The silence of the castle woke her before dawn. Half annoyed that she was being foolish and half alarmed at the lack of those long, slow, gentle snores that made the place sound like a river ran through it every night, she crept downstairs to take a look.
His cavernous room lay dark and cold and empty, three things it never was normally. Not even the gold and jewels of his hoard seemed to glitter in the light of her horn.
Refusing to panic, she stopped by the seneschal's office to leave several layers of instructions with a bleary-eyed Golden Voice: what to do if she wasn't back by daybreak; what to do if she wasn't back by eight AM; what to do if she wasn't back by ten AM. She then run back upstairs, slung on her saddlebags, and took off into the darkness. He couldn't have gotten far, and he wouldn't have, either.
She started with his favorite spots around town and in the forest nearby. Not finding him in any of them, she left hastily written notes for those friends of theirs who also frequented those places and moved on.
On and on and on she searched, flying in a widening spiral centered on Ponyville, but even with the sun fully up and all her senses magically enhanced, she still almost missed him. The purple expanse of his scales and his big green spine ridges mixed so well with the early morning shadows of the meadow beneath her, it was only when she heard that familiar rumble of him sighing that she stopped and doubled back.
Relief flooded her, but she'd known he had to be around here somewhere. With all the decades that had passed since she'd hatched him, she liked to think she knew him pretty well by now.
Except she hadn't expected him to disappear, had she? And hovering in the blue autumn sky above the long, shade-dappled stretch of him, just visible here and there between the tree branches, she had to admit that his grouchiness lately had taken her by surprise, too...
An old tree stump squatted in the grass near where the rumbling sigh had come from. Twilight folded her wings, settled herself down onto the stump, and looked up at his sleeping face. "Spike?" she asked gently.
Stretched out, he wound away into the woods, his head bigger than her whole body. But he still grimaced when he didn't want to wake up, the spines twitching all along his neck. "Not today," he said, his voice always his voice no matter how deep it got.
The breath that washed over her had a slightly sour tinge, but it was the words that made her blink. "You're not Spike today?"
"I'm not waking up today." His eyelids pulled apart just enough for her to see twin reflections of her confused expression in his shiny, black pupils. "So thanks for stopping by, Twi. I'll be home next week. You can show yourself out, right?"
"I see." She rubbed her chin. "So instead of Spike, today you're the fabled Grouchisaurus rex."
His eyes came more fully open. "The what?"
Twilight put one front hoof to her chest, waved the other at the sky, and declared in her best movie announcer voice, "A legendary beast who once roamed the forests and swamps of ancient Equestria!" Flaring her horn, she conjured up an image of a big, purple-and-green dragon tromping over some appropriately primeval landscape. "Snarling and growling at all who crossed his path, he struck terror into the hearts of those ponies who only wanted to know what the hay he thought he was doing lying around being grouchy all day!" She grinned.
He didn't grin back.
"Hence the name Grouchisaurus." Twilight found herself going on even though she was pretty sure the joke had fallen flat. "Because he was being all, y'know, grouchy..." She let her tableau vanish with a pop.
"Grouchy," Spike said, his mouth barely moving, and silence settled over them. Sitting with her grin frozen in place, Twilight tried to think of a clever way to ask what was bothering him, but he spoke again before she could come up with one. "Sounds like that must be the word on your calendar for today."
Her awkward grin became an actual smile. "Spike, I haven't used one of those since I was in school."
"Huh." He shifted his head, his forelimbs sliding him forward a bit. "Well, here's your word for tomorrow, Twi: 'bicentennial.'"
Quickly, Twilight started running through her mental list of anniversaries. It wasn't two hundred years since his hatchday: they'd thrown that party nearly a decade ago. It wasn't two hundred years since the Summer Sun Celebration that had brought the two of them to Ponyville for the first time: they'd done that particular anniversary up in style just last year with Celestia and Luna and Cadance and a giant crowd spilling out of Ponyville's town square.
Nothing specifically bicentennial came to her with regard to tomorrow, but she was fairly sure she could guess the general outline. "Something to do with her?" she asked, not even trying to keep her voice from cracking.
Spike nodded, the grass rustling against his chin scales, and more rustling brought one arm reaching out from the tree shadows. Something shone between the stalactite claws of his thumb and forefinger, and Twilight found herself looking at a lovely aquamarine gem about the size of her hoof. "Two hundred years ago tomorrow was the day we first ran across the Diamond Dogs." Even his whispers made the air shiver around her. "The day she gave me this."
She couldn't hug him anymore, not the way she'd once been able to. But she touched both front hooves to his nose, let a warm stream of magic shiver out from them, let it circle to close at the back of his neck, and let it tighten so he'd be able to feel it.
