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// Breath of Air [Mini-fic] 
// Story: The Enchanted Library: Sidestories 
// by Monochromatic 
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Twilight sometimes likened Rarity to light. 

It was a silly word to use to describe somepony. Light wasn't a thing one could be, light was just a concept, a notion, the result of the sun shining overtop or a candle flickering in the night. And yet, she was light.

The word 'light' made out Twilight Sparkle's first name, yet light was not what she brought. Much like her name, it felt like she lived in the tinted penumbra between day and night, between yesterday and today, between life and death. 

The Light yawned, her hoof going to her mouth as she did so, and her magic gently dropping the needle she'd been holding. She was light, she was life, everything Twilight thought she'd lacked but had now regained, been allowed to have back. 

It fascinated Twilight that Rarity yawned, that her chest rose and fell with each breath not out of habit but out of actual need. 

"Twilight?" 

Twilight blinked, her expression softening like the barriers she'd carefully constructed but Rarity had done away with. "Yes?"

"A bit for your thoughts?" Rarity asked, as she so often did. The endless string of questions, of fascination for Twilight Sparkle who in turn was fascinated by the notion that somepony would be interested in her, in she whom time had long forgotten, in she who'd so dearly tried to forget herself.

Twilight breathed, a habit she kept, and answered, "I don't need to breathe." 

"You don't need to," Rarity said, and she smiled, and it was a lovely smile, Twilight thought. "The dead do not breathe, do they?"

"I'm not dead," Twilight replied, yet she found no sadness nor joy in the fact. "My body is displaced in time. It's more like I'm constantly frozen or paralyzed in a pocket of time."

Rarity hummed. "I know, but death sounds more poetic, doesn't it?" She looked away, to her needle on the desk. "If I stop breathing, I shall die."

Twilight frowned. The thought was unpleasant. The thought was disturbing, even, that Rarity could die, would die, one day far away and perhaps Twilight would still be trapp— 

"If you're not dead, then," Rarity interrupted, and Twilight knew one day the memory of Rarity's voice would paint her eternity with a thin coat of endless pain, "You need to breathe something that gives you life, don't you?" She laughed and mischievously suggested, "Ink from books?"

"How did you know?" Twilight asked, and Rarity laughed, and Twilight couldn't help but smile even more. 

One terrible day, Twilight thought in those especially quiet times, Rarity will no longer come to the library. No longer will her voice fill the hallways, no longer will desks be decorated with books brought for Twilight to read, and lack of use will allow dust to settle over the formerly-pink necklace on the desk.

One way or another, like many other things it had taken, eternity would rip Rarity away from Twilight Sparkle and she'd again be alone in her library with nothing but her owls, and then might Twilight not be so quick to clarify she was not dead.

But for now, she smiled.

She smiled because it wasn't air that filled her lungs, no, but instead it was Rarity's presence that filled her life or lack thereof. Perhaps Rarity was not the light that shone in the library, but the air that filled Twilight's existence.

And for now, Twilight would take as many breaths as eternity allowed.