//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1 
// Story: Darkest Before Dawn 
// by Sessalisk 
//------------------------------//


	Darkest Before Dawn


by Sessalisk



Chapter One










This was the most important day of her life. 
An egg and a diagram of the shell splitting in two – it seemed like a very straightforward problem. Heck, the answer was right in front of her: pull the pieces of shell apart into two separate halves, and a dragon will hatch. But how was she supposed to move two objects in two directions at once? She knew that it would be even easier, would use even less power, to send a small spark of magic into the dormant egg, bringing the unborn dragon to life. 
Twilight had read in a book that the “Come to Life” spell was so simple it was barely a spell at all. The only things necessary were for a unicorn to imagine an object doing what it normally does, to want that object to do what it normally does, and to channel that desire towards the object through her horn. It was one of the most basic spells. Twilight had already performed the slightly more difficult feat of magical levitation, so this should be foal’s play. It was just that… Well… She’d never done it before! 
Her entire future would be affected by the outcome… 
        I have to be calm. Twilight took a deep breath, and pictured the dragon breaking free from its shell. She held on to the thought with all her strength, and then backed up to give herself room to work. Oh Celestia… What if I mess this up? She dipped into her magic and tensed every muscle in her body, focusing all her power and will through her horn. Pleaseworkpleaseworkpleasework… 
Sparks! It was working! Something was happening! I’m doing it! I’m- 
The light fizzled and died. 
Unready to give up just yet, she ran herself through the process again, but this time she wasn’t even rewarded with a watery glow. Her magic wasn’t working anymore. 
Hatch! Come on! She tried making gestures, glaring at the egg, even threatening it with her thoughts, but nothing worked. She couldn’t fail now, not after she had studied so hard! How was she supposed to know that it was a practical exam? 
Please… A small ball of light gathered on the tip of her horn, but petered out as quickly as it came. She reached out again to the place where she’d always felt her connection to magic, and she panicked as she realised that she couldn’t feel a thing. She must have used up all her energy in that last failed attempt. Twilight slumped to the ground.
And she had blown it.
        It was all her own fault for not studying more, for not being more prepared. She couldn’t look any of the examiners in the eye. Her parents watched impassively, like they were waiting. She stared down at the ground and sighed. 
“I’m sorry I wasted your time.”
Twilight envied the ease which they scribbled into their clipb
KABOOM
There was a deafening explosion. A booming peal came from outside and the floor shook from the violence of the sound. Furniture threatened to topple. What? What was - Watery light of every colour poured in through the window. 
Twilight’s lingering focus shattered. 
Without even knowing it, her horn started to glow. 
Magic!
She felt it deep inside herself, natural power rushing forth. The energy blasted out from her horn, following the vestigial trail of her last spell. It hit the dragon egg like a lance. The egg lifted in the air - I didn’t do that - and the tiny baby dragon emerged, floating foetally at first, but then stretching, clearly alive. Twilight yelped in surprise.
The magic didn’t stop. It was like a powerful mental dam had been destroyed, and the little Twilight in her head was left trying to ineffectually stem the tide. Power tingled all over her body, itching and burning. The room grew brighter and brighter to her until she couldn’t see beyond the blinding whiteness. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t shut her eyes, not even to protect them from the painful light. The magic sought strange pathways out of her body, arcing from her hooves and skin. Twilight convulsed involuntarily.
Then, suddenly and oddly, an outward channel made itself clear; it wasn’t her horn. The excess power flowed out of the base of her neck, siphoning gradually from inside of her and from her limbs until she could feel them again. The room dimmed, and her pupils slowly dilated until she could see. At first, it was just four oscillating colours and two magenta ovals on a rosy-white background. It was... a face? The longest horn she’d ever seen spiraled from the... forehead? of the… mare, she realised when her eyes were working well enough to tell the difference. Then she saw that the undulating colours weren’t just a byproduct of her magically altered vision.
Oh dear…
Twilight was staring right into the face of the Princess. 
The last of her magic evaporated. Her hooves touched down on the ground. I was floating? All around her, magic was undoing itself. While she was in her trance, her magic had done a lot of things without her knowledge. Twilight heard a thud as her examiners, floating higher in the air than she had, tumbled roughly to the ground. Two potted plants in the corner… Oh Celestia… They had been her parents, and now thankfully they were again. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a large purple wall on one side of the classroom shrink into a small purple ball. Twilight cringed inwardly at all the damage she had caused.
“Twilight Sparkle,” said the Princess. Her voice was motherly and gentle.
 “Oh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean…” 
“You have a very special gift,” she said, not sounding mad. “I don’t think I’ve ever come across a unicorn with your raw abilities.” 
“Huh?”
“But you need to learn to tame these abilities through focused study.” 
“Huh?!” Why didn’t she sound mad?
“Twilight Sparkle, I’d like to make you my own personal protégé here at the school.” Twilight’s mind went blank for a minute. 
“HUH?!”
Princess Celestia looked at her expectantly. “Well?”
Twilight glanced over at her parents. They didn’t seem too badly shaken from their brief stints as plants. Her father nodded furiously, and her mother grinned, waving her hooves in the air, as if to say, “Do it!”.
        “YES!” Twilight jumped into the air out of sheer glee.
        “One other thing, Twilight.”
        Twilight let out a sound of confusion as she crashed down to the ground. As she lay sprawled on the floor, Princess Celestia pointed to Twilight’s flanks. Twilight turned her head and where there was nothing but a plain purple stretch of fur before, there was now a magenta six-pointed star surrounded by five smaller stars. 
        “My cutie mark!” This was all too much.“Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes!” she exclaimed, leaping in circles around the Princess. She’d done it! She’d made it! Even Princess Celestia thought she was…
        Oh. 
Twilight realised that she was bouncing around the Princess like a hyperactive frog. 
        “Eh… Heh… sorry…”



