“Princess Luna, please!” cried Twilight. “You can’t—”
“TWILIGHT SPARKLE!” roared Luna. “Thou shalt release my sister this instant!”
Twilight threw her shoulder against the door. She glanced up at the clock. Two-fifteen in the morning. Celestia had been here less than twenty-four hours, and already there was trouble. She vaguely remembered Celestia telling her, once, that she could tell when Luna was mad, because her accent got stronger. She had to be furious now, because she could barely understand her.
“Princess, I told you,” Twilight called through the front door of the library, “she’s not our prisoner! She’s here because she wants—”
“Thou liest!” Luna bellowed. “Thou hast Our sister in captivity! Why else wouldst thou forbid Us from seeing her?!”
Luna tried the handle again, but Twilight had barred the door already. Rarity ran up beside her, mane still in curlers, carrying a wooden chair in her magic. She shoved it up against the doorjamb, shot Twilight a frightened look, then retreated.
“Princess, trust me,” Twilight tried again. “You don’t know what’s happening!”
“Then tell thou me!” bellowed Luna, loud enough to shake the door.
“I—I can’t!” cried Twilight. “She told me not to!”
“She told you—?” Luna said, a little quieter. She sounded… puzzled.
Twilight sighed—but then, she saw light under the door—an ice-blue light, growing brighter and brighter.
“I have no more patience for thy lies, Sparkle,” Luna said, her voice now dangerously quiet. “Thou shalt open thy door, or I shall open it myself. I shall give thee until five. One—”
Twilight opened her mouth, then closed it again. She wanted nothing more to let her inside—but she had sworn to Celestia she wouldn’t—
“Two—”
Twilight whipped her gaze around the library, looking for Rarity, but she had vanished.
“Three—”
“Prin-cess!” Twilight shrieked.
“Four—”
And then, the Princess appeared.
Not Luna, but Celestia, coming down the stairs from Twilight’s apartment above. Wordlessly, she passed Twilight a thick, heavy envelope, sealed with still-dripping red wax, and addressed with a hastily-scrawled “Luna” on the front. Twilight shoved it under the door without thinking.
“Fi—” said Luna—then she stopped. Twilight heard her pick up the envelope, open it, and pull out the sheets of paper inside. For a long while, she made no sound at all. Twilight, still pressed against the door, shot Princess Celestia a questioning look, but she just shook her head. Not now.
Finally, she heard Luna fold the papers. “Very well,” she said coldly. “Please inform Our sister that We shall accede to her wishes. For now,” she growled. “But, when she chooses to return, We shall demand a full accounting of her behavior.”
Twilight listened as Luna turned away without another word, and her hoofbeats faded into the distance. Twilight sighed, letting out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding, then slumped into the chair Rarity had shoved against the door.
Twilight lolled her head back against the wood. After a moment, she opened one bleary eye and looked at the clock. Two-nineteen. Far too early to deal with this sort of drama.
Rarity poked her head out from behind one of the shelves, and set down the book she’d been holding up as a shield. “I told you there’d be trouble if you told her you were here,” Rarity said.
Celestia smiled humorlessly. “Even so,” she said, “It needed to be done. She needed to know where I was. And… and I need her to take over my sun-raising duties. I…” she swallowed. “I can’t keep going outside to do it. Not like… like this…”
Twilight shook her head. “I’m just glad that Anti-Teleportation Shield I set up last month still held,” she said. “I mean, I just wanted a little privacy... but still, she nearly broke right through…”
Celestia nodded. “That was a blessing,” she said. “I don’t think anything could’ve stopped her from seeing me if she’d been able to make it inside. And, if she’d seen me, then…” She left the thought unfinished.
“Why’d she leave, though?” asked Rarity. “”What did you say in that letter?”
“I convinced her it was me,” Celestia said, “and I told her I was safe, and not to worry. I’m on vacation, apparently,” she added, with a crooked grin.
Twilight stared. “You… you just had that letter ready?” she asked, incredulous. “And how’d you convince her you were her?”
Celestia shook her head. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I’m sure you understand, with… everything that’s going on.”
Twilight found herself nodding.
“I’ve been up for a couple hours trying to figure out how to explain it all to Luna,” Celestia continued. “In the end, I told her the bare minimum, with enough of our secret stories and in-jokes mixed in that she would have to know it’s me.” She smiled again. “The wastebasket upstairs needs emptying, by the way,” she added.
Twilight nodded, then yawned.
“I think we could all use some beauty sleep,” Rarity said. “After all, we’ll need our energy to get any real good done around here.” She looked at Twilight. “Are you sure you don’t want to share the guest bed?” she asked. “It’s very generous of you to have me over like this, especially after all the excitement with the Princess’s arrival yesterday morning, but I hate to be a bother…”
“No bother,” Twilight said. “I couldn’t sleep either, so I’ve been up doing some research. I think I have a cot down in the basement. I’ll bring it up when I’m ready.”
Rarity shot her a dirty look. “As long as you promise to do so soon,” she said. “And Princess,” she added, turning to her, “You most of all. I know you like to keep a handle on things, but I really must insist—”
“I’ll try,” she said uncertainly.
Rarity smiled. “That’s all that anyone asks, Darling.”
* * *
An hour later, Twilight lay on the small, military-style cot that she’d inherited along with most of the other junk in the basement. She had wrapped herself in her least-favorite quilt, the only one she'd left for herself, and stared up at the ceiling.
She’d tried calculating prime numbers in her head, reciting the complete works of Starswirl the Bearded backwards, and even counting sheep (that is, until she’d found herself attempting to figure out a more efficient means of computing the amount of livestock in a given paddock than simple counting), but she still lay awake. She still had all the issues from this morning weighing on her brain, but there was something else, now.
Luna.
It had been only twenty-four hours, but the three of them—Rarity, Celestia, and Twilight herself—had already sworn to keep the Princess’s condition as under-wraps as they could manage. Rarity had even wanted to keep Luna in the dark, and, though Twilight could see why, she also knew that Celestia wouldn’t leave it alone until she’d at least dropped her a line.
And Luna had done the natural thing, too; she’s probably teleported out here as soon as she’d found the letter, likely right after she’d ended her nightly rounds. She was just worried, was all.
However, it was still entirely possible that, though Luna had done nothing wrong per se, she had still ruined everything. After all, the Royal Canterlot Voice was designed to carry sound, so the Princesses could address thousands of ponies at once—
—which meant that, in the two-in-the-morning silence, every pony, cow, and chicken within miles had heard that Twilight had Princess Celestia holed up in her library.
Twilight wasn’t sure what was going to happen next. But, try as she might, she couldn’t think of a way that this wasn’t going to end in disaster.