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Chapter 19,281 words
Chapter 27,374 words
Chapter 35,419 words
Chapter 48,446 words
Chapter 57,197 words
Interlude: In Dreaming7,450 words
Chapter 64,760 words
Chapter 715,579 words
Chapter 813,430 words
Chapter 910,912 words
Chapter 107,255 words
Chapter 117,009 words
Chapter 128,875 words
Epilogue701 words

Chapter 11

And then, Twilight, Sparkle, and their six friends all got together and talked about nothing.

More than that, they joked about nothing. They giggled about nothing. They told stories about nothing, and illustrated those stories with impressive hoof gestures that didn’t really mean anything. They promised to visit places they would never go, and recalled feelings they never had. It was shallow and they all knew it, but it was what they needed, for when a pony speaks of nothing, they may say nothing wrong.

Also, Rainbow Dash proved she could fit an entire cupcake up her nose. So, that was pretty entertaining.

Eventually though, the afternoon grew hot, and the conversation grew long, and the conversational void the seven ponies had so carefully constructed collapsed. Nature, after all, abhors a vacuum, and so substance gradually leaked into the discussion, one aborted comment and meaningful glance at a time. The seven ponies never acknowledged it, but they all felt the conversation slowing, calcifying, growing stiff and awkward. Until finally, it stopped. And there was silence.

“Well!” Rarity said after a moment, “That was refreshing. So good to get things back to normal. Shall we make our way back inside?”

Absolutely, said the ponies, each affirming in their own way that Rarity was correct on all points. As one, they rose, and made their way back across the palace grounds, past the gardens and the statues and towards the library tower. The ponies attempted to start a conversation along the way, but it wasn’t the same, and in time they found it easier to walk in silence.

“Um...” Fluttershy said, as they drew near the library tower. Her wings were tucked tight against her side as she spoke, and her eye flicked between Twilight and Sparkle uncertainly. “I’m, um. Glad you two were able to relax a bit. And get along again. Do you want to...” She swallowed. “Talk about it?”

Twilight and Sparkle shared a glance, one looking left, the other right. Both opened their mouths to answer, and then snapped their jaws shut when they saw the other about to speak. Each nodded at the other, and then pulled back, starting to speak only to stop again. It was only when they turned to look at Fluttershy that the symmetry was broken—Twilight continued to look left, while Sparkle had to turn her head the other way.

“Yes, Fluttershy,” Sparkle said. “But I think we need to talk about it on our own.” She turned her head to the library doors ahead of them, and then back to Twilight. “If you girls don’t mind us leaving you for a bit.”

“Nah. We’ll be fine.” Rainbow Dash blew off the comment with a wave of her hoof. “I have to go start community service anyway, remember? I was actually supposed to be there like, an hour ago. But I figure, I’m already in trouble. What are they going to do? Send me to jail?”

Riding on Applejack’s back, Spike raised a claw for attention, but before he could answer, Pinkie Pie shushed him and gently pushed his claw back down. Inside Rainbow Dash’s head, wheels turned, gears clicked. Mechanisms engaged and computed all possible outcomes. “Wait for it...” Pinkie Pie said, giggling as she spoke. “Wait for it...” Computations accelerated, sums were totaled, and inside Rainbow Dash’s head, something went bing. “There we go!”

Rainbow Dash’s ears perked up abruptly. “Oh shoot, I’m late! Uh... I gotta go!” Her wings flared up, and she leapt into the air, flying off into the city with a shout of: “Good luck!”

“Do you think she remembers she’s not supposed to fly in the city limits?” Fluttershy asked, as they all watched their friend retreat into the distance. The other ponies just chuckled or rolled their eyes in response, as Pinkie Pie giggled energetically.

“Probably not,” Twilight said, but there was a smile on her face when she said it, and her tone was more fond than concerned. “But somehow, I think she’ll be fine. Why don’t you girls go on ahead? Sparkle and I will join you soon.”

“Alright.” Applejack twitched an ear, moving inside along with the others. Before she could go inside however, Spike reached up to tap her shoulder, and then leaned over to whisper in her ear. Applejack paused in the doorway as Spike spoke to her, and then turned back to the two purple unicorns behind her. “And uh... you two take your time. Ah know the girls’n I have been tryin’ to hurry you along to recovery. But you take all the time y’need. Some wounds just take time to heal. No need to rush it.”

