“Twilight!” Cadence said as she opened the door. “And…Twilight?”
I fidgeted, pushing my glasses up, a nervous habit of mine. I’d never managed to pin down when I acquired it and it was now just a part of me.
“Yeah,” I said. “We wanted to check out some of the astrological differences between this world and Equestria.” I gave her my sweetest smile. “The view is so much better from here in the suburbs than the city proper.”
Cadence eyed the other Twilight. I felt odd standing next to her, the only difference being my wearing glasses and some clothes that Rarity had donated when I had told her that I wanted to dress a little more relaxed. I wondered for a moment if this is what twins felt like.
I adjusted my glasses again, the weight of the new, smaller frames still new to me. Cadence stepped aside and we both stepped within.
“Two conditions,” she said in a serious voice I recognized from our time at Crystal Prep when she had been Dean of Students, not Principal.
“Ok,” Twilight said. “Whatever you want.”
She looked at us both, then smiled. “Sunshine, Sunshine,” she said, covering her eyes.
“Ladybug’s Awake,” Twilight said, covering and then revealing her eyes.
“Clap your hands,” I said.
“And do a little shake!” we finished, all three giggling.
“So strange that so much is the same across the mirror,” Twilight said.
“It’s probably a radial approximation, decreasing as distance increases,” I said. “Close proximity would result in the largest similarities.”
“There are small differences between you that anyone familiar to you can tell,” Cadence said. “My Twilight has slightly darker hair, the highlights are subtly off. You’re a little taller, and you both stand differently.”
I traded looks with the princess, noticing these changes now that they were pointed out. I recognized the look in her eye as one I’ve seen in a computer monitor more than once. It was the look of new knowledge about to be gained.
Cadence cleared her throat. “There’s one more condition,” she said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
She grinned, taking us each under an arm and pulling us to the kitchen.
“Girl’s night!” she exclaimed. “And you can start by telling me about your Cadence, Princess.”
It’s so hard to keep secrets from that woman.
“She didn’t!” Twilight said as my face threatened to burst into flame.
Cadence nodded, smiling as she lowered her wine glass back to the table. “My hand to God,” she said. “She swarmed up that tree like she was born in one just to get a look at the squirrel’s nest. When the branch she was standing on broke, I thought I was going to die.” She took another sip. “Then when I realized she was ok but for a broken arm, I thought her parents would kill me.”
“They wouldn’t have done that,” I said, hiding behind my own glass of wine. Cadence had always treated me like an equal when she could, and since the Princess was above the Equestrian age of majority, we all three were sharing a light chardonnay and a surprising dish of apples, caramel, and chocolate that Cadence had dubbed ‘Apple Nachos’.
“No, but I didn’t know that at sixteen,” my babysitter said. “And considering what you had done, I wasn’t thinking straight in the first place.”
I took a sip and looked at the Princess, feeling much more at ease as we swapped stories. She had already shared how her Cadence had become the princess of the Crystal Empire - which brought about some giggles from me and my Cadence - and the Changeling invasion during her wedding.
“So, Twilight,” I said. “What exactly do we need to search for tonight?”
The Princess of Friendship drained the last sip from her glass and cleared her throat. “I mainly want to examine the relative positions of recognizable constellations and track their path through the night relative to the moon’s path.” She worried her bottom lip for a moment. “I’m puzzled by the fact that your moon’s phases are different from ours.”
“I can explain those if you want,” I said, taking the three wine glasses and lifting them with my magic, recreating the earth and moon’s orbits in slow motion. “Our moon is illuminated by light from the sun, and due to its orbital cycle, at various times the earth blocks parts of the light coming in so it appears to be different shapes.” I adjusted my glasses and continued.
“That, of course,” I stated in a giddy voice. “Doesn’t include lunar or solar eclipses, but they are rare, if predictable occurrences.” I stalled the wine glass diorama. “The phases are dictated by where the sun, earth, and moon are in relation to each other. New, waxing crescent, First quarter, Waxing gibbous, full, waning gibbous, third quarter, waning crescent, and back to new.” As I spoke I rotated the “moon” around the ‘earth’.
Twilight’s eyes lit up. “That might be part of why the time is different on each side!” she exclaimed, grabbing a piece of paper from the stack we had set out earlier next to my disassembled telescope. “In Equestria, we only have four phases, New, Full, Crescent, and Half. How long is the lunar month here?”
“Roughly twenty-eight days,” Cadence supplied.
“Equestrian lunar months are only 18 days,” Twilight said, scribbling with a pencil. “The difference in timelines mean that the portals can’t line up perfectly, only when both sides are on the same point on the same plane.”
I recognized the shape she was sketching, it was a pair of intersecting planes, meshing like the teeth of two gears. I realized where she was going with a flash and grabbed the case to my telescope.
“And we can determine the intersection by following stellar paths!” I cried, heading towards the back door of the house, my counterpart following closely behind.
I stopped when Cadence cleared her throat.
“Twily,” she asked. “You mind letting go of the wine glasses so they can get cleaned, please?”
Sheepishly, I relaxed my hold on the glasses and let them touch down on the table.
“Sorry,” I said. “Heat of the moment.”
She waved her hands at us in a shooing motion. “Get going, you two,” she said laughing. “You haven’t got all night.”
“That was amazing!” I said, setting the telescope off to the side of the door. “That unexpected meteor shower was beautiful!”
“There was that one that split half-way through its flight,” Twilight said. “Did you see it?”
I grinned. “Yes! And I think I got it on camera,” I said, holding up the thumb drive that contained the photos we snapped through the telescope’s integrated camera.
The Princess dropped the twenty pages of notes, sketches, and calculations we had done over the course of the night on the coffee table in Sunset’s - no, our - apartment. That thought still had me glowing when it crossed my mind’s eye.
“Sunshine,” Twilight said, still used to using my nickname. “This is enough data to keep me occupied for a moon cross-referencing with Equestrian celestial charts!” She yawned, then continued. “I’m certain this has to do with the time dilation effect the portal has in its natural cycle.”
I copied the yawn and saw the bag I had set inside earlier in the day. I grabbed it and pulled out one set of sleepwear and handed it to the princess.
“It’s late, Twilight,” I said. I tossed my head at the mattress on the floor over by the bed frame pieces. “You take the bed, I’ll grab the couch.”
She looked like she was going to argue until another yawn split her face. “Deal,” she said, heading to the bathroom to change.
I was already changed and tossing a blanket over the couch when she returned. I gave her a quick glance.
“We still doing lunch tomorrow?”
“Of course,” she said. “I’ve got to see what Joe’s is like on this side.”