        Twilight could only contain her excitement for so long. “Did you hear what Princess Celestia said?” she asked as soon as they were out of the school. “She’s never seen a unicorn with my raw abilities! And- and she wants to teach me herself!”
        Both parents chuckled at that. “Yes, sweetie, we were there,” her mother said.
“Ooh! I can’t wait for summer to be over! I wonder what the new school’s like? I hope it has a big library! Smarty Pants will love it, I just know it! And I bet Princess Celestia is even nicer when she’s teaching, did you see her? She made all the magic just whoosh away, and she wasn’t even angry even though I made all the teachers float in the air! And she still wasn’t mad when I made that big hole in the ceiling and turned you two into plants… Ohmygosh! I turned you two into plants! Are you okay?!”
        Twilight’s parents smiled tolerantly at her. “It wasn’t so bad,” her father said, almost automatically. Her mother took a little longer to gather her thoughts.
        “I thought it was peaceful,” she said. Her father looked thoughtful for a moment and he opened his mouth to continue.  “I used to be a tree you know.” Her mother snorted softly.
        “What? That’s not true.” Twilight said, breathing heavily as she walked.
        “It is so! I was an old apple tree. Once, long ago, somepony cast a magic spell to permanently turn a bad pony into a tree, but it didn’t come without a price. As soon as the transformed pony had his roots in the ground, why, mine pulled out of it. My branches turned into legs and my roots into a tail.” He and her mother walked a little slower for a moment to let Twilight catch up. She lagged behind, breathing heavily.
“My face that you see here, why that used to be the leafy crown of the tree. Your mother and I met when she was just a little filly sitting under my branches in the shade,” he said, turning his head to watch Twilight canter in their direction. “I had always given her my apples,” said her father. 
Her mother tilted her head. “That implies some questionable things, doesn’t it?” she said. 
Twilight ran through all the reasons her father couldn’t have been a tree. When she tried to say them, though, her breath caught in her throat. She gulped air. Sweat dripped down her sides, rolling in beads off her forehead and into her eyes, stinging.
        “Aha, well I didn’t think about that then. I was a tree! Didn’t have any more brains than that lamppost over there.” He gestured in its general direction with his horn. The three of them walked up a slope, slowing their pace. Twilight panted, her hooves feeling like they were made out of lead.
        “Maybe we should rest a minute,” offered her mother.
        “Yes… *huff*huff* that sounds… *huff* good…” Twilight plopped down on to the dirt road, breathing deeply.
        “If I were still a tree, I would offer you an apple right about now.”
        “You were… *huff* Never a tree!” Twilight gasped finally. 
Her father nickered. “Twi’, honey, you don’t look so hot.” 
        “Do you need some water?” her mother said. “I have some here in my bags.” Twilight’s mother was always prepared for this sort of thing. 
Twilight didn’t reply for a minute, catching her breath. “I should be fine now. Can we just go a bit slower?” 
        “Of course,” said her father. The three of them walked at a more comfortable pace, no longer trotting. “But you really need to get more exercise. I never see you playing outside with the other fillies. You never know when you’re going to need to outrun something.”
        “Oh, don’t fuss,” her mother said to him, her tone scolding.
        “And you never know when you’re going to need to debate an unlikely anecdote while marching up a hill!” he said with a grin, ignoring her. Twilight groaned. She should’ve seen that coming.
        “Manipulation is much more effective when you don’t reveal your motivations,” her mother said flatly. 
Her father laughed before responding. “Well that was a freebie!” 
Twilight just stared at the both of them. “Are you two moonlighting as evil overlords?”
        “Technically, I’d be an overlady.”
        When the three of them got home Twilight was slightly out of breath again, and covered in a film of sweat. Twilight groaned as she made her way up the steps to her house. It wasn’t nearly that bad this morning.
        Twilight’s mother was making daffodil and daisy sandwiches for lunch. Her mother generally treated cooking as a mental exercise and a personal challenge, always trying to figure out the fastest and most efficient ways to heat-treat a meal. More than once, Twilight had ambled into the kitchen at dinnertime, only to encounter the portable family chalkboard covered with intimidating diagrams and differential equations. Her mother, of course, would be hunched in the corner, muttering about heat conductivity while floating a parsnip (or some other vegetable) above some arcane device she had jury-rigged out of forks and batteries.
        She wasn’t able to cast any time-saving cooking spells, and even if she did, Twilight suspected that she would consider it to be a form of cheating.
        With that said, her mother’s cooking got the job done. Once she had figured out how to cook something quickly, she really could cook it quickly. However, the speed often came at the cost of flavour, and she didn’t follow recipes too well. Casseroles were burned more often than not, and soup from scratch was always a disaster. Twilight had learned to go to bed early whenever she saw that her mother was attempting to make soup.
        Sandwiches, though, were hard to mess up.
        Twilight helped by fetching ingredients, while her father washed the used utensils in the sink. When the sandwiches were complete, the three of them sat together at the table. Her parents’ sandwiches floated in the air and Twilight munched at the one lying on her plate.
        “What’s the school going to be like?” Twilight asked between bites.
        “I can dig up the pamphlet for you if you want,” her mother replied. “But basically, it’s a boarding school for talented young unicorns from all over Equestria,” 
“Boarding school…” Twilight plucked the last pieces of sandwich off her plate with her teeth. She chewed and swallowed before opening her mouth again – she was eating with her parents, after all. “Isn’t that the kind of school where you live there?”
        “Well,” her father said evenly, “We’re only an hour and a half away, so you can come home on holidays and weekends.” He nibbled at his food thoughtfully for a minute before continuing. “Maybe you could even come home after school if you don’t have a lot of homework. Cafeteria food can be pretty awful.” His voice had a suspiciously helpful tone.
        Twilight’s father’s cooking was much better than her mother’s. Twilight looked forward to days when he found himself bored out of his mind; she would come home to a kitchen filled with pastries and sweets. There would be so much that they would have to give some away to neighbours, co-workers or classmates. Twilight knew that he knew this, and she flattened her ears as everything became clear.
        “You just want me to spend three hours walking every day.” 
        “Curse you for opening her eyes to my evil ways!” he mock-growled at Twilight’s mother. She laughed in response as she fished the pamphlet out of a pair of saddlebags hanging on the wall. It’s uncanny, Twilight thought, how she does that without even looking.
        Twilight spent the rest of the day in her room, poring over the relatively short pamphlet and recalling the events of the morning with a fluttery mixture of excitement and pride. She examined all the pictures closely, and read the words extra slowly, trying to get a sense of what her new school would be like.
        She noticed that all the fillies and colts wore the same thing: brown vests with neckties. This meant that she probably would have to wear them as well. The prospect of putting on a tie every day was a little intimidating, but maybe her father could help with that.
        Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, said the pamphlet, was focused on getting students into universities and important jobs. Twilight found this a little odd because it also said that the school’s program lasted for four years. Although that was a long time, it would be another six years before anypony could hire her to even deliver papers, and eight years before she could be admitted into a proper university. Every explanation Twilight could come up with was rather frightening. 
With over a month until the end of summer vacation, Twilight busied herself with learning as much as she could about magic, gathering books that she thought she needed for school, and practicing how to tie a necktie. There were a bazillion ways to do it, she’d found, but none of them were very complex. No matter what Twilight did, though, her knots were always messy and lumpy-looking.
 When Twilight found the time to ask her mother about it later, she had explained about the condensed schooling. Young unicorns would be allowed to attend grown up universities right away, after graduating from it, Twilight’s mother had told her as she had dug into the guts of a broken purple alarm clock, pulling out springs and cogs.
She’d said that graduates were so well-trained that they were as magically developed as an adult unicorn. Twilight remembered the screwdriver twisting around and around, tightening screws with an itchy squeak as her mother casually mentioned that the school packed eight years of education into just four. Twilight liked school, but she felt like a vise was tightening around her.



