This tower had once been the home of the princess.
It's something that Luster Dawn would occasionally find herself contemplating. Before Princess Twilight Sparkle had ruled in Canterlot, she had lived in Ponyville, and before she'd moved to Ponyville, she'd lived in one of the high towers near the palace, apartments set aside for mages and scholars, and on occasion, apprentices. The shelves now piled with her own personal books had once held Predictions and Prophecies, the tome that had spurred a then-unicorn to study, and then to face, Nightmare Moon.
There were also a number of scorch marks that came from the fact that Ambassador Spike used to live here as well, which Luster Dawn had found with plant pots and other decorations strategically moved to hide them. It helped to equinize the place, for her. Before, it'd felt like Princess Twilight offering her her old apartment was a sign of holding her to an incredibly high standard, but instead it reminded her that her mentor had once been an ordinary mare. Well, as ordinary as having a marked talent for magic and a dragon for a little brother was, anyway.
She did occasionally wonder if she should move to Ponyville herself, though. The friends she'd made at Princess Twilight's urging were there, after all. Then she'd remember what she'd been taught about how friends didn't need to see each other all the time to maintain those friendships, and set the thought aside again. The trains between the two cities were much faster than they were in her mentor's day--hay, when the princess had first gone to Ponyville she'd needed to do so by sky chariot, as the cross-Equestrian railroads were still in the process of being built--making it so much easier to visit.
Still, the tower could get very quiet, and Luster was especially aware of it as she carried a half-dozen books on potion-brewing to her desk, placing them down next to her box of takeout from her favourite Minoan restaurant. Maybe she should get a pet, like a cat or a bird, something that she could talk to and that would vocalize back. Mages did sometimes keep animals around that they could explain complicated problems to in the hope of leading themselves to the solution, and Princess Twilight had mentioned once having a trained owl.
Pushing the thoughts away for now, she opened the first of the books, but Luster had barely gotten a few pages into Supernaturals: Natural Remedies and Cure-alls That Are Simply Super before she sensed a surge of magic. There was no mistaking that signature, nor the flash of light outside of her windows, and so she had time to shut the book and get partway to the door before she even heard the knock. Opening the door and looking up had her staring into the cheerful face of a very familiar pony. "Princess! What brings you here?"
"Do I need a reason to visit my apprentice?" Princess Twilight asked with faux innocence, as Luster stepped back to allow her into the room.
"Technically no," Luster said as she hopped into a nearby chair, and watched as the princess took up every inch of the nearby couch and then some. "But going by the track record, I'm guessing you either have an assignment for me, or you wanted to check up on how things are going with me and my friends."
Princess Twilight laughed a little as her wings awkwardly tried to find a position to sit in that was comfortable. "Oh nothing as formal as that. I was actually wondering if you wanted to come with me on... call it an errand?" She squirmed a bit, her ethereal tail partly phasing through the couch cushions in a way that was distractingly bizarre to look at. "I'm visiting somepony tonight and dropping something off for them, and thought you may like to join me." She shrugged a bit. "Of course, it is Nightmare Night, so if you have plans, that's alright."
Luster shook her head. "I don't. My family really hasn't done anything for Nightmare Night since I was too big for gathering tribute." She nodded toward the stack of books. "And my friends are all going to visit their families. So I was just planning to do some light reading." She smiled. "I'd be happy to come with you on the errand. Who are we going to visit?"
Princess Twilight chuckled. "You'll see when we get there."
A hospital done up in Nightmare Night decorations was still a hospital, and as locations went, one was low on Luster Dawn's list of places she would want to be. She didn't like hospitals, and had never met anypony who did. She'd rarely been in them and, destiny be kind, she hopefully wouldn't ever need to get overly familiar.
Outright healing magic was an extraordinarily rare art, so all the spellwork used to assist with health was subtle, built into diagnostic devices or woven into potions. It was a topic that her education would no doubt touch on, but she would much rather study it from a library rather than be walking the stark white hall full of sterile scents and with the constant buzz of magic leaving an irritating presence at the base of her horn.
Would she have given a different answer if she'd known this would be a hospital visit? Possibly, but at the same time it piqued her curiosity regarding who Princess Twilight would be visiting. She doubted her mentor would have referred to going to see an ailing family member as merely an errand, after all, or invited Luster if that were the case. She was keeping tight-lipped as she led the way, however, the giant of an alicorn occasionally stepping out of the way of a doctor, nurse, or patient, paying each a polite nod. Her horn nearly scraped the ceiling, reminding Luster that the palace was the only place really built to proper scale for alicorns.
