I paced around my office. “Ordinary ponies do this all the time. It’s not hard. It’s barely an inconvenience,” I moaned, flicking my tail. “You’re the principal of the Friendship School! The headmistress! Twilight's best student! The fillies and colts here look up to you!”
I was a nervous wreck, and when I get nervous, I would retreat into something I was good at. Something I understood. Someplace easy, reliable, a place where I could think things through. Keep things simple in my head.
My office was cosy and familiar, but it was also quiet, and the silence constructed a void that I felt desperate to fill with something, anything at all. All the while I ran through the various scenarios in my head, and none of them appealed. How was I still so awkward?
I wasn’t a filly any more, but I sure felt like one, and an awkward, insecure one at that. I hadn’t had a conventional upbringing, and things that even young ponies found simple were alien to me. Things like a healthy understanding of social relationships. Right now hundreds of fillies, colts, griffonlings and changelings were all preparing to head to the Friendship School’s Summer Ball and I, the headmistress of the school, had been so incompetent and pathetic that I had put off asking my crush to go with me until quite literally moments before the ball started.
This wasn’t hard, I thought to myself. It was a simple problem, really, and should have a nice, simple solution. I just needed to focus and think.
I turned, biting my lip as I muttered to myself. “Well not really. They sort of do whatever they want…” I flicked my tail, berating myself for getting off-track. “If you don’t try, there’s no pressure,” I pointed out to myself, before finally retaliating with, “Yes but I want to though…”
I leaned against my desk and checked at the clock. It had been three minutes to the start of the ball for about a quarter of an hour now. Being able to slow time was a lifesaver.
I wondered what Twilight would say. She’d probably tell me not to worry, and give some helpful advice that’d make everything seem clearer, and make more sense… It was too bad that even with teleportation, I couldn’t go and talk to her. She was in Canterlot, and even if she wasn’t, I wouldn’t be able to have my conversation with her in this bubble of stopped time I had created.
Then again…
My horn flashed. I could create a copy of Twilight. A modest illusion. Just somepony to bounce ideas off. Not a real Twilight, of course… An artificial construct.
Mysticor the Magical had developed a system of creating illusory copies based on the memory patterns of the caster. I knew Twilight very well; I’d easily be able to adapt his system to my own spell. It wouldn’t even be hard, I thought.
My horn flashed. I sacrificed a tiny portion of my magical power to cast the spell; nothing that wouldn’t regenerate within a few minutes. In a flash of azure, a Twilight stood before me.
“Oh,” Twilight said, and looked down at herself, examining her hooves, wings, and coat, nodding approvingly. “Mysticor’s memory illusion system? Good thinking. Strong application.”
I breathed a sigh of relief, and stammered to explain the situation. “Y-yes, it is isn’t it? Ha… um… I need your advice. Somepony to… bounce ideas off of! Somepony that’ll calm me down.”
Twilight tilted her head. She was identical in every way to Twilight as I remembered her, which was to say, perfect. Not a hair out of place. She smiled in the warm, understanding way she often did.
“All right then. Let’s hear your problem.”
I bristled. “It’s… well, you helped me with friendship before, which I… appreciate a lot.” I swallowed. “It’s Trixie.”
“Is she being a bother?”
I suppose it made sense that my memory of Twilight would have a level of distrust for Trixie. Most of my interactions with Twilight involving Trixie ended up going wrong somehow.
My experiences with Trixie were different. Even now, I felt uncomfortable discussing it with Twilight, even if she was a construct of my own magic. I steeled myself, and decided that the situation had escalated to the point where I needed to do something. I’d take a little embarrassment.
“No, I… I think I have a crush on her.” I swallowed the last of my anxiety. “I want to ask her out.” My tail flicked back and forth nervously as I watched Twilight’s reaction.
“Oh.” My mentor tilted her head to the side, and turned her ears to face me, devoting all of her considerable attention in my direction. “Has this been a recent development?”
I scratched the back of my head. “I’m not sure how long I’ve felt this way. Not that long, I think.”
“Well.” The analytical side of Twilight I knew well honed in on me, her eyes like lasers. “Let’s see about identifying the cause, then. If we figure out why you feel this way it should inform what you should do.”
I nodded. That made sense. My horn flickered to life, and my office fell away into nothingness.
Trixie tilted her head, examining Starlight's frozen expression with a painful, frantic look in her eyes. She had seen Starlight in a variety of compromising situations, but this, petrified in place, breathing slowed to a snail's pace and staring into the void with little more than a twitch to indicate she was still alive was a new one. Trixie felt concern turn to panic as nothing she did or said seemed to cause any reaction from Starlight. Even her pulse was lethargic.
“Starlight? Starlight! What’s wrong? Answer me, please!”
“Is this where it started?” Twilight asked me, surveying the scene my memories had created.
