Sunset Shimmer looked into the mirror, complaining angrily to her reflection. "How can Celestia treat me like this?"
Beside Sunset, a maid cleared her throat. Sunset rolled her eyes, but stepped away from the mirror.
"Thank you, Mare'm." The maid's feather duster lovingly brushed the mirror and its frame. When every nook and cranny was perfectly clean, the maid stepped away. "Sorry, Mare'm, about the interruption. Please continue."
Sunset glared at the maid. "You've ruined the moment. I was just working up to a good angry venting rant, and now I'm...I've lost my place! Are you happy?"
"On my own account? I suppose so. I love to dust and clean. Some ponies say I love it a little TOO much. But I'm NOT happy that you're not happy."
"You're just pretending to care! That's all anypony does!"
The maid's eyes narrowed. "Is that what you think? If nopony cares, why would anypony even bother to PRETEND to care? What difference would it make?"
In Sunset's mind, metaphorical gears started to turn. "Is this some kind of logic puzzle? Or are you just somepony else trying to play me like a cheap game?"
The maid pursed her lips. "It's a real life question. If nopony cared at all, everypony could get away with not even bothering to pretend to care. But they do. Why?"
"Okay," Sunset admitted, "Somepony must care about PRETENDING to care. But if they're only pretending, what difference does it make to ME?"
The maid looked Sunset in the eye. "I think you know somepony cares."
"Who?" Sunset shouted. "Celestia just TOYS with me, and tells me what to do. My parents were happy to turn me over to the Crown and never have to see me at all, except if there's a holiday and they haven't come up with some kind of excuse in time.
"You know what they said last Hearth's Warming? My mother said, they thought it was easier to have me around for one day, than to fill out the paperwork explaining why they wouldn't!"
"That sounds bad." The maid tilted her head slightly. "Are you sure she wasn't joking?"
"Know what I got for Hearth's Warming? Socks!"
"I know when you're a filly, socks can be disappointing." The maid chuckled. "One way I knew I wasn't a foal anymore, was the first time somepony gave me socks and I was happy to have them. To be fair, my mother is a VERY good knitter. Maybe your mother isn't."
"The socks were half my size! It's like my parents haven't even bothered to LOOK AT me for the last six or seven years! Anypony could tell they were too small! Even the salespony at the department store where my mom bought them could have told my mom to buy a larger size for any pony my age, if my mother had bothered to ask, or to say anything about me at all!"
The maid nodded. "It's like they don't notice you're growing up."
"No, it's like they don't notice ANYTHING about me. Because they just want to ignore me." Sunset grimaced. "I think my parents would be happier if I'd never been born. Thank...Celestia, that Celestia was willing to take me in. Otherwise I might not have had anypony even a LITTLE like a mother. Not even temporarily."
The maid's eyes widened. "But who took care of you before Celestia? There must have been somepony. Somepony who loved you?"
"My brother was a lot older than me, and he wanted to study medicine. He used to treat me like a patient, said he was 'practicing' on me. For a few months there, I had the names and outlines of all different kinds of anatomical features painted all over me, almost all the time. I still know all the different foreleg bones like the back of my foreleg."
The maid laughed. Sunset tried to resist, but couldn't keep herself from laughing too.
Even after the laughing died down, Sunset still smiled. "You have no idea how long it's been since I told anypony that story."
"Your brother sounds like a very funny pony."
"He is. And he's very sweet, in his own weird way. He's really very nice."
The maid grinned. "Is he single?"
Sunset laughed. "He had to leave Canterlot, to go to a medical school that had a space for him. And ever since then, he's been busier than a beaver in a treeless plain full of timberwolves. Sometimes I get a letter from him. I can tell he's doing well in school, and in his residency, because every time his hornwriting gets a little worse, a little more like a prescription. His last letter, just as an experiment, I took it to a pharmacy. They gave me ten thousand milligrams of poppy seed bagel."
The maid laughed. "So...too busy to NOT be single?"
"Married to his career, I guess. Maybe in a couple years."
"Give me his address today, so I can write him a letter and ask him when I should ask him again. But seriously, I'm glad at least you DO know what it's like, to have family who care for you."
