Chapter 1 - After the Wedding
Canterlot Castle July 10th 1001
Twilight was glad that her brother finally got married to the right mare. She and Princess Cadence were going to be great sisters in laws.
"Twilight!" Cadence called.
Twilight turned to see Cadence running toward her. "Oh, hi Cadence. What's up?"
"I just wanted to thank you. If you didn't come and try to reveal Queen Chrysalis for trapping me, I would still be down in the tunnels and Canterlot would be ruined."
"It was no trouble at all sis. I'm glad that we could become related in a way even better than you being my foalsitter."
"Anytime."
"Well, have a great time at your honeymoon!"
"Thanks, you enjoy the rest of the wedding!"
With that, Cadence and Shining Armor left in their carriage.
"Now this, was a great wedding," Twilight said.
"Oh, yeah?" Spike asked. He was sitting on top of Pinkie Pie. "Just wait until you see what I've got prepared for the bachelor party."
Everypony laughed at Spike. He didn't know that the bachelor party was to be done before the wedding.
Ponyville Library July 15th 1001
Twilight had one of the best dreams she could think of having. She was in Canterlot with all of her friends celebrating Hearts Warming Eve with all of her family, and even the princesses.
She probably would have continued dreaming, but Spike got up early and accidentally made a ruckus downstairs.
She shot up out of bed, looking around, curious to what made the noise. She went down the stairs to see spike in a big ocean of books.
"Spike, what are you doing?" she asked.
"I was cleaning up some of the books you left around the other day when the ladder fell and knocked over some books," he replied.
"Spike, I don't leave books lying around. So, what were you doing?"
"Umm, you see, oh, alright." Spike sighed before continuing. "I was practicing my speeches to confess my love to Rarity. I closed my eyes and bumped into the bookshelf. That's why the books are on the floor."
"Spike, I told you not to walk around with your eyes closed. You could have hurt yourself."
"Yeah, I know."
"Good. Since this is your mess, you can be the one to pick it up."
"Fine, but just because its my mess I created."
Spike then proceeded to clean up the books that had fallen onto the floor. Meanwhile, Twilight had decided to explore around Ponyville and meet some of her friends.
Sugar Cube Corner July 15th 1001
Twilight made her first stop at sugar cube corner.
"Hey Pinkie," Twilight called. "What's cooking?"
"Oh hi Twilight," Pinkie called back. "What brings you to sugar cube corner?"
"I wanted to see how you were doing after the wedding."
"Everything is going great here Twilight. Oh, you just reminded me! I have to get a new welcome party ready."
"Really? For who?"
"A new pony named Crystal. She showed up here looking for you Twilight. I thought she was an old friend of yours, so I told her you live in the library down the street."
"Hmm, I've never met somepony by the name of Crystal. But if she knew me, she wanted to see me for a reason."
"Yeah. Well anyway, I have to get the party ready. See you later Twilight!"
"Bye Pinkie."
"And by the way Twilight, I don't know what's cooking. I'll have to ask Mr. or Mrs. Cake about that."
Ponyville Library July 15th 1001
Twilight walked in to see a mare, about her age, talking with Spike.
"No, I don't know when she'll be back. She just left for a walk around town a few minutes ago. I wish I could help you, but she isn't here at the moment," Spike said to the mare.
"Oh, that's okay, I'll come back another time." She proceeded to leave, but noticed Twilight standing in the doorway. "Oh, are you Twilight Sparkle by any chance?"
"Yes," Twilight replied. "I went by sugar cube corner and found out a mare by the name of Crystal was looking for me. Are you her?"
"Yes that's me. Its a pleasure to finally meet you."
"Its nice to meet you too, Crystal. But tell me, why did you want to see me?"
"Oh, I was looking through my grandfather's old magic books when I stumbled upon a rare piece of magic."
"That's interesting. What was the name of the spell?"
"I was just getting to that part. This book, you see, was very old. Probably even older than my grandfather. So I stumble upon the spell, and curious on what it did, I casted it."
"So, what happened?"
"From what I could gather, nothing. I attempted to cast it multiple times, but with no avail each time. I looked over the spell in the book and from what I read, only the most powerful of unicorns could cast it."
"So why did you come to me?"
"From what I could gather, you, Twilight Sparkle, are the only unicorn powerful enough to cast this spell. I went to a lot of unicorns in Canterlot and everywhere else to find a unicorn powerful enough to cast it."
"Well, its nice to know that someone knows me for something. Now, did you bring this spell book with you? I would love to look at this spell."
"Oh, sure," she said as she pulled a book from her sack. "Its on the 57th page."
Twilight picked up the book with her magic and flipped through the book looking for the correct page. As she was flipping through the book, she recognized all of the spells she saw. When she came to the 57th page however, she saw a spell of some complexity, and high magic skills.
"I've never seen a spell like this!" Twilight exclaimed. "Where did your grandfather find this?"
