Twilight Sparkle and the Cake Thief

by Noble Thought

Chapter 11: Dear Departed

“Luna?” Twilight asked as they passed through the hidden gate back into the castle. “Before, you mentioned that you were planning to celebrate with… with your sister.”

“Indeed, and we did. I recall it now.” Luna smiled back at her, closing the cistern hatch and making sure the seals were solid. “Through this very gate I went, carrying something very like these cupcakes. Decorated one each with a sun and a moon.”

“She didn’t help?”

“She didn’t know. Not until I showed her.” Luna laughed softly at Twilight’s expression. “She has been straight-laced since… since we were barely past foalhood. Tell me, Twilight Sparkle, can she still be a stick in the mud?”

“U-um…” Twilight glanced around, wondering if any word of this might reach Celestia. “She’s my… mentor.”

“A teacher,” Luna’s eyebrows rose. “I can see it, and I also shall not expect an answer, as thou art in an awkward position. Did you know that before we left our village, for village it truly was, on the edge of nowhere, she taught me much of what I know, and how to be a decent pony? She continued to teach me well into our school days.”

“She did?”

“Oh yes.” Luna paused again, letting Twilight pass by her before closing the hatch again. “She was older than I, but started school later, and Star Swirl would not let her advance farther than I, nor faster. She was impatient at my slowness some days, and others languished in the ease of lessons. But she did love me.”

Luna’s smile widened, then faltered as they started down the hall, at right angles from the path Twilight knew was right. She weighed the option of slowing their progress against possibly slowing it too much and not learning all she could.

She hesitated, then touched Luna’s flank with a hoof and pointed down the right hall. “This way. I know how to get there from here, I think.”

“Thou has seen the Tower of Moonlight?” Luna looked faintly startled. “Nopony but…” She eyed Twilight again. “Art thou a student of Star Swirl?”

“Um, no.” Twilight caught herself before she explained that he hadn’t taken any students in a thousand years, being dead and all. “And… I kinda saw it by accident. See, I threw a trunk through a window, and—” When Luna laughed, she hastily added “By accident!”

“Of course.” Luna stifled her laughter, though her eyes and her mane twinkled more brightly than before. “Continue, Twilight Sparkle.”

“And when I went to tell—” Twilight cursed herself and swallowed Celestia’s name again. “—your sister what happened, she told me to go to the tower and see what I could do to make up for my error.”

“So, you have been inside the tower.” Some of the enthusiasm faded from Luna’s voice. “Have thou viewed the length and breadth of Equestria at night from its balconies?”

Twilight heard a note of hope in her question, so eager to see it again that Twilight wished she hadn’t watched the setting sun so Luna could show her that for the first time as well. “No. I mean, I saw the sunset, but I had to leave before I could look, and I was in such a hurry to get down.”

“Then I will show thee a wonder eyes have not beheld in…”

“Are you sure you want to know?” Twilight tapped a hoof on the floor, looking down, then up into Luna’s eyes. “I’ll tell you if you want, but… I’m also enjoying talking with you. It’s so… fascinating.”

Luna coughed delicately. “And thou art afraid I will not like the answer?”

“I am afraid… that…” Twilight trailed off. “I don’t want to upset you.”

Luna sighed and rubbed her chin. “Conundrums upon mysteries upon curiosities, and thou art at the center of it all, Twilight Sparkle.” She considered for a time longer, eyes darting from shadow to shadow and back to Twilight again. “I will accept thy judgment, Twilight Sparkle. Thou art more knowledgeable about the state of my being here than I am, I am certain.”

---

It didn’t take long to retrace the path through the castle, pushed on by Luna’s insistence that time was growing shorter even in the absence of time.

“It is a curious feeling,” Luna had said quietly, saving her breath as they trotted along still hallways and past stationary guards that gave no notice of waking soon. Some few were actually asleep. “I do not know why I have the feeling that time is short, but it is growing ever shorter, and I do wish… I wish to see her. A growing sense of the time I have lost is pressing in upon me.”

“Lost?”

“Lost,” Luna said shortly. “I can feel whatever I am sealed away from in my memories gaining ground upon me.”

They stopped at an intersection, Luna glancing at her for guidance.

“This way,” Twilight said, pointing, and trotted off. She could see the door leading out to the courtyard. From there, the trail would wind around the small wooded area, and then to the walled off private garden where seasons… stood still. She gasped, stopping as the thought hit her. “Luna!”

“Yes?” Luna slowed, stopped, and turned about. “We are short of time, is it important? Are we going the wrong way?”

