The smell of coffee and the sound of a pair of feet whispering across bare flagstones woke Twilight the next morning. It was still dark. Fog brushed up against the windows, almost hiding the van from sight with a haze of dim gray. It was, she reflected, like waking up into a dream.
She let the sounds of her friends around her filter into her consciousness. Pinkie’s low buzzing breath, Rainbow’s light snore. Rarity and Fluttershy were almost silent sleepers, the former with a masque drawn down over her eyes, the latter curled up with a stuffed bunny in her sleeping bag.
Applejack’s sleeping bag, by the fireplace, was empty.
Twilight crawled out of her bag, rubbing the sleepies from her eyes, and padded through the maze of arms and hair. She found her friend in the kitchen, peering over the edge of a steaming mug at the windows.
“You’re up early,” she whispered.
“Hey.” Applejack shrugged. “Yeah, I’m used to being up this early. Farm, n’all. I’m surprised you’re up, though. Uh, no offense.”
“None taken. I don’t sleep well in strange places.” It was the ground. Cold and hard. Even with the pad she’d brought along, it felt like the hardness of the floor reached through it to press against her back. Ludicrous, of course. "I've been camping, but only in my backyard with my brother. Stargazing."
“Aw. Sorry t’hear that. But t’ain’t strange when you’ve got friends with ya. You fell asleep right quick after Pinkie started snorin’ in your hair.” Applejack waved her mug at the the pile of pink lying mostly on the couch. “I’m just surprised you tolerated her hangin’ offa you like that last night. That girl’d hug a grizzly until it whimpered.”
“Isn’t that just what Pinkie does? It felt nice, though. I mean, she’s nice. Um.” Heat crept up her neck, hidden by the darkness, and she looked away. She'd only ever seen Shining Armor and Cadance that close before.
Applejack didn’t seem to notice her slip. “She does, sometimes. I can’t stand it, though. Her bein’ all clingy like that. I need my space.” She took a sip of coffee, keeping her eyes on Twilight. “Still, I imagine it’s right nice if you ain’t been hugged in a while.”
Twilight looked away, blushing more hotly.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean ta imply—” Applejack coughed, then sipped her coffee, eyes flicking up briefly to, then away from Twilight’s face.
“It’s okay. I don’t get hugged often. Not by my friends.” Twilight rubbed at her arm, remembering her mother’s hug before leaving, and Shining giving her hair a tousle. He’d been on his way out the door, too, and Cadance waiting at the end of the driveway.
Applejack stepped up closer and pulled her close with an arm around her shoulders. “Ain’t true.” She felt surprisingly warm, the strength of her arm apparent in the density of the musculature pressing into Twilight’s shoulders. It felt good. “Hugs’aplenty ’round here.”
Twilight flushed, but didn’t move away. “Before, I meant. At Star Swirl.” Every day at CHS, she was hugged by someone. Pinkie Pie most of all, and even Rainbow snuck some in after her games.
The half-embrace lasted until Applejack took a sip of coffee and let her go. Minutes might have passed. A quick look around told her the hug hadn’t gone unnoticed, nor the conversation.
Rarity, doing her best to remain still, despite obviously being awake, smiled. Fluttershy curled up tighter around her stuffed bunny. Rainbow and Pinkie were still asleep, apparently, though she thought she might have seen a sparkle of magenta iris when she studied Rainbow’s face. Pinkie on the couch, an arm dangling down to touch Twilight’s sleeping bag, stirred, but kept up her steady, slow breathing.
When she looked back at Applejack, nursing another sip from her mug, all she saw was quiet curiosity in her friend’s eyes. It felt like she was waiting, and Twilight could see no judgement in her open, honest face.
“I said it was a lot to take in, and it is. But the more that I do...” Twilight shook her head. “I didn’t have a lot of friends at the Star Swirl Academy. Not like you. Just other people I knew. Study buddies.” She shrugged and traced a finger over the counter separating kitchen from living room. “It is nice to be hugged just because someone wants to hug me, and not because they’re family or are congratulating me. It feels nice to belong.”
“I won’t deny that. You want some coffee? Got a pot on the camp stove.” She pointed. “It ain’t too hot yet, but it is coffee.”
