She had some vague idea of the coldness of the room before she really felt it; before it had actually sunk through her fur and skin and deep into her bones. She pulled the blankets around herself, cradling herself in what little warmth it offered, and still she shivered. Her breath came in short intervals, and her ears twitched, and she shivered more. Her tail wrapped around her legs as she pulled the covers closer, exposing her feet.
Annoyed, Twilight's eyes opened. It had never been this cold, she knew she would have remembered if it had ever been. The shivered, and sat up in the darkness and looked around. The night sky beyond the half-closed curtains was moonless, and the stars reached out in a seemingly endless fashion. The window was shut.
Why was it so cold?
She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, her hooves gently tapping as they made contact with the ground. She rubbed her face with her hands, ran them down her muzzle and scratched. She yawned, and stood up.
Being organized definitely has its perks, she thought as she navigated the room in semi-darkness. She pulled a blanket form her bed, and wrapped it around herself tightly. She yawned again, opened the door and left her room.
She moved down the stairs of her castle, heading for a midnight snack. She stopped by Spike's room, tried the handle but found it to be locked. She listened closer through the door, but couldn't hear anything. He must be asleep, she thought. The began walking down the hallway.
Maybe I'm sick, she thought. That's it, I'm sick; I ate something rotten, tainted, and it got me sick. Nothing a little water won't fix. Tomorrow, I'll go see Zecora and get a remedy, maybe go try Time Turner and some of his science. As she passed by the windows, the starlight casting silver light segmented by the dark shadows of the windowpanes. Her hoofbeats echoed quietly in the hallway, but to her it sounded like thunder.
She got to the kitchen and turned on the light, and immediately regretted her decision. The light was blinding, searing, and it stung her eyes which she close tightly. She slapped the light off, and stood, rubbing her temples. Her skin was freezing, as were her arms and legs, but her head, torso and groin felt like they were on fire. She was definitely sick. Definitely.
Twilight opened a cupboard and pulled out a cup, and ran the tap and filled the cup to the brim and downed it in one go. Again, she filled completely and drank, but found that her her thirst remained unquenched. A third drink, and she put the glass on the counter. Finally, some progress, she thought. She looked out of the window above the kitchen sink. She looked at the stars, full in their glory in the absence of the moon. Twilight squinted, and tilted her head ever-so-slightly.
Twilight shivered and noticed that, between the stars, strange shapes, billowy and soft, were illuminated as they ran between the stars. She looked at them, but she her brain could not process the image in her semi-asleep state. She yawned, shook her head, and ran a hand through her mane. He hair hung down, almost touching her eyes. She needed a haircut; she would have gone earlier, but didn't want to go out in the rain. She ran her hand up her forehead to the base of her horn.
The rain. It had rained earlier, a very large storm that had not yet stopped when she had gone to bed.
Clouds. The billowy, soft shapes were clouds.
Twilight's mouth opened in shock. Her brain began to understand.
If those were clouds, then those could not be stars.
The three glasses of water puddled beneath Twilight very, very quickly.
"Spike!" Twilight called as she raced up the stairs, her blanket and her urine dumped in the kitchen. "Spike! Spike, wake up! This is extremely important!" She almost threw herself onto Spike's door, pounding with her opened palms again and again. "Open up, Spike! I know you're in there! Wake up!" She stopped and leaned against the door, her ears perked up. She listened; everything was quiet.
"Spike! Dammit, Spike, I need you up NOW!" Still, there was nothing.
You leave me no choice, Spike, Twilight thought as she backed up. She threw herself against the door. It shuddered, the lock rattling in the doorjamb. Again, she rammed it, again the door shuttered and the doorjamb rattled. A third time, and the door burst open, and Twilight slid on the hard floor and hooves still slick with urine as she looked towards Spike's empty bed, and then to the open window. He was going to be in so much trouble.
"What do you think they are, Rarity?" Sweetie Belle shrank inside of her pajamas and looked up to the sky through the window. Beside her, her sister and Spike looked up at the strange lights.
"I haven't the slightest idea, Sweetie Belle," Rarity muttered. She stared almost wild-eyed at the sky, the strange whatever-it-was that hung just below the clouds. "But it really is quite gorgeous. In it's own way, I mean."