For a mare like me, creating a modest pocket dimension wasn’t the hardest thing in the world. The really tricky part was generating the little details. Some magical methods involved algorithmic artificial generation, where the spell itself determined what details to put in it using either a random selection protocol or even its own limited form of intelligence. I had used a mixture of this for things like the furniture, the dust, the lighting… things I couldn’t be expected to recall in perfect detail. Who could? Everything else was drawn from my own memory, with a complex piece of shape and idea determination used to fill in the gaps in a way that presented a logical, seamless picture. It was close to what the mind itself did, which was why it was so effective.
Reality was hard to copy perfectly, but a functionally indistinguishable rendition was easily within the grasp of a talented magician.
The world I had created was an awkward memory that I hadn’t often thought of until recently. It was a memory of me and Trixie on a road trip. I was in her mobile home, sleeping on the floor on a makeshift mattress she had made for me. Trixie had been sleeping on the bed above me. There had been a windy storm the night before, and I had been unable to get a good night’s rest. Trixie had encountered no such problems, and slept soundly throughout the entire thing.
She had rolled in her sleep. In-between brief moments of sleep, I woke up to find her top of me. This by itself was not… overly compromising. Due to a quirk on how things worked, however, we had slept in opposite directions. I preferred to sleep with my head facing towards the far wall; Trixie towards the door.
Once the original positioning and set-up was considered, the rest was just basic ballistics. Her butt had landed uncomfortably close to my head.
I was not a mare who was very good at noticing things or paying attention to other ponies, but even I could be made to look at something and focus on it when it was inches away from flattening me.
“You think?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, I have to make you say these things. It’s more proper for you to come to conclusions yourself. It says so in a lot of resources I’ve read on the topic of helping friends through their ordeals.” Twilight leaned in towards me, scanning my expression with a scientific interest. “What does being so close to Trixie’s ass make you feel?”
Clearly she wasn’t perfect. I couldn’t imagine Twilight saying the word ‘ass’ no matter how hard I tried. Or… evidently I could. Hmm. Perhaps my spell wasn’t flawless. I’d have to investigate that later.
“Uncomfortable. Sweaty.”
“I’m not an expert but that doesn’t sound like a very ringing endorsement to me.”
“Well… it feels awkward talking about it.” I avoided eye contact, which was a complex task because in most other directions there was just more butt. “Especially with you.”
“You’ve never had the opportunity to discuss these things to anyone before. It makes sense that you’d feel self-conscious about discussing your feelings openly, even to an artificial construct like myself.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’m just stating facts. Understanding reality is the first step towards accepting it!”
I sighed. Maybe basing my mental projection on Twilight was a bad idea. It felt like talking to a slightly-distant parent who was keen to relate to their charge, but couldn’t quite.
“What about this made you start to have a crush on Trixie?” Twilight inquired.
I breathed in, and gathered my thoughts. Though artificial, it was the recollection of a moment that had affected me, even if it was in an uncomfortable way, and though it represented just a small fraction of the reasons why I felt I had been compromised, it was still a scene rife with details that a part of me I wished I could submerge myself in for real once again. “She smelled nice.”
“Really? That’s all that it took?”
“Well, I think so. I remember remembering that I thought she smelled nice, and things sort of escalated from there.”
“Fascinating.” Twilight’s horn flashed and a notepad emerged from nothingness. I felt, just a little, like my magic got drained. Like a drop from a massive lake reservoir, but noticeable to one of my talents nonetheless. “So this moment is one you keep coming back to?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I sighed. “It’s...” My eyes turned back to Trixie. “It was memorable. It could have been awkward and unpleasant but I didn’t remember thinking that, so it changed how I thought moving forwards. I think.”
Twilight leaned down to my eye level. “Doesn’t hurt that it’s a nice view too.”
“This was a bad idea. I have decided I am not comfortable with this any more.”
“That’s perfectly understandable. It is very awkward to discuss.” Twilight’s horn flashed again, and the notepad disappeared. “However, we have established some important things. Clearly, you are a pony with lusts and desires like most other ponies. Secondly, Trixie has a grade A ass.”
“I see my subconscious is once again affecting your behaviour. And your vocabulary.”
“Well, you did make me using bits and pieces from your own mind as a base pattern. I’m not sorry you think Trixie has a grade A ass.”
“All right, this is clearly too much. I’m going to fix this.” My horn flashed, and the memory fell away into nothingness as I reconstructed the artificial reality I had immersed myself in.
To adjust specific elements of my spell, I needed a proper workspace. As I dictated the reality around me, I was at liberty to choose one bereft of distractions. The mobile home, filled with clutter, junk, a very attractive mare and a very overwhelming situation were things that would make adjusting my artificial Twilight tricky. The void between dimensions was a lonely place, but it was also an easy place to fix uncomfortable errors.
It resembled nothing; an absence of anything to see. It wasn’t black, since even the absence of colour was a colour in of itself. It was non-space, and it would exist for as long as I needed to fix the only other item I had brought with me; Twilight Sparkle.
“I’m still not sorry,” Twilight informed me.
Right. Time to perform some tweaks in my new workspace. Not only was my creation much too crude but also there was something wrong with her eyes. They didn’t quite glitter the way the real things did. I’d have to fix that. I was a perfectionist.