There was a heat wave a few nights later. 
When the weatherponies went on vacation, they went in droves, leaving only interns to take care of everything. Twilight, feeling like she was being steamed alive, wondered if they had taken the interns with them as well this year.
All of the doors and windows in the house were wide open to let in a breeze. There wasn’t a single lit candle in the house. 
Twilight’s father was down the street borrowing ice from a neighbour who had a talent for freezing things. Her mother was using her magic to work on a homemade fan, and Twilight was mixing a pitcher of lemonade in the kitchen from one of her father’s recipes. Mom’s horn was the only source of light in the whole house. Twilight watched her with curiosity as she poured sugar into the pitcher of lemony water. Her mother charged a dozen batteries with a current from her horn.
There was a whoop of triumph as the blades started spinning. Twilight observed in silence, focusing on trying to get the sugar to dissolve in the water.
“Twilight, sweetie,” said Mom. 
Twilight gave up on stirring the lemonade, and let go of the wooden spoon she held in her teeth. Half an inch of gritty sugar swirled around at the bottom of the pitcher. “Yeah, Mom?” 
Her mother trotted up to where the pitcher of lemonade was. A strainer and a large glass beaker flew from the cupboards. Lemonade poured from pitcher to beaker, and then was strained back into the pitcher. Her mother dumped the damp sugar into the beaker.
“Sugar dissolves faster in water if you apply heat and agitate it,” Mom told her as she turned on the stove. The sugar-filled beaker glowed white with magic as her mother swirled it a careful distance from the short flames using short, controlled motions. Twilight received a brief, but informative lecture on simple syrups and why you shouldn’t heat ordinary glassware. 
She watched quietly as her mother poured the now-dissolved sugar into the pitcher of lemon-water. Twilight stared at the lemonade. Oily-looking tendrils of syrup snaked their way down to the bottom.
“Is something the matter, Twilight?” 
“I … don’t know really… Why do you ask?” Twilight walked slowly into the living room. She held the lemonade with her magic, doing her best to keep it steady and not slosh any over the sides. The pitcher wobbled and shook in the air, splashing a few droplets onto the wooden floor. 
“Well,” said Mom, dabbing at the spilled lemonade with a cloth. “For one, you didn’t immediately ask a thousand questions.” 
“It’s just… I dunno.” Twilight said, after setting the lemonade down on the table.  She pawed at the ground, feeling foalishly transparent. 
Her mother furrowed her brows. She nuzzled Twilight and rested her head above Twilight’s neck in an equine hug. “If anything’s wrong you can tell me about it, whatever it may be. You know I won’t judge you, or think any less of you, or send you to the moon.” 
Twilight thought about that last thing for a moment. It was probably a joke.
“Besides,” she said, flatly. “I’m your mom. I’m not allowed to think bad things about you. They’d revoke my Mom license and throw me into Mom jail!” 
Twilight’s eyes widened at that statement. “They have Mom jails?” she asked.
“No, not really,” her mother explained. “I’m trying to break the ice by being facetious.”
“Oh.” The two of them sipped at their warm lemonade, and there was a moment of awkward silence before Twilight continued.
“I… when we were talking about the school…” she started. Her mother listened patiently, waiting for Twilight to collect her thoughts.
“It sounded like afterwards, I would be an adult.”
“Ah,” said her mother after a pregnant pause. 
“That’s going to happen anyway, though, isn’t it?” Twilight’s father said suddenly, startling the both of them. They hadn’t even heard him come in. A bag of ice hovered in the air in front of him. He carefully tipped some of it into the lemonade and stirred, the pitcher glowing blue. He placed the rest of the ice in one of the fan’s compartments, and the room cooled noticeably.
“Yeah,” admitted Twilight after a pause. “But I don’t know how to do all the important stuff you guys can. I don’t know how to say the right things and to be brave. I don’t know how the sky works or how to fix things…
“I can’t even make lemonade,” she finished lamely. “I guess what I’m trying to say is… it’s just… that... I don’t really know if I can be a grownup so soon.”
Twilight’s mother swept the smaller unicorn up into an embrace with both forelegs. “Oh, silly.” 
“Ack! Squishing… me…” Twilight squeaked. 
Her mother released her. “Sorry.” 
Twilight gasped for air.
“Graduating from school doesn’t automatically make you a grown-up mare,” her mother continued. “Not even if it’s the best school in Canterlot.” 
“And you’ll learn all those things,” Twilight’s father said gently. “It just takes time.” 
“We’re proud of you, and we’ll always be, no matter what you do and what you choose to become,” her mother said. “If you finish school and decide that you just want to spend the next four years going to a normal school and being an ordinary filly, that’s entirely up to you.” She gave Twilight’s father a meaningful look. “Your father and I are perfectly fine with that, and either way, it’s four whole years from now.”
“Mmm… We’ll worry about that then,” said Twilight’s father. Twilight smiled. The three of them spent the rest of the evening in a companionable silence, enjoying the cool wind from the fan and their ice-cold lemonade.



