by Taranth
***
Sometimes, being Princess is unfair.
Wait, no, that’s not even the problem. Sometimes being Princess of the Day is unfair.
Because paperwork. Piles upon piles of Me-cursed paperwork.
Court is well and truly over, and my little Sparkle is off in her labs developing magical wonders never before seen by ponykind, and I’m here in my chambers doing paperwork. This was supposed to die down once Luna came back! Why does it seem like I’ve got even more endless piles of paperwork now? I cannot honestly imagine how a stack of the height in front of me can contain as many pages to read and sign as it apparently does.
I sighed. The answer was obvious - because I have something I would rather be doing. Or somepony, perhaps… heh. I would call them very un-princessly thoughts, if they weren’t being had by a princess about a princess. That should make them the most princessly of thoughts!
...Sigh. Getting distracted. Have to start reading this page all over…
Somepony save me…
Ah! Perfect timing! I look up with a possibly-desperate grin as Twilight opened the door and walked into the room…
...The door was closed, and the room empty, apart from the endless stack of paperwork.
What? I could’ve sworn...
The door suddenly swung open, and then she walked in, bereft of regalia or lab equipment, with that incredible smile across her muzzle that accompanied a fun and interesting night, either from some new magical discovery or something more… biological… or both…
My ear twitched. Something weird just happened, and something was still…
I heard the gentle creak of my door opening, and the clip-clop of Twilight’s bare hooves across the marble floor.
At least five seconds after Twilight herself.
“Twilight Sparkle… what have you done?” I asked. Not in a horrified way, of course, just very curious.
She grinned even wider, and started talking. Or at least, her mouth started moving. It was fascinating, watching those lips move, forming sounds that didn’t come… It took less than those five seconds for me to lose myself in a daydream about those lips, and I almost missed it when her voice suddenly started to catch up.
“I’ve been studying etiology! The time version, not the disease version. Causality. Time spells.” She paused, then, and it took me a moment to link the moment with an eager grin she’d had a few seconds earlier. “This wasn’t intentional, just a weird little side effect. I thought it was interesting. Do you like it?”
By the time her voice had caught up with her, Twilight had been sitting with an expectant expression on her face for a few seconds, but fortunately she had been waiting for my responses for longer in the past as a filly. It took me a few moments to process everything, to be honest.
“It’s… fascinating. A little distracting, admittedly. So your sound is lagging behind--”
I blinked, cutting off. My eyes were tracking across the room to my right. I could sense Twilight somehow, instinct telling me that she was moving, but she was sitting still. It was one of the strangest things I’d ever experienced… at least in a setting that wasn’t checkered and raining chocolate milk.
And then, she stood and started moving, slowly walking around to the right just like I’d somehow predicted, starting to talk again before she started moving. I wanted to watch those beautiful lips again, but my eyes kept trying to insist that I should look a couple of lengths ahead of where she was.
The sound of her hooves sounded a couple of seconds after her voice. “Sound appears to be delayed by five seconds, but that’s not all. It seems my… presence is a few seconds ahead, as well. Not sure if it’s my magic, if it’s just because I have so much magic or something, but I can tell you can sense it.”
Twilight was pacing back and forth before her desk and watching her reactions, now, and I was trying very hard to focus on where my lover was, rather than where my instincts were screaming she should be. The fact that her voice was moving back and forth as a third distraction wasn’t helping either.
“I can see why you’d find it fascinating…”
I felt her presence come to a halt. The smile on her face suddenly turned a little more sultry as her physical form moved to join it and spoke again, giving me a spoiler to where her words were going.. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea to keep doing my testing like this… it would probably interfere with my research. So I thought I might... test out its effects while it lasts.”
The desk, laden with accursed and currently unimportant paperwork, suddenly lifted in the air and set itself to one side of the room under Twilight’s expert magical field (without spilling a single sheet in the fireplace, unfortunately) and suddenly there was nothing between her and I.
And then suddenly I felt her moving forward, and I was leaning down before I knew it, my heart rate soaring and eyes closing on instinct and feeling her lean in and meet my lips in a crushing, passionate kiss…
...Only her lips weren’t there.
It was jarring, yet somehow exciting - like she was teasing me, close enough for her fur and breath to be tickling my nose and lips, yet not close enough to touch. I found myself actually whimpering, pushing forward a little as if to find those lips, forever just a little beyond my reach…
It felt like forever I hunted for the warm, moist slice of heaven, almost unbalancing myself, and I’d just begun to open my eyes when the five seconds was up and Twilight’s corporeal lips met mine.
Ahhhh...
I don’t think I’ve ever melted that fast before. My legs shook slightly as my lips parted for her tongue and caught up on lost time, lips twisting around each other and tongues entangling in a hot, liquid mess.