“I’d love some.” The kitchen table was scarred driftwood, smooth and rough by turns, cut into planks and planed flat. Twilight ran her fingers over a hollow smoothed by countless waves as she sat down. “What kind?”
“Instant. Black. Got some sugars, but nothin’ fancy like a latte-da, or a machoatto.” Applejack poured her a mug, grinning past Twilight, one eyebrow raised, and set the coffee pot back on the hissing burner. “Here you go. So... if ya don't mind me asking, what’ve you got in that journal of yours?”
“Just... thoughts.” Twilight looked down into the coffee mug and frowned at some of the crystals that hadn’t dissolved yet. She plucked a stirrer from the cup at the center of the table and prodded at them. “I don’t know what to think about a lot of things. Writing them down helps me think. I haven’t had a lot of time, lately. Everything’s getting all… jumbled up.”
“Apple trees, for me.” Applejack pulled out a chair, and sat next to Twilight.
Outside the bay window on the other side of the table, chalk-white fog drifted lazily in a faint, early morning breeze.
“I’m not sure I understand,” Twilight said.
“I think better when I’m working in the grove. The smell, the heat of the sun. Heck, even in the shade.” Applejack’s eyes closed, and she breathed in deeply, smiling, then let it out in a long, peace filled sigh. “I don’t know what I’d do without the farm.”
“I...” Twilight glanced at her mug, where the crystals were almost all dissolved. “I have my family’s library. It’s quiet, and usually dark. Nobody bothers me very much in there.” She frowned. “It’s like that at SSA, too. Quiet. Nobody bothers you.”
“Sounds lonely.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t think so. When I’ve got my books, I don’t notice.”
Applejack arched an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.
“Is that wrong?”
“No.” Applejack took a long sip, frowned at the coffee, then took another. “You are who you are, Twilight. If you like quiet, peaceful alone time, that’s fine with me.” She smiled, set the mug down and twisted about in her chair. “Still, it helps to talk things out, too. Sometimes.”
The implicit invitation stuck in Twilight’s throat. She thought of the entries she was less proud of in the beginning of her journal and curled her fingers tighter around the mug.
Applejack smiled and laid her hand on Twilight’s lightly, drawing it free. “Offer’s there, if you wanna take me up on it.”
The offer being made explicit didn’t help. Twilight nodded, and sipped at the lukewarm coffee to cover her silence, but left her other hand under Applejack’s. The warm, rough hand eased the tightness in her throat the longer it rested, waiting for her to respond.
Twilight turned her hand over and let the warmth soak into her palm. She smiled, twining her fingers through Applejack’s, feeling the strength and roughness give way to soft skin as she touched the back of her friend’s hand.
Applejack squeezed lightly, sipped at her coffee, and watched Twilight’s fingers.
“I’m not sure I’m ready.” She squeezed gently, then slipped her hand away. “Yet.”
That seemed to be enough for Applejack. She smiled back. “Take your time.”
They sat at the table, staring silently out the window as the sun continued to creep up and the golden light began to filter down into the cove. The mist began to drift away, revealing the beach in golden light and shadow. The van sat in the sand, a hulking grey shadow glittering in the early morning.
“I don’t know if we’ve said this, but we’re glad you came. Seeing her again would have been nice, but... I know in my heart that she couldn’t stay.” Applejack said, breaking the silence as the sun broke over the edge of the cliff. “You can. We can see you every day, without restrictions or worrying that she might get stuck here or...” She shook her head. “I mean, we love her. What she did for us was—”
Applejack shrugged.
“She showed you what you meant to each other. Rarity said that, when she was fixing up my hair.”
“Yeah, she did do that.” Applejack nodded. “We’ll always be grateful. But...” She shook her head. “She couldn’t stay,” she repeated. “That’s something about friends. Being there for one another.” Her foot brushed against Twilight’s. “You were there for us, even if you didn’t know what you were gettin’ into. I guess we just kinda dragged you into that whole mess with the sirens.”
“I’m not complaining.” Twilight sighed, then shook her head. “I’ve been dying to know, but... what’s she like? Is she like me?”
“No.” Applejack snorted and waved a hand dismissively, making Twilight’s stomach flop. “You might look just like her, sound just like her... but I’m glad you’re not her. You’re more relatable, y’know?”
