Applejack gave Twilight Sparkle a firm pat on her back, then adjusted her hat, and smirked a little. “Sure wish you could stay longer.”
Twilight sighed wistfully at her friends. “Me too,” she admitted. “But I have responsibilities in Equestria that I have to get back to. Its citizens need me.” Ugh, don’t be a downer, she thought. Suddenly, a spark of hope filled her, “But now I can go through the portal whenever I need to! This isn't goodbye. It's just goodbye 'til next time.” All around, smiles filled the faces of her friends. Slowly, she could feel one fill her face too. Twilight turned to Spike and said “Ready?”
“Ready!” the little dragon trapped in a puppy’s body shot back. Slowly but deliberately, they stepped through what appeared to be solid stone.
The experience of traveling through a magic portal while having your body changed was still disorienting to Twilight. Though the change in body was quicker than most of her body-type spells, the traveling was far different from teleportation. Teleportation was definitely a feeling of shrinking against a round wall and then being restored like a balloon inflating, the squeezing said by many unicorn scholars to be instinctively pleasant in its similarities to passing through the birth canal: labeled the “Madigan Effect,” the pressure caused a quick but deep relaxation during the process and a refreshed vigor and readiness for the new location immediately after. The portal wound up being swirly, like a ride in a rolling barrel; Twilight had done several barrel rolls in flight shortly after returning the first time – some were even planned – but she still was not as used to the experience as she’d like to be.
She was already in her return to four legs as she exited the portal, stepping aside quickly so Spike could have room the reorient himself too. Not wanting to cause any potential trouble if the Rainbooms were seen, she reached out through her horn to telekinetically disengage the magic journal from the portal house as quickly as possible.
Loyal as ever, Rainbow Dash was near the portal, standing guard. “Welcome back, Twi!” she said, wholeheartedly greeting the alicorn but obviously being loud enough to be heard in the throne room off the portal room.
“Spike and Twilight are back?” called up Rarity’s voice below.
“Yep!” called back Rainbow Dash.
Rarity was soon at the door, gathering Spike into her forelegs and adding Twilight to what became a quick three-body group hug. “We must gather the others so that we can hear about your journey!” the white unicorn declared.
“No offense, Rarity,” said Twilight, “but we’ve had a busy time. How about we gather the girls up tomorrow and debrief?” It was quickly settled. After a quick letter to Princess Celestia, a pony dinner to readjust her digestive system, Twilight laid down for a good night’s rest.
The next day, Princess Twilight met her friends in their new throne room. “Pinkie!” Applejack groused, “why don’t you ever go and sit on your own chair?”
“I just like yours!” Pinkie explained, but hopped away towards her own.
“If yours is any more comfortable than this hunk of stone,” Rainbow said, stretching her wings as she brought herself to a hover from her sitting position, “it’s worth it. But seeing how they’re all stone, I’m going to go get a cloud. Fluttershy? Twi? Want a cloud?”
Two “No, thank you”’s followed, and in a moment Rainbow was adjusting a cloud as Spike brought the last of the snacks. Twilight related the events of the Battle of the Bands to her friends, answering questions as they arose.
“Huh…” thought Applejack aloud at the end. “I wonder why we never made a giant magic pony when we used the Elements or the Rainbow Power from the box?”
“Was it the music?” asked Rarity. “I know Sweetie Belle has been working with you on song-spells during ‘Twilight Time,’ could that have changed the magic?”
“It wasn’t a song-spell, though,” Fluttershy reminded them. “Twilight didn’t ever finish hers. It was a song that the other me wrote that they were singing.”
“Good questions, girls,” said Twilight. “I’ve been thinking about investigating this. I’m going to take some time to try to write a song – not a spell-song, but just a normal song about the magic of friendship – if I do it right, maybe it will become a song-spell when combined with the magic of our friendship. It would be nice to be able to summon that alicorn spirit here in Equestria, or perhaps give the girls back in the other world the power to use friendship magic without me in case I ever can’t get away through the portal.”