The fact that it was mostly completely silent for a few seconds meant I jumped slightly when the wet smacking and happy moaning caught up, which led to a giggle from Twilight that I felt immediately and heard shortly after.
I have no idea how long we lost ourselves to that divine kiss, with sounds and presence and physical all giving conflicting but wonderful signals, keeping me on hooftips…
It ended on a slightly sour note when I felt Twilight’s presence retreat and tried to follow, unwilling to break the kiss yet, and forgot that her actual muzzle was still there, leading to us butting heads a little harder than I’d intended, but neither of us really cared. The whole world seemed to shudder as she pulled away physically as well, the sounds of our passion echoing in the air as we both caught our breath.
“...Wow.” We both said together. Only, of course, the sound was delayed for her, but that was hardly important, and I found myself giggling at the tardy exclaimation.
And then my eyes widened with a gasp as I felt her move forward again, twisting around my neck and nuzzling across my shoulder.
It was anticipation of a sort I’d never before encountered. I had to settle onto the ground, not trusting my legs as Twilight teased me twice over - feeling her playful giggles as my body twitched and arched in response to touches with hoof, muzzle or feather that she hadn’t yet made. I would lean into a touch on my barrel only to feel her nip at my neck, and by the time she stroked the former with a wing I was shuddering from the feeling of her presence along my back between my wings.
I was constantly off-guard and off-balance. I could not imagine myself allowing this sort of situation with anypony but Twilight, ever, but with her it was incredible.
Slowly but surely she worked her way back along my body, leaving me shuddering more and more with every moment, building up the suspense. When she reached my cutie mark she paused there to play a while while my hind leg twitched and my breath came in stuttered gasps, letting her physical form meet up with the preview at last, and by the time both of them were working together there I was little more than a puddle of whining, molten white princess.
And then she started moving further back.
I let out a hiss as I felt her presence move fully behind me, and tensed in that endless anticipation…
…And waited...
...and heard a strangled yelp and a heavy thump and clatter.
My eyes shot open as the feeling somehow… fizzed, fading and distorting, and looked around wildly to determine what had interrupted my bliss. Twilight was in a groaning pile of tangled limbs against the wall, and…
Oh. My wings had shot open.
Twilight had been in the way!
I hadn’t done that in centuries! I nearly killed somepony last time it happened!
I was always so careful!
I scrambled up to check on her as I realised what had happened. While I’d trained myself to be ever-so-careful with my wings, I’d been instinctively sure that Twilight had been behind me.
“Twilight! Are you alright?”
She groaned, and it sounded… wrong. The pitch wavered and twisted as the sound escaped. I looked at her, as she twitched, her body moving too fast, too slow, jumping and stuttering like a damaged recording crystal…
I’d felt her move behind me in the future, and that had made me throw her across the room. I’d broken causality, and now it was snapping back.
I could suddenly feel the ache in my horn that I realised had been building, an incredible magical charge.
Before I could so much as swear, everything exploded.
~-~-~-~
Twilight and I stared at the doorway of my chambers.
Beyond the doorway, instead of the pristine hallways of Canterlot Castle, was an eye-melting nothingness and chaos.
The same thing could be seen through the windows and other doorways.
“Twilight. What is this?”
“...Ummm… the timeless void beyond reality? Maybe?” She chuckled nervously, once more back in one metaphysical piece.
“Did you just dislodge my chambers from time and space?”
“Hey, don’t put this on me, princess ‘I can bench-press stone towers with my wings’.”
I gave her a long, searching look.
“...That’s not what bench-press means, is it?”
I ignored that. “What have we learned about time magic?”
“Yeah, yeah, not a toy, I know...”
“How long will it take to fix this?”
“...I don’t know? If I was in my lab with my notes I could probably fix it in a couple of hours, but it could take a couple of days from here…” She stared again into the abyss. “...Maybe longer.”
I sighed. There would be panic across the whole country, Luna would be insufferable...
“But hey! Remember, this is timeless space. If we do it right, we can get back right where we started!”
I halted, looking up. “...Wait, so, no matter how much time we spend here…”
“Well, yes, theoretically… I mean, I should be able to...”
I grinned, settling into position and tensing“Good. We can start working on that tomorrow.”
“What? But there’s no such thing as tomorrow here, there’s no time…”
“Twilight.” I closed the chamber door with magic a little harder than necessary, blocking off the sight of the swirling nothingness.
She whipped her head toward me in surprise. I imagine she likely had enough time to notice wild eyes, spread wings, a slightly predatory grin and pose, and how fast I was coming at her before she was bowled off her hooves.
“Oh! Tomorrow...” She managed to gasp out before I caught her lips in mine.
And that was the last coherent thing out of either of us... until tomorrow.