Twilight’s stomach settled again. She took a sip of too bitter coffee, and grimaced at the taste. “What do you mean?” She tore open a packet of sugar, poured, and set to stirring it in.
“You’re...” Applejack trailed off, staring into the fog. “I guess it’s a little hard to put a finger on why.” She twisted her lips in a wry smile. “Like now, actually. It’s easier to talk to you. You understand me when I talk about what’s goin’ on. Cars, trucks, and tractors aren’t a mystery to you, and you don’t look at me funny when I talk about... well, almost anything. Trying to talk to her about anything more modern than a train was like running through prairie dog city.”
“Huh?”
“Well, almost anything.” Applejack laughed.
Should I have understood that?
Silence fell over the table again, interrupted by the growing burbling of the pot on the stove.
“You belong, Twilight.” Applejack’s hand covered her hand again, jerking her out of her thoughts. “I can just feel it. We’re all meant to be together.”
“And her?”
“She... I dunno how to describe it. I mean, aside from talking to her. There was just something in the way she looked at us that I can’t put to words.” Applejack shook her head. “I don’t think I can.” Her eyes unfocused as she looked off into the disappearing fog. Finally, she shrugged and took another sip, glancing at the steaming pot.
“I might be able to.”
Twilight hadn’t heard Fluttershy’s quiet feet padding up behind them.
“Gosh darn it, Fluttershy!” Applejack rasped, sputtering on a mouthful of coffee that dribbled down her shirt. “Don’t sneak up on folk like that!”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to.” Fluttershy backed up, clutching her plush bunny even tighter to her chest.
“No, no. Don’t worry. Wasn’t hot or nothin’.” Applejack swiped at the coffee on her shirt, grimacing. “Come have a seat.” Applejack kicked out a chair and waved her mug at it. “I’ll get you some coffee, too.”
Fluttershy sat obediently, looking down at her stuffed bunny’s face.
“You were saying?”
“Oh. Um.” Fluttershy stared off into space until Applejack came back and waved a steaming mug under her nose. “Right. I was thinking that Twilight—pony Twilight—always seemed like she was looking over my shoulder when I talked to her, like she was searching for something. I suppose she was trying to find the pony us.”
Sitting back down, Applejack nodded. “Makes sense, her looking for another ‘us.’ I admit, it woulda been interesting if you two had met. You are like her, in some ways. Different in others. She was a might more open than you, but other than that… I mean… research this, research that, science doohickeys. Magic doohickeys. Same difference, right?”
“I wonder if that means she’s friends with the other us?” Fluttershy gestured with her mug to the sleeping girls. “I mean, I’m pretty sure she is, but I’m sure we’re different in ways that she wasn’t expecting.” She shrugged and ducked behind her mug.
“Makes me wonder, though. That was awful coincidental that you showed up right when ya did. Like… I dunno. Cosmic convergence or somethin’.”
“I was investigating. I thought some of the students at my school were trying to prank me, at first.” Twilight shook her head. “Those videos of me looking so clutzy. I tried to disprove them, but there was no way they could have been faked. Not with the raw footage I found. I spent weeks examining them, reading everything I could about signal analysis. I even worked the study of the video into one of my free-study projects.”
Applejack glanced at Fluttershy, eyebrow raised. Fluttershy shrugged.
“My friends...” Were they really my friends? Laughter and half-heard taunts plagued the memories of those weeks and months after she’d been put on academic suspension for conduct unbecoming of the student body, and subsequently taken off after her parents threatened suit. “Well, the other students at SSA teased me about it for a while.”
Silence fell over the table, and a yawning Rarity put a hand gently on her shoulder and took a mug offered by Applejack with a nod of thanks. “That must have been awful, dear.”
Twilight shook her head. “I was really isolated at that school. I had my books, and my studies. Coming by the school when I did…” I wanted to clear my name. “I wanted to see if she was still there. I wasn’t even going to stop. Just drive by and look. But when I saw all of you standing around, I did.”
“And aren’t we glad you did!” Rarity squeezed her hand. “Though, I will admit that was a little confusing, seeing you drive up in a car instead of appearing through the statue. I mean, after Twilight wrote back saying she was coming... then the book caught fire, we didn’t know what to think.”
