//------------------------------//
// Before You 
// Story: Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot 
// by Equimorto 
//------------------------------//

"But anyway." The stallion shook his head again. "You can't see it. Right. That's right, you can't see it. Maybe I should find a way to show you. I can probably find a way to show you. I should be able to find a way to show you. Give me a moment." He bent to the side, as the alicorn looked on in confusion, and there he fidgeted with the top of one of the table's legs. A moment later the leg opened, a sheet of something slid out, and the leg closed again. "That was lucky," he said, picking the thing up and passing it to Twilight's clone. "I wasn't actually sure it would work. Still learning to control it and all."
Twilight's clone took hold of the sheet in her magic. It was far heavier than paper or parchment, but still just as flexible. Almost like some combination of metal and paper. One side was dark grey, slightly reflective. The other held a picture of her silhouette in shades of grey, indistinguishable from Princess Twilight's, with some parts inside her highlighted. Some of the lines she was pretty sure didn't match up with any organ or system. In particular though, her heart has clearly visible, and there was something wrapped around it, pictured in a lighter shade of grey. It looked a bit like a small snake, or perhaps an abnormally large worm. But she could make out no details.
"That's what I see," the stallion said, drawing her attention away from the image. "You can keep it. Sell it as an art piece once you've left this town, pretend it's a portrait of the real Twilight. Someone will probably buy it, and you need the bits." He nodded towards her. "Of course, that's not all of what I see. I see that in colour, by the way, the lines are mostly yellow, but this table only does greyscale. But anyway I see it on top of the rest or maybe inside it if that makes sense, the rest which I assume is what you also see. Aside from you changing, because I don't think you see that, but I do also see it. You are a very nice shade of blue. I wouldn't notice the wings if it wasn't for the wires."
Twilight's clone instinctively ruffled her wings as he mentioned them. She lifted a hoof. "Focus on this. Focus on what's going on. That part about me changing. Explain that. That's what I care about right now." She figured making it really clear could help stir the stallion's speech towards the desired direction.
"Well, what I think happened," the stallion said with a hoof under his chin, "is that you accidentally set it to work on everyone except yourself. Accidentally being a relative term, I'm pretty sure you didn't know what you were doing. Neither did I the first times, I'm still figuring it out right now. But I did see that you're like me, see, I see that stuff inside of me too, well, that and the thing I swallowed which I think is called a scale or at least that's what I've heard them referred to as. Mine is currently embedded in my stomach. Not my smartest decision but I had no pockets at the time. It hurts a lot before hailstorms but thankfully we never have those around here."
"Can we get back to the topic of my appearance and its changes?" the exasperated alicorn asked, almost hissed.
"Yeah, sorry, I remember, yes. We'll need a mirror for this next part."