Sundowner

by King of Beggars

Chapter 6 - Bad Rain

I woke the next morning feeling sick. Not of body, or even of mind, but of spirit. There was something in the air outside my house, something wet and rank. I could feel it through the wards around my house, through the thread of magic that linked them back to me.

I didn’t even have to open the curtains and look outside to know that the rain was coming. Considering the sky had been clear the whole night before, it looked like my guess about the necro’s power had proven correct. His ability to cast was definitely an every-other-day thing, and today I could actually sense it pushing against my wards, thick and grainy and greasy as diesel.

I’d felt a storm god’s magic once or twice before, channeled by the medicine man that had taught me skinwalking. It was cold and unyielding and vast, like an arctic sea, but it wasn’t cruel, merely indifferent. This? This was cruel. The pervos who practice death magic always had a certain something to their magic, something malicious that stemmed from their intent and the feculence of their souls that stained everything it touched. I wasn’t quite sure what this particular perv was doing, but he was doing a lot of it, and the residual rain magic would kick up one pisser of a storm.

Usually I can’t even feel my wards unless I’m trying. They’re supposed to work automatically to protect me from most things, and when something magical gets too close I get a little ping on my mystical Spidey-Sense that tells me there’s a possibility of big danger afoot. I really wasn’t used to them going off at all, actually, save for the handful of times Clavus had stopped by unexpectedly. Normally, this world didn't have enough magic to set them off, and the small amount in the rain that we’d been having the past few days wasn’t even enough to tickle them. It said something about how much bartered god-magic was in the air that I could feel my spellwork humming away, practically growling against the strain it was under.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep another wink, so I decided I might as well get out of bed. Problem was, I had a little something weighing me down.

Twilight was in my bed again. She’d probably had more nightmares, if the way she was clutching against my side was any indication. I don’t know how she managed to get her arms around me without waking me – somehow even worming one under the small of my back – but she had, and with one leg draped over mine she was holding on to me like a big old teddy bear.

Adorable little moppet that she was, I still couldn’t believe that this kid was another version of the girl that I’d spent half my life hating. We’d be sitting in silence, watching TV or something, and she’d catch me staring and smile, and a piece of me would ache. Her every smile was a reminder of what a shitty person I’d been, and what I’d done to her through my negligence. It was like having a piece of metal in my skin from a wound that had long healed over – just a dull little lump of pain you never felt until you pressed down on it the wrong way and made it dig into the tissue.

But it wasn’t all bad – not even by half. There was something in how she smiled, something trusting and innocent that made me feel… complicated. I liked it, but it was complicated.

The wind blew hard against my house, and with it came that sickeningly slick feel of magic again, crashing against my wards like a tidal wave breaking against a levee. I shivered, physically, and the tremble was enough to shake Twilight awake.

She looked up at me blearily, yellow crust at the corners of her eyes that said all that needed to be said about whether or not she had cried herself to sleep. She wiped it away, moaning pathetically at having been woken so early.

“Mornin’,” I told her, patting her head gently. “I gotta get up. You go ahead and keep sleeping.”

She released me from her grip and flopped onto the bed, watching as I stood and stretched out the kinks with the customary pops and snaps from my joints that came from a lifetime of treating my body less like a temple than a frat house.

I grabbed my phone off the nightstand and noticed I had a text. It was from Luna. Just a quick ‘good morning!’ with her usual over-emoticoned enthusiasm. I sent a quick reply.

Behind me, Twilight had gotten tired of watching me and began flopping around on the bed like a fish, gathering up the blankets and rolling herself up in them until she was fully ensconced in a cocoon of them. She fell back asleep immediately, burrito-like, her breathing snotty and loud.

I frowned at that. Hopefully she wasn’t catching a cold.

I went out into the hall and fiddled with the thermostat. I keep it low to cut back on the gas bill, but chilly as it was today, Twilight probably needed the extra heat.

My phone chirped as I was walking down the stairs. It was from Luna. Just an emoji of a kissy-face. I couldn’t help but smile at how shameless of a flirt that girl was.

