//------------------------------// // Chapter 5 // Story: Timelapse // by Stik //------------------------------// Twilight threw herself onto her bed in the upper floor of the library and screamed into her pillow, the howl of anguish muffled. Feeling a little better she lay back with a sigh. Things had gone from bad to worse, and just when she thought the universe owed her something they had refused to help, for no good reason at all as far as she could see. They had men just standing around, doing nothing, all the time. After their meeting Rarity had returned to the hospital to lend what aid she could, her steady magic and attention to detail had proved invaluable, and nopony could sew a stitch as neatly as Ponyville’s top seamstress. She was also helping to calm the nerves of the other ponies there as the humans had sent some of their own surgeons and one of their best translators to assist, and their presence was upsetting for many. Twilight had tried to speak with them, although her attempts had been difficult so far, they hardly seemed to understand any of the Equestria language yet. Rarity was sceptical that the humans were going to be of any use at all. Fluttershy was out helping to coordinate emergency supplies to residents who had lost their homes, and Pinkie was… doing whatever Pinkie did during a disaster. Whatever it was, it probably had to do with confectionary or parties. Pinkie could find a reason to party even in the darkest of times. It helped to keep spirits high, at least. Applejack stroked Twilight’s back soothingly and let the distraught mare cry herself out. “We have to make them see,” she blubbered. “We need their help.” “Ah think you already did, sugarcube. You near enough put the poor translator to tears. Ah reckon he knows our problems pretty well.” Twilight sat up on her bed, wiping at her eyes. “Then how could they just refuse like that? Have they no heart? We need them!” Applejack sighed and sat on the edge of the bed, one hoof around her friend. “It ain’t their fight, Twi. They got their own battles. We hafta fight our own. It’s the way of things.” “But we can’t!” Twilight snapped, a lot louder than she perhaps intended and she forced her voice lower. “We can’t win. Everypony just dies.” “Now lookie here, Twilight, ah don’t usually make a point o’ tellin’ you things y’ don’t wanna hear, but ah have got to say this, or ah’m not the element of honesty. You have got to buck up, girl. Discord, space aliens and humans, ain’t none o’ this your fault, you’ve given this place your all, and ya’ll can’t give up jus’ because something don’t go right. You’ve gotta make your mistakes t’ learn what’s right and what ain’t, and above all you gotta keep on kickin’.” She stamped a hoof against the wooden floor for emphasis and Twilight grudgingly looked up, sniffing back her frustration. “I’ll never give up, Applejack, I swear it. But some days it’s just hard to see through the smoke. Today more than ever.” “We’re here for ya, darlin’” Applejack said, her expression softening. “Whenever y’ need us.” “I know you are, and I trust you all to the ends of time.” Twilight looked around at her bedroom, listening to the large clock ticking away, undisturbed by her problems. She made a commitment to be more like it, let life’s problems wash off her and just keep forging forwards. She sighed, failing at the first hurdle as she spotted the dusty hoofprints she had left as she ran up the stairs. There was nobody cleaning the library anymore, her number one assistant was still missing. “Maybe we’re just asking the wrong people for help?” Applejack suggested. “Can’t we go to Canterlot and find the Princesses?” “There’s no train, and it’s a long way by foot,” she replied. “As much as I would like to go.” “Can’t you use these fancy wings of yours and fly there?” Twilight gave a short bark of a laugh. “Not likely. Even Fluttershy can outpace me in the air, I really am a terrible flier. I think growing up with wings probably gives one a big advantage. Having them glued on a few weeks ago hasn’t really given me the confidence, or very much time to practise.” She looked glum and spoke quieter, “and I admit, I might have a little bit of a fear of heights.” “Fair enough, but if ya want mah advice, Canterlot should be our next port in this storm.” “I’m worried what we’ll find there, Applejack,” Twilight confessed, wringing her hooves together. “Haven’t you noticed how long the day and night are? It’s been hours, and the sun has barely moved.” “Ah had wondered about that a little,” she replied. “I just kinda thought the princesses must be too busy, or somethin’.” “They’ve reverted to their natural period, which means Celestia has stopped using her magic to speed it up. That doesn’t bode well, at all. I’m afraid we’ll find her and Luna… missing. Maybe that’s why she hasn’t come to help us already.” “Don’t say that, Twi, ah’m sure she’s fine. She’s a god, after all, ah don’t think you can kill a god. She’s probably just busy with casting spells or somethin’ princess-y.” “Their spirits