The next week, Twilight decided to make a trip to the library. She’d finally finished all the books she’d borrowed, and she wanted to take out some new ones. The skies outside were grey and cloudy, hinting at rain. Twilight sniffed at the air briefly, and wondered what it would be like to live in a different city or town, if you could just shout up at the pegasus ponies in the sky, and ask what the day’s weather would be. No matter, though. Rain, shine, or snow, she was going to get some books.
There were some young ponies playing in a park nearby. Twilight even recognized a few. She made sure that they didn’t see her, then broke into a gallop to avoid them. By the time she was at the library, the air was sweet and fresh-smelling, and she was out of breath. 
Twilight struggled with the library’s heavy stone doors, trying her best to magically turn the knob and pull back at the same time. She didn’t even bother attempting it physically. The doorknob was higher than she could reach without standing on her hind legs, and it was much too smooth and slippery to grip with her teeth. Even to turn it all the way she’d have to either do a headstand, or have the neck dexterity of an owl. Frustratingly, for a young unicorn, most of public buildings in Canterlot had doors like this. After a while, Twilight gave up and rapped on the door with her hooves. 
“Please stand clear of the doors,” said a muffled voice from inside. The doors glowed for a moment and opened slowly, revealing a friendly-looking green unicorn with a lemon-yellow mane. She wore a sleeveless buttoned blouse and a short skirt that concealed what Twilight knew was a jug with three “X’s” on it. 
“Good afternoon Misty Moonshine,” said Twilight, using her best manners. 
“Why hello there Miss Sparkle! It’s nice to see you again,” the doorpony said, smiling in response. “Come to return your books?”
“Yup! They were great, and I learned lots from them.”
“That’s good to hear.” Moonshine glanced up at the clouds and flared her nostrils. “You’d better get inside before that storm hits, Sparkle. Smells like it’s going to be a doozy.” 
Twilight didn’t need to be told twice. She walked quickly into the granite building, the doors grinding shut behind her. 
“I hope you find what you’re looking for,” Moonshine said, before burying herself in a novel.
Twilight peeked at the cover of Moonshine’s paperback. There was a large purple duck who seemed to be very in love with a frightened-looking antelope - Oryx and Drake, she read. She dropped all the books off in the return slot, and walked slowly to the magic section on the third floor.
The spiraling granite staircase was carved out of the building itself and Twilight’s hooves made a resounding clip-clop noise as she ascended. She always felt like she was being too loud whenever she went anywhere in the library. Other ponies her age said that the library was spooky, but to Twilight, any place that held a lot of books was a safe place, a good place.
She sighed softly as she reached the shelves housing the books on magic. She’d only started on them recently, and hadn’t even made a dent in the library’s magic collection. This wouldn’t do.
Twilight picked out any book that looked like it might be interesting. The shelves went all the way to the ceiling and not even a grownup pony, even a grown up pegasus pony, could dream of touching the upper shelves. The aisles were much too narrow for flying.
Just because she could, she reached out with her magic and pulled down a book from the very highest shelf. Doing this by herself made her feel wonderfully self-sufficient. She skimmed its text briefly before packing it into her saddlebags, not really caring if this particular book was a good book at all. 
By the time she felt ready to go, her saddlebags were bulging, and her legs wobbled from the weight. She glanced out one of the windows on the third floor landing and saw that it was raining hard outside (The pitter-patter of raindrops couldn’t penetrate what Twilight knew to be magically treated glass).
Twilight descended nervously, her left side pressed on the stone wall furthest from the guardrail. A small murmur of sound came from the lower floors of the building. she resisted the urge to take off her saddlebags and buck them down the stairs. And though she considered it, she didn’t lower herself on the steps like a foal, resting the barrel of her body on the floor and meeting each new step with two unsure hooves and a shaky shift of weight. 
Still, she really wanted to. 
Twilight took each step slowly. A scene played out in her head. A hoof would slip, or she would step in just the wrong place, and then she would teeter. Her hooves would skitter uselessly at the granite, she would careen headfirst down the steps. There would be a grisly snap and just like that, she would be dead.

