//------------------------------// // Chapter 12: Her Little Pony // Story: Glim // by Smayds //------------------------------// Chapter 12: Her Little Pony The yellow earth pony finished the long climb up the tower’s maintenance-access stairway and trotted out onto the flat roof, shrugging off her packs and stretching in the dawn light. Three other ponies gave her cheery waves and then continued with their highly-dangerous task. She waved back. The last trip, the last place, and everything was nearly ready. She took a moment to appreciate the dawn, to really, really appreciate it. It was spectacular. It made her heart leap in joy, something that must be happening to ponies all over Equestria. It was, she realised, the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen in her life. She was sure there were colours along the horizon that she’d never seen until now. It was like the rainbow had just gained another dozen previously-unknown hues. Well, the date was perfectly spot-on. Today would be the day, by the look of that sunrise. That sunrise looked like the whole world had been made anew. She was a pony of particularly spectacular talents. She wasn’t a pegasus, so she couldn’t fly. She wasn’t a unicorn, so unicorn magic was out of the question. She hadn’t attended an agricultural college, so she’d never learned any of the spells that earth ponies used to make food grow so quickly, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t make magic happen. She made magic happen, alright. She’d excelled in chemistry and physics while at school and university, and she still excelled in them to this day. She was a very expert chemist in particular. She was often in demand, but she’d been working on this single project for half a year, and today would indeed be the day. She hadn’t been named after the Royal Couple - she was a year older than His Royal Highness anyway, and he’d only started to become well-known in the last ten or twelve years. And he’d only been a Prince for two of those years. The second part of her name was more coincidence than anything else, but as happened quite often, it fitted her, and her Cutie Mark of a thousand tiny flaming sparks, perfectly. Ever since the Prince and Princess’s engagement was announced, her family and friends often teased her because of her name, and how disrespectful it was to be named after Royalty. But it didn’t bother her, and she laughed merrily along with the teasing, because they all knew she wasn’t named after anypony. She was named, before-the-fact as quite often happened, for her special talent, that one thing that she did better than anypony else. Her name was Sparkling Starburst, and she designed and manufactured the most spectacular fireworks that the world had ever seen, far more jaw-dropping than anything mere magical illusion could possibly make. Well, maybe not quite as spectacular as that magical sunrise, though. She could live with that. Her small team and herself were all exhausted. They’d been working almost non-stop for the last six months. One day, completely out-of-the-blue, she’d received an invitation to Ponytopia Castle and had been ushered into a private meeting with Princess Celestia herself, where she’d been given the very secret news. The actual public announcement had been made a month later, but by then her thirty assistants and herself had already been pulling eighteen-hour shifts to make sure that everything was ready in time. And it was nearly time. And everything was nearly ready. She opened her large saddlebags and pulled out the last two magical detonators. One of her assistants grabbed one of them and trotted over to the rows and rows and banks and banks of tall mortar tubes lining the western edge of the roof, all safely dogged down and covered with tarpaulins for the moment. She picked up the other one and headed east, walking into the astounding sunrise. The final wiring, checking, double-checking, rechecking and quadruple-checking took all morning. As the sun settled overhead and lunchtime arrived, she trotted over to the pegasus guardsponies that had been put at her disposal. She had two of them stationed at every launch site. This pair had just come on shift, replacing the ones who’d been here this morning when she arrived. Two of her assistants trotted past the guards and herself and headed down the stairs, while the third popped a folding deckchair and umbrella open and settled down for a snooze. Skyflash had earned it, and she had to be on top form for the show tonight. “We’re all done, gents. Here you are.” She held up a small jangling bag of glowing coloured crystals. “Nothing can happen until these timers get plugged into the detonators. They’ve all been pre-charmed to go off at the right times.” The young unicorn she’d hired a year or so ago was the best pony she’d ever met at time-delayed spells, and though her fireworks were all non-magical, she wouldn’t trust the ignition of a display costing two hundred million bits, and not to mention fifty times bigger than anything there’d ever been before, to anything but expert unicorn magic. “Every site is wired and ready. The tech’ll ask you for these tonight. Guard the crap out of them until then, okay? Not that I don't trust her. She's one of my oldest friends, but we do things by the book on this one. You don't know how to put them in the detonators, and she does. She doesn't have them, and you do. None of you are unicorns, so you can't set them off early