“Yes… no. I mean, yes it’s important, and no, this is the right way.”

“Then let us go.” Luna turned again. “Whatever else has come to thee, it may wait, but I cannot.”

Twilight stared after her, shaking her head, and broke into a gallop to catch up, barely slowing as Luna picked up speed.

“Call out directions. Time passes more swiftly the closer we get, I can feel it!”

Twilight felt nothing, but held her doubt and led them through the rest of the castle, bursting through the gate leading out in a haze of cyan barely dissipated when they passed through.

Necessity slowed Luna, then, as the snow was deeper than Twilight remembered. Drifting now must have covered the trail as the wind had risen. Now, the time-locked snow resisted their movement through it, and Luna threw out a myriad of imaginative curses in languages Twilight could only faintly recognize, and couldn’t at all understand.

When, at last, they reached the turn towards the tower, Luna’s flanks heaved and sweat glistened in her coat. “Twilight Sparkle,” she huffed. “If I ever discover which pegasus thought snow should be made from so much water, I shall banish them from Equestria for all time.”

Twilight laughed and fairly collapsed at Luna’s hooves and glanced at the cupcakes floating timelessly above them. No magic surrounded them, but they didn’t seem to mind defying gravity on their own.

“Shall we partake?” Luna asked, following her gaze. “If we cannot make the tower, I would at least share a delicacy with thee before…” Her eyes strayed upwards to the moon, and her brow furrowed. “Before I must leave thee.”

“Luna? What do you mean?”

“I mean, Twilight Sparkle, that I am beginning to remember where I have been for almost a thousand years.”

“How—”

“The stars, Twilight Sparkle. The stars have a pattern of their own, and while it took some time to find the ones I remember most, and it may have taken me more time yet to trace their paths through the heavens from when I remember them last… The stars are my domain, as is the moon. Thou could not hide the truth from me for long, though I appreciate thy concern.” She straightened her neck, looking up. “And more, I remember a part of why I have been gone for so long. I made war upon my sister, upon my ponies, and thought myself right. That if I could only show them all the beauty of the night, and how empty it was without the laughter and joy that my sister surrounded herself with during the day, that they would understand the pain that I felt every night, alone to view the land from my tower.”

Twilight pushed herself up to all four feet and stepped closer. Luna’s coat was growing darker, the shades of her mane taking on a midnight cast. The golden cord did not pulse, and the change crept along to the beat of Twilight’s heart, close to racing as she watched.

“Luna?” She touched the other mare’s shoulder, feeling a tingle of chill rising along her hoof, and pushed past it, stepping closer to press her shoulder to Luna’s, twining her foreleg with the other’s. “You’re not alone. The night is beautiful, and the snow…”

All about her, silver-blue mounds of snow gleamed brightly in the moonlight, in colors that couldn’t be seen in the full light of day. Delicate shades of blue and darker purples, stark lines of shadow that traced fractal patterns in the snow under the trees that cast them. Above, clouds lit by the moon glowed like Luna’s mane, and cast halos closer to the moon into a fractured rainbow never seen during the daylight.

“The night is beautiful, Luna,” she repeated. “I’m glad to share it with you.”

The cold that had seeped into her briefly began to fade. The shadows withdrew from her companion as though the moon had come out from behind a bank of clouds. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she gazed upwards. “I have waited to hear those words for too long. So many ponies fear the night, so many look upon my beautiful land, our beautiful land, at night and fear to walk it, to go out and wonder. For there is much wonder in the night, Twilight Sparkle, and mysteries hidden from the day that only can be witnessed by the light of the moon.”

Twilight felt her throat growing tight, certain she was crying as well.

“Twilight, share with me a cupcake.” She laughed, but there was little humor in it. “It seems so paltry a thing, to share a confection…” Luna drew a deep breath, held it, and let it go. “I want to have this at least, to take back with me.”

One cupcake drifted closer to Twilight, a purple-frosted one with her cutie confection. Twilight drew down Spike’s and let it float in front of her, pushing her own confection towards Luna gently. “I want you to have it.”

“Thank you.”

They ate in silence as they walked onward, at Luna’s insistence. Twilight saw that Luna had not eaten the confection as she had Spike’s, but carried it beside her, cleaned carefully of icing so only the amethystine rock candy remained.

She caught Twilight looking at it curiously and laughed. “If I can take anything with me, let it be this, Twilight Sparkle.”

“You will leave?”