“Caught fire?”
Rarity nodded. “Just woosh! Up in flames.” She paused, a finger tapping her chin. “I wonder what caused it to do that.”
I would love to know that, too, Twilight thought. An artifact from another world, from a magical world, would have been a research opportunity beyond anything she’d been able to manage in secret.
“Mysteries and more mysteries. She seemed to drag them around with her.” Rarity shrugged, waving a hand dismissively. “What matters is that you are here, now. And we’re happy you are.”
“I’m happy to be here, too.”
I’m still not sure how the other me fits into this world. If she does at all. No one has seen or heard from her since Sunset Shimmer’s book caught fire. If only I’d had a chance to look at it before it was destroyed, I could have tested some of my hypotheses regarding the strange readings I’ve been getting.
Maybe some of those mathematics would start making sense, too.
She resisted the urge to flip back to where she’d meticulously copied every number, notational symbol and their explanations. It almost made sense, and that almost…
Twilight closed her journal. That line of thought led nowhere. She’d been down it with Sunset so many times that it’d almost become their mode of interaction. Not that Sunset seemed to mind, but her smile had become noticeably more strained in the last week whenever she was around.
And if I’m noticing it…
She looked up from her journal to watch Applejack and Rainbow Dash setting up the badminton net.
Rarity, sitting beside her, smiled. “You could go play with them, you know.”
“I’m not really the athletic type.”
“I’m not either, dear, but that’s not going to stop me from playing a game or two.” Rarity swung an imaginary racket in a slow underhand swing. The wind, as if sensing her vulnerability, shifted to catch the rim of her sun hat and billow the long white shawl away from her shoulders.
Twilight reached up to catch the hat before it blew off, and held it close while Rarity wrestled with the shawl. Without it to cover her shoulders, the intermittent sun shone from smooth, feminine shoulders, skin as pale as white sand, and a delicately curved neck leading down to the swell of her breasts and the edge of a shallow cut chemise.
“Thank you, darling.” Rarity accepted the hat back as the strong breeze briefly drowned out the rushing hiss and roar of the waves on the shore. “Such an awkward time of year. Too sunny to go without protection, but not warm enough to go without something to keep you that way. You may want to put on some sunscreen if you don’t want your cheeks to get chapped. You’re already getting a little rosy.”
Twilight touched her cheeks, feeling the heat in them, and forced her eyes back to the ocean and away from her friend’s beauty. Friends shouldn’t stare at each other like that.
“I don’t think it’s the wind.”
Rarity reached out to lay her fingers against Twilight’s arm. “Well, you are just a touch warm. Your darker skin must help somewhat. You have such a lovely shade of lavender, too, dear. It sets off your eyes so well. Me? I don’t think the sun likes me very much. And the wind just seems to eat right through whatever warmth I do capture.”
A look at Rarity, at her smile, with a hint of knowing in the corners of it, spoke the lie. Rarity had seen her looking. And it didn’t bother her. She was even offering Twilight a way out.
Why?
“Oh, I do so hope it warms up later. I would hate to have to change out of this darling chemise just for the weather’s sake.” Rarity pulled the shawl more snugly about her, crossing one arm across her belly, drawing both fringed ends of the wrap taut against further intrusions from the wind, and giving her a greater measure of modesty.
“I think it will.” Twilight shook her head slightly, some of the tension leaving her. She could try to understand why Rarity did anything for a week and never come up with an answer. “The ocean will help. The western oceanic current brings up plenty of water from the tropics. I would expect the air to warm up once the sun comes out from behind the clouds. The water would be perfect for swimming, though.”
“Oh, it is plenty comfortable in the water. The problem comes when we get out.” Rarity nodded to the badminton net, fluttering in a strong breeze coming down from the bluffs. “It used to be that we’d fly kites all day on days like this. Poor Sweetie Belle almost got carried off to sea one year when she held on too stubbornly.” She chuckled.
“Should I have left my swimming suit behind? If it’s too cold when I get out, then the point of going swimming, to relax, gets negated by the possibility of the chill lowering my immune response and—”
“Twilight, dear, leave those worries aside. Relax. So what if we don’t get to go swimming? We didn’t come here with a plan in mind.”
