The First of Many

by NotARealPonydotcom

Tell Me A Story...

"Don't worry about it, Twily. If you planned everything like you said you did, then nothing can go wrong. You're the best at planning things out!"

From the couch across the room, the pile of lavender fur, feathers, and fabric leapt up from its spot, revealing the slightly crazed face of Princess Twilight Sparkle.

"How could you say that, Shiny?"

The red-jacketed stallion she spoke to scrunched his face up in confusion. "Say what?"

Twilight moaned in despair. "'Nothing can go wrong.' You can't say that!" She flopped down on the couch again. "Now everything that could possibly go wrong is going to go wrong," she explained, voice muffled by the couch cushions.

Shining Armor rolled his eyes. "Twilight, the way you're jumping around coming up with excuses, it's like you don't want to do this."

Twilight didn't move, and the lavender alicorn was silent long enough for Shining to think she might have suffocated herself in the couch cushions. The moment he stepped forward, though, he heard his sister say something that was too muffled to understand.

"Come again?"

Slowly, Twilight lifted her face off the couch. Her eyes were tearing up. Her lip quivered as she spoke.

"What if I don't want this, Shining Armor?"

Again, Shining rolled his eyes, and he trotted over to the couch, planting himself next to his mess of a sister. He pulled her up, wrapped a foreleg around her shoulders, and said, "Twilight, if you didn't want to go on a date with this guy, then you wouldn't have said yes when he asked you out." He shook her gently. "The fact that you're this nervous right now just tells me that you really like him. Besides, it's always normal to be scared on a first date."

"This is different!" Twilight snapped. "I mean, I'm still getting settled into this whole 'Princess Twilight' thing, and this is my first night away from the castle in almost a month, and I bet your first ever date wasn't with a princess." She sighed. "Maybe he won't even show up. Maybe he's scared of alicorns or something."

Shining Armor snorted, unable to keep his laughter contained any longer. Twilight gave him a dirty look and used a wing to smack the back of his head. He still giggled, and she shoved him with a hoof. Finally, he stopped, but still gave her a goofy smile when he spoke again.

"Twilight, I don't think Ocean Floor would be in the Royal Guard if he were afraid of alicorns, nor would he have asked you out at all. And if I had a date with the most beautiful and probably most available Princess in Equestria, I don't think I'd pull a no-show on her. He's gonna come, you two are going to have a great time, and everything is gonna be fine."

But Twilight's expression told Shining Armor he wasn't convincing her. When Twilight buried her muzzle in his shoulder and gripped his foreleg tightly enough to cut off circulation from it, the captain sighed and looked around the living room of their parent's house absently, thinking of what to say next. The place was exactly the same as it had been the last time he'd visited, save for a few new pictures on the fireplace's mantle. All of them showed in some way Twilight in her new form, whether it was her soaring through the air at her coronation (something that made no sense to him, as Twilight was still getting the hang of flying from her friend Rainbow Dash), or her hugging him at the celebration later, or her with Princesses Celestia and Luna and his wife-

Ding. Idea. Shining smiled at the photo of his wife, and turned to look down at his moping sister.

"Twily, do you want me to tell you a story?"

His sister looked up at him, confused. "What?"

He pulled her into a one-legged hug. "Remember when you were little, and you always asked me to tell you stories about myself to make your problems seem less serious?"

Twilight sniffled again, and nodded.

"Well, how about this: since we've got another ten minutes before he's due to show up, I'll tell you the story of my first date, and then you won't feel so worried anymore."

Twilight gave him a skeptical look. "I don't think listening to a story about how badly your first date went is going to get me to feel any better about mine."

Shining laughed. "Oh yes it will. Trust me."

"But-"

"Twilight! Do you want to spend the next ten minutes panicking over this thing, or do you want to hear about your brother's embarrassing first date?"

Twilight was silent. She nodded.

"Good. Now," Shining began, settling into the couch, "this was a while back, when you were still a filly. It was the summer after I'd finished school, and I was dealing with the fact that I only had a few weeks before I was going to be shipped off to Royal Guard training and probably spend the rest of my life fighting for Equestria. That summer, I tried to do everything I'd ever wanted to do besides join the Royal Guard, which meant spending absolutely no time with my family. I was almost never home, and when I was, it was for meals or when I couldn't sleep over at a friend's house. I was moving faster than a pegasus, going down that list, and eventually I finished everything on it with weeks to spare. Everything except...