Chapter 4: Cooking up Trouble
“So, what sort of potion are we going to start with?” Twilight Sparkle asked, looking around the Apples’ kitchen. She was still a little dizzy, and probably would be for at least a day or two, but had no doubt that Applebloom’s herbal remedy had accelerated her recovery.
Well, maybe a little doubt. She was sure that it wouldn’t make things any worse at least. Almost sure.
“Oh, we’re not startin’ with potions,” Applebloom said. “Zecora’s got all the potion fixins. We’re makin’ cupcakes!”
“Oh,” Twilight said, her voice dropping and trailing off. She forced herself to smile. “Well, my mother always did say that chemistry and cooking were two sides of the same coin. Does it have to be cupcakes, though? I’m not really in a cupcake mood.” She shuddered at the remembered scent of frosting. It smelled like failure.
“Well, what kinda bakin’ are ya in the mood for?”
“Um… I’ve never really been that fond of baking,” Twilight said, staring at the floor and scratching at it with a hoof. “That’s always been Spike’s job.”
“Hmm,” Applebloom said. “Well, is there anything ya feel like eatin’?”
“I guess I could go for a daisy sandwich? I’m not that hungry.”
“That’s not exactly baking,” Applebloom said, propping herself up to look in the pantry. “We’ve got some dried daisies, though. Maybe we can make some daisy muffins?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of daisy muffins,” Twilight said, wincing at the thought of dried daisies. Some flowers tasted fine when dried – roses or violets, maybe – but the whole point of daisies was their nice fresh taste. It made sense that the Apples wouldn’t have fresh, though, since Rose’s greenhouse was all the way back in Ponyville proper, and she charged extra for flowers in winter. “Do you know a recipe?”
“I figure we’ll make some muffins, and put daisies in ‘em,” Applebloom said. “Doin’ it without a recipe’s kinda the point.”
Twilight laughed. “I thought the point was to learn how to use earth pony magic.”
“Witchcraft,” Applebloom corrected her. “Every earth pony’s got a bit of it, but yer a full-blown witch. I’m just a filly, and recipes already go all wrong if I try to follow ‘em too close.”
“That just means we need to adjust the recipes,” Twilight said, smiling. “We can’t just throw random things in a bowl and hope it comes out ‘muffin’. Applejack tried that once, and half of Ponyville ended up in the hospital.”
“I know the ingredients by heart,” Applebloom said. “That part of a recipe works fine – it’s the measurin’ and mixin’ and timin’ that ya gotta play by ear.”
“How about this,” Twilight said. “You play by ear, and I’ll keep track of what your ear plays, then we can see how badly it goes wrong for me, and work out how to adjust from your recipe to mine. It would be a lot easier if we had a baseline recipe to work from, but with a little trial and error I’m sure we can work out the equations.”
“That’s cheatin’!” Applebloom said. “You need ta learn to feel the recipe. That’s how it’s done.”
“Maybe that’s how you do it,” Twilight said, “but I refuse to be some mumbling mystic mixing mysterious philters following fuzzy feelings! If I can’t work out a way to quantify this power I supposedly have, then I’d rather be…” she trailed off a bit. Would she really rather be a changeling? Even if she was going to take that option, she probably shouldn’t tell Applebloom.
“A unicorn?” Applebloom suggested, raising her eyebrow.
“Or a librarian,” Twilight replied, flatly.
“Too bad, yer a witch,” Applebloom said. “An’ witches don’t do math to work out their pies and potions.”
“Then I’ll be the first,” Twilight said, grinning.
===
“No no no no no!” Twilight said, taking yet another tray of burned muffins out of the oven. “How is this possible?” She turned to the pile of notes she’d scribbled on paper borrowed from Applebloom’s school supplies, and went over the math again. “I accounted for the second-order effects due to the reduced amount of sugar and baking soda… and the temperature… carry the one…” As she spread out the papers, a plate, overloaded with carbonized muffins, slipped off the table and crashed to the ground. Twilight didn’t even pause to look – by now it was a trivial addition to the horrific mess that had once been the Apple family kitchen.
“Ah told ya so,” Applebloom said, from her perch on the countertop, with her head resting on the only edible muffins in the room – her batch.