She reached the ground unharmed, glad that she’d survived the epic adventure of Stairs. 
Then she looked back up at them and felt incredibly stupid.
She turned automatically towards the checkout desk, but then stopped. The ponies from the park were standing in the lobby, dripping rainwater on the floors and chatting with each other in low voices. 
They hadn’t seen her yet. She should go back upstairs and just stay there until both the storm and the ponies were gone. She’d already taken a half step backwards.
“Hey!” yelled a carnation-pink pegasus. “It’s Twilight Sparkle!” A dozen ears perked up and the fillies and colts they belonged to turned to look at her. The librarian sitting behind the desk gave a loud shush. 
“Sorry,” the pegasus whispered. 
“Twilight, hey! Wait up!” called an orange earth pony in a voice so loud it could barely be considered a whisper. 
Oh no no no... Twilight thought to herself as she backed up into the stairway. 
The earth pony (her name was Marigold, Twilight remembered) cantered up to the staircase to greet Twilight. “Aw, c’mon. What’s wrong? We just wanted to say hi.”
“Uh… Hi!” said Twilight. “I just realised I forgot all my stuff… upstairs. Yeah. And I’m going to be there a looong time trying to find it...” She gave Marigold a nervous smile. “Tell all the others I said hi to them as well, but I really have to be going. Itwasnicemeetingyouagainbye!” Twilight tried to whirl around on a single leg, hooves scrabbling for purchase on the stairs.
Her saddlebags were too heavy. She couldn’t balance properly, and all four hooves went out from under her.  She would’ve cracked her head against the stone, but she felt something jerk sharply against her chest. Twilight turned her head, and saw Marigold holding her up by the straps of her saddlebags.
“Ywwllyneedtwwukkkwwwgggww,” Marigold spat through gritted teeth. By then the rest of the gang had caught up, and had seen everything. 
“Huh?” Twilight’s ears folded back and her cheeks reddened. 
Marigold let go of the straps.“I said that you really need to watch where you’re going.” Marigold giggled. “Saw you trip right over your own hooves there. Plus, those bags weigh a ton! We can help you get your stuff from upstairs. We got nothing better to do anyway, right guys?” 
Most of them shrugged nonchalantly. The pink pegasus, Duncan, pointed at her flanks instead. “Ooo… You got your cutie mark! What is it?”
“It’s probably a compass. Anyway, my uncle has a compass cutie mark,” said a small blue unicorn filly marked with a brown hourglass. Twilight didn’t know her name, but she looked somewhat familiar.
“No way,” interjected a gray-maned unicorn – Stalwart Heart. “It’s definitely an explosion!” 
“Whoever heard of a purple explosion?” argued the first pony. “Anyway, those white things are obviously stars around it and you can navigate with stars so what else could it be but a compass?”
“It doesn’t have to be realistic!” said Stalwart Heart. “It’s a cutie mark!” 
“Does so!”
“Does not!”
“Does SO!” 
“Does NOT!”
“DOES SO!” The blue filly pounced on the brown colt. Her neck snaked back and forth as she jabbed at him with her blunt and stubby horn. 
“Ow! Ow! Quit it!” He rolled on the library floor, then tried to buck her off. “Stop poking me, you psycho!”
“Not until you admit that you’re an idiot!” The blue unicorn grabbed a mouthful of Stalwart Heart’s mane and pulled at it. Twilight noticed distantly that the filly was much better at talking with her mouth full than Marigold. I really have to get out of here, she thought to herself. 
The larger Stalwart Heart swung his head back and forth blindly, trying to knock her off. 
There was a smacking sound and an “oof!”, but she was only stunned for a second. In a springy catlike motion, she rolled off her side and tackled the colt, biting any reachable flesh. 
“Ow!”
Nopony was paying attention to her by then, all eyes turned to the fight on the stairs. She “stealthily” made her way to the librarian’s counter. 
“I just need to check these out quick, please, Mr. Hans,” whispered Twilight. 
The librarian had his full attention on the distraction by the stairs and hadn’t seen Twilight approach. He looked down at her, a little surprised, and nodded impatiently. His horn glowed. 
Mr. Hans bent down to touch all the books with his horn, undoing the anti-theft spell on them. “They’re due in three weeks,” he said automatically, walking out from behind the desk and cantering in the direction of the staircase.