are gods, not their bodies,” she explained. “They’re not indestructible.” Applejack made a disparaging noise and waved a hoof. “She’ll still be the princess, even if you put her in another pony’s body.” “I like her current body,” sniffed Twilight, unable to help but smile at the absurdity of the statement. Applejack chuckled and stuck her tongue out. “Ah really don’t want to know much more!” They were interrupted by a tapping at the window above Twilight’s bed, and she turned to see what the noise was. A grey pegasus was at the window, waving cheerfully. “You’re lucky to still have glass in that window,” Applejack said quietly, not taking her gaze away. “Applejack! Don’t be mean.” “Just sayin’. Most all your other windows are already broken. Nothing to do with her, of course. Just came t’ mind, all of a sudden, like.” Twilight scowled at her friend and moved to open it. Before she could quite get there Derpy had pressed the glass a bit harder in a misguided attempt to open the window inwards instead of outwards. The pane popped its tacks from the old wooden frame and fell inwards. Derpy gasped, and Twilight followed the tumbling pane with her magic, just catching it before it hit the floor. Derpy hauled herself through the open space and dropped down the floor with a distinct crunch from underhoof, fluffing her wings on her back as she rearranged them. Twilight released the fragments of broken glass from her magic and sighed, trying very hard to ignore Applejack’s warned you look. “Hello, Derpy Hooves,” Twilight said, trying to remain civil. Bad luck seemed to follow the poor mare everywhere some days, although it didn’t ever seem to get her down. “Can we help you?” “’essage for you, T’ilight S’arkle!” she said, fetching a folded scrap of paper from her saddlebags in her mouth. “One uff zeh nice hu-ans said to deliver it to the tee house.” “Thankyou,” Twilight said, taking the slightly slobbery note gingerly in her magic. “No problem-o!” Derpy replied, cheerful as ever. She gave a sloppy salute and made to fly back out of the window. “Hey, you got broken glass, all over your floor. You should really clear that up. Bye!” Twilight watched her go, slightly unsteady in the air, she never seemed entirely confident in the direction she was heading, but somehow managed to deliver everything on time, every time, even so. Twilight filed the mysteries of Derpy Hooves along side the extensive file she already kept on Pinkie Pie, hidden away in a somewhat dusty corner of her mind. “What does it say?” Twilight unfolded it and read the neat contents, characters printed perfectly evenly and in pleasingly correct form. “Twilight, please come to see me when you have a spare minute, I would value your input on a matter,” she read aloud, “then it’s signed with some human writing. I think that’s Riley’s name in his own language.” “D’you feel up to seein’ them again, so soon?” “It didn’t sound urgent,” she said with a wide yawn. “I might just have a little nap, first. Just a short one…” Applejack chuckled as she left her friend to rest. It had been a stressful couple of days for the poor mare, after all. “Riley?” Twilight asked, peering around a door. There were a few humans in the room, but none of them were Riley as far as she could tell. If she was honest they all looked a little bit the same to her. Riley was starting to grow on her and she was confident at picking him out of a crowd, but the rest just sortof blurred together. They were all subtle variations on the same couple of colours, for a start, how strange was that? Maybe they would be different if they didn’t shave all their fur off, but that still left the question of why their manes were all the same dull shades of brown. She said his name again, trying to speak it clearly. It felt strange on her tongue. One of the humans said something she couldn’t understand and made two gestures, out of the door and left. Twilight thanked him. Even if he didn’t understand her, it was still the polite thing to do. A few more stops later and she found the man she sought in a busy room underneath one of the frightening sky-chariots they had arrived in, his head and shoulders deep inside the guts of the beast, as if it was trying to consume him. A few more men were scattered around nearby, holding odd metal parts and cables. Without warning the deck under her hooves began to shake and a warning alarm pierced the silence. From somewhere in the depths of the machinery something began to roar with a gentle whooshing sound, like wind past a closed door on a stormy night. The intensity of the sound grew and grew until Twilight felt more than a little nervous. As the deck shook and trembled there was a loud hiss and a cloud of sparkling white vapour poured out around the humans, dissipating quickly. Whatever was making the noise wound down with a quiet whine until there was only the ticking sound of cooling metal and the soft burble of human conversation. Someone spotted her standing in the doorway at last and tugged on Riley’s clothing, pointing at her. Riley