
Twilight sighed with satisfaction and carefully placed the quill down on the desk next to the letter. Then, she picked it back up.
Postpostpostscript: I really mean it this time. I am seriously an alicorn who does not need your significant matchmaking prowess. I am sorry about last time.
Twilight had opted to sit on the balcony instead of lay in her bed after writing her letter. She couldn’t deny what she was; even though she completely intended to put them back the way they were, the stars were still beautiful to look at and the company of the moon next to her was really helping her sort out her mind.
More than an hour had passed since she’d come out when a thumping knock sounded on her door like someone was trying to knock delicately with a life-size pony statue. Clearly it was Applejack.
Twilight didn’t answer.
The orange earth pony came in anyway.
“Twi?” she asked meekly. “Dash explained about... well, she explained some things, anyway. Ah am awfully sorry fer puttin’ ya on the spot like that.”
Twlight sighed without protest. “I know, Applejack.”
There was a short awkward silence before Applejack stepped out onto the balcony, then another before she sat down next to the lavender mare. “So... do ya wanna explain what happened? Like ah said, Dash explained some things an’ ah’m mighty sorry fer bein’ such a lousy friend when ya came t’ see me, but ah still don’t really get it. It just seemed awfully sudden—the cryin’, ah mean.”
Twilight searched the balcony floorboards for an answer. “It’s just... I don’t really get it either, Applejack. That’s the problem. I can’t seem to deal with it emotionally at all because it doesn’t make sense. I’ve been up here trying to understand it but I can’t figure out where it went wrong or if it was all bad from the start.
“Ah don’t follow.”
“You have to understand, I wanted this, Applejack. You have no idea. The magic, the wings, the stars, the duty, the immortality, I wanted all of it! When ponies always tried to make immortality sound like a bad thing, I laughed! I laughed because I wouldn’t have that problem with Celestia. She was my world before I came to Ponyville, and it’s only gotten worse—better—whatever. Spike was going to outlive me too, and now there’s even Luna.
“Luna,” she laughed bitterly. “She’s like the sister I never got to know, and I thought I had gotten the chance. When I thought Luna knew what was going on. When I thought she wanted me to take over the stars for her and stand beside her, I was just... I saw something wonderful. A wonderful, beautiful future—but it wasn’t real.
“I just want... I don’t even know what I want. I hurt her so much but I still want this; I really really do. I understand that now—but I don’t understand it at all! I’m not a selfish mare, Applejack; I’m not! –but... I don’t know, apparently I actually am! I am selfish and greedy and a horrible horrible pony who hurts the ponies she loves and I can’t apologize and I can’t say I wish it hadn’t happened and it’s killing me inside because I just cannot accept that deep down I am actually so bucking happy about it!
“–and now she’s going to hate me for all of eternity because even if I could give the stars back I’d probably d-d-die and even if I didn’t, I still don’t know if I could go through with it. I thought I was a good pony but I’ve never felt like this before; I’ve never been so afraid to lose something before. I was joking about the ‘Nightmare Twilight’ thing but when I look at myself now I realize the idea actually scares the hay out of me because I can see it happening and I don’t want that. I don’t.
“So yeah. That’s why I break down when you bring it up. Oh look, I’m crying again. Surprise.”
This time Applejack didn’t hesitate; Twilight felt a warm arm wrap around her shoulder, “Ya are a good pony, Twilight. Nothin’ you want is gonna change that; it’s what ya do—and what yer gonna do is go back t’ Canterlot an’ talk t’ Princess Luna.”
“I’m the last pony she wants to see right now, Applejack," Twilight dismissed bitterly as best she could through her sobs.
“That don’t matter,” Applejack insisted powerfully, “‘cause it sounds like she’s the pony you need to see.”
Luna sat in the throne room at Canterlot all alone. Celestia had taken to retreating to her chambers at dusk in order to give Luna some space at the busiest time of her court—that is to say, when ponies were still awake to call on her. It was supposed to encourage independence and empower her in the ponies’ eyes to be seen dealing with business without her big sister watching over her, but the fact that they all gathered around her doors while the sky was still orange soured the experience for her.
This particular day was worse than usual—and not because of Twilight Sparkle, for once; at least, not directly. She’d had to spend the first hours of her night apologizing to some Griffon dignitary for telling their nation to clop off—which was apparently double the insult to them due to their lack of any kind of proper hooves to clop with. The griffon was so intractable and annoying that she was sorely tempted after only a half an hour of telling him the comment was not in fact directed at his nation to tell him that she would be happy to rectify the matter of that little detail immediately.
Eventually though, she was rid of him. Surely her next visitor would be less vexing, she had told herself. She immediately cursed herself for tempting fate when he saw the stallion’s cutie mark; a trio of stars. The stallion took his place in front of the throne and began to speak, “—” but the princess cut him off harshly before he’d even started.
“—May we assume thou art here in regards to the matter of the stars, supplicant?” she boomed.
“Y-yes, your majesty, I–” the stallion tried to reply weakly only to be cut off again just as harshly.
“Silence!” the princess instructed the citizen as she motioned the steward on duty to come closer to receive instructions; why this was necessary nopony could say, because her instructions could be heard clear out the door. “Gather all the supplicants who have arrived to discuss this issue, steward. We shall address them all at once.”
The steward nodded vigorously, then delegated the task and clocked out for the night until he could hear again, as was standard procedure for the night court.
Quickly, the throne room was filled with a gaggle of ponies whose sole unifying feature seemed to be that not a single one of them appeared to be getting enough sunlight. The sight of so many who appreciated her nights would have gladdened her heart any other night, but now bile rose in her throat as she was reminded these ponies were all lost to her.
“We require your attention!” the princess shouted to the assemblage of ponies. “It has come under our regard that thou all seekst explanation of the changes evident in our beloved night sky.”
The ponies all nodded meekly.
“You!” she boomed at the first stallion who had come before her, who immediately cringed. “Dost thou espy stars evident in our celestial mane, supplicant?”
“N-no, your majesty!” the stallion offered rhetorically.
“What dost thou espy, then?” she demanded.
“Um, it appears to be the moon, your majesty.”
“Correct!” her voice thundered. “Thou espies only our glorious moon! We no longer hold dominion over the stars as we once did, and as our duty has altered, so has our appearance and so must thine laments and grievances be taken elsewhere, for they are tiresome and meaningless to us.”
If the whole assemblage of ponies could have blinked in unison, they would have. Instead, they simply didn’t blink at all until someone nudged the initial stallion who had become their spokesperson by right of royal decree. “W-well—umm—princess. Where... elsewhere... would that be?” he managed.
“The alicorn you are looking for resides in the tiny village of Ponyville,” echoed Luna’s voice throughout the hall. “Her name is Twilight Sparkle.”
Sharing the Night: Chapter 5
Sugar Cube Corner was filled with the bright colors and endless cheer that personified Pinkie Pie and all of her events, but despite the smiling faces, something was missing. It was no fault of Pinkie Pie’s, of course; the food was good and the company was as great as always. Even the big, giant banner hanging overhead reading Congratulations Space-Pony Twilight was certainly special in its own way. It was the space-pony of the hour herself who wasn’t quite present.
Twilight had tried, she really had. She’d humored Rarity who had presided over the ritual sweater burning, filled up on sweets and even played no less than six games of pin the tail on the pony—but it was no use. Nothing could rid her of the constant nervousness and discomfort.
Well, one thing could have.
It sounds like she’s the pony you need to see. The words had continually occupied one corner of her mind; it felt like they were important, somehow. They were the answer to a question that was on the tip of her tongue. It was only after the sixth time the tail from pin the tail on the pony had ended up on a certain steadily rising patch of wall that Twilight had finally given up and made to excuse herself.
“Are you gonna be okay, Twi?” Applejack asked as Twilight reached for the door. “Yer looking kinda—well–” she glanced at the banner, “–spacey.”
What Applejack didn’t know was that far from being a distant memory in Canterlot, the princess of the night was looking over Twilight’s shoulder constantly. Oh, she doubted Luna was actually looking in on their little party—at least, she hoped not—but every time she caught the eastern sky in the corner of her eye, she stopped like the princess had just walked in on them. Was it any wonder she was less than comfortable?
“Spacey. Yeah,” Twilight sighed, her eyes drawn to that spot on the wall that hid a goddess. She nervously took a gulp of punch and wished it was cider. “No. No, I’m not okay. I shouldn’t have come. I appreciate the thought, but I can’t do this. I’m just not comfortable celebrating... this.”
“Aw shoot Twi, it doesn’t have ta be about that. Jes think of it like it’s any other party. Pretend we’re—uhh—celebrating Pinkie Pie being clean and sugar-free for six months.”
Twilight blinked. “What? Sugar isn’t—that doesn’t even–”
“–a mare can dream, Twi,” Applejack interrupted. “A mare can dream.”
Twilight emptied her cup of punch and set it down on the closest table with a disgruntled sigh. “Look, Applejack... can you just explain it to Pinkie for me? Please?”
“...yeah, okay.”
Twilight didn’t stop as she escaped the party—and for good reason. The most charitable way to describe the late-winter night would have been ‘brisk’, and she had no intention of setting a single hoof off-course from her cozy little library. It was much to her surprise then, that Twilight actually was feeling charitable about the cold. It wasn’t that the night was mild, nor was she lacking in knowledge of dozens of colorful adjectives that could have been used to describe it, but as the din of music died out behind her she slowed down, took a great deep breath of clear, icy air and felt... much better.
It was a strange feeling. In a repeat of her experience with failing to tire herself out earlier, the discomfort she expected just... wasn’t there. Instead, the bone-chilling cold was not unlike her experiences being the stars and it felt... it felt really good, actually. If only she could capture this feeling and save it for just a few hours, she thought as a certain set of darkened windows loomed closer.
Well, why couldn’t she? There was nobody waiting for her at home—Spike had successfully evaded her at the party and would probably try to sneak in later—and there wasn’t really anything she had to do but put away the stars in the morning. Why couldn’t she just... take a walk and enjoy this for a while? She could in fact do that very thing. There was only the briefest of hesitations and the queerest feeling of rebellion as she walked straight on past the library, stepping off that path she had set herself to and out into her cold clear night.
Leaving her library behind was a peculiarly guilty feeling in spite of the mundanity of the act. It was such a different kind of guilt than the sort she was so mired in that at first it was downright disorienting and she stopped walking for a moment to get herself straight.
How was it different? She couldn’t quite put her hoof on it. The only way she could describe it was to say that it wasn’t a bad guilt—which only served to tempt her to run home and look up guilt in the dictionary once again because clearly she was mixing it up with something a pony might normally enjoy, like eating pancakes, wearing old sweaters or looking up words in the dictionary.
That was just it, though. All she was ‘guilty’ of was not going home to do any of those things. The only injured party here was her own expectations. How often did ponies go out on midnight walks in the middle of winter? How often did the Twilight she knew voluntarily do anything that took her away from studying? Not often, she admitted, yet here she was.
Of course, the Twilight she knew didn’t have wings.
An unsettling shiver ran up her spine that had nothing to do with the cold and snow. Already she was becoming a different Twilight than the one that woke up with wings. Her only consolation was that she apparently felt good about it.
Headed nowhere in particular as she was, it was inevitable that as Twilight crunched through snow past Ponyville’s thatch-roofed houses and her brain ran around itself in circles, her eyes were drawn to the nightscape around her and eventually of course, the sky. For the first time that night she wasn’t looking at Luna—not at first.
It was something of an experience, really. She hadn’t had a chance to just stand and appreciate the beauty of her new stars on her own without overthinking the whole thing. Luna’s sky had certainly never been lacking, but while she would never admit it to Rainbow Dash, there was a certain grain of truth to the idea that she’d been used to them; even taken them for granted. She certainly couldn’t do that now; each star sparkled brilliant and new and they were all spread across the sky in great splashes and whorls utterly unlike the gentle display that had given rise to the constellations she’d grown up with.
Briefly, in one of those rare moments where she could admit her desires without getting crushed by guilt, she imagined all the wonderful things she could do with the sky. Auroras and nebulae, shooting stars and—actually, auroras were probably Luna’s.
Oh. Right. Luna.
The moment was over.
She’s the pony you need to see, came the thought again, nibbling at the edge of her thoughts like the moon that was always in the corner of her eye. She shook her head as if trying to dislodge the thought. Applejack would have her march right up to the palace tonight and confront the princess—but that was Applejack.
Twilight knew better, she told herself. She knew better than to think that such a visit would go well. Maybe Luna was the pony Twilight needed to see... but she wasn’t that pony right now, and Twilight... couldn’t make her be that pony. No, forcing the issue was probably the last thing she should to do.
She’s the pony you need to see. It was an infectious thought. It was just so simple and obvious that she couldn’t put it down.
No, she told herself. No. Princess Celestia was right, they both needed time. Pinkie was right, too. There was more to her friendship with Luna than this one event. Come to think of it, Rainbow Dash had said something like that, too. What was it she said, exactly? She tried to remember.
If they’d had ponies like you back then, Nightmare Moon might not have happened.
It wasn’t quite the same as what Pinkie had said... but it felt right.
The problem was, Applejack was right too. She needed Luna to... to what, exactly? She needed Luna to accept her as the stars, obviously, but it didn’t sound right when she said it like that. It didn’t pull at her like Applejack’s line. She’s the pony you need to see. What did it even mean to her?
Twilight sighed. Something was missing; she just didn’t get it. Nervously, she glanced up at Luna hanging there in the night sky. Hopefully she was doing a better job of all this.
It would not have been fair to Twilight Sparkle to say that she was experienced in procrastination. Anyone who knew her would tell you that she was in fact very meticulous about managing her time and getting things done. They would also tell you that sometimes the priorities by which she organized that time bore a similarity to those of a certain pink party pony in their comprehensibility and—depending on said party pony’s mood—sometimes their comprehensiveness as well.
Yet, the areas of organization and procrastination undeniably share a certain skill set and Twilight was certainly aware of this, so when she reorganized her fateful meeting with the lunar princess down her mental list, she expected to have no trouble at all finding something at hoof to take its place. Her presumed powers of procrastination however, failed her.
Her current task of taking a walk in the night was all well and good as far as tasks went and she’d been enjoying herself immensely until the question of when she was supposed to stop had popped up in her mind. Not only that, but after she finished her walk, what was next? What, in the grand scale of things was she going to do.
Of course, her mental checklist wasn’t actually empty. In fact, she had a very real checklist back home with a great number of most definitely vital items on it just waiting to be done. The problem was, she didn’t really care.
She’d had her life turned upside-down, become a wholly different kind of pony—become not even a pony at all depending on how you looked at it—excuse her if she felt like she should be doing... something! Something other than just going back to lending books and replenishing her quill supply, anyway. It wasn’t that she felt above such things as a shiny new alicorn; she just felt like such a big change should have actually changed something.
Instead, nothing had been resolved at all. This whole situation with Luna had gotten everything all messed up like she was in one of those choose-your-own-adventure foals’ books and she’d chosen the wrong path; some other Twilight on some other page was having an epic adventure while she was just... here, walking through the silent streets of Ponyville in the night. Alone.
It could have been different, she told herself, recalling those few short moments when she’d thought the lunar princess was happy for her. What would have happened—where would she be now if things had gone right?
“I never said we’d be investigating here,” Celestia had said. “I cancelled everything. The three of us were going to get out of here... find some dragons to talk to... visit the old castle... see what we could uncover.”
That. That was what she could have been doing right now. She pictured what it would have been like; traveling the world with one princess on each side, having long talks about secrets only they knew, learning about the world from those who had helped shape it, laughing at jokes whose punchlines spanned centuries.
The three of them would have traveled at dawn and dusk—at dusk, first Celestia would leave, then she would set the sun and Luna and Twilight would bring out the night and follow after her; at dawn, it would be the alicorns of the night who would lead the way.
Then there were the places they would have gone, too; ancient cities, forgotten civilizations, real breathing creatures older than the princesses. She would have been introduced, not as a student but an equal; a fellow immortal they’d be sharing the world with. When she returned to Ponyville, it would have been in triumph; she would understand who and what she was. Then, after all that, then she’d be content to go back to buying quills and lending books.
It would have been magical.
She sighed. It was a pretty picture, but it didn’t help her figure out the here and now—did it? She could still do it, she supposed. Alone. There wouldn’t be any shared sunset walks through precordian ruins, nor would there be any fond remembrances about this or that historical figure. There would be no late nights discussing the stars with Luna, or any personal introductions to beings that were present at the birth of the world.
It was something, though. It was something she could do—something she could move forward with—something that could give her answers. If she knew what had happened, if she knew why she’d been put in this position in the first place, if she could just understand, then maybe... well maybe she’d be able to accept it.
She could do it, she repeated to herself, more sternly this time. She would do it. The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that this would set her back on the right path again. She had legs, she had wings, she had the ability to be anywhere in Equestria in the blink of an eye, she even knew exactly where she could find just such an ancient ruin.
The castle of the royal pony sisters.
It might not even be as lonely as she thought, she told herself semi-convincingly. There had been nothing of Luna in Canterlot while Twilight had lived there. Exploring the old castle could give her some insight into how the princesses had lived when they were younger—just like she’d been imagining they would tell her.
Just, without them telling her themselves.
Totally not creepy, honest.
With determination and a destination in mind, it didn’t take her long to wind around past Fluttershy’s silent cottage to the edge of the Everfree forest. In a remarkable display of common sense, the freshly minted alicorn chose to continue walking rather than add night flying to her list of poor decisions.
Of course, being that it was night, she could have been there in the blink of an eye, but she had thought better of that, too. She’d read a dozen platitudes, adages and truisms about journeys and destinations, but as was the way of such things they’d always just been words until she came up with them for herself. No—she’d set out to have a walk and she was enjoying it. Cheating herself out of it via the wonders of alicornhood wasn’t going to be a benefit to her or her sanity.
Briefly, she was also grateful that said alicornhood hadn’t come with a get out of sleep free card like some fiction liked to imagine. She was sure that if that was the case, she’d have been mad within the week. Then again, she wasn’t quite sure she’d make it to the end of the week regardless, so that was probably a generous assumption.
Regardless, she was feeling really rather proud of herself for the level-headedness of the decision. The choice to walk felt very... Celestia. Though she would never have admitted it to herself, it made her feel like she was doing the immortal alicorn thing properly.
All of this is why she was rather crestfallen when ten minutes later, she was bored out of her mind.
It wasn’t a feeling she was used to having in the middle of the Everfree forest, but with the sky blotted out by twisted leaves and and untamed clouds, she began to regret and even reconsider the decisiveness and pride of her decision not to skip ahead. She’d been growing used to Luna’s presence in the sky, to say nothing of her own celestial bodies, and while they weren’t gone by any means, they were... muted. Like an awkward silence gone on too long.
There was a very real silence settled into the Everfree too, and though she didn’t need to conjure up any light to see by, the way her starlight filtered down through the canopy made everything indistinct and grey. She had the feeling that it all should have been unnerving, creepy, even downright frightening... but somehow her heart just wasn’t in it.
Actually, now that she thought about it, it was kind of creepy... Not the Everfree forest, but her attitude about it. Now a proper shiver ran up her spine as she wondered if this too, was a different Twilight.
Taking a walk on a cold winter night was one thing; she clearly understood the decision, if not exactly how she found it enjoyable. Extending that walk through a forest full of manticores, serpents, dragons and any number of other things? The logical part of her brain told her a manticore couldn’t do anything she couldn’t come back from—a morbid thought, now that it came to mind—but the fact that it had only just came to mind was the thing. She hadn’t assured herself that her alicornhood would protect her, it had just... slipped her mind. It didn’t register at all. She didn’t care.
That scared her far more than theoretical manticores.
There were more than manticores in the forest anyway, though many were of the same sort of danger. Poisonous plants and animals were theoretically unpleasant, but such contaminants were still only physical. What about poison joke or a cockatrice, though? What kind of joke would be played on a new alicorn, and what would it say about her as a pony? What would happen if she were turned to stone?
Twilight caught herself in mid-step.
The scientist in her kind of wanted to try it and see.
What was wrong with her?
In the end, nothing happened on Twilight’s way to the castle of the royal pony sisters. Whether this was fortunate or unfortunate depended on your perspective, but regardless, the damage had been done.