“If you say ‘grade A ass’ one more time we’re going to have a problem,” I grumbled as I rewove the pattern of the spell in my mind. It was easier to tweak the intricacies of magic in a safe, nondimensional space. Less distractions.
I cut out the little pieces of Twilight that were clearly wrong. They didn’t work. Get rid of that weird hyper awareness of Trixie’s ass. I was already plenty ass-focussed, I didn’t need my subconscious help also distracting me by bringing it up all the time. Actually, that might explain where Twilight had gotten it from. I was thinking about Trixie’s ass a lot lately. I suppose it bled through into the artificial constructs I made using patterns based on my memories and, crucially, elements of my subconscious.
Once I was done, I breathed out. Well. Not really. There was no oxygen in non-dimensional space, but it was the thought that counted, literally.
“Okay then! Let’s get back to it.”
Sunburst peered at Starlight, adjusting his glasses. Scuttling around the petrified headmare was the school nurse, pressing his stethoscope against her chest and stomach, assessing her for signs of life.
“I don’t know what happened. Can you help? Do… do a smart magic thing! Use your glasses, or one of your published books!” Trixie exclaimed.
Sunburst frowned. “I’ve only ever read about this in books. It could be… no, that’s ridiculous. Starlight’s far too cautious a spellcaster to make such an egregious mistake.”
Trixie stamped her hoof on the ground, her nostrils flaring in amazement at Sunbursts outrageous words. “Are you for real?”
Sunburst sighed. “Oh, all right. She definitely would.”
Now that my little problem had been fixed, it was back to the memory inside the mobile home. I was a little better prepared this time. I was less distracted by Trixie (although there was, admittedly, still some level of distraction) and I had also rearranged the system to be a bit better optimised. Nothing major. It was a performance issue, nothing more.
Twilight examined the scene again. I had frozen time within the memory I had made in order to allow Twilight and myself time to investigate and talk. Of course it wasn’t truly frozen; I had merely slowed it to a point where each second was dragged out to hours and hours. I had combined this with a few other effects; there was no point stopping time if you couldn’t move due to the resistance of the air, for instance.
Trixie was still sleeping on the floor. She looked peaceful and serene, picturesque; like she had been painted in by one of the great painters of the Reneighsance.
I was now standing over her, and adjusted my mane. Twilight glanced my way. “Are you sure things looked like that?” she asked.
“Hmm?”
“You’re aware that this may be an idealised image based on a biased perspective. You do have a crush on her. It would be natural.”
I tapped my chin. I… had considered it. I wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing. Wasn’t it natural to see the best in your friends? Or was that overlooking their flaws in a negative way? I couldn’t tell. It was the sort of nuance to friendship that I still didn’t quite feel I understood very well.
“It’s not impossible,” I replied.
Twilight’s horn flashed, and the image changed. Trixie was no longer elegantly laid on the ground, her eyes daintily closed. Now, she was sprawled, stomach facing upwards, and her mouth was hung open. A thin strand of drool leaked from her mouth and her mane, tail, and coat were ruffled.
“Aw,” I cooed. She looked so cute.
Twilight looked at my expression and rolled her eyes. “Right, so, it’s not just an idealised image emerging from your lustful biases. Good. That’s useful knowledge. She just always looks cute to you.”
“Can you blame me? Look at her snoring like that! She looks so peaceful.”
Twilight peered down at Trixie’s sprawled body. “I suppose.” She straightened. “Right, so to reiterate… this is the moment that made you see her in a different, non-platonic light? Or at least contributed in a significant way?”
“I… think so. I’ve always thought her to be a friend, and a treasured one at that, but I think this is where I felt… more than that.”
“And when did you realise the significance of this memory?”
“Hmm?”
Twilight paced around the inside of the mobile home. “When did you realise you had feelings for her? Clearly this moment had an… effect on you, but it seems unlikely to me that you just realised instantly upon seeing Trixie’s fantastic tush that you were enamoured with her.”
I narrowed my eyes at my Twilight construct. “Fantastic tush?”
“I am unable to use my preferred terminology due to a magical restraint you have placed upon me, quite unfairly too might I add. However, Equestrian vocabulary presents numerous alternative options that satisfy my communicative requirements.” The artificial Twilight flicked her mane. “I could recite them for you if you’d like. I know all the words.”
“No need. Please.”
Twilight shrugged. Her attitude was, despite my best efforts, diverging from what I believed was an acceptable portrayal of my mentor. “Well? Any other instances you can recall that might have further progressed your romantic connection to Trixie?”
I frowned, remembered, and cast a spell.
“Best not to touch her. She might look still as a statue but she’s swirling with magic right about now,” Sunburst explained. His hooves gestured wildly as he explained his hypothesis to Trixie, who listened to him with rapt anticipation.
His explanation was complex, referring things that Trixie didn’t entirely understand. He talked about Starlight’s magical abilities, Mysticor the Magic, and something about psychology? It all seemed a bit much to Trixie.
She held her hooves up. “Is there no way at all to summarise this quickly?”
“Not easily, no…” Sunburst muttered.
