Twilight Twinkle aged twelve
It was a nice quiet day in Ponyville, and Wisp and Fluttershy were eating breakfast, after having fed all the animals. The two sat there, occasionally one of the two would glance up and smile warmly at the other. There was a knocking on the door, and Fluttershy made her way over toward the door, and opened it.
"HEY, WISP!" Twilight Twinkle boomed, the windows rattling as she did so. A few chickens outside clucked nervously, and Whisper Wind and his mother both recoiled from the noise.
"Good morning, Twilight Twinkle." the young colt said, once his hearing came back.
"So you are no longer grounded?"
"I am no longer grounded." the unicorn beamed. She stared at her friend.
"You look kinda... terrible." she said. It was true. In addition to the still visible scars along his backside just past his wings, he looked somewhat pale, and there were noticable bags under his eyes.
He glanced at Fluttershy, then back to Twinkle, "I've not been sleeping well."
The two walked out into the garden, although Fluttershy reminded them not to set hoof near the Everfree Forest, ignoring the obvious fact that she was the one who choose to live next to the forest filled with deadly creatures in the first place. A veritable multitude of questions swarmed through Twinkle's mind, and of course she had brought a list.
"So how do you feed on emotions? Does shapeshifting hurt? How do you know which emotions to feed on? What do they taste like? How can you fly if your wings have holes in them? If you have fangs do you eat meat? If you do, what does meat taste like? Why aren't you sleeping well? (sorry, that's a new one.)"
The changeling stared at her.
"Sorry," the royal blue mare said sheepishly, "I figured it wasn't worth asking all of them." She blushed. He sighed, staring up into the sky.
"My dreams seem to feature singing. Usually ones that turn into full chorus numbers."
"What are they about?" Ghost-like recollections flashed through his mind, disturbing and alien sensations.
"Nothing I can remember." he lied. Twinkle stared at her friend.
"Dreams are just the mind working things out." she just said.
"I suppose. I wish mine were less uniform, and more... nice." For reasons he wasn't sure of, he though of Shining Sapphire.
Twinkle nudged him.
"I think you're just one of nature's grouches."
"Am not."
"Am so!"
*****
Three months later
"I am very sorry, your highness." The sycophantic teacher said to her mother, who just sat there, her face utterly dispassionate. Twilight Twinkle had once again gotten into trouble at school. Or rather some ponies had gotten her into trouble with taunting and more taunting. There had been a lot of them, but not a brain-cell between them.
Taunting a child capable of fighting timberwolves and escaping (mostly) intact was practically labelled as suicide.
Twilight Twinkle ignored the teacher's rambling. She'd heard the same old things before. They wouldn't dare kick her out, partly because the media backlash would probably ruin them, or just word-of-mouth, but she'd still get her ears nagged off or yelled at by her mother. Or worse, the comparisons. The endless comparisons.
The walk back home was quiet. Once they reached home her mother wordlessly walked off, leaving Twinkle sitting by the front door. She looked down at her hooves. She felt something. Something that had been building for a long while. She had been content to ignore it until just that moment. She walked through the rather large house to where her mother was sitting in her study, large amounts of book piled around her.
"Mom?" there was no response.
"Mom?"
"Hmm? Wut...?" She said, focusing on the books. This required greater techniques.
"Mom." The sterner, harsher voice got her attention.
"Yes, my litty filly." She said, smiling. It was an annoying attempt at mimicing Princess Celestia and it didn't really work. Probably on account of Celestia being old and wise enough to get away with it, rather than a forty-something year old who still couldn't dance very well.
"Do you... love me?" Twilight Sparkle looked like someone had stabbed her in the heart.
"Of course I do. Why would you say that?"
Tears welled up in the girl's eyes as she tried not to think of some of the things the bullies had said to her. Her mother sat next to her.
"What is it, sweetie?"
"The other kids at school. They said..." The tears were beginning to flow.
"What did they say?"