“Stop saying that,” Twilight said, frowning at the scatter chart where she’d plotted her attempts. There was no clear pattern. “It’s just a matter of pinning down all the confounding variables, and then I can come up with a recipe that takes my earth pony magic into account.” She stared at the equation she’d come up with for baking time, and plotted it on the graph – not only did it not predict her latest experimental results at all, but it wasn’t even a good fit for her earliest attempts. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that my emotional state was affecting the results,” she said, spitting out the quill. “Argh! And I don’t know better, do I. But how am I supposed to quantify my emotional state?”
“Yer not?” Applebloom said, drowsily. “Ah told ya…”
“Stop. Saying. That!”
“Ya can’t do it this way, Twilight,” the filly said. “There’s too many confounded varmints lurkin’ in the recipe. An’ it only gets worse when you start using magic plants. Some of ‘em have a mind of their own.”
“Applebloom…” Twilight said, closing her eyes and focusing on slowing her breathing, forcing herself to relax. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate what you’re trying to tell me. It’s clear that this isn’t going to be as easy as I thought – there are all kinds of factors worked into this ‘earth pony magic’ that make the effects seem somewhat random and unpredictable.”
“You could learn ta predict ‘em if you’d just listen to me,” Applebloom grumbled.
“I want to do this right,” Twilight said. “Maybe I won’t get it right in one day, not even for a simple recipe like this, but as long as I’m letting my calculations guide my expectations, I’m bound to figure it out eventually. The instant that I give in and start ‘feeling the recipe’, I’m letting my expectations guide my observations, and that’s bad science.”
“But it’s good witchcraft, and ah need a witch,” Applebloom replied. “If ya don’t wanna be a witch forever, can’t ya just learn enough of it to do one little potion?”
“So that’s what this is about,” Twilight said, narrowing her eyes. “I’m sure there’s somepony else you can ask. What about Granny Smith? She’s a witch, right?”
“She doesn’t do potions no more, ‘cept for zap-apple jam,” Applebloom said, poking at a muffin with her hoof. “She forgets stuff, like what kind ‘a potion she’s makin’, and it always comes out wrong.” She stood up, and pouted powerfully. “An’ Zecora said that she wouldn’t make my potion ‘cause it was a crime against nature! I don’t care ‘bout nature, I just want my darn potion!”
“And you think I’d agree to a crime against nature,” Twilight said, glaring at her.
“You never cared none about nature before,” Applebloom said. “Ya ain’t got a natural bone in yer body. Not that that’s bad – that’s normal fer unicorns.”
“I’m not a unicorn anymore.”
“Sure ya are. Ah mean, you were born a unicorn, and grew up as a unicorn, and just ‘cause you’re an earth pony on the outside now doesn’t mean yer not still a unicorn on the inside,” Applebloom said. “Ya still think like a unicorn.”
“What do you mean?” Twilight asked, insulted. Or, worse, feeling like she’d inadvertently insulted somepony else.
Applebloom just pointed at the now disorganized pile of notes and figures with her hoof.
“Are you saying earth ponies can’t do math?” Twilight said. “I’m sure Cheerilee would love to hear you try to pull that one to get out of doing your homework.”
“Ah can too do math!” Applebloom said. “But nopony thinks it’s important. That’s why I need mah unicorn potion!”
“Unicorn potion?” Twilight repeated, ears perking up.
“Ah’m sure there’d be enough to share,” Applebloom said. “An’ the witch that helped me make it would have first dibs.”
“Where in the wide wide world of Equestria did you find a potion to turn an earth pony into a unicorn?” Twilight asked.
“Ah came up with it mahself,” Applebloom said proudly. “After the love poison, and the cutie pox, and the trouble y’all had with poison joke, I figgered that if we’re surrounded by all these crazy magic plants, we should be able to tame ‘em. That’s the family specialty, after all. Ain’t none better in all Equestria at tamin’ wild magic than us Apples.”
“I don’t know,” Twilight said. “Zap Apple jam tastes good…” Applebloom narrowed her eyes. “Really good,” Twilight corrected. “Really, really good. But it doesn’t turn anypony into a unicorn.”
Applebloom nodded. “That’s why ah’m usin’ poison joke! It turned one ‘a the moon ponies into a unicorn, ‘cordin’ to the story goin’ ‘round.”
“Uh huh,” Twilight said.
“An’ heart’s desire to make it do what you want, stead o’ just what it thinks’d be funny,” the little pony added.
Twilight winced. “I think I’m starting to see where Zecora is coming from.”
