//------------------------------// // Chapter 1: Glasses // Story: Twilight Sparkle: Ghost Savior // by Blueheartpegasus //------------------------------// The sound of chirping filled the ears of the purple alicorn, forcing her into wakefulness. The air around her was cold, and the ground underneath her was like ice. Still half asleep, she rolled around and searched with her hooves for her blanket. She found none, and didn't feel her soft bed underneath her. Instead, she seemed to be laying on cold, hard tile. Hoofsteps neared. The mare didn't notice, she just rolled herself into a nearby wall and hugged up against it in an attempt to go back to sleep. The wall smelled of old parchments and ink. The alicorn, relaxing in the familiar scent, sighed sleepily and started to breath softly and slowly in sleep. "Asleep on the floor again?" a pegasus mare rolled her eyes. "At least I fell asleep on a cloud." As the pegasus walked closer, her cyan color shown brightly and her multi-colored hair stood out. "Wake up! Come on, you'll kill me for letting you sleep this long..." she poked the alicorn in the side with her hoof. "...ive mow inutes...." the alicorn mumbled, barely audible. "Twilight, wake up!" the pegasus poked her again, harder. When that didn't work, she sighed. "I have to get out the big guns." The pegasus spread her wings. She flew up near the ceiling. They were in a large, library like place, but there were more than just books. There were shelves that towered above and were filled with various scrolls, spellbooks, and do-dads. A few windows allowed the sun to shine in, making the miles of dust on everything visible. The cyan mare flew to the nearest shelf and picked up the first do-dad she could reach; a pair of large, circular 'dork' glasses. "Oh, Twilight, look at this!" she called down in a purposefully loud voice. "An old relic that could be full of magic potential!" She then held the glasses out on one hoof and let them slowly slip away. "Oops." she said innocently. The glasses plummeted towards the unforgiving tile far below. They were sure to shatter if they hit it. They seemed to fall in slow motion, the sun reflecting off the lenses as they slowly flipped about, falling, falling, falling... Suddenly, they were surrounded in glittering, magenta magic. "RAINBOW!" Twilight Sparkle stood below, now wide awake, glaring angrily up at the pegasus. "How could you? This could be a valuable magical or historical artifact and you just drop it?! Do you-" "I know, Twi." Rainbow landed next to her friend, a smirk on her face. "I knew you would wake up if I dropped it." The alicorn gritted her teeth. "Still, this is the Canterlot Archives! You can't just destroy everything in here!" suddenly, the anger faded from her face as she realized what she had said. "Wait, the Canterlot Archives?' "Yeah, you fell asleep." Rainbow told her. "The others went home, but I decided to stay with you 'cause you would probably want to do more research." Twilight thought for a second, then nodded. "Oh, thank you. I would like to research a bit more. But why did you stay behind?" "Fluttershy had her animals to take care of, Aj has a farm, Pinkie has a job, and Rarity has a job and a sister. I'm on vacation from my work for so I'm the only one who could stay." Rainbow explained. Yesterday, the six friends had come to the Canterlot Archives in search of a few ancient spells. They had been there all night, so when Twilight fell asleep Rainbow had told the others to leave. "Alright then, thanks for staying." Twilight got to work immediately, trotting over to a shelf she hadn't searched yesterday and started looking around in it. She unraveled scrolls and read through the runes, read the old spellbooks, and set aside the enchanted objects for further investigation. There was a pile of enchanted objects on the cloud Rainbow Dash had brought in, gathered there so they would be out of harm's way. The glasses were laid on top as the pegasus took them from Twilight's telekinesis. How can she already be reading? She just woke up! It takes me an hour to be awake enough to speak properly let alone read this gibberish. Rainbow thought. She gazed out the window, able to see the streets of Canterlot outside. She saw a sign on a building with a mug of coffee on it. she licked her lips at the thought of the caffeine. "Hey, Twi, how about I go get us some coffee?" she asked, turning back to the unicorn. "Sure." Twilight stopped her search for a second, looking around the room. She saw her's and Rainbow's saddlebags off in a corner. They had both brought a few things as they had expected to be there a long time. The alicorn levitated her saddlebags over and took out a bag of bits, tossing them up to Rainbow. The pegasus nodded, grabbed her own bag of bits, and flew out the window. Twilight went back to searching. She had already created a new stack of ancient books, and when she turned she accidentally knocked them over with her wings. She cursed and