"Just like you, Rarity." Spike felt slightly disappointed when Rarity didn't look at him, or even acknowledge his comment. He sighed, and looked back out the window. "How can it just float there? I mean, even pegasi have to move at least a little bit, right, Rarity?"
"Quite right, Spike." She leaned forward against the window, putting her hand on the window. "I wonder why they're here."
"Maybe it's to destroy us all."
"Oh, don't be silly, Sweetie Belle. Surely, if they intended to 'destroy us,' they would have started already. Isn't that right, Spike?"
"Uh, yeah, Rarity. Sure."
Celestia was awoken when Luna pulled her, naked, from bed and drug her toward the window of her room. She grabbed toward a sheet but it slipped from her grasp and her room was filled with the sounds of hooves on tile. "Luna! What is so important I can't get dressed?"
"This must be addressed, sister. Addressed with some haste." Luna swung the drapes aside and gestured to the window. "What is that in our skies, sister?"
"Don't be silly, Luna, those are..... stars?"
"Beneath the clouds? Surely, we do not think such silly things."
"They.... they are beneath the clouds.... they're not stars......"
"Precisely. This must be addressed."
In Everfree Forest, Chrysalis, Queen of the Changelings, stared up at the sky. Two of her soldiers stood with her, dressed in full battle gear. Her naked body felt chilled in some alien breeze that moved through the holes in her legs.
"What is it, My Queen?" one of the soldiers asked.
"Trouble," was all she said.
They stared in silence, Applejack and her family, safely tucked away in Sweet Apple Acres. In her house, Fluttershy coward beneath the windowpane, her eyes looking out the window timidly as Rainbow Dash stood beside her, a hand on her shoulder and her eyes stoically interrogating the skies. In Sugarcube Corner, Pinkie Pie eyed the sky suspiciously, twirling a fake mustache in her fingers.
And in Ponyville, Sweetie Belle noticed that Twilight was standing below the window she looked out of. She was gesturing, yelling, but the yells were muffled through the glass. "Uh oh, Spike," Sweetie Belle muttered, "looks like you're in trouble."
"Oh, no. Don't open the window, Rarity!"
Leering at Spike, Rarity opens the window, and Twilight's yelling becomes clear.
"You're supposed to be in your bedroom, Spike! Did you think I wouldn't find you here?! Don't answer that, Spike! Just get down here and come back with me, we need to study this --" Twilight gestured at the lights "-- this, thing, this whatever-it-is!"
"Oh come on, Twilight! We can study it later. It's not going anywhere - look!"
"Excuse me?! Do I hear a tone, Spike?!"
"Uh, no, Twilight."
"Good. Now come down here so we can leave."
Twilight eyed Spike angrily. Spike looked at Rarity.
"You better go, darling."
"Alright." Spiked sighed. "Coming, Twilight."
Dawn had broken, and the clouds had gone, and in their wake was the cold truth that hung in the skies - curved, yet sharply angular, silently floating above Ponyville, ominous and yet utterly non-threatening. By this time, the Ponyville residents had come out to stare up at the sky, clutching their lovers and their parents and their children. Twilight saw all of this as she left her castle and looked for her friends. As the Princess of Friendship, it was her and her friends who would be expected to find out what was going on, at least in Ponyville and, very likely, for all of Equestria. She saw her friends heading toward her in their own way, a loose pack that looked like something out of a movie. Twilight smiled to herself.
She was about to speak to them as they approached when, suddenly, there was a crack from the thing overhead. Twilight's eyes shot up to it, and she froze. A large, square piece of the thing had fallen, was plummeting toward Ponyville. She acted. "Rainbow Dash!" Twilight herself was airborne, her wings spread and flapping vigorously to intercept the block when the object began to slow. Twilight watched; it still descended, but did not fall freely to the ground; instead, it gently landed on the ground as the crowd moved away from it.
Twilight and Rainbow Dash landed and looked at it as their friends ran to their side.
"What in Equestria is that?"
"I-I don't k-k-know...."
Twilight took a step forward and suddenly heard a voice echo through the skies, emanating from the black box which had landed before them. It was calm, direct, simple and yet somehow, Twilight could feel as though it held great authority. What she heard next chilled her, yet made her all the more curious.
"Hello. Do not be afraid. My name is Karellen, and I am the supervisor of Equestria. We come in peace, and have no intention of violence toward your people. Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship, I wish to have an audience with you."