• Published 28th May 2012
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The Foal in The Basket - PonyBlue



Twilight Sparkles gets a new niece, the daughter of Chrysalis and Shining Armour.

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Twilight

Chapter 10
Twilight

Rarity closed the door to her guest room and was greeted by the concerned looks from Applejack and Rainbow Dash who were seated at the kitchen table.

“How is Fluttershy?” Applejack asked.

“The poor dear is resting now. I simply can’t tell what’s wrong.” The unicorn shook her head. “She is as weak as a kitten, yet she isn’t running a fever. I do hope a day’s rest will be enough. If not we shall have to speak to a doctor. ”

“I hope it isn’t contagious or anything,” Rainbow Dash added out loud, earning a stern look from Applejack across the table. “Hey, I was propping her up all the way from the library,” Dash defended. “I don’t want to catch whatever Fluttershy got. One moment she was holding Twilight’s tyke, the next she just fell over. ”

“Perhaps we should speak to Twilight,” Applejack said. “Just to let her know that Fluttershy might have given something to her foal.”

Rarity was, in a word, horrified. “But that would mean admitting we have been intruding on her privacy, and even riffling through her home, looking for information on her secret rendezvous with her brother, which we didn’t even get to observe.”

Applejack’s reply was a deep frown that caused Rarity to chuckle nervously. “Ah, well… friends do forgive each other for small indiscretions. The health of a newborn foal is of paramount importance. And speaking of foals… Rainbow Dash, darling, by any chance did you have the opportunity to take a few pictures of Wisp?”

“Yeah, I did,” Dash replied, eager to speak about something other than Fluttershy’s health. She reached for the photos tucked under her wing when a tiny mischievous grin crept across her snout. Turn around was fair play, after all.

“But I’ve got to warn you, Rarity.” Rainbow Dash held up a photograph. “This foal fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on her way down. She’s got a face that only a mother could love,” Dash continued with every bit of seriousness she could muster while she kept the photo’s white backing facing Rarity.

“You don’t mean….” Rarity trailed in horror.

“She’s hideous?” Dash made a show of trying to look at the photograph she held with one eye closed but flinched each time she got too near. “She’s not really that ugly,” Dash finally said, “Provided, of course, that a pony shuts her eyes and doesn’t look at her. I’m sure she’ll grow up to have a beautiful bookwormy personality that any stallion can appreciate.”

“Quit foolin,” Applejack rolled her eyes as she approached cerulean mare. “Give it here,” Applejack abruptly snatched the photo from the pegasus’ hoof, hooves not being the best way for a pony hold anything, “and let’s take a canter.”

Applejack had a good look at the foal in the picture. “Well, I'll be. You got a good eye for this,” She admitted once she had a photo. Dash really did have a natural flair. Her sense of timing was perfect. Twilight’s white foal almost seemed to move within these images. “She’s been yanking your leash, Rarity. Wisp’s a mighty fine looking foal. She’s as cute as a button,” Applejack smiled.

“Good balanced knees on her fore legs. Good sized nostrils for breathing. She sure has a pretty face, and even the beginning of a mighty impressive horn that you unicorns are so keen on. And to think,” Applejack spared a glance at Rarity. “You had us all railed up with some idea that Twi’s baby was hideous.”

“Yeah” Rainbow Dash added crossly. “I thought she was a pony Cyclops, another Dr Bluenote. I was scared to death taking her picture!” Dash then paused as she considered what she had just said. “I mean… I was just surprised, that’s all.”

“She is a bit on the skinny side,” Applejack continued, “But then again, all you non-earth pony folks are a bit on the skinny side.”

“I prefer the term ‘svelte’,” Rarity replied. “If I have been misinformed, perhaps you would kindly pass me the picture.”

Applejack obliged with a tilt of her head. Rarity took hold of the photograph with her magic and floated it back to her.

“What do you think?” Rainbow Dash hoof tapped on the wooden table top as she preened. “Am I awesome or what? I could make a great spy or … or a journalist .”

