Chapter 19
✶ ✶ ✶
Camping?
Camping?!
“No,” Twilight spat, squinting her eyes against the sun and gritting her teeth. “No, we are not going camping.”
Celestia just gave her a sad, pitying look that only made Twilight angrier. “Twilight,” she said with a sigh. “Be reasonable.”
“Reasonable? Is that what you think this is?” she growled. “Waking me up at dawn—”
“Noon,” Discord interrupted, earning him a brief glare from Twilight.
“Waking me up at noon,” she corrected, swinging her baleful eyes back to Celestia, “with the whole immortal council lined up against me like I’m the problem here?”
Harmony blinked, her metal eyelids sounding like camera shutters in the silence. “There is a council? Is… is sitting it required?”
Luna’s urge to facehoof was palpable to Twilight, though she didn’t seem to have the energy. “Nay, ancient one, there is no council.”
“Well maybe there should be,” Twilight said with a huff, “since not one of us seems to be able to make good decisions on our own! I mean—”
“That will be enough derailing the subject, Twilight,” Celestia interrupted. There was a hardness to her voice that sent shivers down Twilight’s spine, but she was quite used to the feeling by now, if not from her ex-mentor.
“Oh please, Celestia, listen to yourself!” Twilight yelled with derision. “You needed to at least pretend to have a reason for your little ‘road trip’ for it to make any sense and you brought her along to do it!” She thrust a hoof in the direction of Luna, who cringed and gave a look of hurt from behind her sister. “You have the subtlety of Discord—and don’t think I’ve let that go—which is saying something since he would probably just chuck us in a room together and lock the door!”
“She has a point,” Discord said, one taloned finger under his jaw in thought. “That does sound like something I would do.”
“Fine,” Celestia said, lighting up her horn. “Suit yourself.”
“Wait, what?” Luna began to panic as an aura of golden sunlight dragged her out from the back of the group and chucked her at Twilight.
Whump!
The door clicked shut, but Twilight didn’t notice. She was stunned—not from the impact or the blue alicorn on top of her; those hardly registered either. No, her mind was somewhere else entirely.
“Did that just happen?” she mumbled into the crook of Luna’s neck.
Luna made no effort to get off of Twilight. “Yes. Yes it did.”
The two of them just laid there for a while in silence; it wasn’t terribly different than their perpetual state in the night and… well… so long as neither of them said anything, maybe Twilight could pretend that her life hadn’t gone completely off the rails. It had gone off the rails, however, and the silence wasn’t as comfortable as it used to be.
Luna’s voice came quiet as a whisper. “Twilight, I—I wish to apologi—”
“Don’t,” Twilight snapped, heaving the larger goddess off of her and turning away. Her breath began to shorten as the emotions of the previous night came back to her.
Luna slowly rose, took a breath and straightened her back. “Very well. If that is your wish.” The formality of the words stung, but then, it was meant to.
The silence quickly became actively awkward. Eventually, Twilight found her way to her hooves and stumbled her way back up to Rainbow Dash’s bedroom; the room’s owner was gone, of course, it being the middle of the day, but a certain yellow eavesdropper only barely dodged the door with a tiny “Eep!” of surprise.
“Fluttershy,” Twilight groaned as she walked in and flopped over onto the bed. “I’m sure you have better things to be doing with your demigodesshood than lurk around listening to my life crash and burn.”
Fluttershy blinked. “Oh, um, not really,” she mumbled. “That is, I already, um, did. I am. Constantly. The special connection I have with all my little animal friends is, well… as nice as omniscience is, it’s a bit much, and it’s spring, too, and I really didn’t need to know what Angel does on my kitchen counter when I’m not there and it’s just really nice to be somewhere where, ah, romance isn’t as strong in the… air.”
Twilight briefly lifted her head to stare at Fluttershy, then she buried it face-first in the cloud-pillow. “M’glad my incompetence is good for something.”
Fluttershy shuffled her hooves quietly for a moment and chewed at her bottom lip before chancing to ask, “Do you mean your incompetence at making demigods, or—”
“My romantic incompetence!” Twilight yelled into the pillow.
Fluttershy cringed, her ears folding back at the outburst. “Oh, yes, I suppose that does make more sense, and I do appreciate it.” Fluttershy took a hesitant step toward the bed and reached her hoof out in a halted attempt to comfort Twilight. “Are you… going to be okay?”
Twilight rolled over onto her back and searched the ceiling for an answer that wasn’t coming. “I don’t know.” She rubbed at her eyes with both hooves; she hadn’t been crying, but they weren’t exactly dry either. “I don’t know what I’m doing; I can’t even explain what I was thinking last night. Half of me was completely serious and the other half was just… so angry that I… I don’t know, wanted to prove her wrong? Do what she said as crudely as possible and throw it in her face when it didn’t work? And I used you all to do it.”
“Um, I’m sure Applejack will forgive you eventually.”
“Maybe for making her a demigod, but I also kind of pointed the public at her.”
“Yes, well…”
“I mean, to be fair, the whole point was for you all to empathize with me and Luna did it to me first.”
“I’m sure Rarity will help her market Sweet Apple Mountain products if she asks nicely.”
✶ ✶ ✶
Twilight had very much wanted to burrow back into bed and sleep off her problems, but between all the excitement and the insidious plotting of the solar goddess wherin Twilight had been awoken at basically the time when she was supposed to be getting up anyway, it was not to be.
That left her with the question of what to actually do. A simple glance out the window was enough to prove that Celestia was actually going through with the whole ‘locking them in together’ thing, and had erected a spherical golden shield around Rainbow Dash’s cloud house, which was kind of rude towards the weathermare in question, come to think of it, but it would probably let Rainbow Dash through anyway.
Actually, Twilight was curious to know if Rainbow Dash could break through it on her own now. Twilight certainly could—the whole thing was more a formality than a serious attempt to imprison her—but she had yet to hear anything about the extent of the weathermare’s upgrade to demigoddesshood… which was kind of strange, actually, given that Rainbow Dash was usually in competition with Pinkie Pie for the honor of being the least subtle of Twilight’s friends.
In fact, seeing what Rainbow Dash could do would be a particularly interesting since her job, special talent and chosen starbeast were all wildly different. In theory the increase in magic should be mostly expressed through her special talent, but there was a non-zero chance that Draco could have some influence, and the world did not need any more dragon-ponies.
Twilight abruptly froze in place, one hoof hovering in mid-step of pacing around Rainbow Dash’s bedroom.
How many pony-dragon hybrids older than modern civilization could there actually be? “No. That’s not possible,” she told herself, but she couldn’t believe it. It just made too much sense.
Twilight plodded downstairs, ineffectually pounding her hooves into the cloud steps as she went. She savored a brief moment of pride that her palace at least had crystal for proper stomping before remembering that she vowed never to return to it. At least the cloud house had wooden doors, though.
Crash!
Twilight found Luna in the kitchen surveying a meager selection of snack foods and condiments that made up Rainbow Dash’s pantry. “I refuse to believe that that creature was ever an ambassador!”
Luna stopped and blinked as she processed Twilight’s interruption and then went back to stiffly examining the horseradish. “Well, he wasn’t a very good one, was he? Indeed, I believe that was the entire purpose of his second appointment… though in retrospect, that’s hardly uncommon in politics.”
“It was not the entire purpose,” Twilight grumbled, not quite sure if she should be defending him or not. There were so many questions she had wanted answers to; why did the one with those answers have to turn out to be such a… a… jerk.
Right. He was part dragon. That explained everything.
Not that Twilight was racist or anything; her best friend was a dragon.
“Wait,” she said, stopping herself from getting away from the matter at hoof. “How does a non-magical pony plus dragonfire equal chaotic reality warping magic?” Actually, the answer was obvious. “Please tell me it doesn’t involve the stars again.”
Luna’s silence as she attempted to combine chocolate energy bars with salsa spoke volumes—as did her face.