Twilight had always envied Celestia’s eternal calm, and was proud of her own ability to stay level-headed in a crisis, even though she sometimes failed spectacularly at it. Nopony but Celestia was perfect, after all. When her mentor had admitted to possession of the spell that allowed her to easily connect with the sun it had been a little disheartening, but she’d still allowed herself to cherish the artificial calm she felt as the stars.
Now, she wasn’t so sure.
She wanted to be immortal, wise and all-knowing as Celestia was, she really did. She’d set out into the night in the first place to calm down and just enjoy herself for a while. Given where she was and what she was doing, she had definitely been successful at finding distraction, so was succeeding at finding inner peace—or inner boredom at least, since her insides were anything but peaceful—really so bad?
She didn’t feel like she had succeeded, though. Not knowing where it came from, she felt like it had been given to her. Did that even make sense when she’d started walking to unwind in the first place?
There was a difference between being given something and simply achieving it too easily, she told herself. She was used to being looked down on by others for being a magical prodigy, was this really any different? She hadn’t really explored the new depths of her magic either, for that matter; would she feel cheated out of that, too?
She was the stars; it was an inescapable magical fact. She didn’t know how or why it had come to be, but her essence blanketed Equestria from end to end. She didn’t know how or why she’d originally been so good at magic either, but she’d never cursed or mistrusted the qualities that had led the princess to take a certain young filly under her wing.
She should be okay with this, she told herself. She just... wished she understood where it came from. There was just so much about being an alicorn that was left unanswered. Celestia might have been okay not worrying over them, but...
–but what? She blinked. It was an odd thought for her to have that something was good enough for Celestia but not Twilight herself. She was actually a bit uncomfortable with it, to be honest with herself.
Then again, it made sense. Celestia’s endless serenity was more than just a spell, it was her personality, her faith in herself and her ability to trust. Twilight had always envied that quality of Celestia’s, but now she realized she actually wanted something different.
Twilight wanted the kind of self assurance Celestia had, but she wanted to have it because she knew, not because she trusted. She needed information; she needed details.
She was going to get some. That was why she was here.
The castle of the royal pony sisters was a good distraction from Twilight’s circuitous self-analysis, and she was glad for it. She wasn’t used to being alone with her thoughts for so long and it was starting to wear on her. She had assumed an officially nocturnal schedule wouldn’t change much in the long run, but now she was beginning to suspect that having to stay up to fulfill her celestial duty at dawn might not be quite the same as simply letting her studies stretch late into the night.
If this was what Luna’s life was like night in and night out, Twilight could understand how something like Nightmare Moon could happen. Hopefully for Twilight’s sake, her books would keep her sane; that end-of-the-week estimate was looking pretty real. Thankfully, the slow revelation of the ruined castle before her was enough to distract her from her morbid thoughts.
If Twilight ever had cause to attempt to explain her starlight-sight, she expected most would just imagine it was like being able to see in the dark, and she probably wouldn’t correct them if they did. It was an awkward thing to explain how the diffuse light let her see objects, ponies and ancient ruins from every side at once. Even she herself had difficulty reconciling the reality of it.
Manifested in pony form as she was and therefore already possessing eyes and regular sight, she normally wouldn’t even have noticed the faint overlapping images of objects unwrapping under her focus. Tonight though, the walk through the dark corners of the Everfree had allowed her sight adjust to the point that she felt distinctly like a certain wall-eyed mailmare as she stepped out into the starlight of the clearing that surrounded the castle.
The sky was clear over the castle of the royal pony sisters revealing a great expanse of stars and of course, Luna, giving both of her sights plenty of light to work with. The story her eyes told her was much like what she’d seen on her way to confront Nightmare Moon that fateful night; the story the stars told her on the other hoof, was anything but. Though the chambers she had visited on her first trip were the most prominent structures, there were a great deal more that were disguised beneath vegetation, silt and mud. At one time, this had been a castle that would have rivaled Canterlot itself.
The ruins looked promising at first glance, but a bit of investigation revealed only disappointment. A thousand years was a long time, and from the looks of it the castle might have been damaged before it was abandoned. However it had happened, most of the structures were collapsed to some extent and years of water, growth and rot had made short work of almost everything. Even iron fixtures were in evidence only as a patina of reddish-orange on the ancient rounded stone. Time and the Everfree’s wild weather had reduced what was once the seat of Equestria to little more than gravel.
The sting of disappointment was dulled only by the consolation that she hadn’t told anyone about her grand plans of adventure and archaeology yet. Nothing was expected of her, and from the looks of it she’d be meeting those expectations with flying colors.
She wasn’t quite ready to give up just yet, though. Celestia had thought there might be something of value here and Celestia was rarely wrong. Of course, Celestia would have known what this pile of rubble looked like a thousand years ago. She would have known where what she was looking for was likely to be, and what might have been only buried rather than destroyed. Maybe she even had secret chambers underground for just such an occasion.
Twilight herself wasn’t completely without resources, however; she had read many books about archaeology and ancient architecture. Unfortunately, almost all of those books were from the Daring Do series, and the Daring Do series was fiction. As luck would have it though, her extensive knowledge of the adventures of one fictional beige pegasus turned out to be unnecessary.
There was one geographical feature Twilight had overlooked on account of it not appearing to be pony-made at first glance. It was a ring of vegetation at the nadir of what appeared to be a crater some distance away from the castle, hiding a perfectly circular sinkhole about ten hooves across. It didn’t appear to actually be a sinkhole, however. Unlike a proper sinkhole, the walls of it were smooth as if Celestia’s own sun had lain there and sunk down into the earth—or maybe instead, something had come up. Something angry and full of hate. Something that didn’t care what it hurt to get its way.
Celestia wasn’t the only one who might have had secret underground chambers, after all.
The shaft only went down a few dozen hooves to an uneven bottom which Twilight managed to float down to with her wings and a prayer. Admittedly, it was hard to botch what amounted to falling straight down, but she still felt like there should have been some sort of fanfare to celebrate her success.
The bottom of the shaft was covered in rock and other debris below more than a hoof of ice thanks to the season; but that was it. Twilight assured herself that it was only a blockage and the shaft probably went down much deeper. If she had really just jumped in an empty sinkhole for nothing, she might as well just go home now and pretend none of this had ever happened.
No, she had to go deeper.
Now, she might have been suffering from a slight lack of instinctual fear of the Everfree forest, but she wasn’t stupid. She was standing on the blockage she wanted to clear; that was a problem. She didn’t really see any way around it though, so she was very careful as she melted the ice and began shifting what rocks she could without disturbing the rest, like that one foal’s game with the sticks.
As it turned out, below the debris and a hoof of silt she found a shelf of solid rock under one half of the debris. Apparently at one point or another the whole layer of rock above had shifted a half-dozen hooves and misaligned the shaft, causing a bottleneck and eventually total blockage. Knowing this, it was a simple enough matter for her to uncover the aligned portion of the shaft, retaining the rock, silt, debris and herself on the solid rock shelf.
Simple, but ultimately ill-advised. As she unwedged one rock, freeing up the rest to fall through and clear the half of the shaft she needed, it became clear that the shaft went down for another hundred hooves before opening up to a solid black expanse. She barely had a second to remember how real sinkholes were formed before a loud crack all the way up the shaft signaled that yes, this was indeed going to hurt.
Deep below the castle of the royal pony sisters spread a massive pony-made cavern, almost perfectly hemispherical like a crude planetarium might have been if it were made before the invention of architecture. The dome of the cavern was dark in color and glass-smooth, giving it a rich depth that well mimicked the blackness of the night sky.
Twilight didn’t have a chance to comment on any of this as she and several tons of rock tumbled out of the shaft opening at the dome’s apex. The fledgeling alicorn screamed mostly for her own benefit as she tried over and over to stabilize herself as she had earlier, but each time her wings caught the stale air, she was struck off balance from above by rocks that had broken free of the shaft above her and weren’t so lucky as to have wings to break their fall.
Eventually, she spread her wings one last desperate time and wasn’t rewarded with pain. She couldn’t manage a full glide, but it was enough to soften the impact that followed moments later. Even softened, the impact knocked everything Twilight had out of her, which made rolling off into another twenty hoof drop an insult to injury that she barely even registered.
“What in the hay am I doing?” Twilight groaned as she lay on her back in the middle of... wherever this was. She hurt. It didn’t seem fair at all. If she had let herself be dashed into stardust on the rocks, she didn’t think it would have hurt like this.
She was thankful for the starlight filtering down through the hole above her; she had no idea if it was helping her, but she liked to think it was. Either way, it helped her take her mind off of how stupid this whole thing was. Next time she would just ask Princess Celestia for directions.
It was remarkable, really. Though there was hundreds of hooves of rock between her and the stars, she felt like she was laying in the open sky. She could just see the whole sky sparkling with—no wait, she could see the whole sky, she realized, bolting upright so she could look around. Half the sky, actually; half of the planetarium dome was black, but the other half... the stars were as real as the ones in the night sky. She wasn’t being poetic, either. They were real stars. She could see the chamber by their light, even with her eyes closed.
She was speechless. Was this something left behind by Luna? Was this her private chamber where she had sequestered away a small piece of the night for comfort on Celestia’s long summer days?
The stars weren’t speechless. They growled.
Twilight’s jaw dropped and the color drained from her face.
The stars roared.
Twilight hated being wrong; her only consolation was that despite her earlier worries, her capacity for fear was most certainly, definitely functioning consummately. This was no hidden chamber of Luna’s, no ancient planetarium. Maybe it had been at one time, but now it was the home of the greatest of all the beasts of the Everfree, the great mother bear, Ursa Major.
Somehow, Twilight’s aching body managed to leap from the pile of rubble just in time for a great thundering crash to that she’d just narrowly avoided finding out just how much being dashed on the rocks could hurt. Then again, she might not have felt it if they hadn’t—her brain was stuck back at the top of the pile choking on two words.
Ursa.
Major.
This was no creature the size of a mere house, no; the great mother bear practically filled the whole massive chamber and could have flattened whole swaths of Ponyville just by sitting on them, and right now it was doing a whole lot more than sitting.
As Twilight fled for what she hoped would be sufficient shelter, she zigged and zagged as best she could, but she was dodging blind. In the dark, all she could see of the Ursa Major was the stars it was made of. She could see the chamber by the light of those stars—she really wanted to know how that worked sometime when she wasn’t fleeing for her immortal life—but to the beast itself her starlight was blind.
The Ursa Major on the other hoof, could see Twilight just fine, and eventually her luck ran out. Just as she was nearing the edge of the main chamber, the massive starry paw descended on the tiny alicorn.
She had been right. It didn’t hurt at all.
Something was wrong.
Something was very, very wrong.
Twilight had assumed that dying would be like forced demanifestation. She expected to immediately find herself back in the night sky, because no matter her perspective, that’s where she was. She expected her body to turn to stardust and drift away to eventually find itself back among the stars.
That didn’t happen. She had no body—she was a pony-shaped smattering of stars and magic—but she wasn’t going anywhere.
The Ursa Major had her, and it wasn’t letting go.
Now she was afraid; terrified, in fact. The implications filled her with a kind of dread she’d never experienced. Was she about to die—actually die—so soon after being given the immortality she’d always wanted? That hardly seemed fair at all.
Ursas were made of stars. Real stars. How was that even possible? If someone had suggested it yesterday, she would have imagined it could be true if they were a part of her; staring into the Ursa Major’s eyes as it held her, she knew this wasn’t true. The Ursa’s starlight may have bowed to her, but none of the Ursa’s magic was hers; none of its stars were hers. She and it existed in direct opposition; they were anathema to each other.
Twilight could do nothing. She had no body; no legs to kick with, no hooves to pry with and no horn to do magic with, not even a mouth to scream with. All she could do was watch in mute horror as the Ursa opened its mouth below her.
Would she really die? The very idea defied the few things she actually knew about alicorns, but no matter what her mind told her there was a deeper instinctual dread through which she knew—she just knew—that this would be the end of her. You wouldn’t think that the inside of an Ursa would look any different from it’s outside—and it didn’t, really—but right now, to Twilight they were night and day; life and death.
Could the stars be different than the sun or the moon? They were diffuse throughout the sky—millions of little bits that covered the world—did that matter? What would that change? Her mind raced along as the Ursa’s mouth drew closer, and a spark lit her mind with a pall of understanding.
She manifested differently than Celestia or Luna. Where her mentor always formed her body out of sunlight, Twilight’s was manifested from the stuff of the stars themselves. Was starlight alone too weak? She didn’t know, but it all unfolded itself from there. She was not one thing, but millions, and that made her... divisible. How much of herself was in this small dusting of stars and magic that she’d made a body of? All of it?
It was possible.
In fact, could a soul really exist in more than one place? Could she really exist in more than one conglomeration of starts and magic, or did she wax and wane in a much more real sense than Luna, multiplying and dividing herself as she went from stars to pony to stars again.
What would that do to somepony? She had an inkling that history held the answer.
She could only hope for the chance to find out for herself one day.
–and what would happen if she did die? What would happen to the stars? Would the Ursa seize the night sky? Would Celestia and Luna have to fight against this Great Bear God that had killed their student and friend? Would they avenge her? Would Luna even care or would she only want her stars back, unaware of what that could mean?
So many questions, so many answers, but no solutions. As Twilight’s mind raced frantically from subject to subject, her time eventually ran out. The Ursa dropped her and its great maw slammed shut around the alicorn of the stars.
Like everything else that had happened since becoming an alicorn, being eaten by a colossal starbeast was nothing like Twilight had expected it to be. Instead of gnashing teeth and pain, the experience was more like being dunked into a pool of water. The Ursa Major’s magic was thick and viscous, drowning her in pure bestial power that threatened to overwhelm her as foreign stars dug into her like burning embers as she sank past them.
Was this it, then? Was it her fate to have her existence rendered down to its component magics not owing to a threat to Equestria or even Ponyville, but only her own foolish pride? That was what burned more than the Ursa’s stars; she had friends, family, even between one and two princesses who would all have risked their lives in defense of hers if they’d only had the chance. She, whose only assignment was studying the magic of friendship, had thought she didn’t need anypony else.
Worse, they would all blame themselves. They would ask themselves if they had missed something; if they hadn’t been good enough friends, if they’d been unfair to her, or if they should have left her on her own. Nopony deserved that, least of all the ponies she knew; she couldn’t bear the thought—not when it was her who had let them down. If they could see her now, what would they think?
What would they think? What was she doing just floating here waiting for her consciousness to fade? She should be fighting! She didn’t have a horn, but so what? Her cutie mark was for magic and she was made of magic; her cutie mark was for stars and she was made of stars.
So was the Ursa Major.
She knew what she had to do.
With arduous effort, she reached out to one of the Ursa’s stars and took it in her hoof. The star burned like a baseball-sized sun, evaporating her leg as she held it, but she endured; it was about to get much, much worse. Couching the star close to her chest, she did the only thing she could do...
She ate it.
The sensation of swallowing a star fullfilled all of her expectations and then some—like swallowing an apple whole if that apple was made of fire and lightning. The star burned all the way down, but she contained it; she controlled it; she made it a part of her. Her head swam as she realized this new part of her was not just a thing; it was alive, a piece of the Ursa’s soul just as now it was a part of hers.
There was no way that wasn’t going to be weird later on.
Still, even as she did her best to ignore the images of ages long past, something else was happening. It wasn’t long before the burning star became a fire of vitality inside of her, a beacon that shone with one message to the Ursa she’d taken it from: a declaration of war.
The Ursa Major roared in defiance, flooding Twilight’s mind with a furious anger, but she weathered the onslaught; she wasn’t dying any more. By taking that singular star inside herself, she had started something. With the addition of that star, she was no longer wholly different from the Ursa; that changed everything. Half-measures were no longer necessary.
Twilight barely had to reach out to the stars around her; they pulled at her and as soon as she touched them, they were hers. She exploded outwards, consuming dozens of stars before the Ursa could force her back with monstrous effort that staggered the starbeast. It was just the opening Twilight needed.
As the starbeast stumbled, Twilight—now Ursa Minor in size and definition—threw herself against the creature’s defenses a second time and was rewarded as it fell off balance, crashing down in the center of the chamber.
The Ursa took a moment as it dazedly tried to recover itself, but it was too late.
From the center of the chamber, Twilight could see up the shaft to the sparkling night sky. It was enough; she reached out with everything she had and she pulled.
The sky answered, and bowed low to meet the earth not as a hail of stars but as a whole, amorphous bulge of pure night.
The Ursa Major was gone. Just... gone. In its place stood a trembling Twilight its size of solid stars from horn to hoof whose starry mane billowed up into the sky. Her mind was blank save one singular thought.
She was alive.
She was alive and she was whole again. Despite her colossal stature, she was anything but sturdy. She shook as the weight of everything that had happened crashed down on her. She fell first to her knees, then the ground.
She had almost died. The way the stars worked was her worst nightmare; immortality cached in a sieve. Poetic justice for a covetous pony like her, she supposed. She never wanted to leave the sky again and the prospect of the coming dawn chilled her to the bone. The very idea that a dozen other starbeasts across the world would look at her with hungry eyes was just too much. It didn’t matter that they probably weren’t going to come after her. After this rude awakening, anything seemed possible to her.
This was demonstrably the worst time imaginable for an Ursa Minor to come looking for its mother.
Twilight moved very fast for a colossal starry alicorn tethered to the sky by a swath of night. She made for the opposite side of the chamber, but tripped over herself when she realized the chamber wasn’t there any more. The sky had erased hundreds of hooves of rock as it answered her call, and it hadn’t been careful. She now lay at the bottom of a wide, soft, gaussian dip open to the night sky.
The Ursa Minor thought Twilight was its mother; Twilight thought it wanted her soul. She scrambled away on her back as it chased her, but it was no use. The Ursa Minor jumped and latched onto her flank as if to climb up to its mothers waiting arms, but it didn’t get very far. Halfway there, it popped like one soap bubble merging into another.
She didn’t even feel it.
Her heart pounded as her lungs struggled to process air and she began to feel lightheaded. It was all just too much, and she couldn’t seem to catch her breath any more than she could process everything that had happened. She couldn’t go on like this. She forced everything out of her mind and concentrated on just slowly breathing until her heart calmed down and she realized she was still made of stars and didn’t even have a heart or lungs. Slowly, she curled up into the tightest ball of ephemeral night she could and began sobbing to herself.
Luna was not alone when the whole world tilted out from underhoof. She wished she had been. As it was, she ate marble in front of no less than six ponies she disliked. “What is that foolish pony doing with the sky?” she grumbled sourly under her breath as she righted herself with as much dignity as she could manage.
“Is something wrong, your majesty, or is throwing yourself at the floor one of those ‘games’ you picked up on your visit to Ponyville?” one of the ponies asked with barely contained amusement.
Just as Luna was about to answer him, the stars began to cry in slow, heartbreaking sobs.
“We...” she started, but the sudden outburst had rendered her speechless. She recovered quickly, however. No sooner than it took to think it, there was an excuse on the tip of her tongue and her wings were lifting of their own accord as she made to take her leave. Then, she remembered the situation she was in with the bearer of the element of magic. She visibly wilted.
“It... no, it is nothing. Thou may continue speaking about the... whatever it was you were talking about,” she offered distractedly. It didn’t matter; she didn’t hear a single word they said the rest of the night.
It had been a long time since Twilight had awoken to the warmth of the sun under the open sky. It had been a comparatively shorter time since she’d woken up to the warmth of another pony next to her. It was only her second night as an alicorn and she’d woken up next to a different pony each time; what would Celestia say?
“Good morning, Twilight.”
That was what Celestia would say.
“Good—” she started only for the word to turn into a wide-mouthed yawn. “—morning Princess Celestia,” she finished on the tail-end of her yawn, then snuggled closer to the warm diarch. “It sure is cold,” she remarked.
“Ah,” Celestia said in hesitant acknowledgement. “Yes. That would be the snow, Twilight.”
“The snow?” Twilight asked, lifting her head and cracking open eyes crusty with sleep—no, actually it was frost. Sure enough, she and the princess were laying in the middle of a gently rolling white plain of snow. The snow was too bright for Twilight’s eyes, so she closed them and settled back against Celestia. “That’s funny; why would someone go to sleep in the snow?”