Twilight was half a block from the building when she heard the sound of hoofbeats behind her. Stupid! Stupid! Why did you walk in a straight line, stupid?
“Twilight!” called a female voice. Twilight didn’t slow down, but she didn’t bother running either; she’d never outrun them. 
The blue and brown unicorns pulled up behind her. “Me and Stalwart got kicked out of the library…” started the blue filly. “And anyway we were wondering…”
The three of them walked together in the rain for a while without saying anything.
“What the heck is your cutie mark supposed to be?” finished Stalwart Heart. Both unicorns looked at Twilight expectantly. 
She sighed. “It represents magic.” 
“I told you it doesn’t have to be realistic!” said Stalwart Heart. The other five ponies had apparently decided that they would rather follow their friends in the rain than stay dry inside. Twilight saw them cantering from the library.
The blue filly sniffed. “Well just because it’s stylised doesn’t mean that it’s fake.”
“You’re just mad ‘cuz I’m right.”
“You weren’t right! It’s not an explosion either.” The filly stuck her tongue out at Stalwart Heart. “Anyway, you’re just mad because you’re stupid!”
“I was right. Magic is closer to an explosion than a compass!”
“No it’s not!”
“Yes it is!”
Twilight rolled her eyes and hummed. This was exactly why she didn’t want to hang out with other ponies her age. 
The other fillies and colts flanked her on both sides, watching with amusement. To her left, a grey unicorn (Jerome or Jeremy or something) absently shook the rain off his mane and tail, getting water all over her. Now she was soaked right through her fur. Twilight seethed.
“I bet you still think that foals come from – ”
“Enough already!” Twilight shouted, cutting the blue filly off. “I’ve tried being polite, but you ponies just won’t listen!” Water dripped from her wet bangs and into the mud as she glared at them. “So in case you didn’t get the hint - Leave! Me! ALONE!”
“Jeeze, Twilight...” Duncan was taken aback. “We were just being nice.”
Twilight didn’t recognize the lemon-yellow unicorn who spoke next. He looked barely older than a foal, and spoke in a very small voice. “Yeah, if you didn’t like us being here then you could’ve said.” 
“Jerome says you’re kinda a jerk and boy was he right,” said one of the fillies, a white unicorn without a cutie mark. Jerome, the grey unicorn who’d splashed rainwater all over her, just stared at a mud puddle.
Twilight gritted her teeth in frustration. And then, with the worst timing of any natural phenomenon ever, a bolt of lightning arced in the sky. It wasn’t far away either. Thunder rumbled through the air almost immediately. Twilight flinched, trying to curl into a ball, but she couldn’t. Something was tugging her head upwards. 
Magic. 
Her horn tingled and she felt her hooves lifting off the ground. Fillies and colts backed away from her, ears flat, pupils little black pinpricks. There was a dull pain in her eyes as everything got brighter and brighter. Aw fudge, not again.
A surge of energy rushed through her, and the world turned to white. She heard the shrieks of young ponies, some of the voices cut off mid-scream. She smelled ozone, chemical and metallic. 
Last time, it had hurt a little. This time, it hurt a lot. 
Her body twitched spasmodically from the effort of channeling so much magic, and she lost track of her thoughts in the haze.