Twilight turned away and started to pace. “Right. Of course he does. He was there,” she sourly answered herself. “So the good Ambassador Couscous is on a mission to petition the gods for dreams and happens to be there on the night everything falls apart; he miraculously survives the apocalypse—his family doesn’t—and he’s surrounded by the divine remains of the ones who were supposed to solve his problem. What does he do?”
According to Luna, it does not involve potato chips and mustard.
“He makes his own dream world!” Twilight declared. “With stardust and dragons!”
“Probably,” was all Luna had to say.
Twilight deflated at the lack of response. “Probably?”
“Consider again the reliability of the only source of information we actually have,” Luna reminded her.
“Right,” Twilight said, her enthusiasm deflating. “It doesn’t matter if he may have theoretically singlehoofedly saved ponykind from languishing in post-apocalyptic lethargy and uplifted them to a magical race or not, he’s still Discord.”
As the silence started to grow awkward, Twilight suddenly remembered that she and Luna weren’t speaking—which probably should have been more obvious what with all the terseness and the not speaking. Right. She should just… leave. Which she then did. Silently.
As her counterpart continued committing her culinary crimes behind her back without a word, Twilight’s mind slipped back to Discord for a second and she wondered if this odd sense of knowing that somepony has done something admirable, yet not actually caring was the sort of feeling that Luna had been trying to describe about her dislike of Harmony.
Well, in any case, at least this was one question she could put out of her mind. It fit and even if they were wrong, they had no more information to go by, though it still begged the question… If the source of Discord’s power was the stars of the dream world, which were Twilight’s now, how had he broken free?
✶ ✶ ✶
It was only mid-afternoon when Twilight began to think that Celestia’s ridiculous camping trip idea would have been preferable to this perfunctory house arrest. Of course, ostensibly, the purpose of being confined to the same area as Luna was supposed to force them to talk, but they were doing quite well at avoiding each other and Fluttershy wasn’t much of a conversationalist either.
So she was bored. Worse, she was an angry bored; her blind fury from the night before had brought her no real catharsis, the focus of her anger was just downstairs, but Twilight had no desire to actually go down and confront her over it, and she just didn’t know what to do with herself.
She wasn’t used to being actively bored any more than she was used to being passively angry. In any normal situation she would have at least a book or two on hoof to read, even if she had to borrow it from a friend, but Rainbow Dash was not quite at the stage of actually buying books, and, well… she supposed it was partially her own fault that the Golden Oaks had been emptied to seed her personal library in the palace. What kind of archlibrarian had she been that she couldn’t even find the time to make sure Ponyville got the library it needed?
No, she was lying to herself; she didn’t need a book in her hoof to not be bored. Books weren’t even her special talent. She could be practicing magic, trying to figure out how to solidify her stars or—tartarus, the stars contained the lives of ponies, she could spend lifetimes on just the ones she had with her.
She just didn’t feel like it. She didn’t feel like doing much of anything—talking to any of the ponies closest to her, least of all. Technically, she had actually talked to Luna; she could say that she tried, but it hardly counted. What was there to say, anyway? Twilight was angry, but no matter how it felt otherwise, she wouldn’t always be. She felt lost, but she’d eventually settle into a new status quo. It hurt to be taken for granted, but both of them knew it was inevitable.
It was just incredibly depressing and not something they could just talk out.
The worst part came to her midway through the afternoon; the idea that maybe Luna wasn’t entirely the one to blame after all. Oh, the reasoning and the way she’d gone about it was still hurtful and misguided, yes; Luna didn’t know half of what she thought she did about Somni—and it shouldn’t have mattered anyway because who answers a confession with something like that?—but if nothing else, it was clear that Twilight had been leaning on Luna for far too much. Hadn’t they both agreed that Luna wasn’t supposed to be Twilight’s teacher? Maybe… Maybe Twilight needed to learn to be her own pony first. The two of them were supposed to be equals, after all.
The only problem with that was that she didn’t actually want to move on and come back to it later. She didn’t want to wake up to an empty bed after spending the night in the sky with her. She didn’t want to go check what the tartarus-damned racket going on downstairs was—she was being introspective, damn it!
She should have expected something was really wrong when she realized that Celestia’s golden bubble of house arrest was missing, but nothing could have prepared her for what she found in Rainbow Dash’s living room…
Rainbow Dash.
The presence of the owner of the cloud house in which she was residing was not entirely unexpected, but then, the mare in question would probably agree that nothing can actually prepare a pony to experience Rainbow Dash—doubly so when that Rainbow Dash is made of lightning and rainbows.
“Twi!” Rainbow Dash shouted as she appeared in front of her with a flash and hugged her—a literal flash, actually, and also some sizzle, for that matter. “I told you, didn’t I? I told you how it worked, and I was right!”
Twilight was nonplussed, just standing there with her mouth open and her coat smoking. “I… have no idea what you’re talking about, Rainbow,” she deadpanned.
Rainbow Dash just took to the air to raise her crackling multicolored hooves up. “Look at me, Sparkles! I did it! I am distilled awesome.”
“I can see that, Rainbow,” Twilight answered, pinching the bridge of her muzzle in the crook of her hoof. “But what is it and why were you trying to do it.”
“I broke the cutie barrier!” Rainbow Dash beamed.
Twilight bore into her with her eyes. “I repeat: What.”
“Okay, so, it’s like this—” Rainbow Dash paced and gestured in the air as she talked, unbowed by Twilight’s lack of enthusiasm. “So, when I go fast, I leave a rainbow trail, right? And when I do the Sonic Rainboom, it’s like that, but more, right? So I thought—what if I went the fastestest? What if I went the speed of light?”
“You can’t go the speed of light, Rainbow,” Twilight groaned. “And fastestest is not a word.”
“No, you can’t go the speed of light, Sparkles,” Rainbow Dash shot back good-naturedly. “Clearly I did! And it made me an alicorn!”
Twilight grit her teeth. “You are not an alicorn!” she shouted with a bit more scorn than necessary. “We have enough alicorns! No more alicorns!”
Rainbow Dash just rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, fine, whatever. I ascended my mortal form in a non-specific and totally unique way that—hey! I wonder if I can get Pinkie to—unless that’s what already happened to Las Pegasus and that other place? Huh, maybe being the fastestest—”
“Stop using that not-a-word!” Twilight reiterated and was ignored.
“—is only for me; that would kinda make sense huh? Shoot, maybe we have to worry about miss prissypants after all.”
“Wait, this is all about that time you warned about Rarity becoming ‘pure elemental priss?’” Twilight asked, barely remembering coming in on the tail end of that conversation.
Rainbow Dash looked up from her absolutely serious consideration of the dangers of Ponyville seeing a prissencion. “Hah, see? You do remember! I knew I told you about it!”
“You talked about it when I was doing… star stuff!”
“The literal first thing you said after that was ‘I can hear you guys, you know.’”
Twilight seemed to lock up as she went back over what she remembered of the conversation. Eventually, she capitulated. “Fine. You told me about it.”
“So?” Rainbow Dash said, preening. Figuratively preening. She didn’t actually have feathers any more to preen with.
“So, what? I give up. You win. You told me about it and/or I may have exaggerated the amount of attention I was paying at the time. What else do you want?”
“Yeah, forget about that,” she waved the matter off with a hoof. “What do you think? Eh?”
“It is a fascinating transformation,” Luna chimed in, startling Twilight.
“When did you get here?” Twilight asked, scowling at her counterpart.
“Before you did,” she said as she floated a fried potato skin filled with popcorn, dried peppers and honey to her mouth and took a crunchy bite. “I take it you didn’t intentionally make your friends immortal to make a point, then? It just happened?”
Twilight’s face heated up. “Decisions may or may not have been made out of spite, but they—” Twilight gestured at Rainbow Dash, “—were not supposed to be immortal. Rainbow, stop being immortal; you’re complicating things.”