She'd heard that Duchess Celestia was even taller, but couldn't picture it, not when Twilight already towered over her fellow ponies. Those long legs made for long strides, and Luster kept waffling between a walk and a trot to try to keep up. Hovering in the princess's magic was a bottle, and inside swirled a viscous red liquid, alongside a sealed travel cup from Pony Joe's. The bottle was apparently what they were dropping off, but she'd kept tight-lipped about the contents as well, leaving her apprentice very much in the dark.
Once, Luster had asked the princess why she gave out so little information when asking something of her. She'd simply replied that she'd learned from the best, and Luster had been left to wonder what that meant.
The various decorations in the shape of skeletons, pumpkins, ghosts, and spiders did their best to soften the harsh edges of the environment, but the efforts were in vain. Luster quietly noted that the staff and patients in this wing of the hospital were unicorns and earth ponies, not a single pegasus to be found, and that, at least, tracked with what the princess had told her once she'd revealed they'd be going to a hospital: "Don't worry, Luster, it's not contagious to anypony but pegasi." That told her nothing of what "it" was, or why Princess Twilight's intervention was necessary in the first place, but perhaps seeing the pony in question would help clear things up.
With that thought in her mind, they turned a corner, and she saw Princess Twilight check the number of a room and head inside, gesturing with a wing for Luster to keep back for the moment. Past wings and flowing mane and tail, she couldn't see much, but she could hear a young-sounding voice give a giddy cry of, "Princess Twilight!" followed by, "You brought my medicine?"
The potion bottle floated down toward the hospital bed. "It's right here, Redeye. I made it cherry-flavoured this time."
"Thank you, Princess!" There was silence, presumably due to the foal drinking the potion, and then the empty bottle floated back up again. "That tastes much better than the daisy flavour." The young voice then turned all the more excited. "Did you bring candy too? For Nightmare Night?"
"Candy might be a bit much for your tummy right now," Princess Twilight said in the gentle tone that Luster had heard her use many times before with younger students. The travel cup floated down as the potion bottle tucked itself into star-emblazoned saddlebags. "But I brought some hot cocoa, with lots of whipped cream."
"Thank you thank you thank you!" There was a sound that Luster guessed were hooves fumbling with the top of the cup. "You're my favourite princess ever, Princess Twilight!"
"Oh?" She gave a small chuckle. "Did I replace Luna?"
"Luna's my favourite former princess," the young voice corrected.
"Oh, my mistake." There were more mirthful chuckles, but soon she stepped slightly away from the bed, allowing Luster to spot a nest of blankets and a few shed, dark blue feathers "I have one more surprise for you, Redeye. I brought somepony new to for you to meet." She gestured with her wing again, and Luster obediently stepped in, getting closer to the bed and spotting the small filly among the blankets with her hot cocoa. "You, I, and my apprentice, Luster Dawn, are going to all spend Nightmare Night together."
The filly in the bed waved, and Luster tentatively waved back. The pegasus foal certainly matched her name, her eyes a bright red that stood out sharply against the deep blue of her coat and the silvery shade of her mane and tail. Luster could only really see her face and forelegs, and so couldn't tell if she had a mark, and Redeye's wings looked to be mostly buried in the blankets, the strongest sign that she had wings being the shed feathers on the bed and on the floor.
There were... a lot of feathers. Luster didn't know a lot about pegasi, but she was pretty sure this was beyond what was normal for molting, especially for a small filly who likely didn't have very large wings yet.
"Do you like Daring Do?" The chipper question cut short Luster's observations, and she found herself looking back into inquisitive crimson eyes.
"Um...yes?"
The cocoa cup was put down, nearly spilled--a helpful extension of the princess's magic averted disaster--and a thick book was extracted from the blanket nest and displayed proudly. "Momma brought me my favourite Daring Do book this morning!" Redeye's gaze went back to Princess Twilight. "Can you read it, Princess? You do really, really good voices."
"Of course I can." Luster watched her sit on the floor, as none of the seats within a standard hospital room were going to fit, and Princess Twilight's magic gathered up the book as Luster herself hopped into a nearby chair. "Let's see now... Oh, this one is a good one." She cleared her throat. "Daring Do and the Mysterious Isle, chapter one..."