“Well, at the very least, could you not look like you’re having quite so much fun explaining it? It’s very unsettling.”
“We’ll get her out of this, I promise. It’s just that… I feel like Starlight herself is going to make it very difficult for us. As is often the case with powerful entities, Starlight’s primary threat is herself.”
“But why is this even happening?!” Trixie moaned. “What triggered this?”
“Unclear. She must have been shocked into a state of intense self-questioning by something that caused her to retreat inwards. Do you have any idea what that might have been?”
The projection lit up the massive canvas that had been hung beneath two low-hanging clouds, displaying a movie I remembered well. It was called Trip to Yakyakistan, about a pair of pegasi flying north. This was before the Crystal Empire had returned; the journey was a little more perilous back before the Empire had re-emerged and made the trip safe again. It was a classic movie, especially in Cloudsdale.
Many pegasi were watching from several clouds dotted around the field. Myself and Trixie had been watching from the ground, sat on a bale of hay. It was a friendly date… I thought. Trixie had suggested it since she had missed the movie when she was passing through Fillydelphia, and wanted to see it with me.
I watched myself and Trixie sit in silence as, invisibly, I sat next to Twilight on a more distant bale of hay. Twilight had managed to conjure up some popcorn for herself. She still wasn’t quite acting right, but I had lost the patience to iron out the little details. I’d just have to put up with an imperfect copy of Twilight. Evidently Mysticor’s Method had some wrinkles that I’d need to comment on at the next magical conference.
“You look very cute together,” she commented, nodding in the general direction of my memory’s representation of myself and Trixie. “Look, you’re even cuddling up next to her.”
The scene was, admittedly, adorable. As the movie played on a large billboard, myself and Trixie had been close. My hoof had wrapped around her waist and my chin rested on her shoulder, and with every passing minute, I pulled her in tighter. The ponies around us ignored us, engrossed in the movie itself.
It was a fairly perfect memory.
“It was cold,” I explained.
“The way you’re clinging it must have been freezing. You’re practically a negative distance away from each other. What month was this?”
I clicked my tongue. “Um… July.”
“Ah. Sure. Very cold.”
“Well I felt cold.”
Twilight chewed on some more popcorn. “Mmh hmm. Anyway.” She leaned back. “So what’s going on here?”
“I just sort of… wanted to be closer to her.”
“I see. This was an escalation from the first instance, then?”
“Yes. I think. That makes sense; I wasn’t really in a position to get closer to her the first time.”
“Since she was already at a minimum distance.”
“Yes.”
“But here, there was a gap, and you felt compelled to fill it.”
I nodded. “Yes. I remember thinking that it was strange at the time. I had never really wanted to be that close to anypony before.”
“Did the previous instance have any bearing on this?”
“Yes. I… remembered it. At first I think I just repressed it, because, well…”
“It involved Trixie’s butt in your face.”
“Yes. It seemed like the sort of thing I should repress.”
“Understandable. Go on.”
I sighed. “I guess I just stopped repressing it. I wondered if it would be nice to be so close to her again.”
“So you engineered the cuddle.” Twilight threw another popped corn into her mouth.
“I didn’t ‘engineer’ it. I was just… there. And so was she.”
“And what did this make you feel?”
“Happy. Very warm.”
“Well it was July.” Twilight sat up. “So this is why you wanted to ask Trixie out?”
“Yes. I wanted to be happy again. And again, and again.” I leaned in, hardening my expression. “It was logical. I don’t see what’s wrong with me wanting to be in a romantic relationship with Trixie if it makes me happy.”
Twilight nodded. “Naturally. However, there are other factors to consider.”
This was the part I was dreading. The part where I had to confront what might go wrong.
“Clearly you are romantically and sexually attracted to Trixie, which is… a novel choice in my opinion but it is fair enough.” Twilight summoned a whiteboard and pen and began scribbling notes I couldn’t see on it. “What you’re struggling to do is to analyse and calculate the risk-versus-reward outcomes. When you’re out in the open, outside of this magical artificial world you’ve made, your body is throwing up interference that makes it hard to think. Your pulse accelerates, your mind becomes foggy, and your anxiety causes you to lose control. Hormones and chemicals get in the way of rational thought.” Twilight tapped the side of her head. “Control is what we need to be able to deal with this situation.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, that makes sense. I just need to be able to focus in order to control the situation.”
“Absolutely. Without pesky distractions like lust and hormones to get in the way.” Twilight nudged me in the side with her elbow. “We can get to those later… if we decide to.”
Trixie tapped her hooves together anxiously. Sunburst stared at her, waiting for her response with baited breath.
“Well?” he asked. “What happened? Why is she stuck in her own head?” He narrowed his eyes. “What did you do?”
“I… might have asked her if she was… at all, hypothetically speaking… interested in me?”
Sunburst looked back at Starlight, still staring into the void.
“Ah yes, that would do it.”
“Speaking logically, there’s no reason to be worried about asking a friend out on a date, is there?” I paced around the void as my cognitive construct observed me with a clip-board. “It’s natural for a lot of ponies to develop romantic attachments to the company they keep. And besides, even if it wasn’t, these are things I feel, so it would be dishonest to hide them from a friend, right?”