anyway.” “Safety in depth, and don't leave anything to chance,” the purple pegasus called over in agreement as she propped a book over her face to shade the sun more fully from her tired eyes. “Not when you work with things that are designed to explode.” To their credit, the guards barely flinched. They were professionals in their field as well. Sparkling continued, holding the bag up again. “They don’t go in the detonators until fifteen minutes before the show. Then all three of you get the hell off the tower and safely on the ground. All of Equestria’s going to be a no-fly zone for a few hours tonight. For anything else, Skyflash is in charge of this site and if she gives you an order, jump to it like your life's at stake, okay? It could well be. There's six tons of explosives on this roof, you know.” “Understood, ma’am,” the senior guard said very seriously, accepting the bag and tucking it safely inside his chest armour. “You can count on us. Ms. Skyflash is in command. We let her install these at exactly quarter to nine this evening, then we all evacuate. Any further instructions?” She shook her head. “That’s everything. I’m off for a nap and a shower before I meet the Princess. You've been marvellous over the last couple of weeks though, all of you.” Both pegasi bowed, smiling. “Our pleasure, ma’am,” the younger guard said. Sparkling smiled in return. “So, what’s the word?” Both guards instantly adopted blank, fixed expressions. They’d been in Ponytopia Castle this morning before they flew here to Old Canterlot and started their shift. They would know. “Come on, I can just ask Princess Celestia, you know,” she grinned. “I’m seeing her in a couple of hours to report on the show.” Despite his training, one side of the senior guard’s mouth quirked up into a smile. It was the happiest day in history, after all. “You saw the sunrise, ma’am. That’s all I’m saying.” She tilted her head and put on a confused look. “Oh, fine,” he grumped. “You're supposed to be in the loop anyway. If anypony ought to know, you should. You’re arranging the most expensive fireworks display in history for exactly this reason, for goodness’ sake. Fine. Yes. Equestria now has four High Princesses. It happened right when we were told it would happen. Just before sunrise. My Captain’s seen her, and he says that she’s the most beautiful thing in the world.” Despite his gruff expression, the corners of his otherwise-stern eyes were glistening. “You know how many orders and regulations I just broke?” he said in a surprisingly strange voice. That hollow-sounding voice that stallions affected to prevent themselves from bursting into tears. Sparkling Starburst smiled. The guard’s demeanour didn’t fool her for a second. “Probably a lot of orders and regulations, Lieutenant. Rules and whatnot don’t matter today. This is going to be a day to remember forever.” She hugged the pegasus guard. After a moment, he hugged back. As the evening would prove, she was completely correct. Half a million pegasus ponies, the best of the best from weather teams all over Equestria, arrayed in a wide and loose formation a thousand miles across, streaked off the ground and rocketed high into the sparkling night sky. The moon was down and the stars were blazing far brighter than usual. The starlight was bright enough to cast shadows, and even to comfortably read by, but nopony was reading at the moment. They were all gazing skywards. From the tallest tower in Ponytopia, The Princess of the Night leapt into the sky to join the racing pegasi. She caught them, outpaced them, left them far, far behind. Everypony but Luna turned sharply at thirty thousand feet and dived, racing for the ground as fast as they could go, flying along twisted, jagged paths, their wings sprinkling their natural weather-altering magic behind them. Amidst the hundreds of thousands of diving ponies, six explosions of panchromatic light shattered the sparkling, blazing blackness and illuminated all of Equestria with every colour there was. The legendary Rainbow Dash’s full-blooded descendants left screaming trails of multicoloured magical light in their wakes as they beat every other pony back to the ground. The six Rainbooms were the opening act for the Night of Light. Thousands and thousands and thousands of miles above, in the brutally hard blackness of high orbit, Luna finished her own ascent at a height that no mortal creature could possibly ever hope to reach even a tiny fraction of. She halted where she was for a moment. Her horn ignited, blazing brilliantly bright midnight-blue. The pegasi touched down, having seeded the sky with streaks of weather magic for a thousand miles around the capital city. The flaming point of blue-hued light, high in the night sky and far brighter than any star, suddenly sparked and flashed as bright as the full moon. And then the whole sky was on fire. Princess Luna came screeching down through the atmosphere at a hundred miles a second, the blazing fiery pillar of her passage followed by a massive cloud of thousands upon thousands of shooting stars as half a million bolts of lightning started to flash, like a huge sky-high ripple, a great expanding circle, moving outwards rapidly from their central point right above the very heart of Ponytopia. On the highest balcony of the castle that stood at the centre of the capital, four of the five most important ponies in the world sat and gazed in joy and wonder at the display that had only just