The snow was starting to melt, which was, all things considered, for the best. It wasn’t the last snow of winter—no, it was far too early for the ponies of Ponyville to begin their annual wrap-up—but it would at least be a good few days until Moondancer had to deal with the wretched, damp stuff again. She was glad to see it gone, but more glad that she could actually see where she was going this morning, and it wasn’t long before she found her way to the library.
Today, Moondancer decided, she was not going to be distracted—she had research to do, after all, and unless those adorable filies showed up again for another session of Twilight Time, nothing was going to keep her from
Oh sweet mother of the Sisters, she’s gorgeous.
Moondancer blinked, twice, her hoof still leaning against the half-open door as her eyes fell on Twilight, sitting at a desk, her quill held aloft in lavender aura as she bit her lip in thought. For a moment, she found herself unable to move, but as soon as she could Moondancer stepped forwards into the library and pushed the door closed behind her, shutting it with the gentles of thuds.
Twilight looked up and smiled, dropping her quill to the desk.
“Good morning, Moondancer,” she said, standing up and stretching before trotting across the room to greet her old friend. Moondancer opened her mouth to say something in response, but was struggling to find any words at all.
Twilight’s mane was a mess—she had clearly woken up not that long ago, and tiredness still lined her features. Haris splayed all over her brow, the usually meticulous stipe of pink now twisted in amongst the darker purple. And something about the way her mane fell about her face… today it wasn’t quite straight, but seemed more rounded, and Moondancer couldn’t quite put her finger on why any of this made her old friend beautiful but to be perfectly honest she couldn’t really care less.
Twilight Sparkle was beautiful, and Moondancer was staring.
She knew she wasn’t meant to, that it was impolite and rude and wrong, but Moondancer found her eyes drawn to Twilight and stuck there without any thought of her own directing them. She had no choice—she bjust stared, and hoped that Twilight would move and stop being so impossibly gorgeous before she made a total fool of herself.
“You alright?” Twilight asked, chuckling nervously to herself. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
“More like an angel” is the cheesiest thing you could possibly say, Moondancer, and if you dare try to speak those words out loud I swear to Celestia I will never let you live this down.
“Y-yeah,” she said, forcing herself to blink, holding her eyes closed just long enough that she could turn her head away. “I’m good. Just got distracted, that’s all.”
“Okay…” Twilight said, her suspicion clear in her voice. She shook her head, and smiled once more. “I was hoping you’d come in today. I had some research I needed a helping hoof with, and I couldn't think of anypony else who would be able to help me out.”
“Flattered” was a word that could adequately describe Moondancer’s feelings, if it weren’t for the butterflies in her stomach that were making her feel too self-conscious, as if she needed to curl up in a ball and just let the world completely ignore her in order to feel safe and comfortable again. But she was still flattered, that much she was sure of.
“What are you researching?” she asked, trying to avoid eye contact with the princess. Twilight smiled, and with a flick of her tail, turned around, walking towards the stairs in the far corner of the tree.
“Come take a look yourself,” she said, beckoning with a nod of her head for Moondancer to follow. Moondancer swallowed, and took a few brave steps forward, before the sway of Twilight’s hips dragged her down the stairs like a snake charmed by a flautist.
The stairs twisted and turned, and soon opened out into a basement—a wide expanse of what looked like storage space that had been reconfigured into a DIY lab. Twilight had laid out some desks and various machnies buzzed and bleeped around her. Moondancer stepped forwards, trying to get a closer look at some of the outputs and readings.
“You’re studying leylines?” she asked, incredulous. “But you’re one of the leading experts on leyline theory! What more could you learn from a setup as small as this?”
Twilight smiled, a devilish grin that Moondancer almost recoiled from, before she recognised in the shine of her friend’s eyes the enthusiasm with which she was approaching this task. There was no doubt that Twilight Sparkle was planning something big.
“What if I were to tell you that leylines were changing?”
