I waited in the shadows, watching the train. It was the express from Canterlot, and Twilight was sure to be on it. My new cloak felt good, the dark fabric disguising how nervous I was. I really, really hoped this wasn’t a trap of some kind. If it was, I was falling for it like an idiot.
The train slowed, whistle blowing as it pulled to a stop at the station. A small crowd of ponies entered, only a few leaving. The express didn’t make many stops, thus the name, so its main business was ferrying ponies to the capital. Ponyville was almost unknown in comparison. Even I hadn’t heard of it before I’d ended up here, and I’d lived close enough to see it from my window at the castle. Then again, I’d never paid attention to much aside from my studies.
Among those exiting the train were a distinctive lavender unicorn and a purple dragon that was barely more than a toddler. I almost stepped out to greet them when I saw something that made my blood run cold. A mare with a bright blue coat and yellow mane. The same mare that had chased me when I’d been trying to get away from Canterlot.
I felt a surge of anger. Right at that moment, I held her life in my hooves. I could strike her down with righteous anger and reduce her to ash and dust in seconds. It was her fault that I’d gotten hurt.
There was a tiny voice inside somewhere, telling me that it wasn’t her fault. I’d chosen to throw myself out of the train instead of cooperating with her. I’d made the decision, and that meant accepting the consequences.
And if I did kill her, it’d probably prompt a new investigation into the area. She’d get to live (for now).
She wasn’t watching me, though, and from a distance like this I could see how she was keeping Twilight in sight. It seemed Celestia was keeping close tabs on her replacement for me. I pulled a quill and scrap of parchment from my saddlebags and wrote a quick note before floating it towards her, trying to use as little power as possible to make it difficult to see the magical aura.
The paper hit the young mare in the face. Twilight stumbled and pulled it free. I saw her lips moving and she looked around in surprise.
I had to hope she’d follow instructions.
Her horn lit up, and she vanished in a flash of teleportation. I saw the blue mare start to panic, running to where Twilight and her dragon had been. I snorted with laughter before casting the spell myself, vanishing into the teleport.
I reappeared inside Sugarcube Corner. I’d given Twilight directions on how to get there, but she wasn’t familiar with the town, so I probably had a few-
The door burst open. Twilight ran in, closing it behind her and panting with exertion. She looked like she’d run a marathon. Or maybe just a hundred-yard dash, considering how quickly she must have moved to get here already.
“Twilight Sparkle,” I said, using a spell to lower the ambient light and make my voice echo. “So it has come to this!”
“Sunset, please stop scaring the other customers,” Mister Cake said, from behind the counter. “I don’t care if you’re Applejack’s friend, ponies are trying to eat.”
“THE PONY OF SHADOWS!” Pinkie Pie screamed, running away from where she’d been waiting tables. I wasn’t sure where she went. She seemed to have an ability to appear and disappear at will that surpassed teleportation. Maybe somepony would study her someday.
“Aaaaand there goes my waitress,” Mister Cake sighed. “You two need to stop playing this game.”
“...What’s going on?” Twilight frowned, looking at me.
“Well, I was trying to make a big, dramatic entrance,” I sighed. “So much for that idea.”
“And the pony running away?” Twilight tilted her head.
“She does that,” I shrugged. “She thinks I’m a crazy witch who lives in a ruined castle in the woods. Silly, right?”
“...You are a witch who lives in the woods,” Twilight pointed out.
“I didn’t say she was wrong. She does overreact, though.” I lowered my hood, shaking out my mane. Rarity had been right about her hair products. My mane was bouncier than it had been in half a decade. I had to remember to ask how she knew so much about removing tree sap from manes.
“So, um,” Twilight swallowed, running a hoof against the floor. “I guess you’re Sunset Shimmer. I-it’s nice to meet you in person. My name is Twilight Sparkle and I-”
“We’ve been writing to each other for years,” I said. “I think it’s safe to say I know your name.” I fought down my nervousness and smiled at her. She didn’t seem like a secret agent of the Crown, here to investigate and arrest me. Good start.
“Right! Um, yes!” She grabbed a scroll from her pack. I watched as it unrolled all the way to the floor and kept going. “I-I consulted several books a-and my caretaker to make an appropriate list of questions and topics to cover.” She grabbed a quill. “I can check off arriving in town and introductions…”
I watched as she mumbled to herself. The baby dragon on her back hopped down without her noticing and wandered over to the display case.