“Ah’m not done though!” Applebloom said. “Ya also add amethyst to stabilize the heart’s desire an’ make it work once instead o’ buildin’ up a whole mess o’ trouble. An’ wolfsbane to dispel the curse since we’re usin’ a heap o’ cursed plants.”
“Wolfsbane doesn’t actually have any power against curses,” Twilight said. “That’s just a myth – all it does is make you really sick. It’s poisonous!”
“An’ that’s what the unicorn horn is for!” Applebloom said proudly.
“I think we’re done here,” Twilight said, turning to leave. “Thanks for the pointers. I’ll just gather up my notes and do the rest of the work on my own time, at least until I’m ready to move on to something besides baking. I think I’ve made enough of a mess here already.” She shuffled the notes back into a neat pile, and tucked it under her saddle.
“Ain’t ya gonna help clean up?” Applebloom asked.
“Eh heh heh,” Twilight said, looking around at the disaster area. Burnt muffins were everywhere – along with parts of burnt muffins, splattered batter and spilled flour. “No. I’m not really very good at being an earth pony, you know – still a unicorn at heart! Without my horn I’m useless at cleaning. I’d just make more of a mess!” She stumbled as her hoof slipped on a piece of cracked plate next to the table, and staggered over to the door. “I’ll, uh, think about your potion, Applebloom. I don’t think poison joke is the way to go, but there are some books on magic plants in the library, and maybe they have something in them that would actually – hiiiii, Applejack.” She stared into her friend’s eyes as the orange earth pony looked around the destroyed kitchen in shock.
“What in tarnation--“ Applejack started to say, before Twilight shoved rudely past her, into the snowy night. “Hold on, ya can’t just – nng, ‘et ‘ack ‘ere!” she added, grabbing Twilight by her tail and cutting her getaway short.
“Nooooo!” Twilight cried, as she was dragged back into the kitchen.
===
Twilight trudged home through the gray light of pre-dawn. There’d been more snow during the night, making each step a slog as she sank up to her belly in the white fluffy mass. It was so cold, and only the constant struggle was keeping the sweat and snow infused in her coat from freezing her into a solid block of ice.
It would be better once she got to Ponyville – the roads there were regularly tramped down to a solid snowy surface by hundreds of hooves. This path was almost unused, though, and there was no sign of the tracks that she and Applejack had left the day before, or the tracks Cherry Berry and the Flower Trio, who lived in Ponyville, must have left, or tracks from all the farmers who came from the far side of Ponyville and probably came through town on the way to Applejack’s Winter Wrap Up planning party.
She stopped, looking around at the landscape again. Was she even on the right path? All she saw were trees. Trees everwhere. Yes, that was helpful.
By Celestia’s feathery wings, she was so tired. She probably should have stayed at Applejack’s.
”What do you think you’re doing, trying to run off like that and leave me with your mess?”
“It’s not like that, Applejack. It’s just an efficient distribution of labor. I’m really no good at cleaning; I never was, even when I could do magic. I always have Spike take care of it.”
“Uh huh. And while I’m cleaning, what ‘efficient labor’ did you expect to be doin’ to make it up to me?”
“I’ve had a reeeeeally long day, and I just want to sleep…”
“That’s what I thought.” A bucket plopped in place in front of Twilight, followed by a mop being shoved into her hooves. “Get workin’. I’m gonna go take a nap, I’ve already spent too much time today cleaning up after your messes, Twi.”
Twilight’s eyes opened with a start as a chunk of snow slid off a tree limb and crunched to the ground right next to her, and she realized she’d dozed off standing up. A slight gust of wind sent a chill up the parts of her back not covered by her winter saddle, and her mane was stiff and frozen, but her legs felt warm enough, buried in the snow. She couldn’t remember if that was good or bad.
They still moved when she forced them to, at least.
Why was the snow so deep? Not just deep, but there were layers – a crust under the top fluffy layer that she kept breaking through with each step, as if a previous accumulation had been buried under the most recent snowfall. There was no way this was the right road. It was a road, though… somepony must use it. Maybe she could just go to sleep, right here in the nice thick, fluffy snow, and wait for somepony to find her. If more snow fell and covered her, she might not be found until spring, but sleeping through the winter never hurt the animals.
It had to be better than walking. She wasn’t getting anywhere.
”What do you mean it’s not clean? I cleaned everything!”
“Well, ah guess you’ll have to clean it again. Look at this countertop and tell me it’s clean!”
