FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC REDUX
It was not going to be just another ordinary day for Twilight Sparkle.
Twilight pulled up into the driveway of her father’s house. Her well- used Honda Civic sounded as if it was thanking her for giving it a rest. She got out and admired the view of the Pacific; after all, it wasn’t often that she came to the shore. She supposed in a way she should've been thankful one of her parents was a beautiful, famous supermodel and movie star, for the comfortable, if sheltered upbringing and the somewhat decent (by her own estimation) looks that she had.
Twilight glanced at herself in the driver side window. She was still very young, with her father’s patented dark, swarthy features. Of course, she could easily make out her mother in her tiny, lithe frame and her long, straight jet- black hair, complete with those two streaks of pink and purple. She blew at her straight bangs in a half- sigh and remembered a time not so long ago when she desperately wanted to share everything in common with her mother. Alas, no longer; hence, the perennial highlights.
Twilight walked into the front kitchen, as always, expecting to find her father sitting at the table, a full English breakfast awaiting them on this fine Sunday morning (not that they were English). As she sauntered into the dining area she could not suppress her joy at smelling the delicious varieties of pancakes and waffles and, most importantly to her, Twilight Sparkle, Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee.
“Oh, joy!” she said out loud and giggled a little bit at the thought of partaking in its dusky, Caribbean glory.
Indeed, as Twilight Sparkle walked into her father’s dining room, as always, she saw him sitting at the table in a fuzzy bathrobe and a pair of koala slippers he bought in Australia, smiling as always, with a delicious assortment of cold and hot breakfast items and COFFEE sitting on the table, as always.
But there was someone else there.
“Hello, dear,” her mother smiled from her cup of Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee.
Oh, shit, Twilight thought.
“Oh, hello mother,” Twilight greeted.
The tension in the air was literally, physically palpable, Twilight, in a rare move for the scientist, irrationally calculated. Nobody said anything for a while nor moved.
“Hey, Twily! Look who popped into town!” her father suddenly spoke, still smiling.
“Just… pop on in, did she?” Twilight tried to smile back.
“Come sit down, honey, we were just talking about you,” Twilight (Senior) tried to brush past the awkward first moment.
Twilight Junior gave Twilight Senior a funny look, as if she sensed a trap in the making. Eventually, that became a second awkward moment, so Twilight sat down at her usual place at the table, which was really, really far from her mother. She also got herself a fresh, steaming cup of coffee, so all in all she felt pretty comfortable.
“Is everything all right?” Twilight asked after she got down an initial sip. “Is Shining ok?”
“Why, of course sweetie,” her father knitted his brow. “Why would you think otherwise?”
“Weeeeeell…” Twilight tried to stretch that word out as far as humanly possible.
“She means me, dear,” her mother explained. “Why would I be back?”
“Oh…” her father frowned again. “…Well, your brother’s doing fine; of course, he never talks about his assignments explicitly, but I guess if he did so, you know working for the CIA and stuff, he’d have to kill us all, and that’d be pretty awkward if you think about it!”
He burst out into hearty laughter. Twilight loved him to death, but she was really glad that she and Shining took after her mother in the cerebral department.
“Um, yeah. So… what’s up, mom?” Twilight realized how strained that supposedly normal question actually came out.
“Oh, you know, same old, same old.” Her mother smiled cheerfully. “What about you, dear, what are you doing these days? Still teaching?”
“Oh, I’m still just an Assistant Professor. I rent by myself now, own a non- hybrid car. I haven’t been with Dillon for over a year. So why are you really here?” Twilight cut to the chase.
Her father, now picking up on the atmosphere in his usually warm kitchen, got up abruptly. “So, does anybody want some wine or anything? I mean, I can just go to the cellar and get some…”
“Dad, it’s 8 am.”
“Yeah, but maybe I can get some champagne,” he explained as he steadily backed out of the kitchen. “Hey! We’ll make mimosas.”
When he was far, far away, her mother looked back at her and smiled.
“I missed you, honey.”
Twilight shook her head. “Come again?”
“You asked me why I’m here.”
Twilight looked at her. “No, seriously, mother, come clean.”
Her mother looked hurt. “What? I can’t just come back to be with my only daughter, to tell her how much I love and adore her? Why, Twilight Sparkle, I can’t believe you.”
“You said you missed me, not that you loved me.”
“Of course I love you, dear.”
“Okay, I’m leaving,” Twilight took one last sip of her precious coffee. “Tell Dad to nix the mimosas. Bye, Mom.”
“Twilight!” Twilight Senior called as she rushed out the door. Twilight Junior never even slowed down, though her car kind of did on the freeway out of engine trouble.
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It was turning out to be just another ordinary day for Twilight Sparkle.
“… And so, to summarize, if you can imagine that the Einstein- Rosen Bridge’s shared singularity is torus- shaped, matter could theoretically pass through to the other side, unharmed. It would then be transported from one region of spacetime to the other relatively instantaneously, depending on the amount of expansion between the two event horizons, each tethered to different regions of the universe.” Twilight was practically leaning on the podium. “Any questions?”
One boy in a backwards cap leaning on his seat raised his hand. “Yeah. So, like, why do we call them wormholes again?”
Twilight was sure she felt her eye twitch. Perhaps some of her students even caught it.
She couldn’t believe it. She just couldn’t actually believe it.
You know what? She thought to herself. Fuck it. It’s almost break. FUCK IT.
“Why, because of the sea worms, of course.” She answered very matter- of- factly.
Her student looked flabbergasted. “Sea worms?”