But the plan was to relax. Wasn’t it? Twilight sucked on her lower lip. “Am I even worrying about the right things?”
“Worrying about worrying, Twilight? Shame, shame. Just watch Applejack and Rainbow Dash. They’re amusing enough, in their own way, and they haven’t a care in the world right now.”
Rainbow was standing by her pole, flipping the hammer used to spike in the stabilizing rods for the net, grinning at Applejack. Until Applejack tested the tautness of her line, sending Rainbow’s pole leaning to the right, bringing Applejack’s with it once the tension was gone.
Twilight clamped a hand down over her journal. She’d barely gotten a full paragraph of thoughts out. More scurried around in her mind, waiting to come out, to be made solid so she could examine them and pick them apart.
She stuffed the book back in her bag and lay back to watch Applejack and Rainbow finish kicking sand at each other and finish setting up the net, albeit somewhat shorter than before, with the tension lines placed more optimally, though the net did have a pronounced lean.
Beyond them, Pinkie Pie was racing the waves, her laughter carrying back as she cartwheeled away from one, got caught by a surprise breaker, and got swept from her feet to land, still laughing, at Fluttershy’s feet.
Fluttershy helped her up, and bent to add a shell to the small basket at her feet. Pinkie, being Pinkie, brushed off her sandy bathing suit bottoms and dashed down the beach, her voice rising to urge Fluttershy to come look at something. She didn’t seem at all bothered by the chill wind or that she was soaked from the waist down.
“It must be all the sugar...”
“Hmm?”
“Just wondering.” She pointed at Pinkie. “How does she stay warm?”
“Well, run around as much as she does, and you won’t catch a chill.” Rarity shrugged and waved at them. “Tell me, what did you do for fun at Star Swirl?”
“Read, study, learn new things. There was always something new to learn there. So much that it was hard to run out of things to do.” Most of the memories of the other gifted students she had studied with had never been vivid, but a few stood out. “I don’t think I was normal. Other girls there kept asking me to come with them to parties and game nights. I wonder... should I have?”
“Would you still be you if you had?” Rarity pulled down her sunglasses and peered more closely at Twilight. “Don’t worry so much about the past, Twilight. That was one thing that... other you taught all of us. It didn’t matter what had come between us in the past. All that mattered was what we did with what we had.”
“That’s... very insightful.”
“It still took us six months or more for the lesson to really sink in, mind you. By the time those... sirens started stirring up the school, we had all but fallen apart again.” Rarity snorted. “That was the state you found us in, bickering over a pile of ash. It was Sunset that kept us together those first few days, when the school was falling apart and rallying against us. Before you arrived.” Rarity pushed her sunglasses back up and lay back down, closing her eyes.
“What did I do? I don’t feel like I did much of anything.”
“You’d have to ask Sunset, but I suspect that she realized that she needed to step up and remind us all what Twilight meant to us all. You know, after we realized that you weren’t her.”
Twilight leaned her head back and shaded her eyes against the sun rising from late morning to noon. “Then what did I really do?” If all she’d done was show up… “Do I really—”
“Stop that. Right now.” Rarity sighed and took off her sunglasses. “I worded that poorly. Of course you’re not her, and that doesn’t matter. You do belong. You are one of our friends, and if there’s anything I’ve learned about the real meaning of friendship since pony you went home, it’s not whether or not we are useful that makes us important to each other.” She tapped the folded glasses against her chest. “Look at me. My best friends wouldn’t know high fashion if it bit them. Does that make me any less a friend to them?”
Twilight’s eyes roved over the beach, looking for an answer. Pinkie plopped down next to Fluttershy, examining shells, sorting them into piles on the dry sand a good distance from the reach of the waves. The whistle and thump of rackets started up as Applejack and Rainbow Dash began a game of badminton.
Finally, she shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Rarity let the sound of the surf, wind and their friends fill the air. “Friends don’t have to be useful to each other to be friends. It helps strengthen the bonds if we do things together, but none of us really have a role to play. We just are.” Rarity tucked her sunglasses into the cleavage of her chemise and lay back down, closing her eyes. “Because we like each other. Most of the time.”
Twilight sat quietly, looking at her hands clasped in her lap, feeling Applejack’s warm reassurance as she curled her fingers against the fabric of her shorts.
