When they had rounded the long outer wall and turned onto the thoroughfare that divided the city into its many branches, Twilight collapsed. Taking his cue, Spike plopped to his knees beside her. A group of passersby stopped and rumbled to themselves about proper public behavior, and helping those in need, but were soon drawn off by the calls of a curtain peddler and the irresistible smells of the baker’s stand across the cobblestone way.
“Yeah, I hear ya, Twilight,” said Spike. “And I thought dragons didn’t get heatstroke. Maybe I’m part pony after all.”
“That’s right,” Twilight rasped, her face hidden by her clinging mane and her mountain of supplies. “Too much sun.”
Spike sat watching the crowded marketplace until he decided Twilight wasn’t going to continue. “So, just a thought, but maybe you could teleport us to wherever it is we’re going next? That’s not a lot of magic. It won’t interfere with the experiment. Will it?”
Twilight sighed, trying and failing to flick her sticky bangs out of her face. “I know it’s hot, and no, it wouldn’t affect the outcome of the experiment, but I kind of want to see the old sights. Take a trip down memory lane. It’s been a while.”
“Are you sure?” asked Spike as Twilight struggled to rise under her bags. “The air up here is thinner than an apple in Applejack’s cider press.”
“It’s OK,” answered Twilight, wobbling where she stood. “Nopony is expecting us at our next destination, so there’s no danger of being late. As long as we get there sometime before nightfall, that is.”
Spike slumped his shoulders, but obliged.
They passed through the market one stall at a time. Twilight drifted by behind the patrons who were lined up shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the displays, poking her muzzle between them to peer at the merchandise, or craning her neck around to the side. When there was room, she ducked in to get a closer look. In the shade of a vacant candle stand, she stopped and set her burden down.
“Could I?” she murmured to herself.
From the rows of colored, scented sticks, bound by twos at their wicks, she chose one tagged ‘Peanuts and Cotton Candy’. She ran it beneath her nose, then turned to the gleaming white Canterlot cityscape. It had been here in the grand commons that she had tripped on her way to her first lesson as Princess Celestia’s personal student, butterflies going wild in her stomach, her saddlebags bursting with books, blank scrolls, and quills. Here she had first ventured out as a young mare, hastening forward on spindly legs into the broad circle, tasting the lipstick she had hoped everypony and nopony would notice. Now, as then, the towers that pierced the sky reminded her of so many pencil tips and tubes of gloss.
The hot breeze pushed at her mane, dry at last from so much time in the shade.
“Come on Spike,” she called. “Let’s get going.”
The two of them proceeded out of the market circle and into the winding avenues of the city, flanked every step of the way by fenced alleys and crowded marble doorsteps. The wind coursed straightaway down the artificial canyons that the buildings framed, stinging Twilight's eyes and unsettling her load. Every so often, she would stop at an intersection and look hard at the four corners, scanning the storefront signs.
They turned onto a side street, skirting an ages-old statue of a Royal Guard captain, rearing and defiant toward some unseen threat above him. The inscriptions on the pedestal below were worn down to meandering arcs, lost to endless cycles of frost and heat. Doves and pigeons stood watch up on the crumbling crested helmet, ready to swoop at the first sign of discarded food.
“Hey!” Spike shouted. “I know this street! We’re going to your—”
“You’ve got it!” Twilight replied.
At the end of the block, Twilight slowed in front of a two-story townhouse with hanging pots of fuchsia and spider plants dangling from the second-floor balcony. The Equestrian Flag wagged on its pole between them. She climbed the steps, not needing to instruct Spike to follow. Clearing her throat, she pulled her crown out of her saddlebag, and setting it on her head, rapped the knocker.
“Who is it?” came a distant voice from inside.
“Come out and see,” Twilight called to the curtained glass.
Floorboards creaked. The curtain was pulled to the side, revealing a sharp, crystalline blue eye. Not another second passed before the lock clicked and the door swung inward.
“Twilight! What a surprise! And Spike too!”
“Her Royal Highness, Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship, together with her assistant, Spike the dragon, has arrived to call upon the mare of the house!” Twilight proclaimed, throwing her nose into the air.
Twilight Velvet looked her up and down. “Well, you let her Royalness know that her mother has gone three months without a hug, and keeping her waiting here with the flies getting in is not working wonders for her mood.” She sat back and stretched out her hooves, wide enough for two.
Twilight was able to hold her pose for a few more seconds before giving in to the magnet of the embrace. She found the spot under her mother’s ear, the one with the tiny lump and ingrown hair—still there—and hid it with her snout as she nuzzled. Spike hopped forward and joined in.
The strong gray forelegs squeezed them tight. “Oh, now that’s exactly what the doctor ordered. Have you been doing gallop training, Twily? That can’t be brawn I feel in my little bookworm’s shoulders.”