When the glow had finally faded from her eyes, Twilight had no idea how much time had passed. She felt drained, tired in a weird way that she couldn’t quite describe, but at least it didn’t hurt anymore. 
It clearly hadn’t been raining for some time, but the sky was still stubbornly cloudy. The damage around her was surprisingly mild, just a few disturbed bushes and a slightly dented lamppost that might even have been that way earlier. She couldn’t see any sign of the young ponies. She really hoped they had just run off. 
The air was unnaturally quiet and still. 
“…Guys?” she said, looking around for any clue of their whereabouts. The tang of ozone still hung faintly in the air - Twilight didn’t know if it was from the lightning, or her magic. Underneath it, she smelled fresh urine. Somepony had wet himself. 
She traced the smell to a spot on the road. Somepony, probably the one who’d peed himself, had stepped in it and tracked it with him, but the trail stopped abruptly after a few steps. It was like the pony had just vanished. Oh no…What if she’d banished them all to some alternate dimension? Or… just made them disappear forever?
There was a loud pop behind her. She whirled around to see Marigold sitting awkwardly on the grass, purple wisps of magic rolling off her body. 
“Wha?... What just happened?” Marigold said, her words slightly slurred. In response, half a dozen pops went off around her. Ponies shot up from the grass, sending waves of violet-coloured distortion rippling through the air. 
“Sh-she turned us all into bugs!” said the blue unicorn filly with the streak of white in her mane and violence in her temper. The little yellow unicorn colt started to cry. 
“I didn’t mean to! It was an accident!” Nopony seemed to want to look directly at Twilight.
The yellow unicorn sniveled piteously, “I wanna go home…” Mucous and tears ran down his muzzle. Duncan got up slowly and trotted over to the little colt. Twilight watched guiltily as the pink pegasus cleaned the unicorn’s face with one of his stubby wings and draped the other wing across the foal’s back. The yellow colt hiccuped and sniffled.
“You made Cavendish cry.” Duncan’s voice was very low.
“What a freak,” said Jerome, finally breaking his silence. “Let’s get out of here before she gets mad again and kills our families.”
 Cavendish, squealed. “Noo…” He pulled free of Duncan’s wing and hid behind him, dropping to the dirt.
“I wouldn’t… I couldn’t…” Twilight whispered to deaf ears. She hung her head, suddenly very interested in what the ground looked like.
“Go on, Cav. Get up,’” Duncan said gently to the yellow unicorn. “I won’t let her do anything to Ma and Pa.” The pink pegasus nudged Cavendish with his nose and Cavendish staggered forward unsteadily at first, but then broke into a run. Duncan turned to Twilight and gave her a very long hard look, filled with distaste. He made an agile one-hoofed pivot and galloped after his brother. Everypony else took off in different directions. 
“I bet she blew up her house…” hissed Stalwart Heart to the white unicorn filly.
“Ssshutupshutup… “ she whispered back, ears pressed so close to her skull that her profile was otter-like. “She can prolly hear you…” The filly spared a nervous glance at Twilight, who looked back in apologetic shame. The white unicorn squeaked and galloped faster than Twilight had ever seen a filly gallop. Stalwart Heart was right at her heels.
“I’m sorry!…” Twilight’s voice broke. She pulled her ears pulled back and held her head low. Nothing was around to hear her anymore except the empty air.



Over the next couple of weeks, Twilight studied and practiced her magic. She kept herself busy. She tried not to think about it. 
She knew that it was unlikely she’d get in trouble, but at the same time she still didn’t want her parents to know. She didn’t want them peering over her shoulder all the time making sure she didn’t accidentally kill anypony. They would never say it. They would never call her a failure. But just them being there all the time... they would be expecting her to fail.
Twilight rationalized that if she stayed at home and didn’t leave, it was almost the same as if she had told them to begin with. Summer was coming to an end anyway. It wouldn’t be that long.
It didn’t come up again until the last week before school. She shouldn’t have gotten those books after all. Returning stuff to the library meant that she had to go out again.
Twilight planned a circuitous route to the library that cut through a residential area and didn’t involve walking near any public parks or playgrounds. By avoiding the places where young ponies gathered, she thought, she wouldn’t see any of the ponies she’d run into that day, and hopefully she wouldn’t run into any other kids either. 
Luckily, nothing really happened on the way. She quickly dropped her books off and made her way back home, retracing her path. On the way back she realised why her original plan wasn’t so clever to begin with. The neighbourhood that she used to avoid the parks was where all those ponies lived. 
She caught a glimpse of the white unicorn filly from the other day. The filly bolted into her house as Twilight trotted past. 
Twilight found that Duncan and Cavendish lived nearby as well; Cavendish didn’t see her, mostly because Duncan made it his duty to stand between Twilight and the little yellow unicorn, blocking his view. Twilight didn’t say anything to them. She stared down at the pavement and pretended that she didn’t notice they were there. She supposed she should have been happy that nopony was bothering her, but instead, she just felt rotten.



