“Applejack! We can’t just have a foal! Besides the implications of a completely untested, new spell, what would we do with a foal?! We are way too busy! We can’t just do this right now! This is exactly why I wanted to be more sure of myself before I brought this up to you!” Twilight gasped and rambled.
“Twilight.”
“And! And! What happens when it gets bigger?! Foals get bigger you know! We don’t have room for a foal here! We’d have to get a bigger house! I’d have to commute to the library, I can do that, but—but! What happens if somepony needs a book at three a.m.?! I know that may seem silly to you, but I’ve been there!”
“Twilight!”
“And, it has to eat and stuff! Where are we gonna get all that food?! And diapers! And a crib! And baby supplies, like, like clothes!”
“TWILIGHT!” Applejack yelled.
“What?!” Twilight cried, her mane sticking up in crazily in several different directions.
“Do you trust me?” Applejack asked.
“Of course. Why?”
“I need you to believe me when I say, that Ah can’t wait to do this. You have no idea how important this is to me. Now that I know we can do this….Twi, there has never been anything more important.”
“Applejack…”
“Twi, Ah need this. Trust me. Besides, a foal doesn’t come right away. We’ll have nearly ten months before this baby is going to be anything more than a bulge in my belly!” Applejack laughed.
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Your belly?” She asked skeptically.
“Hon, I love ya, but let’s be honest, you don’t exactly have the greatest child-bearing figure!”
Twilight shot Applejack a look that could have burned out a small star.
“Not that it ain’t gorgeous! Ya just don’t really have the, erm, size! for it!” Applejack blundered, blushing.
“I’m taller than you.” Twilight deadpanned, fluffing her wings a little for emphasis.
“It’s more the child-bearing hips, we’re lookin’ fer, darling!” Applejack explained, wiggling her rear end. Twilight laughed and Applejack’s blush deepened.
“Fine, your belly!” Twilight laughed, done messing with her wife for the moment. Applejack’s moments of embarrassment were few and far between, so Twilight took advantage of them.
“Wait was that a ‘yes’ I just heard?” Applejack smiled. Twilight leaned in for a kiss. She rolled her eyes towards the ceiling and back down to look into Applejack’s bright green ones.
“I trust you.” She said simply.
---
Twenty minutes later Twilight and Applejack stood in the middle of a large, study-sized pentagram; surrounded by spell books, medical texts, and several large diagrams Twilight had drawn.
“Okay, one more check!” Twilight declared, tapping around the circle for the fourth time.
“Twi! Isn’t that enough?”
“This is our baby we are talking about! I mess something up and that child could be dealing with it the rest of their life! I mean what if the genes combine wrong and we end up with…with a griffon child?!” Twilight was on the verge of hyperventilating.
“Is that actually possible?”
“You better hope not!”
Twilight stepped out of the purple chalk line and put a hoof to her chin. She relooked over the spell matrix one more time. In theory, it all would happen without the need for direct medical intervention. The spell would reach inside Applejack and herself, drawing on the connection between them for its main power source. It would replicate their DNA within the spell matrices and combine it randomly, along with a pseudo gene; needed to make sure the foal’s sex would be a fifty-fifty random determination like it should.
Once that was done, the spell itself would implant the new genetic code into one of Applejack’s eggs, inside the womb, much the same as a sperm cell during traditional conception. After that, it was just a matter of making sure the cell stuck and was accepted by Applejack’s womb. It was the same problem couples using invetro fertilization, but Twilight had thought of that too. Combining the pregnancy spell with her time-travel spell would speed the pregnancy up by one month.
Therefore, once the cell was fertilized, the time-forward spell would activate, transforming the cell into a fully forming fetus, that Applejack’s body would have no choice but to accept. Twilight swallowed…. In theory. That was the kicker. This was all in theory, if the connection between herself and Applejack wasn’t strong enough, the spell wouldn’t be able to complete. If the genes didn’t combine correctly, the child could be very messed up. If the time-forward spell didn’t work exactly like it was supposed to and stop when it needed too, Applejack could be pregnant for a year, or five minutes.
“Are you okay, hon?” Applejack came up behind her and ran a hoof down her back.
Twilight swallowed and sighed. “I think so. Are you sure about this?”
Applejack leaned towards Twilight and hugged her close. “Do you remember what I said to you the night you proposed?”
Twilight laughed. “You totally just froze!”
Applejack snorted. “Ah did not!”
“Yes you did! I asked you and then you got all still and looked at me like I was crazy!”
“Fine, fine! I just couldn’t believe it alright!” Applejack protested. “Ah was talkin’ ‘bout after that!”
“Oh, when you said, ‘Yeah! Ah mean Ah think so!” Twilight chided.
“Yeah! And, Ah do not sound like that!”
“So, what you’re saying is that ‘Yeah, you think you’re ready’?” Twilight laughed.
“Yep! Ah reckon I am!”
Twilight smiled wryly and her horn lit with a glowing purple aura. “Okay, then.” She took a deep breath. “Let’s do this.”
The study filled with a brilliant magenta light that completly blocked out the light bulbs, which was probably a good thing, since they were blown out by the power influx only moments later. Twilight’s eyes opened, glowing pure white. A cascade of purple sparks danced out of her horn, glowing as they traveled towards Twilight and Applejack’s hearts, disappearing as they went.
Twilight was deep in the spell by that point. She watched as it proceeded to pull out the genetic information and begin combining, now it would draw on the connection for power. Even Twilight’s near infinite pool of alicorn magic wasn’t enough to create life out of nothing. She turned her attention back to the spell still going on. Then something she wasn’t expecting happened. The sparks, that were the physical manifestation of the spell matrix changed from purple, to rainbow.
Twilight frowned as a rush of power swarmed into the spell and her vision, throwing everything in the room into stark detail and rainbow color within the matrix. Twilight gasped as she tried to control the flow, trying desperately to drive it into Applejack as it tried to dissipate. She gasped in shock as she realized what that much magic would do to Applejack if it were to flood her system. Twilight grunted and began pulling layers of magic off the spell, rings of the pentagram disappearing as she did so.
Those layers were flung out into the night and Twilight could feel as they went racing across Equestria. She didn’t have time for that now though, she needed to do what she could to save the spell, and more importantly, keep her wife and future child safe; as she was too far into the process to stop now. She sent another wave of power out of her horn, struggling to control the flows of energy as they swarmed out.
One…two…three…four…five! The last wave of magical energy didn’t go racing into the void like Twilight expected, but lodged firmly within herself. She gasped in pain, but didn’t pay it any mind. She pulled her focus back as she flung out the time-forward spell. She could feel it work perfectly. It was part of the spell that Twilight could use her own magic well-spring for. The spell finished and Twilight dropped to the floor with a gasp, the time spell had pulled more out of her than she had expected.
She pulled herself up and looked across the room as the final spell fragment landed softly in Applejack’s belly, which glowed pure orange for a split second before the entire study went dark.
“Applejack?” She gasped.
“Ah’m alright, Twi!” Applejack called back through the darkness. Twilight let out a breath she hadn’t known she had been holding. “Did it work?” She heard Applejack ask.
Twilight lit her horn with the last dregs of her magic, doing a simple diagnostic spell, searching for the magic traces that exist in every living being. Applejack’s earth pony magic in her hooves glowed orange, but now there was also another small glow alongside it. A tiny green light emanated from Applejack’s midsection.
Twilight smiled and a tear leaked out of the corner of her eye. She wiped it away absentmindedly with a hoof as she wrapped Applejack in a hug of hooves and wings.
“It worked.” She smiled.