I own nothing!
You know they say a soul sucking demon from Tartarus can bring people closer together.
Crash!
“Nyx! Snowdrop! It’s time for school!” A voice ripped from the floor below.
Oh wait, no they don’t.
Mornings in Ponyville are usually pretty hectic. Dozens of fillies and colts would jump or trudge (mostly trudge) out of bed and quickly get ready for the day. Today was especially hectic as it was the first day of the school year. For some it was their first day of school in a very long time.
It had been four months since the “Mirror Incident” or so it had come to be known. The mirror was moved to a relic safe in Canterlot while Sombra’s book was sent to the Crystal Empire to be fully translated and annotated. It wasn’t all good news though, ever since the incident with Tirek, the old library was, well… gone. Blasted to smithereens. And while the Safe of Harmony had created a shiny new home for Twilight made from crystal, there was always that feeling of sadness over the loss of where so many adventures took place.
But even with that, life seemed to finally be settling down in the Sparkle home… Or was it?
On the second floor of the crystal tree house -er- Manor, two fillies, one black and one light blue, scurried around frantically. They grabbed supplies, papers, pencils, etc. Anything they needed for the coming year.
The light blue one stopped by the stairs before taking a quick sweeping look across the room, going over it in her mind like one would do with their eyes. Once she was assured that she got everything she spoke up. “I think I got everything, Nyx. I’ll be downstairs.” She said.
“Alright, meet you down.” Nyx said, stopping and giving the other filly a kiss on the cheek. The light blue one, named Snowdrop, giggled before happily heading down the stairs, a bunny like hop in her step. Nyx paused and watched every step she took with a degree of concern. Snowdrop had four months to memorize the castle’s layout but Nyx still worried she would accidentally fall down the stairs or run into a corner. The pains of being blind.
Nyx hurried to pick up the rest of her supplies before bolting down the steps to eat breakfast.
Snowdrop wasn’t the only one who had to get used to a new home. With the complete destruction of the old library, Nyx, Spike, and even Twilight had to suddenly deal with completely new surroundings. When you walked through the front door you were met with a long hallway rather than the old library. The new kitchen of the home was much larger than the old one, nearly twice as big. There was a long tabletop that hugged the border of the room and a range of kitchen appliances. The room was outfitted with two crystal ovens, two dozen cabinets, and an uncountable number of utensils and plates. Everything a princess’s home would need.
Spike was standing over the stove, a metal pan tightly gripped in his left hand. This hand was mindlessly making pancakes, years of practice had ingrained the method in his mind. His right hand however was tightly wrapped around his side, as he refrained from consuming part of the house, his dragon tendencies shining through. Despite all his efforts, Spike would still take an occasional glance as a gem plate and wonder whether anyone would notice it being taken.
Living in the house had actually caused some adverse reactions on the no longer baby dragon. As Twilight noted, living in such proximity to walls and floors made of gems seemed to have caused his metabolism to go into a false alarm state, rapidly increasing his growth as if it were his hoard. While he certainly wasn’t as tall as he would if he ate the house, he was now a few inches taller than Twilight. An impressive feat in only a few months.
Sitting on a table a few meters away from Spike, Snowdrop was happily munching on the first batch of pancakes Spike prepared. A few moments later Nyx entered the room.
“Morning Nyx.” Spike said, flipping a pancake in midair.
“Morning.” Nyx replied, stifling a yawn. She smiled as she turned to Snowdrop. Nyx took her seat next to the filly, a bright grin plastered on her face. “Morning Droppy.”
Snowdrop choked on her food for a moment, a laugh stifling. “Nyx!” She coughed, “I said to not call me that.”
Nyx smiled, Snowdrop was cute when she was kinda angry. “Yeah I know.”
“Nyx.” Spike said, depositing a new plate of pancakes on the table. “You know what your Mom said, No Flirting.”
Nyx stuck her tongue out at the teenage dragon causing Snowdrop to giggle at the sibling antics between the two. Nyx grabbed a portion of the new pancakes and began eating.
The room soon fell to a sort of ‘noisy silence”, no one was talking or doing anything loud but the tone of this silence spoke volumes. The steady frying of pancakes and cling and clang of forks on plates gave of a cheerful and happy tone. A tone of progress.
Snowdrop finished her pancakes and, despite her blindness, managed to clean up her mess and put the plate away despite Nyx’s protests to let her help.
“Hey Spike?” Snowdrop asked.
“Yeah?” Spike said, putting the pan into the sink and bringing the last batch of pancakes to the table.
“Where’s Twilight?” Snowdrop said. It was very strange that the head of the house wasn’t down eating breakfast with them.
