Night Light grunted as he stood up on his tip-toes and tried his hardest to reach the bag on top of the wardrobe. It was no use, it kept on slipping out of his reach.
"Why me?" Night Light grumbled to himself. "Darn, Twilight and Shining had to just go out today."
"What was that, honey?" Twilight Velvet asked sharply from below him.
"Nothing nothing," Night quickly said.
"I thought so," replied Twilight, still suspicious.
Sweating nervously but trying not to show it, Night Light turned back to his task and reached up, finally getting ahold of the bag.
Twilight Velvet could barely contain her excitement. "Hurry up, Night, and give it to me!"
Night Light got down from the step-ladder carefully, and handed the bag to Twilight, who took it giddily. She brushed away the dust and peered inside, smiling when she found what she was looking for.
"Look Night," said Twilight, holding up a photo album. "It's our wedding album."
Night Light nodded. "That it is indeed. I believe we were looking for it for quite some time."
Twilight squealed with joy and kissed his cheek. "Thank you, Nighty."
He smiled back at her.
They then went into the living room and sat on the sofa, keeping the book between them and flipping it open.
Twilight sighed wistfully and pointed to a picture. "That's my wedding dress. I remember mother stitching it together with her own hands. Too bad we had to give it away."
"You looked like a princess that day," teased Night Light, poking her in the stomach. "Oh, wait-you still do!"
Twilight Velvet blushed. "Oh hush, what I would give to wear it again just one more time."
Night reached over and pulled her into a hug. They jumped apart when a scream shook the window panes. He and Twilight Velvet looked at each other in confusion.
Night Light glanced briefly outside and looked surprised. "Dear, why is there a pantomime policeman outside our window?"
"Don't pull my le- oh." Twilight Velvet blinked as she looked out of the window as well. "That's weird. I didn't know local cops dressed like that."
"When a felon is engaged in his employment-"
"He also sings."
"How strange."
Moments later, they saw strange lights flickering and dancing in an otherwise clear sky. Suddenly, seconds later, a much larger one flew through the window and slammed into Night Light, pushing him back into his chair. "Oof!"
"Night!" Twilight Velvet rushed over to her husband. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," he grunted, sitting forward. "Just feel as though I have a minor bout of indigestion."
Velvet was about to speak, but then jumped back. "Your jumper!"
"What about it?" Night asked, then glanced down to see it had suddenly split in two. "Oh. Well, that is strange."
As he continued to look on in confusion, his jumper had shifted in proportion, gaining a set of tails in the process. Moments after that, it changed from its normal blue to black, and gained buttons up and down the front, which promptly did themselves up.
"This looks like a suit jacket of some sort," he mused.
"Dear, shouldn't you be at least a bit alarmed?" Velvet asked. "Clothing doesn't magically change by itself!"
"I prefer to do my panicking later," Night Light replied. "For now, I stay calm and try to rationally figure out a solution to this problem."
His purple tie turned red, and pulled back up his shirt until it was a bow tie around his neck (mercifully for him, his shirt had not changed an inch or in any way, shape or form). This left him with just his slacks to swap out.
He was wrong, of course. His shoes hardened into a pair of black formal shoes, polished to a truly ridiculous extreme, and gained laces rather than losing them as seemed to usually be the case. These were, of course, done up, and then his slacks (or rather the legs) began to slide back up his legs. These turned black (the entire set of slacks, not just the legs), but luckily the buttons and zips all stayed in the right places. That could otherwise have been awkward. Very very awkward indeed.
The process appeared, with that, to be finally over. Night Light glanced over himself, looked to the photo album, and then back to himself. "This is the suit I wore on our wedding day!" he realized. "Magical forces must have done this!"
"Don't be silly!" Twilight Velvet said. "Magic doesn't exist!"
Night Light put a hand to his chin. " Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once observed that once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. I must come to the assumption that as I have eliminated that which is impossible, magic remains the only option, irrespective of how improbable it is."