“Sure, Applejack,” Sparkle said. “And, Spike?” she asked. Spike looked alert, just in time for a purple haze to surround him, floating him over Sparkle’s way. “Thanks,” she whispered, leaning in to touch her nose to his, and then wrapping him up in a gentle hug.

After a moment, she passed him off to Twilight, where he received a second hug, and then she bumped his nose with her hoof. “Now run along,” Twilight said, releasing Spike from her magical grip. Spike promptly nodded, wishing them both good luck before hurrying back to Applejack. Pony and dragon alike went back into the library, and the door shut behind them with a click. Then, Twilight and Sparkle were alone on the library steps.

They didn’t talk for a bit.

“Thank you for passing Spike over to me,” Twilight finally said, lifting one ear as she considered her counterpart. “It was nice of you.”

“I didn’t like it,” Sparkle said quietly, her own ears tucked back against her head. She didn’t look up at Twilight, keeping her gaze firmly on the dirt.

“And I didn’t like that you get to hug him first,” Twilight answered, more firmly. “But does that matter? The whole point of today is that we’re being petty and jealous over nothing. I mean, this is all stupid, right?”

Sparkle swallowed. Flicked her tail. “It doesn’t feel as stupid as it did two hours ago.”

“Yeah.” Twilight sighed. “I know.” Her gaze returned to the ground as well, and another long silence passed between them. “Why don’t we go for a walk?” she finally asked.

“Okay,” Sparkle said, turning to move off. The two did not discuss their destination, but instinctively, they began moving in the same direction—off towards the hedge maze. They walked side by side in silence for a time, moving among the trees and hedges and the silent guards.

“You know,” Twilight abruptly spoke, the words coming out so suddenly that Sparkle actually jumped, “there’s an argument that what you did was more virtuous because you didn’t enjoy it. It’s easy to do something that you like. Doing something that you dislike because you know it’s the right thing to do takes willpower.”

When Sparkle recovered her wits—and lifted her head—she found Twilight watching her with a strange expression. Almost pleading. It was enough to give Sparkle pause, but only for a moment, and when she recovered, she let out a breath and shook her head. “I didn’t do it because it was the right thing to do,” she insisted. “I just like seeing Spike happy.”

“Wow. Trying to make a small child happy. You really are selfish,” Twilight said. That earned her a glare from Sparkle, which she attempted to weather, holding her ground with a defiant flick of her tail. Twilight’s will didn’t hold though, and a moment later, she looked off in the other direction. “It’s still stupid.”

“I don’t want to see him get hurt. Don’t read too much into it,” Sparkle insisted, as the two made their way into the hedge. “You know you’re basically his...” The word stuck in Sparkle’s throat, but she made herself press on. “You know you’re basically his mother, right?”

“No I’m not,” Twilight blurted out at once. “I mean,” she stammered, very pointedly looking off at some indistinct point deeper in the maze. “I’m more like his older sister.”

“Because it messes children up that badly when their older siblings fight,” Sparkle insisted, the words emerging harsher than she had meant them. That dropped the conversation into a lull, a near silence, broken only by the steady thumping of hooves on dirt. The two continued to make their way through the maze on rote. Their minds were distracted, but their legs knew the way.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Sparkle finally broke the tension. “All I meant was... I know you feel like you’re too young to be a mother. Because I feel like I’m too young to be a mother. But—”

“I know,” Twilight said. “And you’re right, of course. You’re right.” They moved another few steps along. “I’m glad one of us finally said it.” Again there was a silence, but this time it was brief, and Twilight turned to her counterpart. “I’m also glad you knew I felt that way.”

“I feel that way,” Sparkle said with a shake of her head. “It was pretty obvious.”

“Yeah, but you and I haven't always... been the best, at acknowledging we feel the same way the other does,” Twilight said. “For instance, I know that you think my haircut looks stupid and childish and that I only keep it because I’m afraid of change.”

“Yeah?” Sparkle retorted. “Well I know that you think the reason I’ve never had a coltfriend is because I’m an arrogant, asocial recluse who can’t bring herself down to a stallion’s level.”

“Snob,” Twilight snorted.

“Jerk!” Sparkle snapped.