“I am a prisoner, Twilight Sparkle. I have divined this through careful observation and experimentation. It is as though I am behind a glass wall, and only you can reach past it to touch me. I cannot do the same to you, though I have tried to tweak your tail this past hour.”

Twilight glanced back, snapping her tail. “Scientific study?”

“Of course,” Luna said in a teasing voice, before sobering again. “I am beginning, also, to recall more of what led to my imprisonment. I fear that whatever force is letting me walk, freed from my past mistakes for this moment, is weakening. I feel that the bars of my cell are righting themselves from being twisted askew just enough to let a small part of me out, and it’s not right. This has never happened before, I can feel it. I have walked free before, I can see that now, for near a thousand years, I feel that my mind has walked free as little more than a shadow of what I am now, and never so free as I feel now, never so in tune with myself, never so aware of what I missed, of what I threw away in…” All of it came out in a rush, Luna’s voice rising and rising, cracking, and fading. “And I am so very afraid that the pony you speak with now is not the pony I truly am, and I wish you to know me as I truly am, and accept me.”

Luna’s breath came out in a huff of mist that froze beyond her face, and she walked through it, her pace quickening. “And the closer I get to my tower, to the source of my freedom, I feel… afraid.”

“Why?”

“Because I will go away again, and it may be another thousand years before I meet one such as thee, Twilight Sparkle, who accepts, questions, but does not judge. Thy mind is… clean, simple, brilliant, and yet naive, as I was once. I fear that… I will never see thee again, and that frightens me.”

That, she hadn’t considered. A chill ran up Twilight’s spine. “Then there must be a way to set you free.”

“No!” Luna jerked to a halt, standing straight. “I must—!” She cut herself off, listening to something beyond Twilight’s hearing. “I must not be set free. It whispers to me, even now, and it wants thy help to free me. It could be done, it says. Now, it says. Tonight.” She staggered, her mane flickering black and fading, her eyes slit-like, widening until she closed her eyes sharply and leaned against the wall. “I could… I could be free tonight. It let me see the thousand years. It let me…”

“What’s wrong?” Twilight stepped forward, reaching out. Cold beyond winter assaulted her hoof, and a winter wind whipped out from nowhere to batter her back. “Let me help!”

A summer wind surged past them, tossing the shadow free of Luna. It spun and flared, wings and horn pulsing dark. “Free!” screamed a voice howling out of the arctic north. Its head bent to look at the figure it was still tenuously connected to. “Mine… mine.” Sparks flared into a rough dome around the two of them, sending the hot summer wind spiraling out into a tornado of snow, ice, and light, unable to reach the cold shadow within.

“What are you?” Not that it mattered, she decided, gritting her teeth and standing as tall as she could before it. “Let her go!”

“Why should we let this one go, little morsel? Thy heart is not strong enough to fight us. We could take thee as easily as we took this one, so long ago.” It laughed at her, a twisted mockery of Luna’s lively voice.

“She’s my friend. I won’t let you take her from me!” Before she could think on it further, Twilight staggered forward, baring her teeth and flaring power through her horn without thinking about what she would do with it. The light from her horn seemed to do what the wind could not, and pushed back the shadowy dome. She advanced further, gathering more magic within her unthinking, focused on the thing intent on Luna.

“Thou art brave, little bug,” it said, it’s shadowy form flowing away from the light sparking from Twilight horn. “But thy heart is not strong enough to save this one,” it hissed. “It is ours, and thou wilt watch as we wither the last of its strength. We must thank thee for daring this one to expose its last hopes. Thy heart shall not survive the watching, and will be ours after hers.”

“I won’t let you!” She unleashed the energy racing through her body in a burst of pure magic. Light blazed across the snow, as though dawn had come early, and a spear of light lanced through the heart of the shadow, replacing the arrogant disdain in its blazing eyes with shock, widening to panic as the light gathered and burst like a firework, eating away the shadow until it was little more than a rising fog of lightning sparks.

The dome of shadow snapped away, the summer wind swept in a tornadic fury around Luna, dispersing the last of the shadow clinging to her and throwing snow into a curtain wall of white, freezing at the edge of timelessness.

When it died, Twilight gathered herself, fearing the worst, that Luna had been taken in that moment, and she wouldn’t see her friend again, and pushed through the diffuse barrier of ice and snow to the calm center.

Luna lay there in the center of a patch of brown grass, not a trace of shadow on her or about her, and a lingering warmth of summer lay draped about the clearing. As Twilight pushed her way into the clearing, shoving snow and ice away from her into a rough arch, Luna lifted her head and staggered first to lay on her belly, all four legs trembling, then to her feet, swaying left, then right until Twilight pressed herself against her side.