"They said... they said..." She sobbed slightly, "They said I'm a failure, because I'm not like you." There was a moment of silence where the only noise in the room was a clock ticking, and some birdsong from outside which did sort of kill the mood slightly.
"What?"
"They said I'd never be any good because I don't have wings!"
The silence from a second ago was replaced with a different, far more awkward silence that absorbed all possible conversation. From a moment nothing happened. Then Twilight Sparkle hugged the small damp puddle that her daughter had turned into.
"Don't you listen to them, dear. Don't you listen." Twinkle's only response was a series of sobs. She continued for several minutes, her mother just gently cradling the foal. Eventually she stopped crying.
"why don't I have wings, mom?" Twilight Sparkle bit her lips. She had vowed to tell her daughter of why she had wings and her child did not, but she hadn't been expecting to do it after her daughter had gotten into trouble for being bullied for not having wings. So she didn't say that. Instead she choose something far worse.
"You don't need wings, Twinkie. You're special just the way you are."
*****
Unfortunately Twilight Sparkle's reassurances did not actually help Twilight Twinkle, and as her school career continued she began to quickly fall behind, a rather dangerous prospect when one had been skipped ahead. And each time, she heard the muttering, the casual remark made without thought.
"Twilight Sparkle could've done that."
"-sure she's actually her daughter?"
"My grandma can do better transfiguration better than that, and she's dead!"
Needless to say, for a twelve (and a bit) year old child, this was unbearable. So, one day a really, really, really foolish idea found its way into Twilight Twinkle's head. Careful studying, and the occasional trip to Ponyville to visit miss Doo, eventually yielded an unusual reward: a spell capable of picking any lock. And using this fantastic lock-picking spell (which apparently wouldn't work on wooden locks, for some reason that Miss Doo would not elaborate on) she stealthily made her way into the Royal Canterlot Archives and after analysing the routes of the guard, and a small amount of mad dashes, managed to find a way into the Star Swirl the Beared wing. Elated with her triumph, she gave a morally ambiguous chuckle, before moving onwards.
*****
"Afternoon" The dark blue stallion said to Twilight Sparkle, who was for once not reading a book. She was reading a newspaper.
"Afternoon" It was the carefully thought-out and well-implemented dialogue of a married couple with little to talk about.
"How's your day been?"
"Quiet." Said Twilight Sparkle. There was a brief pause. After several years of escapades Twilight Sparkle had almost learnt how to not tempt fate. Almost.
She sighed a long-suffering sigh.
*****
A problem with the Royal Canterlot Archives, or more accurately the problem, with the Royal Canterlot Archives, was the sheer disarray of the place. Scrolls were placed in shelves without regard to any form of organisation, which made finding what she was searching for unbelievably difficult, but eventually Twilight Twinkle found what appeared to be a suitable scroll, and chuckled once more. She focused her magic, and began reciting the scroll. As she recited, the corresponding parts of the scroll lit up with an etheral glow.
She had a good feeling about this crazy plan.
Half a minute later and the good feeling was gone as bright light swirled around her. She was vaguely certain she could hear orchestral music. Her legs felt weird, her neck felt weird, her head, her everywhere. Except her eyes. Those felt fine. Weird. After a short while the light and swirling ended, and the music passed away. And she collapsed. Darkness took her.
*****
There was no light, only faint voices and a strange rhythmic noise, high pitched and somewhat irritating. After a while she was sure she could feel something warm touching her front leg.
"I think she's waking up!" A familiar voice said. Her eyes slowly opened, to a blinding light shining straigh into her eyes. She could make out two blurs, one right next to her, and slightly extending over a dark blue blob that was probably her leg. Another was by the greyish / mucus green blob that was solidifying into a hospital bed. This blob soon turned into her father, smiling nervously the way only a concerned parent could. Which meant the other would be...
Yes, it was. It was her mother. Looking both concerned and disapproving. Twinkle tried to move, only to find her legs weren't quite moving the way she would have wished. At closer inspection the reason became obvious.