Moondancer frowned. Then she blinked. Then she nodded. Then:
“Wait, what?!”
Twilight smiled, clearly enjoying herself a little too much. “That’s what I thought at first. But I’m convinced—the leylines of Equestria aren’t static, but they’re moving. And what is more, their strength is changing constantly, fluctuating and flittering around a median value.”
“It’s just natural interference…”
“But it’s not,” Twilight interrupted, ripping off some graph paper from a readout and hovering it over to Moondancer for closer inspection. “It’s not interference—there’s a clear pattern in that data. All the leylines have different patterns, each one fluctuating in different ways, but all around the same average. Remind you of anything?”
Moondancer was stunned. She checked the graph again, and, just to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating, walked over to the machine Twilight had taken the readout from and read off the next strip of graph paper herself. There was a pattern. There had always been a pattern.
“This is a spell matrix,” Moondancer said, not quite believeing the words that were the only logical conclusion to what she was seeing. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible. And yet… there it was. “They’re not natural sources of energy—something is channeling energy through them.”
“Bingo.” Twilight dropped down into a chair, and started to mess with a few dials on one of the devices, not one that Moondancer recognised. And if the impression of Twilight’s cutie mark on the side of the tower were anything to go by, it was quite possible that this machine was custom-built for this experiment…
Being a Princess must have had serious perks when it came to getting research grants, Moondancer realised. You could quite literally design and order your own equipment, probably without even needing to worry about the cost. But then, Twilight Sparkle had never needed to think about budgets for her work—Princess Celestia had always seen to that, ever since she was a student. It would have made Moondancer jealous, if she hadn’t been able to ask Twilight to order equipment for her when they were studying together.
“So,” Moondancer said, not quite sure where to begin. “What do you need me for?”
“I need somepony to help me figure out what this spell is doing,” Twilight said. “You were always pretty good at that, weren’t you?”
Moondancer raised a hoof to her head, and rubbed at her scalp. She took a long, deep breath in, and let it out slowly and carefully.
“Yeah,” she admitted. “I guess I can do my best. But I’ll need data from more than just the one leyline. It’s impossible to tell what this spell might be without all the parts of it…”
“I’m trying to gather the data,” Twilight replied, “from research stations around the world. But there’s not much I can do about the San Palomino line: nopony has dared try to set any sort of monitoring equipment up on it in years, and I don’t blame them.”
“But that’s the more powerful line, isn’t it?” Moondancer asked. “Surely, if anything, that’s the one that should tell us about the spell…”
---
“Damn it all to Tartarus!”
Twilight’s voice echoed through the basement, a dulled and muted thud reverberating after it. It was the sound of a mare driven to frustration by a problem that simply refused to be solved, and the sound of a clipboard thrown flat against a soft, wood wall, in that order.
“I’m sorry, Twilight,” Moondancer said, wiping at her eyes and trying to stifle a yawn deep in her throat. “I’ve tried everything I can think of, but it’s just not coming out right. Without the San Palomino line, there’s nothing we can do.”
“I know,” Twilight said, quietly. “I know. I just thought…”
“Yeah,” Moondancer said. “I did, too. I really thought that between the two of us we might be able to find something.”
“It’s no use,” Twilight said. “Maybe we’re just seeing patterns where no patterns exist? Ponies do that far too often.
“Look, I think we should call it a night.” Twilight glanced across the room at the clock that hung on the wall, its large hands mocking them for their lack of progress in such a long time. “Rainbow will be here soon, anyway. You still want to join us tonight?”
Moondancer bit her lip, and thought:
If I say yes, then I could very well be upsetting Rainbow Dash, and I’d hardly want to make that sort of first impressions. But if I say no, Twilight will probably be disappointed in me, and I don’t want to let her down.
Oh, what do I do?
“Are… are you sure you don’t mind?” she asked, settling on the compromise—or rather, the coward’s way out—of simply asking Twilight to make the decision for her. “I’d have thought that you’d have enjoyed some time alone with your friend.”
