//------------------------------//
// Lettera d' Esilio/ Exile Letter 
// Story: Ab Initio-From the Start-Al Principio. 
// by Daxn 
//------------------------------//

After seeing her mother talking to her like that, Twilight  rolled her eyes and said.


"Whatever mother, you are still rambling now, go back in the cameretta for dream about me begin your little foal,"


Velvet was going to say something, but Night Lgiht was quick to shutting her up with a stern look and a raised hoof pointed towards his wife's neck.


Cadence, with a curvy movment, went near Twilight. Putting her left hoof under the purple pony's chin, she asked.


"So, what is your decision, Twilight? All your wishes are orders right now, don't waste the opportunity."


Naturally, Twilight didn't want to waste the possibility of choosing herself the punishment for her crazy mother, not after what she had suffered for those eight days with Velvet.


"Okay, stone her until she is maimed is not a good idea. Regress her to a foal and abuse her is unfair, and would not really solve anything. So, the only viable idea seems ship her to the asylum."


Twilight solemnly said. "Mother... you aren't the one you were once anymore," Velvet's daughter pointed at Night Light, then did a movement towards the door "perhaps you need some mind bleach for go back to your normal self. Asylum it is."


Cadance raised an eyebrow, “I think you’re being too… ‘hasty’.” Cadance leaned in and whispered seomthing into Night Light’s ear. Twilight tried to understand what she was saying, but to no avail. However, judging by her father’s face, it was almsot a revelation.


Night Light nodded, “Alright…” he said letting go of Velvet’s hoof, “Honey, let’s go upstairs to the bedroom and relax, alright? I think it’s time to give Twilight and Candance a little privacy.”


And so, Night Light brought his wife up the marble stairs towards their bedroom.


Left alone in the living room, the two mares stared each other in the eyes, before setting down on the couches.


“Look, Cadence, I don’t know how you are thinking, but I am pretty sure that send Velvet to the Psychiatric Hospital is the best option for everyone involved. It would cure my mother’s madness, it would bring her away from me, and it would not involved anybody else in the mix.”


Cadence gave a slightly disapproving frown to Twilight.


“But did you consider what your father wants? How would your mother see all of that?”


Twilight said with slight reluctance to her voice,


“Yes, but…”


“No,” said Cadence, with a calm and seriosu voice “You actually didn’t. Now, I can see why you are not prone to forgive your mother completely and I can’t really blame you for that.”


Cadence slowly rose from the couch, and stood up in the dead center of the incaian carpet. Breathing deeply, she spoke,


“However, you should not let your rage decide for you. She is your mother after all, and no matter how much pain she has brought to you, you cannot hate her.”


Twilight raised her head and sighed.


“Then what do I do? I just can’t deal with the way my mother acts like anymore. I want her to be back at her usual state of old mare that is watching her offspring grow strong and famous, while the tentacles of the oblivion streak her fur. I cannot understand how letting her go to Ponyville will solve anything. She’d probably just kidnap more unwilling ponies! No, the Asylum, where specialized doctors will help her get rid of her mental illness, is the way!”


“It’s simple,” Cadence said “To get rid of her state, you don’t necessarily need to limit herself to the four walls of her room in the Asylum. You can also give her some freedom of movement.”


At said declaration, Twilight squinted confused, while her mind tried to wrap itself around Cadence’s logic seemingly-inperscrutable logic.


“What about the other ponies? What if she tries to kidnap them for her amusement? I cannot allow that!”


The pink alicorn inoppritunely chuckled.


“And you really think that other poneis would be easy to grab and force? No, it won’t happen. Pinkie Pie shall be sufficent for her, and if it won’t be enough, stay assured that, at such point, the shipping to an institute for mental health is guaranteed.”


Twilight, still unable to understand, sighed.


“Yes, but how this changes things? And, even if she was content with what she has, how leaving her to my friend will destroy the madness, if she fuels it instead?”


Cadence stated matter-of-factly “Who said that your mother was going to Ponyville without somepony ready for help her in the journey of snap out of her obsession?”


“Well, who’s that pony going to be?” Twilight asked, unable to comprheand what was going on in Cadance’s mind.


Candance smirked, “Well, Pinkie Pie aside. I think it’d make sense for Velvet to stay in Ponyville for a little while and get some professional help. Of course, by that I mean see a therapist. Clearly she’s not completly delusional, she’s most likely denying something that she’s unwilling to admit.


