//------------------------------// // Demoscene // Story: Glimmer // by Estee //------------------------------// It felt as if her theories had been crafted to die. Of course, that was pretty much how it was supposed to work in the first place. Twilight was fully familiar with the scientific method, and so understood that the process basically consisted of endlessly galloping an idea around a carefully-observed track until the concept broke. (There were times when it could be helpful to note where it broke, especially if subsequent trials found it consistently cracking in exactly the same place.) You were looking for anything which threatened to produce sweat, situations which brought forth intellectual froth could be somewhat desirable, and you kept going because the only way to create the rarest of transmutations was to test everything. Theories didn't become proofs on their own and as far as Twilight was concerned, some of the concepts which claimed the exalted title had just seen their creators secretly pull them up at the three-quarters pole. Theories died all the time. Heated examination was the most frequent cause of demise. Anypony who dealt with the Thaumaturgy Review on a regular basis had to form an inner shield against the chill of dismissal. Theories died from inherent flaws, or from that one test result which nopony had seen coming. When it came to seniors at the Gifted School, the concepts could perish from a sort of dehydration, because some ideas only looked good until the birth parent sobered up. But they died. And Twilight, who had what felt like far too much to do within the indeterminable time before the mission launched, too many things to learn under Sun -- had turned over full control of the library to Spike. The idea (or theory) was that doing so would purchase her just that many more minutes in which she could fail to master all of it. She'd fully expected to spend all of the gained time in various forms of intellectual labor. She just hadn't anticipated having it be the sort which kept giving mental birth. Twilight had gained time in which she could think, and theories were brought into the world. Most of them didn't last long. Their ghosts haunted her nightscape. There was a small flash of light within the basement, and the coin reappeared upon an upturned blue hoof. Twilight looked at it for a moment, because the depressing opportunity to do so existed. The coin was staying exactly where it was and, in the latest demonstration of failure, so had Twilight. "Again," Trixie said. Twilight sighed. The small object held in her corona found its bubble sinking towards the floor. "It's a lot," she managed to project across the cleared aisle in the laboratory. (At least the words could be projected.) "I know," did not emerge without sympathy. "Aga --" "It's been teleportation theory for days," the little alicorn protested, because thinking out loud was clearly helpful for personal review and any incidental stalling was just a side benefit. Besides, she knew she was speaking too quickly, and that meant the stalling was both minimal and hidden. "I've been getting ready for the six-sapient version of the escort test. Did you know that it's hardly ever given? I mean, part of that is clearly the cost. Even though it's been waived by the palace. You haven't seen the cost. The examiners are probably doing some reviewing themselves, just so they can remember how to count that high. And I mean 'up to six'." (It was something which had to be practiced.) (Practicing required volunteers.) (It was another reason for her friends to come by. Another reason for fear.) (If she got it wrong, any part of it wrong...) The sympathy level was audibly dropping. "Twilight --" "But at least I know how to teleport!" the librarian rushed. "...even if I'm not sure how I originally figured it out. The Nightmare did it, and then I did it. I usually can't copy spells anywhere near that fast. But I'd studied the working before that, so maybe it was just a bunch of theories coming together under stress?" The unicorn slowly tipped the unturned hoof to one side. Waited for the fallen coin to stop clattering, then lowered the limb and began to tap keratin against the floor. "Twili --" "And now I have to learn the tracer spell," the little alicorn frantically groused. "Something is being teleported, and I have to attach myself to it. Go with it. And that's bad enough, but I'll have to do it while I'm escorting! There's already ponies who think I can master spells just from seeing them cast once, or reading one page in a book --" thoughtfully "-- the teleport probably didn't help with that -- but it takes time, Trixie! To just learn a new working, when I don't even know how much time I have to learn at all --" "-- and it requires practice," the performer cut her off. "Ag --" "-- and then there's what we're trying to do! What I have to do, just to keep everypony safe!" There was the briefest of pauses: just long enough for the small mare's tail to twitch. "...as safe as we can be when we're teleporting into an unknown area. Which isn't very. And what has to be done means figuring out a new working! Just about