Book of Sparkle

by Homeshine

6: Brightly shone the sun that day.

"We need to have a plan to find Celestia," Twilight said to the others. "Every minute spent planning saves two in wandering aimlessly or messing up.

"Can we plan to have no plan?" Pinkie asked.

"No."

"I can fly air cover," Dash volunteered.

"Great. Now, Canterlot is on a mountaintop, so she couldn't have left the city without someone noticing. This implies she's still here...somewhere. Pinkie, since you're me, you can stay here and provide a royal presence for the Palace, so that Luna can get some sleep. If anything happens, come get me immediately. Rarity and I can search the crystal catacombs under the city, so I'll be close by. Fluttershy and Applejack, you're good with merchants and animals, so head over to the marketplace. She's going to need food from somewhere. Someone or something there would have seen something. Spike, search the castle from top to bottom; see if there's any small nooks and crannies the guards may have missed."

"You got it", Spike gave a quick salute and started to run off.

"We'll meet back right here at sunset. Let us know what you find, and we can tell Luna."

You wouldn't think a huge, bright white pony like Celestia would be so hard to spot.

"Twilight, there's something you should see." Rarity bit her lower lip as she called out to Twilight. One of the multitudinous reflections of Pinkie Pie resolved itself into a single Pony, that was currently Twilight.

"Oh, thank Celestia," Applejack said. "This place gives me the heebie-jeebies."

"What did you want me to see …. oh." Twilight dead-stopped in her tracks, staring.

There sat a little snow-white unicorn filly- one with Celestia's cutie mark. "Hello," the filly smiled up, "I'm Aurora Glory."

* * *

"Luna, I'm close to Celestia, but there's some things … only sisters …" Princess Twilight trailed off.

"You may ask me anything. I don't feel Celestia would hide anything from you, either."

"Is it possible Aurora Glory is Celestia's foal? It would explain her sudden disappearance."

"While I was gone for some time, I feel she would have mentioned it to at least one of us at some point."

"Time travel? Or Wormhole?" Twilight asked.

"Nay. The castle is shielded well from such things, from external interlopers."

"Maybe Celestia died!" Pinkie burst out, "and this Is the new Celestia"!

"Pinkie!" Twilight shouted.

Luna shook her head "Neither would that option work. Equestria was around before us and will be around after us, if it should come to that. Remember the pageant every Hearthswarming Eve?"

"Hmm..." Pinkie scrunched up Twilight's face in thought, as she absent-mindedly used her horn to make - well, Twilight-colored sparkles in the air. Pinkie seemed mesmerized by them, but Twilight could tell Pinkie's mind was ticking away softly. Twilight wondered if Pinkie having her own body aided Pinkie's mind in any way. She was already starting to behave more like Twilight in that facet.

"Call in fair Aurora," Luna commanded in the Royal Canterlot Voice. In a more normal voice she said, "We will get to the bottom of this."

* * *

"- And that's when Fluttershy found me in the marketplace," Aurora Glory finished her tale. Fluttershy blushed at that and hid her face behind her own mane hair. "She was very nice."

"After we found her, we got her good and fed. She didn't didn't have any money." Applejack added.

"And then we came straight here to get Twilight."

"Thank you. Please take Aurora to the playroom for the guardsponies' children. We will send for her later." The guardsponies saluted at that, and marched her off.

"Well, this is the biggest piece to the puzzle we have so far," Twilight began.

"In really isn't," Pinkie replied. "None of what she says makes any sense. She has a home which isn't there anymore, parents who don't really exist, and a school that's not on any record. It's like some strange game!"

"Maybe she isn't tellin' the truth," Applejack said.

"I don't think so," Fluttershy replied. "She was so happy to see us, and she ate like a timber-wolf. She obviously hadn't eaten for days. And isn't that, by itself, reason enough to put up a fuss?"

"And her descriptions are very detailed. They aren't the work of a child caught lying," Luna concluded.

Everyone was quiet for a moment, lost in thought. Suddenly, Pinkie shouted out, "I have a plan!" then shopped and blushed, adding more quietly "Sorry to interrupt."

"No one was talkin', Sugarcube. Go ahead."

"What if we're the wrong ponies for this?"

"What do you mean?"

* * *

"Hello, Aurora Glory; I'm Spike."

"Oh, you can just call me Aurora. No need to be so formal."

Comments

[Tailbiter231]

They REALLY need to do this in the show. They've gone so long without this kind of thing, the closest they came is swapping cutie marks

[The Philosopher King]

If there are no references to the musical "The Book of Mormon" I will be disappointed

[Inferno demon Dash]

Spike: "My mom's a filly.....my sister is a party mare and one of my best friends who can barely stand still for two seconds is a bookworm and extremely smart....well time to panic!

[TheDriderPony]

That... that was a lot of stuff crammed into one short chapter. Seriously, from planning the search, to finding Aurora, to that last scene, each of these could have been a chapter in their own right. Now I don't want to be too critical, because I binged all of Book of Pink before immediately starting this and I know you can pace well, but this is way too fast. I feel like each section separated by asterisks is a sampler of a full longer chapter, like some authors do when their story covers scenes from a canon episode and they need to quickly brush past the bits that everyone knows. And then there's this:

"Great. Now, Canterlot is on a mountaintop, so she couldn't have left the city without someone noticing. This implies she's still here...somewhere. Pinkie, since you're me, you can stay here and provide a royal presence for the Palace, so that Luna can get some sleep. If anything happens, come get me immediately. Rarity and I can search the crystal catacombs under the city, so I'll be close by. Fluttershy and Applejack, you're good with merchants and animals, so head over to the marketplace. She's going to need food from somewhere. Someone or something there would have seen something. Spike, search the castle from top to bottom; see if there's any small nooks and crannies the guards may have missed."

This whole section just irks me. It's written like Celestia is a child who's run off, not a thousand year old monarch who's much more likely to have been abducted. She couldn't have left the city discreetly? Well we already know flimsy disguises are rather effective, and besides that there's teleportation, invisibility magic, and good old fashioned bribery. "See if there's any nooks and crannies the guards may have missed?" "She'll need food from somewhere?" I rather doubt she's giggling behind a curtain with a jar of cookies.

It's just... this whole chapter is strange. I don't mean to be harsh, but it comes from a place of compassion. I know you can write really well. Book of Pink, grammar issues aside, was one of the most enjoyable pieces I've come across in a while. This feels like either a) you've forgotten where the story was going and are winging it or b) you're rushing to get back into the swing of things. You can take your time to remember, or restructure from scratch, or flesh out scenes as needed. There's no rush. We know you have talent and we can wait for you in your own time.

[Symphonicdysonince]

Awww, I'm caught up already?

Good story so far, my only complaint is that it can be hard to follow at times. If you can get someone to proof read for you, it would help the quality over all.

Still, it's a good story, and I'm eagerly waiting for more.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Very compressed storytelling here. Given the momentousness of the chapter's events, you need to give them all room to breathe. And the search for Celestia never seems to consider the possibility of abduction, which seems a lot more likely than the God-Empress of Ponykind going AWOL without telling anyone.

Happy as I am to see more of this story, I'd much rather wait for as long as it takes to get something more than a barely expanded outline.

[Homeshine]

8497199
Well, thank you then.
Sorry, I'm trying to get back into the swing of things, here. I expect the next chapter will be much longer once I'm back in the groove.

[Gavier]

"Oh, you can just call me Aurora. No need to be so formal."

why every time I read this part I read it with Celestia's voice?
Is just too Celestia

[howard035]

Good to see this story up and running again.

[Homeshine]

8498429

>:)