Twilight smiled. “Yes. The sea worms. Around the first wormhole they found at the bottom of the Marianas Trench in 1969? There were sea worms clustered around the Einstein- Rosen Bridge there, so they termed it ‘The Sea Wormhole’.” She laughed, just a little unwillingly. “Of course, that proved to be too cumbersome a name, so they eventually shortened it to just ‘wormhole’ for the sake of Discovery Channel programming.”
There was a silence in the class. Then, a massive sound of typing on laptops.
“Will that be on the final?” the boy in the backwards cap asked.
Twitch. Twitch. Twitchy- twitchy- twitch- a- twitch.
*************************************************************************************************
As Twilight pulled up into her tiny, tiny driveway, she groaned as she saw her mother sitting on her porch, waiting patiently for her to come home.
“You have got to be kidding me,” she murmured.
Her mother smiled at her frowning daughter and stood up innocently. “Why, hello, dear.”
“Oh, Mom, please don’t make me go through the entire process of a restraining order… paperwork is hell, and besides, I have essays to grade for days,” Twilight walked into her house and immediately put all her bags and her jacket on the table. She walked to her fridge and pulled out a can of Japanese coffee.
“You know you’re going to give yourself insomnia and an ulcer if you keep drinking all that caffeine.” Velvet warned.
“Eh, it’s waaay better for you than heroin,” Twilight wiped her mouth.
“Ok, Twi, you found me out,” her mother sighed and leaned on the kitchen counter. “I didn’t come back here strictly for the memories.”
Twilight smirked. “Did you tell Dad?” she asked sarcastically.
“Your father will get there,” her mother brushed that off. “Look, honey, I… I need you.”
Twilight half- choked on her cold coffee, but abruptly laughed. “I’m sorry, you need me?”
Her mother looked her straight in the eyes. “Yes.”
“You need me?” Twilight wasn’t laughing anymore. “You need me? Dr. Velvet Sparkle needs somebody?” she clucked her tongue. “Well, color me surprised.”
“OK, kid, you can stop that, I’m still your mother, you know.”
Twilight shook her head. “Oh, no, oh no, no, no, you do not get to call yourself that. Not after what you did,” Twilight started to pace the kitchen. “You know, walking out on us for years and years was bad. Not a single letter or explanation of what you were doing, where you were, if you were even alive. However, making me think when I was little that all I ever wanted to be or could ever hope to be was you was sooo much worse- “
“Honey, I- “
“- BUUUUT the single worst thing you ever did, mother?” Twilight’s eyes gleamed with venom. “Was name me after you.”
“Now dear, wait- “
“Night Light and Twilight Velvet Sparkle? The Sparkles? The Sparkles?! Just how many drugs did you ingest during The Second Summer of Love, Mrs. Spiegel?”
“Look… ok, so perhaps it wasn’t the smartest idea for your father and I to legally change our names right after we got married in Ibiza… and maybe when you came around, I could’ve named you after my birth name instead… however, in my defense, as a fellow PhD and, as my own daughter, you really did say it, dear… paperwork can be hell.”
Twilight looked dead into Velvet’s eyes. Velvet started to smile, and Twilight couldn’t help but smile too. Soon they were both laughing, neither one knowing exactly why, both just happy that the dam had finally burst.
Velvet sighed happily and closed her eyes. “You know, I can still remember the day I met your father in Goa… he must’ve been the hottest thing I’d ever seen with a six pack and baggy pants.”
Twilight shuddered. Somehow, that mental image granted her new composure. “So what do you need me for, mom? Emotional or scientific purposes?”
“Oh, come on, honey, we both know that you’re way too good for Assistant Professor of Physics 101 at some state college.”
Twilight’s mirth cooled. “Hey, I like my job.”
“Well, I’m here to offer you a better one.”
Twilight laughed, and then headed for her room. “No thanks.”
“Twilight… “
“You can let yourself out. It was nice to see you again, mother.”
Twilight couldn’t believe it. After all this time, her mother still didn’t think that she could be a grown up and fend for herself. Like Twilight needed her mommy to find a position for her. Like she’d ever work with the only other Dr. Twilight Velvet Sparkle, ever.
“Ok, Twilight, ok,” Velvet put her hands up and began to say.
Twilight stopped. She had seen this tactic before. She waited for the final, surprise offensive meant to break down her resistance.
“I thought you would react that way… I guess this was a lost cause. Oh well, see you around kid, I promise to write more this time, honest.” Velvet surrendered.
Twilight watched as she made a gesture as if to open the door before turning back. “Oh, but before you absolutely refuse, I would like you to talk with somebody first.”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Moooooom, no.”
Her mother smiled. “Oh, but she said that she would really, really like to see you again. You know, it’s been years, dear.”
Twilight cocked her head. What could that mean?
Velvet, reading her expression, smiled wider. “Just follow me.”
Her mother slowly beckoned, and Twilight followed. Out her front door, on the curb in front of the house appeared a long, black limousine. The windows were almost opaque.
“Wow, I guess the lecture circuit is better than I thought,” Twilight joked.
Velvet just continued smiling and opened the door to the back. Wordlessly, she motioned Twilight to step inside.
Twilight sighed, groaned, sighed again and got in. She turned her head inside to see who was there and immediately gasped.
Sitting near the front was a single passenger. She was a beautiful woman dressed in a stunning white, closely cut business suit with a matching white blouse. Her flowing light brown hair was naturally streaked in different shades along the length, as if it made up a monochrome rainbow. Her white designer pumps sported tasteful gold trim.
Even the woman’s eyes seemed to smile at her. “Hello again, Twilight Sparkle. My Most Faithful Student.”
Twilight swallowed hard, and tried to speak. Eventually, she found her manners.
“M- M- Madam President…”
It was not going to be just another ordinary day for Twilight Sparkle, after all.