Twilight Sparkle Lays An Egg
- o -
The morning sun shone brightly into the Royal Breakfast Nook, blessing the breakfast table with its glory and illuminating the six place settings, even though only Celestia and Luna were present. The two sisters were giggling to each other as they shared the generous spread of breakfast items, although an interested observer would be unable to tell just what was so funny about their situation. The only clue to the topic of the ongoing unspoken conversation was a pair of golden bits sitting on an empty section of tablecloth, and the unusual mirth between the two royal pranksters.
With a glance over her shoulder at the risen sun, Celestia asked, “Neither of our two young protégées seem to be joining us yet? I know Cadence is busy with little Flurry Heart—”
“And Shining Armor,” added Luna with an additional giggle.
“—and Shining Armor,” admitted Celestia. “Still, I expected young Twilight to be here by now, no matter which way our wager goes.”
“Hmm…” Luna lit up her horn and concentrated. “Young Twilight Sparkle has not returned to the Dreaming. You don’t think she missed the egg when she awoke, do you?”
“Only if there was a book in her vicinity,” said Celestia with a smirk as she buttered a piece of toast. “Ah, here she comes now.”
The quiet clatter of hooves out in the hallway resolved into an alicorn princess as expected, only a somewhat older one who was carrying a young dragon on her back.
“Good morning, Auntie Celestia. Aunt Luna.” Princess Cadence beamed as she swept into the room and deposited Spike on the tallest chair at the table. “We left Shining Armor down in the garden with Flurry Heart, trying to make friends with the bunnies. Where’s Twilight?”
Both of the elder alicorns broke into laughter when Cadence sat down, and only managed to restrain their mirth through strenuous effort with a constant series of glances between them. Cadence shook her head and looked over at where Spike was happily filling his plate.
“Maybe you should go upstairs and check on Twilight, Spike. I think my aunts are pulling some sort of trick on her.”
“Us?” Both Celestia and Luna put on expressions of pure innocence marred only by mutual suppressed giggles, but Cadence was not buying it.
“Spill it.” Cadence gave her aunts a glare of pure cold steel. “Or I won’t let either of you foalsit Flurry Heart for a year.”
“‘Twas Celestia’s idea,” said Luna promptly.
“It was not!” countered Celestia. “You said you’ve never seen a pony so prone to panic fits, and I said Twilight Sparkle was the most clever pony since Clover.”
“Both true. Please pass the pancakes,” said Spike as he continued loading up his plate.
After moving the platter of pancakes over to Spike, Luna sighed. “We made a wager.”
“A small one,” clarified Celestia, pointing at the two bits on the table. “And we put an egg in Twilight’s bed this morning.”
“A large one,” said Luna with a giggle.
“An appropriately sized one,” said Celestia in her most serious voice. “Created out of our magic and crafted to appear as if it were—” she took a brief glance at where Spike was demolishing his pancakes “—laid by her in the morning hours.”
“With a most pertinent dream to go with it,” added Luna as she built her own stack of pancakes. “As well as the most clever enchantments upon the egg which I was able, including a mirroring spell in case she casts a life detection spell upon it to determine the contents. It will only last a short time, but she will undoubtedly consider the egg to be real because of the results and react appropriately.”
“Yes,” said Celestia with a sideways quirk to her lips. “Luna seems to think Twilight is so immature that she’ll come running to me in a panic.”
“And Celly thinks her student is so bright she’ll see right through our little trick,” added Luna.
Cadence passed the syrup over to Spike with a deep sigh. “Aren’t the two of you too old for this?”
“It is a legitimate query,” said Luna, putting on her most serious face although a few small snickers kept sneaking out of the corner of her mouth. “Knowing how our fellow princess reacts to unusual events is only prudent.”
“Like when you told Twilight my husband was a tooth,” said Cadence levelly.
“In my sister’s defense, that was aimed at me,” said Celestia with one upraised hoof as if she were being sworn into court. “Besides, I seem to remember a certain young princess who convinced Twilight she was going to have star-foals because of kissing.”
Cadence soaked in the situation with a long, slow nod, looking back and forth between her giggling relatives. Then she took a deep breath, rummaged around in her bag, and got out a golden bit of her own to put next to the others.
“Point taken. However, you’re both wrong. Remember, I foalsat Twilight for a long time. She’s a research fanatic. Right now, she probably has every book from the Canterlot Archives in her room, studying to find out just where alicorn eggs are mentioned and how to deal with them.”
“It would explain why she’s not at breakfast,” said Celestia with a contemplative frown.
“And why we have not heard a thing since she left the Dreaming,” added Luna.
There was a little click of crystal as Spike put a small gemstone down next to the three bits. “Nope,” he said before shoveling in another bite of pancakes.