He closed his eyes, leaned forward, and gently touched his bedspread-sized forehead to the tip of her horn.
"Twilight!" a voice shouted, and a cascade of magic crashed over her as cold and hard as a bucket of hurled ice cubes. "Are you here? Did you find—? Whoa!" The sound of somepony thumping against the ground made Twilight's ears wince; she turned to see Hoedown sprawling onto her back in the grass, her bright orange mane and tail spreading out around her like a lava flow. Her head popped up immediately, though, light of the same color playing around her horn. "Elevation! Right! Always forgetting that!"
Hoedown leaped to her hooves, but Twilight still cried out, "Are you okay?"
"Are you kidding?" Hoedown made a rude noise with her lips. "I fall farther than that just getting out of bed in the morning!" She tapped a hoof against the side of her head. "If I told you how many times I've popped back into normal space only to find this melon of mine stuck halfway inside a rock—!"
"Thirty-eight," Spike said. Twilight looked over her shoulder to see him actually grinning, his foreclaws folded under his chin. "Unless you've done another couple since last week."
"Spike!" Hoedown jumped straight up, her horn flaring again. "Hang on!" And she vanished with a clattering crash like a box of silverware falling down a stairwell.
Twilight blinked at the spot of empty air and shook her head. "I need to have another talk with that filly," she said.
"Six," she heard Spike say behind her. Turning to ask him what he meant, she saw him counting down on his claws. "Five, four, three, two—"
The air shattered once more, and six figures tumbled into the grass: four ponies, a griffon, and a donkey. Twilight had to smile. That particular combination told her exactly who the new arrivals were even before the magical tau particles of the spell had shimmered away.
Hoedown was the first to scramble into an upright position. "And that is how I win the teleportation scavenger hunt every year!"
"Excuse me?" Cinnamon Teal pushed himself up next, his wingtips coming around to straighten his glasses. "Might I remind you, Hoedown, of what Princess Twilight has told you several times about attempting to—"
"Attempting?" Hoedown shoved her snout directly into Teal's. "Look around, Goggles! I did it! I mean, we're all here, aren't we?"
With a chirp, Gaia sat up, her talons brushing her crest feathers out of her face. "Gimme a minute, HD; I'm not too sure I'm all here yet."
"I'm sure I'm not," came Dolores's voice, so sweet and clear, it always reminded Twilight of singing even when she was just talking. The big, muscular jenny rose and shook herself, her long ears flapping. "I had a picnic basket full of breakfast I was hauling along for when we found Spike and Twilight."
"Yo." Dusty, on the other hoof, sounded like nothing so much as gravel grinding together. The lanky earth pony untangled his legs to reveal the large wicker basket he'd been wrapped around. "Got it right here."
Dolores gave a squeal. "My hero!" She hopped over to where Dusty was climbing to his hooves and practically knocked him over again with her hug.
"Gracious!" With Dolores out of the way, Twilight could see Mira Belle huddled down in the grass, the little gray unicorn with her usual red scarf knotted around her neck. "Where in Equestria are we?"
That got another snort from Hoedown. "We're, like, two hills away from downtown, Mira! Hardly even outta anypony's backyard!"
Mira's ears fell, and Twilight cleared her throat. "To be more accurate, Mira, we're out in the Everfree Forest about five miles from Ponyville Town Hall."
"Yeah, yeah." Hoedown rolled her eyes.
But Mira sat up straighter. "Five miles?" The words came out with more breathy excitement than Twilight usually heard from her student. "That's farther away from home than I've ever been!"
Teal turned his wrinkled brow toward her. "Forgive me, Mira Belle, but you've been to Canterlot several times with us and even to Manehattan that one time we all accompanied Twilight and Spike—"
"It's not that, Teal." Mira waved a hoof, and Twilight couldn't stop a smile. Not that long ago, Mira Belle would never have dreamed of interrupting another pony. "Those are all cities like Ponyville, so going to those places is just like staying home. But here..." She stood, her gaze moving along the tops of the trees surrounding them. "We're out in the woods. Five miles away out into—" She shivered slightly. "—the unknown."
"Yeah," Hoedown said again, but this time, she didn't sound bored at all. "Isn't it great?"
Gaia gave another chirp. "All this catbird knows is that it's breakfast time." She flapped over to where Dolores was opening the basket. "Got any poppy seed bagels you need help with there, Lori?"
The others quickly moved over to help as well. Twilight joined them, and Dolores gave her the red-and-white checkered tablecloth to spread out on the grass. She was just starting to unfold it with her magic when a shadow fell over her, and she looked up to see Spike. He held out a claw. "I'll take this end; you take that end."