“I guess you’re right.” Twilight admited, nodding sadly.


“Perhaps I’ll leave you with Night Light now. He probably wants to catch up with you, and you two outta make plans for Velvet’s departure.” Cadance said, hugging Twilight tightly.


“Oh… Goodbye Cadance! I’ll see you later alright?” Twilight said, whiel she embraced Cadence.


Cadence smiled, said “Maybe, maybe… for now, goodbye” and then interrupted the hug for leave the living room and the house.


The purple mare was left alone in the room. At this point, Twilight decided to go in her parent’s bedroom, and try to help her father in making the luggages for Velvet’s travel to Ponyville.


So she got up from the couch, stretched her frotn hooves a bit, and walked from the living room to her parent’s bedroom at the last flight of the marble stairs


However, when she was just few steps away from the bedroom, Twilight  saw her father exiting from the bedroom with a small bruise on his right cheek.


Velvet’s daughter stopped herself on the stairs, rolled her eyes and sighed.


“What happened? Lemme guess, she will not let me have a word with her?”


Leading his daughter downstairs, Night Light sighed, “Yes, she’s in no state to talk right now. She’s in a bit of blind fury, and if I try saying anything to her, she’ll just continue to sob into her pillow, or randomly hit me, whichever is more comfortable for her.”


“I see…” Twilight said, while going down said stairs  “I almost feel bad for her, you know? I know I should be angrier, but I’m not…”


“I think you just calmed down,” Night Light said “You’re not seething with anger, that’s for sure.” 


“True, but… I feel more sypathetique than earlier.. It’s kind of weird.” She said, while she landed on the wooden floor of the first floor. Night Light answered quickly to his dauhgter.


“Meh, it happens, when you feel betrayed by somebody you love. If you ask me, I’ve lost what little romantic connection I had with her,” he said, while turning to walk up the first steps of the stairway to the ground floor “So don’t worry about my feelings for her. I’m fine with her living with Pinkie Tart…”


“Pinkie Pie,” Twilight corrected him mid-way on the stairs.


“Whatever, the point is: I don’t mind her going away and even open a buisness separated from me.”


Twilight nodded while she stepped on the floor.


“I understand,” she smiled, in an attempt to brighten up the mood a bit “But don’t let this bring us down. We found the solution to this situation, I’m free once again, you have your daughter in one piece and your house free of strangers. Your ex-wife, whom caused all of this for an obsession, is going to start a process towards recovery.”


Night Light sighed relieved.


“That’s true,” he said, while entering, once again, in the living room “anyway, what were you and Cadence talking about, while I was upstairs?”


Twilight recliend her head for a second, before puttting it up again “We were talking about what punishment to give to Velvet. You know, whether or not sending her to Ponyville was really a good idea, or if it was a dumb one.”


Night Light gently sat down on the yellow sofa and with a wave of his left hoof, invited Twilight to do the same.


“And your decision was sending her to Ponyville, right?”


Twilight nodded, before adding “But not only that...” she said, sitting down “We also decided that while just sending her to Ponyville with Pinkie was of no use for nopony in the short term. Sending Velvet to Ponyville for a while with my friend Pinkie Pie, while having her see a therapist would be better for us all. After all, if she doesn’t snap out by slow psycholgical work, she would not be something that you or me would want back, but it would be something that my friend appreciates deeply.”

Night Light bowed his head.


“Very true and correct, Twilight.”


Then silence filled the room, the only sounds were theones of Sedula cleaning up the rooms upstairs, and of the mechanical clock ticking. The light of the Sun entered in the room, and made the marble shine in the eyes of the two ponies.


Night Light decided to fill the silence with some chit-chat.


“So, father, did anything interesting happened to you, while you were in Romea.”


Nigth Light, whom was staring absently-minded at the white ceiling, after shaking his head for a brief while, turned around towards her daughter.


“Not really: there was the usual banter between the usual suspects, there was the usual wave of newbie notaries that acted like shellshocked veterans or fanatics whose duty is to make the perfect deed to a propety, and I attended to the refresher course held by the Royal Notary. Overall, it was the same story as the past decade, we just agreed on minor points in how to handle certain situation and that’s it.”


Twilight looked at her father.


“So, nothing new on that front?”


“Nothing new,” he said while nodding “Overall, refresher courses and meetings like that are just useless, when no peculiar situations given by new laws or major social changes are happening. Or if you are not overly senile.”