Twilight gave her a quick kiss and pulled away. “No, I haven’t had time for aerobics, although I’ve had to run from a monster or two. It’s a result of alicorn magic, I think. That’s what the historians speculate, anyway. I haven’t asked any of the other princesses yet.”
“Alicorn magic, or getting to be a mature mare. I guess I can’t really call you ‘my little' anything anymore with a straight face, but that’s the way it goes.” She swatted a hoof at something. “Look, now I’m the one inviting the flies in. Come inside! Let’s have a sit.”
Twilight stepped through the doorway, and was hit with the humid wave of lacquer and potting soil she had almost forgotten to prepare herself for. Her parents had always loved the look and feel of natural wood, and worked to preserve every available surface in a flawless, shiny veneer. Every year Twilight and Shining Armor would help them strip and reapply it; the foyer, the kitchen, the winding stairs and railing, and even the windowsills, by the end of the day appointed for the labor, gleamed with a caustic luster.
The heirloom plants decorating the room corners were her father’s hobby. She passed one of the more pungent specimens: a succulent with thick, petal-like leaves and a single white flower sitting on top like a fancy lopsided hat. It had been over two hundred years old, her father had told her, when his father had given it to him. She kept a respectful distance.
“You can just set those things down by the door, dear,” came her mother’s voice from elsewhere.
Twilight dropped her equipment, motioning for Spike to do the same. “That’s OK,” she answered, opening the closet and sliding the pile in with a hoof, “I’ll put them in here for now so they’re out of the way.”
By the time Twilight made it into the living room, her mother had turned up the fan, conjured a platter of tea cakes and eased onto the sofa.
“I hope you’ll forgive an old mare if she forgoes the tea on a broiler like today,” she said, making a display of fanning herself with her hoof. “Typical Canterlot summer afternoon. It’s the stonework. Holds onto the heat like those warming stones they use at the spa. Oh, those feel so good on the spine. Wish we were there now. Have yourself a slice of peach tart.”
Twilight curled up next to her on the old throw blanket she knew never left the sofa, the one with winding rows of raised stitch she would trace for hours on the weekend, when it was too hot or too cold to go outside, and her brain was full of facts and arguments debated in the pages of she’d been reading. Her view of the magazine table was not quite the same as it had been then. The plate of pastries and the issues of Mare Today were lower than they should be. Twilight let her head droop downward, lower and lower until it rested on her mother’s flank.
That too was different. The soft-coated ribs and haunch were leaner now, and had lost their vibrant sheen. Twilight closed her eyes and concentrated on the seashell sounds that met her pressed ear. She could feel the tug of the blanket’s threads as her hoof began to following their flowing pattern.
“I take that as a declaration of nap time,” Spike yawned. “No argument there.” He climbed up between them and wrapped himself into a ball. In seconds he was snoring.
“Oh, Twily,” she heard as if from two voices: one through the solid warmth, and through the air. “My little princess hasn’t changed a bit.” The slender body squirmed. “Except for one thing: you’re a lot bigger, especially with that pointy crown. You’re squishing me.”
Twilight picked up her head, a blush creeping across her muzzle as she muttered, “Sorry.”
“It’s OK, I know I’m a soft pillow. Besides, you’ve saved Equestria so many times, I think I’ll let it slide! Seriously, your name is in the paper twice a day or I’m a pickled partridge. Tell me something about your friendship adventures, straight from the source.”
“Friendship?” Twilight asked. She levitated her crown from her head and placed it next to the pastry platter. “It’s no more complicated than what you taught me and Shining when we were foals. Not that I paid much attention. I guess if I’ve learned anything else about it since I left Canterlot, is that it’s just another way of … what’s the best way to put it? Organizing the chaos.”
“Huh. ‘Organizing the chaos’. I guess I never thought of it that way. Is that what you did to Discord?”
Twilight snorted. She considered the peach tarts. The crust was very dry, she recalled, so that the thin layer of jam and fruit on top would gum up on the roof of her mouth. It had never been her favorite.
She left them alone. “And it wasn’t just me, you know, ‘saving Equestria’,” she said, laying her head back down on her mother’s haunch, just above the big purple stars where there was nothing soft to accidentally pinch. Spike was mumbling in his sleep, lost to the world. Twilight struggled to keep her eyes open. Her mane flopped over her face, and she let it stay there.
Fifteen, it occurred to Twilight as she surveyed the stars. An odd number. Three groups of five, like red rectangles arranged on a chart, regiments arrayed for battle. Forty-two was even, and so very divisible. Fluid. So many possibilities.
“That’s right! What would the Princess of Friendship be without her friends?” came the double voice. A slice of tart rose from the tray. “And where are they today?” the voice continued, before giving way to eager chewing.
