The explosion sounded like a hill-sized soap bubble had burst. One moment Twilight Sparkle arrived at one of the Castle of Friendship's guest rooms, starting to tell Cadance and Flurry Heart that Spike was making crêpes. The next she blinked, snorted, spat and shook out gunk with the consistency of chunky salsa.
Well. Not the best thing to happen to Twilight today, but she was the last pony who should fault a foal for wanting to discover their magic. Once she had enough of the stuff out to function she turned her attention back to a roomy, generously decorated guest suite rather the worse for wear from being covered in red. Only Cadance, covered by a small rosy shield bubble, seemed to be unscathed. She dropped the bubble and gave Twilight a tired little wave and a smile. A wisp of smoke rose from an empty changing table that had been the epicenter, just as if Flurry herself had ex… plo…
Oh no.
-don't panic YES PANIC it couldn't have been her FLURRY NO just ask BUT HOW CAN I of course it's a mistake don't be CHANGELINGS I've developed schizohaynia! WHAT IS-
A little pink hoof fell from the ceiling and booped Twilight on the snoot on the way down.
”AIIIIIIIIGH!” asked Twilight.
”Yes, Flurry has been all over the place today,” Cadance said. ”But she'll pull herself together.”
Flurry Heart tasted like marinara sauce and cotton candy.
”…so sorry, Twilight. I thought you knew, I really did. I must've needed this getaway more than… Twilight, it's all right! She just detonated for a little.”
The sheer insanity of the words made Twilight pause her retching and raise her gaze to Cadance, and the scene of carnage that… faded from view?
Cadance pointed a hoof at the changing table, and sure enough, as soon the last of the red vanished (taking the stickiness and the aftertaste with it, thank Celestia) there was a ”coo!” from the table.
”FLURRY!!” Twilight leapt to embrace Flurry, poke her to see if she was real and not an illusion, and at the same time handle her like she might explode again. This added up to some kind of frantic side-pats. Flurry scrunched up her face and cast Twilight a baleful gaze.
”Ooh! Look, Flurry!” Cadance called out as she twirled the mobile above the table, making the baby giggle and squeal. She then spotted Twilight giving her what, in the circumstances, was a very generous expression.
”Explain.”
”Flurry can't die. The universe won't let her.”
”That's it?”
”That's it.”
”And how did you find this out?” Twilight narrowed her gaze.
That earned a sigh from Cadance. ”Twilight, she's a baby. Leave them alone for two minutes and they crawl over a cliff. What's more, she's a baby who flies like an athlete, teleports like a wizard, fights like her name was Lunchbreak Wink. She's the infant against whom no lock will hold. She cannot be caged; she cannot be controlled.”
”I could've helped! Celestia could've helped!”
”But you thought we were on top of things, didn't you?” Cadance asked, not unkindly. Twilight nodded, so she went on: ”Honestly, so did we. Two lovers and best friends, thrust into a daunting adventure but rising to meet new challenges! Then Flurry got frightened by a cucumber and incinerated the kitchen she was in.”
”Cadance!”
”Yes, Twilight?”
”You're talking about your daughter. Dying. A lot! How can you be so casual?”
”The day she did it back-to-back fifteen times helped. Can you believe that by the end, Shining, Sunburst and I were all just bored? I thought Shiny was still a little skittish but then the next morning he'd put a big ”DANGER: Handle With Care” sign on the nursery door and I laughed myself silly.”
Twilight gaped at Cadance, the unkempt mane, the bags under her eyes, the ”My world's on fire, how about yours" smile of a proud parent at the end of her rope, all fixtures ever since Flurry Heart was born. Twilight had never before realized how terrifying that smile was.
”The answer turned out to be removing the color black. Or pictures of fish. Or maybe she just really hated hiccups. It's always a bit of a guessing game when Flurry gets head-explodey. I keep fretting that she'll hate blowing up so much she blows up in frustration and gets stuck in a loop, but it's not like she minded at all when I popped her a moment – uh oh.”
”I- this- wha- that wasn't Flurry?! YOU BLEW UP YOUR OWN CHILD?!”
”Twilight! Don't shout in front of the foal!” Cadance hissed, her horn igniting. Flurry imploded silently into a sphere of utter darkness. It grew as it ate, gouging a deep furrow into the changing table. A wind whispered, blew, began to howl, but then the sphere vanished in a flash of light.
”Okay, go ahead,” Cadance said.
”What have you done, you MONSTER?”
For the first time since reason was dethroned and madness reigned over all, Cadance looked annoyed.
”Well, it's not like I'm doing her any harm,” Cadance said.
”Oh no, of course not!”
”But then, I suppose I can't fault you for that.”
”You, I, but, that's – AAAAAUGH!” Twilight burst out in frustration.
Flurry appeared unceremoniously on the ruins of the table. Cadance called out ”Ooh, good timing!” and scooped the baby up to the guest room's handsome four-poster. With her back to Twilight, she floated a few toys over from her things as she purred: ”Who's a good baby? You are! Yes, you are!”
Twilight contemplated the matter, and whether or not to start setting things on fire and never, ever stop. A bag of bits bobbed toward her.