“I was hoping you’d tell me, Twilight,” the princess suggested with an edge of concern in her voice that hinted that no, she wasn’t going to get just five more minutes in bed.
Twilight sighed, cracking her eyes open again with one hoof over her eyes to shield them from a portion of the glare. She stared into the cold blue winter sky as she began to think.
She regretted it.
The sky was what did it. The clear open blue sky was many things; beautiful, soft and serene with just a lingering taste of dawn. What it wasn’t, was full of stars. The events of the night before didn’t so much crash into her as slowly crawl up her spine and around her heart like ice.
“Twilight?” Celestia prompted, the concern no longer hinted at. “Twilight, what’s wrong?”
For a short, brief moment, Twilight’s brain connected the lack of stars with Celestia—she’d risen the sun while Twilight was asleep! To her credit, she did not kick Celestia out of their bed of snow as she had Fluttershy the day before.
Celestia was much too heavy for that, for one thing.
Physics being what they are, it was Twilight that tumbled away in the snow, though considering the two alicorns were at the bottom of the dip Twilight’s stars had made, she didn’t go very far. It was enough, though. Celestia looked startled, then a little hurt.
Twilight’s brief panic didn’t last, but the awkward silence that came afterward lingered long enough to make her want to burrow into the snow and not come out until spring. Just as she was scanning the hillside for sign of any snow deeper than a hoof, she felt Celestia’s wing settling over her. Twilight looked up at her, but Celestia’s face held only concern.
“I’m—I—” Twilight stammered, shamefacedly averting her eyes in embarrassment.
Celestia pulled her wing tighter over Twilight reassuringly, but said nothing.
Twilight looked around at the vast open space around them. “I’m... sorry about the castle.”
“I don’t care about the castle,” Celestia assured her.
“But everything that could have been in there; all the things you talked about looking though...” Twilight sighed, letting the implications hang in the air.
Celestia chuckled coyly. “–were removed yesterday by myself and a team of Pegasi.”
Twilight stared, blinked and dropped her head with a sigh. “I am such an idiot.”
“Twilight—what happened?” Celestia appealed.
“I just wanted to do something to help. I wanted answers,” Twilight explained a bit defensively, not looking at Celestia.
“I am sorry you had to come out here for nothing. I wanted answers to give you, but we didn’t find anything worth mentioning,” Celestia explained, dispirited.
“Yeah, well you see... That’s a funny story because I did. I found something. Actually, uh, it’s not a funny story at all. It’s actually really kind of... I don’t even know. Sad; depressing; scary.”
Celestia raised one eyebrow, looking around at the empty field of snow. “–and what you found did all this?”
“No,” Twilight admitted nervously. “No, that was me. Literally me. I pulled the sky out of the, uhh, the sky. The ground lost.”
“The ground... lost,” Celestia repeated, as if saying it again would make it easier to swallow. “Twilight,” she sighed, “I don’t know how you do it, but you really know how to make my life interesting.”
“–actually,” Twilight added, caught up with her description and making motions with her hooves, “it was more like the ground was an innocent bystander that got in-between me and the, uhh, the Ursa. The Ursa Major. The one that used to, um, exist. Here.” She gave a nervous laugh.
“I think maybe you had better start back at the beginning,” Celestia suggested wearily.
Twilight sighed, thinking back to the night before; the stars she’d absorbed and what they were. What had seemed so potent in the moment had been subsumed and diluted into the vastness of her sky; calling on those inherited lives now might as well have been homeopathy. Still, she remembered the impression she got from that first star pretty well enough to build a picture in her head.
Twilight rubbed her temples with her hooves, trying to not to think about how she knew what she knew and what she’d been through to come to the conclusions she had. She hadn’t even had time to frame them for herself, but she tried.
“I think I know how it’s possible for me to have stolen the stars,” Twilight said quietly, studying the snow in front of her. “That’s actually not the beginning,” she admitted, “it’s more like the end, but it’s important. I know because I almost lost them myself. I almost—I could have—” Twilight choked up. She couldn’t say it without thinking about what had happened, so she changed her approach.
“The stars,” Twilight hesitated as she phrased her thoughts, “aren’t like the sun and the moon. That’s pretty clear to me now. They’re like millions of little suns or moons and they could potentially belong to millions of different ponies. They don’t, though. They congregate into masses; masses like me, like Ursa Majors and Minors and other things like them.”
“Then, the Ursa you mentioned...” Celestia suggested, finally getting some idea of what had happened.
“A long time ago, but after Luna was banished and around the time ponies were beginning to build a mythology around the night sky, a star fell here. The stars were as lost without Luna as the rest of Equestria, and on some level they knew the stories ponies were making up about them. When the star fell—which a lot of them did, without Luna—it burned so hot that it sank down into the rock right over th—well it’s gone now. The point is, it sat there for years burning a void into the rock until it started to believe the stories it remembered. Stories of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor in particular.”
“This sounds awfully specific, Twilight. Surely this is conjecture?” Celestia looked puzzled.
“It’s not, really” Twilight admitted. “There’s a small part of me now that lived it.” Before Celestia could say anything, she continued. “It—the Ursa—caught me somehow. I couldn’t see it in the dark and it crushed my body, but somehow it held onto my stars and... ate me.”
Celestia looked distressed. “Oh, Twilight...”
“I fought it as best I could, but I was just... this tiny little pony made of stardust and friendship. That was when I reached for the sky and... it came down. I swear I didn’t even know what would happen, I just... it was me or it, except now it’s me and it. I’m... not really comfortable with that, you can imagine.”
“I’m so sorry, Twilight. I never knew. Luna never said anything,” Celestia insisted.
Twilight sighed, shaking her head. “I don’t imagine she knew either. I don’t doubt the stars used to be a part of her, but they weren’t her. First and foremost, she’s the moon, and being the moon, she’s never been apart from the stars. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be.”
Celestia furrowed her brow, a little confused. “Do you mean to say the stars in the sky are not a part of you when you’re a—quote—‘tiny little pony made of stardust and friendship?’”
“No, I don’t think that’s it. The sky has to always be a part of me, or I wouldn’t have been able to pull it down like that; I wouldn’t be able to bring the stars out as a pony. I think it’s just a separate part. Like... The opposite of how you manifest. You put a bit of sunlight and magic together and make a body, but you’re still the sun. I have to pull myself out of the sky to manifest, and what I leave behind in the sky is like your body of sunlight and magic.
“It doesn’t sound so bad when I put it like that, but it’s all up for grabs. Stars and magic, that’s all I am. One beast of a dozen; I’m just the one that’s winning. This is my immortal life; some kind of sick battle royale for the stars.”
“I don’t believe that,” Celestia insisted emphatically.
“Realistically, I know they aren’t all going to hop on a train and come for my head,” Twilight said, conflicted. “I know that, but it still scares me,” she admitted.
“You aren’t just another pony, Twilight. I know this is all... quite more complicated than you deserve, but you can’t let what you’ve become get in the way of who you are. No matter what you say, you didn’t steal the stars; they came to you because no matter how they’re divided, no matter what shape they take, no matter if you were pony or alicorn, you were the one they were meant for. –not just a mass of stars and magic, but a pony that deserves what she has been given. That is who you are.”
“Thanks, Princess Celestia.” Twilight looked away, embarrassed but genuinely heartened. “Hearing you say that helps. I just wish Luna felt the same way.”
Celestia’s expression darkened. “Luna...” she sighed. “I can’t even begin to predict what she’d make of this.”
“I’m not even sure I know how I feel about it, really.” Twilight cradled her head in her hooves. “Everything that happened last night kind of puts the rest in perspective, doesn’t it?”
“Her opinion matters a lot to you, doesn’t it?” Celestia asked, somewhat out of the blue.
Twilight blinked. “Well of course it does.”
“Is it because she’s my sister?” Celestia suggested neutrally.
The idea, honestly, surprised Twilight. “What? No, not really. I mean, I guess that would make sense, but I hadn’t really thought of it like that.”
“Then I’m sure things will work out with you two somehow,” the elder alicorn assured her cryptically, then suddenly stood up. “–and with that, I should go. I have a nation to run after all, and it looks like there’s someone here to see you.”
Twilight didn’t get so much as a bemused “bwuh?” out before the shining white alicorn standing over her was replaced by a gentle gleam of sunlight.
Confused by Celestia’s words and sudden departure the first thing that came to mind was what Applejack had said... was it really just last night?
It sounds like she’s the pony you need to see.
Twilight turned around, hoping to see Luna, but she was disappointed.
It was just Rainbow Dash.
“Well it’s nice to see you too, Twilight. What’s with the nasty look?” Rainbow Dash groused as she landed, returning the alicorn’s sour gaze.
Twilight blinked. “What? Oh, sorry. I was just confused for a second there. Celestia was really cryptic when she left.”
“Yeah well, whatever,” the pegasus brushed it off. “More importantly, what’s with the big hole in the ground?”
Twilight averted her eyes self consciously. “It’s really more of a dip...”
“Hey, seeing it from the air a mile off—trust me, it’s a hole.” Rainbow Dash gestured for emphasis.
“Yeah, well...” Twilight started, then stopped herself with a grimace. “You know what? No. I am not going into it. No! First it happened, then I had to explain it to Celestia, I am not going to spend another hour talking about it with you!”
“Well jeez, what rumbled your raincloud?” Dash retorted, perturbed with the sudden attitude.
“A giant bear a hundred bookshelves tall!” Twilight yelled in frustration.
“Are bookshelves a unit of measurement?” Rainbow Dash snarked. “Wait—are you serious?”
Twilight pinched the bridge of her nose with the crook of one hoof in exasperation, then looked straight at Rainbow Dash, suddenly calm and serious. “Rainbow Dash, listen to me. I am going to say a phrase, and it’s going to make you forget I said anything about bears, okay?”
“Woah woah woah, not cool!” Rainbow Dash shouted, rearing up and lifting her wings. “I see one spark of magic out of you and I’m out of—”
No magic was required. “Teach—me—to—fly,” Twilight enunciated.
“...yeah, okay.”
“Huh.” Rainbow Dash scratched her head with one hoof, perplexed. “You know, last night your wings were a mess, but now they look great. Did Celestia show you how to preen?”
“What? Oh, no.” Twilight spread one wing and craned her neck back to look at it; it was indeed spotless except for a dusting of snow, which she shook off. “It’s a, umm...”
Rainbow Dash groaned. “What, another alicorn thing? Come on Twilight, I’m playing along but you’ve gotta be able to at least hold a conversation!”
Twilight sighed. “I know. You’re right. Look, you saw how Princess Celestia left?”
Rainbow Dash nodded as she inspected Twilight’s wings to make sure they really were as neat and tidy as they looked. “Uh-huh. She teleported, right? Like you always do?”
“It’s not really the same, no,” Twilight lectured as Rainbow Dash poked and prodded at her. “Teleportation is like—hrm—okay, remember when we had to get Ponyville’s reservoir water up to Cloudsdale, and all the pegasi had to make a big tornado to get it there?”
“Uh-huh.” Rainbow Dash urged.
“Teleportation is like that. It takes a lot of power, and the further it is, the more it takes. Now, imagine that instead of the tornado, you just made all the water into clouds and flew them to Cloudsdale.” Twilight beamed; she was rather proud of her explanation.
Rainbow Dash didn’t think of it quite so highly. “But we don’t have any cloud-making machines in Ponyville, that’s why the water has to go to Cloudsdale in the first place!” she challenged.
Face, meet hoof, it’s been a while. “It’s a simile, Dash.”
That stopped Rainbow Dash. “A what now?”
“A metaphor,” she explained, weathering the sting of improper grammatical usage valiantly, like a true librarian. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a mantra was repeated several times. Communication before correctness.
“Oh, yeah,” Rainbow Dash laughed. “So the clouds in this metaphor, they’re what? Some kind of fluffy magic you precipitate back into liquid pony?”
Twilight’s face twisted into a grimace. “Okay, you know what; that didn’t work.” She sighed, wracking her brain for a better analogy. She failed to come up with anything, but there was another possibility, if she could do it. “Look,” she said authoritatively. “I’m going to try to show you something, just promise me you’re not going to freak out; especially do not freak out if I’m gone until sunset, okay.”
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah.”
“I’m serious, Dash,” Twilight scolded.
“Okay! I promise!” Rainbow Dash relinquished, though it was clear her eyes remain thoroughly rolled on the inside. “Stick a cupcake in my eye and all that, just show me your stuff!”
Twilight steeled herself. She should be able to do this if her theory about how she manifested was right. This is what ponies did—they experimented to confirm or deny a hypothesis. Concentrating on her outstretched wing, and starting at the tips, she slowly dissolved pony flesh and feathers back into stars and magic. Once she was sure she could hold herself together she let her whole body go until she was a whole pony made of stars again.
Just like last night.
She didn’t let it bother her. This wasn’t last night, she wasn’t in any danger, she was opening up to one of her friends. She was fine. Her mind was steady.
Rainbow Dash’s mind on the other hand, was quite elsewhere. “Dude, you’re like, evaporating in the sun.”
Twilight did, in fact, appear to be condensing vaporized magic on her surface. It was disconcerting, but miniscule. “It should be fine,” she said dismissively.
Rainbow Dash took the reassurement at face value and circled Twilight, “I gotta say, that is—”
“–creepy?” Twilight suggested nervously.
“–awesome!” was Rainbow Dash’s actual response.
Reassured, Twilight relaxed and focused on her next feat. Gently, she moved from one side of Rainbow Dash to the other, but not with her starry legs. She just seemed to flow across the space, over and around the pegasus for emphasis.
Rainbow Dash laughed and squirmed as the alicorn flowed over her and reformed on the other side. “You know, you could have just done that in the first place,” she said after Twilight reformed. “It would have saved some time.”
“Yeah, well I—” Twilight started, but Rainbow Dash had other ideas.
“Oh, oh! You know what you should do? Say the line! Say it!” she beamed with a wide grin, literally hopping on her hooves like she was Pinkie Pie.
Twilight was just confused. “What? What line?”
“You know! ‘I am the night,’ like Batmare!” Rainbow Dash mimicked the line with mock seriousness, then went back to grinning.
Just like that, Twilight was flesh again. “No, Dash. Just no.”
“Aww.” The rainbow pegasus deflated, but didn’t argue.
“This really doesn’t weird you out?” Twilight asked, one last time.
Rainbow Dash shrugged. “Hay, pony magic, right? My mane turns into a flipping rainbow when I fly fast enough, you’re made of sparkles, now let’s get you off the ground.”
“...they’re stars, Dash. Stars.”
“So if you can do all that, why did you need me to teach you to fly?” Rainbow Dash asked during a lull in Twilight’s crash course in flight. “Couldn’t you just, like, sparkle your way anywhere?”
Twilight was doing much better now with a pair of fresh wings and Rainbow Dash’s instruction on how to keep them that way after a few of her less effective ‘landings.’ She wasn’t exactly a natural, but then she wasn’t exactly a fluttershy either. It felt a little mean to think of her friend as a benchmark for mediocrity in flight, but the butter-yellow pegasus herself would be the first to tell you that she didn’t mind, and indeed wasn’t the best of fliers.
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Are you seriously going to keep calling it that?”
“Yes.” Rainbow Dash declared with mock authority. “In fact, that’s your new nickname, Sparkles.”
“Eugh,” Twilight bemoaned her fate in life... or nomenclature, anyway.
“So, what gives? I mean, this is great fun for me and all but I got the feeling you didn’t just want to shut me up—though that was pretty good. Do you, like, sit up all night thinking up all sorts of ways you could take the rest of us out if you had to? Like if Discord came back and turned the rest of us again, only instead of using the memories of our friendship you had to—”
“I am not Batmare, Rainbow Dash!” Twilight interrupted. “I swear, if you keep doing this, I will stop lending you comic books at the library.”
“Oh fine,” she relented. “Why do I feel like I have to ask you everything three times, though?”
“Because I’m still not comfortable with some of it, and you’re as persistent as Pinkie Pie, sometimes,” Twilight sighed with a hint of tired bitterness.
“Look, I just...” She sighed, downcast. “I’d rather not have to go back through the Everfree forest right now. I’m still feeling uncomfortably vulnerable after what happened and flying seemed like it would help with that—and it is helping so long as I don’t have to keep talking about it.”
“You could have just said so in the first place, you know. ‘Hey Dash, I’m feeling down, let’s go fly!’” Rainbow Dash emoted extra smoothly for Twilight’s benefit.
“I used fewer words than you did,” Twilight pointed out.
“Yeah, but they were less honest words,” Rainbow Dash retorted justly.
Twilight exhaled softly, and gave a little chuckle. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“I am always right,” Rainbow Dash declared. “I don’t know why you don’t listen to me more.”
“Dash, I’m powered by a million stars and I like you, but talking to you makes me so tired sometimes. Well, demonstrably less than a million right this second, but you get the idea. Some of us just don’t work at the same speed you do.”
Rainbow Dash cringed. “Ugh, don’t say that. I hate that guy. Just reading all that meta garbage makes me tired.”
The gears in Twilight’s head ground to a halt and she cocked her head at the pegasus. “What guy?”
“The one powered by a million suns,” Rainbow Dash asserted emphatically.
“Stars aren’t suns, Dash,” Twilight clarified. “I mean, they’re similar in a lot of ways, but they’re actually denser per cubic hoof, and even though they burn like the sun, the energy they release is closer to the moon, and... you don’t really care, do you.”
“Whatever. I still can’t believe you don’t read everything that comes through your library!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed with indignation. “I mean, reading is great and all but do you have any idea how it feels when I’ve read something and you haven’t?”
“I’m familiar with the sensation Dash, yes,“ Twilight replied with sarcasm bordering on abrasiveness. “–and I appreciate comics just fine, I just don’t like all of the crossovers or new authors that throw out everything a character is about just to make them more bright and sparkly. My life has more than enough sparkles.”
Rainbow Dash was covering her mouth with both hooves, but failed to muffle a snicker.
“What?” Twilight barked, then realized what she’d just said. “Oh hoof it all, now you’ve got me doing it.”
“–but hay, you read Twilight. You don’t have any right to look down on comics,” Rainbow Dash defended indignantly.
“Some day, Dash, I’m going to teach you about personal space.” Twilight grumbled, mostly to herself. “Look, if they made a book about you, you’d read it too.”
Rainbow Dash brightened up immediately. “You bet I would—because it would be AWESOME.”
“Okay, but picture this, Dash,” Twilight explained with exaggerated slowness. “What if they did write a book about you, but it wasn’t awesome?”
“Oh.” Rainbow Dash suddenly blanched, clearly picturing such a nightmare scenario in her head for the first time. “Oh Celestia, no!”
“Now you know what my life is like.”
Eventually, Twilight was given the Rainbow Dash seal of yeah-you-can-probably-make-it-home and the two of them parted ways over Fluttershy’s cottage.
It was weird, but she actually kind of missed her little hole in the ground—she had to admit that it kind of was a hole if you saw it from far off—despite being in the middle of the Everfree forest. It was peaceful and secluded and somehow hers. She’d made it, after all.
That didn’t sound weird at all.
Actually, looking at it scientifically, unicorns did sometimes feel attachment to things they’d used lots of magic on. It was suspected that the magic grew to permeate the object and lent it an air of familiarity. In layman’s terms, it wasn’t unlike animals that marked their territory with scent—though she was unfond of the images that particular analogy brought to mind, especially on the scale in question.
Ew.
Of course, irrational attachment aside, she still felt bad for wiping a historical monument off the map. That seemed like the sort of thing you didn’t do, even if it was inside the one place in Equestria ponies just didn’t go. Celestia hadn’t seemed too broken up about it, and it was basically her old house—but then, sometimes it was hard to tell with her.
Luna, on the other hand...
Twilight sighed. Again, Celestia had reassured her that the two of them would be able to work it out, but she didn’t feel like she was getting anywhere. She’d sort of gotten over the lion’s share of her panic and fear by replacing it with a new breed of panic and another brand of fear. She felt more grounded than she had in days, but she was still in the same place as ever with the princess.