“Wait, who says I’m immortal?” Rainbow Dash blinked; it sounded like a quiet roll of thunder as her luminous eyes went dim for a moment.
“Wonderful; she has sound effects,” Twilight muttered to herself—or to Luna; she wasn’t quite sure. “She and Harmony can start a club.”
Rainbow Dash blinked again. “Uh… Who’s Harmony?” she asked.
Twilight completely ignored her; there was a lot of that going around. “Rainbow, you are made of lightning. Lightning does not age, ergo, you are immortal. Probably. Now stop it.”
“Technically, lightning dies in about thirty microseconds,” Luna reminded Twilight.
“Technically,” Twilight retorted. “Lightning isn’t actually alive to begin with—or at least it wasn’t until she got involved. It violates the natural order! Stop violating the natural order, Rainbow, or everyone will have to start calling you ‘Sparky.’”
Rainbow Dash made weighing motions with her hooves. “Well, violating the natural order is what I do, but if you’re going to stick me with a lame name like Sparky, then sure. Okay.” She touched down next to the bickering alicorns. She looked down at her pulsing lightning coat over a rainbow core that flared out as an ethereal mane and tail. “How do I do that, then?”
“Um. You know—be more… fleshy instead of flashy?” Twilight said, gesturing at Rainbow Dash’s body.
Rainbow Dash gave Twilight a level stare. “Yeah, I gathered that. Like I said: how? ‘Cause as awesome as being made of lightning is, I’ve got some chocolate energy bars in the pantry that—”
“—No, you don’t,” Luna interrupted.
Rainbow Dash halted at the lunar alicorn’s proclamation, if only for the casualness of it. “Uh, yeah, I do? They’re behind the mustard.”
“You did, but now you don’t,” Twilight said, matter-of-factly. “It’s like stage magic, but instead of smoke and mirrors there’s divine right to the manifest destiny of the contents of your pantry. Now, moving on…”
Rainbow Dash looked from the snack floating in Luna’s magic, to Luna, back to the snack, back to Luna, over to Twilight, and one last time to Luna. “So, wait, are you two not fighting anymore?”
Twilight flashed through several emotions, from confusion to dejection and finally settling on ire. “Yes, we are,” she grit out. “Moving. On.”
Luna looked forlornly at the stellar alicorn. “It is complicated,” she told Rainbow Dash.
“Look,” Twilight said, forging onward and doing her best not to think of Luna. “If achieving mortality is that much harder than achieving immortality was, I’ll just—” Twilight thrust her hoof into Rainbow Dash’s chest and ripped Draco out of her.
It did less than anypony expected.
“Woah,” Rainbow Dash exclaimed, stumbling. “That feels weird. I’m less… angular? Still made of lightning, so, yeah, that’s a fail.”
Twilight felt an old habit returning as she passed Draco off to her magic so she could bury her face in her hoof. “Only you can cause this much trouble just by existing, Rainbow Dash.”
“I mean, I think we already established that it’s probably not only me?” Rainbow Dash said somewhat distractedly as she scrunched her face into various expressions trying to do… something. “It feels kinda like—hey, Sparkles, put that back for a second.”
Twilight didn’t even look at Rainbow Dash as she thrust the demigoddesshood back into her, causing a blinding flash and a momentary surge of lightning. “You see what I have to put up with now?” she said to Luna. “Give them an inch and they take a mile!”
Rainbow Dash shimmied and stretched out as her lightning actually settled into a facsimile of a coat, though her rainbow mane remained ethereal and if you looked close enough, each blue ‘hair’ on her ‘body’ had a slight zigzag shape to it, giving her a rather fluffy appearance. With another growling effort of will, she forced them to align and lay down next to each other, if not straighten, restoring something akin to her usual sleek appearance—though she still looked like lightning had hit her and never left.
“Nnngah!” she grunted, panting as she finished forcing her body into shape. “Hah! Easy… peasy,” she said, catching her non-existent breath. “I don’t know why you complain about all this goddess stuff, Sparkles; this isn’t so bad!”
Twilight’s eye twitched. “I don’t care if you are stuck immortal, Rainbow, that does not make you a goddess!”
Rainbow Dash waved off her objection. “Pshyeah, what, I have to be an alicorn for that or something? Or maybe get voted in by the goddess council?”
“Yes,” Twilight said. “Embody the fundamental forces of nature and the council will talk about it.”
Rainbow Dash just stuck her tongue out at Twilight. “Maybe I will. You’d better have my council seat waiting.”
“There is no such council,” Luna reminded Twilight, repeating her words from earlier.
“Well, there should be!” Twilight huffed.
Luna cocked her head. “Hold—if it was a goddess council, would Discord be able to sit it?”
“Have frock, will travel,” a sassy voice said out of nowhere, much to Twilight’s chagrin.
“You had to say his name,” she mumbled.
“I could sit such a council,” the voice reasoned. “But the question is, could I stand it?”
Twilight let out a heavy sigh. “You might as well just show yourself, Discord.”
There was a knock at the door. Twilight opened it with her magic to reveal the warped dragon-pony in question… just kind of standing there and not doing anything particularly sinister. Twilight glared at him, and he waved.
“You have no frock,” was the first thing she blurted out on seeing him.
Discord invited himself inside and mimed taking off an imaginary coat and hanging it up by the door. “Yes, well, you will have to excuse my lack of props as my pony magic gained sentience, walked off on me and founded its own nation state.”
“Wait,” Rainbow Dash interrupted. “Discord is your dad?”
“No, he is not,” Twilight objected vehemently. “No matter how—eugh—appreciated his alleged creation of the dream realm is, the stars were not his to begin with. He didn’t make them and they didn’t come from him. At no point was he involved in their creation or my genesis.”
“Oh, but Twilight, you wound me,” Discord said, throwing an arm around her withers. “That sanctimonious cow may have been your father, but she wasn’t your—oof.” Discord reeled back from taking a hoof to the kidney—though it wasn’t Twilight’s; it was Luna’s, the owner of which was now standing protectively close to Twilight to the notice of neither of them. “Ow, ow, ow. Be careful. I’m weak and helpless now; you might actually wound me.”
“I have a father, thank you very much,” Twilight fumed. “Biological and familial. He works with telescopes. He’s nice, funny and straightforward. The position is not open for applicants.”
“I think she has daddy issues,” Rainbow Dash faux-whispered to Discord.
It was a joke. She knew that intellectually. What angered her wasn’t that that it was tasteless, or that it could actually do some real damage to her reputation and follow her for years if the wrong pony overheard it, she was just… spent, tired and angry. Enough!
An almighty crack resounded throughout the cloud house, causing everyone present to flinch. It wasn’t an attack, though. Lowering her arms, Rainbow Dash saw a sight that drained the rainbow right out of her face—there was a literal crack splitting Twilight’s body in two, shedding stardust.
“Rainbow, immortal or not, if I hear so much as one word of this absurdity repeated elsewhere, I will find a way to kill you and put ‘Sparky’ on your tombstone.”
There wasn’t so much a prolonged silence so much as a heavy weight of dread filling the entire room, making it hard to breathe.
Discord leaned over next to Rainbow Dash without taking his eyes off of Twilight and faux-whispered back with slow, deliberate enunciation. “I think you should agree.”
Rainbow Dash slowly nodded.
Twilight heard a shuffling sound next to her and turned to look at Luna, frightening her and sending her reeling back; the sight made her wilt. Twilight remembered, then, Luna struggling to hide behind Celestia before being thrown at her. Had Luna not just been avoiding her? Had she been afraid of Twilight? Afraid, not just of facing Twilight’s entirely justified anger, but afraid for herself?