“Looks like someone wants a treat!” Mr. Cake said, smiling down at the dragon. I had a feeling I’d be waiting for a little while, since Sparkle was re-reading her checklist, so I tossed the dragon a bit. He promptly bit it. I should have remembered that toddlers will put anything they can get their hooves on - or talons in this case - into their mouths. I tried to take it back from him and discovered that taking gold from a dragon was not as easy as it sounds - and it didn’t sound easy to begin with.
“Just keep it,” I sighed, after a third tug failed to rescue the bit. I levitated the next one to Mr. Cake. “Can you give him something better to chew on?” I didn’t think it’d damage his teeth or anything, but I wasn’t sure if dragons could digest metal. Mr. Cake gave the dragon a cupcake, and the little guy dropped the bit to devour it. I put the coin up on the counter and out of his reach.
“Right!” Twilight said, finally speaking up. “S-so the next order of business…”
“Twilight, calm down,” I sighed. “You know I’m not like Celestia. I don’t care about formality. You wanted to learn a few of my tricks, right?” She nodded. “Great. We’re going to go to my place. It’s a long walk, and we need to get out of town without being seen. No telling when your tail is going to bring reinforcements.”
Twilight blinked and looked at her butt. “My tail?”
I facehooved. “There was a pony following you. One of Celestia’s spies. It’s why I had you teleport before you came here, to throw her off.”
“Celestia’s spies…?” She frowned. “But… why would she follow me?”
“You mean aside from the fact you’re her student?” I snorted. “Come on, Twilight. I know you’re smarter than that. She’s probably been reading the journal. It’s why I didn’t tell you where I was living.” I looked out of the window to the street. “I’m lucky she didn’t show up herself.”
“That’s why you didn’t meet me at the station,” Twilight said, thinking. “You wanted to make sure it wasn’t a trap.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “For all I knew, you were lying or she’d send the Guard in your place to take me into custody. You got everything you need for a while?”
“I brought some of the books you asked for, and a number of others you might need,” Twilight opened her saddlebag. “I also brought extra ink, quills, and enough parchment to write a thesis in triplicate!”
“I was thinking food, bottles of water, a bedroll…” I sighed as I saw her start to blush with embarrassment. “You’re not used to roughing it, I take it.”
“I… brought bits!” Twilight said. “Just in case I needed to pick up something I didn’t have! See? It’s the last item on my pre-trip packing checklist!” She pulled out another scroll. I pushed it away.
“Calm down,” I said. “It’s fine. It’s not like I won’t feed you. I’m just… not a good cook, so fair warning there.” I laughed a little. “Come on. We should get going before Celestia shows up herself wondering where you went off to.”
“Do you think she might do that?” Twilight’s eyes were wide with fear. I guess the thought of Celestia being disappointed affected both of us the same way.
“Not really. But if she does, I’m throwing you at her and running.”
“This is further out of town… than I expected,” Twilight panted, struggling to keep up with me. I took a tiny sliver of joy from that. A long time ago, I’d been sweating that much trying to keep up with Zecora.
“We’re almost there,” I said. “I can carry some of those books for you if you’re having problems.”
“N-no, it’s fine!” Twilight said. “I put an enchantment on my saddle bags to make them lighter and give me more room! It’d actually be more weight for us to carry if you took some of them.”
“That’d be a handy spell to learn,” I mumbled.
“I can teach you!” Twilight said, excited. “And you can teach me how to get more power out my my spells! This is going to be the best study-cation ever!”
“...Study-cation?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“It’s a portmanteau of study and vacation,” Twilight explained. “It’s appropriate because while I’m getting a vacation and out of the palace like the Princess had been hinting at, but I also get to keep studying so I can get ahead of my lesson plan!”
I shook my head. “I can’t even remember when I cared that much.”
Twilight was quiet for a while. I thought she was just catching her breath, but as we reached the gorge, the ruined castle just visible on the other side, she surprised me by starting up again.
“Why did you leave?” She asked. “I couldn’t ask the Princess about it directly, but some of the castle staff mentioned you but… not why you had to go. You said it was because you failed a test, but there’s no way she’d kick you out just for that.”