It was the best breakfast Twilight had eaten in quite a long time: Dolores had even packed a bag of quartz crystals for Spike. The talk and the laughter rolled all around the little meadow, and she watched Spike's grouchiness melt away under the warmth of the kids' high spirits.
Except they weren't kids anymore, were they? Dolores pretty much ran her family's construction business, and Cinnamon Teal was now the regular evening librarian at the newly-grown South Ponyville Library. Gaia had made herself indispensible over at the post office; the shows Dusty choreographed and danced in at the Ponyville Community Theater brought ponies to town from all over Equestria; and Mira Belle continued to develop into the most thoughtful student Twilight had taught in decades. And while Hoedown was, of course, Hoedown, she wasn't much more of a loose cannon than a lot of other ponies Twilight had known over the years. She would find something she could devote her talents to eventually.
Several sighs pulled Twilight out of her thoughts. Gaia was folding up all the various papers and cloths that had wrapped the food and was tucking them expertly back into the basket, and Dolores was getting to her hooves. "I may be the boss," she said, "but that doesn't mean I can skip going to work." She nodded to Hoedown. "You zapping us back to town, HD?"
Hoedown noisily sucked the last drops through the straw in the juice box she was holding and tossed it to Gaia. "You know it!"
Gaia caught it, squished it, and looked around. "We forget anything?"
A clearing of throat like a minor thunderstorm drew Twilight's attention—and everyone else's as well—to Spike, lying on his belly so that his tail snaked back into the trees. With a grin, he poked a claw at the blanket most of them were still sitting on. "I can carry it back to town if you haven't got room there, Gaia."
Tapping her beak, Gaia glanced back and forth between the basket and the blanket. "Fold it good, and I'll make it fit."
All of them stood, and Spike folded the thing into almost a perfect cube, something Teal and Twilight both laughingly declared was impossible even as the dragon did it. Gaia then managed to squeeze it into the basket, and Dolores, hoisting the thing in her teeth, tossed it to balance perfectly across her broad back. "Once again," she declared in her musical soprano, "we've managed to overcome science, magic, and good sense all in the same morning!"
Dusty gave a whistle. "I'm telling you, Lori, you're amazing! You've gotta let me put you in wunna my shows!"
Dolores blushed all the way out to the tips of her ears, and a tiny crackling fireworks display shot from Hoedown's horn. "Whoo-hoo!" she shouted. "And we all lived happily ever after!" The fireworks changed to a display that looked a lot more like a volcano going off. "Now! Back to town!" She waved a hoof from Twilight to Spike and back again. "You two coming?"
Twilight pretended to consider it. "Well, the last time I went teleporting with you, the stripes in my mane switched places."
Mira Belle giggled, and Hoedown rolled her eyes. "Fine! Spike?"
Spike had risen back to sit on his haunches, the spiny ridges on his head reaching higher than the first row of tree branches. "Seriously?" he rumbled, folding his arms across his chest.
Looking up at him, Hoedown actually went a little pale, the first time Twilight could recall seeing that. "Yeah, might be better I catch you next time," she said. Sparks blossomed from her horn. "Everybody else ready? 'Cause here we go!" The sparks swirled in a tornado through the meadow, and when they cleared away, Twilight was alone with Spike.
She let the silence drift down for a moment before asking, "Feel better?"
He nodded. "We have such great friends," he murmured, his eyes unfocused. "Some of them are gone, sure, but that doesn't mean they aren't our friends anymore. And the ones who are here, every moment we're with them is the best gift we're ever gonna get." He blinked at her, and a smile curled sideways over his snout. "I'm sorry: I should've put a 'Dear Princess Twilight' in front of that, huh?"
"Quiet, you." She unfurled her wings and sprang up to hover in front of him. "As I think somepony may have said once or twice in my hearing, 'friendship is magic.'" She spread her front hooves. "But more than that, it's everywhere and in everything if you let it be."
The next sound he made sounded suspiciously like a sniffle, but before she could ask him teasingly about it, he was catching her in his arms and pulling her into a hug. And while it wasn't like the hugs they used to share, it was most definitely a hug, and Twilight found herself feeling a little sniffly too all of a sudden.
More silence drifted over them, then he said, "Can the fabled Grouchisaurus rex give you a ride back into town?"
Giggling, she slipped from his embrace and flapped up to flop over the top of his head. "I'll be the envy of the paleontology society!"
She heard him sigh, but it wasn't one of his grouchy ones. And the two of them started together into the woods.