Twilight’s teleportation spell landed her back on the hill she first arrived on, and her nose curled up at seeing her blood still staining the snow. Wouldn’t kill the sky to drop some fresh snow or something. Or maybe Fluttershy could just melt it? Or maybe Twilight was just seeing things cuz she hadn't slept? Who knows, who cares.
The next order of business was to shed Twilight’s pony skin, though she was loath to do it. She’d gotten used to dressing as a pony, and the last several months of her life, where she’d spent it as a pony almost every single day, had been the best time of her entire life. She didn’t want to abandon what was starting to feel more and more like her ‘real’ skin.
But those days were over, and the disguise had to go. ‘No more hiding’ was her new mantra, after all.
Her horn flared up with magic and split in two, starry wings outstretched from her back, and violet flame torched her fur, covering every inch of her body until she was born anew in the form of a dragon; it was a much more painless transformation than the forced one from before, but it still brought with it a sense of guilt and disgust, not helped by the nausea she felt from using her magic, since she was still recovering from her exhaustion.
Twilight crawled through Fluttershy’s forest back into her cave—well, no; she supposed ‘crawling’ wasn’t quite accurate, she was just walking on all fours, but after having spent so much time as a pony, it felt like crawling.
Spike was awake and rushed to hug Twilight’s muzzle as soon as she entered the cave, and she nuzzled him affectionately in return, sighing contentedly that at least he was safe, despite everything else going wrong.
Fluttershy was curled up in the corner of the cave, though she was looking at Twilight expectantly.
“I talked to them,” Twilight said, and Spike gasped, his hands over his mouth.
“How did it go?” he asked.
“Don’t know,” Twilight sighed, “won’t until they get here.”
Fluttershy took a deep breath and sighed, frowning as she rested her head limply on the ground. Twilight knew Fluttershy wasn’t keen on Twilight’s plan—neither was Twilight, for that matter—but Twilight was over the moon grateful that Fluttershy agreed to be a part of it; after all, Rarity’s group would have a difficult time saying ‘no’ to two dragons.
Unless of course Celestia got involved, and it burned up Twilight’s nerves that every single element of her plan relied on her presumption that Rarity would want to deal with Twilight herself and not get Celestia involved, but if she was wrong—
“I couldn’t sleep while you were gone,” Spike yawned, and Twilight took the opportunity to nuzzle her little bug and escape from the torturous thought train she was on.
“I’ll hum you a lullaby,” Twilight whispered fondly. She was glad that Spike was falling asleep too; she desperately didn’t want Spike to be around for Twilight and Fluttershy’s confrontation with Rarity’s group. He didn’t deserve to be put through that kind of stress.
Twilight coiled up and Spike snuggled up into her embrace, using her tail and wing for cover as Twilight hummed his favorite melody. The peace and comfort she felt as she heard his light snoring was almost enough for her to feel like going to sleep herself, but the intense stare of Fluttershy alarmed her.
“What?” Twilight asked, and Fluttershy covered her face with a wing.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stare,” she said bashfully.
“It’s okay,” Twilight said, “what’s on your mind?”
“It’s just,” Fluttershy muttered, “he really loves you a lot.”
“I should hope so,” Twilight remarked with a sly grin, “I’d be a really bad mom if he didn’t.”
“I just mean, relationships like that, built on mutual trust and companionship, between ponies and dragons… that’s very rare.”
“I guess,” Twilight said, looking at Spike as he slept comfortably underneath her wing. “He’s been with me his entire life, he hasn’t known any other family but me and Zecora. And I may have lived a lot of years, yet sometimes I feel more like a child than he is.”
“How did you find him?”
Twilight looked toward Spike, then back to Fluttershy. She never shared the story of how she found him before, not to anyone but Zecora, but it’s not as though it was some deeply treasured secret. And besides, she was putting her life in Fluttershy’s paws and, more importantly, was risking the safety of Fluttershy and her forest for her own selfish reasons.
Twilight wanted Fluttershy to trust her, so she explained.
Though Spike was only a decade and change, Twilight remembered her life before him as though it happened centuries ago. So much could change in but a single day, how much more in a decade?
A younger Twilight flew through the night skies of Zebrica, through snow-swept mountains and through blustering wind. She still felt far from home thanks to her travels, but she was almost in reach. She was exhausted, almost ready to give up entirely, but she was so close, that she commanded herself to push through her weariness, even if it meant walking through the snow for a bit, instead of flying.
The howling of the wind had been the only noise echoing in her ears for hours, so when she heard another sound, she thought herself delirious and ignored it. But something about that sound, like a high-pitched squeal, caught Twilight’s attention, and something in her gut compelled her to find its source.
She soon realized it was the sound of a distressed baby, and Twilight almost wanted to breathe a sigh of relief. Its parents must have been nearby, she told herself, and there was nothing she would be able to do to calm it down anyhow, so she elected to ignore it and be on her way.
But then, she thought, why would a baby be so far from civilization? This mountain range wasn’t exactly a primes tourist destination, and even if the parents were nearby, were they properly equipped to travel these channels? Twilight pondered this for a moment before deciding that it didn’t hurt to at least check and make sure everything was okay.
The sight that greeted her formed a pit in her stomach. A small campsite, with a long dead firepit sitting in the center, a small carriage sitting unmoving in the snow, with the creatures that had been pulling it lying dead before it, small, thin blankets covering their bodies in a futile attempt to protect them from the piercing weather.
