Twilight Sparkle looked at the information again. She looked over Rainbow Dash's scans. She checked her notes. She even reread Rainbow Dash's notes—which just made her horny and more confused. She looked at the notes and sighed. "I'll have to go to school today and see Mr. Hurricane, but when I get home I'm going to shift gears on this."
"I don't see what the big problem is. You said Rainbow Dash seems to be handling it fine." Turning to the side and tilting his head just so, Spike started scratching at his ear with eager enthusiasm.
"It doesn't matter, Spike. This disease is doing things we don't understand." Twilight left unsaid that when she didn't understand things she poked at them until she did—it was how science worked. She lifted her glasses off her face for a moment and set them on her desk. "Besides, if we do find out it is nothing, Rainbow can just not get the cure. Simple as that."
Shortsightedness was no joke. Twilight Sparkle opened her eyes and the world was a blur. There was just one way to be able to see normally. She picked up her glasses and put them back on. Almost everything came back into focus. "And to top it all off, I need new glasses."
Spike stopped scratching and looked up at Twilight. "Why don't you just do the thing?"
"'Thing'?" Twilight asked.
"Yeah. When you had the—the thing, and became—became her, you made glasses appear." Spike pantomimed a pair of glasses. "Why don't you just do that?"
At first Twilight Sparkle recoiled. Midnight Sparkle was a bad dream, but it was her on her worst day. She never wanted to have that bad a day again. "I can—"
"Just the glasses." Spike tilted his head to the side a little. "What's wrong with that?"
Twilight groaned. "Well, it…" She trailed off trying to think up a reason. "It's just magic."
Glancing at the time—she still had an hour before she needed to be at school—Twilight tried casting her mind back to when she'd done the most horrible things of her life. A weight on her lap surprised her and comforted her. "Thanks, Spike."
"It was a pretty bad time for everyone, remember? I'm not going to let you dredge that up alone." That said, Spike reared up and put his paws on each of Twilight's shoulders, then licked her face to show his canine support.
"Spike!" Twilight was too busy giggling and trying to stop the dog she had come to think of as her friend. When he finally stopped, somehow, her mind settled into just the right moment. Everyone else had seen her transform into a darker version of herself, but Twilight had been that darker version.
At first things had been blurry, out of focus. Something had happened to her glasses—she couldn't find what she wanted. The spell had come to her instinctively, so she had to cast it instinctively. Twilight let out a breath—in the here and now—and repeated the magic.
Power radiated from Twilight's hands, and she felt pressure in her forehead. It was how it always was. Fighting to keep the magic just to her hands, she worked the spell as her darker-day-self had.
The world came into focus again. Twilight Sparkle could see with clarity and precision. There was no edge to her vision, the glasses pattern around her eyes was apparently just a manifestation.
Spike jumped from Twilight's lap as she stood up. He followed her all the way to the mirror she kept in the basement. Her silence worried him, and—as dogs are wont to do—he jumped up on her legs to get her attention. "Twilight! Twilight!"
Her name broke the mental spell. It wasn't actual magic but shock at seeing her eyes changed. Midnight Sparkle looked back at her from the mirror. For a moment longer she was distracted by her eyes before she saw more. There were wisps of stuff swirling around her.
Stepping back from the mirror, Twilight gasped in surprise. "What is that?" She looked down and could see the mist swirling around her hands and body. She tried to grasp it, but it rushed through her fingers. "Hold on a second. Is this—?"
Twilight Sparkle's cyan-bordered, magenta eyes widened at the wash of purple light. It poured through her arms, rushed around her excitedly. "It's magic! Spike! I can see magic!"
"Yay!" Spike, being a dog at heart, didn't need an excuse to cheer. His owner being excited was more than enough. "What's that mean?"
Watching the spirals and patterns magic took, Twilight began to twirl them and put them into more orderly patterns. It took her a moment to build what she wanted, but the shape seemed right. She poked a part of her pattern and a fanfare played. "This is amazing. I can see magic and manipulate it. I'm not just fumbling for ideas anymore, this is,"—Twilight Sparkle took a deep breath and tried not to giggle—"wizardry!"
At that moment Twilight's phone beeped to get her attention. Spinning around—and giggling at all the sparkles of magic that tumbled from her—Twilight walked over to her desk and checked her mobile. Just one message—from Timber Spruce. "Oh my gosh!"
Twilight had been counting the days until her birthday. She would be eighteen in just three days. She flicked the message with her thumb, opening it.
—Would you like to go out sometime? I can't stop thinking about you, Twilight.—
Timber Spruce stared at his phone with panic, desire, and absolute fear. The fear was mostly of Twilight saying no, but there was some of her saying yes.
Cleaning up Camp Everfree after his sister had wrecked it hadn't been easy. The students of Canterlot High School had helped a lot, but there was a lot of little things that no one had noticed. Brambles as tall as he was with thorns longer than his fingers. The well was choked by some kind of fungus.
The strangest thing, for both Timber Spruce and Gloriosa Daisy, was their lost days. Being alone in the woods together was nothing new, but going to bed one night and waking up two days later had thrown their rhythm off completely. Neither talked about it.
But Timber had been dealing with another problem: he was horny. Horny when he woke up. Horny while he ate breakfast. Horny while he worked. Horny while he ate lunch. Horny while he worked hard in the afternoon. Horny while he ate dinner. Horny while he was drifting off to sleep. Dreams? Those were horny too.
Timber Spruce, like most young adults, had already been practicing the fine art of masturbation, but now he had gone pro. Before and after each meal. Just after waking up and prior to bed at night. If there wasn't so much work to do, he would probably spend most of the day rubbing his penis.
The worst part was his sister. At first she had looked better and better by the hour. His mind raced with ways he could explain his need to Gloriosa, and of course she would strip for him and offer herself to slake his lust.
But the days leading up to Twilight's birthday passed, one by one, and with them his lust for his sister faded and transferred to Twilight Sparkle.
He didn't want to think about her like that, but the parasite in his head was insistent. At first, it had directed him towards the only suitable nearby partner, but not only didn't he pair up with them he actually got stressed. The parasite, simple as it was, latched onto the feelings he had when he looked at a particular picture.
The picture was the icon on Timber's phone. The lust rose within him again. He'd only just finished masturbating, and yet here he was getting rock hard again. From one blink to another his mind slipped from the torturous reality of his situation—his hand reaching for his growing shaft—to a fantasy.
Twilight Sparkle stood—a goddess.
Timber Spruce crawled towards the one woman he could never have, and never stop wanting, and begged her. She told him to prove his devotion. Timber looked down at his goddess' feet and dropped to his belly before her.
Reclining, Goddess Twilight Sparkle offered Timber one of her feet.
Nuzzling and licking at Twilight's toes, Timber moaned as her other foot found his aching shaft. He squealed in bliss as he serviced his goddess with his mouth, lapping at the gaps between each toe. There was no dirt, nothing to detract from how amazing her feet were.
The beep of his phone and his climax yanked Timber from his dream.
—Sure. Thursday?—
He knew the significance of the day. The parasite in his head lavished his brain with chemicals as a reward for submitting to his urges. His hand—the clean one—worked at the phone's touchscreen.
—Okay. Let me know when and where.—
"I'm twenty-two and chasing a schoolgirl…" Timber slumped against the side of his bed and looked at the mess he'd made on the floor. Of course he'd clean it up, he just wasn't done feeling sorry for himself yet.