from one go!" She could feel her eyes going wide with fear. The tip of her tail was starting to fray, and her bangs wouldn't be far behind. In theory, if she displayed enough terror, somepony would have to respect it. She didn't know how much time they had before the mission would officially begin. It could make every second available for preparation feel scant: a cloth-draped hourglass for which the flow of sand could only be tracked through hearing, with no way to know when it would run out. Or, when the failures piling up in the basement level started to feel truly endless, the gallop-up to dispatch might threaten to stretch out into infinity. Twilight didn't know how much time they had, and it was beginning to irritate her. To some degree, her inner librarian simply liked to have departure and return dates solidly placed by a checkout stamp: operating without any form of known deadline was simply unnatural. But it was more than that. Something was taking place in a distant land, it might be progressing even as they studied and experimented and failed, could have already gone past the point where it was possible to make any difference at all and the Bearers were still in Ponyville. Every chill day which passed without dispatch was starting to feel like a personal failure, especially since Twilight's own studies were an essential part of what would allow them to travel at all and -- she wasn't advancing fast enough. There were too many distractions, a true excess of failures and, when she was frantically seeking a way to recenter after having not gotten it right again -- (It all depended on her.) (All of it.) (If the moment came, and she failed...) -- there were theories. Questions. Waking nightmares. It felt like the best way to get a few out of her head was through confronting them and so at one point, she'd managed to send off a quick inquiry to the Medicine department of the Canterlot Archives: an express air carriage dispatched by the palace had flown scant, semi-relevant texts back. As it turned out, Applejack had been right: Twilight hadn't been the first to the 'how does a disease create a real talent?' question. Unfortunately, based on the sort of scrawls which managed to remain half-illegible even when rendered into engraving, just about everypony who'd come up with it before had been a madmare: most of the exceptions were gender-based and did little more than swap out the last four letters. Twilight had been reviewing theories which made Sudden Appearance Death Syndrome look sane. The concept of the 'undersoul' wasn't the worst of them, mostly due to some of what she'd read after running into that one. Still, the concept that every pony who'd ever lived had existed as nothing more than a minuscule expression of a single giant soul, one which put little trotting extensions of itself into the world for -- some reason -- had a few flaws. Admittedly, it did allow the theory's creator to say that Cutie Pox simply forged a connection between one fragmentary vessel and every talent the undersoul had ever known. And obviously tapping that deeply was what eventually lead to death: the exhaustion produced by constant performance was just a side effect. She'd still been in the recovery phase (as had the book, which was currently in Mrs. Bradel's repair shop because when you came across an idea that stupid, an instinctive kick was the least of it) when she'd come across the true lunacy. Because the talents which rose from Cutie Pox obviously came from somewhere, and a text whose print run had committed the sin of reaching positive integers wanted to offer her the answer. They came from the dead. Because as it turned out, the world was just filled with ghosts. The fact that nopony had ever seen one (or at least, nopony who was reliable or sober) was irrelevant. The shadowlands existed in overlap with the living world, separated only by an intangible shroud. The dead moved through a reflection of the real, unable to do anything more than watch. And how did this relate to Cutie Pox? Wasn't it obvious? A pony suffering from the disease became a soul magnet. They pulled the dead into themselves and through doing so, manifested their lost marks. And of course, all of those dead ponies just wanted to practice their talents again, so they made their host do exactly that. Over and over. But death still wasn't from exhaustion, because it was just so clear that the disease only ended when overcrowding forced the original soul out. ...there was a working known as 'securing' or rather, when it came to the pony races, there were three versions, all of which had the same goal: using magic in order to make something resistant to further magic. With unicorns, the casting usually meant that any unauthorized fields which made contact with the secured object just slid off. Twilight, who had initially been surprised to find the working present on a book, had shrugged, nosed her way along, and understood completely at the moment she added her own bite marks to the well-notched offending page. Still, both books contained nothing more than theories. (A pair of delusional creators had still spent a few paragraphs in