“Well, that settles it,” said Applejack, getting back to the floor. “We’ll let you be while you research.”
“And if you need us,” added Pinkie, “we’ll be around to help you unleash as much Rainbow Power as you need to test it!”
Twilight shook her head. “Magic power I have. What I really need is help with writing a song. It’s a bit different than a spell. Fluttershy, Rarity, you write for the Ponytones, any advice?”
Fluttershy considered this. “Your song comes from your heart. You just give it life. Don’t overthink.”
Rarity nodded. “Show, don’t tell. If you want to write a song about friendship, write it about your friends.”
“And always start with an awesome title!” added Rainbow Dash as she kicked her cloud-cushion and left by the skylight the castle had clearly grown just for her aerial entrances and exits.
Twilight giggled as her friends left. “Spike, hand me a notebook, then keep yourself occupied while I start this.”
“No problem!” her assistant said, notebook and quill already in his claws.
“Let’s see,” Twilight said, “awesome title, huh? Rainbow Dash wouldn’t find anything more awesome than rainbows… except maybe dashing. The magic does express itself as a rainbow, so Rainbows it is.” She wrote this down. “Now, what do my friends do with the Rainbow Power? They shine. So there we have that: Shine Like Rainbows.” She added this too.
Twilight considered her notebook for a moment. “Well, rainbows don’t actually shine,” she reprimanded herself. “The sun is shining through the rain.” She leapt up. “That’s a great metaphor for friendship!” She spoke the words out as she wrote quickly: “Together we stand as the rain begins to fall, and hold our heads up high as the sun shines through it all… needs another syllable in the second part, though, so I suppose “holding’ can replace ‘hold.’” She did a quick ink-removal spell and rewrote the last sentence.
She found herself hesitating on the period at the end. Admittedly, expressing things in rhyme was somewhat easy for her, at least when she did not have to juggle that and having no magic to write with. The last time she wrote down a quick rhyme like this, though, writing a period at the end of it had caused an explosion and her friends worried that she was dead for an afternoon. “Guess that didn’t turn out too badly,” Twilight mused, stretching her wings.
Twilight considered what she had so far. “Alright, “Shine Like Rainbows” is the title, so I’ll keep that as a repeated phrase. In that case, I’ll need a few things that rhyme with ‘Rainbows.’” She considered the subject. “Fluttershy’s song worked as a counterspell, and was largely about singing. Strange.”
“What’s strange?” asked Spike, who was carrying a stack of dishes to the kitchen.
“Human Fluttershy wrote a song about having music within her, and mentions music being in her heart several times. Our Fluttershy wrote a similar song that she sings with the Ponytones, about the music being all around and how a pony can find the music in them like she did.”
“They seem to be largely the same,” commented Spike. “I guess it’s just not like they’re all that different. Less like two different Fluttershys and more like one Fluttershy put into two different situations, two species that grow and socialize differently.”
“That’s very astute, Spike.”
“What can I say? When you deal with Spider-mare being cloned as many times as she has, and with Eternal Crises popping up all the time, you learn multiverse theory pretty quickly from comics.”
Twilight rolled her eyes a little, but smiled wide, in the end proud of her little drake-brother for being so smart. “Singing about our music will make a good theme, so I’ll write it down,” she commented as the baby dragon went about his chore, “but for now, back to the task: rhyming words with ‘rainbow’ that are about music. Let’s see… ‘pianissimo?’”
“I beg your pardon!?” asked Spike, sticking his head out of the door he had just passed through.
“‘Pianissimo,’” Twilight repeated, oblivious. “It means ‘very soft.’”
Spike snickered. “Soft, eh? Don’t want to go with that.”
“You’re right, Spike, but ‘forte’ doesn’t rhyme. Oh! But ‘crescendo’ does. That’s when it rises!”
Spike fell to the floor at that one, clattering a few dishes.