They were longer than they should have been. Much longer. Panicked thoughts began to race through her head.
"So... guessing the spell didn't work?" She said nervously.
"What were you thinking?" Her mother snapped, "Breaking into the Star Swirl the Bearded wing of the Royal Canterlot Archives and playing around with experimental spells? What were you trying to do?"
"Guessing it didn't work." She looked at the nervous look on her father's face.
"What?" Then something occured to her. The word 'longer' came to mind. She lifted a leg. A long, flexible leg.
"That wasn't what I was hoping for" She eventually said.
"It seems you aged yourself by about four years. You look like a sixteen year old now." Her father said, glancing occasionally at Twilight Sparkle's livid expression.
She waved the hoof in front of her face.
"Oh." She said. For a moment, she had presumed she'd just been out for that long.
"Four years doesn't sound that bad" she added, limply. Twilight Sparkle said nothing, merely walking out of the room. Twinkle looked at her father.
"Your mother's just... taking this a bit hard. You've been out for a while. And we... well..." he looked trailed off for a moment. Then he smirked slightly.
"You should have heard her wondering about how you got into the Star Swirl wing. I thought she was going to write a paper on it."
Father and child smirked at that. He walked over to her and smiled.
"You just rest up." He said, before walking out of the room, leaving Twinkle with nothing to do, save a book her mother had left. As it turned out, it was... well, about adult life.
"Mom has a sense of humour." Twinkle said, eyes wide in shock.
*****
As it turned out, being sixteen was difficult. It took a few months to get used to the longer legs and body, and she frequently found herself bumping into things by accident. And that was before being a body that had reacted to going from twelve to sixteen in the same manner most cats reacted to being woken up. Worse still, Twilight Sparkle kept treating her like she was ten. The only consolation was that Wisp and Shining Sapphire both reacted with considerable aplomb.
"How unusual." Wisp had said, the same way somepony would say 'it's raining again'.
"Suits you" was Shining Sapphire's remark.
*****
Of course, eventually being a twelve (and a bit) year old in the body of a sixteen year old became routine, as if children routinely aged themselves by four years. Everything seemed fine and both Twilights overcame the whole 'broke into a library' situation, and merely settled into an arrangement where neither talked to the other for prolonged periods, occasionally acknowledging each other at mealtimes at the most.
Twinkle found herself feeling okay with such a situation however. Until one day...
*****
Twilight Twinkle aged fifteen (physically nineteen)
The day was lovely. Birds chirped in the sky, clouds wafted lazily and a slight breeze cooled faces warmed by the lovely summer sun.
The only possible dampner was Twilight Twinkle complaining.
"Mom, I'm not a little kid. Magic shows are boring." She said, in a particularly whiny tone.
"Oh, don't complain. Just sit through to the first break, for me?"
Twinkle pouted. She would have rather been somewhere else. Perhaps with Wisp, who was getting to be rather tall and... muscled. There was an odd feeling in the air, one she couldn't put her hoof on, but it was driving her to distraction.
The show started, and everything seemed fine. The blue showmare seemed to like the sound of her own voice though. She performed all the usual tricks, a few brags, occasional bald-faced lies (as Twilight Sparkle kindly pointed out). Everything went well for about half an hour. Then everything went dark. Not because she'd gone unconcious. The sun was still there, but the colour wasn't reaching them. And the magician on stage was nowhere to be seen.
"Ladies and Gentlestallions, we regret to inform you that the Bland and Uninteresting Trixie has been cancelled." Twinkle looked at her mother, who looked utterly confused, and terrified.
"Instead, we present a far more entertaining fare." A strange jaunty tune started playing out of nowhere.
"Presenting, the one, the only, the dashing and desirable..."
A strange, mish-mashed creature appeared on the stage, wearing a top hat and carrying a cane, which it promptly tossed away. The cane hit the ground and exploded into a shower of strange balls of fur.
"Discord has returned!"