//------------------------------//
// Talking with yourself 
// Story: Comparing Notes 
// by Rose Quill 
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I couldn’t believe it.

Across the table from me were almost perfect copies of Twilight and I. And I mean almost perfect. Not even the Princess Twilight looked as close in similarities as this one did.

But there were differences. The Twilight across the table still wore the old, heavy framed glasses that she had worn back when we had met. She also had a slightly different bearing about herself than my Twilight.

My duplicate also held some minor differences. She lacked the scars along the ribcage from the talons of an enraged harpy, for starters. She also sat a little more relaxed than I was. Twilight had remarked on how much more proper I had become since gaining my wings.

I had promptly hit her with a pillow just to dispel the illusion.

This is unreal, I heard through the bond. They are so much like us.

“It’s probably not polite to do that with them here, Sunshine,” I said to the confusion of the two sitting across from us. Middy and Rory had sat at the table next to us, their son Sunlight joining them. It didn’t take a mind reader to see that Rory was more than mildly interested in the boy.

“Do what?” the other Twilight asked, the glasses adjusting she did electing a memory.

I glanced at my wife.

“It’s a long story,” my Twilight replied. “And rather full of twists and turns.”

“Share yours and we’ll share ours,” the Sunset across from me said. “After all, how different can our stories be?”

I raised an eyebrow, hand subconciously brushing across my scars.

“You’d be surprised,” I said, seeing Sunshine’s hand drift to her shoulder.

“I’m all ears,” the other Twilight said.

“Well,” I took a breath and turned to my counterpart. “I think the first question is, are your parents still alive?”




Twilight clenched her teeth when she heard the question but tried not to show it. Her eyes darted to her wife beside her and caught the less hidden tension. It was not normally a topic that came up between them and Sunset had settled it in her heart a long time ago. However, to be confronted so directly with another version of herself who might have a very different past…

“I don’t,” Sunset began with a deep frown and conspicuous uncomfortableness. She thought for a second if she should even tell and then decided she might as well. This was herself, after all. “I don’t know. I made a decision many years ago never to go back. Not for any serious time anyways. There wasn’t anything compelling enough tying me to my old world and there was plenty tying me to this one. Twily,” she held and squeezed her wife’s hand, “and the girls too.”

The middle-aged scientist looked into her wife’s eyes deeply. Her Sunset, not the other one. She didn’t have to ask to know her spouse was asking for help. “Her parents didn’t treat her nicely when she was growing up,” she explained as Sunset’s gaze fell. “There was never any love from them. They only wanted a child to make them rich, which was why they pushed her into selfish ambition. After Princess Twilight gave her a second chance at the Fall Formal, she felt that cutting ties to her old family was essential to starting a new life.”

Sunset settled some of her own thoughts and lifted her head again. “Sometimes we disagree about what it means to ‘move on’ but I’ve never felt like I was missing closure in my life."




I couldn't believe what I was hearing. My parents - well, my mother at least, since I didn't really remember Dad - had been nothing but supportive and loving. It had been my own faults that had led to my ambition. How could two dimensions hold so much the same and yet be so different?

I felt Twilight's love filter through the bond, supporting me.

"My parents are both dead," I said. "Dad when I was a foal, and my mother just before we got together." I felt Twilight's hand slid across my shoulder. "It's so weird, the difference in how our parents were. Mom was always supportive and loving when I was a foal, I can't comprehend there being an uncaring bone in her body."




"I'm," Sunset started to say. The words were hard coming out. Not because she wasn't glad for her other self, but because it was so disappointing to know how her life might have been different. "I'm happy for you. There were plenty of times I wished I had the kind of experience growing up that lots of other foals seemed to have back in Equestria. At least one of me did and that's more comfort than I had before."