//------------------------------//
// 3 The Play 
// Story: Numbers Are Ponies Too 
// by Telofy 
//------------------------------//

“Did you feel that, too?” her sister asked from the bed.
She nodded. It had felt like a surge of strongly amplified magic somewhere nearby, probably within their castle. She had never felt anything like it before. Two ponies had been involved in it. She would recognize their magic.
Soon guards would arrive and report to them what had happened, she thought.

She heard a rustling of sheets. So her sister had felt something as well.
It had felt like a surge of strongly amplified magic somewhere nearby, probably within their castle. She had never felt anything like it before. One pony had been involved in it. She would recognize her magic.
Soon guards would arrive and report to her what had happened, she thought. They must not disturb her sister. She was still so fragile. “Sweet dreams,” she whispered and left the room to intercept them outside.
None came.

Moist. Sticky. Her head lay in a puddle.
I’m bleeding!
Amber woke up with a start to a bare, twilit room. The sudden motion let the migraine explode and knocked her right out again.
This time she dreamed.
“Amber, could you help me with something?” Cheerilee asked.
Amber was back at school in her old classroom. The other students were filing out while she was still packing her books and quills. Cheerilee walked toward her against the flow of the students.
“Some of the students are falling behind on Starswirlian magical theory. I don’t have the time to give them extra lessons, but you seem to be intimately familiar with the material.”
She did not have to think this over. “I’d love to!”
Suddenly, Amber felt that she was dreaming, and she also remembered the episode the dream was showing her.
Back when she still attended Juniper Berry’s carpet flying lessons, Amber sometimes envied her the position of authority that her skills afforded her. Now Amber would become like a second teacher of Starswirlian theory to the other students. The discipline of magic would be taught by an earth pony and a unicorn who was barely able to lift her quill. Amber loved it. 
A few years earlier, her accident had seemed like a curse, but it had opened her so many doors she would otherwise not even have noticed that she now thought of it as nothing short of a blessing.
Then she remembered that she had also betrayed her friends that day. Her classmates all blamed Little Cedar for it. She was no longer at Amber’s school and did not know that her name had become a curse, so Amber let them. She was too afraid that their wrath would turn upon her.
The classroom faded.
“Morning sisko! I bought you some quills. The tiniest and lightest Davenport could find,” her brother greeted her.
“Morning bubs.” She yawned involuntarily although she did not feel tired at all.
“Have you been reading all night again?”
She lay on her bed, one hoof holding open a paperback book. “I’ve been thinking that the weight of the quill might be only part of my problem. I’ve always tried to draw single letters, and then I was exhausted after two or three of them. But really I can envision whole words and even fragments of sentences, so I tried to write in greater chunks.” She closed the book to reveal a page full of nonsensical sentences underneath. “It works like a charm. No pun intended.”
“That is amazing!” Her brother gaped at the page. “You’ve never written that much or such long sequences.”
“I know!” It was exhilarating to be able to write again. “It’s all in this book. Discoveries that go back to Starswirl the Bearded, although the authors apply them to traditional unicorn martial arts.”
Amber again realized that she was dreaming. This one was a real memory too. Amber could hardly remember the dream sequence at school but she felt that she had traveled years further into her past.
Damask and the page of scribbling faded. Her journey continued.
“But Amber, our parents aren’t unicorns, and neither would they want to be,” her brother said.
Walking was still painful for him, but he limped over to her anyway. It had been their first night back at home. The Ponyville hospital was severely damaged, so she had to stay in a hospital in Canterlot until her injuries had healed sufficiently, and the doctors released her.
She no longer had attacks of panic and disbelieve whenever she remembered that her horn was useless now. The attacks had burned her out and left her in an ash cloud of despair. It did not help that she had singlehoofedly ruined her school’s theater play and received an inauspicious cutie mark in the process. She lay on her bed flaccidly, weighted down by a blanket of down and a blanket of regret.
But this was not the Amber she wanted to be.
“You’re right, I don’t need magic, but still,” she brushed her metaphorical ashes away and threw off the blanket, “I will regain it if only to prove to myself that I can do it.”