arguing for fact.) And when it came to what had been brought into the world, Twilight was prepared to debate the unexpected benefits of stillbirth. But when she forced herself to look deeper into the insanity, if only for a moment... There was a shared question present: something which had also arisen within pages that had been composed from more inquisitive thoughts and lesser amounts of drool. The one which was starting to set up a base camp within her own mind. Where do talents come from? They rose from the soul at the moment of manifest. It was magic. Everypony knew that. There's magical effects associated with most talents. Talents can break what ponies see as the normal rules, and that's part of why nopony suspected the hybrids. Nearly all of them are subtle, almost impossible to detect in use -- but they're present. But a talent usually also comes with a degree of inherent skill. Skill can imply knowledge. How does magic know something? ...through magic. That was the easy answer. Magic did everything by magic. And when it came to ponies, the effects were universal and reliable. You didn't have to think about them. But now she was thinking. And it felt as if there had to be a better solution. Something which could be analyzed, explained, and understood. And she waited for her mind to birth a theory. But nothing came. "There's no real trials!" Twilight desperately protested. "No slow advancement through measured stages! This is one step above 'theory to horn', and you know how that usually works out!" The performer involuntarily glanced at the wall-mounted first-aid kit. "I know." "And we still have to keep everypony safe! Everypony, when they're all depending on what I do! So there has be another way, a safer --" The blue hoof stopped tapping, and the mare's next two words emerged as something solemn, steady, and factual. "There is." Twilight blinked. Most of the hope got tangled up in her eyelashes. "...there is?" Trixie silently nodded. "...what is it?" The hoof came up. Then it slammed back down. "Again." Perhaps it was intellectual overcrowding. She had so much to think about, and no concept of how much time was truly available for doing so. Some theories were probably waiting in line. It would have been reasonable to expect her mind to form an orderly queue, and so it annoyed her when certain thoughts kept cutting to the front of the line. She often found herself wondering about the dead stallion: something which typically happened in the last minutes before she fell asleep. They knew he had been in the southern hemisphere, but -- why? An expatriate who'd settled in a distant part of the world? A trader, a merchant, an explorer... there were so many reasons for a pony to go that far, along with a few marks to spur the voyage. But his mark could have been anything at all, including that mathematical symbol. Unless -- until he was identified, there was no way to know. ...unless. There were ponies all over the world. Some regions had scant numbers, while others found the native population at zero -- but Equestria was hardly the only possible home. If he had been born outside the borders, away from any paperwork and witnesses the palace could track... He'd been desperate enough to teleport out. What had he been fleeing from? Perhaps... a sick camp, where those who were suffering had been isolated in hopes of treatment? Because it was an illness, he'd been sick and desperate and possibly not thinking clearly, he'd run from the only ones who could have helped and he might have infected -- -- nopony who'd been in contact with him had shown symptoms. (Well, one Guard had come down with a cold, but the cause had turned out to be 'winter'.) It still left the possibility of an allergen. One which targeted marks. Another one. And if it was an allergen, and there was a sick camp -- then why hadn't the host nation told Equestria? Fear. Concern. ...experiments. Weapon development. Those were the kind of theories which were born while she was trying to fall asleep, twisting and turning under her blankets while Spike curled up a little more tightly in his basket and their guest tried to sneak off in the general direction of a Moon-lit window. The kind of thoughts which stole sleep. Which lurked within the nightscape, waiting to strike. "I can see you concentrating," Trixie quietly observed. Twilight forlornly stared at the coin which was balanced upon the upturned hoof. (Again.) A smidgen. The single smallest unit of Equestrian currency. Smidgens were the sort of thing ponies tried to avoid. You either spent smidgens in order to round off your purchase number into something which didn't have your change include more smidgens (and in doing so, often learned just how bad some cashiers were at basic math), or you eventually wound up pitifully carrying a very large jar into the bank, where pitying tellers would perform the pitiable task of consolidating it into a pitiful result. Or, if you happened to be Twilight Sparkle, you had to ask somepony else to carry it, because you had been banned from the bank for several years. Parasprites ate food. Those under the influence of the last spell Twilight had sent