The alabaster unicorn made no reply. Slowly, Rarity laid the picture onto the table. “Dear Celestia I can’t help her.”

“Say what?” Applejack was taken aback by Rarity’s whiter than usual parlour.

“I didn’t realise it would be this bad.” Rarity shuddered and pushed forward the photograph to her two friends. “No amount of accessorising will hide this. A fake horn might actually be for the best.”

“What are you talking about?” Rainbow Dash asked. “She’s not even a month old and even I can tell she’s got a big horn on her forehead. What’s not to like? A big horn. I know you unicorns love that, right?”

“Wherever did you hear that?” Rarity was mildly offended. “I have never heard something so superficial.” Rarity retorted. “Unicorns value more than the length of a stallion’s horn. It is the magic one can do with it that counts.”

“I.. uh… read it in a magazine.”

Rarity snorted. She had a good idea what that magazine was, and it was not material she would keep in her home, certainly not with her young sister, Sweetie Belle, in and about the Carousel Boutique.

“I only read it for the articles.” Rainbow Dash squeaked defensively in her scratchy voice. “I really do.”

“Horn size isn’t everything. Wisp may have the potential for a large horn, but no matter the length, no unicorn will find a horn that malformed attractive. The poor dear doesn’t have a single groove on her horn,” Rarity pitied. “I simply don’t know how Twilight will be able to introduce her daughter to High Society. The poor dear will probably spend her entire life in the library. Shunned away.” Rarity fell back. “A mare destined to never know the flower of her youth. A phantom of the library!” She said dramatically.

“I still don’t see what the problem is,” Rainbow Dash stated. “So the tyke has a smooth horn, so what? I’ll bet she will be plenty powerful when she grows up.”

“So what?” Rarity repeated in shock. “Rainbow Dash, how could you say such a thing!” Seeing the blank look on Rainbow Dash, Rarity added. “A horn like this is very much like… like a pegasus with small wings… like Snow Flake.”

“Oh.” Rainbow Dash looked away. The muscular stallion had the smallest wings she had ever seen. He worked hard to compensate. He exercised them more than any pegasus she knew. And he flew well enough, actually better than most, but it would never stop the looks that mares would give him.

“Yes, terribly so. I simply cannot imagine any hat that would remedy this. Oh, her debutante ball would be a dismal shambles. Twilight would never be able to introduce her oldest daughter as her heir. This will cause all sorts of conflict between Twilight Sparkle’s daughters. ”

Suddenly, Rarity grabbed Rainbow Dash by her withers. “Should Wisp be magically stronger than her younger sister, it could trigger a family feud. And nobles being what they are, this would last generations, with one branch of House Twilight bent on uprooting the other!”

“Now, pardon me for a second there, Rarity,” Applejack interjected. “Family feud,” the earth pony mare could barely stop herself from rolling her eyes. “That is pretty darn unlikely. I’m sure Twi would raise her daughters better than that. And why are you talking about nobility? Do you mean to say our Twilight is a noble like that Prince Blueblood fella you were so obsessed about till the Grand Galloping Gala?”

At the mention of the Duke of Canterlot’s name, Rarity fell silent and dropped back onto her four hooves. Something in her chest ached for the loss of a cherished dream. It was a childish dream, but nevertheless, it was one she had had since she was but a foal on her first visit to Canterlot with her parents. Prince Blueblood the 54th had just succeeded his father as Duke, and as part of the middle class, her family was there to pay their respects to their new Duke. Prince Blueblood was but a foal himself, maybe only a few years older than her. He seemed so sad, uncomfortable, and in need of a friend.

“Let us never speak about that uncouth stallion,” Rarity said simply. “And yes. Twilight Sparkle is a noble. Did it never occur to you how odd it was that an alicorn princess was Twilight’s foalsitter.”

“Can’t say ah ever did. Ah thought Cadance was being generous and good natured,” Applejack reasoned. “She seemed that kind of pony.”