“They’re out and about,” said Twilight. She sighed. “Now that you mention it, friendship has … I don’t know … helped me to see things from other ponies’ point of view. I’m not being much help, am I? I can’t believe how much of a nerd I was. It used to be that if something wasn’t written down in a book with at least three original references, it wasn’t worth my time." Her voice grew softer. "I guess being around other ponies all the time forced me to allow for more …” she mouthed a silent word.
Another tart rose into the air to meet its fate. “A nerd? That’s not how I remember it. Studious, maybe. Ever since that first Summer Sun Celebration, you were a filly with a mission. How many nights did I nag you to put your books away and get to bed? So excited to be Princess Celestia’s own protégée, may fortune smile upon her!”
Twilight flinched, but couldn’t muster the energy to lift her head again. “The Summer Sun Celebration …” she murmured. She could see, for a moment, Celestia's triumphant silhouette against the rising sun, and felt the cold pre-dawn air of years past change to a sweet blanket of warmth.
She lingered in the memory until the fan rotated her way again, not much more of a relief than the Canterlot breeze had been on the long journey home. “Have you ever watched a sunrise?” she asked.
There was more chewing, and a labored gulp. “Other than at the Celebrations? Uh, no, at least I don’t think so. Maybe once or twice with Night Lite when we were younger. He was romantic once, if you can believe it. He used to tell me … you know what he used to tell me? That I ‘have a soul like the night sky’. And you know what you do when a stallion tells you something like that? You marry him. You marry him, you bear his beautiful foals, and when you have a filly, you give her a name just like yours so that when she comes of age, her soul will inspire some other stallion to tell her something just as foalish and sweet.”
Twilight breathed slower and slower, more and more in time with the fan’s cyclic hum and Spike’s snuffling. “I guess some … I guess experiments can’t be repeated,” she whispered. Her hooftip traced the stitching by its own volition, around and around in swirls that all were leading deep underwater. “Can’t line up the conditions … get the same result.”
“What was that?” the voice cooed, all but submerged. “Twily, are you tired, sweetie?” The flossy purple and gray tail flicked, tickling Twilight’s nose.
She jumped again, using the momentum to pull her head away from the murky waters. She rubbed her tingling snout, blinking at the room. “Sorry. I said I have. Watched a sunrise, that is. Several hundred of them. Five hundred sixty-two and three-quarters, to be exact. Astronomical research. ”
“Three-quarters?”
“I was interrupted once,” Twilight explained. “Spike threw up. Too much mint chocolate chip. But that’s beside the point. You see, the last thing you want to do, when making any kind of observation, is to feel something.” She raised her hoof when she heard the gasp of horror building. “Just listen! Feelings negatively impact the interpretation of the data, and any hypothesis that might result. Then your line of reasoning is contaminated. You start making decisions because of what you want to believe. Or even worse, on what makes you feel good.”
She paused, waiting for a reaction. The confused stare told her that she wasn’t making herself clear.
“Stop feeling,” she said. “Stop caring. Stop having any interest in how the experiment plays out. That’s the only way to get to the truth.”
She smoothed over the three purple stars with her hoof, and waited until she knew her mother was seeing her. “That’s the only way to really be in control, and move forward; to achieve one’s destiny. Disinterest.”
Twilight Velvet sat, as still and silent as a statue, her ears perked.
“Mom? I think I’m …”
“I’m sorry, hold on just a second, dear. I’m listening, just … hold on.”
She climbed off of the sofa and opened the window, spitting at the curtains as they blew into her face. She shoved them out of the way.
“Violet! Over here! It’s me, Twilight! Ha ha, fancy seeing you here. Just passing by, are you? We’re meeting at the café this Wednesday. No, the café! Could you … no … could you make a reservation? We’ll be eight in total. I’ve got your magnifying glass to give back. I’ll bring it. OK! See you then.”
The window thumped shut, and the curtains sagged.
“Sorry to interrupt, dear. I just happened to hear Violet’s chit-chat as she was passing by. That mare is just impossible to get ahold of. Now, please do continue. What were you saying, something about destiny?”
But Twilight had stood, and was rousing Spike with a gentle hoof. “Hey, can we take a walk?” she asked. “I know it’s really hot, but … there was a convenience store we used to go to, I think … corner of Prancer and Parade, maybe, or somewhere in that neighborhood. I’ve been daydreaming about it. Yes, Her Royal Highness the Princes of Friendship still daydreams. It comes back to me sometimes … a lot nowadays … but it bothers me because I can’t seem to remember much about it. Just that they had everything a filly could want. Rows and rows of candy, I think, and toys you couldn’t get anywhere else. The shopkeepers, they knew us. We’d go every Sunday, or almost. You, me, Dad and Shining. Our neighbors would be there too, sometimes.”
She stopped, searching all the room’s corners and chairs and bookshelves; each of the miniature potted plants and memento figurines that crowded the shelves, and the floral-patterned tiles of the last-century ceiling. When she finished, her gaze settled on her mother.