directly from theory to horn had eaten a settled zone's history's worth of bank ledgers. Mr. Croesus was rather slow to forgive. The desperation casting had been, in all ways, a failure. This seemed to give it a lot in common with a basement-trapped Twilight. "I am concentrating," emerged a little too softly. "I know how important this is, Trixie. The Princess has every palace researcher and half the Gifted School looking at it." The latter were doing so under the 'interesting theory, does anypony have any idea on how to deal with it?' clause and somehow, the former were actually producing the majority of the explosions. "I've dealt with lockdowns before." Not well, made its forlorn way through her mind. I couldn't even get us out of Qui -- out of the castle... "Defensive ones," the performer noted. The librarian sighed. "Because this is the first time we've had to think about somepony using one for offense. I have to follow the device, using the tracer working -- and I have to bring everypony with me. The device is supposed to get almost all the way back to its starting point. So what if that still has it hit the lockdown? What if we're right behind it, and what happened to that stallion..." She didn't try to repress the shudder. Trembling on that level, at that speed, with a little bit of froth trying to rise within her fur -- that was something which had to be recognized. Respected. "...happens to all of them," she forced herself to finish. "If they all..." and failed at that, as her imagination watched six bodies fall. The hat is soaked in Applejack's blood. Fluttershy's tail is severed. So many scales are split... "And that's why we're trying this," Trixie reminded her. "So we can create a working to allow a teleport scout. Teleportation takes time, Twilight: you know that." "I know," the little alicorn tried to grouse. "You're just telling me what I know, and you know that's what you're doing. Review only goes so far --" She still had the little object in her field bubble, and was trying not to look at it. She knew it was there. Therefore, there was no need to see if the borders of the field were spiking. None at all. "-- you send something ahead of the group," the performer persisted. "Close enough to see in the between, far enough ahead that you'll have a chance to react. And if anything happens to the scout object, you bring them all out. Immediately. Abort the transport, dump the group back into the world whether there's a clear arrival space or not." Slowly, evenly, with every syllable under rigid control: "Because you told me what happened to the stallion, and dealing with just about any amount of recoil is better than that." She put her hoof down again. The coin clattered, and the fragment of the impossible teleportation device on the table behind them vibrated with mild sympathy. They'd had the fragment for a while. The palace had given it to them for further analysis and since neither of them had a device mark, Twilight was translating that as 'Maybe you'll think of something.' Because the staff's device experts had failed to develop theories, offer a path to repair, recharge, or do anything other than ask for migraine medicine -- Twilight had at least been able to recommend a brand -- but there was a Bearer of Magic in the vicinity and with any luck... Twilight now had Ratchette's sketches for what the complete version might have looked like. Luck, however, appeared to be in scant supply. The little alicorn looked at the incomplete section within its cushioning cradle, and the little bits of pulled wire which stretched beyond its borders. They were counting on it. They were counting on her. There was so much which could go wrong... "It's an exit strategy," Trixie said. "Something you need in an emergency. I know about exit strategies." It had been years since she'd been sent out of the Ancient History department of the Archives. Posted to Ponyville, with the nonsensical mission of 'making some friends'. Years and scrolls. Enough time to change, in more ways than could be expressed through the arrival of wings. And yet, there were still times when the words just slipped out. Teasing, with a light touch of lifting lilt in her voice, "So yours is a cloud of smoke, immediately followed by tripping before you can get out of sight?" She had meant it as something which would make the performer smile. Magenta eyes, tinged with grey, took their time about narrowing. "I was still recovering from the Amulet," Trixie starkly stated. "...I..." Twilight swallowed, and could find no other words. "I could barely operate my own body," the unicorn continued. "It was like I didn't fit in my body. Everything I was got shoved into a corner of my skull. For hours. And then I had to find my way out." "...I didn't mean..." wasn't much of an improvement. "I wake up sometimes after a nightmare," the performer went on, "And I still feel that way. And nopony knows what to do. There's nothing out there about how Amulet wearers recover. Every other Amulet wearer is dead." Words were failing. Contact...? Twilight took a step forward. "Trixie --" "-- stay there," was just above a whisper. "Right there." More