Twilight caught on. “Didn’t I tell you to keep yourself occupied?” The drake hurried out, giggling still. “Now then,” Twilight continued, “‘crescendo’ is a literal term for the rising of the sound, so, ‘The sound that we hear in our hearts makes a crescendo, and shines like rainbows.’ No, I have bring it back to visual senses. Visuals that rhyme with ‘bows…’ ‘Shows?’ No, it needs to be an intransitive verb… Hmmm… blows, flows, glows – ‘glows!’” She turned back to writing. “‘And the light glows…’ ‘the light that ignites glows –’ nice internal rhyme, still a bit more… ‘the light that ignites in the dark glows.’” Comparing that to her previous line, it still lacked a few syllables. Finally, she came to a conclusion. “Okay, so ‘the light that ignites in our hearts, it makes us all glow.’ Close enough even with the plural verb – you’d think whoever came up with these rules would have made it easier to rhyme a plural with another plural.” Twilight shook her head, trying to forget Starswirl’s time travel spell. She doubted she could case enough one-week jumps in the time allowed anyway.
“Alright, I’ve got some good writing done here,” she said, examining her work, “but it looks like a lot of solid statements. Good material for a chorus. I need something for the verses, though. I should do what Rarity suggested, tell the story of my friends.” She smiled warmly. “Now, how does the story start?”
Spike was making his way across the room once again, so he chimed in with, “‘Once upon a time?’”
Twilight shook her head slightly. “Come on, Spike, that’s so cliché.”
Spike crossed his arms. “Yeah, and ‘Awesome as I Wanna Be’ was the epitome of verse. Come on, Twilight, the Rainbooms are a pop band. They max out at a 5, 6 tops on the Mohs scale of rock hardness.”
“Mineral hardness.”
“I know, and I meant what I said. You’re not looking to win the Ponitzer Prize here. You’re trying to make a song that’s catchy, that makes the listener feel good. Sometimes a cliché is what you need.”
By this point, Twilight was nodding slowly. “You’re right, Spike. I think I actually will start with ‘Once Upon a Time.’ Now, what happened after that? In both worlds, my friends came into my life and unlocked the power of the magic of friendship. How can I express that in a metaphor? What symbolizes the magic of friendship, other than…” Twilight looked down at her own flank and exclaimed, “My cutie mark! Stars, aligned! ‘Once upon a time, you came into my life and made my stars align!’” She wrote this down.
“Now, what happened after that? I saw that the ponies here represented the Spirit of the Elements of Harmony. I saw that without friendship, Sunset Shimmer would be unable to wield the Element of Magic. I saw that Discord could not separate us, I saw that I needed Spike to defeat Sombra… each time, my friends pointed me in the direction I needed to go to complete a puzzle!” Twilight’s voice rose as she saw an answer coming. “They were signs! ‘I can see the signs!’ Wait-” Twilight slumped back down, writing, “I’ll need a bit more to start. ‘Now’ will do.” She tacked it on to the front of the line. “Alright, in both meeting my friends here and in the other world, when the spark of friendship ignited and we cast the Rainbow Power, we floated. So my friends picked me up so I could ‘shine like rainbows.’” She ran the last line through her head a few times. “Needs a bit more. ‘You picked me up…’ why? Why do you pick someone up? They’ve fallen down. I certainly had fallen, Nightmare Moon had destroyed the old Elements of Harmony, Sunset Shimmer had stolen my crown. So in both times, my friends picked me up when I was down so I could shine.” She cleared her throat and gave the title a shot as a song. “Shine like rainbows!” she belted.
“No.” said Spike, having arrived so quickly a cloud of smoke was in his wake, his clawed hand now covering her mouth. “Just, no. You sang great with the girls, but you need someone else’s voice to help you sing. Seriously, what you just did was almost as bad as your first attempt at a counterspell.”