“Can we go back there, please?”
A clear crystal bell jar floated from the kitchen doorway and came to rest on the plate of pastries. “Hmm. Nothing like that comes to mind. Was there a shop there? Royal ribbons, that would have been before Magesway went the way of the ponysaur. What was the name?”
Twilight blinked faster than was polite. “I can’t remember.”
“Well, I don’t see anything wrong with a trot around the neighborhood. Maybe if we put our heads together, we can—“
“No, it’s OK,” Twilight interjected. “I won’t take up any more of your time. I hadn’t told you, but I’m actually here to retrieve a 3D compass I had when I was doing my studies at the Palace. I left it on my toy shelf in my room. Any chance it’s still there?”
Her mother flopped back down on the sofa. “Unless you took it with you, it’s still in there. Although, we’ve rearranged—”
“Excellent! Come on, Spike. We’ve still got work to do.”
Spike was rubbing his eyes. “Aww, do we have to?”
“Yes,” snapped Twilight. “I want to get to the tower by nightfall. We need to make preparations.”
“Fine,” Spike sighed. He slid off of the sofa and hopped on Twilight’s back. “But I’m driving.”
Twilight was already heading up the staircase that led to the bedrooms. She plodded up the creaking steps, keeping her hooves flat to preserve the immaculate lacquer. It grew hotter as she changed levels. The paintings and portraits of her grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles smiled down on her, welcoming her home. When she reached the top, she swung right, strode to the end of the short hallway and pushed open the door to her old room.
As she scanned for her misplaced compass, she caught sight of the cause of her mother’s warning. Her bed was gone, and in its place was a crib; the same, she knew, that had belonged to Shining Armor, and to her, in turn. Through its bars, and the sun, moon and stars of the mobile that had been hung above it, she saw more portraits, arranged in a triangle. Her mother and father were beaming at the apex, captured in the sunshine of a springtime meadow. Below them, Shining stood at attention in his Captain’s uniform, and in the frame next to his, Cadance laughed in her wedding dress. Further down was a large portrait of Flurry Heart. She was in the center above the crib, her little hooves open wide to hug the world.
Off to the side was a painting of herself on her coronation day, smiling and waving to the crowd that had come to celebrate her greatest achievement. That day had galloped by in a blur. The heralds had sung their ancient song, her Ponyville friends had come, dressed in their finest to cheer her on, and Celestia herself had presented her, reborn as the fourth princess of Equestria.
An empty space had been left next to her portrait.
Spike tapped her side. “Should I grab the compass? I can see it right there on the bottom shelf. Kinda creepy, I always thought. Like an evil dragon’s claws.” He flourished his own little paws and bared his fangs.
“OK,” said Twilight.
Spike jumped to try and snatch it from its perch, but missed. Casting about the room, he spotted a toy crate at the foot of the cradle. He dragged it underneath the shelf to use as a stool and tried again.
“Got it!” he cried, almost losing his grip. He stepped off of the crate and returned to his seat between Twilight’s wings.
“OK,” Twilight replied again.
Spike waited for her to move. “Uh, giddy-up Twilight?”
She exhaled, tearing her gaze from the wall of portraits. “Alright, Spike, let’s go. We can do this. We can do this.” Her head low, she turned and carried Spike into the hallway.
When they had made their way downstairs, Twilight pulled her bags from the closet and hoisted them with her magic. Spike jumped down to give her room to shoulder them, and went to retrieve his portion of the load.
As they checked to make sure nothing was on the verge of falling out, Twilight Velvet came to the living room doorway. “Will you be staying the night?” she asked. “I hope you didn’t mind, but we turned your old room into a nursery for Flurry Heart for when Shining and Cadance are visiting. We keep the guest room prepped for you, though. You know, just in case you drop by?”
The saddlebag buckle clicked closed. “No, we really should be going. We’ve got a lot to do. Too much to do.”
“Are you sure? Dinner’s no problem. I can make your favorite. Mashed carrot and parsnips? Your father won’t mind.”
Twilight tried to smile. She hadn’t eaten mashed carrots in fifteen years. “That’s OK. Thanks though.” She opened the door and lifted a foreleg. “Thanks for everything.”
She was down the steps and on the street before she heard the door swing shut.
Outside, the air had cooled with the lowering sun. The long westward road was emptier, now that the daily doorstep conversations had run their course, and dinners were being served. She passed once again by the statue that had stood near immortal since the founding of Canterlot, or at least the lifetime of a young mare. She came to a reluctant stop below it, shadowed from the setting sun by the blunted wings and almost featureless face, held rapt by the scored holes where its eyes would have been, bulging and blind. A pigeon blurted from atop its ruined crest.
Twilight galloped off toward the towers of the Old City.