This whole thing with me and Luna was still real fresh, and to be honest, we still hadn’t had the time to get past the initial flirty-flirty stage of things. It was nice, though – different from the type of wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am courting I was used to. I was kind of enjoying this slow pace we had going, even if it was just a product of the circumstances and timing of our meeting. There was a sense of anticipation every time she tossed me a look, and the kittenish glint in her eyes put a tingle in my bones and a shiver up my back up every time our gazes met. I was very much looking forward to getting to know her better while Twilight wasn’t in the room and there wasn’t a sword dangling above our heads.

My phone chimed again, this time with an email from the bank saying my checking account was below the minimum limit. I sat at the bottom of the stairs and checked my accounts. The automatic payments for all my bills had gone through and it had been a little more than I’d been expecting. The little shopping spree I’d had for Twilight certainly hadn’t helped, either. Neither of those things were her fault, though. It’s just the way things had turned out. Luckily I had enough to cover everything without getting overdrawn, and a few quick swipes had some money transferred from my savings back into the checking.

I set my phone down and sighed into my hands. When this was all over I was going to need to sit myself down and work out a new budget. I hated doing finance stuff, but there was no way around it. I’d already made my decision and I was just going to have to figure out how I was going to afford to keep Twilight until I found her somewhere nice to live.

I gave myself a couple of hard smacks, slapping my cheeks like I was forcing myself awake, and stood with adult-like resolve. I was a grown-up and I could do this. I could take care of a kid for a few months, maybe even a year if it took that long. Aside from financial support, she was big enough to pretty much take care of herself, in fact. Hell, I wasn’t much older than her when I was already living on the street. Probably wouldn’t even be as much work as taking care of a pet, and I was at least responsible enough to take care of a pet.

“Oh shit, my chickens,” I muttered, suddenly remembering that chickens need food.

I went to my kitchen and set the phone on the counter. The wind blew again, making the back door tremble in the frame and once more making me feel a little ill. I looked down at my bare legs, mentally weighing the pros and cons of running back upstairs to find some pants. Laziness won out in the end, like it always does, and I threw open the door to step out onto the back stoop.

The wards surrounding my house extended over the whole property, but they were strongest on the building itself, and that wasn’t a quality I had appreciated until this very second. Even dulled by my own working, I could feel nearly the full force of that sickeningly greasy magic washing over me.

The sky was an ashy gray, the sun behind it little more than a halo of white fighting to poke through the gloom. The beginning of angry cloud banks were forming in the distance, whisps of black and gray cruelly curling like the horizon was sneering. The wind blew again, pushing that filthy wind forward, whistling it through the trees and pulling it back like the beating of some massive heart, pumping sickness through the veins of the city.

It was still morning, and considering everything to this point indicated that the other guy’s power was attuned to the night, the fact that I could feel it so strongly this early in the day was not a good sign.

Wasn’t much I could do about it, though. I didn’t know where he was and I had no clue what he was up to. It was fine, though. Long as I stayed indoors and behind my wards it’d all be copacetic.

There was no time to dawdle. I ran across the lawn, pushing away my disgust, and made a beeline for the shed. I scooped up a bucket of chicken feed and ran out to the coop.

My birds were smart. They were holed up in their coop, and even calling to them as I tossed handfuls of feed into their enclosure was met with birdy-skepticism. One of the braver hens stuck her beak out, carefully weighing the options before hurrying out to quickly peck at the sand. The rest followed, and by the time I’d put the bucket back in my shed the chickens had already picked the feed clean and darted back into their shelter.

I followed their lead and ran back the house. I slammed the door behind myself, locking it for good measure. Wind and rain and magic don’t use doorknobs, but it still made me feel better to have that little extra bit of security between us. I slumped against the door, shivering and running my hands up and down my arms like I was freezing – which I was, now that I had time to notice. I felt gross all over, even through what little clothes I had on.

I grabbed my phone without thinking, and before I knew what I was doing I’d sent Luna a text asking if she was okay.

“course, y?”

“Just… gunna rain. Keep dry, okay?”