“Really?” I snorted. “I thought she’d make sure you heard the story.” I sighed. “Look, I’ll tell you, and if you want to go back to Canterlot after that, I won’t blame you. I told you I was a bad pony who did bad things, remember?” She nodded. “I meant it.”
“What was it?” Twilight asked, almost whispering. “Necromancy? Blood Magic? Chaos Magic? Double Chaos Magic? Necro-romantic spells?” She said the last with particular fear. I couldn’t blame her.
“Wow,” I said. “Your imagination went right to some really dark places when I said I was a bad pony. I’m not a monster, Twilight. I was just a jerk. I wanted Celestia to turn me into an alicorn, and we got into a fight over it because she was holding me back from my real potential.”
“Holding you back?” Twilight tilted her head. “But she’s always pushing me to be better.”
“Well from what I hear, miss ‘five percent extra effect’, you hold yourself back just fine.” I snorted as Twilight’s ears folded back and she looked down. “Sorry. I didn’t mean… Just trust me when I say you’re going to have fun.”
“That’s not it,” Twilight said. “It’s just that the only time she ever tries to get me to slow down or stop is when she’s afraid I might hurt myself.”
“You know what her favorite phrase was with me? ‘You’re not ready.’” I laughed. “I heard it every day. ‘You’re not ready to know about the mirror.’ ‘You’re not ready to become a Princess.’ But you know what she meant? She meant ‘I don’t trust you.’ She didn’t trust me with anything, including the truth.”
“The… truth?”
“The truth about what she wanted from me!” I yelled. “She didn’t just take me on for fun, Twilight! She never does anything without a reason. And whatever her reason was in using me, it didn't include actually following through on her hints that she'd turn me into an alicorn. She just wanted to dangle it in front of me like bait to make me jump through her stupid hoops for years on end! Cadance didn't have to do anything! But me?! I was never good enough for her!"
“Cadance is nice,” Twilight muttered.
“Whatever.” I sighed. “Do you want me to break out into a cackle and tell you how I’m going to prove them all wrong? Maybe about how Celestia will rue the day she trifled with me?”
Twilight giggled. “If you do, maybe Daring Do will swoop out of the sky to stop you. I mean, we’re going to be in ruins in a dangerous wilderness.”
“Daring Do?” I frowned.
“You know, from the book series! The second book just came out!”
“Twilight, I live in a castle in the woods. All of my books are a thousand years old.” I paused. “And I don’t get out much.”
“Well, I can tell you about it on the way in! See, Daring Do is a pegasus archaeologist…”
“...and then she gave the stones back to the villagers to restore the harmony they enjoyed, and it ended with a rainstorm forming and ending the drought!” Twilight finished. We'd arrived at the castle an hour ago, more than long enough for me to remove all the tracking spells from her things. She'd been talking the whole time, and I don’t think she took a breath since she'd started getting into the book’s plot. I wasn’t sure I even needed to read it now that I’d heard all of it.
“Mm…” I made a noncommittal sound as I stirred the cauldron. “Do you take milk or sugar with your tea?” I checked my icebox. Whoops. “Never mind. I don’t have either.”
“That’s fine!” Twilight said. “Princess Celestia never takes sugar in her tea-”
“And you want to be just like her.” I rolled my eyes.
Twilight bit her lip, confirming my assumption.
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” I said. “I tried to imitate her, too. I thought if I was just like her, she’d treat me like...” I trailed off, biting my lip. “Anyway, it’s important to be yourself, too, but you have your whole life to figure out how to do that.”
“You’re a lot nicer than the servants said you were.” Twilight blushed and covered her mouth.
I laughed. “Yeah. I used to be a total bitch. Then I nearly died and I only survived because of the kindness of others. It sounds lame, especially since I’m trying to be a witch. Everything that happened kind of… filed off my rough edges.” I used a ladle to pour a cup of tea for Twilight. She took the cup and looked at it curiously.
“What is this?” She floated it over her head.
“I made it myself. I know it’s a little ugly.” I poured myself a cup in a similar glass. It was rough, the glass not even close to transparent. “I made them while I was practicing with fire magic.”
“That’s impossible. Spells can’t make heat that high.” Twilight frowned at it. “This looks like a fulgurite.”
“My fire magic gets that hot,” I boasted, drinking down the boiling tea. Twilight sipped and squeaked with pain. “Clearly you haven’t made yourself fireproof yet. That’s quite a weakness.”