Stranger still, even though she wasn’t quite actually afraid that the princess would hate her forever any more, her desire for an amicable resolution sooner rather than later was stronger than ever. She already had friends like Rainbow Dash and she could just talk forever with Princess Celestia, so why did it feel like Luna was so important?
She found the library before she found an answer, and gently swooped down to land in front of it. Nopony could mistake her for a regular pegasus, but she hoped to be inside quick enough to avoid comment. When it came to actually opening the door though, she hesitated.
Standing in front of the door to the Library, she remembered her little fantasy from the night before about how she expected learning more about the alicorns would solve all her problems. In reality, it had probably been the shortest ‘quest of self discovery’ ever, but it sure hadn’t felt like it; stupidest maybe, like the zen equivalent of finding enlightenment by turning a corner and running straight into a wall. Either way, she was glad to be home. She wasn’t sure where she would be going from here, but there was still one more talk she had to have.
There was a scratching sound like claws on wood upstairs as Twilight entered the library and shut the door behind her.
“Spike!” she shouted, but there was no answer. “I don’t care, okay? I won’t even say anything about it, can you just come out, please?”
A little purple and green head peeked out of the stairwell and the rest followed soon after. She was on him in an instant; the poor baby dragon never had a chance. Sister hugs were an inescapable fact of life.
“Twi—light! You’re—crushing—me!” came a series of complaintive squeaks from somewhere in Twilight’s arms.
She loosened her grip to hold him at arms length and look at him with misty eyes. “Please don’t ever avoid me like that again, Spike. You have no idea what I’ve been through. If the last thing I ever said to you was your name, asking you to come back... well, you’d feel really bad.”
“Don’t you mean you’d feel bad?” Spike asked, confused.
“No, Spike,” she responded with complete, almost unnatural sincerity. “I’d be dead.”
Spike frowned and was silent for a moment as that sank in. “Can that really happen?”
“Apparently,” was her only response.
Spike looked down, having been successfully embarrassed. “...I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” Twilight gave a short nod and hugged him again.
“What—did—happen,” he asked from within her death-grip
“Ursa Major,” she said simply.
“You mean Minor, right?” he asked, eyes wide.
She gave a smirk. “Both, actually.”
“Woah.”
“–and Spike?” she added, finally releasing him.
“Yeah?” he responded automatically as he recovered.
“At least bet on me next time, okay?” she said with a scolding smile.
The baby dragon dropped his eyes in embarrassment. “You said you wouldn’t say anything.”
“I’m an alicorn. I lied,” she declared matter of factly.
“I don’t think that’s how that works.”
Some time later, after stories had been exchanged and food had been had, there was a knock at the door. Spike got it. “Um, Twilight?” he shouted. “There’s a bunch of ponies here to see you. Like, a bunch; possibly a ton of ponies. They look important.”
Sharing the Night: Chapter 6
“You don’t measure ponies by the ton, Spike,” Twilight chided as she made her way to the front door of the library. “The most common collective noun is ‘herd,’ but there’s als—oh Celestia, that is a ton of ponies.”
The alicorn of the stars paled at the mass of ponies outside her library. What had she done now? The ponies of Ponyville had mostly seen fit to watch her from afar, save that one time when she’d made the mistake of engaging them. They certainly hadn’t dared come to her door en masse.
Frozen in place in the doorway, hesitant to leave her home, no room to invite them in, and too polite to slam the door and hide under her bed, she realized that these ponies weren’t from Ponyville. A moment later, she realized that their not being from Ponyville didn’t mean she didn’t know them. In fact, one of them in the middle of the crowd waved.
Twilight weakly waved back, attempting to feign a look of neutrality and failing completely.
“Ahem,” the foremost pony of the group coughed.
“Star Glister,” Twilight greeted the aged head of the Astronomers’ Guild of Equestria as politely as she was able. He had a clean white coat and a rich midnight blue mane despite his age, and was not exactly her favorite pony in the world. Bringing the whole guild to her doorstep wasn’t helping either.
“So, it really is you,” he stated with a hint of sourness and disbelief.
“Yeah. It’s me,” she confirmed neutrally.
He eyed her wings and mane. “Princess of the stars.”
“Alicorn. Just... alicorn of the stars,” she corrected with a mix of exasperation and acceptance. There really wasn’t a way she could say it that didn’t put her on a pedestal. Still, the title of princess was special to her and it felt wrong to take it for herself.
“Of course.” He stiffened. “I never thought when Princess Celestia had us install that telescope in your tower that it would lead us here.”
“Why are you here?” Twilight asked, pulling back and flattening her ears with guarded suspicion. She had a pretty good idea.
“The princess of the night—” he started to say, but a younger stallion at his side nudged him and he corrected himself. “The princess of the moon directed us here.”
“She’s still pissed, huh?” Twilight asked dryly. Of course she was.
The older unicorn looked unsure at the connection, but admitted, “Her demeanor was not pleasant, no.”
“Princess Luna...” She shook her head sadly. “What are we going to do?” she asked herself.
“Lady Sparkle—” the stallion began.
“Please don’t call me that. This isn’t Canterlot,” Twilight asserted. “I’m just the librarian here.”
Star Glister frowned. “Very well then—Librarian Sparkle,” he corrected unhappily. “My apologies for bothering you at your residence, but the mayor of this quaint little town didn’t seem to know where you would be holding your evening court. Disgraceful, I tell you.”
“My what?”
“Court, Spike!” Twilight bemoaned. “They want me to go out there at dusk and hold court!” She was standing over a large book of Equestrian law—her own personal copy, of course. “–and they’re right! The authority to hold court, mediate disputes and render judgement is granted to alicorns for some hoofing reason. Look at the date on this.” She stamped on the page with her hoof. “It’s from before there even was a diarchy! How can they not have updated this in over a millenium and a half?” she shouted angrily at the book.
“Wait, so all the talk about not being a princess was pointless?” Spike asked, dubious of the possibility. The princess wasn’t known to give false assurances. Well, not to Twilight anyway, usually, when the world wasn’t in danger.
“Right!” Twilight shouted automatically with indignation, then sighed, looking back at the book. “Well, no, it does matter. There’s a bunch of other stuff I’d have to do if I really was a princess, and I think I’d actually need to own land to even qualify. You might think all the stars in the sky would count, but apparently not! Anyway, look at this. All the really really big stuff says alicorn.”
“I guess that’s what you get for having one on the throne the whole time,” Spike shrugged.
Twilight gaped at the baby dragon. “Spike! Are you suggesting the Equestrian government is racist?”
“What? No!” Spike shouted defensively.
“Oh.” Twilight was easily mollified, though it got her thinking. “Actually, you know, there don’t seem to be any provisions for cloud ownership.”
“Man, you think you know your government...” Spike shook his head.
“Yeah, well, Celestia can only do so much.” Twilight shrugged. “There just isn’t that much pegasus representation in the government.”
“Duh—because they aren’t landowners!” Spike pointed out.
“No!” Twilight barked, then reconsidered. “Well—maybe—but I meant that most pegasi value their freedom and get bored sitting around waiting for politics to happen.”
“Didn’t that one pegasus mailmare run for mayor, once?” Spike recalled.
“That doesn’t count, it was a joke write-in that got out of hoof,” Twilight dismissed. “She didn’t even know she almost won until ponies started asking about her stance on muffin taxes. Her campaign never recovered from the embezzlement allegations after she started talking about how much she’d like it if ponies paid their taxes in muffins,” she elaborated somberly.
Spike rolled his eyes. “How do you even remember all of that?”
“It was last Tuesday,” she reminded him.
“Oh, right.” Spike scratched the back of his neck, a little embarrassed. “Anyway, Twilight. I just meant that there hasn’t ever been a difference between alicorns and princesses before, has there? You’re the first alicorn that’s ever not been a princess.”
“That’s true,” she admitted. “Unless Celestia and Luna had a third sister they didn’t get along with.”
Spike screwed up his face in disgust. “Yeesh, Twilight. That’s pretty grim.”
“Grim? What do you—no! Ugh, Spike!” she shared his look of disgust. “I just meant that they didn’t want her ruling Equestria with them!”
“Right,” he said. “So they—”
“You do not accuse the diarchy of committing sororicide of their non-existent sister, Spike!” Twilight lectured indignantly. “Not even if they have a history of long-forgotten sisters and attempted coups. Not only is it rude, but it’s also only one data point. I’ve taught you statistics, Spike. You know this.”
“I guess.” He shrugged. “But wait, speaking of ‘multiple data points...’ what about all those other princes and princesses, like Blueblood?”
“Don’t be silly; they aren’t real royalty, Spike. They’re not even—” She stopped mid-sentence, as soon as her mind caught up with her mouth.
“–alicorns?” Spike finished sarcastically, knowing her all too well.
Twilight just stared blankly ahead for a good, long moment before dropping to the floor and burying her face in her book out of embarrassment like a literary ostrich trying to will the pages to accept her face. “Yeah, that,” she said, her voice muffled by the pages.
Twilight was still reading her copy of Equestrian Law for the Politically Disinclined when there was an ominous knock at the door for the second time that day. For a moment, she panicked, thinking she’d lost track of time. She had lost track of time, actually, but lucky for her it wasn’t nearing dusk just yet. She still had some time before she needed to hold—she wilted just thinking about it—court.
As the door opened to reveal her mystery guest, though, she realized there were more immediate problems.
“Twilight Sparkle!” the pony at the door said disapprovingly.
“Hello to you too, Rarity.” Twilight shook her head and let the fashionista in so she could close the door before she attracted too much attention. “Why is it you’re never just happy to see me these days?” she grumbled.
Rarity had the decency to look contrite as she entered the library. “Well I’m sorry, Twilight, but how do you expect me to have something ready for you for tonight if I have to hear about it from the—”
“I don’t, Rarity,” Twilight interrupted. “I’m not wearing anything; Princess Celestia doesn’t.”
“You would think that, Twilight.” Rarity shook her head and tsked. “You know, the fact that she is never seen without it doesn’t make the royal regalia any less important.”
“Okay, fine.” Twilight rolled her eyes. “If you can come up with a full set of regalia, in my colors, within the hour, I’ll wear it.”
Rarity just grinned like the cat who caught the canary.
“...you didn’t,” Twilight balked, disbelieving.
“Days ago, darling.”
Luna had listlessly lain in bed far into the late afternoon. It was true she hadn’t slept well ever since she’d lost the stars, but today in particular she’d been absolutely miserable. While in the end she’d only had to put up with the stars crying for a short while, the repercussions had bothered her for the rest of the night.
Well, bothered might not have been the right word.
She was conflicted. Of course she felt bad about ignoring a crying mare no matter how angry Luna was with her, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Worse was that after Twilight had cried herself out, she’d drifted off to sleep and the stars had once again clung to Luna until dawn. Apparently the lunar princess wasn’t going to get a choice in whether or not she had a part in consoling the element of magic.
Worse still, far from feeling taken advantage of, she was actually glad for it. She was glad to have the decision taken out of her hooves and she was glad to be a comfort to the faltering mare without actually having to face her. The empty place in her heart told her that she was still angry with the element of magic, but still...
It felt good to be needed. It filled the emptiness, if only just a little.
It was a lie though. The element of magic didn’t need her, she told herself. Twilight had five of the truest friends a pony could have. Even Celestia herself had run off at dawn, skipping their usual breakfast together. Luna scoffed; whatever had happened, she was sure the end result was a lesson learned and a heartfelt talk. If anything, it was Luna who would come up short in the matter. Surely a personal visit from Celestia meant there would be no letter for lonely, angry, bitter little Luna to read later.
It was dispiriting to think of herself as such. Honestly, she was sick and tired of being all those things. In the past she had been driven by them; she used to spend days on end with no sleep planning for the morning when she would stop Celestia from raising the sun. She suffered through countless lesser indignities just for the day she would see that self-righteous face falter.
What a joke. None of it meant anything to her any more. She didn’t know if the elements of harmony had taken those feelings out of her or if she’d just gotten old. A thousand years was a long time to hold onto hate, even for an alicorn like her. It was half her life. Was it any wonder she felt like a different pony these days? Was it any wonder that maybe, just maybe, she wanted to hope, for once?
She didn’t have a whole lot to hope for, though. The hope that she would get her stars back was dry and dying; it was nothing that would sustain her. The only thing she could come up with was a sad little bud that said maybe the element of magic would send a supplementary report on what had happened, and that she could read it.
Hope was rather depressing, she found.
Moments before dusk, Twilight found herself shifting her weight from one hoof to the others outside of Town Hall where the Mayor sometimes held speeches and press releases. Public speaking was nothing new to her, though she’d had no time to prepare a speech on a stack of index cards like she sometimes did. She had no speech for that matter, which was sort of the problem.
The ponies of the Astronomers’ Guild of Equestria weren’t expecting a speech. They were here as petitioners. They wanted things from her. They wanted answers. Answers which—for all that she had discovered the night before—Twilight doubted she had.
“I present to you, the High Archlibrarian of the Stars, Twilight Sparkle,” came the announcement.
Twilight inwardly cringed as she stepped forth. “Libraries are not an autocracy,” she groaned to herself as shoes made of polished jet made dignified taps each time her hooves met wood. She prepared the traditional Ponyville Librarian Voice, expecting to have to quiet her audience as Celestia often did.
She didn’t. There was no need. These were astronomers, after all; they were scientists. They didn’t cheer. They just stared. She was okay with that, though. Staring was good. Staring meant she had their attention, and though she didn’t have any answers, she did have a bit of a plan.
Twilight’s ‘court’—she still couldn’t believe she was doing this—was scheduled for directly after dusk, but it wasn’t dusk yet, not quite. Her audience would expect to see her bring out the stars, and she wasn’t going to disappoint them.
It was a very strange plan for a pony in her position. It wasn’t very elaborate or complicated. The entirety of it could be summed up as ‘making a good impression,’ if you were so inclined. The strangeness came in that it required her to convince the crowd of something that she’d have argued adamantly against just yesterday, and she still wasn’t completely comfortable with.
They were here to question her, to complain, really. She knew because in her mind she was right there with them; they were her own concerns, her own complaints. They were polite and cordial on the surface, but she needed to convince them that she really was the alicorn of the stars. She needed to convince them that she had the right and authority to be here before them and tell them that what they wanted, they would never see in their lifetime.
As for what specifically she was going to do... Celestia had her own show for raising the sun. It was graceful, elegant and powerful; it was what had first set the fire in Twilight’s heart burning for magic. Twilight had ended up with a special talent for magic, the stars or both, but that was inconsequential. This—to stand before a crowd and show them something wondrous, like Celestia had shown her all those years ago—was what she had wanted to do with it. She wasn’t steady enough on her wings to do graceful or elegant, but after last night... she felt maybe she had it in herself to do powerful.
She stepped up behind the podium, but didn’t get up on it. Instead, she levitated it aside so she was in full view of the crowd. She felt exposed without the podium, index cards or other props, but she wanted them to see this.
She closed her eyes and lit her horn—using Celestia’s spell to calm herself until she could feel the stars around her—then snapped them open again. She couldn’t see the crowd any more, but she knew what they saw: eyes black as night, filled with stars. A few gasps of surprise egged her on only to be repeated again as the black from Twilight’s eyes seemed to spread over her body until she stood before them as she’d shown Rainbow Dash just earlier that day, stars from horn to hooves.
The jeweled collar and tiara she wore clattered to the ground; she lifted one hoof in surprise only for it to come out of its shoe. Somewhere behind her, Rarity made a sound like a strangled mouse. Twilight forced herself to go on.
Resplendent in all her glory—and none of Rarity’s—she reared up, spread her starry wings wide for effect, and slammed her forehooves down with a great resounding thump. Just at that moment, the stars exploded out into the sky above her, churning out great whorls in the process.
The deed done, she released herself from the sky and her starry form at the same moment and looked down at the crowd, expecting faces lit up with astonishment and awe.
The crowd looked back at her unimpressed. At first she wondered if she’d gone too far and scared them, but on closer inspection they looked disquieted—angry, even.
Twilight coughed into her hoof uncomfortably as she levitated her collar, tiara and shoes back on. The sound echoed over the crowd and they all looked up to her. “The—err—Stellar Court will now accept its first petitioner,” she announced, bemused and a little worried.
Star Glister stepped forward from the crowd with a dour look on his face. “The Astronomers’ Guild of Equestria would like to formally request to know when the stars will be returned to their proper locations so we may continue our work.”
Twilight stiffened and put on her best Princess Celestia face. “I am working to return the stars to their previous configuration, but I must do so star by star.”
There was a rumbling of dissent which was echoed in Star Glister’s steady face. Nopony knew better than them just how many stars there were in the night sky. “–and how long do you expect this to take?” was the obvious question they all had on their tongues.
Twilight swallowed hard, her throat dry. “By my calculations, it will take me a thousand years,” she stated plainly, doing her best to make it sound matter-of-fact. The rumbling of the crowd turned into a thunderous outcry as the obvious conclusion was finally confirmed.
Apparently, it actually was possible to get astronomers riled up, Twilight reflected with bitterness. All you had to do was crush their hopes and dreams and invalidate their entire lives’ work. “I’m... sorry, everypony,” she added weakly as she dropped her head. The traditional Ponyville Librarian Voice made the tremor in her voice clear as day, which only drove the crowd louder still. From zero to riot in twenty seconds, she mused. For some reason she’d imagined it taking longer, but what else was there to say?
Star Glister raised one hoof to quiet them. He wasn’t done, apparently. “–and can you do it?” he asked coldly.
Twilight furrowed her brow, confused. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
“Forgive me, but you say you are working on restoring the stars. I don’t see it,” he challenged.
That was true, she had to admit. She’d had so much on her mind that beginning a thousand year project of shuffling stars about hadn’t exactly made it to the top of her list. “Well I—” she started to explain, but Star Glister had more to say.
“How do you expect to restore them when they never stop moving?” the aged astronomer aggressively snapped.
“They what?” she asked automatically.
“You swirl the stars about like it’s a show when you bring them out, and they drift in eddies and currents until you put them away in the morning,” Star Glister fumed angrily. “How do you expect us to maintain any kind of charts when stars can cross the sky in a single night, and drift away from our telescopes no sooner than we get them in sight in the first place? How do you expect to restore them—be it in one thousand or ten thousand years—when you can’t keep them still for one single night?”
Twilight blinked dazedly, blindsided completely. She’d seen the long swirls the stars had formed into, but she hadn’t had time to observe them for long. She certainly had been too busy to get her telescope out. “I... I didn’t know,” she admitted, her lower lip quivering.
“You didn’t even know?” the older pony asked incredulously, shaking with anger.
“I haven’t had time to—” Twilight tried to explain.
“–you didn’t have time?” Star Glister balked, all pretense of civility—let alone propriety—finally stripped from him. “You didn’t have time? You are the alicorn of the stars! What could possibly be more important to you than the bloody stars?!” he shouted in a rage.
Twilight cringed at the outburst and took a step back. Her heart was beating hard and she could feel the blood thrumming in her ears over the pregnant silence that came in the wake of Star Glister’s anger. A small part of her told her she was being ridiculous. It was just a pony yelling at her, but she swore that she could feel the hate boiling off of him. She felt like she had the night before, looking down the jaws of an ursa major—like she had two days ago when Luna had pointed out just how Twilight had hurt her. Most of all, though, she felt lost and confused as her head swam with a mixture of emotions she couldn’t rightly identify.
Before she knew anything was wrong, Twilight found herself surrounded by ponies. She felt another wave of anxiety building up before she realized it was just her friends. At some point she’d stumbled back onto her rump and she was just sitting there with one hoof over her rapidly beating heart like she was trying to hold it in. They were concerned about her, asking if she was alright, but their words all blended together in her muddled head and she couldn’t find her voice to answer.
It really was ridiculous, she told herself. She’d let the stress get to her to the point that she was worrying her friends and making a fool of herself in public because she couldn’t handle a single angry pony. As much as she didn’t want to disappoint Celestia, enough was enough. Magic filled Twilight’s horn and she used the calming spell Celestia had taught her for finding her connection to the stars.
It was like being suddenly dunked in ice water. Her heart seemed to stop between one beat and the next, but eventually it beat once, then again. Each consecutive beat came at its normal pace, as if she hadn’t been inexplicably scared for her life just moments ago. Her breathing followed suit, and she pushed the spell further until everything went dark and the whole of her great tangled mess of emotions unraveled out in the sky.
