Quick Nick Fics

by Nicknack

Generosity – 1

My most faithful student, Twilight Sparkle,

It pains me to see the extent of your injuries. When I first heard about your pyrrhic victory over Scion the Black, I held hope that a part of you would eventually heal.

However, it has been several years now. It is evident to both my sister and me that we are doing you a disservice by allowing you to live here, in Canterlot, as our guest. Worse, our nurture has not healed your spirit; in fact, it has provided an environment that allowed your disability to injure your mind.

We believe it is in your best interest if we remove you from this environment. I write this letter with heavy heart, knowing full well that your situation is not one of your fault, yet still of your own making. Canterlot will provide a small stipend to you, for use as you see fit towards making a new life for yourself.

Do not take this ruling as an affront. It is an opportunity for you to succeed and rebuild your life.

Please take it.

Sincerely,

Princess Celestia

Your former teacher and failed mentor

Twilight Sparkle read the yellowed parchment, and she shivered. She had read the letter almost daily over the past decade, so she had long grown used to the words. In fact, four years ago, she had spent a month reciting the letter from memory.

The words did not effect on her.

She shivered.

Manehattan had grown as a steel forest, forged by pony blacksmiths and architects who sought utility above all else. Metal, glass, and concrete were the elements that built that construct, and in its artery-like streets, ponies were the foul magic that gave the wicked golem life.

On that day in late January, Twilight didn’t look up to see the skyscrapers rising above her. She didn’t look around at the empty, snow-covered sidewalks that were kept dead and empty by the subfreezing winds.

She simply sat huddled in her box, wrapped in her cloak, and read the letter that had ruined her life. The box held some warmth; she’d set it near a business’ heating vent. It often reeked of coal or smoke, and some mornings, she’d wake up coughing and covered in soot, but her box was warm.

It was home.

Her mind remained sharp enough for her to remember that it hadn’t used to be home. Her letter proved it. But even before that, she’d grown up in Canterlot with her mother, her father, her brothers. They were still there too—a happy, perfect, loving family.

There was no room for cripples.

One of Twilight Sparkle’s tics she held something akin to fondness for was to absently rub a hoof upwards from the top of her nosebridge to her scalp. That day, she didn’t want to spare the effort or pull her hoof out from under her cloak, but if she did, just like every day before then, she would feel fur, then a flat, disk-like stub, then more fur, and then finally her mane.

She’d tried to reason with everypony after it happened. She’d lost her horn in a valiant fight with Scion the Black, an evil necromancer who twisted the very souls he’d ripped from Tartarus into a legion of mindless soldiers. She, along with a battalion of Equestria’s first standing army in centuries, had pushed through to his stronghold. Once inside, the fight had ended in ten minutes.

Her older brother had told her that the ground outside had shaken like an earthquake during parts of it.

Nopony seemed interested in remembering in the time before the fight, the evils the fight had put an end to, or the fight itself. After the fight, when Scion lay defeated, everypony had begun to take the peace for granted—everyone except for her. She’d only noticed a fine powder of translucent sand falling down from above her eyes. That was the first time Twilight Sparkle had lost her horn.

She lost it hundreds of thousands of times after that. Every time she absently tried to lift something, or open a door, or feed herself, her lack of a horn had presented itself. Early on, the hurt had been fresh, like the first time she’d lost it. As time progressed, the pain ebbed, but it never truly went away.

It merely coalesced into a dull ache, one that filled her body with a sharp, painful truth:

She was Twilight Sparkle, the Element of Magic. And she could no longer perform magic.

At first, all her former friends and family had supported her. Heck, for three years, Celestia had done her rightful duty and given Twilight a room in the castle to live in. Even then, after the guards had escorted her out of the castle, there’d been shoulders to cry on, meals to share, and beds to sleep in.

There’d been no more magic. One by one, her friends had turned away from her. They didn’t understand. Each of them had loose interpretations of their elements, like an Honest day’s work in the apple orchard or bringing Laughter through sugary, sweet cakes.

Twilight Sparkle was magic. When her horn had broken, so had she.

In her box, in the alley, on that late January afternoon, the wind picked up around Twilight. She pulled her cloak tighter around her, though it didn’t help much. Few thoughts could survive in her mind, other than to realize how cold it was. When the temperatures got that low, being stuck outside was like drowning in an ocean. There was the cold, Twilight was in it, and all she could do was helplessly struggle to keep it from claiming her.

As she sat shaking, a new source of discomfort came back to her. Her stomach growled, gnawed on itself, and she felt an all-too-familiar sense of bile rising in her throat, like hot nausea. Twilight blinked, hard, and forced a swallow, hoping to overcome the hunger with sheer force of willpower.

Unfortunately, like the cold, hunger was an all-present force in her life. Her hot hunger met the cold air around her, which turned into a dramatic storm of emotional display.

Twilight sighed.

Slowly, on aching joints, Twilight forced herself into a standing position. Being hungry was a problem that had a simple solution, theoretically. She needed to find food. In a city as large as Manehattan, there were literally tons of edible scraps that were thrown away daily, yet none of it ever found its way to Twilight Sparkle. The last good, filling, hot meal she’d eaten was down at the shelter.

It’d been her Hearth’s Warming gift to herself.

She began walking aimlessly, with a single goal in mind. Somewhere in Manehattan, there would be food she could eat. Somewhere, she would find it and eat it. Somewhere, she would still feel empty inside afterwards, but at least it’d hurt less.

The wind sliced across her uncovered face as she exited her alleyway. Usually, no pony would choose to be out on those sidewalks, yet she noticed a surprising number of ponies to avoid while making her way to wherever her hooves would take her.

If Twilight had believed in luck, she would have found it quickly that day. Not four blocks from her home, near one of the city’s convention halls, stood a food cart. The aromatic swirls of cinnamon and sugar cut through the sharp coldness like a sweet kiss, and as she stood across the street from it, her mouth began to water.

Luckier still, the cart stood unattended.

Twilight literally lacked the energy to try and act subtle. She didn’t walk up the street, cross at the corner, and then come back down nonchalantly. There wasn’t time—the vendor would return at any moment—and more importantly, there weren’t any ponies in the streets.

At the cart, her hooves shook as she tried to open one of the heated serving containers. She was cold, and even after all she’d experienced, she still felt nervous about the concept of being caught in the act of a crime. It was against the rules. Finally, her useless, shaking hooves managed to pop the latch open, and Twilight began stuffing hot, steaming apple turnovers into her cloak.

“Hey you!” a stallion’s voice cried out behind her.

Twilight ran, dropping a fourth pastry. She’d heard of some ponies committing small crimes to go to jail for the winter, but the only thing she hated less than the cold were the stories she’d heard about prisons. As cold and empty as she was, she didn’t need anything forcefully filling her.

“Come back here!” The voice carried a familiar drawl with it, but she didn’t obey its words.

Instead, she ran all the way back home. She took a roundabout way and cut through a few buildings, to hide her tracks from any pursuers. But even in her box, in its warmth, she never felt safe.

In fact, after all that running, she felt rather lightheaded.

Once the world stopped spinning, Twilight only heard silence—no sirens or policeponies shouting around her. For now, she had time to enjoy the spoils of her victory: three slightly smashed, dripping, lukewarm pastries.

The sweet, gooey apples filled her mouth in a bliss she’d all but forgotten. There wasn’t time for dining etiquette, or decency, or morals. In less than ten minutes, she’d eaten all three pastries, licked the inside of her cloak clean, and huddled back down in her box.

After Twilight ate, the cold seemed much more bearable. Darkly, she wondered how long it would be before that small victory would fade into nothingness.

Two minutes later, Twilight shivered.