“Are you okay?” Twilight asked quietly, her own legs trembling from the exertion of unleashing so much magic at once. She made a mental note to practice large scale spells more often. “What happened?”

“Freedom,” Luna said in a small voice, “It felt me thinking of being free… It wants to be free of its prison.”

“Can’t we keep it imprisoned and free you?”

“Nay.” Luna shook her head and stood straighter. “I am as much its prison as its host. So long as I am…” She shuddered. “Let us go, Twilight. What little time I have left, I would like to share with thee as I promised.”

---

The rest of the trip through the snow went quietly, Luna leaning against Twilight, the two of them no longer forging an easy path with magic, but trudging through the piles of snow, only occasionally finding the track Twilight had carved through it the day before. Neither spoke, but Luna seemed to warm against her the farther they got.

The walled garden loomed first through the fog of frozen white vapor, growing slowly into a solid structure devoid of the protective bubble that had been there only the day before.

The gate stood closed, as it had before, the golden cord stretching up into the heavens seemingly right behind it.

The closer they got, the slower Luna’s steps became, and the more she seemed to shrink in on herself until she stopped. Twilight continued on for several steps more, exhausted and hardly paying attention to where she was going.

“What’s wrong?” Twilight asked, looking back at Luna, then at the cord. It had been growing dimmer by the step, each one step closer to it seeming to drop its luminance another degree. “Are we out of time?”

“Nay…” Luna shook her head violently side to side, staggered back a step, and sat heavily. “Rather, to say, I am running out of courage. She is there, waiting for me. Waiting to welcome me home. I-I cannot. I cannot, Twilight Sparkle. As much as I wish to, she cannot see me, and I cannot see her.”

“Why?”

“Because…” Luna trailed off, eyes locked on the cord, shifting to the gate as if she could see through it. Long moments passed. With a shiver, she turned her eyes away from the gate, head down, tail and mane pooling about her on the snow, glowing now, nebulous and hazy. “In my mind, I see the last moment, over and over again. I saw the horror, the pain, and the realization.” She choked and fell to the snow, openly sobbing as she hadn’t before. “I-I-”

Twilight dashed to her side, only to be halted as the nebulous mane swallowed Luna whole, little more than a star field rising up into the night towards the moon. With the cloud of vapor went a tiny purple sparkle, held at the center like a comet’s seed crystal.

“I’m sorry,” came a last fading whisper.

Twilight watched until she could no longer make out the moon for the shadow enveloping it, knowing its position only by the golden cord stretched from ground to sky.

Twilight felt it in her chest when the cage slammed shut around Luna once more, a deep shuddering, as of a monstrous key turning inside a lock made of flesh. Somewhere close, a cry of anguish went up, and the cord disappeared. The moon twisted subtly, turning sideways in a dimension Twilight could only vaguely recognize as a feeling of nausea emanating from her horn, and the Mare in the Moon’s eye twinkled at her again. In that last frozen moment, it was a sprinkle of tears.

The cold hit her like a slap across the face, and Twilight lurched forward, raising a hoof to her pounding heart, as if it finally remembered to beat again. She called for Spike, but his name died in the howling wind. Wind, wind, how was there wind inside the pantry?

There couldn’t be, she reasoned after a long, foggy minded moment.

Shivering, she shrank into herself to find some center of warmth. Wind and snow, she wasn’t in the kitchens. That much was for certain, but little else. The cupcakes lay on the snow in front of her, one toppled to the side, showing her a familiar cutie mark, white bubbles on a gray background. She remembered two more. There was sweetness on her tongue, something that touched a memory, and in a rush, a dark mare loomed over her, face like a queen, mane like moonlit clouds and eyes like nothing else. A golden cord leapt at the mare, binding her wings and muzzle, stifling her beautiful laugh, and darkness roared up from within those eyes to consume her.

She staggered away from the vision, stumbling into a patch of loose snow and almost falling. She caught herself at the last moment, stopping and turning to catch the plate of cupcakes in a spell. They were important to her plan.

“Spike!” She called, hoping to hear the echo of her own voice reaching back to her from the kitchen, to hear him demanding she wake up. That was it. A dream, she was dreaming. She’d fallen asleep waiting for the thief, and this was all a dream.

