September 27th, 1000 Domina Solaria
Twilight blankly stares up at the pure white moon. Thoughts and ideas continue to twinkle in and out of her mind like the stars above, and the ones that stick around tend to race about like the night shift pegasi fending off the storm brewing over the Everfree Forest. She restlessly shifts in her bed again, grumbling about sleepiness even though her mind refuses to slow down. And yet, no matter how many stars she counts or how long she closes her eyes, she can’t get that feeling out of her head.
Laughter Magic, capital L, deals primarily with physical healing and growth. As the saying often went, Laughter is the best medicine, even if Generosity and Loyalty dip their metaphorical hooves into the diverse pool. And Laughter treads into Kindness when dealing with mental issues, the two often merging or at least showing a certain synergy when used in concert. It also deals with the preemptive healing of shields and other protective magics.
And she is quite familiar with that branch, seeing as her brother Shining Armor is one of the foremost experts, at least when pure power and malleability is concerned. But none of her work with him ever triggered something like this. Nothing compared to the rush she got when Pinkie Pie unleashed her Laughter. And the faint memory still rebounds around inside her. She can almost taste it. It reminds her, if she emulates Applejack and picks the designation that just seems to fit, of pink.
But that seems to be part of her hangup. Why pink? Why not orange, the color Applejack ‘feels’ when somepony is stretching a story past truth? Why not spinward? Things should be better defined, a stricter standard than what ‘feels’ right. But having so few points of reference makes it difficult to build an overarching paradigm. And her skin tingles under her coat when she thinks about expanding that limited pool. And not in a good way.
Did she feel something like this when she absorbed a bit of Honesty from Applejack, or Generosity from Rarity? No, not that she remembers. Perhaps she was too engrossed in the moment, then. And she is deeply concerned about the consequences of repeating that particular experiment. She hasn’t tried it again with Applejack or Rarity, and neither of them had offered.
She doesn’t know if she would have declined.
Fluttershy… Fluttershy had been a moment of weakness, her Kindness - well, Malevolence, at the time - palpable even through the petrification. The Kindness she imbibed certainly helps with the anxiety and fear and trauma of being helpless. She still has the memory of her certain demise slowly creeping closer and closer. Worse, the numbed sensation of the cockatrice crunching not-stone from an angle she couldn’t see. But it doesn’t haunt her, she doesn’t have that feeling of impending doom, all thanks to the infusion of Kindness.
Twilight glances back; her tail is still cropped short, barely covering herself. Rarity had done a passable job with the mangled mess the cockatrice left. And Doug likes it, or at least he plays around with it, idly twisting his fingers through the strands and playing around like he did before. So there is that.
Her gaze briefly turns to Spike; his scales have already healed, his debt to the dragons repaid. Could she repay her friends? What penance could she provide, what arduous task could she undertake? Would they even want her to? They haven’t said or done anything, or demanded any sort of recompense.
But maybe she is worried about the future. Her tongue laps out of her mouth of its own accord as images of Rainbow Dash flicker unbidden to her mind. The pegasus just hovering in the air, constantly in flight unless she has a compelling reason - Doug or Scootaloo - to be grounded. Her showing off her tricks, or maybe just practicing and throwing a little extra showboating for any observers. Busting clouds at full speed, impervious to the normal effects of such a feat.
Loyalty magic deals with enhancing qualities innate to an object, such as speed or strength or durability. Something Rainbow Dash has internally ingrained and performed with, likely subconsciously, since fillyhood. How else can one explain the Sonic Rainboom? An almost unheard of phenomenon, no records of the impressive act being performed in at least three generations. Or her performance at the Iron Pony competition when she actually went all out, though she wasn’t too far outside the normal spectrum of a pegasi’s capabilities.
Much like Pinkie Pie’s Laughter, she can sense the Loyalty that radiates from Rainbow. It’s almost intoxicating. What she imagines getting bucked by an Appleloosan salt lick feels like.
She…
She doesn’t trust herself around the pegasus.
Was it a mistake to tell Princess Celestia, her close friend and mentor, the details of what happened between her, Applejack, and Rarity? She didn’t tell her about what happened with Fluttershy. There is no precedent for using magic in such a way as anything other than the vilest of dark magic, the kind that earns oneself a one way ticket to the depths of Tartarus and a long conversation with the original perpetrator of such atrocities.
Assuming he is still alive. It has been over a thousand years since Princess Celestia and Luna dealt with the monster.
Twilight Sparkle finds herself getting up from her bed regardless of her vain attempts to go to sleep. She looks back at Spike, happily snoring in his little bed right by hers. She tried to set him up with his own room to sleep in but the rueful look she got in response broke her heart. Instead, they reached a compromise: when Doug is over, Spike goes to Rarity’s and sleeps with Sweetie Belle.
Wait a second.
Not that she has any problem with the two of them… being together. But, is Spike mature enough for that sort of relationship? Speaking of, what is the age of majority for a dragon? For a pony, it is when they obtain their cutie mark. Sweetie Belle is, currently, sadly bereft, and thus unlikely to pursue a relationship of that nature, but she might be talked into it. A dragon, though? There is so little known about the reclusive, solitary creatures. Do they even have an age at which they are deemed ‘adult’ enough to make those kind of decisions?