“It’s clean!”
“What do ya call this?” Applejack pointed a hoof angrily at a large black streak fixed indelibly to the countertop.
Twilight scowled. “I cleaned there, but it wouldn’t come off. It’s as clean as it’s going to get.”
“Ya just need ta put yer back into it,” Applejack said, grabbing a scrub brush and strapping it to her hoof. “Like this.”
Twilight watched her scrub. “It’s not coming off.”
“I’m not done. You can’t give up that easy, girl,” she said, continuing to scrub at the stubborn stain, gradually wearing it away, too slowly to see, until the streak turned to specks, and eventually to a spotless surface. “Just keep at it, see?”
“Twilight?” asked a gentle voice, and she opened her eyes, realizing she’d drifted off again. “Are you okay?” asked a yellow and pink pegasus, looking down at the mired earth pony while standing atop the snow as if it were a cloud, hooves hardly sinking in at all. Her wings were spread, as if she was prepared to flutter away at the slightest provocation.
“Fluttershy?” Twilight asked, blinking away the sleep and the cold.
===
Twilight fell asleep again on the way to Fluttershy’s cottage, draped over her back, nestled between her wings. She almost woke up when they finally went indoors, but wasn’t able to rouse herself enough to move as she was shifted gently onto the couch and covered in a thin blanket.
She actually woke up well after dawn, to the clink of a plate against a table, and the scent of hay-cakes. She sat up and stared blankly at the plate of food for a while, while Fluttershy hovered nearby, nervously. After a few minutes she realized that it wasn’t levitating over to her mouth because she wasn’t a unicorn anymore, and leaned down to grab one of the warm cakes with her lips, gobbling it up in seconds. “’ank ‘ou,” she mumbled as she chewed. She swallowed, and added. “I’m so glad you found me… I was so tired, I got completely lost.”
“Oh, it’s not…” Fluttershy said quietly, looking away. “You were on the road to my cottage, so you’d have found me if I hadn’t found you.”
“Oh, good,” Twilight said, eating another pancake. Fluttershy didn’t respond.
She ate the rest of her breakfast in silence, the only sounds the squelch of her own chewing, the slurp as she took a sip of juice, or the occasional rustle of fur against cloth as she shifted position. Fluttershy was completely silent.
Once she was done eating, Twilight sighed with contentment, and rested her head back on the cushion, drifting back into a lazy half-sleep. She wasn’t too asleep to notice her host retrieve the dishes and take them to the kitchen to wash them… it occurred to her that the polite thing to do would be to offer to help, but she really, really hated cleaning. Especially dishes. Especially as an earth pony. She’d had enough soap in her mouth to last a lifetime.
Twilight sighed, and rolled off the couch onto her hooves. She stretched out, arching her back and yawning, then drifted over to the kitchen, where Fluttershy hovered over the sink, brushing the grease and crumbs off the plates with a soaped up rag draped over her hoof, before handing them off to Angel Bunny to rinse and set in the drying rack. She turned to Twilight, and smiled.
“I was going to offer to help, but it looks like you have everything well in hoof,” Twilight said. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a burden, Fluttershy – but yesterday was a really, really bad day for me. Thank you for giving me someplace to rest.”
“Oh, Twilight,” Fluttershy said, giving a happy sigh, “it’s not a burden to take care of somepony who needs my help. I just wish I could have found you sooner, before your day got so horribly horribly awful.”
“It’s probably better that you didn’t. Applejack would have chased you away with a stick,” Twilight said, then shook her head to try to clear it. “Nng, no, I’m not going to think about her. It’ll just make me angry all over again.”
Fluttershy finished up with the dishes – there hadn’t been many to wash – and turned around to face Twilight, then looked down at the floor and poked at it with her hoof. Angel tapped his foot impatiently, then shrugged at Twilight when she looked up at him.
“Is there something you need, Fluttershy?” Twilight asked, as gently as she could manage.
“I just… wanted toknowifyouneededaridebacktothelibrary,” Fluttershy squeaked, her voice getting higher pitched and quieter as she neared the end of the sentence.
“The snow’s still pretty thick then,” Twilight remarked, after parsing that. Fluttershy nodded. “Still, it seems like a lot of trouble to put you to…” Angel Bunny shook his head vehemently, behind the shy pegasus. Twilight wasn’t sure whether he meant ‘refuse’ or ‘stop refusing’, but settled for ‘do the opposite of what you were about to’. “…but it would get me there a lot faster. I’m sure Spike’s wondering where I’ve been.”