She stood still for several moments, willing herself to wake in the warm pantry, laying on her burlap sacks that smelled of must and rind. She could picture the scene when she’d fallen asleep so easily, the hourglass winding down towards midnight, Spike half-snoring under his comic book. Each detail brought her a step closer to waking.

All the while, her instincts screamed at her that it was all too real, and the sere, bitterly cold wind bit far too hard and painfully across her nose for it to be a dream. But she kept on, until she had the scene perfectly formed. Something odd happened to the hourglass in her vision, as the grains began forming a pillar. She gasped, snapping her eyes open and looking about her furtively. Not the pantry at all. She was outside, on the trail to Princess Celestia’s tower, but she wasn’t sure how far away she was.

She dashed forward, stopping as the wind whipped at her, dashing snow and ice into her eyes. But for just a moment, she had seen a light blooming in the distance, the flicker of a torch through a window maybe. She started off again, calling out “Is anyone out there?” But the wind tore her voice away from her ears even as it numbed them.

Several steps further, she came to a loose patch in the snow, an echo of fading warmth at its center. Somepony had lain there just a moment before, and not her. Another mystery in a cavalcade of them.

She called again, huddling deeper into the depression with its fading warmth that seemed as nebulous as the reason for her being out there.

What could have been a minute or an hour later, a voice called to her from her left, and she turned towards it. A moment later the voice repeated, and she could make out a name through the wind: “Luna!”

Luna. The name released a lock in her mind, letting the memory flood through her. For the briefest moment, the laughter had a face to it, sharply defined features like a benevolent queen’s statue, eyes twinkling, smile bright and mane like a waterfall of starlight, but it faded into the howling wind before she could grasp it and hold it to her. She cried out, her heart flaring with an ache that she couldn’t even remember the reason for. Luna cried with her, a clarion voice in the blizzard. But even the name slipped from her grasp as she sagged into the depression once more.

A figure loomed out of the white, seeming apart and a part of it at the same time. Golden light flared, lighting up a regal face in shades of sunlight.

“Luna?” The figure hesitated at the edge of the depression, looking down at her. “Twilight? But… I swear I heard—”

The voice reminded her of the laughter at the edge of her hearing, and she wept again, surprised at herself. Why am I crying? She staggered to her feet, slipped on ice, and fell.

Golden light encompassed her, soft as goose down, warm as freshly baked pie, and smelling indescribably like home.

She fell for a long time, buoyed by light and gentle reassurances spoken to her ear. Nearby hovered the plate holding one cupcake, one missing.

“Twilight Sparkle,” said the regal voice with a soft laugh as the golden glow faded. “You are up far past your bedtime, my little pony. What brings you out this far in the storm?”

The familiar timeless state of the garden bled away the exhaustion suffusing her in dribs and drabs. She was in Celestia’s private tower garden. She shivered one last time, shook herself and looked up. The prepared speech she had made before, and rehearsed in the pantry just in case she was caught fell away from her lips.

“I know…” She took a deep breath and pushed herself upright to stand before her Princess. “I know you said I should forget about the thief, Princess Celestia, but… I couldn’t. I’d come so far, learned so much, too much to let it go. Can you forgive me, Princess?”

“Yes, Twilight, of course. I wish…” Princess Celestia took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “There was no harm done. Are you feeling okay? You really shouldn’t be out and about in a storm like this. How did you come to be out this far?” The princess’s voice, always regal, turned soft and motherly. “Tell me, and no rush, what is the last thing you remember?”

“I-I don’t—” The memory came free of the jumble. “I was standing watch with Spike, waiting for the thief to come, and my hourglass started to act funny, like it was slowing down. And then…” The fog of fragments after that refused to be handled, and even the barest of ideas slipped free before they touched her tongue. She closed her eyes tight, chasing down the last fragments of wispy memory, gritting her teeth as one after the other evaporated like so much fog. When she opened her eyes, she was surprised to find her vision blurry.

“Gently, Twilight, gently,” Princess Celestia’s soothing voice washed over her. “I do not expect miracles.”

Twilight burst into tears. Something important had happened, she knew, but her memory, always so faithful before, was failing. “I can’t remember!”

Feathers and warmth enveloped her, and the strong smell of sunlight on grass wafted past her nose as wings and mane covered her. It took a long time for her to realize that her teacher was hugging her close, whispering soothing admonishments to be calm into her ear.