desperate, almost frantic. "Trixie, I didn't mean -- I just want --" "-- this is a test," the unicorn said. "You have to maintain the distance. If you cross it, you teleport." Her eyes closed. Stayed that way for two long breaths, and then slowly opened again. "I can see you concentrating," Trixie observed. "When you try." Let me talk. Let me apologize. Let me make it right. The mare was only a few body lengths away. A gap which had to be bridged. But the words wouldn't come. All around them, devices hummed. A few glowed. Nothing helped. She often caught Trixie going towards the windows, or the balcony. It was something which generally took place after Moon had been raised and in the current portion of winter, that didn't require a very long wait. No theories were required to explain that action. Trixie suffered from chronic, cyclical insomnia. (The performer claimed to have found potions which treated the condition, and some of them had held up for nearly a full week.) It was something which became worse when the mare was stressed. The stress of being trapped in Ponyville -- -- in the tree -- -- it was usually the tree... ...well, it had just made sense to put an exception into the security spells for Trixie. What was the alternative? To tell the mare that Twilight was effectively going to keep her prisoner? Because Trixie had insomnia, and that was paired with wanderlust. It was rare for the performer to spend a moon in a single location: a week was usually closer to the limit. She wanted to travel, to get on the road, to find an audience who might stomp their hooves in applause -- or clack beaks, click talons, bray and stomp... Trixie needed to move. (She paced a lot. She occasionally seemed to be on the verge of rearranging shelves. Twilight found this to be a somewhat unfair way of dealing with the stress, mostly because it was hers and besides, she hadn't restored that one corner of the basement to the way it clearly should have been.) Movement was something which could help with the insomnia, at least if she moved enough to wear herself out. The pacing groove wasn't enough. And when the settled zone was deep under Moon, if the majority of Ponyville was well and truly asleep... The performer had risked going out a few times, because both insomnia and wanderlust were getting worse by the day. Twilight had twice awakened to find her coming back in, looking slightly refreshed. A third occasion had found the unicorn wincing her way across the library floor, as snow slowly slipped from the impacted places in her coat. She'd tried to get Trixie to talk about that, and... all the unicorn had said was that it was cold everywhere. It could be taken as a theory. It was also an open lie. "I have to concentrate --" was all Twilight had. "That's not the problem," the performer told her. Some of the frustration found its way into the abrupt tail lash. (With herself, with the working, with her inability to make it right.) "Then what is?" It had only taken a dozen failures for Twilight to decide that as a student of magic, the librarian was an irredeemable idiot. Trixie's expression suggested that the performer had just caught on. "That's all you're doing." Ponyville was working on a few collective theories. The settled zone knew something was up, and most of the blame for that could be placed at Trixie's still-present hooves. The fact that the performer was staying at the tree, and doing so under palace orders -- it raised any number of questions, and Twilight had overheard enough frustrated discussions to know that some of them had in fact been sent to the Solar Throne. All of the answers had come back marked 'palace orders,' a few of the more insistent inquiries had gained the unhelpful addition of 'classified' and when it came to facts, that was the sum total of what Ponyville actually knew. Which meant everything else had to be invented. Twilight's friends kept making excuses to drop by. Chances to talk. To look for updates. (Celestia's scrolls came in four times per day, spaced across the clock in order to give Spike a break -- but there were still a lot of them. Twilight was still trying to decide if she liked the mare.) And Ponyville's residents could be found roaming the aisles of the library, asking the little dragon whether his sister was available. Because there were theories and for the three mares who were the most paranoid, they centered on mind control and some sort of second Amulet and a desperate need to save Twilight from herself. The Flower Trio generally found themselves ignored by long-time residents. But there was a constant influx of fresh population and when it came to newcomers, the mares had something of a shared talent for spreading stupidity. Preventing soapbox climbs meant giving them near-constant reassurance, none of which held for more than a day. And if anything truly moved through the herd... Trixie was in Ponyville. Was still in Ponyville. So ponies kept visiting the library, all with the intent of protecting the librarian. Somepony who clearly wasn't up to helping herself. The herd was getting nervous. Something was obviously wrong. But they didn't know what it