“Yes,” Twilight said, simply, “but it’s not every week that an old friend comes to call in Ponyville. I haven’t seen you in two years, Moondancer—it’d be nice to make the most out of the time that you’re here. If that means waiting another week until I get to just spend time with Rainbow Dash, then I’m happy to do that.”
Moondancer wasn’t sure if she was meant to be happy that Twilight was willing to let her new friends take second priority to her, but it made her chest feel warm and she felt as if she were being hugged. She resisted the sudden urge to wrap her own forehooves around her barrel and squeeze, instead settling comfortably in the position of having her elbows pushed up against her ribs, a light pressure on her sides.
“Okay,” she said, simply and quietly, nodding her head in a soft, bobbing motion. “I’ll join you. Sounds like fun.”
Twilight beamed, and all but pranced across the room to wrap her own forelegs around Moondancer’s neck—and she melted into the hug, and allowed the princess to completely surround her, until she was lost in a sea of lavender embrace and the entire world was Twili
The thud of a knock at the door. With a slight cough, Twilight disentangled herself from Moondancer and, with an apologetic grimace, ran up the stairs to greet her guest. Moondancer sat still for a moment, stunned.
Her heart was beating at a thousand beats per minute, each contraction a shudder that sent a light flutter through her chest. If she looked down, now, she could just see it—there, in the middle of her ribcage, right under her sternum, the gentle twitching of her skin in butterfly-wingbeats to the rhythm of her heart.
She took a deep breath in, and focused on the flow of air through her throat, the sensation of the cool gas flowing almost like water into her lungs, filling them up, She didn’t think about the lingering tingle of Twilight’s touch, of the ghost of pressure that still pressed against her shoulders. And, slowly, her heartbeat calmed, and the twitching of her chest became lost amid the slow rise and fall of her breaths.
When at last her heart had calmed down, and every inch of her body has stopped tingling with the lost sensation of Twilight’s embrace, Moondancer rose and wandered slowly over to the stairs. Above her, she could hear voices playfully arguing: Twilight’s voice was relaxed and comfortable, and the mare she was speaking to sounded almost… proud? There wasn’t really a better word for it, Moondancer was sure.
She took a step upwards, and the conversation grew that little bit louder. Slowly, as she climbed the steps, the muffled voices became more and more distinct, and the words she was hearing became more and more clear until at last they were no longer just a murmur of noise but actual, clear phrases and sounds that she could understand. And, soon enough…
“Twilight, this is our time. Together.”
“I know, Rainbow, but it’s been years since I’ve seen her and I thought it would be nice…”
“Nice? I haven’t even met the mare, and you’re asking her to come and read with us? Do you know what that feels like, Twi?”
“No, Rainbow, I don’t. All I know is that I thought you’d understand me wanting to see an old friend for the few days she was in town.”
“I… I just… I thought this was something I could share with you, Twi. Just you.”
Moondancer froze at the top of the stairs, just around the corner from the main room of the library. She felt her breaths become shallow, and tried to make everything she did as quiet as possible—she didn’t want to intrude.
“Twi, I… I need to ask you something.”
“Okay. Go ahead.”
She could hear the mares breathing, the breaths deep and ragged and Moondancer wasn’t entirely sure that either of them were fully comfortable with their situation. But of course, she couldn’t do anything. Rainbow Dash was in this on her own.
“Uhh… gee, Twi, I have no idea what I’m doing. Okay. I can do this. I- I can do this.”
HEr breaths were too shallow—Moondancer was starting to feel light headed, and the world was starting to swim a little before her eyes. She forced out a breath in the quietest sigh she could, emptying her lungs until they ached for air, and then slowly, ever so slowly, breathed in until they were full. The world stopped swimming; her head was once again grasped by gravity.
“I think you’re really pretty and awesome and I wanted to know if you would go out with me?”