That was just a bit unreasonable, wasn’t it? It wasn’t as if Twilight was even capable of hurting her; they’d pushed each other off of buildings, for crying out loud! Well, they had wings, but Twilight hadn’t known how to use hers yet, so it counted. Luna… Luna was a pony who drank poison for her own amusement! She conquered the world and built Equestria on the ashes of Discord’s reign! She took the stars into herself and tried to overthrow her sister! How dare she of all ponies be afraid of Twilight!
Twilight raised her hoof with a sneer on her face and—stopped.
What was she doing? She took one hesitant step back then another.
“I… I have to go,” she said, quickly turning and dissolving into stardust before anypony could object.
☾ ☾ ☾
Luna cursed herself for her reaction and sent a glare at Rainbow Dash for her part in precipitating it. “Didst thou needs rile her up so unceasingly?”
Rainbow Dash’s only response was a guileless, “What?”
Luna pressed her lips into a fine line and attempted to get her diction back under control. “I asked if you really needed to vex Twilight so.”
“Uh, no, I kinda got what you were saying,” Rainbow Dash said, still not really seeming to realize what she had done. “But come on, we were just joking around like we always do; she didn’t have to take it so badly.”
Luna could not believe that this was the Rainbow Dash that Twilight had written about. “Did it not occur to you that she is not entirely stable at the moment?” she asked rhetorically. “It petrifies me to think of what could have happened last night had her focus not fell to the matter of granting you and your friends the status of demigoddesses.”
Rainbow Dash objected. “I was taking her mind off of it!” she insisted.
“And a fine job of it you have done,” Luna said, letting the sarcasm speak for itself. “Or can you not see how marvelously that is working out?”
“Woah, hold on, why am only I getting the blame, here? What about Discord?” Rainbow Dash gestured to the empty space beside her. “Wait, where’d he go?”
“I expect as much of him,” she said. “You are supposed to be her friend, are you not?”
Finally, Luna’s words seemed to be getting to Rainbow Dash. “Yeah, well, you’re supposed to be her marefriend and we can all see how that’s working out,” she retorted.
Luna narrowed her eyes at the mare. “Get out.”
“But… this is my house?” the mess of lightning and rainbows objected.
“Twilight did explain such matters to you not five minutes prior, did she not?” Luna asked, but shook her head immediately afterwards. “But very well; I do doubt she will be returning here, so Tia can hardly begrudge me leaving.”
Luna envied Twilight her access to her celestial essence during the day as she was forced to rather undramatically stamp across the puffy cloud floor to the open door. This was why modern palaces were made with crystal or marble. At least she got to slam the door behind her as she leapt into the sky above Ponyville, leaving Rainbow Dash to her own devices.
In truth, Luna was both concerned and relieved to have Twilight gone—or as much as she could be when they were still sharing the umbra. As close as the two of them had gotten, the raport they had developed was at odds with the current situation. It was so easy to simply fall back into the pattern of banter, yet awkward did not begin to describe any attempt to consciously decide what to do and say; her attempt at an apology had been rebuffed, yet at times it was as if nothing had happened.
And then Twilight had snapped—literally cracked down the middle right in front of them—and raised her hoof in anger at Luna. She was not proud of her reaction, yet she had thought… She had thought that Twilight had finally passed that moral event horizon which she remembered crossing herself so well all those years ago. The point when she had finally had enough; where one imagined sleight was one sleight too many and the consequences of going down the road of her intrusive thoughts were no longer convincing enough to quell her anger.
But Twilight had stopped, and now… now what? That was the question, she supposed. Where could they go from here? Twilight had made herself vulnerable, and Luna had hurt her. The fact that she hadn’t meant to do so didn’t make the situation any easier to resolve; if anything, it made it harder, as Luna could not actually demonstrate a change of heart when there was none to be had.
She wished she had just said yes. If she hadn’t had her own conversation planned, if she had just had time to think on it, she would have said yes. She desired Twilight, certainly, in more ways than one. In another time and place, even were Twilight not an alicorn, Luna would have considered courting her simply to secure her company. The problem was that Twilight knew all of this already, and any assertion of her attraction would likely remind Twilight of the last time she had mentioned it—the very rejection she was trying to amend.
No.
No, Luna had once before assumed that somepony close to her understood her feelings and it had only ended in loneliness and a very long exile from Equestria.
No, if Twilight was intent on being angry at her, then Luna would put everything she had into making it as hard as possible.
So… how did she go about doing that?
✶ ✶ ✶
This time it worked. In her demanifest state, Twilight could finally think clearly. She breathed in and out… or she pretended to, at least. Her existence as the stars was something she wasn’t sure she’d ever have a full vocabulary for—but she was distracting herself.
What was that?
Just what the ponyfeathers was that? She had been a single moment from giving Luna a reason to be afraid of her; a moment from from reaching out to grab her and—oh. Oh, yes, Luna had reason to be afraid of Twilight. Twilight didn’t know if she should feel stupid for missing it or be glad that hurting Luna didn’t come naturally to her.
It didn’t, did it? But she’d reached for the stars. She’d done it automatically, without even thinking about what she was doing, and now she knew why Luna was scared of her. How Twilight had scared her. That was… No, it was fine. Things like that happen. Twilight would never actually hurt her; Twilight would never hurt any of her friends. Or anypony. Anyone. Twilight was not an angry pony… except, at the moment, she very much was, and it scared her.
We all wish we were better mares in times like these, Luna had once told her.
No, I am better, she remembered answering. I used to be, anyway. I stress out and get frustrated, sure, it happens, but I don’t lash out and break things.
That, of course, had been said after she’d lashed out and broken things.
What if it’s not irony? What if it’s not a coincidence? Everything that’s happened seems to suggest that the stars are bad for me. No matter how grounded I think I am, no matter how calm and collected, it all falls apart—just like these stars. I’m made of sand, and I don’t know when the next wave will come.
She’d let herself forget; she’d thought she was over it. Hadn’t she survived being speared on Gemini’s essence and thrown into the desert of dreams? Hadn’t she overcome the cacophony of stars and made a library of them so they would never threaten to overwhelm her again? But she wasn’t being overwhelmed by the stars, was she? There weren’t foreign thoughts and forgotten histories fighting forward from somewhere inside of her, it was herself that she was having trouble with. Her metaphorical bookshelves were doing their job, but the foundation was crumbling beneath them.
No, it wasn’t crumbling; there just wasn’t enough of it. Here, now, spread out into the stars, she could step aside and just think so much more easily. Okay, maybe the dissociation that came with being the stars wasn’t entirely her… but actually, it kind of was, wasn’t it? It was how she was supposed to be; it was how Luna and Celestia were all the time, to a certain degree. They had manifest forms, and that certainly gave them focus, but they didn’t have to give up the rest of their celestial being to experience it like she did.
She couldn’t go on like this. She couldn’t just keep going from one to the other, flipping parts of herself on and off at the drop of a hat. She was a living, thinking being. Already she was worried about manifesting herself again—about what she might do, and worse, what she might think. There wasn’t a demanifest Twilight watching her life with a clear mind and tsking in disapproval as she made a list of all of Twilight’s mistakes. Demanifesting didn’t give her any magical insight into what she should have done or could have said with a clearer mind… or at least, no more than the usual hindsight.
All she had to do was look at last night to see that her muddled thoughts and bad decisions could follow her into the stars if she let them. No, it was important to remember that the seeming stability granted by her state was only a side effect of simply being so much greater and grander with the frame of reference to match.
Well, even her so-called grand frame of reference couldn’t help her disentangle the mess she’d made of things. At least here and now she mostly just felt lost instead of—no, she was still angry; how could she not be? She’d been hurt—and she’d been hurt for some stupid, ill-conceived, poorly thought out ‘best intentions.’
And then she’d gone and hurt others, very much without the best of intentions. It was little more than the luck of the draw that she hadn’t alienated most of her friends last night; just Applejack.
Applejack… and maybe Celestia.