Twilight smirked. 


“The return of one of the Diarchs was not big enough?”


“Exactly. It wasn’t big enough to impact on my overall job. If with her return, say, all the last wills were probated only if Luna signed them, then this meeting would have been useful, because then we could have agreed how to keep our job going at maximum speed and respect the law at the same time.”


“I see,” said Twilight, before wandering on with her eyes. 


“Bottom line, I went there and did nothing truly productive or interesting. Now, about my visits to my brothers…”


Twilight leaned fowards in interest.


“Yes?”


“The situation is degenerating again. Grandma is throwing shingles from her apartment on the heads of aunt Eraclina, all because she thinks that she snatched me, aunt Lucky and uncle Benson from her hooves, and she keeps pouring money in the wallets of everypony.” Night Light’s voice got slightly more angrier “However, she never cared enough for us to begin worthy of our affection, but now she wants to buy it. Eraclina tried to give us an education and the mother figure that she did not provided to us, in fact, I would say that the entire family was and is constructed around her; when she dies, it’lll be a rush for a take of the biggest bite to her estate.”


As the purple mare listened, something clickled in her mind.


“Now that I think about it,” Twilight thought “Grandma’s situation is similar to what  is happening right here, right now. But in somewhat reverse and smaller scale. There is my mother, Velvet, that wants to give me loads and loads of attention even without my consent, and disregarding my feelings about the kind of attention she gives to me. Then there’s my father, whom I feel more conntected to, and is basically considered a foal snatcher by my mother. Guess that history sometimes repeats itself with minal changes.”


While Night Light was still ranting against the greed of Uncle Lionheart and Aunt Lucky, from the hallway, a trotting came.


“Oh...” Night Light said, with a deadpan voice, while slowly raising “I guess she has calmed down.”


Twilight also jumped down the couch, and followed heri father in the hallway, where Velvet had her head hanging low.


“Calmed down?” Asked Night Light rhetorically.


Velvet glared to her husband, but said nothing.


“I will take it as a ‘yes,’“ said Twilight’s father “anyway, your dauhgter has something to say to you.”


Looking nervously at the floor, Twilight tried her best not to toy with her mother more than the necessary, “Well mother, I’d like to propose you got to Ponyville for a while to get things sorted out. I think you know as well as we do that something wasn’t and is not right in your head. We’re thinking about letting you stay in Ponyville with Pinkie.”


Velvet nodded, acting as if the news wasn’t surprising. Twilight thought that Velvet should have been glad of the response, because she and the other members of the family could have reacted worse. After all, there were mental asylums that would happily take care of her case, not to mention police and guard departments.


“Now go upstairs and pack up.” Night Light said, “We will give you a letter to give to Pinkie. Don’t open and or read it for any reason, unless Pinkie gives you explicit permission. We’ll know if it that happend, so do not even think to do it..”


With a sigh, Velvet nodded, and went upstairs again.


“Now, Twilight,” said Nigth Light “you should write anote for your pink friend about the therapist. I don’t trust Velvet enough to let her go on her merry way and ingore the second part of the order.”


Twilight wasted no time and went in the entrnace hall, took a piece of paper from a stash of blank pages. She went upstairs in Shining’s ex-room, now converted into scriptorium, took a quill and ink from there. Quickly she started to write her letter:


“To my friend Pinkie Pie. While you may be overjoyed by the news of my mother joining you in your desires of regression. I have to inform you that she has not been sent to you because we just wanted to make you and her happy, but also because I and my father want to cure her mental illness. Find a therapist, send me a letter back with the price, and I will provide the mental care for her. Please do so, the fate of my mother’s sanity lies in your hands and that’s something I’m making you responsible for. Fail to comply, and there will be grave consequences. Consider yourself warned.


-Twilight Sparkle.”


With everything done, she folded the letter and put it in the envolope. She sealed it with some sealing clay, stamped it with a consumed stamp usually used for important notary deeds and then exited from the room with the letter in her magical grip.


While Twilight was exiting, Velvet was already on the stairs; two luggages in her magical grip, and a large filly hat not unlike the ones that Rarity usually wore.


“I’m good to go,” Velvet said.


“Hurry up then,” shouted Night Light “The train will leave the station in twenty minutes!”


Velvet complied, and trotted quickly down the stairs, at which point Twilight also went downstairs with her.