“Everypony’s been so worried about you, Twilight,” Fluttershy said. “You vanished from the library, and nopony knew where you were.”
“Applejack knew,” Twilight said.
“Well, everypony knew that Applejack’s team was busy planning for Winter Wrap Up, so Rarity didn’t want to bother them. After all, if you were with her then you were safe. Or we thought you’d be safe, but then I found you abandoned in the cold and the snow in the middle of the night.”
“That… wasn’t really Applejack’s fault,” Twilight said.
”And what in the name of Luna’s freeze-dried tailfeathers do you think you’re doing?” Applejack demanded, standing in the doorway as Twilight turned to leave.
“What?” Twilight asked. “You said it was clean. You said I was done! What more do you want from me? Is it time to go strap me to a harness and haul burning logs from the barn?”
“Nah, we took care ‘o that while y’all were destroyin’ my kitchen.”
“Then what?” Twilight asked. “Do you want bits to pay for all the flour and sugar? I don’t have much on me, but I’m sure if you foalnapped me that Princess Celestia would laugh to herself and expect me to learn a valuable lesson about friendship!” The last part was shrieked into Applejack’s face.
“I just mean –“ Applejack started, but Twilight screamed and bowled her over, then galloped into the night, at least until she ran out of porch and had to start plowing through the snow with rage-fueled leaps. “Fine!” Applejack shouted after her. “Get your darn-fool tail froze off in the blizzard then!”
“I didn’t even think about the snow, I just wanted to get away from that place,” Twilight sighed. “It was a really bad day.”
Fluttershy looked horrified, imagining Celestia-knew what.
“Earth pony hazing ritual,” Twilight explained, trying to reign in her friend’s imagination without giving too much away. “And Cherry Berry.”
“Oh, Cherry Berry,” Fluttershy said, nodding sagely.
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Heh... So Cherry Berry is explanation enough why someone would rather freeze to death than stay safe and warm one moment longer. I do wonder what would/will happen should the new Elements actually be needed to contain a true threat and not just pacify misunderstood ponies.
I'm curious to see what Fluttershy's relationship with Twi is like these days. It seems that all of her friends are worried about her, but also clearly uncomfortable around her as well. AJ and Twi are both too stubborn in different ways, and Twi was indeed behaving like a brat, so it's not surprising that things there deteriorated. I suspect things won't go well with Fluttershy either, who seems to think Twilight is either helpless or suicidal. Really, Pinkie would have been the perfect Earth Pony to help Twilight with the transition... Or drive her completely insane. Either way, it doesn't seem to be an option now. It's looking more and more like Twi will opt to take the changelings up on their offer instead.
1665284 You have to relies that going from yay magic to hooves would make anyone insane and temperamental and twilight may be depressed. For she kind of lost her way of life also she really should have been sent to a therapist and a psychologist for she obviously has and had problems that. And her friends are probably the worst thing Celestia could have allowed for shes probably feeling a lot of guilt around them you gots to remember the surface isn't as deep as the soul. Instead of looking at the character try to see what the character thinks and feels.
1665456
Hey, I love Twilight the most out of all the ponies and there's no doubt that she's a bit of a mess right now, but she was clearly being a brat in trying to dodge the clean-up from her baking experimentation. AJ was never going to accept "You're better at cleaning than I am, so you should do it" as a valid excuse for avoiding hard work. It's the kind of thing Rainbow Dash might pull, but seeing Twilight do it is kind of new. Of course, she got into this whole mess to begin with by trying to run away from the responsibility that came with being an uber-powerful unicorn and so accidentally wished away her horn, meaning that she's not the poster-pony for responsibility these days anyway.
To a pony like AJ, letting her pull that kind of thing wouldn't be doing her any favors. I imagine from her perspective, Twi needs to either focus on getting her horn back or focus on living like an Earth Pony and all of the work that comes with it, rather than lamenting how easy things used to be while she searches for Earth Pony magic and does things the unicorn way or dodges doing them at all. Apple Bloom was right... she's a unicorn in an Earth Pony body right now, and she can't keep living in the middle of the road.
