“Geez, Twilight, I feel kind of bad I brought it all up,” Spike muttered. He hung his head, blushing slightly, and nervously scratched back of his neck.
Twilight watched the countryside go by for a moment before answering. “It’s all right, Spike,” she said with a sigh. “It’s something I would have to come to grips with eventually. Probably better it happens now than after my friends all started getting old.”
“Yeah, but ruining your conference?”
“Spike,” Twilight chided, “the conference isn’t ruined: Princess Celestia said she would make sure it wrapped up without us. And she said she’d ask Luna to help.”
“You know what I mean, Twilight,” Spike retorted, but with a gentleness in his tone that implied sympathy rather than irritation. “Ruining it for you.”
“Oh, right.”
There was a moment of awkward silence, broken only by the clickety-clack of the train wheels running along the track.
“That’s all right, too, Spike,” Twilight finally said. “I know you didn’t mean to, and I’ll make the best of it. I just don’t know if I can bring it up with everypony straight away, or if I need to distract myself for a little while. And while I know Celestia and the others would understand, I don’t want to take too much time away from my duties. And what if the Cutie Map calls me? I can’t let – oh, here I go starting to think about everything too much.”
Twilight took a deep breath, held out her left forehoof, and waved it slightly as she exhaled.
Another silence. Spike fidgeted. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then seemed to think better of it. He went back to fidgeting, hunched over.
“Maybe… maybe… maybe I need to take my mind off of things, first,” Twilight mused. “I’ve got it! Starlight’s been working on a new spell. I’ll ask her how that’s going. Maybe after that, I’ll feel up to getting together with the girls so I can explain why we had to come home early.” She paused, putting a hoof to her chin pensively. “But will I be able to talk about it with them by then?” She sighed again, saying, “I just don’t know, Spike.”
She turned back to look out the window, then frowned as she took in what was outside. “That’s funny, we’re just about to pull into Ponyville Station.”
“Well, yeah,” Spike responded. “I don’t want to say you’ve been moping most of the trip, but – ”
“ – but I’ve been moping most of the trip. I get it, Spike.”
As the train began to slow down, Twilight frowned again, squinting at the platform, before smiling.
“She shouldn’t have!” she said, with a warmth of tone suggesting she was not entirely serious.
Waiting at the platform were six very familiar ponies.
“I wonder how Starlight got them all together on such short notice?” asked Spike.
“There she is!” shouted Rainbow Dash as Twilight emerged from the train. She flew in for a rambunctious greeting, bowling the mulberry-coated princess over.
“Whazzat?” Twilight said groggily as the others converged, piling on.
“Er, sorry about that, Twilight,” Starlight said contritely, trotting up to the ponypile. “When Spike wrote that you were coming home today, I was worried something had really gone wrong, so I thought I should have everypony out to greet you, if you needed a friend or two. Or, er, five or six.” She smiled awkwardly, scratching behind her mane.
Twilight shook her head. “That’s quite all right, Starlight,” she said warmly. “Pinkie Pie, I say this with love and affection, but will you please get off my whithers now?”
“Oops! Sorry, Twilight!” Pinkie exclaimed with an embarrassed grin. She scooted over to stand alongside Starlight.
“We were just worried about you, Twilight,” Fluttershy said softly.
“Is something the matter, sugarcube?” asked Applejack. “You weren’t supposed to be back ‘till tomorrow. Ain’t your conference in Canterlot still on?”
Twilight took a deep breath to settle herself. “Something is the matter, everypony. I don’t really want to talk about it right now, but I will, soon. Right now, I just want to be here in my home with my friends. I know you all have busy lives, and I’m sure you all dropped whatever you were doing to be here, and I appreciate it. Could we all go to lunch together?”
She was delighted to hear a chorus of agreement in reply.
Spike came out of the train, struggling to pull two big bags behind him.
“A little help here?” he asked. His question went unheeded.
“Typical,” he said darkly, hauling the luggage along as fast as he could to keep up with the chattering septet of ponies.
None of them saw the dark shape in the shadows of the train station, partially concealed by the wall, nor its glowing yellow eyes as it watched them.
The glowing eyes narrowed, and the shape withdrew behind the wall of the station.
There was something… soothing, for lack of a better word, being surrounded by her friends, Twilight decided. They’d spent lunch going back and forth over what they had all been up to while she had been away.
“… and that’s when the cake exploded!!!” Pinkie concluded with a fit of uproarious giggles.
“Well, that’s rather dramatic for a cuteceañera, don’t you think?” Rarity asked.
“Are you kidding?” Rainbow Dash managed between her own guffaws. “That sounds awesome!”
“I suppose it was okay as long as everyone was all right with that,” Fluttershy managed. “It’d be too bad if it made someone upset.”
“Oh, it went down a treat!” Pinkie Pie declared. She winked and nudged Twilight, who rolled her eyes and sighed in response. “You’ve seen my super secret party planning basement. You all know that I know my audience when it’s time to put on a party!”
“That we have,” Applejack agreed. “Don’t sound like it would have been to my taste, but ah’m sure Pinkie Pie knows what she’s doin’ when it comes to parties.”
Rarity, whose seat was facing the window, perked up with a snort. “I say, what’s that?”
Everypony turned to look out the window in the direction she was peering at.
“What’s what, Rarity?” Twilight asked.
Rarity squinted. “That darker corner, there, where the shadows from those buildings meet… I thought I saw…”
“Saw what?” Applejack prompted.
Rarity tched and rubbed her chin with a hoof. She peered carefully out the window for a moment longer.
“Nothing, I suppose. Must have been a trick of the shadows.”
They all turned back to their seats. Twilight let out a contented sigh.
