So much can happen in just a second. With over eighty-thousand of them every day, how can a single one make so much difference? Of course, that’s not to say that most of them don’t pass by the wayside, but it seems so strange that a single second could change the course of my entire life.
There was a certain volatility that came with living in Ponyville. Ever since Princess Celestia’s protégé, Twilight Sparkle, had arrived, there had been no shortage of spells-gone-awry, villains hell-bent on their destructive goals, or disasters of any sort. The unicorn seemed to attract just about anything out of the ordinary. As such, she had naturally become somewhat adept at coping with the unpredictable.
One thing, however, that Twilight knew she could have never been prepared for, was something not on the catastrophic scale that so regularly threatened the inhabitants of Ponyville, but was instead a simple matter of realization. The epiphany had blindsided her so thoroughly, but, in retrospect, seemed so absurdly obvious. However, it was certainly understandable given her inexperience at the time. If there was one matter that Twilight’s studies of friendship long neglected, it was the matter of love.
In its romantic sense, Twilight had long lived outside of the influence of love. Sure, she loved her friends dearly, and they meant more than most anything to her. When it came to finding a stallion, though, she had never found the idea of falling in love appealing. The prospect of caring about somepony so much that it could warp your perception of the world was, at the very least, uncomfortable. After all, her mental faculties were one of the things that Twilight would very much prefer to keep intact.
However, a pony as unpredictable as the city they lived in had other plans.
When Pinkie suddenly confessed to her, Twilight had been at a loss for what to do. She had never learned anything about how you could let a friend down gently, yet it was what she needed to do. After all, she had never been positively disposed towards romance, and Pinkie Pie was obviously incompatible with her. She quickly made up a contrived spiel about how it would affect their friendship too much, but as she opened her mouth to speak, something stopped her.
Just for a second, she wondered why Pinkie Pie would have fallen in love with her. They had been spending a lot of time together recently, and whenever Twilight answered the door, she hoped it would yield that same exuberant, infectious smile that Pinkie wore. Pinkie had almost seemed sad whenever it was time for her to leave, and though Twilight knew she would be back tomorrow, she had felt that same reluctance to let her go.
So, perhaps then Twilight could understand why Pinkie had fallen for her, but that did not mean that things would work out. On a logical level, it was absurd; but on an emotional level…she actually had not considered the possibility. Though the idea seemed so outwardly absurd to her, Twilight at least had to dignify Pinkie’s confession by figuring out what she felt.
Of course, there was little to figure out. In a single second, everything she had felt fit together beautifully, and it all added up to one brilliantly simple conclusion. It explained so much about their interactions with each other. And though there was no way Twilight could possibly understand it, she felt a trust towards Pinkie that everything would be fine. It was the sort of trust that, against her better judgment, she did something for the first time in her life: She took a leap of faith.