"He never said," Crystal replied. "He left when I was young. I haven't seen him for a long time."
"Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't know your grandfather left."
"Its okay. He would have wanted me to find out what this spell did."
"Well then," Twilight continued. "Lets cast this," she looked at the spell in the book another time, "'Complete Ease of Mind' spell. I've heard of spells like that, but never one for complete ease of mind."
So, like, actual murder is less horrible than attempted murder?
4020256 Murder almost never happens in Equestria.
4020284
That is entirely unrelated to how horrible it is.
4020287 True, but read later chapters when they come out.
4020293
Why? You haven't really made a very strong case for people to keep reading, so what reason do we have to continue?
4020301 You don't have to. Others can read on if they want to. Oh, and rereading your first comment, I'm going to change the '3 most horrible crimes' to '3 of the most horrible crimes.
*sisters-in-law (I think, according to a quick google search. Could also be sister-in-laws, but that's what I got. You might want to check on that.) Also, the "She" here refers to Twilight, but it could also be read as referring to "the right mare."
Perhaps Cadence shouldn't be running about, alone, when she's just about to leave on her honeymoon. Why not flesh out the scene, make her walk up arm in arm (foreleg in foreleg?) her new husband, have them both thank Twilight again. I mean, Shining Armor is mentioned for the first (and last) time in this chapter in this one sentence: "With that, Cadence and Shining Armor left in their carriage." This is actually a scene that has been covered in the show (what with the joke about Spike and the bachelor party), but I should note that it is Shining Armor who thanks Twilight in the show, not Cadence. You don't have to follow the show that exactly, of course, but you should keep that fact in mind, and make sure your version is good enough that fans won't have too much to complain about. Also, don't explain the joke. This particular joke involves a call-back to earlier, when Spike was set up as being in charge of the bachelor party and having no idea what he was doing; that might be hard to make work in your story. If the joke doesn't work, I'd just leave it out.
I don't think the place tags are helping. The readers should be able to figure out where events are occurring through the text; interrupting with an announcement every scene change, when it's still the same day, just breaks the flow of reading.
The scene at the library seems to be set up to show that time has passed, and to establish Twilight's motivation for the day. However, the date tag already showed that time has passed, and Twilight's motivation is established with a single sentence not even related to her location: "Twilight had decided to explore around Ponyville and meet some of her friends." This scene also establishes Spike, and his crush on Rarity, but is that important? Is it going to play a role later on? It feels like this isn't doing much for the story, at the moment. It's also short. Why not dive into the dream a bit more? Give it a bit of a narrative, set the tone for how Twilight thinks her day is going to go. Or you could just get rid of this scene entirely and go straight from the wedding to when Twilight enters the Cake's bakery.
Also, when Twilight is talking here, 3/4 times you start her off with "Spike." Repetition is not your friend here.
*Sugar Cube Corner
Sugar Cube Corner is the name of a store. As a name, it should be capitalized. And please, describe it for us; assume we have never watched the show (ha ha), and tell us things we need to know about it. It's a bakery/sweets shop. It's cheerful. Is it crowded? If you're feeling poetic, you could even talk about the smells coming from freshly-made pastries. Just set the scene, near the start, and then the characters can talk as much as they want.
The cooking joke is funny, but I wonder if it actually benefits from being split up like that. I would try putting Pinkie's nonsensical answer with Twilight's reasonable question; I just think it would flow better.
Needs more stuff! Flesh things out more!
And now we're back at the library. Twilight's determination to go out and visit her friends doesn't seem to have lasted very long. For such a simple thing as going out to see Pinkie, you probably don't really need that coherent a plan anyway; I would suggest trying to eliminate the need to state her reasoning at all, and for the parts you still have to, something like "she was hungry" would do fine.
There is a lot of dialogue here, and not much action. Perhaps you could break up the talking bits with smaller actions, like if Crystal took out the book earlier in the conversation, to show it to Twilight, and you took a sentence or two to talk about how the book looked. Then, you could have them talk about the history of the book as they flip through the tattered pages. Crystal finds the page she wants, and hands (hoofs) the book over for Twilight to look at. Twilight comments on the spell.
Something like that.
*Let's
... So. Much. Critique.
Comment now.
"This book is extremely old, Twilight Sparkle. Eons have passed it by, and it's author has been condemned to the dusts for centuries. Why, it may even be older than my grandfather, who I miss dearly."
"I'm so sorry about your grandfather."
"Oh, he's not dead. He just left somewhere, and hasn't written yet this decade. He'll be back."
"Wait, how old is your grandfather anyway?"
"The ancient Emperor of the Changelings was there in the time before the Sun and Moon, before the Earth itself was made, before the stars began to burn... So pretty old, I guess."
"... Okay. And what about your grandfather?"
"HE IS MY GRANDFATHER."
I guess it is a good thing no pony ever goes in the Canterlot Garden ever to see that Discord is gone. Again.
Very, very telly.