Luna must’ve caught the meaning hidden in my words, because the next text I got was free of emojis and youthfully lazy typing. “I will. You too, please. I’ll be indoors by night.”

The unease in my heart settled a bit knowing that Luna was alright, despite the fact that I’d known that very thing not ten minutes before. I wasn’t used to this, wasn’t used to worrying about people other than myself. The only real friend I’d had in a long time had been Clavus, and if there was anyone that didn’t need me worrying about him, it was that old changeling. Now that was a guy who would whistle a tune as the world burned to the ground around him.

For what felt like the hundredth time in the last few days, I wished he was here.

* * *

I looked up from my book as I heard Twilight thumping around upstairs, her feet stomping with more force than the weight of her teeny body would imply. I frowned at the clamor she was making, idly wondering if she might fall through the floor, even though I knew that wasn’t even remotely likely.

I could trace her movement through the house by the sound of her loud footfalls – from my bedroom, to the bathroom, then to her room, back to the bathroom, back to hers. Kids were always wondering what was going on in other rooms and always in a hurry to find out – they were a lot like dogs in that way.

I decided to ignore the noise. It made it a little harder to concentrate on my book, but I wasn’t really into what I was reading anyway. It was a ratty old sci-fi novel with yellowing pages and a robotic pegasus on the heavily creased cover. I was fifty pages in and that was already enough to make me suspect that the cover art was lying to me. I’d chosen it as a distraction more than entertainment, anyway. Just something so I wouldn’t have to think about what was going on outside. I didn’t even bother bookmarking my place as I tossed the paperback onto the coffee table and stretched out on the couch. I normally hated leaving a book unfinished, but I was willing to make an exception in this case.

I turned my head to look at the TV. I’d left it on while I read, with the volume low enough to be background noise. It was an old habit I’d picked up from having lived alone for so long. I get antsy in a perfectly quiet, still room.

The morning news had finished up and given way to a talk show – one of those ‘That Ain’t My Baby!’ drama deals where they do DNA testing that, no matter the results, always ends with someone crying and someone else doing the Electric Slide. I lifted an eyebrow and summoned the remote to my hand to turn up the volume.

Distraction found.

Twilight’s steps trembled through the house again, alerting me to her descending the stairs.

“Morning,” she said as she swept through the living room, making a beeline for the kitchen.

“Mornin’,” I replied. I watched her with one eye, the other focusing on the impressive series of backflips that the non-father on TV was celebrating with.

A few minutes later Twilight walked out of the kitchen holding a big bowl of cereal. She was still in the pajamas I’d bought her – a pair of loose black bottoms with puckering kissy-lips in bright red and hot pink, and a plain white t-shirt with a cartoon devil that proclaimed her to be ‘Hot Stuff’. I moved my feet out of the way to make room on the couch for her, but she seemed happy to sit on the floor with the bowl on the table in front of her.

“What’s this?” she asked as she spooned cereal into her mouth.

“Trash TV,” I explained, “one of humankind’s greatest works.”

She tilted her head, frowning as she chewed the crunchy bits of sugar and corrugated cardboard that passed themselves off as part of a balanced breakfast.

“That baby doesn’t look like him at all,” she commented.

“Nope.”

We sat in happy silence, content to let the noise of hooting audience members hold our conversation for us. Twilight split her attention between her cereal, the show, and the book I’d left on the table, while mine was split between the TV, her, and the dreary skies peeking in through the gaps around the edges of the drawn curtains.

“Is Luna coming today?” Twilight asked as she set her spoon aside to tilt the bowl to her lips and drink down the sugary milk with a loud slurp.

“Nah, not today,” I said, ruffling her hair. “Just me and you all day.”

She gave me a conflicted look, like she wasn’t certain if she should be happy or not. “Is it because you guys had a fight…?” she asked timidly.

“Wasn’t a fight,” I said. “She just didn’t think you should’ve watched that movie last night.”

“Why?” Twilight asked. “It was funny. I liked it.”