Twilight used the last few days of summer to practice her magic. She had to keep herself busy if she didn’t want to think about anything else. Smarty Pants practiced too. Twilight knew she needed to practice writing without her teeth and the most efficient thing to do would be to combine work and play. It would be perfect. 
Smarty Pants’ little purple quill scratched at the notebook. Twilight pretended that the grey earth pony doll was inventing very difficult magic spells. 
I have invented a spell to cure all of Equestria of the common cold, said Smarty Pants, prancing in triumph. Now it is time to move on to my next lofty goal: Geometry homework!
“Together we can triangulate the distance of the whole world!” Twilight buried herself in an old textbook, refreshing her memory on some trigonometry her father had shown her. She wished dearly that she had some magic textbooks to pore over as well, but, well... she wasn’t going to risk anything like that again.
Spending time with her father was a last resort. He would always ask some very pointed questions about why she wasn’t doing what she normally did, staying all day in her room or at the library. 
“Dad,” said Twilight, before he could bring up any other subject. “How do you figure out how big a hippopotamoose is again?” 
Twilight’s father was kneading a ball of dough with his forehooves, but stopped and cocked his head at the question. “Hippopotamoose?”
“You know…” said Twilight. “The triangle... thingy.” She ran to her room and grabbed her textbook, flipping it open to the page she’d been looking at.
“Oh! You mean a hypotenuse,” he corrected. Twilight’s father explained the simple equation to her.
“Oh... But then what about the other sides?”
“Um...” He picked up the dough again and continued to knead absently. “I haven’t really planned a proper algebra lesson for today...”
“But then,” insisted Twilight, “what if somepony kidnaps me and shows me a triangle and won’t let me go until I tell them how long all the sides are?”
Her father made a little choking sound. “That... doesn’t seem likely,” he said, finally.
Twilight frowned. A filly at her old school said that she could get her mother to tell her anything she wanted if she phrased it in a hypothetical situation where something bad happened to her. Maybe she wasn’t going far enough? “What if they murder me!” 
“By the way,” he said, changing the subject. “Since neither me or your mom are going to be around when you’re at school.” Her father put the springy dough into a large mixing bowl, covering it with a damp cloth. “Would you like to learn how to pronounce any word correctly just by looking it up in the dictionary?”
“Would I!” 
It turned out that the funny little symbols next to a word in the dictionary were actually characters in an alphabet that was only for pronunciation. There were letters for every sound imaginable, even for ones that she’d never heard anyone use like “voiceless labial-velar plosives” and “alveolar clicks”. The character used for the latter was a slippery one, since she’d always known it as an exclamation mark (or as her mother had taught her, a symbol meaning factorial). 
Twilight opened up book after book, translating her favourite passages from words into sounds. It was dinnertime by the time she realised that her father had probably brought the whole thing up to keep her out of his hair, but by then she was having too much fun to care. 
“hɛloʊ mɑːm haʊ wəz jʊər deɪ,”  Hello, Mom. How was your day? she wrote on the family chalkboard when her mother walked through the front door. 
“You’ve been teaching her the International Phonetic Alphabet, haven’t you?” 
“Yup.”



Twilight’s parents planned on walking her down to the school on the day before classes started. All three of them carried heavy saddlebags and wheeled luggage. Smarty Pants rode on Twilight’s shoulders. Twilight imagined that she was appraising the cargo with a critical eye. Smarty Pants’cultured voice echoed in Twilight’s head, No sewing books, what a shame.
“Are you sure you need this many books, Twi’?” her father said as they left the house. “The library at your school probably has a big enough collection of its own.”
“It’ll have enough magic bookth for thure,” Twilight said, lisping around the handle in her mouth and pushing the huge suitcase forward with her teeth. She let go of it briefly. “But I bet it won’t have a very big collection of standard literature or poetry. What if somepony else needs to read The Headless Horse and they just don’t have it!”
“Fair enough,” he told her, pulling a suitcase behind him with his magic, “but just think of how much trouble the trip back home would be.” 
Twilight blanched at that. “Maybe it would be alright if I just left some of the bigger suitcases at home.”
“Atta girl,” he said, wheeling the tallest ones back inside.
Stripped down to the bare necessities, literary and otherwise, it actually took a little less time than usual to get to the school. 
At the top of the slope, Twilight spun her luggage around, ignoring the looks from her parents and their orders to hurry up and stop wasting time. She clambered on the huge suitcase and held the bag steady with her magic. Facing the bottom of the steep slope she gave herself a teeny tiny push. 




Her parents had galloped after her, chastising her at the bottom, but it was worth it.

“Are you sure everything will be alright?” her mother said when the school was in view.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I’m not saying anything is going to go wrong,” she said. “I just want to make sure that if anything happens, you would tell us, correct?”
“…Yes?” Twilight said, confused.
“I’m just making sure that it’s perfectly clear – ”
“Twilight,” interrupted her father. “Your mom’s trying to say that we know what happened with the other colts and fillies that day you went to the library, and that we don’t blame you, but she just wishes that you would tell us these things.”
“Oh…” she said, cheeks reddening. “I didn’t think –”
“No, you didn’t.” Her mother gave her a serious look. “We’ve never punished you for things that you had no control over,” she said taking a deep breath. “I fully understand that ponies your age have their own lives and secrets that they feel they need to keep. You don’t need to tell us everything.” Her father nodded at that statement and her mother continued. “But when something this dangerous happens, we trusted you to let us know so that we could do our best to keep you safe, so that we could keep all the other fillies and colts safe.” Twilight’s mother shook her head sadly. 
Her mother didn’t say it, but the words hung heavy and unspoken in the air: You let us down. She had tried not to do it. She’d kept quiet and hadn’t let herself out of the house... and she’d done it anyway. Twilight felt like she was about to cry.
“When did you find out?” Twilight whispered, starting to tear up.
“The day after it happened, Twi’” said her father. “We don’t live in a bubble you know. We talk to other parents too.” He sighed. “Nopony was injured and I figure you thought it was no harm, no foul. We were just hoping you would come clean about it on your own.”
Twilight sniffled.“I didn’t want to worry you...” 
Her mother gave her a sad look. “It’s water under the bridge now,” she said as they reached the front doors of the school. “Just in the future… please do better.”
With that, her mother and father combined their magic. Both of the school’s front doors shimmered and pulled open, leaving a wide path in front of her. Twilight walked inside, both parents in her wake.




A big thanks goes to feotakahari who helped me edit this chapter.


AN: I do not own Wolf Speaker.

Also, this document was initially posted on Google Docs. There are a couple of formatting issues due to FIMFiction's font size restrictions and stuff. The original story can be viewed here: 

http://www.equestriadaily.com/2011/11/story-darkest-before-dawn.html