Damask’s face lit up. She saw that he recognized his dear old sister again, the one both had thought lost after the accident—and Amber recognized herself as well for the first time in weeks.
Then Amber gained distance again and saw the dream for what it was, another memory. Within a year she would relearn writing the unicorn way but she would also find joy in mastering her daily chores the earth pony way.
When she was a child, her dad never thought it necessary to teach her all the little tricks and mnemonics that earth ponies use to paint, clean dishes, and cook magnificent meals; nor did she notice them. A whole new aspect of her culture revealed itself to her, just like the curtain that parted for the first performance of their theater play, still in Ponyville.
The bedroom faded.
Town Hall was crowded with parents, siblings, teachers, and a few guests.
“Today’s performance,” Cheerilee addressed the audience, “is also a dress rehearsal for the two performances in Canterlot in two weeks. I have received permission to extend the school holidays by another week, so we can fully concentrate on our play, and show Princess Celestia what the students of our little town are capable of.”
After a few more words of introduction, Cheerilee left the stage. Amber gave Juniper a sign, then she levitated the black backdrop of the stage to one side to reveal a large aerial picture of Ponyville, Canterlot, and vicinity that was painted on the wall behind it. At the same time, Juniper activated the spotlights and bathed the stage in light.
All six of the main actors, Amber among them, and a few in supporting actors filed out into the light. Some of them were the understudies of the students who would play in Canterlot. They took turns, so everypony could play at some point. Amber had personally overseen the casting and made sure that everypony felt at home in their role—except for her own understudy. Amber had picked Little Cedar because she had stage fright and was happy that Amber generously volunteered to play in all performances and rehearsals.
Pangs of guilt cut the dream short and shook her awake.
Amber’s second attempt at waking was a little more successful than her first, but the headache ran all the way down through her spine and engulfed her body and mind. There was no room for thoughts. She lay in complete darkness, but she had long not attained the level of consciousness that would allow her to wonder about her whereabouts.
Hours passed.
Light good. A first observation pierced her mental cocoon. It was dawn.
The throbbing of her head seemed to lock out any sense of time, but it abated gradually and soon she remembered the darkness and her minimalistic greeting of the new day. Memories of the meeting with Fleur returned as well.
She lifted her head and was relieved to find that she lay in a puddle of her spittle, not blood. Her head hurt doubly, once from the receding headache and once from lying on concrete for the better part of a day and a full night.
She brushed off her spittle as best as she could and looked around. The room looked exactly like Fleur’s office but may just as well be one of the other empty offices on that level. An assortment of slashed and singed detritus that she recognized suggested that it was the same room: stacks of newspapers and books, some cut in half by the cone of light, the section of Fleur’s desk that had been cut out as well, even a piece of the concrete floor, and right next to her the chair, the tube, and one hundred bits.
So far she had only raised herself enough to lean her head on a hoof. Now she sat up. Another surge of headache made her queasy. When it lessened, she tried standing.
Something was weird.
The ceiling was higher, the chair bigger. The disorientation lasted only a second until she looked at her hooves and legs, then her flank. Her legs where shorter, her cutie mark gone. Bummer.
The the realization set in. My body! Fleur stole a decade of life from me!
The adrenaline blocked out the ache in her head. A vignette of red shrouded her vision. “Give me my life back!” The cry echoed from the bare walls and stone floor.
She bucked hard and hit the chair at random. It skidded a few inches and tumbled slightly. All that I’ve learned, all that I’ve been through, it can’t be all lost! All my memories! She started to cry.
Then she realized that she did remember her life. If I had lost my memories I wouldn’t notice a thing right now, would I?
The realization calmed her down. Building model ships with Damask, performing in Ponyville, rediscovering the joy of writing, teaching her class in Starswirlian magic, moving into her own home, all the pleasant memories of her past were still there. So were the unpleasant ones. She did not linger on those.
She wiped away her tears. She often cried of joy or sadness, but it had been years since she had felt such panic. Surely some gifted magician could restore her adult body to her, or if not she may get to live a few years longer. She had not lost her personality, her identity. That was what mattered most to her.
She looked at her short legs and shook her head. Her eyes still burned, and the headache was slowly encroaching on her senses again. She did not want to think anymore. She dragged herself to the wall and slumped against it.