There was a moment of quiet. Not silence: silence would be the complete absence of sound, but if she stopped to listen Moondancer could hear sounds all around her. The machines downstairs, still turned on, were beeping and buzzing. There was a bird in the branches of the tree—an owl—calling out with a loud, whistling call. In the kitchen, she could hear the twisting and falling of the water in a dishwasher, cascading through the machine over and over again. But what was most important was the sound of the deep, ragged breaths of Rainbow Dash, the gasping for air that she had lost in her effort to ask her question as quickly and painlessly as possible.
No, that wasn't the most important thing. The most important thing was the sound that she could not hear: Twilight’s breaths. For a moment, Moondancer began to worry that her friend had fainted from shock, until she heard the quietest voice speak up:
“How long?”
“Long enough.”
And there were Twilight’s breaths again, moving in rhythm with Rainbow’s—both shaky, both light and erratic, both nervous. After another moment of not-silence, Rainbow Dash spoke up.
“I, uh… I can go. I-if you’d rather I left. I’d understand.”
Twilight didn’t say a word, but a few moments later Moondancer heard the heavy thud of hooves on wooden floor, the slam of a door opening and closing again in quick succession, and what she was certain was a sob.
It wasn’t until after that that Moondancer felt she could look around the corner, and when she did she saw Twilight Sparkle sat inthe middle of the floor, curled up on her hind legs, staring at the front door of the library in shock and horror. Her body was deflated, almost as if she was slumping down to the ground in a sign of defeat, and she was beginning to tear up in the very corners of her eyes. Moondancer couldn’t help it—she all but ran across the room, and wrapped her forelegs around Twilight, pulling her into a tight embrace. The princess turned towards her, reaching up, wrapping her own legs around Moondancer in return and dropping her head into the crook of Moondancer’s shoulder; and she could feel the light dampness forming against her fur, and she simply held Twilight as she cried.
It was some time before Twilight was ready to sit herself up, but when she did so, she did so with a remarkable dignity. Moondancer had never quite been convinced that Twilight was acting particularly like a princess —she lived in a library, not a palace, and treated her spare time as an excuse to perform crazy experiments on ancient foundations of Equestrian magic, but when Twilight Sparkle needed to be dignified, the by the sisters could she manage it.
Twilight wiped at her eyes, drying the tears and swallowing before she cleared her throat.
“I’m sorry,” she said. That was all.
“You don’t have to be,” Moondancer replied. “You have nothing to apologise for.”
“I just sent one of my best friends away,” Twilight said, her voice flat. “I think I have a lot to apologise for.”
For a moment, the two mares just sat in silence, neither of them even breathing. The atmosphere was tense—too tense, and Moondancer wasn’t wholly sure she felt comfortable, or safe.
“I’m sorry, Moondancer, I can’t do this,” Twilight said, rising and turning to the stairs. “I’ll see you around, but right now… I need to be alone.”
And in that instant, all the thoughts of Twilight snuggled up with her, reading—all the guilty little thoughts that she might have Twilight to herself tonight now that Rainbow Dash was out of the picture—dried up and vanished, and Moondancer’s priorities shifted. In that instant, she knew, her duty was to her princess… no, to her friend. She needed to make sure that Twilight was well, and that she was happy and safe. And so she did the only thing she could:
“Are you sure?” she asked, her voice almost cracking. “I-is there anything I can get you?”
Twilight snorted. “Unless you can get Rainbow Dash back here, I don’t think so. And I doubt even you could catch that mare when she didn’t want to be caught.” She shook her head, walking up the stairs to her room. “I’m sorry, Moondancer. I really am. Another time, maybe?”
And with that, Twilight vanished around the twist in the stair, and her calm hoofsteps became a fast-paced flurry of hooves on stairs, running, clambering up to her bedroom. And Moondancer simply sat in the middle of the floor, curled up on her haunches, and stared at the stairway that her friend had disappeared into.
“Okay.”