She didn’t let herself get distracted, though. She tried to put a comforting smile on for her friends as she motioned them back, but it disappeared as she got up. Rainbow Dash and Applejack were facing Star Glister and the crowd, so she had to push past them to do what she was going to do. She felt strange and detached walking with only her starsight for reference, but that was the point. Only when she was like this did she really feel the scope of what she was. Only like this did she really feel whole.
Having to get in front of Rainbow Dash and Applejack put Twilight on the steps leading down away from Town Hall, so she kept walking on down to the crowd. As she did, she turned her body to stars again. Her collar and tiara thudded to the ground once more, but it wasn’t funny this time. As she approached Star Glister, it struck her how small she looked from above, so she pulled a little extra from the sky until her starry form had the stature of a fully grown alicorn. It was kind of mean, but she was beyond being polite.
In fact, just that moment, she had the urge to find out what happened to a pony when you dropped a star on them. Luckily for Star Glister, she’d seen last night what the stars could do to solid rock, and that was enough to stay her hoof.
She looked blindly down at the aged astronomer, then past him to the rest of the guild who had all backed up to form a bubble of space around him. “The Stellar Court is now over,” was all she said.
Star Glister was livid. “My hoof it is! You screw up the stars and you don’t even know what’s going on with them? –and now this—this posturing? What in Equestria is wrong with you?”
Twilight leveled her empty gaze back down at the aged unicorn in front of her. “Star Glister, you are the head of your guild, so act like it. If the stars move, either chart their currents or find a job farming rocks. I am done here.”
As if to prove a point, Twilight didn’t move a hoof. It only took a moment of awkward silence before ponies began to excuse themselves to... anywhere but in front of the alicorn of the stars.
Star Glister was the last to leave, but in the end he did so without another word.
“We are done here,” Luna announced with a dejected sigh. The Night Court—nay, the Lunar Court, she corrected sourly—had been a complete waste of time tonight. It was a waste of time every night, but tonight in particular she had honestly considered striking up a game of cards with her guards. In the end though, she had told herself she didn’t want to have to look at the aces and so stuck it out until she caught one of her moon guard actually yawning, after which she decided to call it a night.
Also, she fired the guard.
With nothing else scheduled for the night, she made her way back to her chambers. She hesitated just inside the large double doors, however. The thought of another night spent wallowing around these gilded rooms turned her stomach, and the sight of books on tax law piled on her nightstand triggered a derisive snort. The fact that Celestia had thought her actually interested in ancient tax law proved that her sister had missed the point entirely.
Ever since she’d returned from the moon, she’d felt lost. She’d felt so empty and out of place in this new castle, with its new culture and new complications. The castle had been remodeled so she would have her own space, but you couldn’t remodel ponies and it was too late for her to go back and watch them change into what they were now.
The tax laws on the other hoof were something she could go back and understand from a thousand years ago to now. She didn’t care about them and she didn’t like them. They were a substitute. They filled the time and made her feel like she had some connection to the way things were. They were a dry, bland consolation, and one she didn’t have the stomach for tonight—a sentiment that extended to everything else in her chambers.
Her eyes drifted longingly to the window; she knew what she really felt like doing. She wanted to fly. She hadn’t done any flying since she’d lost the stars, though; they were connected. How could she bring herself to fly when it would be out there with those foreign stars all around her? Was it any wonder she was so miserable, she thought bitterly. The stars and flying were two things that hadn’t changed in the thousand years she’d been gone. Trapped in this castle, they’d been her only escape for a year. Now, having lost one, she’d lost the other and she really was trapped.
It was pathetic, she told herself. The fact that she—who once ruled the night—would not so much as go out into it was beyond sad. There were many things she had no control over in this new age; she could not make ponies speak or act like they had a thousand years ago, she couldn’t make them forget the horrible things she’d done and the stars would never be hers again. This, though, was not one of those things. This was a cage of her own devise—one she could ill afford.
Steeling herself, the princess of the moon took a slow, methodical step up to the window and took a deep breath. The cold winter night smelled the same as it always had. She opened her eyes, and the night landscape looked... well, not quite like it always had, but close enough. Finally, she raised her eyes to the sparkling night sky.
It wasn’t that bad, actually. They still represented the greatest loss of her immortal life, but if she imagined she were on some parallel version of Equestria, she could maybe admit that they looked... quite nice.
Somehow she’d expected more, but the worst part of it—the feeling of somepony else in her sky, blanketing the whole world with her magic—she hadn’t been able to escape in the first place. She was still a long ways from being used to it or accepting it, she told herself, but this... this wasn’t anything she wasn’t dealing with anyway. This was just looking at the stars.
She suddenly felt very foolish. In an effort to forget the feeling, she stepped up, launched herself into the night sky and flew.
Some time later, after she’d shaken much of the anxiety she’d built up after several days of self-inflicted house arrest, she spread herself out on a wispy white cloud and stretched. Feeling much better, she had just settled down on the cloud to watch the terrain drift below her when a thought pierced the haze of her relief.
“...where is the old castle?”
Twilight was watching Canterlot castle from the stars when she started hearing voices.
“Do ya reckon something’s wrong?” Applejack asked someone. “She ain’t moved a hair fer half an hour.”
“Well, after that debacle, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d fainted on her feet,” Rarity chipped in. “I suppose even alicorns can have panic attacks; Celestia knows she’s been taking this whole thing badly.”
“Yeah, well, if she knows, where is she then?” Applejack huffed. “Ya’ll know ah’d sell my hind legs ta help that gal, but I jes don’t feel like ah am. Seems t’me the princesses should be helping her with it all more’n they are.”
“I’m not so sure,” Rarity said uncertainly. “You know how she gets around Princess Celestia.”
“Yeah, ah know.” Applejack sighed. “Ah reckon Princess Luna’d be able to set her straight—return the favor fer Nightmare Night and all—but the way Twi talks about her, they’re really at odds over this whole thing.”
“You would think someone her age would be a little more mature,” Rarity sniffed, but relented. “I suppose it’s hardly fair to blame her. I can’t fathom what it’s even like to have that sort of connection with something, let alone to lose it. The way I hear it, her mane has gone all white with the moon in it—she’ll have to replace her entire wardrobe!”
“Ah don’t think she has a wardrobe, Rarity,” Applejack said in her distinctive sarcastic drawl.
“You and Twilight—honestly! They’ll need to find something white for all her regalia, at least. It can’t be too iridescent, either, or it’ll make her mane look dull. I just wish I knew how they make them; I nearly died when the set I made for Twilight just fell right off not once, but twice!”
“Well I doubt ya’ll will make that mistake again. Ah’m more worried about the mare herself. Any ideas, Shy?” Applejack asked.
Fluttershy squeaked quietly, responding with uncertainty. “I—I’m not sure,” she admitted. “She was sort of like this yesterday. She wasn’t all starry, but her eyes were and she wouldn’t respond to anything. She said it was, um, a normal alicorn thing.”
“No kidding!” added Rainbow Dash, who was apparently also present. “She’s stiffer than those stuffed-shirt guards when she’s like this. I tried to pry Fluttershy out of bed with her and it was like she was made of Applejack.”
“Now what in tarnation do ya’ll mean by that?” Applejack demanded, not sure if she should be offended or not.
“Well, darling,” Rarity tried to mollify her. “You are rather... solid. It’s not a bad thing!”
“A’course ah’m solid,” Applejack answered matter-of-factly. “Ah’m an earth pony.”
“Yes, well, so is Pinkie Pie,” Rarity pointed out for sake of argument. “You can’t crack walnuts with her face.”
“Ah trip one time and ya’ll never let me hear the end of it!” Applejack objected. “Pinkie Pie is made of cotton candy anyway—she doesn’t count,” she grumbled.
Rarity rolled her eyes. “I doubt she is actually made of candy, Applejack.”
“She might be if she got going fast enough,” Rainbow Dash pitched in excitedly. “I’ve got this theory going that the closer you get to the speed of light, the more you turn into, like, your cutie mark.”
“Pinkie Pie’s cutie mark is balloons, not cotton candy,” Applejack pointed out simply.
“It’s not perfect!” Rainbow Dash countered defensively. “I’m not done with it yet! –and I mean, like, what your cutie mark represents, you know? Like, as Rarity approached the speed of light she would probably turn into pure elemental priss—not diamonds—so she should probably avoid it.”
“Rainbow Dash!” Rarity balked, offended. “Honestly, I’m glad our little bookworm is rubbing off on you, but that is just rude!”
“It’s also sort of a self-serving hypothesis coming from, um, you,” Fluttershy meekly added her two bits.
“Hey—as the fastest pony alive, I’m the only one who can test it! You study what you know!” Dash reasoned.
Okay, that was enough. It had taken Twilight a moment of listening to her friends talking about her to remember she was still standing out in front of Town Hall, and after she’d remembered she hadn’t found a good time to interrupt, but now this was just going nowhere.
“I can hear you guys just fine, you kno—WAH.” Twilight yelped in surprise the moment she released her connection to the sky and found her entire field of view filled with Pinkie Pie, who was standing on a chair and making silly faces inches from Twilight’s nose. She stumbled back on her alicorn-sized starry legs and tripped over a stump.
No wait, that was Applejack.
“Oof,” Twilight grunted as she hit the ground, though it was less of an impact and more of an ethereal splash of stars and magic. For the first time, she looked down at the larger starry body she’d made from its own perspective. It was... peculiar. She didn’t really have time to think about it though, as Applejack was already standing over her, looking like she wanted to help Twilight up but couldn’t quite figure out how.
Twilight solved the issue for her by letting herself become a pony again. She was mildly disappointed when she found herself her usual, only slightly taller than normal self as the extra starry mass blew off in the early evening wind. She supposed she’d either have to grow up to Celestia’s stature the old fashioned way, or else find some dark power to—no, she couldn’t even joke about that right now, it was too close to the thoughts she’d had about dropping a star on Star Glister.
Once more made of pony stuff for the most part, she took Applejack’s hoof and pulled herself upright.
“You okay, hon?” Applejack asked.
“Yeah,” Twilight said automatically, then actually looked down at herself. “Um, yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Pinkie Pie has good timing.”
All five other ponies just looked at her.
“What?” She turned and looked herself over again, but everything was where it was supposed to be. “Was it something I said?”
“Twi.” Applejack looked her in the eyes. “Pinkie there’s been making faces at you fer at least twenty minutes.”
“Oh.” Twilight looked away with embarrassment. To her relief, there wasn’t another pony in sight except for her five friends.
“Now are ya really, really okay? Ah cain’t pretend t’understand everything ya’ll are going through, but ah know mah friends and yer worrying me.”
Twilight sat down on the steps in front of Town Hall and sighed. “Yeah, I know. I worry me sometimes too. I’m sorry for going all... weird on you. I promised myself I wouldn’t use that spell for that.”
“Spell?” Rarity asked. Everypony looked at Twilight oddly.
“Hon,” Applejack took over. “Ah’m more worried that you looked like you nearly had a heart attack here when that old fool started yelling than all the exact details of how ya shut him up.” Everypony else nodded in agreement. “Way ah see it, ya said exactly what ya should have and ah won’t let it get t’me just because ya had t’turn up the creepy t’make him get it.”
Twilight looked up at Applejack and her friends with an expression of helplessness. Right. The whole collapsing thing. “I know, and I’m sorry. I know this isn’t like me. It feels like I’m falling apart, sometimes. I thought it was just with Princess Luna, and it made sense because I care what she thinks. I care about all those ponies I let down today to an extent too. Star Glister, though? He never approved of me and I made peace with that years ago.”
As she talked, her voice got more and more unsteady. Fluttershy sat down next to her and tried to comfort her as she continued. “I thought after last night that I was past this, but it’s like I fold from the slightest thing from anypony and I don’t know why. The worst thing is, you’re right; I said exactly what I should have. I’m a more functional pony as a ‘goddess’ than I am when I’m an actual pony, and I hate that.”
Twilight lowered her head and cradled it with her hooves. “I hate that it works, too; it always works! Every time I act like I’m better than somepony else it works wonderfully; it always has, even when I was just Princess Celestia’s student! Now ponies just fall over their hooves to do anything I want unless it’s to just treat me normally—and if I don’t tell them what I want they get all these crazy ideas in their heads. They bow to me, ask me the stupidest questions imaginable and make me sign library books whose stories only bear a superficial resemblance to my life!”
Everypony was speechless; even Fluttershy had paused in the middle of gently stroking Twilight’s starry mane.
“It’s a real concern!” Twilight asserted defensively. “The worst part is... I’m doing it right now and I know it!”
Applejack blinked. “Uh, care to run that one by us again?”
“Look around!” Twilight declared hotly.
“There’s no one here, Twilight,” Fluttershy informed her, trying to sound comforting rather than concerned.
“Exactly!” Twilight said triumphantly. “We’re sitting in the middle of Ponyville shouting—”
“–you’re the only one who’s shouting,” Fluttershy mumbled under her breath.
“–and nopony will so much as step out their door while I’m here!” Twilight finished. She was breathing heavily, but seemed to calm down after she’d said her piece.
“Twilight, I really don’t think–” Rarity started dismissively, but was interrupted by Twilight.
“No—you know what? It’s okay. It’s their problem. I have too much on my plate right now to also deal with trying to protect ponies from themselves. If they don’t want to come outdoors until morning, then fine.”
Everypony looked uncomfortable. “...you’re not gonna stay out here all night, are you?” Rainbow Dash asked, looking a little ashamed for doing so.
Twilight looked up at the awkward pegasus and sighed, feeling guilty about being such a burden on her friends. “No, Dash. I think I’m just going to go...” Twilight paused as she searched for the right words. “I think I’m going to go be myself for a while,” she finally said.
Applejack offered her a hoof and a smile to help her up again. “Come on, we’ll all walk ya back to the library.”
Twilight didn’t take the hoof she was offered, instead shaking her head slowly. “No, it’s fine,” she said, suddenly starting to dissolve into stardust before their eyes. “Tell Spike not to worry, okay? I’ll be... around.”
It was a long time until anypony broke the silence—long after the last mote of Twilight had drifted off in the wind. Applejack’s voice was grim, but determined.
“Somepony get me a quill.”
Luna had circled the site of the old castle of the royal pony sisters a few times before landing with a crunch in the freshly fallen snow. There was no mistaking it though; the old castle was simply missing as if it had never been there at all. One more piece of her past was gone forever. As she looked out over the fresh white snow, however, somehow she was not quite so devastated as she thought she should be.
Having landed on the edge of the gradually steepening slope that made up the hole where she’d once lived, Luna begun to walk around the perimeter, examining the site and her feelings in turn.
The most glaring thing about the hole was that she had no idea what had made it. It wasn’t a crater; no falling star or explosion had carved it out. It was just as if the castle had vanished overnight like the Crystal Empire—and it had taken her feelings with it.
The crunching of her hooves though untouched snow stopped for a moment. That wasn’t entirely true. As she searched her heart, she realized she did still have feelings about the old castle, though not the ones she expected.
Looking over the blank slate where she’d once lived in the silence of the night, though, she understood that deep down inside, it was not a place that she had actually wanted to remember. Whether they were from a thousand years ago or just one, the old castle represented so many memories that were tainted by jealousy and hatred.
Luna had never actually asked Celestia why she had abandoned their old home. She had never really given it much thought, beyond bemoaning it as another source of unnecessary change. It was easy to forget that those events troubled her sister as much as they did her.
That wasn’t the point, however. She forced herself to keep walking and keep examining her lack of reaction. No matter what her real feelings towards the castle, the Luna she knew would be frothing mad right now. She was used to every insult, every prick or barb to her pride cutting her to the quick. It had long been a truism about the princess of the moon that she was nothing, if not emotional. Lunacy, they called it—moon madness if you were being crude. Whatever it was, it was like that whole side of her was gone.
A whining, unstable, insufferable side of her, but a side nonetheless.
She had bemoaned feeling listless countless times since returning from the moon, but this was just the straw that broke the camel’s back—or the castle that failed to do so, rather. The princess sat down in the snow and looked up at her moon. She was beginning to think that there really was something wrong with her.
Twilight was by now no stranger to the experience of actually being the stars in the sky, but neither had she made a point of spending very long as such. It was a good feeling, for the most part. She felt whole and secure in her immeasurable vastness, stretching all across Equestria.
Now that she had a clear head—which is to say, no head at all—she sort of regretted the dramatic way she’d left the girls on the steps of Town Hall. She really did somehow feel much more herself when she was up in the sky than she had as a pony these last few days. Being the stars didn’t seem an exercise in being immense and powerful so much as she just felt normal while everything else took on a certain toy-like size and quality.
It wasn’t entirely sparkles and rainbows, though. Now that it had been pointed out to her, she could feel parts of herself drifting gently across the sky in different directions. It was quite possibly the strangest part of her new condition yet, which was saying quite a bit. The drifting was slow enough that she didn’t consciously notice it and yet fast enough that she was constantly surprised of the shapes she was in from one hour to the next.
She would have said it made her skin crawl, but she didn’t have skin and was pretty sure the sensation in question was the movement of the stars themselves. Actually, when she just stopped and let herself drift, it was less of a crawl and more a gentle flow. She could imagine she was lying on her back in the ocean with her eyes closed, just letting the current take her where it would—except in this case she was the ocean and she was the current. It was really not a bad feeling at all.
In fact, it was so oddly hypnotizing that with no other pressing matters, she let herself just drift for hours. When the time came for dawn she was so lost in herself that she just rolled over in her half-sleep like she had the last two mornings, setting the stars and making way for a new day.
A new day without a Twilight Sparkle anywhere in Equestria.
The urge to set the moon had awoken Luna, which was odd for her. She almost never fell asleep before dawn, though she’d been getting such poor sleep lately, she supposed it was inevitable. She got up and stretched in the fresh rosy dawn, the crunch of snow beneath her hooves reminding her that she had somehow fallen asleep at the site of the old castle.
The lunar princess let herself fall back down into the fresh, soft powder and rolled lazily over onto her back in it. Somehow, the whole area still felt like the night to her. The cold was reminiscent of the time she spent in the sky, of course, but that wasn’t it. Even though the night had gone, it was still here in the rock and snow—in the very air. She curled up on her side and breathed it in.
“Twilight,” she sighed.
Wait, what? Luna blinked, suddenly wide awake with her heart in her throat. It wasn’t the night she felt—well it was, but—it was Twilight. It was her magic that filled this place, the same magic that filled the night sky and constantly reminded her of what she’d lost.
When did that become a thing she sighed wistfully about when she was half asleep?
Twilight slept rather later in the day than she would have normally expected, though one could certainly say that there were extenuating circumstances what with her being sealed away in a silent realm that held nothing but the night and therefore there being no day for her to sleep late into. Wake she eventually did, though, all the while through the process reflecting that it was rather difficult to eke out just five more minutes in bed when one had no covers to wrap tightly about oneself, no eyelids to squint shut and indeed no bed to stay in in the first place.
Having awoken to the sight of nothing but empty black space, Twilight rolled over in place and looked elsewhere several times, locating some stars, some more stars and the moon before coming to the conclusion that indeed, Equestria seemed to be missing. Eventually, after a while longer spent waking up, she recognized her particular predicament for real.
This, then, must be the umbra.
Neither the word umbra nor the place itself was as new to Twilight as one might think, though indeed the application of one to the other was a thing of mere days, dating back to her nightmarish foray into the Canterlot archives’ collection of reprehensible books on celestial mechanics. The word itself, though, was common enough for a student as dedicated to the sciences as Twilight was, and the place she found herself in was the first way she’d experienced her new existence that day in the bath. This place was where the night went when it wasn’t night and it was the place she had to reach into to bring it back.
Umbra itself was an often misunderstood term, even before you started throwing it at celestial mechanics. Many ponies came across it first in fiction and simply thought of it as meaning ‘shadow,’ which it sort of did in old Equestrian and that was good enough for them. However, Umbra as it was used today had a much richer meaning.