Twilight flushed and drew back, firmly but gently. “I-I’m sorry, Princess—”

“Nonsense.” To her surprise, Princess Celestia’s eyes were also gleaming with unshed tears. “That is how it always is for me, as well, my Twilight Sparkle. I cannot remember her face, nor her voice anymore. Oh, paintings, but to see a painting and yet know the reality… It is no substitute. Alas, time has dimmed the reality, though I have been careful to keep my own memories of her alive as best I can, but… I’m afraid what little memory I have of her is growing dimmer by the year. I keep vigil here year after year, hoping to catch some glimpse of her, a scrap of her voice, some small token that she was here at all.”

“Who was she?” A glimmer of laughter, bright and happy, in dusky tones similar but unlike Princess Celestia’s, rose in her mind and faded again before she could think of words to describe them.

“As you must have surmised… she is my sister, and long ago we ruled Equestria together.”

“And she’s haunting the castle?”

Something slid behind Princess Celestia’s features, a faint look of surprise, though Twilight wasn’t sure how she knew it; her teacher’s face remained as still as before, almost stiff. “She does. You are the first to see her, I believe, in a thousand years. Please, anything you can tell me would be the greatest gift. But be gentle with your memory, Twilight. Time spells of such power have a way of twisting one’s thoughts into pretzels when they end.”

Time spell? That hadn’t been in her planning or even a thought of a possibility in her consideration. Something about that thought triggered a fragment to solidify, twisting out of the confused fog into an idea. “I… was…” Twilight drew the words out carefully, letting them come instead of trying to force them. “I… wrote something down.” Carefully, as though moving too swiftly or suddenly would jar the last remnant of laughter from her mind, Twilight pulled open her saddlebag. There, on the very top, was a corner scrap of parchment in her hoof.

It was a list of study subjects, important ones at the time she’d written them down, though why she’d chosen those was beyond her; they were nothing but ancient history and myths. And Time Magic theory. That, at least, made more sense, and it cemented the idea that something had happened outside of time. This list was real. She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. Maybe I should have drawn her. I must have seen her, but I’m not very good at art.” She held out the scrap to her mentor as an offering.

Instead of disappointment, as she’d expected, Princess Celestia’s eyes lit up for the briefest of moments as she read over the list, and a smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “You needn’t worry, Twilight Sparkle. Are these the subjects you would like to study?”

“I must have thought they were important. So, yes, I suppose.” Twilight puzzled over them. “Can you tell me anything about them?”

“Only what is available in my library, and in the Star Swirl the Bearded wing,” Celestia said gently, looking up and over her back at the tower. “If these are your courses for the coming years, I cannot tell you anything about them, that would be cheating, but if these are truly the subjects you wish to study, then I will grant you full access to this tower for as long as you wish.”

Twilight stared, first at her teacher, then at the tower beyond. “But… why?”

“I am hoping that you will discover that, Twilight Sparkle. My thoughts are too… close to this matter to consider rationally, even after so long a time. I will not bias your studies with conjecture and supposition.” Princess Celestia held out a hoof, beckoning Twilight close again. “There’s even a bedroom downstairs. Many of my personal students over the years have taken up residence there during their final years of study, Twilight Sparkle, and if you wish to move in, you can do so as soon as you like.”

“Do I have time to think about it? I don’t want to take this tower away from you.”

“Worry not, Twilight. I have all of my personal mementos kept somewhere quite safe.” Princess Celestia looked pointedly at the spire housing her suite. “And of course you will have time. Tomorrow and the week after are holidays from school.”

“And Spike too?”

“Of course. And I will have some special classes for him to take as well. I expect much of your time here will be spent in research, when you are not in class. Do you have any other questions?”

Twilight sat back and pondered. There wasn’t anything of importance left in her room. All the books she had considered important were at home, and most of those and the ones left in her room were semi-permanent loans from the school library. Her clothes, she could collect at almost any time, not that she had an extensive wardrobe, just a few sets of boots for mud or snow, a raincoat and a winter coat. And a simple dress for special occasions; it was currently gathering dust in the farthest corner of the wardrobe.

“Can I move in tonight?”

Author's Note:

And thus ends Twilight's journey to the beginning. Epilogue to follow.

Comments

[Stahlseele]

Why is it raining?
Who is cutting onions?
I AM NOT CRYING! ;_;

[Cross Lament]

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It's allergy season, that must be it! ;__;

[Noble Thought]

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8902148

Glad to touch some feelings in this chapter. This ending was the reason why I initially didn't want to mark it comedy, because I knew the ending would be a roller coaster, and comedy wouldn't fit in it very well.

Thank you all for reading. One more chapter coming up soonishy.

[theoldenbrony]

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liquid pride