“It’s not a weakness,” Twilight said, frowning and touching her scalded lip.
“You might disagree soon. You ready for your first lesson in using your full power?”
“Of course!” Twilight smiled. “So what are we doing first? Meditation?”
“Meditation?” I snorted. “No. The first thing we’re doing is going somewhere we can’t break anything.”
“What? But we just got here!” Twilight groaned.
“I guess if you’re too tired to learn…” I said, trailing off.
“I’m never too tired to learn. Sometimes I don’t sleep for days!”
“I usually sleep at nights myself. Now let’s get moving. I want to see just what Celestia found as a replacement for me.”
Two hours later, I stopped walking. Twilight collapsed next to me, covered in sweat. I smirked down at her and prodded her with a hoof. “You’re not dead, are you?” Her dragon helped me poke her, mimicking me like, well, a baby.
“I want to be,” Twilight managed to gasp, between breaths.
“Such a complainer.” I sat down and waited for her to recover. “Anyway, this should be far enough from the castle that we won’t collapse anything time and the weather haven’t managed on their own.”
“We’re miles out!” Twilight complained. “We could have just gone down the path a little.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “But you need to push yourself more. When was the last time you really hit your limit?”
“I…” Twilight trailed off. “I guess it would be my last midterm. I didn’t sleep for almost a week. I practically collapsed right in front of everypony!”
“Okay. That’s a start.” I nodded. “We’ve got you exhausted physically, so now we’re going to work on getting you exhausted magically.”
“According to all the books I’ve read, being magically exhausted doesn’t-”
“Your books are wrong,” I interrupted. “You’re going to tell me that it’s not like a muscle, right? You don’t get stronger by just using magic until you pass out.” She nodded and opened her mouth to continue talking. I put a hoof on her lips. “That’s true for most unicorns. But most unicorns hit their limit without even trying.”
“...So why are we different?”
“Because we’re powerful,” I shrugged. “Twilight, Celestia wouldn’t have taken you in unless you had a lot of potential. Do you know how I got my cutie mark?”
“You said there was some kind of… accident at the orphanage.”
“Orphanages are just like this, Twilight.” I reared up and spun around, spreading my front hooves to encompass the forest around us. “The sun shines, the rain falls, and the strong prey on the weak. And a foal that doesn’t have their cutie mark? They’re the weakest. I had a lot of trouble using magic when I was young, Twilight. I tried all those little things they do to teach young unicorns. Levitate this feather, light this candle, help this flower grow.”
I laughed. “I was terrible at it. Everything I did blew up in my face. Literally. Now, Twilight, what’s the most common reason for a spell matrix suddenly deciding to explosively release its energy as light and heat?”
“Usually… it means the pony is putting too much mana into the spell.”
“Wrong! The most common reason is because the spell matrix is malformed. But you never had problems with that, Twilight. Neither did I. That’s why we’re alike. Both of us have power to spare. When we blow up a spell, it’s because normal spells are too delicate for us. That’s not true for normal unicorns. They struggle to have enough strength to get the matrix going at all for much beyond basic levitation and things where a cutie mark talent assists.”
Twilight blushed, but didn’t interrupt my story. She sat and held Spike, keeping him from running off. I was going to have to break her of the habit of listening to monologues. It might save her life at some point, or at least it might surprise Celestia, which was almost as good. I’d love to see her face if Sparkle stopped her in the middle of a lesson and said something about her hypocrisy.
“Now,” I continued. “I didn’t know my problem was because I was putting too much power into it. Foals almost never have that problem! And I got bullied for it. I wasn’t… confident in myself. They backed me into a corner, and they taunted me, hit me, dared me to cast a spell. So I tried to make a light spell. And I put every ounce of mana I had into it.”
Twilight paled. She seemed to have figured it out already.
“A light spell is a pretty tough little thing, you know?” I shrugged. “They work with almost no mana at all, and they can hold tons before they become unstable. But that just makes it worse when they do. They don’t just puff into a harmless burst of soft flame and soot.” I shivered. “And I had no control. I didn’t know how much was too much. There… wasn’t much left of the orphanage. Nopony died, but a few foals got pretty badly hurt. Celestia found out what happened and took me in. Maybe she thought nopony else would, or that if she didn’t do something I’d be an even bigger danger.”