Specifically, while a shadow was in most cases thought of as a flat shape projected on a surface, an umbra was specifically the three-dimensional space within which light from a particular source was obstructed completely. There were also the penumbra and the antumbra, but Twilight was pretty sure they didn’t apply here. In the case of an umbra though, it was the space itself which was in umbra, and the light never needed to touch anything or form any shadows for it to exist. It should be clear, then, why one would expect this seems like a perfectly sensible name for the place Twilight found herself in now.
One would then be wrong, but that seldom mattered with nomenclature.
Saying that the place Twilight found herself in was in umbra would of course lead to the question, ‘in umbra of what?’ Certainly, during the day it could be considered to be in umbra of the sun, but then at night the sun came to this place, so that didn’t work. If there was anything the place was actually in umbra of, it would have to be Equestria itself, except for the little detail that Equestria as a whole wasn’t actually a source of light and there was technically, no mass obstructing it from view, either.
The requisite mental gymnastics required to make literal sense of the word aside, it was really rather remarkable that nopony had come up with a more accurate one. Normally ponies couldn’t name things fast enough, but the idea of a place defined purely by the fact that it couldn’t be seen from Equestria quite literally proved the proverb ‘out of sight, out of mind.’
Twilight on the other hoof had much more use for a name for it, considering it could very well end up on a checklist with ‘pack sandwiches’ under it in red.
You’d think that the question of where the sun goes at night would be one of those awkward questions that young fillies and colts asked their parents or teachers, and you wouldn’t be wrong. The fact of the matter is just that very few children are still paying attention by the time their parents get finished making something up because they got bored when they were their age, and so on and so forth ad nauseam. As for those who ask their teachers, well, it’s pretty much the same, except the teachers actually know what they’re talking about.
If you ask the children, it’s not an improvement.
As it is, when first introduced to the idea that the world of Equestria is round, many children are wont to presume logically that it is always day on one side of the world and night on the other. This is of course, not the case. They are quickly taught that the sky and world are separate things and obey separate rules. The world is viscerally physical, while the sky is ephemerally magical. Earth and water below contrasted with fire and air above in some philosophies.
While the various basic elemental views are comforting, however, they fail to fully describe the complexities of the albeit limited pony understanding of the sky. One outlook young students are provided is to think of the sky as a layer of magic which wraps around the world like a blanket, and that from within the blanket, the sky looks the same from any point on the world according to the angle of observation. The day and night are then each one such blanket, existing in a space where they are able to trade places without intersecting one another.
This is generally where the class automatically divides itself into two halves: the half which finds this fascinating, and the half which will go on to do meaningful things with their lives. The Twilight Sparkles and the Applejacks, if you will. Sometimes there are also Pinkie Pies, but one does not normally talk about those in polite company.
Fortunately for the Applejacks, none of this is actually important but for the simple understanding that when the day or night seems to pass over the horizon, they pass into a place the same as any other, save that you cannot see the world from it. This, then, is the Umbra: a cold black expanse where nothing exists but night when it is day, or day when it is night.
Unfortunately for all of the Twilight Sparkles of the world—and specifically the Twilight Sparkle who was, at the moment, not of the world—this all took relatively less time for her to review than it did for the day to pass into night again so she could actually leave it. The umbra was—for all of its fancy metaphysical implications—quite boring to actually visit, as it turned out.
As the late afternoon in Ponyville slowly turned into night in what was probably her most gentle dusk yet, Twilight let herself flow lazily down into the library to appear with a yawn and a great big stretch. She felt like she’d slept in all day, and had no plans to do anything at all stressful.
“Twilight!” she heard, moments before a small baby dragon wrapped its arms around her neck.
Twilight returned the hug. “Hey, Spike.” After a few moments, she tried to extricate herself from the hug, but the baby wouldn’t let go. “Spike?”
“Don’t tell me you can die and then just disappear for a whole day,” he said seriously.
Twilight blinked. A day? Well actually, her ‘court’ had been held at dusk yesterday, so... wow, it had been a whole day. “I... I’m sorry, Spike. I didn’t mean to be gone that long.”
The baby dragon finally let her go. “Did something happen again?” he asked with worry.
Twilight sat down and looked away guiltily. “Not exactly; that is—um—no. Nothing like the night before last.”
Spike just looked expectantly at her, mildly confused.
Twilight sighed. “I was asleep when I put away the stars, and I kind of... went with them. I didn’t exactly plan to, but it’s my fault I did so—I’m sorry for being gone all day,” she explained reluctantly, a touch indignant but mostly just embarrassed.
Spike looked like he was actively trying to wrap his head around that. “So... You locked yourself in some celestial closet all day and couldn’t get out until the sun set?”
“That’s...” Twilight hesitated. It wasn’t really worth lecturing him on the details. “Yes, Spike, that is exactly it,” she finally said flatly.
“So, pretty much the same as my day then,” Spike concluded.
Twilight cocked her head to the side. “You locked yourself in the closet?” she asked dubiously.
“I might as well have,” Spike explained. “I could have gotten some sleep if I had. Without you around, this place is dead quiet. I never thought I’d miss the sound of pages turning while you mutter under your breath about quadra-whatsits and whatever-nomials.”
Twilight was glad to hear it. “Quiet is good. I am sorry I left you alone, but at least all of those astronomers will be long gone back to Canterlot by now.”
“Um...” Spike hesitated, scratching the back of his neck out of awkwardness.
Twilight was not amused. “Spike, tell me the astronomers have all gone,” she insisted seriously.
Spike opened his mouth to speak, stopped to think, then declared with confidence, “the astronomers have all gone—”
Twilight sighed in relief.
“–to anypony who will rent them space while they’re waiting for the construction,” Spike finished hurriedly, as if maybe he could say it fast enough that she wouldn’t notice.
“Construction,” Twilight deadpanned. “What construction.”
“Um—you know—maybe I misheard Rarity,” Spike backpedaled. “I don’t think there’s any construction after all.”
“As if you would ever pay anything less than full attention to the sound of Rarity’s voice.” Twilight rolled her eyes. “What did you hear?” she enunciated insistently.
“They might be adding a guild branch here in Ponyville,” Spike explained.
Twilight cringed reflexively, but she’d already prepared herself for the obvious. “Well, that isn’t so bad. At least Star Glister won’t—”
“–more of a headquarters, actually,” Spike corrected quickly.
Twilight groaned. “The whole guild is moving to Ponyville?” she asked with a pained expression.
“According to Rarity...” Spike began to check off items on his claws. “The whole guild, their families, their servants, their business partners, ponies ‘in the know,’ whatever that means,” He had to switch to his other hand to keep counting. “–ponies not in the know who are smart enough to follow those who are, opportunistic nobility who’ll try to get you to naively sign off on things, all of their families, servants and business partners...”
Twilight’s eyes got a little wider and her jaw dropped a little more with each item Spike listed until the young dragon found himself blinking in confusion on account of being out of claws on his hands to count with. After a moment’s pause, he began to point to the claws on his feet, but the look on Twilight’s face indicated that she had got the idea, so he moved on.
“Anyway, apparently real estate prices skyrocketed today and Rarity said something about Ponyville becoming the new Canterlot. She was—umm—cackling like a madpony.” Spike looked around shiftily. “Don’t tell her I called it that,” he added.
“Wh—but I—how?” was all Twilight could say. “How do they get ‘we should stick around and build a monument to her glory’ out of what happened yesterday?”
“I don’t know anything about a monument,” Spike mentioned uncertainly. “–but Mayor Mare did say she had something important to talk to you about.”
Twilight’s head thudded into the floor in front of her with another groan. “Well, at least that’ll have to wait for tomorrow. The mayor’s office is closed by now.”
Spike hesitated to say anything at first, but he failed to keep quiet. “They adjusted their hours, actually.”
“What.” Twilight had clearly misheard him.
“They adjusted their hours,” Spike said again. “They’re open until midnight,” he clarified.
“Spike, that’s impossible,” Twilight dismissed with a hint of nervousness.
Spike looked confused. “–but the mayor said—”
“No, you don’t understand, Spike.” Twilight lectured, motioning with her hooves. “This is the government we’re talking about. No government office in the history of ponydom has ever been open past five.”
“Is there a record, or something?” Spike had to ask.
Twilight turned to look at her front door with dread. “Suddenly I get the feeling that this is getting too big for me to handle,” she bemoaned.
“You didn’t at the phrase ‘new Canterlot?’”
Twilight felt no compunction over using the stars to make her way to Town Hall without being seen; she held no illusions that such a trip would be as relaxing as her trip through the Everfree forest had been—which was a weird thing to admit without sarcasm, but no less true for being so.
Manifesting on the steps outside of Town Hall, she did her best to forget the events that had taken place there the night before, let alone the idea that there would apparently be many more such occurrences in the days to come.
Days? More like years—decades—centuries. It made her few petty days of resistance feel futile.
Twilight shook her head and distracted herself by confirming that yes, the mayor had even had Town Hall’s posted hours changed already; it was eerie, like something out of a horror story. Nonetheless, she steeled herself and opened the door.
Like most government buildings, there was no receptionist. You simply had to either know where you were going or check the posted floor map for the right office. Twilight’s case was of course the former. She’d been to the mayor’s office many times about this or that event, and the library was government funded, so she and the mayor saw each other often. They weren’t exactly friends, but they were comfortable with each other.
At least, that was what Twilight had thought before she’d walked into the mayor’s office only to have the government official get up and display exactly why one didn’t typically bow from behind a fancy desk. “Your—ow—majesty.”
Twilight rolled her eyes, and started to refuse the title, but paused. After what she’d read about the governing rights of alicorns, she wasn’t sure if ‘majesty’ wasn’t actually applicable after all. She settled for a sigh. “Come on, mayor. It’s just me. Spike said you had something to talk to me about?”
“Ahem, yes.” The mayor straightened up and regained her air of dignity. “It won’t take very long at all, I just have some papers for you to sign.”
Twilight furrowed her brow. “Papers?” she asked suspiciously. Her mind immediately went to Spike’s mention of ponies trying to take advantage of her relative political naïveté.
“It’s just a couple of things,” the mayor insisted as she fished some papers out of her desk. “The first is really just a formality,” she explained.
Twilight took the papers in her magic and looked them over. “Confirmation of alicorn residence...?” Twilight read across the top. “There’s a form for this?” she asked incredulously, wondering if this was some sort of joke.
“There is a form for everything,” the mayor explained seriously, for a moment giving the impression of a bedraggled office worker rather than the leader of their fair town. The impression was brief, however, and she continued. “This one mostly just confirms that you—an alicorn with all rights and privileges of such—make Ponyville your residence. Having a residing alicorn will have several benefits for Ponyville, not the least of which are several different tax exemptions, and the rights and status of being a crown city.”
“I don’t even have a crown,” Twilight grumbled, then proceeded to read through the papers as the mayor summarized them. She was glad she did, because the mayor helpfully left out one little detail. “This gives me authority over... you. This is a position.”
“It is not—strictly speaking—an actual position,” Mayor Mare corrected uncomfortably. “There’s no additional title involved. It was drafted with Princess Celestia in mind, should she ever choose to leave Canterlot. There are provisions there for residence and access to the city treasury, however.”
Twilight frowned. “I don’t need all that. I’m happy just being the librarian here.”
The mayor closed her eyes, took a breath, then opened them again. “That is the other thing I need to talk to you about,” she said as neutrally as possible as she slid another single sheet of paper over to Twilight with her hoof.
Twilight didn’t even have to pick it up. She could read the form header from where she sat. The large block letters read ‘notification of termination.’
“You’re... firing me?” was all she could say.
Mayor Mare looked like she wanted to word it differently, but eventually she gave up and just sighed. “Yes. Yes, Twilight, I am firing you.”
“–but... why?” she asked weakly, then stiffened up. “Are you trying to pressure me into signing—”
“No,” the mayor interrupted as sincerely as she could. “No, if anything I’m pushing that through because of this.”
Twilight was at a loss for words. It wasn’t like her irrational fear the day before—she was completely in control of herself—it was just... she had never been fired before. Princess Celestia herself had arranged for Twilight’s position at the library. She didn’t even know what to think.
She hunched over and moved the paper closer to herself with her hoof so she could read one line in particular. “Reason for termination: No longer suitable for position?” she squeaked softly.
“There have been complaints, Twilight,” the mayor explained. “–and I confirmed with Spike today; nopony but you and your friends so much as go near the library now. I know it’s been your home, but a library is a place of learning for the public, not just you. We can’t have a library that ponies are afraid to go to, Twilight.”
Twilight dropped her head and closed her eyes. That was it, then. She couldn’t argue against that. “I... understand,” she said hollowly, finally taking the paper in her hoof, as if in acceptance.
“Now, I know it has only been a few days. It’s going to take a while for things to get sorted out around here, and I don’t expect this to happen immediately,” the mayor explained. “I’d like you to keep it in mind, though.”
Keep it in mind. Right. “I get it. I assume you already have someone lined up?”
Mayor Mare nodded solemnly. “Dusty Scrolls has agreed to come out of retirement.”
Twilight nodded back, and made to stand. She suddenly didn’t feel like sticking around to chat. “I’ll... let you know when you can have your library back, I guess,” she said mechanically, then took the other stack of papers in her magic as well. “–and about your offer too. I’ll have to think about it.”
Mayor Mare kept her face neutral. “Of course.”
Twilight went to put the papers away, but of course she didn’t have any saddlebags on since she’d arrived via starlight, and she couldn’t go back the same way with the papers. Wonderful. She rolled the papers up in her magic and stuck them under the crook of her wing instead. At least they were useful for something.
With a silent nod of farewell to the mayor, she made her way out of the building on unsteady hooves.
Twilight slowly made her way home in something of a daze. As usual, nopony interrupted her, though she couldn’t say whether it was because it was her or just the time of day. She stopped a distance away from the library just to look at it. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to think of it as anything but her home; it was the only home she’d ever known in Ponyville.
The library door opened quietly in deference to Twilight’s mood and Spike was busy in the kitchen, so she was able to make her way upstairs without a word. She would have to say something to him sooner or later, but she really didn’t feel up to it right now.
As soon as she made it to her room, she dumped all her paperwork on the desk, collapsed face-first on the bed and just lay for a while. She wasn’t sad or angry—not yet, at least—mostly she was just... shocked. She’d been so busy dealing with all of her other things that she’d forgotten she’d had a life before wings had suddenly appeared on her back.
Her room, she noted as she rolled over onto her back, was as neat and tidy as always, reminding her that she hadn’t actually slept here for two days. She resolved to fix that tonight no matter how tempted she was to just disappear into the sky again. She had to stop neglecting Spike, or he’d be as lost to her as the library was to be.
It was a bit of a wake up call, she realized. Figuring out the past was all well and good, but she really had to start thinking about what she would do with her future. Her mind went to the papers on her desk and she wondered if it was already too late. Ponies were already trying to make those decisions for her. All they needed was her signature, and they’d build her a palace. If she didn’t do something to stop them, ponies would be arriving from all over Equestria just to look at her in her cage.
Who was she kidding, though? She already had a cage of her own devising. She stayed in the library all day or disappeared into the sky all night. She had avoided everypony she could since this whole thing had started; was it any wonder ponies were too scared to come to the library?
An official position, public appearances, a friendly face; that was how Celestia did it. Wasn’t that what she had said she wanted? Immortality, duty and responsibility? To be everything Celestia was? She had thought so, but faced with the prospect, the idea just seemed so hollow and lonely to her.
Maybe she should just move back to Canterlot, she thought at first. The idea was immediately rejected. The whole point was to get ponies used to her again so she could walk down to the Carousel Boutique or Sugar Cube Corner without causing a major incident. Hiding away in Canterlot wouldn’t help her.
Was that it, then? Was she really going to do this? Things were moving so fast, and she felt like she was all alone in the world when it came to things like this. She curled up on top of the covers and remembered the feeling of waking up under Celestia’s wing, or with Fluttershy in her arms. She kind of wished she had someone to hold right now. Not Celestia; she was too big... but maybe Luna. As she began to drift off to sleep, she vaguely remembered holding a small white moon in her arms.
Luna would be nice.
Just as she was on the edge of sleep, a knock at the door startled her awake. “Twilight?” came a trepidatious voice that sounded an awful lot like a baby dragon who wasn’t sure if she even existed.
Twilight rolled over onto her back and sighed. “Yeah, Spike?”
The door clacked open and Spike popped his head into the room. “I—um—made dinner. Hayfries and roast dandelion?”
Twilight swung her legs off the side of the bed and rolled up to a sitting position. She rubbed her face with her hooves as images of the moon faded from her mind. “Yeah, okay,” she responded as she rolled off the rest of the way out of bed and onto her hooves.
“I missed you at breakfast,” Celestia mentioned offhandedly as Luna walked into their shared dining room for dinner.
Luna grumbled something unintelligible as she set down a plate of mushrooms and moonflower salad, which she didn’t particularly like but ate out of a sense of stubborn pride for nocturnal flora. Her choice of meals was not the source of her disgruntledness, however. She’d spent most of the day back in her chambers, pretending to be asleep after her unplanned ‘nap’ the night before. The memory of mumbling Twilight’s name in her half-sleep still haunted her.
“So, it seems Twilight has been roped into holding court down in Ponyville,” Celestia remarked out of the blue.
Luna nearly choked on a mushroom, giving a series of coughs as she cleared her throat and tried to regain her composure. “O—oh?” she asked, feigning innocence. She had actually completely forgotten about that particular little act of spite.
“Yes, it seems the Astronomers’ Guild tracked her down faster than I expected,” Celestia explained dourly.
It was then that Luna noticed a scroll sitting on the table next to Celestia’s plate. It looked exactly like the scrolls Twilight sent her friendship reports on. “I wonder how that happened,” she said, pointedly not looking covetously at the rolled parchment.
“Indeed.” Celestia took a sip of her tea. “It does present a bit of a problem, however,” she noted.
The word ‘problem’ immediately drew Luna’s eyes back to the scroll on the table. She subsequently lowered them back to her plate and resumed eating in an effort to distract herself. “W—what sort of problem?”
“I’ve received a number of letters concerned with the implications of a ‘filly’ passing judgement out from under the watchful eye of Canterlot, let alone the scheduling issues of having two separate courts for the night in different cities.”
Luna deflated; the scroll wasn’t a friendship report? She channeled her disappointment into indignation and puffed out her cheeks. “I had noticed a decline in supplicants as of late,” she admitted, remembering the previous night. If tonight was the same, she would have to have a pack of cards at hoof, aces or no aces.
“We’re agreed it’s clear what needs to happen, then.” Celestia set down her tea cup without a sound and looked at her sister seriously.
Luna nodded, her eyes still on her salad and not really paying attention. Politics this, and politics that. She rolled her eyes and gave a vague response, “She certainly cannot be allowed to go unchecked.”
“Good.” Celestia smiled. “The seneschal has already packed your things.”
“That shall be—wait, what?”
Sharing the Night: Chapter 7
It was a troubled Luna who found herself stomping about on a moonlit cloud, once more above the Everfree forest. She didn’t mean to keep returning to this place, but the way the hole just blended into the magic of the rest of the sky seemed to draw her back again and again.
Her head was in a similar state, constantly gravitating back to the same subject. She was sprawled out on the cloud, breathing heavily from flying all night, but no amount of exertion could pull her mind away from those few sentences she’d spoken with her sister.
In Luna’s defense, Celestia had been talking about politics, so she had barely been paying attention. That had changed quickly, and words were exchanged—if you could call them words. Mainly, Luna had made a series of strangled sounds while Celestia simply sat there, sipped her tea and made calm, one and two-word responses.
Eventually, Luna had fumed at her sister long enough that she couldn’t take it any more, and stomped out of the room with a wordless cry of incredulity. Even now, Luna still hadn’t quite recovered from the affront, though if it was any consolation, Celestia’s tea set never would.
Luna hated it when her sister meddled. Celestia was excellent at being sneaky and underhooved, but she never actually was when it came to Luna—she only pretended to be. Outright lies between siblings with immortal life spans had a way of coming back to bite you eventually, after all.
Yes, Luna knew exactly what her sister was doing, but when it came right down to it, that was the problem. Like that night when the stars had cried themselves to sleep with only her moon for comfort, there was a part of Luna that wanted nothing more than to be forced to do the right thing. Celestia couldn’t actually force her out of Canterlot, but Luna would go, nonetheless. They both knew that.