“In Ponyville perhaps, but in High Canterlot society no act is without cause and effect.”

“Ah didn’t think our Twi was such a big fancy wig.”

“Well I did read several articles pertaining to House Twilight in the Canterlot Chronicle just before her brother’s wedding. It was all in the news. Her House is minor nobility, but they have considerable…”

Rarity didn’t finish when a knock on the front door interrupted. “Rarity? Hello? Can I come in?” Spike called out.

Rarity paused, “Just hold that thought for the moment.” She smiled and left for the front room. “Spike dear. Do come in.”

“Thanks.” Spike answered and followed Rarity to the kitchen. “I needed to give Twilight space, with her brother being here and all...” Spike stopped at kitchen’s threshold. “Applejack, Rainbow Dash, what are you girls doing here?”

“Discussing Twilight’s new foal,” Rainbow Dash answered from her place at the kitchen table.

Spike was betrayed!

“W-What!” He spun around. “Rarity! You promised!”

Rarity’s glare, if not her hoof, was immediately pointed in Dash’s direction.

“Hey, it needed to get out. We were going to see her anyway. Don’t want Twilight’s tyke going down with whatever Fluttershy has, do we?”

Rarity let out a sigh and dropped her gaze to a very disappointed baby dragon. “I’m sorry, Spikey-wikey. But I had to tell somepony. Keeping it all to myself for so long was just too much for me. Will you ever forgive me?” She held her fore hooves together and did her best to look pleading.

Spike sighed. But then again, he didn’t seriously think Wisp could be hidden away forever. “Only for you Rarity, only for you.”

“Thank you.” Rarity lowered her head just a little to plant a kiss on his cheek.

His claw was soon on that warm spot. It brought him an absent smile. “But keep this between the four of us for now, please. There was enough shouting back in the library. Shining Armour even threw a lightning bolt!”

That got everypony’s attention.

“At Twilight?” Rarity asked. This was the furthest thing from what she would have expected. Joy, shock maybe, but outright violence? Never! From the expression of everypony at the table, they were all thinking the same.

“Oh, no. Not at Twilight. At Wisp! Nearly hit her too, if not for Twilight putting up a shield.”

Rainbow Dash stomped her blue hoof resolutely on the floor. “That’s it,” she snapped as she rose up. “I’m so going back to the library right now!” Her wings were fanned out to further emphasize her rage. “I’m going to buck that stallion so hard, he’ll need one of Twilight’s fancy telescopes just to see his own cutie mark.”

“Now, just hold a minute there,” Applejack protested and stomped own hoof down. Rainbow Dash wasn’t going anywhere with her tail pinned to the floor. She was a bit surprised that Dash reacted so strongly. “Ah may not be the sharpest tool in the old farm shed, but ah know that Shining Armour ain’t that kind of stallion.”

“Well what is it then?” Rainbow Dash demanded. “He nearly injured his own foal, for Celestia’s sake. Earth ponies don’t buck their foals by mistake, do they?”

“Ah got nothing, but we shouldn’t go running off half-cocked.”

“Well…” Spike began. “He did think she was a dangerous changeling.”

“Mighty jumpy. But it was a mistake.” Applejack pointed out. Privately she was in the opinion that Shining Armour needed to see a head shrink if he could mistake a foal for a changeling.

Dash wasn’t all that convinced, and the frown on her face said so.

“Well, Spike,” Rarity turned her attraction back to the purple baby dragon. “You must tell us everything about dear Wisp. So how is it living with the new foal?” she asked hoping to bring a little calm back to the table.

Spike thought about it for a moment

** *** **

Twilight Sparkle could only stare. That was right! She, Twilight Sparkle, the most powerful unicorn in a thousand years, special student of one of Equestria’s diarchs and sun goddess, and sister in-law to Princess Cadance, could only stare at the scene in front of her. She could feel a migraine coming on, and it wasn’t a weak migraine. Not at all! A small pitiful thing could never do because only the greatest, most debilitating of migraines was worthy of occupying the brilliant, amazing head of Twilight Sparkle.