dropped some tools on the floor with a clang and wiped his oily hands on the front of his overalls, adding to the impressive stains he had already acquired there. “Hello, Twilight, thankyou for coming,” he said, motioning her over to a quieter corner of the cluttered room. “What are you doing?” Twilight asked, not caring if it was a rude question. She had a few pieces of machinery herself, hidden in her playrooms under the roots of the ancient oak tree, so she was no stranger to the concept, but now she felt as if she were inside some huge machine that was as big as her house. Everywhere she looked pipework and cabling snaked in and out of boxes and intriguing devices. The floor was a lattice of metal, partially transparent and hinting at yet more fascinating complexities under her hooves. This was their magic, she realised. Great, intricate machines that could take them across the entire universe and back again. Riley looked a little taken aback by the question but did his best to answer anyhow. “Um, the… faster-than-sound-propellant-accelerator thing failed, looks like we stripped some blades from the… really-fast-compressing-fan thing, and we’ve been struggling to grow new single-crystal things without a, uh, high-pressure-indivisible-particle-spraying thing…” He trailed off, looking embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I don’t know the words for these objects. If you even have words for them in your language. They weren’t in any of the books we processed. Do you have aircraft here?” “Like these flying craft? No, there are some chariots that we enchant with magic to allow pegasi to pull them through the sky, but nothing like these. I’m very interested to learn more about them, though!” Riley put an arm up and scratched at the back of his head, looking a little abashed. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea, Twilight. If we hadn’t been forced to land here we probably would have hidden these from you entirely. We’re not really meant to interfere in the development of other species.” “I don’t see why,” she answered petulantly. “Imagine how much quicker we could get around. At the speed you were moving you could probably circumnavigate the globe in a day!” she said lightly, exaggerating for effect. “More like twenty minutes,” he mumbled after an almost guilty pause. Twilight just stared in open disbelief. “They go really fast when they’re working properly.” “Will you show me? I’d love to know what that feels like! What can you see when you move that fast? Is everything just a big blur? How do you breathe? Doesn’t the air heat the metal? I’d love a ride!” “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” he said, holding his hands out and laughing. “We’ll see, maybe. The admiral won’t like it, though, not one bit.” “You don’t have to tell him,” she said with a cheeky grin, leaning forward and drawing out the ‘have’ to far more syllables that it should have. “Look, we’re not having this conversation,” he said irritably, but Twilight thought she was started to pick up on the hidden inflections in the way he spoke now, and he was not being serious. “You already got me in trouble once, remember, if anything, you owe me.” Twilight laughed and let the point drop, she could pick that particular subject up again later. There was just too much to see and do in the belly of the ship to limit herself to just one experience. “You humans are weird.” “Well, sorry,” he said grumpily. “It was a compliment,” she said with narrowed eyes. Her attention was caught by something shiny and modular on the worktop and she reached out to it, rotating it and causing the two parts to detach with a gentle clunk. “I didn’t ask you here so that you could disassemble my spacecraft,” he said reprovingly, pulling some other piece of machinery out of her reach as she poked at it with an inquisitive hoof. “We’ve got to go on an excursion, and I would like to ask your advice, particularly about the landscape.” “Oh, well, there’s plenty of maps back at the library, which area did you want?” “Mostly the nor…” he began, but never finished. “Be right back!” she called, exchanging knowledge was her thing, she could do this. With a pop she was gone, unfortunately forgetting about the effects her teleportation spell had on the engineer. “Come on, Twilight,” she muttered to herself, digging through piles of dusty tomes in a dark basement under the library. Not many ponies ever wanted the large scale maps so they had migrated to the back rooms over time, then down to the archives, then the basement, and now they lay almost forgotten about. Choking and coughing from the dust she galloped upstairs to the relative brightness in the library proper, unrolling some of the maps onto the large oak table there. “North, north, north… Unicorn Range, Cloudsdale, Canterlot, Crystal Mountains,” she muttered aloud as she flipped through the pages, checking their extents. With a gasp she realised what she had just said. “Canterlot! Oh, this is just perfect.” As she ran back to kick the