1665721 True but it feels to me like applejack is trying to force her to the earth pony side which is probably bad and no one else is really helping except the changelings in the way of "Look we know your screwed up in the head right now so here's a good solution that we can all enjoy." I say Celestia should have thought this out better. I mean her sister makes a attempt at the thrown and gets One thousand years of time out twilight makes a bunch of stupid mistakes and get her very way of life changed so fast the long term effects are likely to out way the crime in term of damages.
1665747
Didn't AJ earlier tell her she was better off spending her time finding a way to get her horn back? I feel like AJ is just trying to show her "this is what being an Earth Pony really is..." rather than making it an easy transition for her so that she can keep living a lie.
I don't trust those Changelings... When someone seemingly sympathetic shows up at your lowest point offering you a solution and camaraderie, and all you have to do is fundamentally change your life in return, well... that's how you end up in a cult.
As for Celestia, we don't really know what her opinion of all of this is. It wasn't her idea to de-horn Twilight, after all... that was the result of Twilight's thought process and the culmination of the plan executed by Dash. We never heard what Celestia's sentence was going to be for Twilight's misadventures, or what she had to say about it afterwards, but I suspect she's looking at all of this as a lesson for Twilight. Twi has simply become too powerful to keep her childhood habits of making a mess in her eagerness to learn and discover and then leave that mess for Spike to clean up (or the Princess, should things get out of hand.) It's time to grow up, behave responsibly not let things get carried away in the first place. (Which is not to say that I think Twilight actually is that irresponsible... she's one of the more responsibility-minded ponies. But when you can do as much damage as Twilight can, growing up means having to take things to a whole other level.)
I think Twilight needs to come around and want to take up that responsibility again, instead of looking for another way out of her troubles. If and when she truly does, I imagine that Celestia will want her to have all of her power back as well... she's invested quite a bit in that little pony, after all.
Poor Twilight definitely needs some counseling from someone though, you're right. And Celestia and Twilight do need to talk through that theory Twi has about her fate always ending in stone imprisonment. That's pretty heartbreaking.
1665932 I don't think applejack was like you should try to get your horn back she was more along the lines of you have no horn therefore you may need other skills the Changelings were released by pinky so I think this is more along the lines of thanks here's a gift so you can tell pinky we did something good.
Celestia is twilight's teacher she should have dealt with those habits when they first started showing not now when she knows no other ways.
I believe that Celestia,Luna and Candice need to sit down and teach twilight right from wrong in the way she does things because they are probably the three biggest ponies in twilight's life and as the teacher, sister in law and hinted friend they should be trying to improve the way she handles these things.Not punish her for things she obviously doesn't understand.
Although I do agree with you she does need to learn responsibility is this the way to do it no can it be learned this way yes but only through blood, hate, sweet and tears.
A good chapter, Twilights' difficulty with Witchcraft has been established in a manner that flows from characterization perfectly. She still has yet to fully adjust to the idea of being an Earth Pony, notable in her habits that despite has no doubt been quite some time since the de-horning she still has unicorn instincts in regards to manipulating objects as seen in Fluttershys' house. The part that stands out to me is that when she gets upset she lashes out to both the immediate target (Applejack) and Celestia.
She may have brought this on herself but she still seems to very much blame Celestia for her loss, and in a way she is has a point. When one thinks about it Celestia was her Teacher and mentor, yet despite having spent years with Twilight it took the 'Want-it need-it' incident for her to notice her Students borderline psychosis about deadlines, nevermind her various other issues. Still, it hardly puts the blame of the previous incidents on her, Twilight is for all intents and purposes an adult who is responsible for her own actions. However it is a reaction one would expect from the former unicorn despite having earner her punishment; her mentor was supposed to guide her and assist her, and now that she has lost essentially everything short of her own home she is nowhere to be seen. She certainly failed the friendship assignment, the pain of losing her friends is quite obvious, and apparently Celestia no longer has any interest in her so of course would only add to her loneliness and feelings of abandonment.
The Scene at Fluttershys' cottage was good for exposition but I would have like to have seen more of Fluttershys' new relationship with Twilight. Her saving the former unicorn and attempting conversation are to be expected but it would have been nice to see how Fluttershy feels about and around Twilight after everything that has happened.
As always, an enjoyable chapter to read,
BlackWinter
1666554 This, basically.
1743230 Celestia didn't actually forbid it; Twilight was using a figure of speech and Applebloom took it literally.
Awww, poor Twilight. :(
Yeah, poor Twilight.