"Sure. It's good SOMEPONY wanted to change my diapers and bandage my scraped knees. He says he thought facing a full diaper would be good practice for other things that seem really disgusting, like surgery on a severely infected, reeking wound, or handling broken bones when multiple fractures have gotten all splintery and everything seems like a total disaster."
Sunset smiled. "But I think really that was partly an excuse. I think he just likes to help somepony who needs it, especially when nopony else can or will."
"But who changed your BROTHER'S diapers, when he was a tiny foal?"
"My mother's sister. My brother's original parents died before I was born. So he was sent to live with my mom, and her second husband."
"It must have been very hard for your brother."
"Yes," Sunset agreed. "Sometimes, I'm sure it was. But it was nice having somepony around who loved me. For as long as it lasted."
"By as long as it lasted...do you mean, before you came here to the palace, to attend the magic school and be tutored by Celestia?" The maid looked pensive. "I'm confused. If you hadn't said that, I would have thought it was lucky your parents thought to have you considered for admission."
Sunset snorted. "It WOULD have been very thoughtful of them. But what really happened was, my brother told my parents it would be like free daycare if I got in. He helped me study, and he filled out the forms, and he brought me to the palace on Entrance Exam Day.
"In a letter he wrote me years later, he told me he had been worried about what might happen to me, if he went away to med school. Who would take care of me? But the 'free daycare' angle worked just great on our parents. When I was given permission to live in the palace as Celestia's special student? They were even happier."
The maid took a deep breath. "Do you feel...abandoned, sometimes?"
Sunset frowned. "I guess I do."
"So you talk to yourself in the mirror."
"I do. Something about this mirror...my reflection in it feels...a little more REAL, somehow, than in other mirrors. I come down here and talk to myself nearly every day."
The maid pursed her lips. "I suppose that explains the little toothpaste spatters I find here sometimes."
Sunset blushed. "I...didn't mean to. It's just, I'm so busy trying to learn everything about magic that I possibly can. Sometimes the time I spend brushing my teeth is all the time I can find to spend with myself."
The maid chuckled. "Don't worry. I won't tell on you. And I did say I LOVE to clean."
Sunset got an odd look. "I didn't...should I have asked about what you meant...about that? LOVING to clean? Maybe I don't want to know. Maybe when I'm older."
The maid nodded. "Yes, you can ask when you're ready. I'm around the palace nearly every day. There's no hurry."
The maid sat down. "When I interrupted, you were saying something about how Celestia treats you?"
"Yes. I was."
"So how DOES Celestia treat you?"
Sunset looked sour. "In the beginning, it was so great. She told me I could learn anything I wanted, become anything I wanted. The only other pony who has ever believed in me like that...was my brother."
"So...Celestia is like a second brother to you."
Sunset laughed. "Sure. For those first few years, it was wonderful."
"Everypony should get to have a wonderful foalhood."
"So true." Sunset still looked sour. "But it didn't stay that way. What Celestia wanted of me...started to change."
"What? Did she stop telling you, you could become anything you want to be?"
"Not exactly." Sunset rolled her eyes. "She started dropping little hints about FRIENDSHIP. And then BIG hints. And then DEMANDS, and ORDERS..."
"Everypony should have friends," the maid said.
"I'm sure you're right. But it's easier for some ponies than for others."
The maid said nothing, waiting expectantly.
"Maybe the problem started, when I was more interested in learning everything I could, to try to get closer to that day when I really can become anything I want to be. More interested in becoming the best mage I can be, than in doing things with friends."
Sunset shrugged. "My drive to be the best...some of my classmates resented me, a little bit. But it wasn't too bad."
Sunset's look went from thoughtful to angry. "But I wasn't really a friendless pony...or I THOUGHT I wasn't. THAT'S probably where it first went seriously wrong. One day, I tried telling a few classmates a story that I thought was funny, about my brother."
The maid smiled. "I imagine you have a lot of funny stories about your brother."