“There is the matter of potential repercussions to consider,” Twilight pointed out. “Now, I don’t want you to panic at the suggestion, or dismiss it out of hoof, but there is a non-negligeable possibility that Trixie might not be into you.”
I felt a prickling sensation at the back of my mind. Something felt wrong. The beginnings of a memory? Something somepony had said?
Twilight continued talking regardless. “We have to consider the possibility that Trixie will reject you.”
I felt insecurity latch onto my mind. A small part of me acknowledged that this was a very small chance; insignificant, even. Trixie had reciprocated the cuddle during our date to see Trip to Yakyakistan. And there was something else… the nagging sensation that she had asked me something, but I couldn’t quite recall what it was.
“But the movie night…” I began.
“It’s not uncommon for friends, especially close friends, to establish physical connection platonically.”
I continued to pace. “Still, it’s… worth the risk, isn’t it? What’s the worst that could happen? She says no.” I chuckled, though even I could feel my voice crack as I tried to reassure myself. “Big deal, right?”
“Well, not quite,” Twilight continued. “Through no fault of your own, the mere act of asking her will recontextualise many of your actions in the past. For instance, Trixie becoming aware of your crush will colour her memory of your cuddle whilst watching Trip to Yakyakistan. It will affect how she perceives sleeping near you, as she did whilst you were on your road trip.” Twilight lowered her clipboard with a severe look in her eye. “There is the potential for awkwardness.”
I bit my lip. It was true. It would be my fault, too. It’d be something that arose directly from my actions and I’d have to live with that. What if it affected the friendship I had? I wouldn’t be able to magic my way out of that one… not without wiping Trixie’s memory, of course. But that would be wrong.
...I still didn’t like that one of my first instincts was to wipe my friend’s memory if it inconvenienced me. I’d have to work on that.
Would there be a way to get to ask Trixie out whilst also mitigating or negating the risk of awkwardness? To make sure it didn’t affect my friendship with her? There had to be a way.
“Moreover,” Twilight went on, “There is risk involved if you succeed.”
I paused. What did she mean? I looked at her, my ears flicking forwards and my eyebrow raising, awaiting her explanation. Twilight adjusted her stance.
“We both know that you are not, by nature, a nice mare.” Twilight began to circle around me. “You are manipulative, your mind tailored towards using magic to dominate and control others. Time and time again this has been a struggle for you and one that, even now, you are barely keeping a lid on.”
I swallowed. She was right. She was, after all, drawing from my own mind. This version of Twilight likely knew me better than I knew myself.
“Not only do you struggle with your tendencies on a daily basis, but on top of that you are not experienced with romantic situations. Potential for heartbreak, for clouded emotions, and for moments of passion will form a risk that you might lose control. In order to keep yourself and the ponies around you safe, control is something you need.”
I bit my lip.
“The last thing you want is to hurt Trixie.” Twilight’s horn flickered to life. “Even now you are doubting yourself. If you were confident in yourself and your ability to keep your darkness inside you… would this even be an issue?”
In a flash, the void fell away around me, and I was brought back to the memory I had shown Twilight first.
“Well, what was I supposed to do? She cuddled me whilst we were watching Trip to Yakyakistan! I wasn’t sure if she was interested. I was just curious!” Trixie exclaimed.
Sunburst took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Well, clearly it wasn’t something she thought too hard about at the time, because your line of inquiry has triggered a devastating escalation inside Starlight’s own mind. Honestly it’s impressive that you were able to manage it at all. I can’t imagine many ponies causing this level of utter bewilderment in Starlight.” He wiped his glasses, restraining a pained sigh. “Tragically, her inability to confront her own potential crush has caused her to develop a form of magical mind-cancer. It’s virtually impossible for all but the strongest of spellcasters to suffer from. Most ponies who experience this sort of thing are limited by their lack of magical ability. They simply resolve their mental issues gradually. Starlight, being one of if not the strongest unicorn spellcaster in Equestria, has managed to trap herself in her own mind.” He repositioned his glasses in a way Trixie had come to despise. “I just hope she hasn’t started looping already.”
This time I wasn’t just participating in the memory of me, the mobile home, and the intoxicating proximity of Trixie. I was an observer, not just of the memory, but of the memory of myself observing the memory. I saw me and Twilight examine the scene like forensic scientists, discussing how I had interpreted the moment.
“You weren’t even sure if this was the starting moment of your crush,” Twilight, a second Twilight, the one who had taken me back to watch myself deliberate with the first, said. “I don’t deny that it made you feel things, and I don’t deny that you have used this moment to justify your growing infatuation with her, but that you had to deliberate at all shows a remarkable lack of confidence and focus. Is this the sort of mentality that will yield you Trixie’s happiness?” Twilight leaned in towards me. “Her happiness is the goal here, after all, right?”