picked them up again. I'm not used to these things. she thought. She used to be a unicorn, but her mentor, Princess Celestia, had given her wings and made her a princess about a month earlier. Twilight had considered moving into the castle, but she couldn't bear to leave her friends, so she stayed in Ponyville and only came to Canterlot for royal duties she couldn't do at home. But yesterday, when searching through all the old books she had in the basement of the library she lived in, she found a few pages missing from some old volumes. Knowing that they were copies of books in the Canterlot Archives and that important spells were on those pages, she asked her friends to come with her to Canterlot to find them. Evidently, all except Rainbow Dash had left last night after she had fallen asleep among the books and scrolls. After stacking the books again and seeing that none were what she was looking for, Twilight re-shelved them and went on searching. "This is gonna take awhile." she said aloud to herself. She glanced out the window Rainbow had left through. "Maybe I should just tell Rainbow to go home. I shouldn't keep her here..." *ssssssstt* "Gaah!" Twilight leaped back, spreading her wings and knocking more stacks of scrolls and books off the shelves. "What was that?" The sound, that seemed to be coming from the glasses upon the cloud, sounded almost like a fizzing. A bit like somepony opening an energy drink or the world's most shaken soda. The sound was gone quickly, and silence once again descended all around the young princess. "Is... is somepony there?" Twilight crept closer to the cloud. No answer, not even a shuffle. "Hello?" she flapped her wings gently and landed on the cloud, gazing at the glasses. The morning sunlight reflected off of them, and she thought they seemed to glow with midnight blue power. Was she imagining it? Afraid her own magic would disturb its power, Twilight picked the pair of glasses up with her hooves. She carefully placed them upon her face and... A purple earth pony appeared before her. "Waaah!" Twilight fell backwards off of the cloud, smacking her head against the hard flooring of the Canterlot Archives and falling unconscious. Rainbow Dash picked up the two coffees, balancing them on her back in between her wings. "That'll be six bits." the gruff stallion at the counter of Starbits grunted, holding out his hoof. Dash grabbed her money bag and took six bits out of it, not touching Twilight's. The stallion took the bits and nodded for Dash to leave. Rainbow nodded and left, careful to take both cups in her forehooves without dropping them and flying out of the shop. Twi's not going to be happy if she finds out I paid for her drink. She probably counted her bits again to make sure I didn't. Still, she shrugged and flapped her wings quickly. She wasn't far from the window, where she could just see... Twilight Sparkle, laying sprawled on the floor with one wing bent unnaturally. "Oh no!" Rainbow swooped through the window, set the coffee cups on the floor by the wall, and landed next to her friend all in the same second. She looked over the alicorn, and only could come to two conclusions; the bump on the back of her head bent that she had hit her head (probably on the floor), and she wouldn't wake up. The cyan pegasus, although reluctant to leave the unconscious pony behind, raced out the window again to find help. She could be really hurt, and Dash was no doctor. "Did she see me?" the earth pony leaned over the edge of the cloud she was sitting upon. Below, she could see the unconscious alicorn. "Is that what scared her?" She sighed and rested her chin on her hoof. Her darker purple mane fell about her shoulders, and her tail curled around her frame. The cloud didn't react to the pony on it, not even a few puffs sinking in under her weight. It was almost like she wasn't there. She stared down at Princess Twilight Sparkle, having nothing else to do. She watched as Rainbow Dash, a pony she had seen around Ponyville a lot, swooped in and then back out. "Is that...?" the earth pony suddenly smelled something, seconds after the pegasus had left. It smelled... like something she missed. She looked around, and saw what the source was. Two cups of coffee from Starbits. She stood and hopped off of the cloud, gently floating to the floor. Neither cloud nor floor showed any signs of her moving on them, and no sound was heard. She trotted over to the cups and gazed at them, magenta eyes wide. The wonderful Styrofoam cups with the great liquid inside. "I wish..." the pony sighed. "I wish I could drink it." She sat next to the cups, enjoying the scent of what she could not have. Suddenly, *ssssssssstt* There was the sound again. The sound that haunted her entire being. She clamped her hooves over her ears, standing up on her hind legs. "Stop it!" she shouted at nothing. When she stood, her tail moved away from her flank, revealing her cutie mark. It was a bunch of grapes and a strawberry.