//------------------------------//
// 17: Work Your Way Around 
// Story: Shining Together 
// by Bookish Delight 
//------------------------------//

"Okay, then." Starlight wiped her brow in hesitation. "Right. Vacation. Reason I'm here. Well..." She trailed off.

Sunset held in a groan. "Wait, hold on. You're getting cold feet now? After hailing me in the middle of the day, pleading for me to meet you, having me think something terrible and urgent is wrong—" 

"No, no, I'm not, I swear!" Starlight said. "It's just... you know how you have a story in your head to tell someone, and you memorize it so you won't have to waste the other person's time, but then you have so much fun with the other person that you originally forget what you were going to say?" Her eyes were wide and pleading. "Please tell me you do."

Sunset blinked... then relaxed. Starlight was lucky that they clearly shared a brain and half a life. "Actually... yeah, I do. Sorry for jumping to conclusions."

"No, it's okay, I'm sorry for... look, you've already helped so much. I can't begin to say how grateful I am for the last few hours. But it does mean that my pre-planned sob story went out the window." She giggled. "You might have done your job a little too well." 

"I've been known to have that effect," Sunset snickered. 

"So, yeah. I just need to take a second to start over." Starlight rolled her eyes and huffed. "Ugh. I knew I should have written everything down."

"Know that feeling all too well, too," Sunset said. "But, remember what I said earlier: it doesn't have to be a novel or a dissertation. We're talking about emotions here. Just describe them as best as you can, technique be damned." She snapped her fingers. "Oooh, okay. Let's start with... the very last feeling you had when felt you needed to get away from it all—so much that you felt needed to violate the space-time continuum to solve your problem." She winked.

"Augh!" Starlight yelped, miming being struck by putting her hand to her heart and jerking back. "Could you find a worse way to word that around me?"

"Nope," Sunset said. "That's what makes it fun."

Starlight calmed down, taking deep breaths. "All right, Starlight. Don't overthink it. Don't overthink it... okay. My last feeling was..." Starlight perked up, then slouched. "Oh, yeah. Feeling really, really overwhelmed."

"Getting somewhere already," Sunset said. "I completely understand what that's like. But I also remember a pretty wise person teaching me once to focus on the positive, and live in the moment. To take things as they come?" She smiled slantedly. "I can introduce you, if you want."

Starlight laughed for a short time, before sighing and resting her forehead in one hand. "Right. I guess I never told you the part where you shouldn't take all of the things as they happen. At once." 

Sunset furrowed her eyebrows. "Yeah, that sounds... less doable."

"So, where where you had magic problems that didn't always exist in the moment, I have pony problems. And creature problems. Life problems. Different lives. All the time. All existing. One of everyone." She slouched further in her booth, resting her head on the table. "Yeah, it's starting to come back to me." Starlight's voice was mildly muffled by the table she was speaking directly into. "Pretty sure I know where all this started." 

"Great," Sunset said. "Let's hear it."

Starlight raised her head up, just enough to look at Sunset. "Mind if we time travel anyway? Metaphorically, I promise." 

"Sure thing," Sunset said. "We've got all the time in the world."