“Because it was a grown-up movie with grown-up jokes,” I explained, rolling my eyes. “She thinks that you’ll be warped from seeing a few boob jokes.”

Twilight puffed her chest up with childish indignation. “So what? I have boobs… well, eventually I will…” She shook her head as if to blow away some errant thought. “Either way, I don’t see what the big deal is. I covered my eyes whenever you told me to.”

“That’s what I told her,” I said with a grin. “But nah, it’s not because of that. She’s going to spend the day with her sister.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Twilight said, nodding in approval. “I’m glad you didn’t break up.”

I almost laughed at the relief in her voice. “Break up?” I asked. “I don’t know about that… I mean, we’re not even…” I trailed off, realizing about that this discussion would start leading to me having to explain the terms of a romantic entanglement that I myself was still just getting a grasp on. I was willing to admit that I really, really liked Luna, but I wasn’t quite ready to say that we were in anything even remotely like a relationship.

I also wasn’t ready to say we weren’t in a relationship, because, quite frankly, the idea of that was a little more tempting every day.

I frowned and Twilight frowned, and we sat for a moment, frowning at one another before I turned back to the TV, sniffing as I checked to see what was on after the talk show.

“Isn’t she your girlfriend?” Twilight asked, still frowning, the cogs in her head spinning away behind her eyes.

“I told you the other day I didn’t have anybody like that,” I said.

“But then Luna showed up later that day.”

I sighed internally. “Jeez, kid, it’s only been a couple of days.”

“But she likes you!” Twilight said insistently.

“I know.”

“And you like her?”

I wiggled myself further into the couch, unconsciously withdrawing from the line of questioning. “I do. It’s not simple as that, though. Right now we’re just kind of feeling each other out, y’know?”

She shook her head. “Not really…” She turned back to the cereal bowl, pushing the spoon’s handle around the edge in a slow, lazy circle that made a sound like a tiny millstone as metal ground against ceramic. “A boy in the class next to mine told Lemon Drop, the girl who sits next to me, that she was pretty, and she said he was cute, and then they were boyfriend-girlfriend… Is that not how that works?”

I couldn’t help but smile at her innocent assumption. “It can be,” I said, “but only for a certain kind of relationship. I think Luna might want something better than that, or at least that’s the feeling I’m getting…”

Twilight leaned forward, resting her chin against the table and furrowing her brows as she chewed on my words.

I laid there on the couch, my hands buried snugly between my throw pillow and the armrest, and watched her try to puzzle out whatever question had congealed in her mind. It was actually more interesting than the show, watching her forehead repeatedly smooth with epiphany and wrinkle with renewed frustration as she meditated on the nature of ‘grown-up things’.

Her hair kept falling into her eyes, and her lips would turn up almost in reflex, pushing her feathery bangs aside with a puff of frustrated breath. I couldn’t help myself, and eventually I reached out and brushed her forehead clear. Her eyes flinched at the sudden feeling of my touch, but she didn’t shy away or brush me off, so I slid my hand to the top of her head and toyed with her hair. Over the last few days, her bangs had been bugging me – just a flat curtain of hair that sat on her face without personality. It was cute, but boring, and it didn't help that they were getting shaggy. It was a real shame, too, because she had very pretty eyes behind all that hair and those adorably geek-chic glasses.

I pulled her bangs back and turned my head as I examined her hair. I gathered it up in a bunch at the back, trying to imagine what she’d look like with a ponytail, or maybe with it tucked up into a bun, or pulled to the side as pigtails.

“My mom used to play with my hair, too,” Twilight said, her voice oddly toneless against the exuberant pitch of the hype-man on the television trying to attract people to his used car dealership.

I let go of her hair immediately. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay, I don’t mind… You didn’t know my mom, did you?”

“No,” I said. “I never got to meet her.”

“She told me that she wanted to be a hairdresser when she was a little girl,” Twilight continued, unfazed by, or maybe indifferent of, my reply. “She never got to go to beauty school. I don’t know why, but I think her parents wanted her to go to a real college. She still liked cutting hair, though. She used to cut all of our hair. Mine, Shiny’s, dad’s… Not Shiny’s anymore, actually. Two summers ago he begged dad to talk mom into letting him go to a real barber shop. Dad even bought him a shave, even though he didn’t have a beard. I told him that was silly and he said I wouldn’t understand because it was man stuff.