basement door closed (there were some things down there she’d rather other ponies not stumble upon accidentally) she passed a mirror only to catch sight of her reflection and was a little shocked to see the wild mare that stared back at her. She stopped short and took a few deep breaths, closing her eyes momentarily until her heart stopped thumping away quite so quickly. “Calm, Twilight, calm,” the mare in the mirror said to her. “You’re getting too excited. They won’t let you go in their flying machine if you seem… unstable.” “Right, of course,” she replied, smoothing back her mane and trying to make herself presentable again. She flapped her wings aimlessly, urging the feathers to lie flat again, but the wind just disturbed her frazzled mane again. She frowned and pushed it back down with magic, determined this time. “Okay, status report! Maps: check, doors: check, calm Twilight? Check!” With another pop she was gone, and reappeared a moment later in the belly of the metal beast. Riley was glaring at her, massaging his temple with two fingers. Twilight grinned sheepishly, remembering the first time she had teleported nearby. “Sorry,” she squeaked. A few technicians were scuttling around and tutting as they picked up bits and pieces she had dislodged during her entrance. She apologised again and backed away, trying to avoid stepping on anything delicate. “I had planned a surprise for you, you know,” Riley was saying behind her. “But I’m beginning to reconsider if I actually want to give it or not.” “For me? What is it?” “Later, if you behave,” he said irritably, and this time Twilight was not sure if he was serious or not. “I brought maps,” she said hopefully, pushing some things out of the way on the table and spreading the dusty old things out. She realised how out of place they looked amongst the sleek, shiny glass surface. It even glowed with a soft white light, like it was illuminated from inside somehow. Riley stood beside her, leaning over and squinting at them. They were a little faded, it was true. And possibly not that accurate. “This is us?” he asked, pointing a dirty finger at a small unlabelled town. “Yup,” she nodded, leaning closer and becoming suddenly aware of how close to him she was. She could feel the warmth radiating off his skin and smell the oil he was coated in. “There’s Canterlot, our capital, directly to the north, then the Crystal Mountains behind that, further still is the Crystal Empire. There’s various other towns and villages just north of us, as well, they probably aren’t on these maps, though. These are quite old.” “You don’t say,” he murmured, flicking between several pages rapidly. Twilight looked up at him and was sure she could see his eyes shimmering in an altogether unnatural manner, and she suppressed a gentle shudder, he possessed an unnerving intensity at times. “I’ll be honest, I was hoping for something a little more detailed. It’s good to know the names of places, but we’ve already been able to get most of this from the radar scans as we came in.” “Oh,” Twilight said with mild disappointment. Her heart jumped when the tabletop suddenly changed colour, fading rapidly from a uniform white glow to black. Abruptly thin green gridlines appeared, then a trace of the coastlines, rivers and mountains appeared on top, more and more detail filling the tabletop. Riley reached past her and brushed a few fingers across the surface, moving and scaling the map like it was the whole of Equestria laid out before him. It was mesmerising. She reached a hoof up to touch it, and as she made contact with the smooth surface the image jerked, centring on where she had touched. A tiny delighted squeak escaped her throat and she moved to poke a new bit but Riley batted her foreleg away with his hand before she could interfere further. “Behave,” he admonished, dragging the map back again until it was centred on Ponyville. An image of one of Twilight’s maps faded in over the top of the surface and Riley manipulated it with his fingers until it lined up roughly with their own maps. Twilight watched in unconcealed astonishment. “You have so many wondrous machines,” she said breathlessly. He laughed. “And you have your weird ‘magic’,” he said, tapping the tip of her horn with one of his strange fingers. Twilight leapt backwards in surprise, a jolt of sensation running down her spine and she let out a yelp that caught the attention of the other humans in the bay. She felt her cheeks flush in embarrassment. Riley was staring at her in bewilderment. “I’m sorry, did that hurt you?” “No,” she rushed, looking intently at the floor in the hope the flush would go from her face. “It’s… just a strange sensation, there’s a lot of nerve endings there. Umm. Ponies don’t usually… you know, poke it. In public. Um.” “Forgive an ignorant alien, then,” he said with a wide grin. “I guess there’s still many things we need to learn about one another’s species. Like how you teleport. Can you all do that?” Twilight was glad of the change of topic and timidly returned to the table, keeping