There had been a time in her life when the idea of anypony having such an antagonistic conversation with the princess of the sun would have given Twilight fits. Now… Well, to be fair, Celestia had woken her up by needling her with a literal eyeball-seeking sunbeam; so maybe Twilight’s attitude had been kind of justified.
Celestia would get over it.
Applejack, though… Twilight imagined herself groaning at the thought of dealing with that whole mess; not only had she gone against Applejack’s express wishes, only having managed to talk her down to not arguing back before turning her into a demigoddess, but now there was this whole thing with Rainbow Dash somehow ascending her physical form. Applejack might be a down-to-earth pony, but she was just about as in-tune with her cutie mark and earth pony magic as you could get. Suddenly the subject of Applejack being solid enough to crack walnuts with her face wasn’t quite so funny when there was the possibility of her actually turning into an elemental force.
Maybe… maybe she’d let that one sit for a while—and on that subject; Pinkie Pie and her likely ascension. Yeah… no. Twilight was just going to let that little nightmare come to her, as it inevitably would. No need to borrow trouble from Las Pegasus when trouble had a whole road trip planned.
Fluttershy… Gah. Now Twilight just felt like a heel for taking her for granted and then all but ignoring her issues. The soft-spoken demigoddess had probably wanted help with her overactive omniscience but couldn’t bring herself to actually ask for it. Worse, her fears were probably more sound than Twilight was comfortable admitting; as terrible as it made her feel, she had too much on her mind to focus on the sorts of things cute and not-so-cute animals get up to when nobody but a young, impressionable demigoddess is watching.
Wasn’t this whole thing supposed to bring Twilight and her friends closer together?
It was some consolation that, at least—no matter what Rainbow Dash’s opinion was on the matter—Twilight didn’t actually have to worry about what Rarity would become if she ‘broke the cutie barrier’ as the brash mare had put it. Demigoddesshood no doubt suited her, but she didn’t have the… oneness of being that Twilight imagined was required to take it any further than that—not that that was a bad thing.
If any of Twilight’s friends could be counted on to have all of their ducks in a row, it would have to be Rarity. Not actual ducks—that would be Fluttershy’s thing, and what they’re doing all in a row Twilight had no desire whatsoever to know. In fact, if Fluttershy could just never mention that aspect of her newly-enhanced special talent ever again, Twilight would depower her in gratitude.
Anyway. Rarity. Ducks. Not duck-ducks, but a duckification representing her prevailing competence at life—now there was an idea; maybe she could help sort some of this out, even if it meant that Twilight would have to eat her words and listen to—ugh—relationship advice.
Wait. Relationship advice was literally both what she wanted and needed.
Still, ugh.
✶ ✶ ✶
Twilight found Rarity in the throne room of the ponyville palace. Now, Rarity would never be so rude as to sit in either of the thrones even if Twilight hadn’t reduced them to piles of rubble, but then, you couldn’t actually see the space where the thrones had been either, so the amount of respect being shown was dubious. No, the entire back half of the throne room was taken up by Rarity… or more accurately, Rarity’s dress. It was a grand, flowing thing; waves upon waves of silk and embroidery like an eruption of floral petals over acres of ribbons. Settings adorned with gemstones the size of ostrich eggs decorated the thing, standing on display like a score of hydra heads, and the floor was completely hidden beneath curls and ringlets of lace.
Twilight legitimately wasn’t sure if she’d jinxed herself and this was Rarity’s transcendent immortal form or if it was just Rarity being Rarity, and she decided not to ask. Any suggestions that this decision came to her as the mare in question bore down on her with the seeming fury of a thousand jilted lovers were entirely unfounded.
“Twilight Sparkle!” Rarity bellowed. Yes, bellowed. Normally Rarity would rate a word like declared or announced, but with the way Twilight’s ears folded back at the shout, she was going with ‘bellowed.’ Internally, at least.
“What?” she said, backpedalling on reflex. “What did I do?” It was a moment before the inanity of that response really occurred to her. “I mean, specifically,” she added somewhat sheepishly.
It was an impressively distracting sight to watch Rarity’s dress flow after her, weightlessly roiling through the air as she finally reached Twilight and pointed a dramatic hoof right under Twilight’s nose. “You ran off and slept with Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy!”
“Yes?” Twilight blinked, somewhat puzzled. “It’s not like it was the first time, either; what’s your point? We can’t even have an embarrassing misunderstanding about it since you know that I don’t even see ponies that way. Well, I’ve told you I don’t see ponies that way; whether or not you actually internalize information like that is something I’m less confident in, given the conversations we tend to have.”
“That was another matter entirely,” Rarity said dismissively. “That was Rainbow and Fluttershy sleeping with you, which is entirely different, if gossip-worthy.”
“I’m confused. I actually have no idea what you’re even talking about.”
“I will be very clear, Twilight,” Rarity said, jabbing Twilight in the chest with her hoof. “You are going to move back into the palace and you will do so tonight. This is not negotiable. I don’t care if you have to fight Luna in a duel to demanifestation to stake your claim on the bedroom, but you will live there or else. You signed a contract for alicorn residency and I will enforce it if I have to.”
Twilight just stared at Rarity in bewilderment. “I don’t know why I thought you were the sane and stable one of my friends.”
“You recognized it!” Rarity proclaimed in something resembling manic glee. “I am the only pony who has been working tirelessly towards solving things once and for all. Oh, that’s not to say that your approach wasn’t a good one, darling, but the execution… A valiant attempt, to be sure, but you rather dropped the ball at the finish line, as it were. But regardless! It is nothing that can’t be fixed!”
Twilight wasn’t sure if she was actually getting any closer to making sense of this or if they were just treading words. “Fixed… by me living in the palace?” she asked for clarity.
“Exactly!” Rarity beamed, no doubt taking Twilight’s vaguely successful attempt to follow her logic as acceptance.
“Could you maybe… explain that a little?” Twilight dared to suggest.
“Why, darling, I thought you’d never ask!”
Twilight had an immediate desire to strangle the pony in front of her, and she wasn’t sure what she wanted Rarity’s unknown immortal status to be proven to be when she did. She was pretty sure that was a natural reaction that anypony would have, though, so probably not the stars’ fault.
Meanwhile, Rarity—entirely oblivious of the ire being directed her way—turned, took part of the dress flowing behind her in her hoof and pulled it back to reveal…
“A model of Ponyville?” Twilight said, automatically voicing her thoughts out loud. “With a wonky purple crystal tree in the middle?”
Rarity stood still, blinked and looked at the hideous thing she had revealed. “Oh my, no no no no no, not that one.” Rarity looked at the model from several angles before kicking aside the table it was on. “I know I have it somewhere, here…” she mumbled to herself then grabbed Twilight and pulled her along into the depths of her dress. “Here, follow me.”
Twilight quickly lost all sense of direction as she was yanked and guided this way and that through the dress, searching for Rarity’s treasure. Eventually, Twilight found herself pushed out into a clearing that had…
“Another model of Ponyville?” she blurted out in disbelief. This one, though, had Twilight’s actual palace in the center. There was more than that, though; there were six similar but smaller towers surrounding it, connected to the main tower by long, thin crystal bridges, and each one she looked at was revealed to be placed on top of one of one of her friends’ existing houses.
Twilight was stunned speechless. “Do we really all live basically in a circle? That seems horribly contriv—oh wait, no, Applejack’s tower is on top of what used to be Barnyard Bargains for some reason.”
Rarity cleared her throat, interrupting Twilight’s train of thoughts. “Yes, well, let us ignore that for now and come back to it later,” she said in a tone indicating that ‘later’ meant ‘never.’ “Do you see, now?”
Twilight stepped back and took in what she was actually looking at; the towers smaller, but they were not small. Each one was palatial in its own right, and while Applejack and Fluttershy would not be the types to live in a palace with servants waiting on their beck and call, this could actually almost be the opposite of that; a space wholly their own that exposed Twilight to them without all the pomp and circumstance of her procession. “All the land you bought and traded… all the sneaking around at court… even trying to buy Applejack’s farm… It was all for this? So we can all live together like a bunch of college friends who all moved into the same neighborhood?”