There was poop on the floor!

’How did this happen?’ Twilight Sparkle could not truly say. All she did was have one little afternoon nap. Was one hour too much to ask for a poor tired unicorn that stayed up all odd hours of the night feeding a relentlessly hungry foal?

‘It’s not in one neat pile either,’ Twilight noted grimly.

No, that would have been too convenient. Instead, poop was scattered everywhere. Some even appeared to have worked its ways into the carpet that was a birthday present from her mother. That carpet had been imported from Prance and it was now coloured by a brownish yellow smear.

And her books! Her poor, poor, terribly expensive books!

Oh, her lazy habit of leaving them on the floor had finally come back to bite her with the ferocity of a starving pack of timberwolves. There would be stains on some of those precious books for years to come, provide, of course, she could dry them first. How such a small foal had such a big bladder was beyond her comprehension.

“Breathe,” Spike said. A troubled worried expression was on his face. Twilight’s dead gaze seemed fixed on a large puddle of urine that surrounded a spire of book like a moat.

“Of course I know I need to breathe, why would I forget?” The hairs in Twilight’s mane began to jut out at odd angles from uncontrolled sparks of magic. “It wouldn’t do if I fainted from not breathing would it? That would be a terrible thing! Simply tragic!!” Her pupils started shrinking and she was hyperventilating. “That would leave Wisp unattended for another hour, and only Celestia knows what would happen then!”

Spike only stared in silence. Not daring to make a sound. Yup, he knew when not to present a target.

“I’m breathing Spike.” Twilight Sparkle finally answered more calmly. Logically, she could understand. A foal that nursed with as much vigour as Wisp would obviously defecate with equal quantity. Yes, it was logical! What was not logical was why it was all over the floor. Her left eye twitched as her gaze landed on the little pony in the middle of the soiled room.

“You!”

Honeydew Wisp sat on the floor surrounded by her own filth. Her large oversized vest was soiled and wet. It was obvious that the little foal had dragged the vest all across the floor. Her diaper had somehow come off. How? Twilight could only guess. It had been secure in the exact same manner Nurse Tenderheart had shown.

Twilight’s gaze drifted to a corner where the diaper lay. It had been chewed!? Why in Princess Celestia’s good name did Wisp chew on her own diaper? Even as Twilight asked, Wisp smiled back with not an ounce of guilt. Who me? the smile asked as innocently as possible.

Twilight growled as her horn was engulfed by a roaring purple fire. “Ohh…no you don’t. The grin and smile routine is not going to work this time, young lady. You are in so much trouble.”

“Twilight…umm”

“Not now Spike,” Twilight Sparkle’s answer was as clipped as her temper was short. Her complete attention was on Wisp, who was already on her feet. The guilty foal was making ready for a sprint across the room, but that was not going to happen if Twilight Sparkle had any say in the matter. She was going to march the filthy foal into the bathroom and have her cleaned. Twilight took a step forward. She paused only when she realised her left fore hoof had stepped on something that clearly wasn’t the hard wooden floor.

“Don’t say a word.” She lifted her hoof off the brown smear on the floor.

“I won’t.”

** *** **

“Spike, dear. Are you alright? You seemed as if you were off somewhere.” Rarity passed a diamond and a cup of tea over to Spike.

“Messy,” Spike finally answered as he slowly bit down on the diamond.

“Pardon me?” Rarity paused.

“You asked what it was like living with Wisp. It’s messy,” Spike clarified as he chewed on the diamond, licking at flakes of the white stone that crumbled between his teeth. “Wisp isn’t toilet trained yet,” He said with a shudder.

“And that means?” Dash trailed as she returned a blank expression from across the table.

“What goes in one end has to come out the other.” Applejack answered dryly.