Then they both laughed. It wasn’t an eager laugh like before—just a little chuckle—but it carried them into the center of the hedge maze, and up to the little grove of trees therein.

“We’re a little absurd, aren’t we?” Twilight asked.

“A little,” Sparkle agreed. She settled down in the shade of the trees, lowering her body down to the grass. “But I still don’t feel right.” She watched as Twilight sat down opposite her, twitching one of her ears. “And I still want to leave. I don’t know if I will, but... I want to.”

“Okay,” Twilight said, with a measured tone. She wasn’t sure how to respond, but knew she had to proceed carefully, and so a few moments of silent thought passed before she asked, “Why?”

“Because even if we sort everything out.” Sparkle gestured between them with a hoof. “Even if we...” She gave a faint shrug. “All this. Do you really want to be one of the Twilight Sparkles? To just be one of a set instead of an individual?”

“We’ll be individuals,” Twilight replied, trying to keep her tone upbeat. “We’re already starting to diverge based on our experiences since the spell. You’re more dour than me, I think.”

“And you’re more elemental,” Sparkle agreed. That made Twilight blink, glancing down at her hoof as she tried to work out just what elemental meant in that context. “But it’s not that simple. We’ll always both be the pony who fought Nightmare Moon. We’ll always have to listen to friends joke with another pony about things we did. We’ll both be the Element of Magic and Shining’s little sister and...” She fiddled with the dirt with her hooves. “And even if we’re not, isn’t that worse? If after that fight I had with Princess Celestia, after all the things I said, she accepts you...”

Sparkle lowered her head, shut her eyes, and went on. “A-and it’s not just selfish. I’m not just worried you’ll turn out better than me. I don’t think I could stand it the other way either. If I worked out great and I had to see some emotionally troubled, rejected version of me slouching around town. Stars, that would be awful...”

“It doesn’t have to be one or the other,” Twilight said, but Sparkle only snorted.

“You feel the same way. You’re just saying that because we love to argue,” she said dismissively, not even bothering to look up.

“Well... yeah!” Twilight said. “We do. But maybe that’s good! Maybe we need somepony to argue with us when we’re being emotional, and... isn’t a good debate part of the scientific process? Whatever happened to our love of discovery?”

Sparkle was, reluctantly, forced to admit that she did love proper scientific procedure. And discovering things. She admitted both of these points via the mechanism of twitching an ear and saying nothing.

“Isn’t it...” Twilight continued, hesitating for a moment before pressing on, “Isn’t it possible that we just turn out different without being better or worse? Yes you... had a fight with Celestia.” Twilight froze for a moment, uncertain if trying to smooth that over would come across as cruel or insensitive. “And... and I can’t imagine what that’s like. And I’m sorry. But maybe that just means you turn out more independent than me. Maybe it means you’re more mature. A pony’s life is complicated; you can’t just boil it down to ‘better’ or ‘worse.’ We’re not that judgemental. Are we?”

“We can be,” Sparkle answered. “Have been.”

“We’ve been angry before too,” Twilight insisted, not giving any ground. “Are we an angry pony?”

“Well, you kind of are,” Sparkle answered, but by now, her ears were perking up, and she opened her eyes again.

“I’m not angry; I’m elemental,” Twilight replied, with a cheerful twist to her tone. She smiled as Sparkle lifted her head, bashfully looking away a moment later. “Sorry. I just do like arguing with ponies.”

“We do love a good debate,” Sparkle agreed. She was up by that point, and alert, but her face did not mirror Twilight’s smile. “But do you really believe that’s what’s going to happen? Or are you just being contrary?”

“It might happen that way,” Twilight answered, adding an enthusiastic little kick to her words. “We don’t know. That’s the point.”

Sparkle’s expression was unmoved, and while she didn’t glower or grumble, her tone was equally static as she replied, “But you don’t think it will happen that way.”

“It might!” Twilight insisted, her cheerful tone growing strained.

“But you don’t think it will,” Sparkle said.

“No I don’t think it will, but I don’t think it won’t either!” Twilight snapped. Her impulse was to lean in close to glare at Sparkle, but she’d no sooner started the action then she remembered just what recent experiences that would drag up. Quickly, she looked off into the bushes, stammering as she tried to recover her thoughts.