I swallowed, feeling increasingly nervous. It was true; this whole thing was ridiculous. I was trying to convince myself that it was natural to fall for a friend, but was anything about this situation natural? Were my feelings even real, or was this just a backwards retroactive interpretation of a memory I used to ignore? A memory I had conjured up to the forefront as a tool to explain myself to the Twilight I had created? I could no longer tell.
Sometimes… Having the magic I did made things complicated. I didn’t know what was normal or not because I wasn’t normal. The things I could do didn’t fit into any established pattern; just being able to make this universe with an artificial Twilight made my head spin. I wasn’t just experiencing second thoughts; I was experiencing third and fourth thoughts, and in a way nopony had ever known how to advise me on.
“You need to come to a decision regarding the risk and reward of asking Trixie out. You are a mare of immense power, and with that power comes responsibility. You need to think of all the outcomes in order to determine if this is the best course of action…”
Twilight was becoming increasingly oppressive. I felt stifled by her arguments. The things I had to do to remain in control… They were absurd. I needed to think that far ahead? Would Trixie? Should I?
Of course I needed to! I had the power to turn back time and to determine reality with the simple flick of a horn. My drive for control had damaged hundreds of lives in the past and nearly cost Equestria its future! If I was going to put Trixie near that kind of loose cannon, I needed to be sure I was in control.
And considering all the risks, why then even ask when Trixie may simply just reject me outright? I might have misread everything. It was possible! Everything was possible!
My head swam. I just needed a moment to clear my head.
Wait… clear my head! Of course. Such a simple solution. I needed to clear my head. To engineer a simple situation. An easy problem for me to solve; if I was too convoluted and broken to easily come to terms with my feelings, all I had to do was help myself out. There was nothing I couldn’t do if I just helped myself.
I needed a basic scenario. Actually, now that I remembered, this all started because I was trying to ask Trixie out to the ball. That was a nice, simple situation that didn’t need to be made so outrageously complicated.
Then again, I’d need to wipe my memory of course. Clear my head. If I had all these thoughts swirling around in my mind polluting my thought process, that’d confuse the matter. What I needed was simplicity. Wipe the slate clean and start again.
All right. It was decided. I’d start this again, and this time, I’d keep it nice and simple. I concentrated power into my horn, envisioned the scenario that I had been supposed to deal with, and then got to work.
“Looping?”
“A sort of perversion of a fairly natural iterative mental process. Don’t worry. It only becomes really dangerous when combined with time slowing magic.”
“That’s Starlight’s favourite kind.”
“Ah. Very suboptimal.”
The first thing I did was slow time down to a crawl. It was a complex spell to most, but an easy way for me to take a minute to breathe, to collect my thoughts. I got stressed easily, and after some time as Headmistress of the Friendship School, I had begun to rely on the spell extensively, as I needed to now. I was tired and needed to think. My thoughts were awash with confusion. I needed both time and somewhere safe to think.
My office was cosy and familiar, but it was also quiet, and the silence constructed a void that I felt desperate to fill with something, anything at all. All the while I ran through the various scenarios in my head, and none of them appealed. How was I still so awkward?
I wasn’t a filly any more, but I also hadn’t had many of the things that a regular filly enjoyed during the foalhoods. Like a healthy understanding of social relationships. A balanced and nuanced appreciation for mental health. Right now hundreds of fillies, colts, griffonlings and changelings were all preparing to head to the Friendship School’s Summer Ball and I, the headmistress of the school, had been so incompetent and pathetic that I had put off asking my crush to go with me until quite literally moments before the ball started.
This wasn’t hard, I thought to myself. It was a simple problem, really. I just needed to focus and think.
I paced around my office. “Ordinary ponies do this all the time. It’s not hard. It’s barely an inconvenience,” I said, flicking my tail.
“Is this… normal?”
“Well, yes, in a sense. It’s quite normal for ponies to picture a safe place to be whilst they wonder and think in circles. They might imagine themselves in a conversation, even, and iterate the process multiple times until they come to terms with reality. The trouble is that Starlight’s power is such that she could even create a manifestation of her own anxieties, and that would only serve to exacerbate the situation, and since she is not in reality she cannot effectively come to terms with it, instead sinking deeper into her personal recollection and internal perception.”
These were the kinds of words Trixie didn’t quite pay attention to. She was convinced that he would eventually summarise a succinct instruction, and had resigned herself to patiently waiting it out.
Trixie ran her hoof through her mane. “Well… what are we supposed to do then?”
Sunburst stroked his beard. “Well, I might have some small idea, but it’d take a spellcaster of great and considerable power.” He peered over his glasses at Trixie. “I don’t suppose you’re anywhere near Starlight’s level? You had mentioned you were practicing?”
“Well, no, but we have to try!” Trixie squared her jaw and glanced at Starlight. This had been, after all, her doing, although she didn’t quite think it was fair to be blamed for something quite so outside the bounds of normalcy. “Explain the process to me.”
“Well, in theory, this should be perfectly applicable. But it’ll be difficult. Luna uses a variation on the technique I am about to use to infiltrate dreams. I expect however that Starlight will have defences up. Nothing she can control; they will be entirely subconscious in nature. You will have to deal with that.”