“So she taught you to moderate your power,” Twilight guessed.
“Yes, but she did something else too.” I lit up my horn. “She taught me how to use all of my magic safely. She said that I’d probably never need to use it, but that I had to learn, because if I didn’t know my limits, if I didn’t push them, the only restraint I knew would be the restraint of a straightjacket - handicapping myself instead of controlling my magic.” I turned and lifted my cloak to show Twilight my cutie mark. "I got this when I blew up the orphanage. It's the spell, just before it went off. It was like a miniature sun. I heard they could see it from everywhere in the city."
Twilight nodded, wiping sweat from her brow. I could swear she wasn't sweating that much before I'd shown her my flank. “And she did something like this. She took you someplace nopony would get hurt, and had you just… use everything.”
“Exactly. In my case it was the north face of Canterlot mountain. You can’t see it from the city, but there are a few craters there. The forest is just as good.”
“Won’t we hurt animals and plants?”
I rolled my eyes. “Twilight, if there are any animals around here, they’re going to try and eat us. I suggest you put on a good show to make sure they’re terrified.” I fired the spell I’d been holding on my horn, throwing a fireball that duplicated in midair into a storm of blazing blue comets, crashing into a tree and smashing it into red-hot coals.
Twilight’s eyes went wide, and she focused, firing a burst of magic into the air, where it blew up in a flash of cold light, snow falling around us and extinguishing the flames I’d summoned.
“You could have killed us!” Twilight yelled. “Using fire in the forest is going to… you know! Start a fire. A forest fire. In the forest.”
“Eloquent,” I snorted.
“It’s not like you gave me time to think of something clever to say,” she mumbled, blushing.
“You’ll have to learn to think of quips on your hooves,” I said. “It’s an essential part of being a powerful sorceress. You can hardly threaten to poison a well or blight crops unless ponies are going to take you seriously, and that means having clever things to say.”
“...I’m not going to poison a-”
“It was an example!” I groaned.
“It’s just that if you do those kind of things there might be a reason why you and the Princess got into a fight…”
“Leave this place, foul despoiler of the land!”
I looked at Twilight. She hadn’t said it. I hadn’t said it. We both turned around, and I groaned. It was a deer, who both considered themselves the true rulers or caretakers of the Everfree - despite the fact that ponies had been there first - and also didn’t like overt magic very much. Needless to say, we didn’t get along. I hadn’t seriously hurt any of them, but I didn’t like them much either.
How was I supposed to know they'd hold such a big grudge just because I'd burned down a few acres of their 'sacred grove'? They hadn't even put up a sign!
“I’m not a ‘foul despoiler of the land’.” I made sure to say it with the right emphasis to make the quotes obvious. I wasn’t sure if the deer understood sarcasm. “How about you take your stupid little useless antlers and scamper back to your tree fort?”
“You…” he growled and dug at the ground with a cloven hoof, lowering his head like he was getting ready to charge.
“Yes, me!” I yelled, stomping and raising my head to look down at him. My cloak billowed out as flames surrounded me in a corona of blinding light and heat. It was more real than illusion, though I had to be careful not to burn my cloak. Rarity would kill me. “The Witch of the Everfree, the Pony of Shadows, the strongest mage in all of Equestria! Woe to those who would align themselves against my power! Retreat now or fall to your knees in worship, for any other action leads only to your own destruction!”
I’d had that speech ready for a while. I wasn’t going to win any beauty contests with the ragged scars across my skin, so I’d settle for making ponies wet themselves in terror on command. There might have been a little spite and fantasizing about confronting Celestia’s guards someday, too.
The deer’s ears folded back at the display, and he turned tail and started running. I threw a weak fireball as a warning shot at his rear to make sure he didn’t stop.
“W-was that necessary?” Twilight asked. I turned, and my expression of triumph fell. She was terrified of me. I’d wanted to scare the deer, not her. She was my friend, or my student, or my pen-pal, or whatever we were now. She shied away when I took a step towards her. Spike seemed confused but happy. Probably because loud noises and fire were comforting to a dragon of any age.
“I didn’t-” I looked down, dropping the flames around my body. “I’m sorry…”
“You could have really hurt him. Is that how you treat everypony?”