begun - well, one of them wasn’t sitting, she was being cradled. Suddenly, a shadow, a dark whipcrack, a fast-moving bluish-black winged shape streaked onto the balcony, turned, flipped, and then Princess Luna brought the number to five as she dropped gracefully to her silver-shod hooves next to her family. Her Sisters, her brother-in-law, her infant niece. “Not bad, if I do say so myself,” she said as she sat down next to Celestia. The shooting stars were filling the whole sky. They wouldn't stop falling until dawn. “Definitely one of your better efforts,” her older sister said, right as the clocks struck nine. The rippling cylindrical sheet of pegasi-forged lightning bolts had almost reached the distant horizons when thousands and thousands of streaks of fire erupted into the sky all around them. The non-magical celebrations had begun. The first of thousands of nationwide barrages of starshells. Every colour of light exploded a mile above them, lighting up the city. More distant bursts showed all around, some near, some hundreds of miles away. A second set of ten thousand explosions of joy and celebration followed instantly. The sound must have been deafening. The fireworks alone would have been loud, not to mention the still-echoing roar of half a million thunderbolts. But the balcony was silent. Twilight had a soundproofing spell surrounding the entire towertop chamber, for a very, very good reason. She didn’t want to hurt the little one’s ears. She looked down at the tiny bundle she held as Starburst gently nuzzled her neck. Poking out of the swaddle of white wrappings, the smallest, tiniest, prettiest little purple face had her eyes open wide and was watching the sparkling explosions in the sky with wonder. They’d had lengthy discussions over what she should be called. A name was very important. It might hold a pony’s destiny. Tradition told that a new foal should be named on-the-spot, that the parents should look on their child and say the first thing that came into their minds. Magic was everywhere and that magic extended to names as well. Names themselves were very magical. Twilight and Starburst had spent weeks talking about it instead. Well, that was their way. “What about joining our names?” Starburst had offered. “Like, Star... Twilight... Hmm. Starlight?” They both chuckled at that. It sounded so trite. “Okay, bad idea. We know she’s going to be a girl. Do you know any nice girl names?” he’d asked, months ago. “I know loads of nice girls’ names!” she’d said. “Loads and loads! But her name has to suit her. Maybe we should decide when she’s born. Maybe we shouldn’t even think about it until then.” “We can still talk about it. What about your name? You told me you were named after your mother, right?” “That’s sort of a family tradition for the fillies. Well...” Twilight paused. She was nearly nineteen hundred and fifty years old. Her parents and grandparents and brother and sister-in-law and nephews and nieces were almost a legend to her now. Ancient history. But tradition was still important. “Yes, it was a tradition. The oldest girls in my family have all been called Twilight. There’s me, Twilight Sparkle. My mother was Twilight Twinkle. My grandmother, hmm.” She thought for a moment. “Twilight Dazzle.” She thought again. The memories of so long ago were hazy, but if she thought hard enough, they always came into focus. She concentrated on the sweeping family tree she’d learned as a filly. “My great-grandmother was Twilight Flicker. And her mother was Twilight... Twilight Spark. Almost me,” she chuckled, then opened her eyes wide. Memory was flooding back now, like it’d done so many times before. “Then Twilight Brilliance, and Twilight Shine. Twilight Glow and Twilight Fire. Twilight Night. Twilight Dawn. Twilight Sky. Twilight Dusk and Twilight... Twilight... Oh gosh. I can't remember. Twilight... Twilight... Oh. No, no. No, no, she only had one name. My great-great-great-great-great-great... I’ve lost count.” They both laughed. “My very great grandmother was just called Twilight, and her mother was called... Sunset Sky. I guess that’s where the tradition began,” she said pensively. In the end, they’d decided to wait. And, like new parents all over Equestria discovered every day, when they first saw her, the name chose itself. They both knew instantly what she should be called. And the tradition kept itself alive. An hour or so after the birth that morning, while the spectacular sunlight was filtering in through her chamber’s half-closed curtains, the doctor came back. He was a very experienced obstetrician and paediatrician, and the job of delivering the most important baby to be born since the three Sisters themselves naturally went to the best that there was. Getting on in years, silver-maned and with a lined face - laugh lines, all of them - this elderly unicorn gentlecolt had been delivering foals for his entire professional life. He was widely regarded as the best there ever was - his Cutie Mark of a smiling colt and filly attested to that. “Good morning again, Your Highnesses,” the kindly old stallion said, bowing slightly as he trotted up to the Royal Family. “Good to see that you’re up, Princess. I thought you would be,” he chuckled. Twilight didn’t need to recover from the trauma of birth, of course. “Welcome back, Doctor Lucino.” Starburst bowed himself. “You did a great job this morning.” Twilight was bowing her respect and thanks as well. Between her own indestructibility