was. So they could do was theorize, and the results spread as rumor. Meanwhile, the update scrolls carried a few theories of their own. In theory, the Bearers could be disguised as a traveling performer show, bringing the wonders of pony magic to those lands whose central exposure to such things was in watching Sun and Moon traverse the sky. (Trixie could rightfully claim a portion of inspiration there.) But that only gave them a reason to be within the settled areas, and it still didn't seemed to provide much of an excuse for Spike. Her brother was the first dragon whose egg had been hatched by a pony, adopted and raised by the natives. But Equestria had possessed dragon citizens before Spike -- in very small numbers: between lone immigrants and small families, it roughly worked out to a few in every other generation. The concept of having a dragon live with ponies still brought forth shockwaves in portions of the realm. Take that idea to another continent, one where dragons were legends and sources of fear... What was the plan for Spike? Because he had to come: the Protector had his role to play and additionally, there was no other hope for regularly communicating with Canterlot. Well, perhaps a really good traveling show could claim to incorporate a dragon. There might be a chance to sell him as a miniature breed: something safe. But if that failed? It was unrealistic to expect that he could be constantly hidden away -- (They were going to be teleporting in.) (They could wind up arriving in full public view.) (There were so many problems with that...) -- and that brought up the question of disguise. As questions went, 'disguise' mostly led into a followup of 'How?' Illusion shells had to be rather closely fitted to the wearer's body: the other option was an increased chance of having phantom body parts pass through things. There were hardly any bipeds of Spike's size, and for those that did exist... the majority weren't intelligent, and the scant exceptions would never be found traveling with ponies. A non-Princess portion of the palace had proposed having him move on hands and knees at all times. Surely that had to offer a few other possibilities. 'Making constant excuses for why everyone keeps hearing scales on stone' was certainly a possibility. But it still opened up a whole realm of shapes! For example, there would then be the chance to make him look like a pet. Say, just by way of example, a dog -- -- there had been a NO. It had emerged as a chorus between shout and roar, and it had echoed. That idea had been discarded. But he was still coming along. And nopony knew what to do. Of course she was an idiot. It was obvious. Trixie's tones had just suggested that the performer had solved everything, and the idiot librarian was the one who couldn't figure out what the words meant. "All I'm doing," she semi-repeated. It didn't help. "I'm concentrating because I don't want to get anything wrong --" The blue right forehoof stomped again. A split-second later, the left one joined in, and the device fragment shook. "You don't have any flair!" Trixie told the local audience: the underground venue helpfully confined the echoes. "I've been watching you cast for days, Twilight! And all you do is concentrate --" "-- I --" She would have felt better about the interruption if she'd had more to interrupt with. "-- I don't understand --" "-- there's emotional resonance in every casting," the unicorn slowly said. "Something else you know. It makes some spells easier, alters others, and there's a few which have the right resonance as a requirement. Some workings are just about pure resonance. And what does Twilight Sparkle do?" The streaked mane shifted across the length of the weary head shake. "She concentrates. The corners of her eyes go tight, her snout crinkles, her legs look like they're all about to cramp at once, and those are the only things which happen because she's concentrating. No flair. No projection of confidence. No theatricality." "What?" Because she didn't understand, just like she hadn't been able to work out anything about the device or the new spell or the tracer and at least that meant Twilight was being consistent -- The next words emerged in soft tones. Something which suggested Trixie was speaking to a very young foal. The newest student in magic kindergarten. "Twilight... if you believe you'll succeed in a casting -- if you talk yourself up inside and project all of it into your corona -- then you're more likely to succeed." The librarian stared at the performer. At a smile which seemed small and weary, but... real. "I've been watching you cast for days," Trixie repeated. "You put thaums into your workings. I've barely seen you commit yourself. It's almost like watching a textbook illustration come to life, where the images have just enough animation to let you see how fake it is. Angle your corona here, round it off there. It doesn't give you the feel. Or the feelings. Twilight, you need to go for it emotionally. To turn yourself loose, to show off a little --" The unicorn stopped. Her head dipped down, glancing to the left and whatever mysteries that portion of floor held. "-- no," the