“No! He was just a jerk and… I wanted to scare him off.” I sat down heavily, looking at my hooves. I felt like a liar. Here I was, all preened and nice looking, with polished hooves and a new cloak and my hair washed, pretending that I was always like that, instead of the messy beast that I really was. “I warned you that I wasn’t a good pony,” I muttered. “You should have listened.”
I didn’t notice her moving until she had pulled me into a hug. She was still smaller than I was, not quite fully grown. Her body was warm and soft, and I tried not to make a sound as a tear ran down my face. I didn’t even know why I was starting to cry.
It was a long while before I felt anything like normal again. I guess if there was one thing Celestia had never managed to teach me, it was how to put on a mask. She was a master of it. Sometimes even I couldn’t read her, and I’d spent almost my whole life around her.
But me? I carried my emotions on my shoulder and I couldn’t help it. My talent for power might really be more accurately described as passion. Passion for learning, for using my power, for everything, really. And sometimes it bit me in the flank.
I watched Twilight cast spells one after another. She’d suggested teleportation, but we’d both agreed that wasn’t safe. We wanted her to get tired, and teleporting while exhausted was a quick way to get yourself killed.
So she was lifting weights. Boulders as big as ponies, almost a dozen of them at a time, and holding them until her aura gave out and they crashed down. It was slow and crude, but at least she was getting something done. Spike had already fallen asleep, curled up around a pouch of bits on the moss.
“I can’t carry any more!” Twilight complained. “How is this teaching me?” She lost her grip on all but one rock, sweat dripping down her body.
“Catch!” I yelled, throwing a rock at her. She grabbed it with her magic. I raised an eyebrow. “Can’t carry any more, huh?”
“That’s…” Twilight blushed.
“You’re stronger than you think you are,” I said, giving her a weak smile. I still felt like I was failing her as a teacher. “What’s the most difficult spell you’ve been taught?”
“The most difficult?” Twilight considered, the rocks orbiting her. She probably didn’t even realize that most unicorns couldn’t manage boulders of that size at all, much less after straining themselves all day. “It would probably be the Creation spell. It makes matter out of nothing. Most ponies mistake it for the Apparate spell, but that actually pulls matter from somewhere else as a summoning effect.”
“Twilight,” I smiled, more genuinely this time. Her little lectures put me at ease. It meant she wasn’t quite as afraid of me. “I know what the spells do. Celestia taught me too, though… she only ever taught me how to make-”
“Cake,” Twilight sighed. We shared a look and broke out laughing.
“Alright, you’re in charge of dessert, then,” I smirked. “Make me your biggest, best cake.”
“Not literally you, since that would be a Transmutation spell instead of Creation.” She giggled. “But if I turned ponies into cake, they’d start calling me a witch too!”
“You could join me and Zecora,” I suggested. “We could all get around the cauldron and make prophecies. It’ll be great! We can tell ponies about how they’re going to be kings and stuff.”
“I’ll remember to bring my own cloak,” Twilight said. “Okay. Stand back. I’m so tired I’ll be lucky if this does anything at all.”
I gave them some distance and let her put the rocks down. She still had enough control to put them down softly onto the mossy ground. She really wasn’t pushing her limits very far yet. Her horn lit up, and I saw sparks of raw mana fly from the tip, a sure sign she was pulling from the depths of her mana well. I liked that. It meant she was taking me seriously.
I could feel the magic in the air starting to come together. The aura on her horn flickered.
“Twilight! Push harder!” I snapped. “You can give it more than that!” The aura solidified, shining a bright white. “That’s it!” She was starting to flare, magic pouring out of her body. It was beautiful, a perfect expression of power.
The cake took shape in a flash, appearing all at once and steaming with heat like it had come right out of an oven. I grinned and clapped my hooves.
“See? Now that’s pushing your limits.”
“I can’t believe I did it…” Twilight grinned up at me, then her eyes crossed and she slumped to the ground, unconscious.
I limped over to her and picked her up. And the cake. I freed a slice from it and tasted it.
“Yellow cake with fudge icing. Just the way Celestia likes it.” I sighed. “I should have guessed." It was good, but gave me pangs of nostalgia. It wasn’t just the way she liked it, it was the same cake she’d taught me to make. And now she’d taught Twilight how to do it in my place. She’d replaced me, but I could replace her too. This memory, teaching Twilight, that was how I wanted to remember this cake from now on.