“I don’t,” she stammered out, trying to speak quickly before she lost her place, “I don’t know what’s going to happen. Okay? None of us do. For all I know, I could be dying. Or maybe not! I’m basically a golem, right? Fabricated matter and come-to-life magic. Maybe I never age. Maybe I’ll live forever. Maybe one of us will get a coltfriend who really isn’t interested in the other. I don’t know what’s going to happen and I don’t care! I just want us to stop fighting because we’re hurting everypony around us.”

“I want us to stop fighting too, Twilight.” Sparkle’s tone remain unmoved, and she shook her head. “But the formula for less fighting isn’t more optimism. Insisting everything was fine when it wasn’t is what got us into this mess in the first place. Maybe, deep down, we can’t stand each other and this isn’t going to work. Can we at least acknowledge the possibility?”

“Yes, fine, we can acknowledge the possibility of giving up before we’ve even started!” Twilight rose to her hooves, stalking off a few paces into the garden and letting out a loud, “Ugh!”

Sparkle said nothing, and instead, watched her counterpart as she angrily paced back and forth, her head held low and her tail lashing this way and that. “And worse, you’re the one who acknowledged that we’re like Spike’s parents, and now you want to take that away from him!? I can’t believe you! You’re so selfish and-” Her rant abruptly ended in a loud snort, and she kicked a hoof down into the dirt.

Sparkle gave Twilight some time. Watching her breathe and slowly calm herself. “You know that this is what I meant when I said you were elemental, right?” Sparkle asked. “You’re cheer and sunshine one moment and snorting fire the next.”

“I know!” Twilight growled, pausing her pacing to turn and face her duplicate. “I know I’m...” Her tone softened. “I know I’m moody, okay?” She looked back to the hedges. “It’s probably nothing.”

“What do you mean, ‘probably?’” Sparkle asked.

“Like you don’t know,” Twilight said, adding another dismissive snort and a stamp of a hoof.

“No, actually, I don’t!” Sparkle said, bristling faintly under the accusation. “Whatever thought you had clearly came to you after we split, so I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh come on, it’s obvious.” Twilight turned to face her counterpart. She consciously forced herself not to glare, but she did lean in close, lowering her head to Sparkle’s level. “You created a magical creature using a spell you don’t understand, and now it’s behaving oddly. Not the way it’s supposed to. What’s your first conclusion?”

Sparkle leaned back from Twilight’s intrusion—lifted her head and perked up her ears and watched Twilight closely. “You think I cast the spell wrong?”

“I don’t know if you did!” Twilight turned away sharply, pacing a tight circuit around the trees. “I don’t know if you didn’t. I just know I didn’t used to act this way. And yeah, maybe it’s because we’re stressed out. You’re certainly acting differently. But maybe it’s not.” Her circuit tightened and her pace accelerated, mirrored by a tightening in her throat, and her quickening speech.

“What if the spell never worked in the first place? What if it produces imperfect copies? What if I have poor impulse control? What if I have explosive rage? What if I’m just evil? Princess Luna said she saw darkness in my heart and...” Twilight choked up a moment, and had to swallow before she could go on. “And I believe her. But was it there before? I don’t know!”

Her tone grew increasingly erratic as she went on, her voice wavering up and down. “And even if I am sane, that doesn’t make me a perfect copy. I’m a golem—made of conjured flesh. Do I age? Can I ever have foals? I never thought about foals before, but now that I’m pretty sure I can’t have them it’s suddenly a big deal!”

She lowered her head, her hooves tearing up the earth with the ferocity of her steps. “And what if I’m a copy of you at a specific point in time? What if I can’t change, or learn, or grow as a person?” Her voice briefly cracked, but she pressed on undaunted. “What if I just stay the same eighteen-year old mare forever while you grow up and become what Twilight Sparkle is supposed to be? What if you have a destiny and I just have to watch? What if...”