What if Fleur actually sent me back in time? The implications seemed overwhelming in their complexity. Amber did not feel like thinking at all. No, there are no time travel spells that would’ve lasted so long.
She felt like dropping off to sleep again and forgetting about all this nonsense. She wanted to just close her eyes and wait for it all to go away by itself. The thought even struck her as logical for a moment, which gave her pause. Was my brain affected after all or am I just confused?
A few minutes later she felt strong enough to stand again. The mysterious tube still lay next to her. It gave her an idea. An auburn aura enveloped it tenderly—then smashed it against the ceiling. Whoops.
Magic. She had full access to it again, or at least that of the average unicorn. She should be overjoyed. She felt something akin to it, but it was not joy. It was something vicarious. It was just as if someone had gifted her that model building set of the ship with the strange figurehead, a kind of mediated joy for her filly self who had still pined for her lost magic, joy translated for her adult self only through nostalgia.
But magic was useful, especially since she had no backpack to carry this weird tube in—whatever it may be good for—so she was glad to have it back.
More so she was curious. She lowered it to eye level and peeked inside. It was empty.
No, there was something tightly wrapped along its inner surface. Of course, Fleur PhD would give her a map, she should have known that at once. She pulled it out and unrolled it in the air.
It was as if meeting a long lost friend or old enemy again. Both maybe. Most of Equestria’s towns and villages were pictured disproportionately large, the whole thing was a little skewed, and now she could see the phantom Apple Cider Island too. She rolled it back into the tube together with her hundred bits. It was time to find out what else Fleur’s spell had changed besides Amber’s body.
Still swaying, she walked to the door. The headache was getting more bearable and the vertigo it caused faded, but the suddenly so different proportions of her body still made it difficult to walk. The door was not locked and the hallway was empty. On the one hoof, she would have welcomed the sight of guards there, or of anypony, so she could ask them what year it was, but on the other hoof, she was not quite sure how common it was for a lone filly to cross through these parts of the castle, which were most likely off limits to visitors.
She had memorized part of Fleur’s zigzag route through the building, but tracing it back proved more difficult. Her memories of the past days seemed almost years distant while memories of her foalhood shoved their way back into her consciousness.
After a few turns that only lead her into less and less familiar passageways and galleries, she felt a flash of fear at being lost, something she had not felt in years. She shook away the childish emotion and changed her strategy. If she managed to go in the same direction long enough, she had to reach an outside walls at some point. Even if it should be one overlooking nothing but the great drop along the cliffside, she could follow it until she reached an exit toward the city.
With rooms to both sides of the hallways, she could never be sure whether she was in the midst of the structure or in fact already close to an outside wall, but she felt confirmed when she came upon a door like the ones Fleur had to unlock for them. From this direction, it had a handle and opened readily for her, so most likely her route was outward. She had to strain a little to reach up to the handle with her forehooves to depress it. Only when she watched the door swing shut with finality behind her did she realize that she could have used a certain freshly restored function of her horn for the task.
Another door and she left this more plain and functional wing of the huge building and entered one of the many towers. Her hoofsteps echoed more loudly on the marble tiles than in the carpeted hallways. A path of lighter tiles circled a staircase in the center of the tower and lead out onto a wide balcony that boasted an ornate balustrade much too high for Amber to peek over. She walked out into the fresh mountain air and stuck her head through a gap between two mythological creatures chiseled out of the sandstone of the balustrade.
She could not see the windows in the tower itself, but judging from nearby buildings, she must be on the height of a fourth floor. Beneath her lay a plaza she recognized. The morning sunshine played on a squat structure almost like a temple in its center, which lead down to what her brother had called the Hypogeum Abscititious, where busts of many great ponies of history were on display. If she could get down there, she would find her way home easily.
But what if she had not just transformed into her younger self but actually traveled back in time? Surely that was impossible. No known time travel spell could have lasted this long. But what if? Where would “home” be for her? Miles and miles away in Ponyville and already occupied by her doppelganger. She dismissed the thought. The paradoxical implications of time travel were something she would consider if and only if it should turn out that she had actually traveled back to her foalhood.
