The Personal Journal of the Human Twilight Sparkle, Part Two · 6:17pm Oct 30th, 2014

The Personal Journal of the Human Twilight Sparkle

Part Two: Sustained Magical Manipulation

A month ago my mentor, Sunspot Storm, sent me to the remote wildlife refuge of Horseshoe Falls. It was the early fall, and the start of the school year, although the significance of that last point would not reach me for some time yet.

My research told me that thirty-two years ago, the falls at this location had been selected as a place where drinking water could be profitably bottled. You see, the area was known for some of the freshest and most delicious water in the whole country. But the company attempting this venture ultimately failed, because they completely failed to grasp the nature of Horseshoe Falls. It wasn’t that the water from here was fresh, it was that any water brought here became fresh. Horseshoe Falls...was magical. And the water turned back into swill within a kilometer of the falls.

The magic was extremely localized, and extremely weak. But it was more than enough for my purposes. My first magic wand fell apart into its component parts when I focused my will upon it, as if I had never glued them together. I tried making more wands, going through a half dozen in total. I soon realized that it wasn’t my method that was lacking, but my attitude. Magic, as I said has a mind of its own, and responds best not to actions, but to intent. Only when I made it clear that my intentions were peaceful was I allowed to proceed. Once I had established a rapport, I was quickly able to devise instruments for detecting and pinpointing sources of magic, much better than the crude devices I had ringing my house. With these new instruments, I would be able to go far beyond what even my mentor had done in the field of magical studies.

It is, perhaps, the entirely wrong approach to attempt to classify and systematize magic—an approach that my mentor shunned—but I have no other choice, for that is my basic approach to life itself. It is for this reason that I worked out a hierarchy of effects achievable via magic, what could be called “spells”, except that they are thought systems rather than anything that can be written down in words. Each spell was rated according to how much magic it pulled out of the environment. Level 1, the easiest, was the Heat spell. Level 2 was Light, and Level 3 was Levitation. Standing behind Horseshoe Falls, at the spot where I felt the magic was the strongest, Heat was easy. Light could be accomplished with a little concentration. Levitation was impossible. And Spike...was still Spike.

Does...does he suffer? I worry about that, far more than I do about whatever might happen to me. Does he remember what he once was, what he once was capable of? Does he mourn for his lost intellect? I know I would. I walk among those of far lesser intelligence than I, and they appear to be happy, but perhaps that is just because they don’t know any better. But to be a genius, if only for an hour, and then to have that cruelly stripped from you...how can he stand it?

One day I received a letter from Sunspot. It had taken more than a week to reach me, having been initially sent to my home address in Hoofington—despite her knowing where I was. It was short, and incomprehensible, at least on first perusal: “What are you doing here?” it asked. “Did you not promise to never break my cover? I respectfully demand to know what you are up to, and what the Fall Formal could possibly have to do with our mutual research. Yours, Sunspot.”

I wrote a short reply protesting my innocence and asking for clarification. I then packed up and drove for most of the next day before returning to my little rented house in Canterlot. There I found a second letter waiting for me:

Dear Twilight Sparkle,
Come one! Come all! To the event of the century!
Here at the Canterlot Amphitheater! The one, the only...
BATTLE OF THE BANDS
See the best and the brightest duke it out on the big stage! Many will enter, but only one group will emerge triumphant, to drink in the fruits of their labor. And YOU can be part of it!
Do not miss it, or you will regret it for the rest of your days!
HELP ME

It was signed by Sunspot’s true identity. There was a date and time on this glorified flier, informing me of when this so-called “battle” was to occur. It had in fact already begun.

I had absolutely no idea what to make of this absurd letter. Never had I expressed to Sunspot the slightest interest in music, or the performing arts. (I have such interests, Journal. It’s just that I never expressed them.) So I did the only thing I could do—I searched it for secret messages.

And there, in the large blank area at the bottom of the page, I discovered indentations, left from writing words with a heavy hand on a piece of paper that must have been on top of the one I was reading. I rubbed it with the side of a pencil lead, to discover the words “HELP ME”. Combine this with the readings being recorded by my crude instruments at that very moment, what was being picked up by the the seismograph...

And so my path was unalterably directed towards my fate.

All this writing is making me hungry! I’ll reveal what I found at Canterlot High School after breakfast...well, after I go out to eat breakfast. I still haven’t had time to restock my supplies.

Yours in loyalty and solidarity,

— Twilight Sparkle, Human

“Just hurry up and pick something! I feel unhealthy just standin’ around this place. I mean, all the apple juice here is ‘apple flavored’. Who would do that?”

“Hold your horses! I’ll still looking.”

“Hee-hee! You said ‘horses’. Hey! Look what I found!”

“It looks like some sort of journal. You should put that back, Pinkie.”

“No, but look at the title! I told you there was another Twilight Sparkle!”

“Gimme a look at that! Hmm...do you think that was the ‘strange girl’ that Fluttershy saw?”

“I think we should give this to Twilight. Well, Pony Twilight. Well, more like Pony-Twilight-Who’s-Human, as opposed to Human-Twilight-Who’s-Always-Been-Human.”

“I would think that a tremendous invasion of privacy!”

“‘Privvassy?’”

“That’s ‘privacy’ in Rarity. Oh, right. No talking.”

“And I think we leave it right here in the Lost And Found, wait to see who picks it up, and follow them home!”

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