For once in her life, Rarity actually looked a little embarrassed. “Well, darling, I have also become the obscenely wealthy governess of Ponyville in the process, but… well, one must have things in order to share them, so yes; I suppose it was all for this. What else did you expect of me?”
It was… perfect. Well, okay, no, it wasn’t perfect; it would actually take a decent amount of presentation and convincing to get them all to go along with it, but… Rarity was capable of that; there was no question. All it required from Twilight was that she continue living the ridiculous farce of alicorn superiority rather than flying off and becoming a hermit. Err, that is… technically being an alicorn did make her superior, but only in body! She’d been smarter than them before her ascension and—wait—no, that wasn’t what she—damnit! What she meant was that just because she was superior didn’t make it right! Why couldn’t things ever be simple?
This was all Rarity’s fault.
Twilight did her level best to strangle her.
Gently.
Around the chest.
☾ ☾ ☾
Luna thought that Twilight’s choice of companionship would have been obvious. She herself was out, for obvious reasons, as was Celestia, after the stunt which she had pulled that morning in attempting to force the two of them together. So, too, were all the ex-bearers of the elements of harmony, with Twilight’s actions the night before making things awkward. No, there was only one place, one person she could go to.
Unfortunately, he was also the one whose advice she needed. Luna knocked as quietly as she could on the door as of what once was the Golden Oaks library. Quickly enough, the door opened and Luna placed herself so she wouldn’t be seen by anyone farther in.
“Oh, hey Luna,” he said, opening the door wider once he saw who it was. “Come on in; you want some tea? I, uh, think there’s some left. Ever since Twilight moved out, the only ones that drink it are Rarity and Fluttershy and I usually go see them.” He shrugged and was making his way to the kitchen before he froze. “Ah, you won’t die from a little rubidium poisoning, right? I’ve been cooking in these pots and pans with a lot of heavy and alkaline metals lately; can’t have dessert all the time. Not for more than a week straight, anyway…”
Luna slowly followed Spike into the ex-library, cagily looking around corners, expecting to run into Twilight any awkward moment now, but such a moment never came. “Is… is Twilight not here?”
Spike poked his head out of the kitchen. “No?” he said, making it a question. “Is she coming?”
Ah, awkward moment arrived at, although it was not the precise one that Luna had been expecting. “I had expected she would, but perhaps she has found solace elsewhere.”
“Huh, I kinda expected you two to still be joined at the hip,” he said, his voice echoing from the kitchen. “She was kinda freaking out when you got vaporized by that dragon. Actually, come to think of it, she came here back then… did something happen?”
Luna’s wings ruffled as she prepared to admit her folly. “We have not not suffered a brief, unplanned schism in our mutual understanding of one another,” she said.
Spike appeared at the kitchen door, cleaning a porcelain cup possessing a slightly silvered interior with a hand towel. He just stood there for a moment just looking at her blankly. “You accidentally rejected her and she’s pissed, huh?” he said as he turned and walked back into the kitchen to continue what he had been doing.
“That is not innacur—that is to say, yes, you are quite astute in your deduction,” she conceded. “I shall not mince words; I… I ‘bucked up’ and I am not certain how to go about remedying matters.”
“So, you weren’t expecting it, said the wrong thing, she ran off and now you’re trying to find her?” he asked.
“Ah, it is far more complicated than that.” Luna took a long, deep breath. “The Elements of Harmony have awakened as an ancient, essence-deficient alicorn with a grievous case of habitual apathy, stealing the vim and vigor from Twilight’s other friends and afflicting them with chronic magical withdrawal. Twilight had offered them a resolution, but reconsidered when it was suggested that it would, in fact, make them demigods in their own right, only to then blindside me with her overture of affection when I had intended to express some concerns and argue against her decision. We had a… slight altercation which spiraled slightly out of control when I—in admittedly poor judgement—suggested that perhaps the timing of our courting might be best put off until matters had stabilized. She took it predictably poorly and proceeded to threaten the very fabric of Equestria, stretching it thin between her twin domains of the sky and the dreamworld as she searched the globe for her remaining starbeasts so she could grant them to her friends out of misplaced spite. In doing so, she inadvertently released Discord, whose chaotic powers originated in the dreamworld that he, as the first magical pony, created with the power of the stars and which Twilight, in her unceasing primordial wrath, recalled from him, breaking his prison and leaving him a largely harmless, though likely still immortal dragon-pony hybrid who is currently lurking around Rainbow Dash’s cloud house on account of being left there by a full half dozen ponies who do not realize that he is incapable of getting down from it on his own—and me, who just doesn’t like him. Ah, but I am getting ahead of myself; after Twilight quit her job, told the public to buck off and slept with Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy again, Celestia, in her infinite wisdom, foolishly decided to wake Twilight and make demands of her before she had had her coffee. Twilight’s response was again easy to predict, as my sister did not even participate in the common ritual of declaring the commencement of a ‘road trip’ at the top of one’s lungs; a gross oversight, I feel as the Royal Canterlot Voice is uniquely suited to such a rite, though one likely to be doomed to failure from the start as I—the one who Twilight is cross with—was present and Celestia chose to bodily project me at Twilight before fleeing when negotiations broke down—not the first time she has done that, actually. Twilight and I then proceeded to avoid each other like nervous school fillies—as one does with ponies they have recently engaged in unwarranted drama with—until an increasing agitation with her uncouth pegasus friend caused her to snap and she fled in fear of what she might do if she remained. Oh, and one or all of your shared friends might be properly immortal, so there is that.”
“…So, business as usual, then?” he asked, sounding only half sarcastic as he juggled two teapots and a pair of cups out of the kitchen and over to a small table with an empty circular bookshelf in the center of it. “All of that happened since the thing with the grumpy dragon, huh? Guess I’ve been out of the loop.”
Luna sat and poured herself a cup of the nameless black tea that Spike had managed to dredge up. “Just the last twenty-four hours, as a matter of fact.”
“…Must be the climax,” he muttered as he joined her, pouring himself a cup of some sputtering metal or another. “I told her to skip the wacky hijinks, but maybe that would have been better than what actually happened.”
“Yes! The ‘hijinks,’” Luna said with great enthusiasm. “This is why I have come to you for advice.”
“Me?” Spike said, somewhat blindsided. “Why would you come to me of all dragons?”
“I have heard great tales of your attempts to woo the lady Rarity.”
“Ugh…” Spike drooped in on himself and wrapped both claws around his cup. “Luna, I’m not—there has been no wooing. There’s just me putting myself out for a mare I’ve always known would never see me as an adult. Ever since Twilight became immortal, it’s just… made me really aware of the ponies who aren’t.”
“Well, that is simple then!” Luna said, beaming. “You shall help me with Twilight, and I shall endeavor to ensure that Rarity becomes immortal! Surely if that indecorous lout she calls a friend can achieve immortality, she can.”
“Wait, what? ‘Indecorous lout?’” He mouthed the phrase to himself silently with a look of confusion on his face. “Rainbow Dash is immortal now?”
“Perhaps,” Luna said, making a ‘so-so’ gesture with her hoof. “She appears to have been transmuted into living lightning and rolling rainbows, though as to whether or not she is actually immortal, only time will tell. Did I not just say this?”
Spike blushed, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly. “Sorry, after living with Twilight for so long, I tend to zone out during recaps.”
“Ah,” Luna said, nodding. “I do the same thing with Tia’s speeches on… most things, actually.”
“So, wait, that means Rainbow Dash is an alicorn now?” Spike asked, somewhat wary of the concept.
