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// MODI 
// Story: And It Was a Tiresome Dream, But Only Because She Wished It So 
// by Ditherer the Fussbudget 
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Twilight woke up with the distinct feeling that there was less magic in the air. She thought for a moment that she was in the human world again, and wondered how she’d gotten there if the portal had stopped working. 

Then she realized she was still in Equestria, and she felt profoundly nervous. 

“Spike?” she called as she left her bedroom. Her voice rang rampant throughout the corridors, but there was no answer. With a little teleportation, she did a full sweep of the castle, and he was nowhere. 

When she went outside to look for him, Ponyville was empty, and her stomach sank. It was like being punished as a filly, after a day of waiting for her father and mother to discuss her misdeeds and hoping against hope that maybe they’d forget all about it in the next few hours. 

She flew to the train station, to Canterlot’s castle, to Appleloosa and Manehattan, she flew so much that eventually she fell and flagged, and she realized it had been more than a day with the sun still hanging in the morning sky, for there was nopony left to raise or lower it. 

When she finally made it back to Ponyville, after resting in the shade, she debated whether to lower it. She had the power if she rested for long enough, and she knew that the sunlight would damage the land after a while, but the thought of an eternal night still brought shivers to her all these years after it should’ve stopped being an issue. She let it be, as a testament to her teacher. 

Over the following weeks she gathered more parts. If her portal didn’t work any more, she’d fix it up as best as she could. It took endless assembly and double-checking, the kind that she’d tried to grow out of. If she’d made the mistakes that caused all of this in the first place, she had to make sure to never make them again. 

For some of that long and increasingly hot morning, she cried herself to sleep. Her trips to the outside became fewer and fewer, and required more and more magical protection. She wouldn’t bring down the sun, not while Celestia might still come back and turn everything right again, not when there was a chance she could find out where everypony disappeared to and put things right again, like time hadn’t even passed from their disappearance. 

When she finished it, deep within the castle and a good distance away from the other, the portal crackled to life on the spot, and Twilight resisted the urge to do a little dance for long enough to check the results and make sure she hadn’t made any fatal mistakes. Then she galloped through as fast as she could. 

On the other side it was night. Equestria. She took in a breath of air and knew she’d made it. Then she took to the sky, cheering, and looked around. 

She’d been in the Everfree, which was close enough considering she hadn’t been able to search for anypony specifically. It was a piece of profoundly good luck that she arrived so close to civilization, and she swooped towards the light of town while the night air kissed her face. 

Nopony. The lights were on, but nopony was home. She beat down doors and teleported through walls, looking for anypony. It was just as empty. 

She thought that she might still be in the same world, but her castle didn’t have the portal in it. This was a new world, and just as abandoned as the last. 

So were the next eighty-seven.