“Now this I must hear,” said Luna, gesturing with her fork. “Go ahead, young drake.”
“After you’ve finished chewing,” added Celestia.
Once he had dealt with the pancakes, Spike looked up at the three curious alicorns, pointing to them in turn. “Princess Celestia, you taught her. Princess Cadence foalsat her, and Princess Luna, you may have heard all kinds of stories about her, but none of you have lived with Twilight Sparkle for the last ten years. She’s going to do something none of you expect.”
...causing arcane wards to surround the guest bedroom, sealing it off from the rest of the universe…
“Back when I was just a little whelp, I got to talk with some of the teachers who were there when I was hatched,” said Spike. “They all tried to talk around it, but they obviously didn’t think it was possible to hatch an egg like mine, and had all kinds of questions I couldn’t answer. Since then, I’ve seen Twilight Sparkle do some amazing things nopony has ever done before, things which were called impossible before she did them. Like saving you from Nightmare Moon,” he added, looking at Luna. “She didn’t panic and run away then. Or when she became an alicorn,” Spike said, looking at an uncomfortable Celestia. “She didn’t doubt the authenticity of Starswirl’s journal. She dove right in and tried it, regardless of the consequences.”
…motes of magic floated around Twilight as she poured herself into the spell…
“Spike, she’s always done her research,” said Cadence softly. “I don’t think she’s been out of reach of a book since she learned to read. Plus when she fought Nightmare Moon, I heard she had to go reference a book first.”
“To learn something she didn’t know,” said Spike. “She needed a book to know where the Elements of Harmony were. If she has already read a book about how to deal with a problem, she just deals with it, and since she’s been living in a library, she reads a lot.” He grabbed another pancake off the tray and put it on his plate, sprinkling it with powdered emeralds. “I’m going to be a big brother,” he added as he poured the syrup.
“Spike,” said Celestia gently. “It’s not a real egg. Luna and I created it with magic. There’s no foal inside.”
...mares are the only pony able to create life…
Spike shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Remember, she hatched me when she was taking her test to get into the school, and that was years and several decimal points in her power rating ago. She wants to hatch the egg, so she will.”
...insufficient power to do what was needed, but there were other sources of power available…
Now it was Luna’s turn to frown and address the little dragon. “Are you implying our little Twilight Sparkle wishes to become a mother?”
Waiting until he was done chewing, Spike nodded. “She changed my diapers when I was just a baby and spoon fed me when I was hungry, even when I ate the spoons. She was the best mother to me as a little filly. Now she’s all grown up, and all she seemed to talk about on this trip was Flurry Heart.”
...it’s just borrowing for a little bit…
Cadence let out a sigh and patted Spike on the head. “I know you’re both excited about Flurry Heart, and you think you know all about Twilight and magic, but it’s impossib—” She gave a little hiccup and blinked several times. “That was odd,” she said, peering cross-eyed at her horn. “My magic just blinked out.”
“And my moon hath just risen back over the horizon,” said Luna with a sharp glance toward the west. “I have no control over it.”
Before Celestia could say anything, the sun went out, and the breakfast nook was flooded with darkness of such intensity that all the occupants could see was afterimages.
“What’s going on?” asked Cadence from somewhere in the pitch-black room.
“Twilight,” said Spike. He lit one of the candles at the table with a regulated burst of dragonfire, regarded the three panicked alicorns in the resulting light, then gave a shrug and finished off the last of his pancakes.
Just as he put the fork back on his empty plate, the ground trembled, and a sprinkling of dust came down from the ceiling. The floor of the room tilted to one side and then the other with the popping and crackling of fractured stonework as the castle tower heaved much as a ship in a storm, then settled back down onto its foundations with a series of thuds. A deep tremor continued while the universe seemed to groan in labor pains, twisting and spasming across nearby dimensions with a sensation that only plucked gently at nerve endings instead of tearing the world apart as it seemed to want.
The feeling only lasted a few minutes, but cut off with an intense jolt, and when the sunlight burst back through the smoke-filled air of the breakfast nook, each of the alicorns was sitting rather stunned on the floor.
After cocking his head to one side and listening for a moment, Spike scooped the three bits and the gemstone off the table and tucked them away. “Told ya.”
In the resulting dusty silence, all three alicorns quietly got back to their hooves. The moon obediently slid back below the horizon to its presumably proper place, the sun shifted in the sky as if to adjust itself for a few missing seconds, and Cadence looked up with an expression of unfiltered joy.
Cadence held a hoof across Luna’s chest before she could break the silence.
“No, Auntie Luna,” she whispered. “Listen.”
And the distant cry of a newborn alicorn filtered down from above.