Applejack dive after a birdie, miss, and laugh as she got up, sending the birdie flitting with a backhand swing back to Rainbow in the next instant. Further down the beach, Pinkie Pie jumped up with a screech that carried above the waves and wind, and picked up a large crab by the offending pincer.
Fluttershy waved her hands urgently, her words lost to Twilight in the ceaseless rush and crash of the waves. She watched while Pinkie wrestled with the crab, trying to keep its other pincer from her arm, and finally set it down in the water.
Ribbons of light danced and faded between all of them, grew stronger, then melted away.
“I can see it, sometimes,” she murmured. Focusing on the spark in her heart, the streamers grew stronger. It was like their magic, a rainbow of light that had connected them together. Even the longer streamer leading away to the east, Sunset Shimmer, was there. The vision of rainbows faded away as a puffy cloud drifted lazily, briefly across the sun. “Magic.”
“Did you say something?”
Down near the ocean, Fluttershy looked up and cocked her head. She glanced back at Twilight, and waved.
“Just thinking.” Twilight waved back and stood up. That was the problem. Sitting still wasn’t the answer. She could talk and talk and talk, and think even more, and never find the answers she wanted. Friendship experimentation… She smiled at the absurdity. “I’m going for a walk.”
“Enjoy yourself, darling. I think I’ll see if I can convince Rainbow Dash to let me play a game. In a little bit.”
Wet sand squelched under Twilight’s sandals as the wave retreated, leaving behind the cool tingle of saltwater on her skin. Ahead, the cliffside rose up off the beach, a wall of white and dingy brown. Trees clung desperately to the craggy face, their leaves swaying in the wind that continued to sweep down fitfully from the bluffs.
“This really is a beautiful place. Isolated, calm.” Fluttershy smiled into the wind and spread her arms out wide. “It’s perfect.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Without cars, city noise or even the subtler hum of electricity, something in her that had been unwinding since she arrived uncoiled that much more. A walk was the right thing to do. Physical motion, moving, getting away from thinking. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt so relaxed. It feels weird.”
“Being relaxed?”
“Yeah. Everything that I should be worrying about feels like it doesn’t belong here.” She waved her hand at the cove, and glanced over her shoulder at the four girls playing badminton closer to the beach house. “Except none of the things that I used to worry about apply anymore. Not really. CHS is far more lax than SSA ever was.”
“With homework, you mean?” Fluttershy paused a moment to bend and pick up a seashell half-buried in the sand. She brushed off the sand with slow, deliberate care. “But there’s so much more going on at CHS. The Fall Formal, the battle of the bands... the Spring Fling is coming back around again, too.”
“Those are social things. SSA had those, I guess, but...” Twilight shook her head and fell quiet. Days spent isolated in the library while, outside the thick double doors, the sound of revelry and her fellow students having fun filtered through her mind. Her only companions had been books and Spike, probably living it up with her parents, who spoiled his diet far too much. Her only friends had been Shining Armor and Cadance. “They were never something that I worried about.”
“You don’t need to worry about them, you know.” Fluttershy peeked at Twilight from under her hair, then reached out to settle her hand on Twilight’s shoulder. “Just enjoy them.”
“But Pinkie Pie and Rarity—”
“Volunteer their time. We all did when other you was here. We worried, yes, when it seemed like she wouldn’t get home, but we also had fun.”
“And the Battle of the Bands? There was a lot of—”
“Twilight...” Fluttershy’s hand tightened on her shoulder. “Stop.”
Her back tensed under the touch. There’s the house, too. There’s so much to organize, and after Rarity’s tour this morning, I think we’re just scratching the surface with what needs to be—
“Let it go. Just relax.” Fluttershy pulled Twilight around, setting both hands on her shoulders. “The band isn’t here. The school isn’t here. Nobody is here but us.”
Sunset wasn’t there. She wanted to talk to Sunset about what she’d seen. The ribbons of light. Equestria. The Princesses. A whole other world. That would have been fun. And relaxing. She was certain of it.
Eventually.
“How? Every time I stop thinking about one thing, something else comes up?” At least with Sunset, she could share what she was thinking and have it be understood.
Fluttershy smiled. “That’s why we’re here. Why don’t you tell me about these shells?”