a little further from him this time. “No, just me, and maybe one or two others at the university in Canterlot. The princesses could, of course, and there’s plenty of references in historical texts to other unicorns who could cast the necessary spells.” “How far can you go?” “Not very. If I try really hard I can just about get across Ponyville, but it’s not easy. I have to be able to see where I’m going to end up really, or it could get messy.” He mused on her answer for a bit, staring at the maps thoughtfully. Twilight spotted an opening and a mischievous grin formed. “Say… if you let me have a ride in one of your spacecraft, I’ll explain it to you. I might even take you with me one time. If you behave, of course.” Riley shook his head and turned away, but not before Twilight caught the silly expression on his face. Anything more she was going to say, however, was drowned out by a phenomenal roar from outside, and the suspended floor under her hooves began to shake and shudder. A disembodied human voice came from all around and she looked about in alarm, eyes wide. “What’s going on?” she shouted over the noise. “Reconnaissance flight,” he yelled back, fiddling with the controls on the table until it switched to a table full of complex data, meaningless to Twilight. “When we entered your atmosphere we lost contact with one of our craft. We think it’s crashed some way from here. They’re going to fly up high and look for any sign of it, then we’re going to go and retrieve it. We were hoping to get this ship up, too, but it doesn’t look likely at the moment.” The sound outside was quieting down now, receding into the distance. Twilight rushed to the door and peered out into the sky, watching the other ship climbing rapidly into the blue, riding on a burst of brilliant white light and a tail of smoke. They were a lot less terrifying now than they had been the first time, although the raw noise they made was still somewhat distressing When she returned to Riley’s side he barely seemed to notice her, deep in unintelligible conversation with another two humans and, apparently, the disembodied voices that came from hidden speakers somewhere. The view on the table had changed to a view from underneath the spacecraft, and Twilight watched the ground slide by from impossibly high up. Even though she had wings she had not dared go much higher than the rooftops, in fact the events on the night of the humans’ arrival was the first time she had been to the clouds at all without her trusty balloon. More humans entered the space, and soon she found she was pushed out of the way, barely able to see for the freakishly tall bodies all around her. They seemed to all be talking at once and the look on Riley’s face was not at all happy. He was shouting something at someone and getting very agitated. Twilight jumped as he slammed a fist on the table-top and pushed roughly past her and the others to get to the exit. The others all followed, Twilight at the back, feeling very bewildered and forgotten about all of a sudden. Outside the humans were pointing at the sky and shielding their eyes from the bright sunlight. Somewhere in the distance a black smudge could be seen in the sky, elongating and descending quite rapidly, and Twilight began to gain an inkling of what was happening. She kept back, letting the humans grumble amongst themselves, the look on Riley’s face told her he wouldn’t appreciate anymore interruptions, everyone seemed to be talking to him at once. Ten minutes later he was sitting mostly alone on the leg of one of the metal craft, talking sullenly into a small device he held to his ear. He was hunched over with his head resting in his hand. Twilight trotted over and lay down in the shade of the ship a few paces from him, watching him calmly as he slipped the device back into a pocket. “Are you okay?” she asked eventually. “Yes. Just fed up of this place. No offence,” he said with a weak smile aimed at her. “Nothing is going right. You believe that the sun is your goddess, yes?” “That is correct, Celestia is the spirit of the sun.” “Well, she doesn’t seem to like us very much. Your sun has a really chaotic output right now, sunspot activity is off the scale, the amount of radiation it’s pumping out is well beyond our shields. We were lucky to have come in on the night side, all things considered, or I doubt any of us would have survived.” “I don’t follow,” Twilight said, frowning. “We can’t safely fly while the sun is up,” he summarised, a little snappily. “Which means we’re going to have to go on foot, a prospect I am not looking forward to.” He sighed and stood wearily, cracking the joints in his lower back in a frightful series of clicks and crunches. Twilight shuddered. “I guess you’re waiting for the surprise I promised you, hey?” “What? No, I…” she began. That thought could not have been further from her mind, was that really why he thought she was still there with him? She tried to find the right words, but he’d already wandered a few paces ahead and she hurried to catch