and this wonderfully-skilled physician, she doubted there’d ever been an easier birth in history. “It’s what I do,” he said, smiling. “Now, please, Princess, there’s something else that needs to be attended to. I’m afraid the beautiful little filly needs her bloodwork done.” He levitated a small, very thin syringe. “We don’t need much, and she won’t feel a thing.” She won’t feel anything at all if she’s an alicorn, because the needle couldn't possibly break her skin. And then we won't need her blood checked for abnormalities at any rate. I can't tell from her feathers. I suppose this is the easiest way to find out if she’s mortal. I’m certainly not going to allow anything to hurt her, just to see if she can be hurt... No wonder it took Celestia's parents three years to find out that she was indestructible. Twilight nodded and smiled. She held the quiet little bundle out to the doctor and he took her with well-practiced grace. “Don’t worry, Your little Highness,” he cooed as he opened the folds of fabric and gently stretched out one of the sleeping foal’s tiny wings. “Don’t worry at all, this won’t hurt. Not one bit. I promise.” He pushed a few of the downy feathers aside and spotted the vein he was looking for. The small patch of purple skin glowed pale blue with what Twilight could tell was a nervelessness spell for a moment, and then he slid the needle in. A few drops of bright-red blood flowed up into the thin syringe. He popped it out of the vein, snapped the cap over the needle and magically scrubbed the tiny pinprick with an antiseptic spell. The baby was re-swaddled and back in Twilight’s forehooves in seconds. She hadn’t even woken up. She hadn’t even stirred. She just stayed still, breathing quietly. No wonder everypony said that this kind old unicorn was the best paediatrician in Equestria. “Well, this needs to get to the lab. I’m sure she’ll be perfectly healthy, of course, but we need to be thorough, check everything properly. Anyway.” He bowed again and beamed at the Prince and Princess. “Congratulations once again, Your Highnesses, and double congratulations. A beautiful little winged unicorn. Don’t believe I’ve delivered more than five or six of the little miracles in all my years. And I’ve helped to bring, oh, ten thousand or so little ponies into the world in my time. Rare and magical, and she's just about the prettiest little thing that I've ever seen. Well done, Your Highnesses.” He’d smiled and bowed once more, and they'd smiled and bowed back. And now, hours later, under the blazing celebrations to end this magical day, Twilight gazed down at her daughter. Her mortal daughter. She didn’t care that her daughter and her husband would grow old and die. Not any more. It would be just like her friends, when they’d passed away. Well, all except Spike of course, but her heart was even softening towards the dragons after a thousand years. Yes, Spike’s sudden and unexpected death had been incredibly hard - she’d nearly lost her mind in the aftermath of that bloody afternoon, in fact - but the rest of them... They’d all died very old for their kind. Dash had departed a few years earlier than hoped, but forty-three was still old for a pegasus. Fluttershy, though... That pegasus had far too much loving to do for her to die at a normal age. Her earth pony husband had passed away soon after she did at the age of seventy-three, which was even starting to get old for an earth pony. And Rarity, who’d seemed to just go on and on and on because of Spike's magical love. But all of them, they’d all died very old. They had all died completely natural deaths. And that was the difference. It would be so incredibly sad for her to see her beloved Starburst, and her wonderful daughter who wasn’t even one day old yet, pass away. But she would manage it. There was no way she’d ever let anything happen to the two most important ponies in her life, not until age itself snuck up and, rightfully, took them away. Especially not after Celestia told her of Pinkie Pie’s prediction. There was no telling if the prediction was referring to her daughter and herself, but the Sisters weren’t taking any chances. Celestia and Luna had strapped on their magically-intimidating armour and gone to see the dragons, and had reminded them in no uncertain terms of the severe and brutal consequences that would result if any dragon came within a hundred miles of any pony town or city. She knew she’d be able to fulfil those consequences too. They weren’t just a threat any more. A threat that the dragons had no idea was empty. Well, it wasn’t empty now. Celestia and Luna would never be able to do it but she would. She could. For the sake of her husband and her daughter, she’d vaporise any dragon she found breaking their treaty. She’d let nothing come between her beloved, precious family other than old age. And she would accept that, when it happened. And she would go on. She could see the pinpoint sparks and flashes of the fireworks and Luna’s night-long shooting stars reflected in her baby’s wide, awe-filled eyes. The brashness of the celebrations didn't really suit her name, but that wasn't important. The tiny little winged unicorn was clearly enthralled with the fiery dances happening all across the wide, clear sky above her. “I hope you enjoy them,” she murmured, smiling, as Starburst leaned in and kissed the tiny purple filly on the cheek. “I really hope you do. They're all for you, my beautiful little Twilight Glimmer.”