Luna let out a snort of derision. “Hardly; even were she to grow a horn, the defining feature of an alicorn appears to be the production of magic either ex nihilo or converted from a source which no pony has yet deduced, discovered or divined; all pony magic thus comes from Twilight herself. Twilight was distracted by her failure to completely reverse the effect with the removal of Rainbow Dash’s additional stars, but there was an effect, thus she is almost certainly still reliant on the stars for magic.”
“Uh, if they wanted to reverse it so much that they even tried turning her demigoddesshood off and on again to fix it, why wouldn’t they take out her original star, and why wouldn’t you mention it? Last I heard, the guy Twilight did it to was fine.”
Luna shuffled in place a bit as she took a sip of her tea, showing her discomfort. “Given that Twilight soon afterwards threatened to find a way to kill Rainbow Dash, I believe it has been proven prudent that I kept my observations to myself, because that is likely what would happen to a pony without a self-sustaining physical body if their magic was removed entirely.”
Spike looked at Luna thoughtfully for a moment. “You know, Twilight is rubbing off on you.”
“Constantly, yes,” Luna said with a shiver. “She is calm enough at the moment, however, so it is not as noticeable—a good sign, I hope.”
Spike’s look deviated from thoughtful to land squarely on distressed. “That… is not what I meant and I did not need to know that about my psuedo-sister-slash-mother. What I meant was that you seem more analytical than the time we—err—conspired to move her into a palace that didn’t exist yet. You know, that seemed a lot more reasonable at the time.”
“We do what we must for those whom we love, Spike; sometimes that means engaging in unconventional shenanigans,” Luna declared entirely seriously.
Spike set his cup down and buried his face in his claws. “On second thought, I’m not sure I want your help with Rarity.”
“It is called courting because it resembles courtly politics in its frivolity, idealism and reliance on vainglorious conviction in the face of seeming futility,” she reassured him.
Spike chewed at his lip, looking torn. “On one claw, I’m pretty sure that’s a load of ponyfeathers, but on the other, it’s a load of ponyfeathers she’d probably agree with.”
“Wonderful!” Luna said, throwing an arm around her comrade in love.
“You know I’d help you regardless, right?” Spike said, his voice a little muffled as his cheek was being pressed into Luna’s chest while he struggled to keep from spilling his rubidium.
“Indeed,” Luna answered, relaxing her grip. “But it pains me to see a fellow immortal give up romance and passion for bitterness and apathy so young, nor would I stand by whilst you settle into decades of pining. Trust me when I say that way lies nothing good and wholesome, young Spike.”
Spike scooted away from Luna when she let him go and quickly finished his drink before the princess’ enthusiasm could the better of it sooner or later. “Yeah, I guess. I just… I’m not stupid; I know how she sees me, but that doesn’t mean I should give up on it ever being possible.”
“Quite,” Luna said, nodding as she finished her own tea and the two of them got up. “It took me at least a century until I had decided that all romance was drivel and poppycock.”
“I—buhwha?” he blubbered, stumbling as he was making his way back to the kitchen with the dishes. He turned back to look at her. “What about all that stuff you just said?”
“Time and events change ponies, Spike, not just once but again and again with each new experience. Sometimes we grow up and put away our childish things, and sometimes maturity means allowing oneself to get them back out and dust them off again years and decades later. Me? I am brushing up on being an idiot in love as best I can, so bear with me.”
☁ ☁ ☁
“Not cool, Luna,” Rainbow Dash groused for the umpteenth time that afternoon as she worked on refining her immortal magical body. “Not cool at all.”
She was feeling pretty rotten, all told, and it was all because Luna had to go and hit her right where it hurt—her loyalty.
“You are supposed to be her friend, are you not?”
A crack of thunder accompanied what could only be called a short-circuit in her foreleg, causing it to revert to its overtly jagged form. “Mother bucker!” she cursed, that mistake setting her back at least ten minutes of work.
Contrary to what she had claimed, this whole lightning-and-rainbows thing did not come easy to her. She’d first broken the cutie barrier on her morning fly—almost ten hours ago now—and it had taken her until mid-afternoon just to collect herself enough make her way home. Okay, so maybe she had kinda forgotten how messed up Twilight had seemed last night and there had been something about Applejack not being totally okay with the demigoddess thing, but psh—it was Applejack. She didn’t actually hold grudges; she was too nice and… what’s the word? Hospitable.
Oh, and supposedly Applejack and Twilight were a thing or whatever, but Rainbow Dash didn’t buy that.
Zap! “Celestia damn it!”
The irony in her situation was that half of what she was doing was basically like exercise and training muscle memory—things she was experienced in and really good at. What ruined it was that it was just so… fiddly—and not pinion feather positioning fiddly, but like, actual playing-the-fiddle fiddly.
“Hiya Dashie!” said a smiling pink shape
Zap!
“Pinkie!” Rainbow Dash cried out in rebuke.
Pinkie gave Rainbow Dash a hug from behind, getting a shock for the trouble but not letting that stop her. “My pinkie sense told me somepony here needed some cheering up!” she told Rainbow Dash as she smoothed out a singled curl of pink hair.
Rainbow Dash turned to see Pinkie Pie… standing in her living room? “How are you standing—?”
“Hold that thought,” Pinkie Pie interrupted as she circled Rainbow Dash, examining her from several angles. She hemmed and hawed over Rainbow Dash. “Something’s off about you; lemme think.”
“Well, yeah, I—”
“I said lemme think!” Pinkie Pie scolded her. “I’ve almost got it… Aha!”
Without warning, Pinkie Pie thrust her arm into Rainbow Dash’s back right between the wings and wiggled it around like she was feeling for something. Whatever it was, she seemed to find it. She yanked at it, then pushed back and did something that sent shivers down Rainbow Dash’s… completely flesh-and-blood spine?
“What… did you just do?” Rainbow Dash panted, taking in real actual deep breaths she didn’t realize she’d been missing.
“I just smoothed over your doozynoodle,” Pinkie Pie explained as she pulled her hoof out of Rainbow Dash; it wobbled around shapelessly like a limp cucumber and was dripping fluorescent pink. “You were really jiggered up!”
Rainbow Dash gaped at her in awe. “When did you learn to do that? It hasn’t even been a day!”
Pinkie Pie giggled. “Oh Dashie; I’ve known how to do that for… um… gosh; years, I guess!”
Rainbow Dash felt a little of her pride break just then. “You… you broke the cutie barrier as a filly? All on your own?”
“Is that what I did?” she asked, purely innocent and naïve. “I just thought I became a super-duper eternal force of party pony pinkitude!”
Rainbow Dash was floored. No, literally, she crumpled over onto the floor in shock, then shot back up to look at Pinkie Pie. “Wait, if you’ve mastered being a pronking force of pink since forever, then why in Celestia’s name are Las Pegasus and that other place craters?”
“Silly Dashie; I didn’t make the Las Pegasus crater; I just brought the fun!”
✶ ✶ ✶
“You have nothing to worry about,” Rarity told Twilight after she had explained things. “There is always a break in the third act wherein the two lovers spend some time apart due to some disagreement or mistake in order to show them how much they belong together. Now, all you must do is prepare a show of forgiveness, and you shall live happily ever after.”
Twilight gave Rarity an annoyed look. “My life is not a romance novel, Rarity.”
“Ah, well then.” Rarity straightened where she sat and returned Twilight’s look with a flat one. “You are being a bit of an unreasonable, self-centered bitch to somepony who has professed quite poetically to love you just as much as you do her, and you should get over yourself and try to make it work instead of throwing a hissy fit over the first stumbling block in your relationship.”
“But she—”
“Ah-ah-ah,” Rarity interjected, cutting Twilight off. “Honestly, Twilight, if ponies actually meant ‘no’ when they say ‘no’—especially when prefaced by ‘yes, but…’—then nothing would ever get done anywhere in business, politics or romance. Of course, if that were the case then there would be fewer stallions who can’t read a situation, so it might be worth it, but there’s no point in wishing. The point is, you already know she’s interested; all that is left is the negotiation.”