It was a harder pill to swallow than most, however. A whole mess of different emotions warred in her mind. The loss of the stars fought with more than a year’s worth of admiring the element of magic. Her frustration with Canterlot waged war with the idea of moving to yet another strange new place. Her irritation at her sister for telling her what to do clashed with aggravation at herself for needing to be told.
Luna stamped on the cloud with her front hooves. She just wanted things to go back to the way they were, with only her dark past to worry about. No inexplicable alicornifications, no reason to hate the element of magic, and no stupid hole in the ground that she kept coming back to for no good reason.
Unable to lie still, she stood up on the cloud and looked down at the smooth, cleared area below. Bristling with bottled-up frustration, she gathered up a measure of moonlight and flooded the clearing with it, trying to wipe away the stellar magic that filtered through the trees like a sparkling wind.
The clearing glowed with magical moonlight, but other than that, it did nothing. Her limpid light was no match for the lingering magic. Luna frowned. Whatever had happened here, it must have been truly incredible. Not to be defeated by mere lingering magic, Luna gathered up even more light, and brought it down harder than before.
The barren rock sizzled and smoked with moonlight, emanating a cool magical glow even as Luna surveyed her work, but it was all for naught. Truly, it was as if the sky itself had set hoof in the middle of the forest, and wouldn’t be banished by mere half measures.
Luna had never stopped at half measures.
Gritting her teeth and raising her horn, the princess of the moon took all the moonlight in the sky, pulled it into a single, wide moonbeam and poured it out into the vexing clearing before her with everything she had. Her grip on her manifest form slipped with the effort, and her eyes disappeared into pools of pearlescent white light.
To say that the effect was a bit more than anticipated would imply that she’d actually thought about what she was doing at all. No, it was exactly as one would have expected, considering her last attempt had left the rock smoking.
The moon went dark to the rest of the world as its magical light pierced the ground below the tormented princess of the night. The light burrowed clear down through the rock, on and on until all of its energy was spent. Luna’s chest heaved as she took deep, gasping breaths, and her eyes returned to their usual teal as she gazed upon the aftermath below. What had been a smooth impression in the ground was now a massive, gaping well rimmed with excess moonlight… and it still felt like the stars.
Spent and defeated, she collapsed back down onto the cloud with a sigh. Distaste and shame in her pointless outburst flooded Luna behind her returning common sense and dignity. Disgusted, she rolled over and looked up into the starry sky instead.
She lay there for a while, watching the slowly shifting stars, and to her surprise, felt a little better for it. They seemed to calm her down, somehow, as they always had. So long as she could forget that they had been hers, it was okay.
Maybe Ponyville wouldn’t be so bad, she thought. Even if she never forgave Twilight Sparkle, Ponyville was a moderately-sized town, and the alicorn of the stars was only one pony. If she could delude herself well enough to enjoy an entire sky, surely she could stomach one pony, right?
As she drifted along under the cold winter sky, her mind wandered to the other night, when she’d realized that she had no good memories of the old castle. Quietly floating there with the wind and stars as her only companions, she wondered if she had any of Canterlot either.
Meanwhile, in the depths below, something awoke.
Twilight awoke with a sudden jolt to find herself in a cold sweat. She’d been having a dream about… well, she couldn’t remember exactly. All she could remember were teeth and hanging over a maw of teeth like just before the Ursa Major had swallowed her, but instead of just one tooth-lined maw, it was dozens—hundreds—thousands. It was a whole sea of teeth, enough to swallow the sky.
The uneasy feeling of danger lingered with her as her heart beat in the early morning silence. The feeling seemed to surround and encompass her, but mostly, it seemed to be coming from below. She stayed frozen in place, as if any movement would cause the floorboards of the library to open up beneath her, and the earth below would swallow her whole.
After a time, the feeling faded—as all dreams do—and Twilight let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Nightmares. Yes, clearly this was something she needed right now, terrifying, heart-racing nightmares. She peeled the sodden sheets off, tossed them aside and lay there letting the icy morning air cool off her coat.
At least she didn’t have to go far to figure out where this one had come from, she reflected. The looming loss of the library and the unknown future beyond had been cast in the form of the most frightening event of her recent life in a combination guaranteed to get under her skin.
Gotten under her skin it had. She rubbed her face with her hooves to wake herself up, then collapsed back down on the mattress. A glance out her window told her that dawn had broken just minutes ago. She usually remembered the process, even when it happened while she was asleep, but clearly her dreaming mind had had better things to pay attention to than celestial timekeeping. She felt a little guilty about always having to be reminded by the sun and moon trying to move without her, but she had more immediate things to worry about.
“The library,” she told the ceiling above her bed. “The library, the library, the library.” What was she going to do? How was she going to tell Spike? She pictured herself walking into the mayor’s office and demanding that she be allowed to keep the tree. Let them build a palace for the books instead; she didn’t need one.
It would work.
It always worked.
It would be hollow, though. What would be the point of living in a library nopony visited? Well—okay—the idea of having a private library all to herself was maybe sort of actually one of her fondest dreams, but that was irrelevant. Heck, they’d build her a bigger library if she asked. She could make them build the whole palace as a library. Clover-cached crenelations—Starswirl-stacked stairwells—the little filly in her perked up in greed at the idea of having a literal book fort.
It just wouldn’t be her home.
It would become her home eventually, of course. She hadn’t even been in this library for two whole years yet, after all. What was that to her? Hardly anything, really, even ignoring the whole thing where she was an immortal scion of the sky.
The library was more than a home, though. It was a defining part of her life. She didn’t just like having a library; she liked being a librarian. She felt pride in holding the position on her own merit. Sure, Princess Celestia may have arranged for it to begin with, but afterwards, Twilight had always paid for her residence with hard work and… and…
…and now she couldn’t. Nothing would change that. If she started her new life by making demands of the mayor, all she would get out of it was a tree.
It was a nice tree, though.
Due to the change in hours, the mayor’s office didn’t open again until four in the afternoon, and Twilight waited until shortly before dusk to make her visit. Her day had been moderately uneventful, particularly due to having avoided the specific event of telling Spike she’d been fired. Better, she thought, to talk to the mayor first and find out what they could work out. As empty an act as it would be, she wanted to at least try to get the mayor to let her keep the library.
She had actually planned on waiting a bit longer, until after dusk at least, and probably a bit later than that to be certain that everypony else would be inside having dinner. Her nerves had gotten the better of her, though, and one moment completely indistinguishable from the next, she just grabbed the stack of alicorn residency forms from her desk and decided to get it over with.
Since it wasn’t yet dusk, she was going to have to hoof it. She technically could have used her normal teleportation spell, but in this case she wanted to be able to see where she was going. Blindly teleporting into a group of ponies just wasn’t something she wanted to risk right now—not that it was dangerous or anything, just, you know, awkward.
The streets were not as clear as she would have liked, but they had at least fallen below that critical mass that caused everypony to just stop, stare and bow as she walked past. Instead, they merely kept their distance and ducked down side streets or into other ponies’ houses while acting as if they were absolutely going to do so all along and had simply forgot where they were going for a moment.
She made it to Town Hall without incident and quickly ducked inside, stopping only for a moment to wonder if it would technically be City Hall after she signed these papers. Regardless, she was in such a hurry that she simply barged into the mayor’s office without knocking. She was surprised to find that Mayor Mare already had company.
There was a midnight blue alicorn standing there, hunched over the mayor’s desk, signing a stack of papers which looked strangely familiar.
Luna heard the door open behind her, but ignored the interruption as she finished making the final touches to her overly long, title-bloated signature. Once she was satisfied that she had committed herself to this venture with suitable aplomb, she turned to see who the intruder was, and froze. Standing in the doorway was a frightened-looking alicorn. Moments later, two nearly identical stacks of papers fell out of the air and spilled across the floor.
Luna was quite at a loss for how to respond. She had known that she would have to face the element of magic eventually, but being that she was an immortal alicorn, she was quite good at imagining ‘eventually’ to be a very long time—or at least until after dinner, in any case.
Twilight’s wide, fearful eyes looked like she was ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. It was a look that Luna was used to seeing on most ponies she met, but she had never seen it on Twilight Sparkle. Not even when Twilight had been trying to hide her alicornification from the princesses had she looked quite so desperately afraid.
Rather than any of the great mix of emotions she would have expected to have upon meeting the alicorn who now embodied the stars, the only thing Luna felt when she looked down at the timorous Twilight Sparkle before her was… sadness, and a sense that she had lost something important.
For all that she was angry with Twilight, the alicorn of the stars—and she was, she had to tell herself—being angry with Twilight Sparkle, the element of magic, was far more difficult.
Twilight was the one pony who had believed in her, even when she hadn’t believed in herself. Twilight was the one pony who Luna looked up to, despite the disastrous mistakes she had made in her life—because of them, in fact. Twilight was the one pony since her return—the only pony alive—who she had briefly thought of as a friend.
Now, that pony was terrified of her. The thought twisted her up inside and she felt… ashamed that it had come to this. Silence filled the mayor’s office as the two alicorns dumbfoundedly stared at each other. The mayor, too, stayed silent, not privy to the details of the situation, but quite able to read the mood.
It was Luna who eventually marshalled the nerve to break the silence, if only to say, “Leave, please.”
Twilight made a noise like a strangled mouse and stumbled backwards, but Luna took the smaller alicorn in her magic and levitated her back into the room. “Mayor, please,” Luna abashedly corrected, with a nod of her horn to the door. The mayor didn’t need to be told twice and wasted no time on her way out. The door shut behind her with a click, and the silence returned, more awkward than ever.
Along with the silence, however, came the growing bitterness she had come to expect. It was the first time she’d seen the younger alicorn with her starry mane, and with the shock gone, the reminder of what Luna had lost began to take over.
It was just too much. Unlike the stars in the sky, she couldn't pretend that the alicorn’s starry mane wasn't a symbol of something that was—had been—hers. Not wanting to make matters worse, Luna turned away from the source of her discomfort, trying to separate Twilight Sparkle the alicorn from Twilight Sparkle the friend.
She opened her mouth to say something, but she was at a loss for what to say. She was tempted to simply move on to business and explain that she would be moving to Ponyville for the foreseeable future, but her memory of those terrified eyes in the doorway stopped her. She swallowed, trying to keep her heart out of her throat.
The silence in the wake of Luna’s aborted sentence stretched on, until finally, it was Twilight Sparkle who actually spoke. Her voice was tiny, her eyes downcast. In that moment she made Fluttershy seem like Rainbow Dash, but there was a hint of determination in her words, too. “Please,” she whispered in a voice so quiet it sounded raspy. “Please, don’t hate me.”
Luna was suddenly glad she wasn't looking at Twilight. Seeing the element of magic in such a state would be too much to bear. “Of course I don’t hate you,” she wanted to say. The words were so automatic that she almost spoke them aloud.
Her ability to say them truthfully was a different matter, however. She desperately wanted to be able to do so, she found. More than anything, she wanted to go back to the way things were before.
She was sad and hurt from losing the stars, yes. Twilight had only made it worse when she’d tried to cheer Luna up, yes. What was stopping her, though? What was really stopping her?
There were things in this new age which she had no control over, she remembered thinking as she stood across from a window that had eventually been the instrument of her freedom. This was not one of those things. This was a cage of her own devise—one she could ill afford.
Could it really be so easy?
As easy as stepping up to a window and daring to look outside?
What did she have to lose?
Craning her neck back over her shoulder towards Twilight Sparkle, Luna took a deep breath, swallowed and opened her eyes.
Twilight watched Luna turn, revealing a face tight and wary. Twilight met it with her own sad, but hopeful, expression. She dared to hope that this would be it. She dared to hope that the princess would forgive her.
Her hope didn’t last. She watched the light in Luna’s eyes die as a scowl found its way to her lips and the princess of the night once again turned away.
That was it, then. Twilight dropped her head and mirrored the motion in defeat. Unlike the princess, she had the benefit of a door behind her. She figured she might as well use it. Taking one last, sad look over her shoulder, she saw only the princess’ back and the white of the moon in her mane. The message was clear. Twilight was beyond forgiveness. Without a word, she made to leave the mayor’s office. Her hoof was inches away from the door when a voice just as unsteady as Twilight’s had been stopped her.
“Hold, please,” the princess pleaded. “Do not go.”
Twilight stopped, but didn’t turn. She couldn’t get her hopes up again. “I know when I’m not wanted.”
“No, thou dost not,” Luna stated.
Twilight dared to look back once more, but moon was still all she saw.
“I do not hate thee, Twilight Sparkle,” Luna insisted emphatically, her voice scratchy. “That is my decision,” she continued, but then her voice turned weak and timid, “but understand that I am also hurt.”
Twilight didn’t dare say anything to interrupt the princess and ruin the moment, only turning to look at her and listen to Luna properly as she spoke.
“Thou art blameless. I know this, but I have blamed thee just the same. I have not been kind to thee in my thoughts, and mine actions have been… similar. I wish that I could congratulate thee honestly, yet I have lost things most dear to me, and thou hast gained them. It is not a thing which I can simply pretend does not hurt.”
Twilight slowly sat as Luna talked, guiltily looking out the corner of her eye at the bit of her starry mane that rested on her shoulder. She could hear in the princess’ voice how hard it was to admit what she was saying, and Twilight was touched. At the same time, however, it was the death knell of any hope she had of real reconciliation.
With hope well and truly dead, the implications of the situation filled Twilight’s mind, and concern tightened her brow. “But, those forms…” she said, looking down at the mess on the floor. If things with Luna were this bad, alicorn residency forms were the last thing the two of them should be signing.
Luna was silent for a time, and Twilight had begun to regret asking, when the princess finally responded with distant wistfulness and a sniffle that Twilight had heard before. “I have some experience with hate and jealousy,” she bitterly reminded Twilight. There was another long pause, and Twilight almost said something before Luna continued. “In yon fair Canterlot, I have nothing to look forward to but more days of wallowing in mine own misery. It solves nothing. I wish… I wished to do better.”
Twilight stared at the princess’ back. “You came… because of me?” she asked in disbelief.
“It is… why I allowed Celestia to send me here,” Luna answered cryptically.
Twilight continued inspecting the papers that littered the floor. “You’re really moving here, then?”
Luna hesitated once again. “I have signed the papers,” she answered coldly.
That… hurt. The princess probably hadn’t meant to be cruel, but it hurt just the same. It was an admittance of defeat and a declaration of regret.
Well, why shouldn't Luna give up? Luna had given it her all and still couldn’t so much as look at Twilight. What had Twilight done to try to make this work? What had she given, besides one meek little “Please don’t hate me?”
No, there was something she could do. There was something she could give. There had to still be a chance, she just hoped it was enough.
Bracing herself, she reached deep into her magic and pulled.
Luna was regretting the terseness of her response when she heard Twilight gasp—not a sniffle or whine as one might expect after such a spiteful comment, but a sound like a stifled cry of pain. Unthinking, Luna quickly turned to see what had happened and was struck dumb by the sight.
There were tears streaming down Twilight’s cheeks, and she seemed somehow… diminished. She was seated on her rump, timidly holding something in two shaking forehooves.
A tiny star small enough to fit in the hollow of one hoof shone bright enough to cast the room into sharp relief.
“W-where didst thou get that?” Luna balked. It was not yet dusk; there was only one place it could have come from. No—wait—why would that matter? She didn’t know, but the wan look in the younger alicorn’s eyes told her it did.
“Take it,” Twilight insisted.
Greed drew Luna’s hoof forward. It was wrong, she told herself, but her hoof didn’t stop. She made it stop. “I… I cannot. Twilight, do not offer me this.”
The young alicorn had already made up her mind, however. She lurched upright and shouted “Take it!” as she shoved the star into Luna’s grasp with both forehooves, then stumbled back and fell.
Luna panicked, juggling the star from one hoof to the other like a hot potato as she watched Twilight fall away. The element of magic hit the ground and fell still. “T-Twilight Sparkle!” she shouted in stark dread as she rushed to Twilight’s side. The star followed after her, gripped in her magic.
Twilight, for her part, was breathing heavily—but steadily—and smiling with her eyes closed. Luna was less composed. “What—how—why—” she stammered. “Why hast thou collapsed? What is wrong?”
Twilight just continued to lie there, pleased as punch. “I guess Princess Celestia didn’t tell you. I manifest… backwards from you. All of me is right here, in this room, in these stars. No offense, but it’s kind of lousy as immortalities go.”
Luna’s eyes widened and she looked up at the star that was floating above her head, then back down at Twilight, distraught.
“Thanks for not trying to give it back again,” she teased with a knowing smirk causing a sharp twinge of guilt in Luna. “I’ll be fine. I have… hundreds more on hoof,” she explained, interrupted intermittently by heavy breaths. “They’re just—um—smaller than that one. I didn’t expect taking it out of me to… take quite so much out of me.” The weakened alicorn gave a thready giggle at the play on words.
Luna was starting to get annoyed at the younger alicorn’s dismissal of the gravity of what she’d done. “Twilight Sparkle, what in all of Equestria made thee think that this was a good idea?”
“I don’t know,” she said simply. Her breathing had calmed, which was only more infuriating as she lay there still as the dead, not even looking at Luna. “I just… wanted to do something. I know it’s only one star, but I can give you more. I have plenty. I even found some spares the other night. Did you know that? A whole mess of stars just sitting around in a cave, minding their own business, trying to eat me.”
Luna had no idea what to say to that. “I think thou art delirious, Twilight Sparkle.”
Twilight just smiled smugly. “I think the fact that you still haven’t given it back means I made the right choice.”
Luna shrunk inwardly at the accusation… but did not prove Twilight wrong, either. The star floated above Luna in her magic as if it were judging her.
“Relax, princess. Dusk is in, like, a half an hour, tops. I would offer you Polaris, but I’m afraid I’ve quite lost track of it.” Twilight giggled. “Did you know the stars move, now?” she added as an afterthought.
Luna’s ears perked up. Dusk! Of course! They just had to wait for dusk, and everything would be fine. Concern furrowed her brow, however. A half an hour was a long time. Looking down at the still body of Twilight Sparkle, she wondered if that would be soon enough.
Buck it, she wasn’t going to wait a whole half-hour. Dusk would just have to happen right now! Luna lit her horn and let her presence recede back to the moon from whence it came. With a great effort, she pushed the moon along its course.
Nothing happened.
Of all the times for Celestia to begrudge her an extra half an hour. Luna gave another push, grunting with exertion. “Move your fiery flank, you fat cow!” she shouted aloud to the mayor’s office, but it was no use.
With a sigh of defeat, Luna settled fully back down into her manifest body. Twilight was staring at Luna as if the alicorn of the moon had just sprouted a second horn.
“Ah—umm,” she balked, blushing sheepishly and averting her gaze. “Yes, it is as you said. Dusk will be along shortly.”
The awkwardness from earlier was threatening to return, when there was a grunt from Twilight, and Luna looked over to find her attempting to sit up. Luna rushed to help her, and they succeeded with only a mild increase in Twilight’s breathing, though she wobbled a bit as Luna let her go.
The younger alicorn smiled weakly. “There, see? I told you I’m fine,” she insisted once again, still looking inordinately proud of herself. “In fact…”
Luna was mollified by seeing Twilight moving about again, but shifted to being concerned again as the younger alicorn’s horn began to glow. Having no idea what Twilight was doing, Luna gave a start when the star she’d been given was plucked from the grasp of her magic only to be set back in her hooves.
Luna took the star with slightly more grace this time but still resorted to fiddling with it between her hooves nervously as the glow of Twilight’s magic faded. It was a gift carelessly given and guiltily kept, and yet… the foolishness of the act was what made it special.
“There is no way that this can possibly be a good idea,” Luna muttered quietly, her eyes focused on the star.
“I’m glad you like it,” the alicorn of now one less star responded.
Twilight’s contradictory response earned her a flummoxed look from Luna, but that much was an improvement. Clutching the tiny star to her chest, she found that looking at Twilight Sparkle—the alicorn Twilight Sparkle—hurt a little less. Her lips curled up into a smile—a sad smile, but still a smile—and she gave a little laugh at the ridiculousness of the response. Yes. She did like it.