Their attention was momentarily taken by a horde of pirates running past, waving their swords and singing sea shanties at the tops of their voices.
"Do they have no indoor voices?" Twilight Velvet asked.
"Well, dear, they are outdoors."
Twilight Velvet had no chance to get a response in before being hit by another of the large blobs herself.
Night Light was concerned, but just in case Twilight Velvet's clothes too changed, he backed away slowly.
And change they did. Twilight Velvet's jumper began to shrink. The sleeves began to shrink back, and the collar and shoulders began to thread themselves apart, the individual segments all undoing rapidly and flittering away into one another as the neckline dropped downwards. It descended down at the back as well, until it stopped at her upper chest and breasts, and the middle curved inwards, forming an interesting curved pattern at the front. At the bottom, it began pulling upwards. Whereas normally it dropped to partway down her legs, covering part of her skirt, now it stopped above her hips, leaving a small gap between it and the skirt.
Twilight Velvet gasped as the jumper tightened onto her body, becoming quite a firm fit as it shifted from nylon to a mixture of cotton and lace. In a bright flash, the garment turned from its normal pink to white, and the front rapidly became covered in elaborate patterns and color symbols, forming complex and diverse shapes, all marked out and superbly decorated using silver and diamond sequins which made it seem to shimmer in the light. As if this wasn't enough detail, silver details also appeared on the garment as her ears gained earrings, a silver necklace appeared around her neck, and a crystal headband appeared in her hair.
She had a good idea of where this was all going, and she looked to her husband. "Quick, check the photo! Could it be!"
Night Light picked the album up and began comparing what his wife was wearing to the image. "I think it is!"
"Hold on, it's starting up again!" And it most certainly was, as in one swift motion the bodice, as it now was, attached itself to her skirt, using the leftover fabric from its prior transformation to fill the gap.
Two sets of white patterns emerged out of the bottom of her skirt as it turned white. That wasn't the only thing to turn white. A quick glance down confirmed that her normally purple heels had turned white, and were also encrusted with brightly colored gems that glittered in the light.
With a brief creak, her skirt began to grow longer, stretching over her legs, down over her knees, flowing past her ankles and making direct contact with the floor. The outer fabric began to puff up, changing from a flat texture to an incredibly elaborate series of ruffles and puffed fabrics, a mixture of silk, cotton, and lace that seemed to either curve wonderfully or bulge out slightly in place.
A metal object brushed past her legs, followed by several more skirts flowing down that and helping to give the outer skirt more volume.
Twilight felt it necessary to state the obvious. "It's my wedding dress! Though it is a bit smaller than I remembered..."
Thankfully, that was to be dealt with too. With a brief flash, the skirt began to inflate. It spread across the floor like a tidal wave, fabric spreading and stretching and growing in size as it moved along the floor. The inner layers expanded too, of course, and the frame spread sideways. Unlike a lot of earlier incidents, this seemed to be forming an A shape of course.
Not that Twilight was too worried, of course. She had a grin on her face that would give the Cheshire Cat a run for his money as her dress continued to grow, expanding ever wider, taking up more and more space with its glorious white expanse. Something she hadn't felt since she had been a younger woman.
"If I remember correctly, it wasn't much bigger than this," she said. And with that, the growth, just as suddenly as it had started, stopped, leaving both a man who seemed like he was going out to some formal dinner, and a woman who, to any outside observer, could easily be mistaken for a princess. Which, I guess, is the entire point of such wedding dresses, and was exactly how she was feeling right now.
Twilight Velvet looked over her transformed clothes in wonder. She ran her hands over the bodice, feeling embroidery she hadn't felt in many, many years. She reached down and felt the ruffles on the skirt, soaking up the softness of the fabric. She watched as she pushed the frame and it rocket gently back and forth, the inner skirts swishing as it swung. Every detail was perfect and exact to that happy day. After so many years, her wedding dress was returned to her.