Or is she reading too much into her own casual use of a word that commonly means exactly what Spike is doing right now? The dragon has slept in her own bed when he was younger, and perhaps even referred to herself as ‘sleeping with Spike’, but there had never been that connotation in mind. And the two youngsters have never hinted at their relationship being more than two close friends, or new siblings feeling each other out, especially as they spend more time together.
Twilight’s mind turns back to the quill on her desk, sitting next to an inkwell and blank pieces of parchment. She can’t keep distracting herself from the primary issue at hoof! She needs to get to the bottom of what is going on with her cutie mark, and the other Elements of Harmony.
But what would Princess Celestia say? Would she allow her the chance to explain her actions, should she know about those two recent incidents? Likely. But, what about how the… craving... will impact her future decisions? If she doesn’t trust herself around her friends for fear of a repeat incident, should Princess Celestia? What would be the safest course of action for her friends?
What would be the safest course of action for her?
Twilight gulps. She doesn’t want to leave her friends, her herdmates. Even Trixie and her nonchalant attitude towards, well, just about anything, that Twilight finds particularly infuriating. But the mare plays a mean Lunar advocate, and Twilight enjoys the verbal sparring matches that she sometimes finds herself goaded into. Mostly after the fact, but still.
And she doesn’t think her friends are in any real danger from her. Right? Rarity recovered from their ordeal, no worse for wear. Applejack showed no side effects, same with Fluttershy. Pinkie Pie was, well, Pinkie Pie. Maybe all she has to do is corner Rainbow Dash, get her to perform some trick, and it will all be over after she has a nibble?
Ugh, now there’s a can of parasprites she doesn’t want to open, having to explain all that to her occasionally, perhaps purposefully, dense herdmate. And anypony else who witnesses it, or with whom Rainbow decides to talk. Doug likes chasing ideas down rabbit holes, but perhaps just this once she’ll decline his assistance, at least until she has a better understanding of the overall situation.
Much better to figure it out on her own. Right? Then, when she tells Princess Celestia about the ailment? Altercation? Anomaly? she’ll have a concretely defined condition, a set of symptoms, and a course of action to deal with and perhaps learn from the affliction.
Assuming she is, in fact, afflicted with anything, as opposed to a natural consequence of being linked as, well, intimately as they are. Princess Celestia hinted at something in one of the few letters she received in turn, but implied in a roundabout manner that such things are not to be written about. Perhaps she’ll ask her mentor in person when she gets the chance.
But where should she proceed until then? Continuing her own research is her best option, compared to doing nothing. She already told Princess Celestia, and she isn’t banished, so it can’t be that bad, right? Everything is going to be just fine!
If only she believed that as wholeheartedly as she did a month and a half ago.
But where should she start? Applejack and Rarity? Perhaps, if they wanted to repeat their ‘experimenting’ from before. And, since Twilight has a good idea of why it didn’t work the first time, she should be in a much better position to not go completely overboard and wreck everything. But it does beg the question of, should things go correctly, what will happen. Would she be able to stop, when Rarity is Generously offering herself? Or Applejack?
Fluttershy almost seems like a non-starter. Granted, the mare shows kindness to all around her, but not the capital K that she finds herself lusting after, though the yearning had dissipated to a low grumble after the fact. Getting Fluttershy to Stare herself (Twilight) sounds all sorts of bad, and she doesn’t think the pegasus would Stare a rock or innocent critter, or even a guilty critter for that matter.
Pinkie Pie, though…
First, Pinkie Pie seems to have suffered no ill effects from Twilight absorbing the Laughter the mare so readily released. But, how did an earth pony do something so extraordinary? A unicorn would have been exhausted after such a feat, and Fluttershy seemed slightly worn out after she used the Stare.
And the mare’s Laughter is only one aspect of Pinkie Pie that Twilight Sparkle is having difficulty nailing down. Perhaps she could do a bit more inspecting on every aspect of the enigma known as Pinkie Pie.
If she can figure out the secret to Pinkie Pie’s abilities, how she can radiate Laughter? Her impeccable sense of timing? How she can appear and disappear from places she has absolutely no business being or leaving, except that they might draw a chuckle? And many others, but trying to enumerate Pinkie Pie’s powers is like trying to count how many cupcakes are in Sugarcube Corner. The number fluctuates far too rapidly, with too many hidden in some out of the way nook and cranny.
But if she can? Especially since Laughter is contagious, spreading to others with no quantifiable loss on the part of the spreader. She’ll need to observe the entity known as Pinkie Pie, scientific name Pinkius Pieicus, in her natural habitat. Should this line of research pay off, though? If she can harness the power of Laughter…
A deep rumble echoes in the back of Twilight’s throat. The laugh initially bursts forth as a small giggle, steadily growing deeper and longer with every passing second. Soon she is bellowing, crazily cackling as Laughter overtakes her.
“Come on, Twilight,” Spike yells, chucking a pillow and hitting Twilight square in the face. “Will you just go to sleep already?”
“Ugh,” Twilight groans, massaging where the pillow hit her. At least it knocked her out of her manic mirth. The pillow levitates back to Spike, tucking itself behind his head as Twilight returns to bed. “Thanks, Spike. Night.”