"Hypergraphia" · 2:18am Dec 21st, 2018
[Content Warning: (inaccurately depicted) obsessive mental illness]
“C’mon, Twilight. It’s time for supper!”
Twilight Velvet peeked into Twilight’s study. The young mare was hunched over her notebook, her pen dancing across the page in long, curled strokes. Velvet walked over to get a closer look. “What are you working on?” she asked.
“Oh, I’m just writing,” Twilight replied.
“All right. Well, when you’re finished, come on down, okay? Supper’s just about ready.”
“Okay.” Throughout their short conversation, Twilight never stopped writing. Velvet noticed, but didn’t consider it out of the ordinary. Her daughter had always demonstrated a certain obsession with whatever project filled her time. She needed some sort of mediating factor to keep her grounded; otherwise, she’d find herself absorbed in her work like this. Velvet sighed and went back downstairs. Whatever Twilight was working on, she’d be finished soon enough.
***
“Mooom, I’m ready to eat!” Shining Armor complained.“I know, dear, it’s just... Twily hasn’t come down yet.”
“Can’t she just come down later?”
“I want to spend time together as a family while we still can.” Velvet turned the heat back up on the soup pot; it was starting to get cold again. “You’re heading out to basic training, and Twily’s going to start her senior study program with Princess Celestia. We’re going to have fewer and fewer of these family meals soon.”
“Then can’t you go get Twily and tell her to hurry up?” Shining Armor whined.
“All right, all right. I’ll go check up on her.” Velvet sat up from her cushion and headed back upstairs to the study. When she got to the door, she heard something on the other side. Pressing her ear against the door, she recognized it as... writing. So Twilight was still working on whatever it was? She’d been going at it for at least half an hour, if not longer. Now would be a great time to take a break.
She opened the door and called out, “Hey, Twily. Let’s go ahead and head downstairs.”
“Ah, okay! Just let me...” Twilight trailed off, her quill still scratching against the paper. She turned a page and absently noted, “I’m running out of paper in this notebook. Could you get me another one, please, Mom?”
“Sounds like you’re at just the right place to put it down for a bit.” Twilight didn’t respond. “Don’t you agree, sweetheart?”
“Mm.” Twilight continued to write, all the way down to the last page. Then, without even reacting, she began to trail down below the page, scribbling onto the desk itself.
Horrified, Velvet raced over and flicked Twilight’s horn, cancelling out her magic. “What are you doing? Don’t write on that!”
Twilight shook herself, as though she were broken out of a spell. “Huh? What?” She read the disturbed look on Velvet’s face and asked, “Is everything okay?”
Velvet took a moment or two to recuperate before saying, “Yes, everything’s fine. Ready to come down to supper?”
“Yes, mom.” They both began to head downstairs. Just before Twilight made it out of her room, she noted, “Actually, I just need to write down one thing...” Behind her, a wave of chalk stood to attention in front of her chalkboard and began to write on the board. Looking more closely, Velvet realized that most of it was nonsense, or real words strung together in meaningless sentences.
“Twilight, you need to stop.” Her mother stamped her hoof down, but Twilight paused for only a second before the chalk began to write again.
“Okay, absolutely.” Despite the agreement, Twilight made no effort to stop writing or cancel her magic in any way.
Frustrated, Velvet snapped the chalk in Twilight’s grasp and grabbed her by the ear. “That’s enough. Come downstairs, now!”
Twilight was eerily silent. Velvet looked back and saw something that shook her to her core. Twilight had casually pierced the side of her leg, enough to draw blood, and was using her magic to continue to write on the walls in bright red. Velvet’s magic flared, and Twilight found herself encased in a protective magical bubble. Simultaneously, she called down to her husband, “Night Light! Something’s wrong!”
***
Hours later, Princess Celestia stepped out of the room. “I’ve ruled out possession, dark magic, and other potential external threats.”
:So... what is it?” Velvet asked. “What’s happening to our little filly?”
“It’s a... somewhat uncommon condition called hypergraphia,” Celestia replied. “Simply put, whenever Twilight Sparkle begins to write, she doesn’t know when to stop. The urge may come upon her to write, and she will simply continue to write indefinitely, unless something drastic happens or the urge stops.”
“So what do we do?” Night Light asked.
“I think the best thing for her would be to discourage her from writing. If Twilight can avoid writing as much as possible, she will be able to recognize when her hypergraphia urge starts to develop and quell it effectively.”
“But Princess, doesn’t she need to write for her studies?” Velvet asked. “What will she do about that?”
“I believe I have a solution that will suffice,” Celestia responded.
***
Twilight closed the door behind herself with a sigh. It had been such a long day. Rarity had needed a lot of help with her latest project, Applejack was eyes-deep in apples and had wanted help getting everything sorted, and Pinkie Pie had fallen into a crisis of faith. Luckily, after all Twilight had learned from her other friends, she could now use those lessons to help everypony else.
After events like this, she needed to let Princess Celestia know what she’d learned and how she’d forwarded the cause of friendship. Now she just needed one last thing. She wandered into the kitchen and found Spike looking into the refrigerator. “Hey, Twilight!” he said. “How was your day?”
“Great!” she replied. “I’ve got a wonderful story I want to tell the princess.”
“Gotcha.” Spike hurried over to the main study and grabbed his things. Then, quill and parchment in claw, he returned to the kitchen. “Ready when you are.”
“Spike! Take a letter.”
"Twilight," he groaned. "We're a hundred pages into your friendship letter, and you stopped making sense on page fifty. Can I just send it already?"