Twilight’s extended rant was cut off by an ugly, rough croaking sound in her throat. Her vision blurred as tears formed in her eyes, and she came to a halt. After a moment of fruitless rubbing and aborted attempts to speak, she squeezed her eyes shut, lowering her muzzle to the grass and letting the tears fall away to the earth under their own weight. “And now I’m crying,” she said, her voice worn and ragged. “Elemental was right. Upbeat then angry then grim then weepy in what, five minutes?” She shook her head, trying to clear the tears. “Forget it, I’m going to—”

Twilight felt Sparkle’s forelegs wrap around her shoulders—slide over her neck and pull her in close. Sparkle was there beside her, pressed up against her so their heads were side by side. “I didn’t know,” Sparkle whispered, squeezing Twilight all the tighter. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know because I didn’t think about it, and I didn’t think about it because I’m selfish. But I swear, I didn’t know.”

Twilight pulled away and turned her head so she could look at Sparkle. Her vision was still blurred by tears, but she could hear perfectly well. She could hear the wavering in Sparkle’s voice, and the pain in her words, and when she rubbed the tears away one more time, she saw that Sparkle's eyes were clouded as well. “I never thought about foals or you being a pony or... or any of that! I only...”

As Sparkle trailed off, Twilight leaned over to hug her back, and soon they embraced. Twilight didn’t tell her it was okay, or that everything would be fine. But she didn’t pull away either. And so they sat there and hugged and sniffled for what felt like a very long time, though in reality it was only a couple of minutes.

It was Sparkle who finally broke the silence, as their mutual sniffles wore down. “I was just thinking about that first night. I know you feel bad you hurt a pony. Attacked me. And that’s not okay. But... stars. The scream you made. And I realized I’d made a living thing just so I could kill it. It wasn’t like fighting or getting angry. It was just something dying and...”

Sparkle pulled back as the hug naturally loosened. “It was all I could think about when I saw you. And when you did something I didn’t like—when Applejack took my name away and gave it to you—all I could think about was that moment. What I owed you for doing that to you. So I bottled up those feelings and shoved them away until...”

“Until you started to resent me,” Twilight said. Sparkle nodded. Both of them looked away after that and tilted their heads to the ground—one left, one right. “Is that it then? I hate you because I thought you were ignoring my pain, and you hate me because you bottled up all that guilt?”

“I think there’s more to it than that,” Sparkle said quietly. “Like what happened up on the tower roof.” She almost stopped there, but made herself press on. “That’s why you exploded like that, isn’t it? You were afraid that those feelings were a sign you were going mad. And you were relieved I had them as well. And then—”

“And then you betrayed me,” Twilight said, letting the words out with a sudden torrent of bitterness. An anger that washed her tone of all the sadness and understanding of the last few minutes.

“Yeah,” Sparkle agreed. “I did.” After a time, she added, “I do like magic. I like using magic. I like changing the world. And I like how power feels. And that scares me sometimes.” She twitched an ear. “I’m sorry.”

Twilight snorted. Flicked her tail. “Luna says that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with us.”

“What about being so angry or selfish we nearly kill another pony? Does that mean there’s something wrong with us?” Sparkle demanded, a trace of bitterness showing itself in her tone. She regretted it at once however, squeezing her eyes shut and shaking her head. “No. No, I’m sorry. That was childish.”

“Yeah, it was,” Twilight insisted, as sharply as she has spoken a moment ago. She too regretted though, and a moment later spoke with a more moderated tone. “But, I’ve been stupid and emotional all day. So if you want to be stupid and emotional for a little while, it is your turn.”

“I’ll be fine, thanks.” Sparkle gave a humorless smile, that remained on her face for only a fleeting moment. “So what happens now then?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping you knew,” Twilight said. After a moment, she moved to the space beside Sparkle and sat down. Sparkle settled down as well, and the two rested side by side. “We could apologize. But we’ve done that a lot already.”

“I could help Princess Luna and Princess Celestia unravel that spell so we’ll know the answers to all your questions,” Sparkle suggested. “But... they know a lot more about magic than me, and that spell is—”

“It’s okay,” Twilight said. “I spent a lot of time going over it myself in the library. I can’t tell if it’s beyond us or if Starswirl made it intentionally obtuse to stop it from being modified. But... yes.”

The two sat in silence for another several minutes. This time was different though, because for them, it wasn’t really silent. They heard the wind rustling the trees and the bushes, the distant sound of ponies walking through the palace gardens. They leaned against each other, each heard the other breathe, and after a time, their breaths fell into synch.

“I want to spend more time with Spike,” Sparkle said. “We spend a lot of time with him already, but he’s always being our assistant or doing chores or something. I want to spend more time just being with him.”