There was a crackle of energy. Something was trying to punch its way through… something. The time barrier I had set up? No… it didn’t feel right… There was something else...
My horn flashed as I tried to scan my surroundings with a simple divination spell. Wait… something wasn’t normal. This wasn’t my office… not really…
I held my head as I tried to think. What the hay? Where was I? Come to think of it, I didn’t… remember how I got here. The ball wasn’t scheduled for months… Was it? Was this an artificial world? Who had put me here, and why?
I detected the delicate spiderweb of magic getting trodden on. Something was infiltrating its way into this world… Not a being or matter, but something thin and ephemeral enough to slip through the barrier without being stopped. Instead of clawing its way into the region of stopped time I had made, it merely affected the perception of reality. Not that this was reality… I had no idea what had happened. How long had I been here?
My head swam and I felt my balance leave me. I scanned my mind for signs of tampering. I clutched my head as I saw the extent of the damage. My brain was covered in the magical equivalent of fingerprints, prodding and tweaking and altering, all layered one on top of the other. More than I could count.
“Well that’s pesky,” came a voice.
I looked up, and saw Twilight Sparkle, my mentor, tutting at me. What was she doing here? Had she managed to infiltrate this… place? Was she the one trying to punch through the walls?
“Wh-what’s going on?” I asked, panic creeping into my voice as everything around me seemed frightening and unnerving. “Twilight, help me…”
Twilight shook her head. “I’m trying. First things first, I’m not Twilight. I’m your subconscious. You gave me Twilight’s face and some of her mannerisms, which you were the first to admit didn’t go exactly according to plan. I’m here to help. You wiped your mind just now to try and simplify things but this time things seem to have gone wrong.”
“This time?”
“It’s been an iterative process. Nothing to worry about. Iteration is perfectly rational as an approach.” Twilight leaned down next to me and put her hoof around me. “The first thing you need is to breathe. Breathe and calm down. I’m on your side.”
“Am I trapped here?”
“No, you’re just in the middle of a conundrum and need to resolve it. This shouldn’t be hard, but you know how difficult these things are for you. Your mind… it isn’t very good at dealing with things other ponies find simple and easy.”
I tried to get to my hooves. “Did I… do this to myself?”
“In a sense. There was a level of instinct involved. You would often give yourself a moment to breathe by slowing down time; it’s just that in this instance, you set up a system that allows you to work through your emotions in a neat and sensible manner.”
I tried to force my alarm away, crush it into nothingness. I straightened, and flicked my tail. “If I erased my memory… for whatever reason, I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time… why can you remember things?”
“I’m from your subconscious, for starters, so it’s harder for mind wiping magic to work on me. Also you cast the spell mostly on the version of you standing there, not me. So it wouldn’t have erased my mind anyway. This time. Other times you did try to take me with you, as it were.”
“What do I need to do to get out of here?”
Twilight smiled. “Resolve yourself.”
“There’s something in the way,” Sunburst told Trixie. “I can only assume it’s Starlight herself, acting to prevent entry.”
“Does she know it’s me?” Trixie asked.
“Probably not. I think it’s her subconscious. It’s taken a form.” Sunburst adjusted his glasses. “This is… less than optimal.”
“It’s taken a form, you said?”
“Almost certainly. I suspect that if Starlight is trapped in there it’s because her conscious and subconscious are defeating one another, whether on purpose or by accident.”
“Well, I might not be able to break in, but I can cast a good illusion…”
I ran through the memories of me and Trixie. Twilight… or rather, my subconscious… was very helpful, and outlined points for me to consider. My romantic feelings, my lustful feelings, the relationship I already had… things I needed to think about to maintain control.
“How many times have I come back to this place?” I asked, looking over at the scene of me and Trixie watching Trip to Yakyakistan.
“I’ve lost count. But I’m sure we can make progress this time.”
I frowned. I wondered if it was even possible for me to make progress. I felt more confused than ever; just thinking about everything I needed to consider just to ask Trixie out seemed unbearable. I felt my breathing accelerate.
Maybe my past iteration was right. Keeping things simple was a good idea. Maybe the best idea…
“What the—” Twilight began, and her horn flared. I sat up, alarmed, as her coat shimmered and warped and her mane exploded out, taking on more volume. Her shape and figure were also altered, and the hue of her coat and mane shifted towards a colder hue…
“...almost in!” came Trixie’s voice.
As Twilight’s shape began to settle, it was clear to me that this was Twilight no longer; it was Trixie. My Trixie. Was she the one who was trying to break in earlier?
“What are you doing here?” I asked, a hundred emotions flooding into me. Panic, embarrassment, panic again, gratitude, happiness, more panic…
“The great and powerful Trixie is here to rescue you!” Trixie declared. “Sort of. I actually can’t do anything other than talk and am not actually here. I just altered your perception of this… um, whoever this was… to appear as if I was here.” She flicked her mane. “Very canny, as I’m sure you’ll agree. If you can’t squeeze reality through a small hole you can just slide in a little unreality. Much easier.”