“That’s a problem why?” Rainbow Dash didn’t seem to comprehend as she sat back down again. “Wouldn’t it just go through the cloud deck… oh…ground pony.”

To put it mildly, Applejack was stunned. She could only stare at her feathered friend. “You mean to say that you pegasi just let yer foals do it on the floor and it falls out of the cloud!”

Oh, the rotten luck that earth ponies had! Unicorns had their fancy magic to pick up things, but to hear that pegasi just did their business and it would take care of itself was almost as infuriating.

Earth ponies had to change dirty diapers with their mouths!

Their mouths for Celestia sake!

Applejack remembered a certain younger sibling and the diapers she helped her mother change. Nopony would ever forget smelling something like that, especially up close.

“Hey, we have indoor plumbing! Rainbow recycling.” Rainbow Dash protested. “We don’t poop on other ponies! It’s perfectly okay to walk under a cloud house or a pegasus town. Blue ice is a racist myth!”

Before Applejack could reply, and her reply would undoubtedly be biting, Rarity interrupted. “Is she happy?”

Spike was quite again and his thoughts drifted away. Was she happy?

** *** **

It was night and the last of the day’s chores was finally done. The front door was closed, the books shelved, and most important of all, the mess Wisp had made on the floor was gone. It had taken magic and elbow work, but the room was clean and smelled of lemon. From this day on, the smell of lemon would never be the same again.

Wearily, Spike turned to the staircase and began the slow climb up to the bedroom he shared with Twilight. At the top, he noticed a sliver of light cutting across the landing. The bedroom’s door was ajar and he could hear Twilight reading out loud. Curious, Spike crossed the short distance and peered into the room beyond.

A candle burned by the bed stand as Twilight Sparkle lay curled up on her bed. Honeydew Wisp was huddled by her side with her small back pressed against the older pony. In front of the two was a large book. Wisp seemed enraptured by the slow turn of the book’s pages.

Twilight read in steady voice.

“Hey Twilight,” he greeted.

“Hey Spike.” Twilight lifted her head and turned to the dragon as he came walking in.

“What bedtime story are you reading?”

She lifted up the heavy tome for Spike to read its tittle. “Obscure Magic Theory for Intellectual…” Spike trailed.

“It’s a book on advance alchemy,” Twilight supplied.

“Um… don’t you think that’s a little…. Advanced… for her? Maybe you should wait until… you know… she learns to talk and then read.”

“Oh, Spike. It is not what I’m reading to her, it’s the tone of my voice. I understand from Lady Manner’s book on parenting that a foal first learns to speak by listening to those around her.” Then with a laugh, Twilight smiled. “Maybe she’ll learn something.”

Wisp yawned and glanced down at the book. She couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing. However, the enchanted moving pictures, which cycled and danced as they depicted complicated magical interaction of alchemy, were fascinating all the same. Drowsy and with her eyelid drooping, Honeydew Wisp laid her head down by the mattress, just by the side of the heavy book. She rubbed the side of her snout against Twilight Sparkle and closed her eyes.

“I think she has the right idea. I’m going to bed.” Spike said as he lay on his bed, a reed basket at the foot of Twilight’s bed.

“Sweet dreams.” Twilight then blew out the candle, cloaking the room in Luna’s quiet night. The stars in the sky out lit their bedroom window with

“Hey Twilight, did you read to me when I was small?” Spike asked. His question lingered in the night.

“Yes, Spike,” he heard Twilight Sparkle reply. “I read to you Star Swirl’s theory of differential topology.”

“How about that. Did it work? I mean…Did I learn any topology?”

Twilight Sparkle managed a smile. “I don’t know, but it was your favourite book.”

“Good to know.”

“Good night Spike.”

“Nighty night Twilight.”

From his own bed, Spike watched as Twilight leaned over Wisp. “Goodnight Wisp,” he heard her say before she kissed the sleeping foal on the side of her snout and laid her own head to sleep.

** *** **

“Yes, I think she is happy,” Spike answered.