“…can we go back to the romance novel version?” Twilight whimpered.
Rarity shook her head sharply. “Not a chance; you asked for the realistic version, and the realistic version is the tough love version.”
“I didn’t actually ask…” Twilight had started to mumble before the urge to argue to the point at hoof took over. “She did more than just say no, Rarity,” Twilight fumed, stomping her hoof now that she finally had a proper crystal floor to stomp on. “She took it and she used it as some sort of—of—carrot; a reward to be had for good behavior. That’s not something you do.”
“Did she?” Rarity asked with a heavy sigh, lowering her head to give Twilight a serious look. “Or was your poor behavior and her reluctance to enable it her reason for turning you down?”
“I—what?” Twilight stumbled in place as if struck and she felt the crack running down her body shift even further out of alignment, not as gone as she’d thought it was. “But—no, that’s not…” Her voice became small and strained. “That’s not the same thing at all… No, she hurt me… it can’t be me that’s wrong.”
“Strange,” said the oddly familiar twin voices of Gemini from behind her. “By now, you should be used to being wrong.”
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Whoa, this old gem again?
What a pleasant surprise!
huh... 3 months early.. neat.
To use a old fimfiction classic that i havent seen in a while
Now i just need to find the time for a quick reread^^
great to see one of my all time favorites has been updated.
Rarity slappin' sense into this girl.
Let's hope it doesn't take yars to get more this time.
skip to 1:38
The Cutie Barrier, awesome. Rainbow has become elemental lightning, Rarity is apparently part-Life Fiber now, Fluttershy is fauna given sentience or something and Pinkie is Pinkie, but with an explanation that makes sense within the confines of the story. The reason why pulling Draco out didn't do anything significant was because it wasn't necessary to embody their talents/magic, it just helped.
NEED MOAR But please take care of yourself C-I Cary.
I feel like if you take over tw years between updates we should at least get a recap in the author's notes. I dont have a hot clue whats going on anymore.
9203587
Noted. There is actually a recap of the most recent events in the chapter itself, thought it's placed most of the way through. Honestly, I'm not sure how I would meaningfully recap the entire story, as I'm not sure going over the broad strokes would help much. Personally, I'm usually quite happy to reread a story I've forgotten, but then, I'm also one of those weirdos that delights in finding 600k+ stories that I enjoy in the first place.
9203636
The recap was good it just didn't expressly say what happened just that it was some sort of rejection over something. Recapping the entire story is a bit much but at least expressly reminding the audience of the main point of the drama in this chapter would be nice. It doesn't even have to be just in the notes, just have Luna mention what she rejected so at least I, and the auidence, will be reminded as to what the core of the conflict is.
9203636
Oh my gosh I'm not alone!! I absolutely love any story over 100k words or more lol.
For me the longer fic the better!!
9203489
Agreed that this is one of my favorite ongoing stories on FimFiction.
Thanks for the chapter!!
Really like this story, keep up the good work!
woah i've been proven wrong
i tend to asume any story thats gone this long without an update is dead but you done shot me out of the sky there...
"We're going camping"
I have been sitting in that line FOREVER. And my patience has been rewarded!
Hrmmm. Gemeni seems somewhat perturbed...
Update!!!!!! This made my week thank you.
I’m loving that Twilight has to take a look at herself. I also love that she didn’t just automatically go along with what Celestia wanted.
Edit: also HOLY BUCK!! Didn’t realise it had been almost two years Welcome Back
So will it be 2019 or 2020 that we get another update?
Best present to wake up to this morning: new chapter of Sharing the Night!
Y'know — I do wonder if that guy Twilight took her star out of will ever get that star back. What's his life like, suddenly living as probably the only completely mundane pony in the magical land of Equestria? What sorts of unexpected obstacles has he had to endure and overcome, what sorts of benefits has having magic provided that he'd taken for granted and not realized until it was gone? I'm interested in his story since then.
inb4 his story since then is super boring, lol.
It feels really good to read about these romantically challenged idiots again! Thanks for not forgetting about this.
This was great!
Hoping i don't have to wait another 2 years for an update lol.
Thanks for the update. :)
Great update
9204013
I hate to put a damper on your imaginings, but she gave it back immediately afterwards
There are plenty of untold stories going on, though. Even when the first section of this was posted last Christmas, I still haven’t seen any comments that recognize Fluttershy’s mention of Sweet Apple Mountain.
…in hindsight, I probably should have had Luna mention that when she was flying around.
Wait, is it 25th Dec already
It's nice that the story still lives. Thanks for your work
9203762
Yup
9204123
I wondered about that, but without context or lead-up to it there wasn't much I could do beyond ignoring it and moving on.
I'd have thought that if the events that created Lake Everfree also disrupted AJ's farm, Twilight would really have gotten an earful about it as part of her next on-camera interaction with Applejack. Mountains don't grow orchards or hold soil very well.
I'm glad to see the update! You pulled at least two major "wham" moments on us, but I'll do my best to wait patiently for the remaining chapters to see how they'll be resolved
.
As for continuity/recaps, I've found that re-reading just the previous chapter is usually sufficient for me, for this and the other infrequent-updates stories I follow. Your mileage may vary.
9204123
I don't remember if I noticed it before, but I definitely noticed that when I read it this time. Noticed and hoped to learn more.
Love the new chapter! Oh mans, both Twilight and Luna are so bad at romance, thank goodness foooorrrr....dadada daaaaaaaah! Relationship Advice Horse (AKA Rarity)! I love how you wrote her and Twilight's conversation at the end there.
Thank you for the new chapter!
9204123
Well I guess I was right then, his story was super boring! It lasted all of 10 seconds, rofl. Can't believe I forgot she put it back.
Uhhh... what ... really happened to las pegasis then pronk goddess?
Welcome back!
...huh. this seems to be the year of the living dead.
At least 10 stories I've thought to be dead for years have come back
I hadn't checked this story or even logged on to fimfiction in like 8 months. Then I decide to give it a look and I find out it updated 2 days ago after about 1 and 3/4 years of silence. Sometimes I have uncannily good timing with these sorts of things.
I was not expecting to see Gemini again.
Spike still exists? Huh, I forgot he was even in this...did you?
Argh! How did I miss this updating!? That's not fair, I was actively counting down the days to Christmas for this!
You tricked me! But also thanks!
OwO
I first read the Pinkie scene as her pulling Rainbow's real spine out of her etherealized body before I did a double take and reread it
Just spent last two days re-reading this, Loved it yet again, especially with the new chapter!
9203826
Yeah, Gemini is beside themselves.
Your writing style is fantastic as usual, and that was a stellar chapter.
So thank you—I really enjoyed that. But I won't ask forgiveness for a terrible pun.
Stupid ponies should never possess the power of gods.
I, with my IQ of 160 and resistance to emotions, am clearly perfect.
(Alondro spends his godhood smiting the heathen... which is basically anyone who doesn't think "Babylon 5" was the greatest sci-fi series ever)
It appears Christmas came early.
i find it odd gemini accuses twilight of being wrong. we all know luna is the one that rejected her.. for some reason
9214478
Ponies possessing the power of gods is literally how the show opens.
Also, not how you spell 'Lexx'.
9247814 Boo, that series was dreadful. I barely could stand 3 episodes before it lost me entirely.
Woo! Love the chapter! Love the story! Been following it for years. Just re-read the story for the umpteenth time. Never gets old :) keep up the great work! Looking forward to reading more of your genius writing!
9248211
your argument is invalid
I've been trying to figure out how to mix my 'hrrrrmahgawdLexx' with an argument. I can't. It was dumb. I will only say I was drinking (not an excuse, still dumb) and suddenly THIS UPDATED!
Of the stories that have year-long cooling off periods, this one is at least consistent.
And omg.