She quickly pinched herself to check she wasn't dreaming.
She wasn't.
Night Light then noticed his wife start to cry. "Dear, what's wrong?"
"I'm just so happy!" Twilight Velvet said, her tears being tears of joy. "I never thought I'd get to experience wearing this again, and here I am. One of my biggest regrets has been undone." She did a quick twirl, briefly letting her inner child take over and grin with glee as the skirts flew out. "The skirts are even the same cut and thickness as the original. I have no idea who made this happen, but I want to thank them personally!"
Night Light stepped over to give his wife a hug, but unfortunately he slipped on something. He skidded across the floor, and his other foot landed on Twilight's skirt.
There was a loud tearing noise as part of it ripped off with his foot and ended up on the floor. "Oh no," he said. "Darling, I'm so sorry-"
"Look!" Twilight replied. Sure enough, the damaged section began to glow, and new fabric, identical to that which had come off, grew into place and filled the gap.
"Whoa," was all Night Light could say.
Twilight, on the other hand, was ecstatic. "I've gotten my wedding dress back and discovered it can repair any damage it suffers on the same day! This is like a dream come true!"
"Want to try and recreate our wedding portrait?" her husband suggested.
"That's an amazing idea!" Twilight replied, once more the blushing bride she had been many years earlier. "I'll find the camera!"
Before she could do so, the pirates from earlier ran the other way, bellowing at the tops of their lungs about being quiet as the pantomime policeman from earlier chased them.
Seconds later, there was a knock at the door. "I'll get it!" Twilight Velvet called, and walked over to it, still grinning at feeling the skirts flowing against her legs and watching as it gently swayed back and forth.
She opened the door, and her eyes widened. Her daughter and one of her friends was on the other side; the former dressed like Belle, the latter like Snow White.
"Hello!" Velvet said, looking a little surprised. "Did you get transformed too?"
"Yes, actually," Twilight said, heaving her skirt through the door and helping Fluttershy through. "As pretty as this thing is, it is really impractical! You can see why they stopped wearing them for daily use."
"Mine isn't what I'd normally wear, but my skirt is nowhere near as wide as yours, so I'm not really in a position to complain," Fluttershy replied. "Good afternoon, Mrs. Velvet."
"Please, Twilight is OK," Velvet said.
"Considering there are two people in the house both called Twilight, that could get confusing," Night Light pointed out.
"I'd ask why you're dressed like that, but I think I know the answer," Twilight said. "Magical flying blobs?"
"Yes," Night Light replied. "Why do you ask?"
"It's what happened to us too," Fluttershy said. "Rarity's magic seems to have gone a bit wrong. The CMC made a bit of a mess of her house, and this made Rarity angry. It seems her magic is what's transforming everybody's clothes, ourselves included."
"What did I tell you, dear?" Night Light said. "I deduced it was magic, and it is. The model works."
Velvet ignored him. "So it was Rarity? I must thank her!"
Twilight ignored this and spoke up. "Mom, I will be in my lab for a bit. I've collected some samples and evidence. Until the Princess can get here we're on our own, and I think I have enough data to figure out a way to reverse this-"
"No!" Velvet suddenly blurted out.
"Excuse me?" Twilight asked, surprised at the sudden interruption.
Velvet then spoke again. "I don't know if you know this, but this is my wedding dress. We had to give the original away because we didn't have enough space to store it, and that's always been one of my biggest regrets in life. To finally have it back feels wonderful, and I'm not making the same mistake I did the previous time. Twilight, is there any way to keep this as it is?"
"Well, I can't promise anything, but-"
"Twilight, please. Can you at least try?"
Twilight saw her mother's face, and nodded. "Yes, mom, I'll try. I can't promise anything, though. Time for research!" She and Fluttershy dashed up the stairs, briefly getting stuck as they did so.
Night Light looked to his wife. "If that's what's happened to Twilight, then what would have happened to Shining?"
"We'll have to find out then."