“Here.”
Snowdrop turned back towards the voice. Standing at the doorway, Twilight was walking in, absentmindedly carrying a stack of books that would probably be reshelved later on today. Twilight stopped by the table and took a sniff of the fresh pancakes. “Ooo, this smells great Spike. New recipe?”
Spike smiled, pulling a handful of crushed crystal from a cabinet. “You say that everytime. You know it’s the same old one.”
“I know.” Twilight quipped, turning to the two fillies.“Alright, you two ready for your first day of school?” Twilight said happily. The two nodded.
“Got your pencils?” A nod followed.
“Got your papers?” Another nod.
“Got your books?” A final nod. Twilight smiled, “Alright it’s…” —Twilight looked up at the clock— “7:54, class starts at 8:30, so you two can relax for a bit before heading out.”
The two fillies looked at each other with mischievous grins before dropping their bags and heading to the door leading to the next room. Snowdrop paused for a moment, catching the attention of Nyx. She turned towards Twilight.
“Um, Twilight?” She squeaked.
“Yeah?” Twilight said, her nose in a book from the pile.
“I’m sorry, I’m just so forgetful. What’s the date today?”
Twilight put the book down, her hoof on her chin as she tried to remember the the of month. “It’s September 7—” Twilight paused as she looked up to answer. Behind Snowdrop, Nyx was silently waving her hooves in distress. She moved right hoof across her neck in slicing motion, giving Twilight the message. Shut up. It then suddenly dawned on her what Nyx was talking about.
“Uh… Twilight? Is something wrong?” Snowdrop asked.
“No, it’s… it’s fine. It’s September 7th, 13 A.C.”
Snowdrop nodded with a smile before turning back to the doorway. “Come on Nyx, let’s go upstairs.”
“I’ll uh… Join you up there.” Nyx said with a faux smile. Snowdrop couldn’t see this and nodded before leaving. Once she was out of hearing range, Nyx let out a sigh of relief.
“Nyx.” Twilight said tensely. Nyx looked up to see her mother looking at her, judging her. “Nyx, we can’t keep doing this. When are you going to tell her?”
“I need some more time.” Nyx pleaded. “I just need to find the best point to tell her.”
“And when will that point be, Nyx? We can’t keep this act up forever. She’s going to school know, she’ll figure it out.” Twilight retorted, trying to speak some sense into her daughter.
“It’s not gonna be forever, just… until I can break the news without her getting angry.”
Twilight sighed, “So... never. Nyx this isn’t telling her a pet ran away or you ate the last ice cream cone.” On some level Twilight could here Pinkie Pie scream. “This is what year it is. Keeping the fact that she was gone for a thousand years isn’t something you can just hide.”
Nyx looked up at Twilight, trying to think of a response. “Please Mom. I just need some more time.”
Twilight’s expression softened at her daughter’s pleas. She sighed, she understood quite well what it felt like to need just a little more time. It was a situation she found herself in a few times too many. “Fine. You have three months. If you don’t tell her, I will.”
While Twilight didn’t mean it, her emphasis of certain words came off as very intimidating. But Nyx was brave, this was in her character. She agreed to the terms and went off upstairs, leaving Twilight to think about what she had just done.
Twilight exhaled and laid back in a seat by the table. She lazily pulled some pancakes to her side and tore a chunk out to nibble on. Even after all these years parenting seemed to just take something out of her. She enjoyed it, Nyx was the world to her, but she couldn’t ever get that perfect method right.
“Teenager problems?” Twilight turned to see Spike eating his crystal embedded pancakes, a cocky grin on his face.
“Yeah he’s four foot three and will outgrow the house soon. Have you met him?” She said sarcastically. Spike rolled his eyes and kept eating.
“So what are you going to do about Snowdrop?” He asked, not looking up.
“I don’t know.” She said, “Probably what I promised. If Nyx doesn’t do it in three months I’ll tell her myself.”
“Don’t you think that will lead to some consequences?” Spike replied.
“How?”
Spike looked up at Twilight. “As much as you try to cover it Twi, those two are dating. And if you break the news at the wrong time you could really mess up their relationship.”
Twilight swallowed her bit of pancake, her mind lost in thought. She certainly didn’t want to push her daughter into a situation like this, yet the ramifications of letting Nyx just continually push it off weren’t much better. Twilight wanted to see Nyx happy, but she didn’t want to leave Snowdrop in the dark to do so.
“Three months. She has three months. If she can’t do it, then I’ll…” Twilight paused, unsure on what to say. “I’ll... think of something.”
“Uh-huh. Sure.” Spike said, a dash of sarcasm in his voice.