No matter whether or not it would give her more trouble down the road, the ice, at least, had been broken. That alone was worth the potential heartache.
With some time to go before the two alicorns brought out the night and Twilight could replace the star she’d given up, Luna had taken it upon herself to clean up the mess of papers that had been spilled across the floor of the mayor’s office. Said mayor was then retrieved from an epic adventure she was having with the break room coffee pot, and its bounty shared. The papers were indeed two sets of identical forms, and the coffee was a far cry from the ambrosial drink Luna had been introduced to in Canterlot.
While the mayor was busy pointedly ignoring the star in the room, Luna cleared her throat and explained the situation properly to Twilight, who had been propped up in a chair off to the side of the mayor’s desk so that she could see both ponies without straining herself. “Your mayor has offered Us—” Luna paused and furrowed her brow at the ambiguity of the royal ‘Us.’ “Me—” she corrected, then changed her mind once again, “Us—the site of this building for our palace. We—I—think it will be suitable.”
“Us?” Twilight asked hesitantly. “Us us? You want us to… live together?”
“The available space is small, I admit,” Luna nodded, avoiding the question nervously. She would make it work, and that was enough. She continued on with forced pride, trying to distract Twilight with tales of what was to come. “But it is my understanding that pony architecture has come a long way since I was imprisoned. A glorious tower as tall as the summit of Mount Canterlot shall be the perfect way to begin this new city, I think.”
The mayor gave a polite cough, to get the princess’ attention. “Yes—well—I’m not sure we can build anything quite that tall yet, but—”
“What?” Luna recoiled in shock. She glanced at Twilight out of the corner of her eye, worried that she would see disappointment. Fiddling with the star in her hooves, she turned back to the mayor. “But I had thought—”
“I assure you, princess, it will be quite respectable,” the mayor reassured her. “An unequalled marvel of pony engineering, I promise. Just… not a mountain.”
Luna deflated at the news, but Twilight actually gave a cute, little giggle. The sound of happiness from the weakened mare assuaged some of her worries. Luna wasn’t sure quite where the two of them stood in regards to each other, so she wanted to avoid anything upsetting Twilight.
“We also may be able to reclaim the closest blocks of property over time in order to expand the palace grounds as the new city planning ordinances push out old residents. We’ve already lost the chance to scoop up a number of them that have been sold already, but outside buyers aren’t likely to be very attached to them,” the mayor explained, then looked askance. “Except…”
“Push out old residents?” Twilight frowned with concern.
“Yes, the new planning ordinances will require much more regal architecture to match the palace, like in Canterlot. We can’t force anypony to change their homes, but any new work must be done to the new code and existing residents may not be up to the, ah, costs involved.”
“You needn’t worry about thy fellow townsfolk,” Luna volunteered, trying to reassure Twilight while casually handling a star like a desk toy and pretending everything was normal. “It is my understanding that they will do quite well for themselves.”
The mayor nodded in confirmation. “That’s sort of the problem. You see, several properties changed hooves shortly before all of this happened, and not to an outside buyer.” The mayor looked at Twilight meaningfully for a moment before the younger alicorn facehooved with a sigh.
Luna was quite confused. “Prithee tell what thou speakest of, I seem to have missed something.”
Both Twilight and the mayor said one name in unison. “Rarity.”
“The element of generosity?” Luna asked with bewilderment in her voice, causing Twilight to wince at the reminder of her friend’s status in such a situation. Luna had read all of Twilight’s friendship reports, but never actually had a chance to meet the mare properly, as she had been absent on Nightmare Night. “I recall she is a seamstress, is she not?”
The mayor just nodded solemnly, not denying it, but giving the impression that it was more serious than that. “Rarity is the best there is at what she does,” the mayor explained, “but what she does best isn’t very—”
“Sewing,” Twilight suddenly interrupted energetically, in spite of her condition. “What she does best isn’t just sewing. She’s also an—um—aspiring landowner, apparently,” Twilight hastily clarified. Nopony seemed to want to elaborate more, and the silence stretched on awkwardly.
“I’m sure it won’t be a problem,” the mayor finally declared, with Twilight nodding in agreement a little too vigorously in her own right.
Luna was completely lost, but she let the subject slide, as she was certain she was misreading the subtext and didn’t want to sound foolish. Surely there was nothing to be concerned about with the element of generosity involved.
The three of them discussed several more issues regarding the potential palace as the clock ticked onwards towards dusk. Eventually, the mayor seemed to think they had covered everything important, and said as much. “If everything sounds satisfactory, I can take your papers now, Twilight.”
Twilight blinked, looking hesitantly down at the stack of papers on the mayor’s desk, awaiting her signature. “Oh, I… umm…” she stalled awkwardly.
Luna frowned as her worries over the tenuous peace they had formed came back to her. “Were we being too presumptuous?”
Twilight’s response was less than encouraging. “Ah, no. Nope. Nothing to add. Sharing a castle… tower… palace thing with you will be—um—perfect, princess.” Twilight quickly signed the stack of papers while wearing one of the biggest, fakest smiles that Luna had ever seen.
For good or for ill, Twilight seemed to have made her decision, and Luna’s concern was swept away by the time. “If that is all, mayor, please excuse us once again. Dusk approaches, and we would like some privacy while we perform our duties.”
The mayor’s eyes darted quickly to the window to see that it was indeed very nearly sunset. It was the look of someone who wasn’t used to being at work so late, and therefore it was a look which Luna was naturally familiar with. “Ah, of course, princess. I’ll just take this paperwork to be processed.” The mayor’s office door quietly clacked shut, and Luna took a breath, basking in the quiet.
In fact, it was so quiet that she briefly forgot that Twilight was in the room with her. Luna gave a start when she remembered the younger alicorn’s situation. Twilight was fine, though, and seemed to be enjoying the quiet as well, so Luna simply sat and said nothing, holding the star she’d been given as dusk approached.
At nearly the same exact moment, both of the alicorns’ horns lit with magic, and day flowed into night.
As soon as the deed was done, Luna slipped back down into her manifest body and looked hopefully over at Twilight. The alicorn of the stars seemed to brighten, the color returning to her coat as she was renewed from the state she had put herself in for the lunar princess’ sake. Her breathing quickened as well, no longer drawn out in torpid stillness.
As Luna watched, however, Twilight’s breathing quickly outstripped normal and her eyes shot open in stark terror, still black as the night. Luna quickly bolted up, reaching a hoof to calm the younger alicorn, but Twilight was faster still. The alicorn of the stars jerked away, her blank eyes never leaving the floor of the mayor’s office as she danced around on it as if it were made of lava—an ubiquitous children’s game which had been much more literal growing up during Discord’s reign.
Twilight wasn't playing around, however. The suddenly skittish mare leapt up onto one of the room’s finely upholstered chairs, then onto the mayor’s desk. “Twilight! What—” was all Luna got out before there was an explosive paff of stardust, leaving behind a spilled coffee mug of pens, a spilled coffee mug of coffee, several hoofprints that would make the desk a priceless historical artifact in a hundred years and a completely bewildered princess.
Equestria wanted to eat her.
Things had been going well. Twilight had been the happiest she’d been since she’d become an alicorn. She had felt that she had finally done something right, even if—as the princess had said—it was a terrible idea. Unfortunately, it was all inconsequential next to the fact that Equestria wanted to eat her.
It was her dream from that morning all over again, only it wasn’t a dream and it hadn’t been a dream. There was no escaping it. No matter where in the sky she looked from, even with a whole sky of stars behind her, Equestria wanted to eat her.
Most ponies have no sense at all of the sheer size of the world they live on, for the simple fact that they cannot see it all at once. At sea level, a pony can only see for about two miles to the horizon; if they stand up on their roofs, they might see as far as five to eight miles. In Canterlot, they would be able to see for ten times that distance, but it would still be less than one one hundredth of a percent of the surface of the world.
Twilight, on the other hoof, was in the unique position of being able to see all of Equestria at once.
It was tremendously, colossally, impossibly large…
…and it all wanted to eat her.
“Tiaaaaaaaa～” Luna shouted in panic as she slammed her hooves into the doors of Celestia’s chambers in Canterlot, throwing them open.
Celestia looked up from a scroll she was reading on her bed. “Yes, Luna?” Celestia calmly asked. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Ponyville?”
Luna was less calm. “Yes! I was with Twilight Sparkle when—” she had started to say, when Celestia jumped to her hooves, aghast.
“Luna!” Celestia shouted in sudden anger as she stomped towards her younger sister. “I cannot believe you!” she shouted furiously, yanking the star Twilight had given Luna from the grasp of her magic. Luna tried to quickly snatch it back with her magic, but Celestia wasn’t budging.
“You give that back!” Luna screeched in distress as she pulled harder. Thankfully, it was night, and she had the advantage. Celestia’s magic reluctantly relinquished the star, and Luna gripped it in her hooves covetously. “How dare thee! This is not yours to take!”
“It’s not yours either!” Celestia snapped harshly.
“It is!” Luna shouted back defensively. “S-she gave it to me,” the lunar princess insisted with less confidence as tears welled up in her eyes. She knew she didn’t deserve it—shouldn’t have accepted it—but she wouldn’t let it go, either.
Celestia stopped to look at Luna for a moment, and Luna could feel her older sister judging her. Finally, the elder alicorn gave a sigh and fell back onto her rump in acceptance. “Oh, Twilight…” She shook her head sadly.
Luna slowly let up her guard as her sister seemed to calm down. Celestia’s gaze found its way back to Luna once again, now full of equal parts remorse and pity. “I’m… sorry, Lulu,” Celestia apologized, “but she shouldn’t have—”
“I know,” Luna interrupted dejectedly. “I know. I told her as much.”
They shared a moment of silent acceptance before Luna remembered why she’d come. “Tia!” she shouted. “Twilight, she—” Luna paused as she tried to figure out how to explain Twilight’s behavior.
Twilight’s name spoken with such distress had got Celestia’s attention, however. “What? What happened?” she demanded.
“I—I don’t know!” Luna insisted. “We had just begun the night, when she—” Luna was about to explain when suddenly every star in the sky winked out. “That!” she shouted, pointing out the window.
Celestia looked out her window at the suddenly black sky with alarm, then back at Luna. There was only one place the stars could have gone, and only one of the two sisters could be there right now. It only took a moment for Celestia to disappear without a word, following after the stars.
With that, Luna was alone, the only alicorn left in the world. She stared up at the huge, empty sky for a while before placing the star she’d been given up next to her moon, adjusting it just so until it was perfect.
It wasn’t enough to fill the sky, but somehow, she felt a little less lonely for doing so.
It had been a very long time since Celestia had manifested a body in the Umbra. There had never been much point, as by definition she had never shared the space with anypony else.
Until tonight.
Normally, for Celestia, the Umbra was a great sky-blue expanse with the sun burning brightly as the only landmark. She feared that the sun’s brightness would drown out the stars, and that she would have difficulty finding them; she couldn’t have been more wrong.
The stars burned brighter than they ever had before, bright, hazy shapes like miniature suns dotting the blue expanse.
“Twilight?” Celestia hesitantly called out, but there was no answer. “Twilight!” she called out again, much louder this time and full of hope, but the response was the same.
If only the stars had ears.
Luna was at a loss as to what to do. She couldn’t very well follow Twilight and her sister into the Umbra while the sun was there. In fact, she had no idea how Twilight could do it. Were the stars truly that different? She scoffed at the idea. They were—had been—her stars for on the order of two thousand years; she knew how they worked… didn’t she?
Then again, she also thought she knew how Twilight worked from the dozens of friendship reports she’d read, but the Twilight she’d seen earlier had been a far cry from what she knew. Now that she had a chance to look back, it began to worry her. She’d been blinded by the turmoil of their unexpected meeting at the time, but in hindsight it was clear that something was really wrong.
“I guess Princess Celestia didn’t tell you,” Twilight had teased Luna in her delirium about her apparent odd relationship with the stars. Remembering the look of terror on Twilight’s face just before she disappeared, Luna wondered just how much Celestia hadn’t told her—and if she would have listened if she had.
As she had expected, though, there had been no friendship letter about the night when the stars had cried themselves to sleep. There hadn’t been one for any night since Twilight had become an alicorn. Luna had been—quite ironically—left in the dark.
She frowned. Just what in Equestria had been going on while she’d been wallowing on her own? Suddenly, Celestia’s words from the day after Twilight had left Canterlot came back to haunt her, and her face fell. It couldn’t be…
“You just didn’t expect her to hurt you,” Celestia had rightfully guessed at the time, but now it seemed that Luna’s naïveté had been twofold. In the light of the rogue thought, Twilight’s fear and desperation seemed to make much more sense. Luna had been so preoccupied with her own problems that she hadn’t even considered that the situation might go both ways. Luna hadn’t expected to hurt her.
Had she? Hadn’t she? Of course she had! She’d been hurt and had lashed out at Twilight. She’d wanted to hurt her as she’d been hurt. She’d been selfish, hurtful and ignorant, everything she’d accused the element of magic of being. Was it any wonder Twilight was a wreck? Was it any wonder that Twilight had been so desperate for approval that she’d given up a piece of herself? –and Luna had taken it. She’d held forgiveness out of reach until the younger alicorn coughed up a star for her.
This was all her fault.
What had she done?
It took a moment for Twilight to realize where she was. Her only thought had been to get away from Equestria, so of course she’d ended up back in the Umbra where her stars had just come from. The Umbra, however, was occupied, and not by the silent, peaceful moon sitting quietly in a welcoming black expanse.
She had no attention to spare for the sun, however. Her eyes—as much as she had eyes—were peeled not in the direction of the sun, but at the corner of the twist in space around which Equestria waited. It was a thing which wanted to eat her, after all. She would be remiss to turn her back on it.
As is the way of celestial bodies, time stretched on as she held a breath she didn’t actually have. Over an hour passed as she waited, as if afraid that Equestria would follow her into the Umbra, but it did no such thing. Eventually, her curiosity grew as large as her fear, and—emboldened by experience and possibly a bit of mania—she dipped a few stars back into the night to peek at the terrifying beast that was the world she had lived on all her life.
It was like dipping your hoof into a pool to test the temperature, only to find that the water had been replaced with bees. You immediately think ‘Oh dear Celestia—bees!’ but at the same time, you don’t dare yank your hoof back for fear of disturbing them. Then, they start crawling up your hoof, but they’re just being nice, so you give a little awkward laugh of pure terror as goosebumps run up your arm and you stare in morbid fascination, all the while thinking ‘bees bees bees’ as you slowly pull your hoof back and the bees slowly leave your hoof, dropping in clumps or flying off to who knows where, until you can finally clutch your hoof to your chest—bee free—and assure yourself that the experience is over. You catch your breath and calm down. Then, anxiously, you do it again, with a little less terror and a little more fascination the next time.
It was like that, but in Twilight’s mind, the bees were teeth, and the pool was a starbeast’s maw the size of Equestria. Twilight clutched her stars protectively in her other stars until she calmed down enough to assure herself that everything was okay. Everything was okay. There was nothing to fear but fear itself—also, Equestria, apparently, but that was okay, she could handle that. Mind-numbing terror was just… a thing. She was good at handling things.
She did it again.
Every once in a while, Luna thought she caught the glimmer of a star in the corner of her eye, but when she turned to look, it was gone. The sky was still starless as she found herself on the palace roof above her chambers, which was worrying. Dinner had taken quite some time and left Luna feeling certifiably awful, though it was no fault of the food. Dinner had been mushroom stew, but the only stew she’d had any mind for was stewing in her own guilt. In the end, she’d sent it away half-eaten, wishing emotions were as easily dealt with.
She hadn’t come up to this spot since she’d yelled Twilight off of it. She supposed it was an appropriate place to sit and think as she waited helplessly for… something. Celestia wouldn’t be back until dawn, of course, but Twilight should have been. It was odd to realize that she had gotten so used to Twilight’s stars that she missed them now in their own right.
She found herself automatically telling herself that it wasn’t Twilight’s stars she missed—that anything was better than this cold, empty night—but it was stupid. It was as stupid as making herself get forced to do what she really wanted to do. Couldn’t she just admit that Twilight’s stars were nice? Was that so hard? Did she have to unconsciously sabotage every thought she had about her?
The cold winter night had no answers for her, only more questions.
What could be keeping Twilight? What could have sent her beyond the horizon in such fear? More than anything, she needed to know. She needed to know what was wrong with Twilight. She needed to know how much of it could be laid at her hooves.
There was clearly more going on than aftermath of the… ‘argument’ she’d had with Twilight, she was sure, but that did not absolve her of her guilt any more than one was guiltless for kicking a pony when they were down—or felling them so they could be kicked, as the case may be.
Guilt.
Rather strangely for somepony who had once tried to plunge Equestria into eternal night, guilt wasn’t actually an emotion Luna had much experience with. For all the turmoil she’d caused by giving into her hate and jealousy, she’d been stopped, and now that she was restored, Celestia had only loving forgiveness for her. She’d never felt so personally responsible for another’s troubles.
Why should she? She was a princess! It was her lot in life to make decisions that affected many. It was her job to make the hard choices for the good of all. Guilt was a thing she’d forgotten long ago.
Hurting Twilight was hardly for the good of many, however—or any, for that matter. It was an act of pure, petty spite, which she now regretted.
Could she admit that to herself, now? Had she been cruel enough, gotten enough out of Twilight Sparkle that she could finally stop insisting that she hated her? It was a little late, she thought bitterly, but better late than never, right? She didn’t want to think about the possibility that it was too late, that the damage had been done.
Up in the empty sky, the moon hugged the single star cradled in its magic. In hindsight, the gift seemed all the more foolish and all the more special. It was a gift given freely by a mare who was at her lowest. One star to make up for the loss of billions.
Yes, she could admit that she’d forgiven Twilight Sparkle—if not at the behest of those sad, tearful eyes, then later, worrying over her in her fragile state. It was easy enough to like and hate someone at the same time, but it was much harder to hate and worry about them.
A colder, more pragmatic mare who wasn’t currently wracked with guilt might have asked herself if such forgiveness could really be bought with a star, but it wasn’t about the value of a star and it never had been; just as it had never been about the stars that she’d lost. Emotions were rarely as simple as that. Twilight Sparkle had done nothing that should have required forgiveness, but Luna needed to give it to her just the same.
If only she were here.
There was a tingle in Twilight’s stars. It felt like fear, but she wasn’t afraid. She had taken that feeling and accepted it, embraced it. It couldn’t hurt her. She laughed as she rolled the feeling around between her stars, and the umbra filled with flashes of light that could no longer be called twinkling. It was bewitching how a feeling that had brought her such terror could be tamed and made to dance.
What was it, though? She still didn’t know. Was it a reaction to danger? Some sort of instinctual sense of self-preservation? Maybe it was a sort of magical empathy born of an alicorn-like connection to friendship. It sounded silly, but maybe not quite as silly as it should have. The specifics of her cutie mark were still a mystery, after all, and she was quite certain that her fear had a voice.
Not a real voice, of course. No, she wasn’t going crazy. It was a voice only insomuch as any celestial phenomenon mapped to bodily concepts. It spoke no words and formed no sentences; she simply knew that it was there and that it was anathema to her.
Whatever the feeling was, as she drew it in and examined it under the light of her stars, she recognized it. If it was fear, it was a very specific brand of fear. It was the fear she’d felt in the jaws of the Ursa Major, yes, but that wasn’t the only place she’d encountered it. There was one other, much smaller source that had come to vex her recently.
It wasn’t Luna. No, despite the lunar princess’ position as ex-owner of the stars, she wasn’t threatened by her in that way. Her fears and anxieties regarding the Lunar princess were all natural. No, instead she was thinking now of standing in front of Town Hall, with her heart seeming to seize up on her as a bitter old stallion yelled at her. Somehow, on some level, Star Glister was in the company of the greatest terrors in the world.
It was hardly much of a comparison of course, considering the other members of the club included the world itself. Still, it would have been interesting to look into if she didn’t have bigger fish to fry. Pisces, for example, because even as she accepted this fear into her, categorized it, bottled it and studied it, she knew—as the Ursa had known—that there would be no peace between her and its source.
There could be only one, and somehow, despite all sense, the entire world was her enemy. She was the underdog in this conflict.
She was going to need a lot more stars.