“I don’t know why he wouldn’t want mom to cut his hair anymore. I liked it. She’d wash my hair in the kitchen sink, and then we’d go out to the porch in the backyard so she could cut it. She’d take her time and we’d talk about stuff… big stuff. Like when the other girls in class would ignore me.”

I narrowed my eyes at that. That wasn’t something I could keep quiet about. “Kids were picking on you?”

“No,” she said. “Just ignoring me. They’d say I was weird because I wanted to read in the library instead of play tag or dolls or whatever, but nobody ever picked on me. Mom says I’m just not sociable. She said I should try harder to make friends, but I don’t know… I don’t really see the point.”

“I get that,” I said with a sniff. “Was the same for me when I was your age. I was always reading or playing with my cheap chemistry set, studying bugs in the garden. The other kids didn’t have the same interests I did and that made it real hard to make friends, so I just did without.”

“When you were in the orphanage, right?” she asked in a small voice.

“Yeah.”

“What was it like?”

“Lonely,” I said. “Really… really lonely.”

It was a short answer, but there were volumes in those few words. Meaning enough that Twilight could only grunt in agreement. A curt acknowledgement of the camaraderie we shared, linked by our similar circumstances as we were.

The talk show had already ended. Daytime television did what it did, moving from one exhibition of human desperation to the next with little more than some advertisements for cookies and disposable diapers separating them. A man and woman were standing before a hot lady judge that almost certainly didn’t have a law degree, but was sufficiently pretty and sufficiently middle-aged enough to straddle the line between sex-object and authority figure. The woman was angry about the man’s cat damaging her car somehow. The judge was mugging for the camera at every ridiculous claim the woman made, to the almost canned amusement of the peanut gallery.

I really, really wanted a drink. Something coastal that brought to mind white-sand beaches and huge-breasted women in string bikinis. Anything that wasn’t evil rain and cute orphans.

At least I wasn’t alone.

* * *

That greasy sense of wrongness got more bearable as the day wore on. Long-term exposure made it more tolerable, though still uncomfortable whenever I happened to notice it. While earlier it had been enough to leave me shivering, I’d finally acclimated to it enough that it wasn’t too much worse than that sticky feeling you get when you haven’t had a bath for like a week.

It wasn’t all sunshine, though. Quite the opposite, in fact.

As the hours ticked away, the sky grew darker and darker, as though trying to hurry the sun out of the sky and past the horizon through sheer gloominess. The storm clouds had been roiling at the periphery of the city all day, the occasional bark of thunder thrumming the air, like the drums of an invading army awaiting the order to close in and begin the siege. The skies directly above Canterlot City were slightly less ominous, and all the more unsettling for it, as though we were all sitting in the eye of a storm – which I suppose we were.

Luckily, I had Twilight with me to keep me distracted.

We were sitting in the living room with a steaming bowl of popcorn sitting on the couch between us. We’d been having a nice day, mostly just sitting around being couch potatoes. Twilight had pretty much let me me choose whatever we’d watch, so I had decided to let her have her turn.

The doorbell rang just as we were getting to the part of the movie where the spoiled mermaid princess was selling out her family so she could have legs to open for the pretty boy prince. I hadn’t been expecting anybody – not unless the pizza guy had used his Shine to sense that I was getting hungry.

I answered the door to find a sullen looking Luna standing on my welcome mat.

“Luna?” I asked, surprised by the state of her appearance as much as the suddenness of her visit. The rain hadn’t yet made good on its threat of falling, but for some reason the wooly blue cardigan she was wearing was wrinkled, like it had gotten wet and hurriedly wrung out. The light dusting of makeup she wore was smeared, and her eyeliner was running down her cheeks – one of which was pink and swollen. “Have you been crying? What’s wrong?”