”Sorry about the table, Twilight,” Cadance called over her shoulder. ”You know how it is. Well, no. Never mind. Can you give mommy a smile? There you go!”
Twilight took the coins, and with the way things were going, quickly checked that they bore images of Celestia and not – for example – ponies with their faces frozen in terror as they strained against the metal in a final futile attempt to push themselves free. They did, so she put them down somewhere.
”That'll hold her for a while,” Cadance remarked as she left Flurry chewing happily on a stuffed buffalo and turned back to Twilight.
”So,” said Cadance.
”So,” said Twilight.
To Cadance's credit, she hardly flinched at all. She exhaled, inhaled, then launched into what sounded like a well-used speech.
”I'm the Princess of Love – bear with me, Twilight, I am – and that includes loving oneself. Ponies think self-care means exercise, or fancy vacations, or big sweeping changes that turn your life around. And some of the time it does! But it also means the small things. When things are bad and the world's run you more ragged than you thought you could be-”
There was a helpful ”oaaao!” from the bed.
”-then it can be about the tiniest things. Always eating off of clean plates. Never going to sleep with your dirty uniform on. Something you do, or never do, because despite everything, you're still better than that. It doesn't have to sound like much, but in the moment, it's a way to show the world – show yourself – that you're still a pony, not a wreck.”
Twilight waited.
”For me, it turned out to be not changing diapers with my mouth when I'm too tired to even use my magic safely.”
Twilight waited some more.
”I guess that got me into a habit.”
Yet, Twilight waited.
”She's dry when she comes back,” Cadance added.
Twilight snorted. ”For a moment, I thought you were going to spin a tale about how you had to do this to keep Flurry Heart's magic from growing to threaten the whole world. Or something like that. Something that would make this worth it.”
”Trust me, Twilight. When it's 4:13, and you've been trapped inside with your foal for so long you genuinely can't remember if that's night or afternoon… at that moment, soiled diapers are your whole world. Besides…”
Cadance actually chuckled. ”…all the best parenting books said the same thing: living with a child will be unlike anything you've imagined, but if you're attentive, you can learn to know your new normal, adapt to it, make the best of it.”
”So you became a serial killer.”
”It's a victimless crime.”
”Aren't you worried that Flurry will take after you? Make it a family tradition?”
”Oh, Twilight, it's good of you to ask. But she's at an age where she's far from clear that she has legs. That sort of conceptualization is well beyond her yet. Maybe I could show you those books? There's diagrams…”
”Cadance, you're rubbing your right foreleg with your left. That's what you did after you ate all the brownies my mother had left for both of us. What aren't you telling me?”
”Always quick on the uptake.” Cadance paused, then sighed, slowly, wearily. ”My daughter has no concept of death and shoots house-sized lasers from her face. Losses are well below projections. Also, we replaced Sunburst with a homunculus and a crystalline recording of his brain patterns.”
”You did what? Why?”
”I know, it's just like installing sprinklers. Everypony complains about the noise and tut-tuts about the cost and wonders why you'd go to such lengths, and then the sirens go off.”
Twilight swore she could hear her own eye twitch.
"Hm? Oh, sorry, tired. Flurry was cold, so she turned Sunburst into this big, warm, fuzzy blanket maybe an inch thick. We had to go to backup."
”Transformation magic isn't that hard to undo, even if it's not a formal spell.”
”She used telekinesis.”
”Ah.”
”She still has it, in fact. She pitches a fit if we try to take it away.”
Twilight made a sound that she didn't know the name of. (Even now, that bothered her.)
”Is that everything?” Cadance said. ”Yes, I think that's everything. Now, I don't know about you but I've worked up an appetite. You said something about crêpes? Do you have raspberry jam?”
Cadance made for the door, but reared back when Twilight teleported to block the doorway, teeth grinding, pawing at the floor.
”NO!” Twilight screamed. ”ENOUGH! This doesn't make sense! You don't make sense! The Cadance I knew would never act like this to her child, she'd never do this for, for convenience! She'd never become you! Make sense right now or I'll have Discord melt you into a big bowl of blueberry pudding, because pudding I can understand!”
As Twilight finished, she noticed Flurry was staring at her wide-eyed, lip quivering, yellow magic sparkling and flickering as it started to build on her little horn. But then they both blinked as bright cyan shimmered in Flurry's mane and a thin, branching, white ropelike thing plopped onto it. It turned this way and that, patting its new surroundings with its branches, and as Twilight realized it reminded her of a mushroom's hypha it opened a maw far bigger than itself and pounced. One second later, where Flurry had been stood a large, handsome, bright-blue mushroom.
The mushroom fell over with an undignified PLORT. Twilight glared at Cadance, who shrugged.
A long pause. In the distance, a bird sang.
”Trust me, Twilight-”
”No!”
”- you don't want to know. And I say that knowing I'm talking to you.”
For 0.4 seconds Twilight considered that maybe she really didn't want to learn something – close to a personal best.
”All right, we're doing this. Not that I expected any less of you.” Cadance closed her eyes, brought a hoof to her chest on an inhale, extended it on an exhale. Seeing this Cadance use the mannerisms of the old one managed to anger Twilight still further.