In her reverie, she noticed the hoofsteps only when they left the winding staircase and reached the platform. She turned.
“Young lady,” a guard said with mild surprise. She hesitated while she looked from Amber to the tube hovering next to her and back to Amber. “Unless you have a letter of safe conduct on you, I don’t think you are allowed in this part of the …” She checked her watch. “Eh, scratch that, quitting time. You looking for someone?” She took off her helmet and tucked it under her wing.
“I am a little lost,” Amber said. It might be true in a comprehensive, four-dimensional sort of way, she realized. “Say, what year is it?”
“Hah! Everypony keeps asking that. What do I know!”
Amber stared. “Really?”
“Just kidding.” The guard told her the date. “So you time-traveled here or something?” She did not even seem surprised.
She shuddered. So I did go back in time. I don’t want to have to relive, what, eight years! Aloud she replied, “Naw, a ten-minute walk away through the corridors over there.” Amber was indicating the direction with the tube when she realized that the here was more likely meant temporally. “I’ve been trying to find a way out of this labyrinth.”
“It’s simple enough when you get used to it. Come, tag along, I’m going home anyway,” said the guard. She lead the way back where she had come from.
This last part of the way was simple enough indeed. Amber thought she could have found it easily on her own, but with the guard at her side, she did not have to worry about running into any other less jovial guard ponies. What she did worry about were her chances of getting back to her present, or what she still considered her present. Could Fleur help her? The current Fleur—even assuming she was willing to help her—might not know the first thing about time travel spells. Amber dismissed the idea.
“You’re not stealing some sort of painting there, are you?” the guard asked when they reached the exit of the tower.
Why painting? It’s a map. It took her a second to realize that the guard could not have known that. It felt as if her adult brain were at war with her filly brain.
“No, it’s a map someone gave to me.” You could not have been more vague, Amber, could you? Why are you thinking in the second person anyway? What if she asks me who gifted me the painting? A librarian from the future? She shook away the thoughts. The burden of proof was not upon her. She had been caught trespassing, not stealing.
“Cool. By the way, I’m Praetoria.” The guard clapped her on the shoulder. “You got someplace to go?”
Amber hesitated. The headache was fading, but she could not possibly walk all the way to Ponyville in her condition. The fading pain in her head also admitted feelings of hunger and thirst for the first time.
“I can invite you to the guards’ commons,” Praetoria continued after a moment as if reading her thoughts.
“I’d love that!” She sounded more euphorical to herself then she had intended. “I’m Amber.”

The castle used an interleaving system of many different shifts so that no collective changes of guards could open windows to intruders, however unlikely those were. As a side effect, the great hall of the commons did not have any set peak hours. Apart from random fluctuations, its long rows of antique tables and chairs were always lined with a comfortable number of off-duty guards, all of them elite troopers ready to fend off changeling hordes at a five- or ten-minute notice—because who could waste such yummy food?
Anything would have tasted yummy to her in her state, Amber thought, and she had to exercise great restraint not to eat too hastily. Praetoria also brought several bottles of water to the table and finally mango lassis for both of them.
They took a few sips, then Praetoria indicated the entrance with one wing. “Oh, look who’s coming!” She winked. Three ponies walked into the hall, escorted by two guards in armor.
“Bubs! Mom! Dad!” Amber was delighted to see them, but her delight was dwarfed by theirs. They were all so much younger, especially her brother!
“Hei sisko!” A moment later they collided halfway in a big ball of fur and feathers and hugs.
Praetoria walked up to them a moment later. “Your parents had asked the royal guard for help when you didn’t come home overnight. Another day and we would’ve launched a full-scale search. I took the liberty of calling them here.” For a moment, she observed at the four ponies with tears of joy in their eyes. “No family issues then I assume.” She looked relieved.
Amber was surprised how deeply this reunion touched her. She had not believed them lost for a long, wakeful night as they had, in fact she had not expected to see her parents again for several weeks.
Praetoria waved away everypony’s thanks and guided the family out. The four of them walked in silence for a minute, very close to each other, until they were out of earshot of the castle. The tube was bobbing in the air between them.