“I’d like that,” Twilight said. “Do you want to take turns?”

“Isn’t that a little cold?” Sparkle asked. “I don’t want him to think we’re keeping score.”

“I don’t want him to think that either, but we’ll have to work out some kind of system,” Twilight said, adding after a moment’s hesitation, “Assuming you don’t still want to leave, of course.”

“You didn’t actually address any of those objections, you know,” Sparkle said quietly. “I do feel better, after talking to you like this. But it still makes my skin crawl when I see them laughing with you about things I did. When I see them for the first time but they’ve been talking to me all day. I hate it. Maybe we go through all this and we still end up killing each other.”

“Maybe,” Twilight agreed. “But we have to try, don’t we? For Spike and for the others?”

“We do,” Sparkle agreed. Then, after a moment, she said. “Could I ask you for a favor?”

“Um...” Twilight turned her head,, wondering what her counterpart was planning. She saw nothing in Sparkle’s expression, which was flat, and perhaps a bit thoughtful. “Sure?”

“Could you cut my hair?” Sparkle asked, looking back. “I hate the way those bangs look on you. You hate the way they look on me. We just keep them because it’s easy and we know them and sometimes we get comfortable, and I don’t like that. So will you cut my mane?” Twilight tilted her head. “I’ll do yours if you want.”

“I don’t know if we have any books on cutting hair in the library here,” Twilight said, adding a warning, “Even if we do, it’ll probably look really bad.”

“That’s okay,” Sparkle nodded. “It’s not about how it looks. I want to feel like I’m moving forward. Like we’re not stuck in this awful rut.”

“Then, sure. Of course I’ll cut your hair,” Twilight said. She leaned back over towards Sparkle, both of them looking off into the distance, towards the topiary statues of their friends. “Got a third resolution for the checklist?”

“Huh?” Sparkle asked, flicking an ear, caught off guard by the odd question.

“Spend more time with Spike,” Twilight said. “Cut your hair. Those are things you don’t like about yourself, so you don’t like seeing them in me. And now you’re trying to fix them. That sounds like a list of resolutions to me. And obviously it has to be a checklist. How else would we check the list to see if they’re done?”

“We could use our eyes,” Sparkle said, starting to smile a little.

“No that’s stupid,” Twilight said. A moment later, they both laughed.

“Okay, okay,” Sparkle said. Her horn glowed, and a moment later, a roll of parchment and a quill appeared out of midair, retrieved from their stash back home. “So, item one. Spend more time with Spike.” Her quill scribbled as she spoke, drawing an elegant box, and a little sketch of Spike next to it, along with a few lines of text. “Item two. Cut our hair. Your turn.”

“Ask a stallion out,” Twilight said, earning a skeptical glance from Sparkle for the bargain. “What?” she asked. “I’m not saying we have to find true love. I just think it might help us be a little less awkward.”

“Okay...” Sparkle turned back to the list. “So, like, one stallion between us, or...”

“Ewww!” Twilight scrunched up her face. “No! Where’d you get that that idea?”

“Shining Armor,” Sparkle said, a bit of a blush rising to her cheeks. “I asked him what he would do if there were two of him, and uh... him and Cadence...” Twilight looked confused. So Sparkle made a remarkably illustrative hoof-gesture. Remarkably.

“Ewww!” Twilight scrunched her face up further, the blush on Sparkle’s cheeks soon mirrored on hers. “I did not want to know that!”

“I didn’t want to know it either, but he told me!” Sparkle insisted. “And if I have to live with knowing that, so do you!”

“Okay, fine! Item three. Ask out one stallion each. Separately!” Twilight said, pointing sharply at the parchment. Sparkle wrote quickly, adding a third box illustrated with a little rosy heart, her neat calligraphy beside the simple drawing. “Phew,” she said when the writing was done, and both of them exchanged a silly little laugh, letting out a breath and looking at the page.

“Dibs on Big Mac,” Sparkle added quickly, scribbling one more line onto the entry. Twilight had just started to blurt out the same, but finished a moment too late, and was left fuming as Sparkle added the point to their checklist. “Oh don’t look that way. Time Turner is really nice. He can even tell us apart.”