She smiled, chagrined and yet seemingly relieved to see me. “Hey… can I come in?”

I took her by the hand and brought her inside. Twilight had shut off the movie and was waiting by the couch with a worried look.

“Is something wrong?”

“I’m okay now,” Luna said, laughing off the little girl’s concern. She wiped self-consciously under her eyes. “Do you think you could go play in your room? I want to talk a little bit with Sunset.”

Twilight shifted her weight, as though she was debating whether or not to do as she was asked. She shot one last look at me, silently pleading for permission to stay. She didn’t get it, and so heaved a resigned sigh as she trudged to her room. She paused as she was walking past Luna, looking up at her with those big doe-eyes.

“Um…” she began. “Do you need a hug?”

“I think that’s exactly what I need,” Luna said as she knelt down and tightly hugged Twilight before sending her up the stairs.

“What’s going on?” I asked as soon as I heard Twilight’s footsteps thud off into her room.

Luna exhaled heavily as she collapsed onto my couch. “Celestia and I had a fight.”

“Like a for real one?” I asked. At her questioningly look I pointed to the still-swollen cheek. “You look like you got clocked.”

Luna blinked, touching the sore spot with a grin. “I got slapped,” she admitted sheepishly. “She said something I didn’t like and I threw my water in her face… so she dumped hers on me and added the slap to make sure I got the message.”

I sat next to her and took her hand. “So what happened?”

Luna shifted to the side and leaned against my shoulder. “We were having a good day. I know you said to stay indoors, but I figured it wouldn’t rain until later, so we went to the mall this morning.” She pinched her cardigan and clucked her tongue. “I bought this. Cute, yeah? We finished shopping and went home to watch movies and eat ice cream – sister stuff. It was going good and then… she started asking about you.”

A rush of panic went through me and it must have shown on my face, because Luna had a giggle at my expense.

“Not you specifically,” she said, patting my shoulder. “She wanted to know about the person I’ve been seeing. I tried to make up some excuses, said she could meet her later, that right now we weren’t at the ‘meeting family’ point yet… but she was just so damn insistent. She always does that. It doesn’t matter what it is, she always has to butt her nose into my business, like it’s her life and not mine. Between her pushing me and all this stuff going on with Twilight and having to keep all these extra secrets, I just snapped at her and… well…”

She laughed and pointed dramatically at her swollen cheek.

“Wow… she didn’t really seem like the catfighting type,” I said, honestly surprised.

“She’s not,” Luna said. “At least not anymore. She’s always had a temper, but she’s calmed down a lot. I guess this stuff with Doctor Night Light is just bringing out the worst in her. She’s so stressed.”

“Understandably so.”

Luna grunted in agreement. “I probably should have been more understanding, but she got all worked up and all bluhbluhbluh. All like, ‘I’m the big sister, I’m trying to look out for you’ and stuff. I tried to be cool about it, but… well, we’re sisters.” Luna let out a sort of sarcastic little half-laugh – the vocal equivalent of an eyeroll. “We’ve known each other our whole lives. You don’t know someone that long without learning how to hit below the belt. A lot of stuff came out all at once.”

“That must be nice,” I mused. “Not the part about fighting, but, you know, having someone who knows you that well.”

“It is,” Luna said, sighing. She leaned into me a bit harder as she toyed with the material of her new coat, plucking at the loose bits of fuzz and lint like pulling the fluff off a dandelion. “She’s a pain in the ass, but I wouldn’t trade her.”

Outside, the rain finally started to fall. It was slow at first, just a soft pitter-patter on the porch. The steady hum of the falling rain ticked by like the seconds on a clock, and soon enough it was falling in force. The feeling of magical pollution in the rain beating against my wards was starting to grow uncomfortable again, but only slightly so. I was inured to the worst of it, and the feeling of a warm body pressed against mine certainly helped.