Her mother folded a wing over Amber, who wondered how much she could tell them without worrying them even more. She herself hardly knew what had happened or how she was supposed to get back. 
“Amber, where were you?” Her mother asked the obvious question. “You went into the hotel bathroom, and ten minutes later you were just gone.”
“It’s a long story.” Eight years and a few months.
“All right?” her mother encouraged her.
“Hmm, I’m not precisely who you think I am.” At this, her parents looked at her. Not her brother, however, but surely he also mentally reviewed the last few minutes. “I am Amber, but, as crazy as it sounds, someone sent me back here from the future.” Hopefully they’ll think I’m just talking about a few days or weeks. How would they react to having missed eight years of my foalhood?
“You don’t look any older,” her father said.
“I don’t entirely understand how or why either,” Amber said. “I think the spell imprinted my brain, this brain,” she tried to nod upward, “with the knowledge and impressions of my future self.”
“Do you know who did that?” It was her brother who asked. Amber saw that he already had his cutie mark of fountain, ship, and rose.
“A librarian here in Canterlot. But I doubt her current self knows anything about it.”
“We have to find her anyway, but how far in the future did all that happen?” It was her father who asked the question Amber had been afraid of.
She hesitated for a moment. “I’m a little over eight years older than the Amber you knew a few days ago.” No pony replied. “This must come as a shock to you; my character must’ve changed radically; I never meant to take the Amber you knew away from you; I’m sorry this …”
“Hey, hey, easy there. I’m so glad we get to skip your puberty,” said her father flatly but could not suppress a slight smile. “Oh, you don’t happen to remember any lottery numbers?”
“I don’t have bubs’s brains unfortunately. Besides, those are all time travel proof. Each ticket influences the order in which the balls are inserted into the lottery machine.”
“Do you feel up for the theater play today? If not, Little Cedar can always take over for you, you know?” her mother asked.
“That’s today‽” Her mother must have flinched at the sudden outburst because Amber felt a tug on the wing that enveloped her. Both of course remembered how much effort young Amber had put into the play, but it had even deeper significance for Amber than her family could guess.
“No, mom. Little Cedar hardly knows her lines and cues. She never expected that I would… I mean, she completely counts on me showing up.” Amber realized that she could not recall any of her lines and cues either. “And she’ll just disappear back to Cloudsdale or whatever before the final performance. Cheerilee will be forced to cancel it.”
“Why would she do that?” her mother asked, but Amber suspected that she was worried about something else entirely.
“She never wanted to be on stage, and maybe she just felt little responsibility for our play from Ponyville. But then again I never reminded her that even I could be dis… unable to make it, even though it was part of my responsibility.”
“It is part of your responsibility, you mean. All this time travel stuff has also afforded you another chance to change, uh, …” Her mother gulped. “What exactly happened to you in the future? Or is about to?”
“It’s not going to happen again. This time I have a show to put on!” Fleur had been wrong to think that Amber still wanted her magic back, but even a painted watch is right twice a day. What Amber had learned from the previous iteration of this day was that it was not about getting past such an experience. It had to become a part of who she was. The only aspect that she refused to make a part of herself was the missed and ultimately ruined play, the sadness in the eyes of her friends, and that Little Cedar would become the school’s anathema when it had been Amber’s wager that was to blame. Her mother was right. This was Amber’s chance to correct her mistake.
Amber was ready to turn on her heels. “Bubs, do you know where I keep the script?”
“It’s in the hotel room on the Chippendale escritoire partially covered by a ‘do not disturb’ sign.”
“That would take too long. I’ll go back to the castle. Somepony will have a copy for me.” Amber ducked from under the wing, gave her family hugs, and hurried back the way they had come. The event would start at noon and run till the evening. Even if their class was among the last to present their performance, she’d only have a few hours to relearn her role.

The venue was an oblong hall that could serve any number of purposes but had been set aside for three days for the theatrical spectacle. It was shaped like a nave with a wide space where soon rows upon rows of parents, teachers, and guests would mill, save for a narrow aisle through the center. This nave, however, culminated in a round platform where the chancel would be, the stage. On this stage the groups of students were taking turns rehearsing. The rest of the place was teeming with all the other groups who either waited their turn or had set up impromptu stages between the columns that lined the walls.