“So you ask him out, and I’ll ask out Big Mac,” Twilight said, more than a trace of skepticism in her tone. But Sparkle only giggled, and Twilight finally relented. “Okay, um... item four...” She tapped a hoof to her chin.

“I want to make up with Princess Celestia,” she said.

The quill froze above the page, and Sparkle’s expression froze with it—her lighthearted smile quickly fading. “You didn’t have a fight with Celestia,” she said.

“I sort of did,” Twilight said, speaking slowly and quietly to try to soften the news. “You and Celestia talked about feelings you had before we split, which means the next time I talk to her, it’s going to...”

Sparkle put the paper down and looked away, her ears folding back against her head. “Sparkle,” Twilight said, trying to lean around to see her counterpart’s face. “I don’t mean it that way.”

“There’s not another way to mean it, Twilight,” she said, and though she kept herself from snapping, tension returned to her voice. “If Celestia wants to judge you based on things I told her, that’s between the two of you.”

“You don’t think it’d be better if we went to her together?” Twilight asked, keeping her tone level so as not to rise to the bait.

“I don’t think I really care what Celestia thinks about us anymore,” Sparkle said, shaking her head. “She doesn’t know half as much as she pretends to.”

Twilight’s ears raised, and her tail did as well, her eyes narrowing. It was lucky that her that Sparkle did not see, for a moment later, Twilight thought better of her instinctive reaction. She forced herself to relax her muscles, to lower her tail, to soften the angry words she had been about to spit forth. “That’s not true, Sparkle. You love Celestia. I love Celestia. I believe that she hurt you. Maybe she hurt you badly enough your relationship will never be quite the same. But you do care about her.”

Twilight waited, but Sparkle said nothing, and so after a few seconds, Twilight pressed on. “We’ve both got a lot of things to let go of. That was one of the things Princess Luna told me.” Twilight swallowed. “She also said that there’s nothing wrong with us if we want to... you know.” She nudged the ground with a hoof. “Get Celestia a Mother’s Day gift once in awhile.”

Sparkle looked up sharply, the movement so abrupt that Twilight actually shrunk back. “I-I mean,” she stammered. “That’s not up to Luna to decide. But she pointed out that it’s not really about us either, or even about Celestia. It’s about if acknowledging Celestia as a mother figure is hurting or excluding Mom, and... well. It’s not. Mom understands us. She understands what we’re going through. She even understood when you didn’t come to see her. And...”

Twilight swallowed, and forced her tone to normalize. “She’s still in town. She’d like it if you came tonight.”

Sparkle said nothing, but gradually, the glow to her horn returned. The quill levitated from where it rested, and a fourth box was added to the checklist. “Patch things up with Mom.” Then, a fifth box, “Patch things up with giant alicorn mom who is also a princess.”

Each smiled a little at that, and then looked off into the grass.

“I’m still mad at her,” Sparkle said after a moment, flicking her ear firmly to emphasize her position.

“I know,” Twilight nodded. “And, I think we’re both going to be mad. Maybe for a while. We’ve talked a lot today, but we’ve talked before and... well. It’s not that easy.” She paused. “But we’ll get better.”

Sparkle said nothing for a time, though she did turn back to the list. Her eyes darted left to right and top to bottom as she scanned the page, only to return to the top and do it again, reviewing the items over and over again. Finally, she lifted the quill, and added one last box: “Write a friendship report.”

“For Princess Celestia?” Twilight asked, but Sparkle shook her head.

“No,” she said as she put the quill down. “I don’t want to send it to her. At least not right now. Not when I’m this angry with her. But I do want to write it. Studying friendship in Ponyville is what my... our, life was about. And I want to get back to that.”

“Well... here, then,” Twilight took the quill from Sparkle, and a moment later, conjured another roll of parchment. She stretched the parchment out and pressed it down to the grass, looking expectantly to her counterpart. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“Oh, I didn’t...” Sparkle shook her head. “I just meant sometime. Not now. We’ve talked a lot today but I don’t think I’m—”

“It doesn’t have to be good.” Twilight shook her head. “Or even coherent. But it’s about feeling like we’re moving forward, right? No time like the present.”

It took her a second to think it over, but soon Sparkle nodded. She took a moment to get comfortable—shifting her legs and drawing a breath. “Dear...” she began, only to hesitate. Her jaw opened, but no sound emerged, and the relaxed pose she had only just assumed started to stiffen.