performer wearily corrected. (The smile was still there.) "I sort of understand why you don't show off, at least a little. And part of that is... me. Because I put a connection into your head. Between showing off and having everything go wrong." The little alicorn took a hoofstep forward. The unicorn didn't seem to notice. "Trixie --" "-- but it wasn't just me," the mare's half-bemused exhaustion went on. "I don't think you showed off before I turned up. Sometimes, after I look at your scrolls, when I try to see the words which weren't there, the ones hidden between what you wrote... I feel like you're afraid of your own strength." "Well, I imagine that believing one had turned their parents into decorative plant life would leave something of a scar..." Discord's moons-past voice left the memory of the practice ravine, echoed within Twilight's mind, and every leg locked. The wings, by contrast, simply had their joints all loosen at once, and feathers sagged towards the floor. "You hold back because you don't want to stand out," Trixie continued. "Because you don't want to look different --" "-- too late." Trixie looked up, focused towards the bemused tones. Twilight recovered just enough control to wriggle her wings. "Oh," the performer said. Twilight sighed. "I can't look forward to the mission," she admitted. "Not when it's this big. But I was thinking about one part. My disguise." Wistfully, "I'm about to be normal..." Trixie's lips quirked. "A normal pegasus," the performer noted. "Since it's easier to hide the horn." Twilight winced. Nodded. "Who can't fly," the mare unnecessarily added. Defensively, "I can fly a little." "But you're bad at it," Trixie openly teased, and nothing about the words was cruel. "So they'll probably bandage your wings and claim injury. Right?" You haven't been this -- normal since we all left Vanhoover... "...right," Twilight admitted. "Maybe you concentrate too much on flying, too," the unicorn considered -- then shrugged. "I wouldn't know. Anyway --" She sounds like she's trying to help. Like she cares. How much does she care about me? Does she c -- -- I want to believe her -- "-- let your emotions come into it," Trixie told her, and the streaked tail swayed. "Psych yourself up. Twilight, if you don't believe in yourself, then the working is a lot more likely to fail. Doubt has a resonance, and it mostly gets in the way -- when it isn't just stopping you cold. So add some flair and theatricality. Make it a performance, because you're playing to an audience of one. You. And if you can't convince yourself --" It almost made sense. She didn't want it to. "-- when I'm casting in public?" Twilight asked. "Just -- performing..." The unicorn's smile became wider. And then it became shadowed, as the light from her ignited horn surged from base to tip, flared past the partial corona level into a full single, intensified -- "So what's wrong with making it a performance?" the mare half-shouted, doing so as the core of the light began to shift towards white and Twilight was staring, it was safe enough in the lab with no real chance of a sudden sharp impact to the horn, but any double corona was always going to make her think of risk and backlash and -- -- she was staring at the horn. At the way Trixie had just reared back, both forehooves parting from the floor, forelegs waving in the air as the performer balanced, mane and tail tossing about. "Make them look at you!" Trixie called out, and the mare's voice was strong, powerful, designed to reach the back row and silence all detractors. "Make a light, make a noise! Make them think they know everything you're about to do, because it's all so big and obvious! They decide what you're up to, they know what's going on, they tell themselves that it's all so obvious and they get ready to counter -- !" She's staying reared up too long, gesturing too much, it takes Lyra to hold that position, she's going to come down and if she overbalances -- -- something tiny bumped against the side of Twilight's head. She blinked. Looked away from Trixie's blazing horn, just as the corona's intensity began to carefully drop and the forelegs followed suit. Saw the smidgen hovering next to her, contained within its own little field bubble. "-- and then they lose," Trixie calmly said. "Because you made the really big noise to distract from the very small one. And sometimes, the small noise was all you really needed." Repeated blinking seemed to be required. "I never saw you split your focus," the librarian forced out. "I didn't even feel it --" Trixie shrugged. "'Go look at the distraction'. A double corona usually turns into the center of attention in a hurry. Twilight, I know boasting isn't you. And any performance is going to be hard to hold for long, especially at first. But you're trying to learn something new, Believe you can. Make me believe it. And..." The coin floated down the cleared aisle. Reached the starting position, and the corona winked out. Trixie's right foreleg lifted. The hoof was upturned. Waiting. "...show off." A lot of her theorizing served as attempts to define an unknown. She tried to picture the entity who might be