It had been hard enough to find this place in the labyrinthian castle. She thought she would remember the way, but it had been too long ago. Now it proved similarly hard for Amber to find her classmates. The maroon carpet that marked the aisle worked like a magic force field in that it sliced through the agitated masses of fillies and colts to allow Amber to pass. She scanned the faces left and right. No pony seemed familiar. Halfway through the hall, she found them. They had just finished a rehearsal and were removing their minimal set and props from the stage.
“Amber! Where’ve you been?” Cheerilee darted toward her.
“There was a contingency. Do you have a script for me? I didn’t have time to fetch mine.”
“You could’ve sent somepony to tell us. We’ve been sweating blood and water! Here, take mine,” she shoved a small stack of pages against Amber’s chest, all filled with scribbled notes. “I think I know it all by heart at this point.” She was about to dart off again. “Oh, and find Juniper. She was looking for you.”
Amber had no time to reply. Cheerilee was already on the other side of the hall comforting Featherweight. The colt claimed Twist had called him an idiot, which she vehemently denied. He was sniffling and sneezing, so that Amber made a mental note to ascertain that his understudy was well-prepared. She stored the tube with the heap of her class’s props, and went looking for Juniper Berry.
As she had expected, Amber found the unicorn backstage in the fly loft, where she acquainted herself with the lines and blocks. It was a small shock each time she saw a good friend reverted into a filly, but they had been close friends throughout most of their time at school.
Amber must have felt, even as filly, that Juniper was more mature than most of the other students, and that she could learn a lot from her. Thus, she had been privileged to take part in Juniper’s inofficial carpet flying lessons for unicorns. Juniper always enjoyed telling the anecdote of her parents’ surprise when she came home with a small image of a flying carpet ringed by a magical aura where they had expected a bunch of berries to pop up.
“Hey, Juniper, did you have time to fly around Canterlot already?” 
Juniper looked at her askance. “You insisted that we focus on the play and wait with the flying until after the last performance the day after tomorrow, don’t you remember?”
Amber had no recollection of it. “Yeah, I’ll trust you on that. There’s a bunch of things that I need to tell you, but first, you were looking for me?”
“It’s all rather badly planned here. All the groups want to use the stage, but we only have a few more hours, so we only do the scenes where we need this stuff at all,” Juniper said, pointing at the lines all around her. “Could you go through the play scene by scene and see if there’s anything we forgot, any missing props or missing ponies?” She giggled softly, but Amber knew that behind that shy giggle stood a pony who met her ostensible limitations with pure irreverence, something she taught Amber just as she taught her class of unicorns flying.
Amber had often applied the wisdom this young pony had conferred to her, and it seemed unappreciative to undo the key event that had enabled Amber to glimpse its full significance. Yet she had made the decision hours ago, and now she would carry it through.
“Juniper, I already noticed one missing item. The Ponyville town hall had this picture of our region of Equestria where we indicated our town and the Everfree and the old castle; this stage does not. But I brought a map with me.”
“Oh perfect.”
Nothing changed. She could still remember her accident and the years that followed. Evidently, this was a completely new mode of time travel, one that allowed you to have your cake and eat it too, or more likely they were two cakes on different timelines. But Amber did not mention these observations to Juniper just yet.
“Oh, and, Juniper, you should look into finding backup for yourself too, somepony else who can also work these ropes. I’ll go down where the others are and learn my lines.” Juniper stared questioningly, so Amber added, “I forgot them. I’ll explain later. It should be a breeze to relearn them since I knew them once.” Amber hugged her sideways in a way that she hoped would inspire confidence. “We’ll have a whole lot of fun today!”

“Does my crown no longer count now that I have been imprisoned for a thousand years? Did you not recall the legend? Did you not see the signs?” Diamond Tiara’s impression of Nightmare Moon was almost as spine-chilling as the original. The cone of a flashlight pointed at Ponyville on the map. Soon it would edge deeper and deeper into the Everfree Forest.