“Princess Luna?” Twilight suggested, unaware of the gleeful giggling and my-stupid-sister-can-bite-me victory dance that was at that very moment occurring in Canterlot Palace.

“No, it’s okay,” Sparkle said, bringing the dance to its abrupt end. “Dear Princess Celestia,” she began again. Quickly, Twilight moved to faithfully record the words. “Today I learned...”

She paused and wondered just what, if anything, she had learned. She has talked a great deal with Twilight, it was true, and she felt like they had made progress, but what had they actually resolved? It was only when Sparkle stopped to think that she realized the conversation had wandered from topic to topic without ever really dwelling on any point long enough to settle it.

“I...” She drew the word out as she thought. Twilight frowned, but said nothing, holding the quill at the ready for when Sparkle next spoke. Sparkle looked at Twilight as she thought, wondering how she would tell Twilight to stop. Doing the letter right now had all been Twilight’s idea, hadn’t it? Sparkle knew that all she had to do was say she wasn’t ready. But she couldn't say that. How could she say she learned nothing after all this? What kind of a student would that make her? And so, she spoke.

“Today I learned just how easy it is to hurt a pony,” she said, and Twilight diligently transcribed her words, “and how easy it is to be hurt. I always imagined cruelty as a product of malevolence—that ponies hurt each other because they were selfish, or angry, or spiteful. But I learned today that that’s not always true. I was cruel to another pony, and hurt her very badly, not because I meant her any harm, but because I didn’t care. I didn’t care enough to see things from her point of view. I didn’t stop and think. I was thoughtless.”

Sparkle paused to give Twilight time to catch up. She needed a moment to think about the next part anyway, and when she continued, her words were less hesitant. “And now we’ve both paid the price for my mistake. I hurt her, and some part of her wanted to hurt me back. So she did. She...” Sparkle trailed off for a moment, folding her ears back as she looked at Twilight, “did things that I can’t forgive.”

Twilight paused a moment in her writing. Her expression flickered uncertainly, but she set her teeth and made herself press on, transcribing Sparkle’s observations word for word.

“And now,” Sparkle said, sighing and shaking her head, “I don’t know if things will be okay.” She twitched an ear. “But, if there is something good to come of this, it’s that I know how important it is that I always try to see things from the other pony’s point of view. A single moment of neglect is all it takes to inflict a wound that may never heal, but if I’m thoughtful, and understanding, and open with the ponies around me, they’ll be open with me. And maybe then this never needs to happen again.”

She drew a breath. Let it out through her nose. “Also, I’m not saying you were a huge jerk to me last night for no reason, but an apology wouldn’t be out of place. Maybe something like ‘Hey, I’m sorry I was such a bad mentor that the Spirit of Chaos ranked favorably in comparison!’ Not that you’re a bad mentor in general, actually you’re excellent, but your handling of this latest crisis? C+ work at best. See me after class! Oh, and on that note, you and my mom might need to work some stuff out.”

Twilight discreetly stopped writing.

“Ahem,” Sparkle cleared her throat. “Your faithful student, Sparkle.”

Twilight signed at the end, dotted, and then put the quill down on the paper. “It might need some editing,” she said, after a second. She didn’t look at Sparkle, and Sparkle’s expression slowly grew concerned. “I think I like it though,” she finally said.

“Do you want to add anything?” Sparkle asked, a moment later, she added quickly, “Because, that’s just me! You can get something different out of it and that’s not wrong. We don’t have to write these letters together. If you learned something totally different from the conversation we can—”

Twilight turned back as Sparkle’s pace picked up, and just as she looked ready to panic, silenced her with a gentle tap of a hoof to her muzzle. “I think that’s enough for now,” she said. “I don’t think one letter is going to cover this one. A lot happened between us, and we both made a lot of mistakes, but...” She glanced at the letter. “This is a good start.”

“Heh... okay,” Sparkle said, hesitantly tapping the ground with a hoof. “You want to go back and see the others? We’ve been out here for a while.”

“Yeah. Let’s not worry them,” Twilight said. The two of them rose and, side by side, they walked back to the library.

When they arrived, their friends were waiting for them.

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