up. “That wasn’t why I was sitting there, you know.” “That doesn’t change the fact that there is a surprise,” he said, sounding unconvinced by her assertion. “Anyhow, this probably won’t wait much longer.” “Where are we going?” “You’ll see, keep up,” he said, breaking into a jog. She trotted along beside him, suddenly curious. By the time they reached their destination he was panting hard, and she wondered what the matter was. When she’d asked him he seemed to find it funny. “Four legs, better than two, hey?” he said breathlessly. “Remind me not to enter any races here.” He led her inside the building, and she blinked in the darkness as her eyes caught up. “Hey, Twilight,” came a familiar and very welcome voice. “Rainbow Dash!” Twilight cried joyously, spotting the brightly coloured pegasus immediately. She was propped up in a bed several sizes too big for her, one wing stuck out sideways and held in a metal jig of some kind. None of this stopped her from practically jumping on the mare and Rainbow began laughing, embracing her friend with her forelegs. “You’re kindof squashing my stump,” Rainbow said suddenly and Twilight leapt off the bed faster than she thought she was able to, horror on her face. “Your… you lost your leg?” Rainbow looked down morosely at the sheets, and slowly began to pull the edge up while Twilight trembled in trepidation. Suddenly she drew the sheets back with a flourish and Twilight gasped in shock, only for a puzzled frown to cross her face, her friend still seemed to have the standard number of limbs for a pegasus. She looked up at Rainbow, who burst into raucous laughter. “The look on your face, Twi!” she managed between giggles. “Oh boy, I’ve been waiting forever for you to arrive so I could do that.” “Rainbow Dash!” shouted Twilight. “My heart nearly stopped! You could have killed me!” The pegasus continued giggling, unable to form words. “I am so glad to see you,” Twilight gushed, calming down and leaning her head on the side of the bed. “I was so worried about you, I thought… I thought the worst things.” “Shh,” Rainbow said, stopping laughing. “I’m loyalty, remember? That means I’m not going anywhere.” “I know, but…” “Besides, it’d take more than a few space-apes to take Rainbow Dash out, am I right?” “Space-apes aren’t half as fearsome as they’re made out to be,” said Riley, who’d crept up behind Twilight as they were talking. Rainbow nodded with a wide grin. “Humans, on the other hand…” “Pffft,” Rainbow blew, “Now I know your weakness, I’d take you out anyday, buddy.” “Wait, you two know each other?” Twilight asked, a little incredulously. She had been starting to feel a little smug at being the first pony to properly engage with an alien species and was now a little worried Rainbow Dash had swiped that trophy at the last hurdle. “Of course, this guy saved my life,” Rainbow said in such a matter-of-fact sort of tone that it suddenly seemed perfectly normal. Riley grinned at the two and made to leave. “I’m sorry I kept Twilight so long.” His expression fell. “Nothing has gone quite to plan lately.” “No sweat, big guy, catch you later.” “Riley, wait,” called Twilight, turning to him as he paused. “I… thankyou. For looking after her, and generally being… nice.” He paused, then nodded once and left. “What was that?” Rainbow asked, one eye raised. “What?” “That.” Twilight groaned, exasperated. “What?” “You’re acting all weird.” Twilight frowned, immediately on the defensive. “Well, it’s been a weird couple of days. You know, we met a weird alien race that tried to kill us and’s now our friend. Don’t you think that’s a bit, you know, weird?” Rainbow thought for a moment, then, “nah. We do stuff like this all the time!” “Oh Rainbow, it’s not been the same without you around.” “I bet. And I hope you made the most of it, cause they’re letting me out soon.” “What? Already? But you’ve only been in here a couple of days.” “I know, right? They have some incredible stuff here. They gave me some weird things to drink, tasted terrible but made everything go strange colours. Colours that make me look bland. Now my wing feels great, and I can barely even tell my leg was hurt, apart from the patch of fur they shaved off. That’ll grow back, though.” “More wonderful things they probably won’t let us have,” Twilight muttered resentfully. “What?” “Oh, nothing,” she said, shaking her head. Now was not the time to gripe. Librarian-Twilight eyed the pile of books next to the bed appraisingly. “So, what are you reading?” “A lot of random stuff, if I’m honest. The human they sent to your library to get books can’t read, go figure. I’ve learnt a lot more about cookery and flower cultivation than I ever wanted to know. I’ve been picking up some of their language, too! Check this out,” she said before clearing her throat and launching into something totally incomprehensible to Twilight. “I have no idea,” she said, shaking her head. “I said, ‘Twilight is a big old dork’ in human-ish. Neat, huh?” She rolled her eyes theatrically. “You’ve spent your time wisely, I can tell.”