Once in the entrance hall, Twilight gave the letter to Night Light. He was busy closing the three buttons of his black and white vest, while Velvet fixed a loose bronze hinge of a brown luggage.


“Here’s the letter,” she said, “ take it.”


“Thanks!” Night Light said, grabbing the letter and putting it in his coat pocket.


“As for you Mother…” Twilight said, turning towards her maternal figure, “Have a safe trip. I’m sorry that all this happened, for you and myself included.” she finished by kissing her mother on the snout.


“Ready to go?” Night Light said, heading  into the garden


Velvet turned around, waving a hoof to Twilight before walking down the stone path in pursuit of her husband.


Twilight watched from the door  as the two left the house. Weird, this was actually the first time she’ been without a caretaker all week. She grinned.

“Freedom, at last!” she said with pure joy and sadisfaction, trotting towards the family library, finally free to enjoy the company of a book.





The next day, at the Kindergarten...




“They what?” Lux said covering her mouth.

“Yes,” Twilight said grinning ear to ear, “They left yesterday, and I’ll never see Velvet again!” she said clapping her hooves together.

Nutriz frowned at the purple mare's declaration "Twilight, I understand Velvet has been abusing you for a week now, but isn’t celebrating her absence a bit… cynical?”

Twilight sniffed and pointed her nose in the air. "She is thankful that she has not been shipped to an Asylum. NOW she was going to be in deep trouble. Instead, I'm offering her a pony willingly to give in to her desires, and a therapist for slowly get over her obsession."


Lux, whom, up at that point, just listened with wide eyes and an unbeliving smile “I can’t belive you got yourself out of that mess without lashing out!" then Lux poked gently Twilight's flank "And you managed to have no accidents today! Good girl!"

Twilight smiled, perfectly capable to take the jest now. “Hehe, yeah."

As hse said that, a doubt formed in Twilight's mind. "However, should I still wear diapers here?"

The two teachers shrugged their shoulders.

"Maybe. I mean, you probably don’t want to, and you have no obligations, so," Nutriz said.

“I'd suggest to still wear them," Lux said "because we don’t want the non-stall trained foals to feel… ‘foalish’ and too inferior compared to a classmate." Lux chuckled "That being said, I doubt you’ll be using them anyway.” 

“Only if I wanna make your guys job harder for you!" answered Twilight.  

"Speaking of making things complicated, I apolgize I wasn’t able to attend yesterday. By the time the two left, it was nearly one in the afternoon."

Nutriz bowed her head slightly. "Your father has already taken care of it. Also, we understand that, so no hurt done." Then the teacer looked behind her, seeing that the class was getting impatient "now go and join your classmates."

“Gotcha!” Twilight said, walking into the class. Scanning the class for Lex, Twilight found her in a corner, apparently alone.

“Hello Le…” The mare said, approaching the small filly occupied with a drawing, However, before Velvet's daughter could finish her sentence, the little filly jumped on her leg, hugging it tightly.

“Tiligh! You wewe not hewe iestewday! I think wewe sick or..." she gasped "weawing!"

Twilight smiled, “No Lex, I was just celebrating something. My mommy doesn't see me as a 'little filly' anymore,” Twilight nuzzled the little filly softly, calming her down “however, I’ll still be here for you!”

“Yay!” Lex said.

Twilight, feeeling even more upbeat, decided to see what Lex was drawing.

It was a decently-drawn (for a kindergartener) image of Twilight lying on a hospital bed and keeping a thermometer (blessed naivety) in her mouth, what it was supposedly Pearly Handle giving her syrup, and Lex dressed like a nurse standing near the bed. Looking down, there was the phrase, written in green crayon "Get vll son."

The drawing warmed Twilgith's heart, cuaisng her to smile happily. 

"This... is beatiful."Murmured Twilight, before turning down at a eagerly awaiting Lex.

"Wan to pway?" Asked Lex to Twilight. Twilight, leaving the drawing on the table and planning ot take it with her, nodded extrmely eagerly.

As she joined Lex with her little friends in a game of pretend involving the three Princesses and a random guard (that Twilight subtely turned into an expy of Shing Armour), Twilight's mind had a thought that made her frown a little bit.

"I’m not really free now, am I?” She said, looking away from the ongoing game, but immediately going back to it.

"No matter. Princess Celestia's punishment is good enough for me."