“I saw them, and I know who you are,” Amber took a step toward her and looked her in the eyes, “Nightmare Moon!” After an hour of futile learning of Twilight Sparkle’s lines, Amber had decided to refresh herself on the gist of the play and then just improvise the rest.
From the corners of her eyes, she studied the audience. It was just early afternoon, and the room was not any darker than in the morning, but the stage was now so brightly lit that all the guests were almost hidden in the relative dimness beyond the stage. She could however see the gleams of hundreds of attentive eyes all the way to the end of the hall. The adrenaline rush was exhilarating and she enjoyed every second of it.
Despite the size of the hall, the ponies were packed so tightly that ventilation was becoming a problem. Most of them were friends or relatives of the ponies in the plays, and some had traveled with them from as far as Vanhoover, Las Pegasus, Baltimare, or Manehattan. The festive mood was only disturbed slightly during the intermissions when parents who had shoved to the front for their own child’s performance pushed all the way back out. Amber could not make out her family, but she was sure that they would respectfully stay for the whole event.
“Elements of Harmony, Elements of Harmony, …. How can I stop Nightmare Moon without them?” Amber was pretending to search through rows of encyclopedias. Rainbow Dash, your cue! She threw Noi a furtive glance.
“And just what are the Elements of Harmony? And how did you know about Nightmare Moon, huh? Are you a spy?” Noi rushed at her. There was not only mock anger in her eyes, but Amber ignored it.
Soon their performance neared its end. She had done it. Two cakes, one eaten, the other one still in front of her. All the formative experiences of her past eight years were still with her, her treasured memories of studying theoretical magic with her brother, her better understanding of the perspective of earth ponies, and her realization that it was just as full of possibilities. Now she would undo the effects of her betrayal of her friends.
The curtain fell, everypony grabbed some props, and they scrambled out through a backstage door into an adjacent hallway. Cheerilee congratulated the group on a performance well done, but as the group dispersed, a few remained behind and ringed Amber.
“What the buck was that about, Amber? Because you had to be creative with your lines, we almost missed our cues. The audience will think we’re the ones who messed up,” Diamond Tiara said.
“You got to be a bit flexible, silly filly, think on your hooves,” Amber countered.
“Well, when you didn’t say ‘Elements of Harmony’ the final time, I wanted to enter anyway, but I wasn’t sure. That’s why I hesitated,” Noi said.
“Okay, it won’t happen again. I promise.”
They did not seem entirely satisfied, put their tribunal was cut short when Cheerilee took Amber aside. When they were out of earshot, she put a hoof on Amber’s shoulder.
“You’re good at improv, Amber, but, as you know, the others relied on your lines as cues. They didn’t expect you to ad-lib them. And you knew them well-enough a week ago in Ponyville. Why the changes?” Amber saw that she was angry but allowed herself only to show her concern.
“I mentioned a contingency earlier that caused me to be late today. That was an understatement. I’ve forgotten a lot, including the lines, but I tried to relearn them as best as I could.”
“Oh,” Cheerilee looked her up and down as if trying to find any hint as to what Amber might be referring to. “What, uh, contingency could do that?”
“I would prefer to keep it private.”
“Okay, but if you have any problems you would like to talk about, you know you can always come to me for that.” She waited for Amber to nod her understanding before she proceeded. “As you know, the next performance is the day after tomorrow already, and that’s the final one. The princess will be there to see it.” She gulped. “Amber, I know how hard you have worked for this and how much you love the stage, but you can’t learn that script in one day. Little Cedar should take over your role.”
Oh no! “That would not be a good idea,” Amber said, deciding, as she spoke that she would not snitch on Little Cedar, especially not after she had knowingly cast somepony who never wanted to be on stage.
“Many other ponies have made arrangements to share one of the performances with their understudies. It’s only fair.”
Maybe Cheerilee had looked through her plans all along. No, she would’ve intervened. “She doesn’t want to be on stage. I will know my lines, I promise.” Was there a chance Little Cedar would leave before the final performance despite the changes to this timeline?
“No, Amber. I’ve made my decision. I’ll brief Little Cedar as soon as I find her.” She looked around. “She must’ve gone home already, but I’ll catch her tomorrow.”