responsible for all of it, and... she didn't know if that party existed. Allergens remained an option. But Twilight still kept trying to construct an internal model of a sapient being. One who would have set up a situation which made a mark evaporate. And every time she did so, it twisted into a monster. The test, at least when expressed as pure theory, could falsely come across as being simple. Trixie used the exoteleport and brought the coin to her hoof. When that happened, Twilight had to manage two things: the first was to magically attach herself to the coin and follow it through the between, and the second was to send something ahead of her. With such a short distance involved, the arrivals would effectively be simultaneous: something which had made it all the easier to determine when nothing had happened. Trixie had a coin. Twilight was trying to project a rather small, hopefully-unbreakable vial as her scout. But it had turned into more than that. "BEHOLD! Behold the matchless concentration and effort --" Grey-tinged eyes rather theatrically rolled. "-- brought forth by the alicorn!" Twilight declared. "Come see one of the rarest sights in the world, one of four, just four alicorns to exist, as she brings forth MAGIC!" Which was when she decided to improvise. "MAGIC brought forth by MAGIC HERSELF --" i can do this i can do this i can One blue foreleg was already raised and waiting for the coin. It made executing a facehoof with the other into something which had to be suggested via expression alone. "...I write down some of my patter before I take it on stage," Trixie muttered. "I rehearse it. How can a librarian be this bad at editing...?" I can do this The coin flashed. Twilight's corona surged -- -- the first thing she heard upon emerging was the vial clinking onto the table. But she'd been following the coin while trying not to arrive directly on top of it, that made her stumble slightly, and the first thing she felt was the warmth of Trixie's fur. She tried to pull back. Hooves scrabbled at the floor, and did so to very little effect. It mostly made her snout press deeper into Trixie's neck. The "I'm sorry!" was partially muffled accordingly. "I didn't mean -- I have to work on the spacing --" The unicorn... laughed. Twilight had never heard the performer laugh before. It was a sound which came across as being very light, along with possessing a degree of speed which Rainbow might have envied. It didn't stick around for long, as if it was afraid of being caught. But it felt real. "Again!" Twilight typically hated feeling undignified. 'Stupid' was worse and when you combined that with mud... well, it would have been hard for Rainbow to have made a worse first impression. And there was a lot of indignity in progress, because she couldn't seem to stick the landing. The teleports were happening. The vial went ahead. Nothing ever went too far forward, never appeared in the space which her lab partner was occupying and triggered recoil. But the pony kept stumbling and in doing so, went into the unicorn. Bumping happened. Kept happening, with some of the snout contact being closer to boops. There was also giggling. That wasn't officially part of the magic lesson, but Twilight felt it had some chance to reach a scroll. "Five more," Trixie smiled. "Five more and then we need to go get some food, before Spike tries to shove you up the ramp again." "Five more," Twilight agreed. Five more successes -- It happened on the third. Twilight was still having trouble keeping her hooves planted upon emergence. She wasn't sure why. It might have been a side effect of the tracer spell itself. All she knew was that she could follow, the projection of the scout vial was working -- but a stumble was just about assured. Trixie, larger and more solidly-built than the little alicorn, had simply braced herself accordingly. It wasn't exactly hard to take Twilight's rather minimal weight. On the third attempt, Twilight stumbled. Her head pitched forward. The horn came in, and Trixie did the natural, instinctive thing. She stepped back. The unicorn's reflexes were sound. Twilight's horn didn't scrape her, and never came close to a gouge. But there was still a yelp of pain, because Trixie had just shifted backwards into a table. The wood was jolted. Tilted up and back, crashed down again: something which triggered a second yelp. They both heard the fall. Something small was knocked out of the cradle, loudly bounced off the tabletop, came down over the edge -- -- Twilight's corona lunged. Surrounded the section of rod, and desperately yanked it up. It never reached the floor. It came to a stop at a midpoint between the eye levels of the two mares, and all they could do was stare at it. A few seconds passed before either could breathe. Longer before they mutually exhaled. The mares automatically leaned towards each other. Given another moment, there might have been a nuzzle. Something born from sheer relief. And then they saw the first glint of light form at the end of a broken wire. A spark of irreplaceable power coalescing, just before it parted from the metal. Faded into nothing. And then they were out of time.