"True. But this turned into the wrong kind of funny. I talked about how my brother used to treat me like a practice patient, because he wanted to be a doctor someday...and somepony misunderstood. The more I tried to explain the truth, the more things went wrong. It seems that some ponies say 'playing doctor' to mean something very different from what my brother used to do."
The maid looked a bit angry herself. "I see."
"Rumors spread, and the more they spread, the worse they became. Soon there were ponies whose parents said they weren't allowed to play with me. They said I might be a 'bad influence.' And that's one of the nicer things they said."
"But was everypony foolish enough to believe those things?"
"Not everypony. But even when somepony was polite, it was hard to know what they really thought. And what they were saying about me behind my back. Whenever somepony tried to get me to talk about my life, especially my foalhood, I didn't know if they were trying to be my friend, or trying to get something they could turn into a jucier, nastier rumor."
The maid looked furious. "Sometimes foals can be cruel, about something they don't understand. I feel for you."
"Thanks," Sunset said with a grimace. "After that, friendship just didn't seem to work so well for me, in the school here. But I wasn't going to let nasty, lying ponies with filthy minds, and the ignorant ponies who believed them without even checking all the facts and thinking for themselves, drive me out of the school where I had earned my right to be. If somepony should quit, they were the ponies who deserved to have to leave, not me."
"That's very sad."
"One day, somepony said something that went just a little too much farther than before. Or maybe it was just that hearing the same thing for the thousandth time finally became too much. Or maybe it was just that partway through what he said, he found a whole new way to insult my brother. I snapped."
"Was anypony hurt?"
"No. But somepony feared for their life that day. I had studied a lot of magic: the school's whole curriculum, and anything else interesting I could find. And when I feel like it, I can be a very creative mage. Somepony learned that day, what fear truly means." Sunset snorted. "But I let him live. I let him beg for his life, for a while. But in the end, I let him live."
The maid looked worried. "That sounds bad. For everypony involved." Her brow wrinkled slightly, for a moment. "So what happened, after that?"
"I told him that if he told anypony too much about what I'd done to him, and what I COULD do to him, he would find out more than he wanted to know." Sunset shrugged. "I don't think he ever told anypony more than I'd wanted him to. But new rumors started. They were vague, and they were terrifying. Or so I infer. Because nopony ever dared insult my brother again."
The maid sighed. "Is that a solution?"
"It was...a KIND of solution. It was better than if somepony had finally driven me to do something even worse to them."
"So...about friendship."
Sunset laughed bitterly. "Many ponies were too afraid to try to even speak to me, after that. The ponies who did, mostly wanted something. Not really true friends."
"Did you tell Celestia?"
"I told her...some of it. I didn't tell her the worst. I left out most of the details. What should I tell her, that her school is full of ponies who can be so nasty and evil?"
"Celestia has ruled a country for thousands of years. Anything bad and nasty that somepony has to deal with in government? She probably knows a lot more about really bad things than you've ever thought. I think she could handle hearing the whole truth."
"Yeah, you'd like to think that, wouldn't you? But everypony knows she controls the sun and the moon and...everything. The things that happened to me? She never would have had to deal with what I had to deal with. She can intimidate most ponies just by walking into the room. She never would have NEEDED to make a nasty little pony beg for his life."
The maid sighed. "Maybe. Maybe not. But I hope you won't have to wait too long, before you discover a true friend. Or true friends. Ponies you can really talk to, who will try to be fair to you."
Sunset fumed. "After what I've experienced? I think most ponies aren't WORTHY of being my friend."
"So you come down here, and talk to yourself in the mirror."
"Sure." Sunset snorted. "I could do worse." She waved a forehoof at the mirror.
Nervously, the maid said, "Be careful with that mirror. It's more dangerous than you might think."
"What, this old thing? I've brushed my teeth in front of it a hundred times. It's a very good mirror. But it's just a mirror."
"It's not always the same!" the maid warned.
Sunset waved her forehoof again. "It's fine." As her hoof passed close to the mirror, the surface rippled. Something seemed to draw her in. "WHAT THE--" Sunset shouted, as she lost her balance and fell into the rippling surface.
"Oh, buck me," the maid said.