“That bad, huh?” Twilight asked sheepishly. “Okay, no more trying to sing. The girls back in Canterlot High will just have to write the music.” As Spike went back about his business, Twilight gathered up her notes again and started to read over them again. “So this is one good verse,” she said, “But I need another. So let’s see, I’ve met my friends, I’ve defeated the bad guy, what do I want to say now?” Twilight wandered over to her picture of her and her five pony friends. “Let’s try just talking it out. Wouldn’t hurt. ‘Friends… you are…’” sometimes Princess Twilight still had trouble expressing herself to other ponies, and it appeared that now would be the same. “‘Friends,’” she started again, “‘you are in my life.’ True enough. ‘And you can… count on me… to be there…’ ugh, gotta rhyme… ‘there… by your side?” Corny as it sounded, as she thought back on the adventures she had been through with both sets of friends now, it was a big deal. She had friends from another world now contacting her, because they could depend on her loyalty. She turned to the picture and addressed it with a manner of pride. “Friends, you are in my life, and you can count on me to be there by your side.” She smiled warmly. “It won’t win me the Ponitzer, but it makes me feel good. Comfortable. Like a warm blanket.”
Spike, who was still in earshot but not in a line of sight, made a gagging motion with his claw at that metaphor.
“Okay, almost finished. I need one more good couplet, something that carries me from life with my friends to the music theme, preferably something that deals with lifting up, and ending with ‘so I can shine.’” Twilight rubbed her chin. “Actually, it should be about all of us, so ‘so we can shine.’ Something lifts us up so we can shine. The music?” She shook her head. “No, it would be better in a verb phrase to go alongside ‘lifts us up.’” Twilight took inventory. “We don’t all play or write, but at times each of the Rainbooms sang, and I know we sing a lot here in Equestria, so all together we sing our songs to lift us up so we can shine.” She took note.
It was coming along great, just a transitional line and she’d be set. Despite this, Twilight found herself struggling for a line. After several attempts, she called down Spike. “Spike,” she asked the drake when he had arrived, “does the new library have a copy of ‘Song Spells and Magical Melodies?’”
Spike’s draconic memory of the contents of a hoard rarely failed. “I think so,” he confirmed. Together, they walked into the new library. Spike began to scan the shelves for the referenced reference in anticipation of a request to fetch it, but while searching, continued, “But I thought you weren’t going to focus on spell-writing.”
“I wasn’t, Twilight confirmed, also scanning, “but I’ve hit a bit of a writer’s block, so I was hoping this would help.”
“So why not a song writing reference?” Spike asked.
“I was thinking of that, but one of my main goals in this is to allow my friends in Equestria to summon that alicorn spirit through music. I thought I’d start with musical invocations and see if that encouraged my writing along.”
“I don’t know, Twilight,” Spike said as he wheeled over a ladder, believing to have found the right location. “Remember what Fluttershy said? Your song should come from your heart.” He scurried up to a shelf near the top. “If you want it, though, I’ve got the book here!”
Twilight was staring blankly ahead. “Fluttershy said more than that,” the princess murmured. “She said I give the music life. That’s what I’m trying to do, make the music come alive! I’ve got it!” She ran out of the library to pick up her notes. “Thanks, Spike!” she called back as an afterthought.
“Don’t mention it,” Spike grumbled, wedging the thick book back into its place.
Twilight pranced in place a little as her horn set to work. First, she finished her notes; then, she transcribed the lyrics as a completed song, judging how much to repeat the chorus and what parts to repeat. Finally, she drafted a brief explanation to Sunset Shimmer so that she could send it via the magic journal. When the drafting was done, she took the journal and began writing the note and song.
After a few patient minutes, she got a message back:
“Dear Princess Twilight,
Thanks so much for writing us a song! The girls are all happy to have something new to sing, but don’t worry, I’ll do my best to also document any magical properties of the song. (Think a thaumometer would be to conspicuous?) Either way, great lyrics, though I’m sure we could use some music-”
Twilight looked puzzled. It seemed like such an abrupt stop. After a few moments, a line slashed through the last phrase, followed with the quick writing of:
“Nevermind, Rainbow and the girls say we’ll take care of it. Thanks again!
Your Friend,
Sunset Shimmer.”