Twilight inched closer, drawn by heartache to the tragic scene in front of her. What had brought these travelers so far from home?
The sound of the crying baby snapped Twilight back to attention, and as she approached the carriage, she prayed desperately to find the baby’s parents still alive inside. She knew they might be afraid of her, especially if they were foreign to Zebrica, but if they still breathed, she could bring them warmth, or to shelter, or—or something.
Twilight moved the tarp that acted as a door to the carriage aside and peaked inside, and her body fell awash with grief at what she found.
A couple, huddled together underneath every blanket and fur they could manage, trying to keep each other warm with their own bodies to no avail. They were long dead before Twilight found them. Between them, Twilight could see something moving ever so slightly, and she raised a single claw as she considered reaching for what was almost certainly a baby, no older than a few months.
Twilight wanted to weep for the child, only kept alive due to the sacrifice of its parents, and for what? The babe wouldn’t make it through the night in this cold…
…unless it could be warmed up by the light touch of a dragon’s paw.
Twilight tore the roof off the carriage, wincing at the sound of the baby’s whimper. With a trembling hand, she reached into the carriage and took the child, gently balling her hand into a fist. Bringing her hand up to her snout, she saw the baby closer; purple fur and a little green mane just starting to form, swaddled in so many blankets.
Twilight looked around, and only snow, wind, and rock greeted her. The mountains were perilous, and it was so easy to get lost, that must have been what happened to this family. If Twilight had only been a little faster, if she had perhaps been a little less lazy getting out of bed this morning, or had more dutifully headed down her path like she was supposed to, she could have—
Another whimper distracts Twilight’s misplaced guilt, and she looked to see the baby’s face scrunched up in pain, and she felt that pain as if it were her very own. He’s so small, and so cold, and he’s shivering. He doesn’t understand a single thing about what’s going on, no thoughts going through his head other than how he doesn’t like what’s happening to him, and he wants his parents, no idea that they won’t ever comfort him again.
Twilight felt tears rolling down her cheeks as she pressed her nose gently against her hand, balling it into a fist as much as she could without disturbing the little bug who was so much smaller than even her littlest claw. With a breath of magic, a radiant warmth fills her fist, and Twilight’s tears turn from grief to joy as she hears the baby make a little giggle.
He opened his eyes and stares up at the monster looking down on him, holding him in her fist. Twilight’s breath hitched as she worried he was going to start crying again and she wouldn’t know how to make him feel okay, but he just laughed instead; the precious, innocent laughter of a baby who hadn't a care in the world.
He reached his tiny little hands out to Twilight’s muzzle, and she leaned a little closer so he could touch it, giggling and cooing as he ran his barely-warm hands across the heated scales of her snout. For a moment, Twilight feels like everything’s going to be okay. She’s so close to home she can almost smell the aroma of Zecora’s cooking pot, and she’ll know what to do with a baby pony.
But there was one more thing that needed to be dealt with before Twilight could leave in peace.
Twilight gently took the bodies of the parents and of the animals that so dutifully served them in her magic, laying them out on makeshift cots made from the carriage’s wood. She covered them with blankets and prepared a gust of flame to send them off, but then stopped short.
She took in a deep breath and looked at the tiny child comfortably sleeping in her palm. She closed her eyes and whispered a short prayer; if the spirits of these parents, somehow, were watching over this scene, still clinging to their child in death as they so honorably had in life, then Twilight wanted them to know that their baby was safe with her.
Twilight blew a violet flame across the bodies of the dead, and with a gust of her wings scattered their ashes into the winter wind so that their spirits may be free to find their next lives, unshackled by guilt or regret.
There wasn’t much in the way of supplies in the campsite, but there was still baby food, clothes, and blankets, and Twilight took everything she could before taking flight, holding her newfound charge close to her chest, promising him, herself, and the child’s parents that she wouldn’t let him grow up without a family.
“Oh,” Fluttershy remarked as Twilight concluded her tale, and Twilight couldn’t help but laugh at the reaction. “I never… I don’t what I expected, but that certainly wasn’t it.”
“I still think about them sometimes,” Twilight admitted, staring at the snoozing Spike, “his birth parents. I wonder, if their spirits are still around in some way, what would they think of me? Would they condone the way I’m raising our child? I wonder, if there is a life after this one, what they’ll say to me when I reach it.”
Twilight went silent, a nightmarish thought suddenly flashing through her mind that never even occurred to her before.
“I’m going to outlive him.”
“Yes,” Fluttershy said, “almost certainly.”
Twilight took a deep, deep breath, and released it with as soft and calm a sigh as she could muster. That was a thought for another day.
“But for now,” Fluttershy said, “you are his home, and his family.”
“He deserves better,” Twilight remarked immediately. “He deserves a real family, not just a good-for-nothing mother. He had one, and I screwed it up—”
“Twilight,” Fluttershy rose to her feet, wings fidgeting at her sides and eyes narrowing at the entrance to the cave.
“They’re here,” Twilight gulped, “aren’t they?”
“Yes,” Fluttershy clutched her heart, “your family has arrived.”
It broke Twilight’s heart to crawl out from under Spike’s sleeping form, but with a little effort she managed to do so without waking him. He would be protected by the animals of the forest until Twilight returned to him.
The idea she may not return flashed through her mind, but she threw that thought away with a bitter snarl.
No matter what happened with Rarity and the others, Twilight would never leave her son without a family.