“Girls, I just wanted to tell you how much it means to me that you all could make it out today. I don’t think I can tell you just yet why I came home early, but trust me when I tell you I already feel much better.”
She grabbed them all with her magic and brought them together for a hug.
The large doors to the Castle of Friendship creaked open. Twilight Sparkle walked in, breathing a sigh of relief. So did Spike, because it was at that moment that Twilight remembered her luggage, and took it in her magic. She concentrated and it vanished in a burst of purple light.
“I don’t want to pry, Twilight,” Starlight was saying, “but did something go wrong at the conference? Would that be something you’d feel uncomfortable sharing with everypony else?”
“Oh, no, not at all,” replied Twilight. “It’s nothing to do with the conference. So far as I know, that’s running along just fine. Prin – I mean, Celestia promised she would make sure everything went smoothly. It feels kind of reassuring, knowing so many ponies were willing to move around their schedules to help me. Although I’m sure it helps that I left her a big list.”
“How does she do it?” Celestia muttered under her breath, looking with a pained expression at the unnaturally long roll of parchment. Carefully-drawn boxes and their associated action items ran down its entire length. “Just between you and me, I’m finding this a little intimidating,” she admitted to Luna, who sat next to her.
Luna examined the items on the to-do list with bewilderment. “Does she really have the day blocked off into five-minute increments? I don’t see how we can do Twilight’s instructions justice, dear sister.”
“You did, did you?” asked Spike, eyeing Twilight critically.
“You bet! I’m sure she really appreciates the level of detail I put in to it.”
“I know, Lulu, but I promised I would help.”
“You promised Twilight Sparkle that you would help run the conference in her absence. Not that you would slavishly follow her checklist. We shall attend to the work at hand in our own way.”
Luna rolled up the parchment with her magic and tossed it into the fireplace. She smiled at Celestia sweetly before her expression turned serious.
“Let us never speak of this again.”
Celestia rolled her eyes and sighed loudly.
“Anyway,” Twilight went on as the trio reached the library, “I want to keep my mind off things just now. How is your spell coming along?”
“Oh, that, heh,” Starlight said, brightly. “Well, I’ve made some decent progress. I’d run up against a wall until I thought about something you’d said, not long after I first started to live here.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“You told me that in one of the alternate timelines you traveled to – or maybe that's time streams – Zecora told you how time acts like a flowing river. Taking that analogy a step further, time travel is a bit like jumping in and out of it.
“What I found is that trying short jumps back in time is harder than longer ones. It’s bit like if you jump a tiny bit upstream, the current carries you back to where you started almost right away. The farther back in time you go, though, like Starswirl’s spell, the easier the spell technique gets – although going back further than Starswirl’s spell originally allowed takes a lot more power.
“But then it occurred to me: what if I could just change how fast time is flowing around somepony, instead of trying to jump through it? So I went over all the calculations you and I did together a few more times and figured out how to modify the spell so it stopped trying to fight against the flow of time, and tried to shape it instead.”
Starlight concentrated, and her horn glowed a light turquoise. Spike was walking up the stairs when he suddenly froze. So did the flickering of the lights in the library. Twilight shook her head. “What happened?”
Starlight smiled sweetly before tossing her head. “Oh, nothing," she said with false modesty. "I’ve just created a spell that can make localised distortions in the flow of time. Everything around us is effectively stopped until I end it! Or maybe it’s because we’re going so fast now, everything seems stopped. I’m not quite sure yet.”
“Really?! That’s wonderful!!” Twilight clapped her hooves together in glee. Starlight grinned and stopped concentrating with her magic.
Everything snapped back to normal. Spike continued ascending the stairs as if nothing had happened.
“I should warn you, though,” Starlight went on, “Despite tinkering with the spell some more, I haven’t been able to stay in that state for long: it always feels like my heart is about to burst after a very short time - anywhere from twenty seconds to a minute. Unless I figure out a way to stop those side-effects, I don't know that I'd ever want to use the spell outside of emergencies. I was going to work on it some more this morning, before I got your letter from Spike.”
“Still, what a breakthrough!” Twilight said giddily. "Congratulations, Starlight!"
Spike stopped atop the staircase and looked down at Twilight, wearing a confused expression. Then he shrugged and went on his way. Twilight pranced around the library.
“Ooh ooh, what should we call your spell? How about ‘Glimmer’s Time Field Stasis Distortion’?” In her excitement, Twilight leaned uncomfortably close to Starlight.
Starlight leaned back, smiling awkwardly. “Uhh… I’m thinking something more like ‘Time Stop’. Little catchier, maybe?”
Twilight paused, her eyes darting back and forth, lips pursed. “Ooooof course!”
“Did you want to see the notes I’ve compiled in the last few days while you’ve been away?” Starlight asked.
“You don’t need to ask twice!” Twilight exclaimed.
Starlight reached for some notebooks with her magic, but dropped them with a start when there was a sudden knocking on the castle doors. They sounded surprisingly urgent.
“Who could that be?” Twilight wondered aloud.
“I’ve got it!”
Spike came tearing down the stairs and out into the hallway. Twilight and Starlight followed at a more sedate pace.
They heard the door open, and Spike speaking indistinctly. The visitor’s gravelly baritone voice, though, was much clearer.
“I’d heard the Princess was back in town. Is she here, Spike? I’ve got to speak to her, it’s urgent!”
Twilight and Starlight came around the bend in the corridor. There at the door was Spike, and, doing his best to restrain himself from simply running in, was a thick-set earth pony stallion with a dun coat, earthen mane and tail, and three small headstones adorning his flank.
“Four Foot?” Twilight asked in surprise.
“Princess Twilight!” the stallion replied, bowing. “Please, you’ve got to come at once – there’s been a grave robbing at the cemetery!”
Spike recoiled, and they all gasped in shock.