I paused, trying to collect my thoughts, but Trixie’s sudden appearance had scrambled me like a flashbang. Instead of saying anything, I lunged and pulled her into a tight hug.
“Eep!”
She didn’t feel the same way Trixie did. There was a disconnect between what she looked like and what my senses were telling me. Her illusion magic, of course! What I was hugging was in reality the Twilight construct I had made, so she felt exactly as I imagined Twilight, not Trixie.
It didn’t matter to me. I knew that this was Trixie to me, talking to me from beyond the borders of this strange reality I was in. I was so glad to be around her again, no matter her form. A Trixie I hadn’t conjured up with magic or fashioned from memories.
“Thanks so much for coming to get me… I don’t know what’s going on.”
Trixie began to hug back. “Sunburst thinks you’ve done a real number on yourself by accident. Something, something, subconscious, internal worlds, yada yada… I didn’t bother to memorise all of it.” Trixie then became serious. “What we need to do is get you out of here! You’ve been staring straight ahead for almost an hour now and frankly, it’s a little unnerving. We’ve had to call off class.”
I spluttered, and then began to laugh. “I’m glad my apparent mental breakdown is only a little unnerving.”
“You don’t understand; if you don’t get out on your own I’ll have to call Twilight, and I don’t think she really likes me very much…”
“Well, I’m not sure I can. I can only leave here until I ‘resolve’ my problem.” I then began to blush furiously. “Which… hmmm. I’m struggling with.”
Trixie tapped her hooves together, sheepish. “I’m sure we don’t have to focus on tha—”
“I can’t even remember who asked or did whatever it was that happened to get me here. I’ve been caught in a memory-wiping loop I think…”
“Oh well that’s excellent!” Trixie exclaimed. “It’d be an absolute bother if you remembered who had accidentally triggered this in the first place! So. What problem exactly do you need to be fixed?”
I breathed in. “I need to figure out if I should… um… ask you out or not.”
Trixie tilted her head. “Is that all?”
“Yes.” I caught her unimpressed look. “But there are other factors involved! Quite a lot of them, actually, and I’ve been working through them with my subconscious, who I gave Twilight’s face, which didn’t actually go so well, and—”
“Well, I think you think far too much about things! If thinking in circles has gotten you stuck here, then not thinking will be the key to your magnificent escape!”
“I’m not sure I can stop thinking…”
“Well that’s what I’m here for! I am famously distracting! Avanti!”
I giggled. Being around Trixie did make things simpler. She cut through my relentless self-analysis like a scalpel.
I definitely wanted to ask her out.
I felt hungry. Stiff. A bit tired, like I had been worn out from a lot of work and stress. I wasn’t in my office, or in Trixie’s mobile home, or even in Ponyville watching Trip to Yakyakistan. I was in the teacher’s room, where I often sat with Trixie and Sunburst between classes. The room was almost empty outside of myself, my two friends, and the school nurse, who gave me a small nod of approval and quickly retreated.
“My work here is done,” he declared, and vanished into the school corridor. “Whoosh.”
Next to me was Trixie and Sunburst, both of whom appeared deep in concentration. Both their horns were flickering with magic.
I rolled my neck. According to Trixie I had been trapped for about an hour; long enough to feel an ache in my spine and neck for sure. I had also burned up a lot of magical energy; not just by retreating inside my mental fortress of solitude, but also by casting an uncountable number of spells whilst inside.
It occurred to me that maybe, if I had stopped time, then my capacity to regenerate my magical energy had been crippled. It did, after all, take time to regenerate magical energy... I felt a stab of fear as I realised how much actual danger I had been in. Past a certain point, I may not have even had the magical energy to escape by myself, even if I had wanted to.
“That is the last time I cast that spell without taking some precautions first…” I muttered, rubbing my head. I felt a headache coming. I was exhausted.
Trixie and Sunburst both began to stir. Relief washed over Trixie’s face as she saw me, and I’m sure I reciprocated. Both of us locked in a hug. I couldn’t express how relieved I was to see her on this side of reality.
Sunburst breathed out. “Well I’m glad that’s resolved. I did not need that kind of stress on a Monday.” He looked in our direction. “I suppose this means you sorted out your, ahem, confliction?”
I pulled away from Trixie for a moment. “I did, yes.”
Trixie pushed her muzzle towards mine, and kissed me. I let it happen, and the couch we were sat on creaked as she leaned into me. Maybe it was best I let her make the decision; Trixie might not know what she was doing all the time, but she was much better at making things happen. I needed that right now.
Sunburst clapped his hooves. “Excellent. Good to see that whole thing finished. I’m going to get back to teaching. The students are probably wondering what the hay happened.”
I nodded, not too hard so as not to dislodge Trixie. Trixie giggled a little, and we took a small moment to catch our breaths.
“That was fun,” I said.
“It was. Shall we pick this back up later? I think you have work to do.” Trixie smiled warmly and rubbed her cheek against mine. “Don’t go overthinking things, now. If you want to make things simple, talk to a real friend, not just yourself.”
I nodded. “I will. Thank you.”
Fin