“I got hurt once,” Luna said, her soft voice breaking through the sound of falling rain. “You’re the second person I’ve ever tried to be… romantic with. I was in high school, a sophomore. She was a senior. She was really shy, but God was she cute. She was my best friend. We ate lunch together, went shopping, saw movies, sometimes we’d even fall asleep talking on the phone. I was so sprung on her that I pretended to take up photography, just so I’d have an excuse to take pictures of her all the time.” She flinched, sucking air through her teeth like she’d just been stung. “Man, that sounds creepy saying it out loud like that.”

“And what happened?” I asked, even though I could probably guess it.

“She just wanted to be friends,” Luna explained sourly. “She was talking about wanting to get asked to the prom, so I made a move. While she was still stunned from me asking her to let me take her, I tried to kiss her. She pushed me away, said that she didn’t like girls like that at all. I was a stupid kid and too hormonal to see reason, so I took the rejection badly. We had words and in the end we couldn’t even be friends like she wanted. It was too weird for her by that point, and too painful for me.” She licked her lips, and in her eyes a cinder of something old and long-ago resolved was poking its way to the surface, trying to rekindle itself. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, snuffing it out. “It was my fault for letting myself get carried away like that without even finding out if she was attracted to me. I told myself the next time I found someone I liked that I’d just… y’know, put myself out there. No hesitation. At least I’d know right away if it was a lost cause or not.”

“Ah…” I said. All at once, lot of things fell into place in my head about how aggressive Luna had been so far in this little courtship of ours.

“I took up running after that. Did a lot of that and a lot of crying on Celestia’s shoulder.” Her free hand, the one that wasn’t currently being held in mine, found its way to my knee. “That whole thing is what started the fight. She says she doesn’t want me getting hurt again, and I do appreciate the sentiment, just not the execution. She shouldn’t have brought that up the way she did… If it was anything else I wouldn’t have...”

Luna took a breath, long and steady, like the slow drag off a cigarette. Breathing helps when your nerves get all frayed. Nicotine helps more, but she said she was a runner, so she probably wouldn’t appreciate me offering her a smoke.

“It was like a snowball. We went back and forth so much that I guess she got fed up and told me to stop acting like a spoiled brat, so I said she should stop acting like a know-it-all bitch, and that’s when the, ah…”

She mimed throwing a glass of water in someone’s face and then put her hand right back on my knee. That hand didn’t stay there, though. It started wandering. First in little circles, then slowly up my thigh, then back down, climbing a bit higher with every pass.

Luna looked up at me, her eyes moist, a hint of worry – fear, even – peeking through. “She’s wrong, right? You won’t hurt me, will you?”

This would’ve been the time to say something cool, but all I could manage was a dry-throated “I don’t want to…”

A smile spread across Luna’s face. “That’s a good answer,” she said as she pushed me onto the couch. “It’s honest.” She straddled my waist and leaned in close. “I would’ve been suspicious of a no.”

And we were kissing again. It was hard and desperate, like it was the only way we could keep breathing. She was getting better at this. Lots better. She pulled her mouth away from me, breathlessly. Even with smudged makeup she was beautiful. My eyes drifted down to her lips, full and puffy with the forcefulness of our kissing. Her lipstick – a soft plum color that stood out against her beautifully fair skin – was smeared around the corners of her mouth. I probably had a fair bit of it around my own.

“You said I should stay out of the rain,” she whispered huskily as she ground her hips against my belly. “I should stay the night.”

“I think you should, yeah.”

I could hear Twilight moving around upstairs. She probably wouldn’t even think about coming down for at least ten more minutes. Not much time, but enough for a little exploratory fooling around.

My hands were pulling open the front of Luna’s pants when the doorbell rang for the second time that day. Luna threw back her head, growling out a low, angry curse.

“I’m never going to lose it at this rate,” she said under her breath, quiet enough that she probably thought I wouldn’t hear. I got real good hearing, though.

She climbed off me and redid the buttons of her jeans. I gotta say, a little piece of my heart shattered and crumbled away as the flash of frilly pink lace disappeared behind blue denim.

I pulled down my shirt and wiped my mouth hard with the back of my hand. Sure enough, it came away with the same streak of purple as Luna’s lips. “Why don’t you go clean up while I get rid of whoever that is?”

“Do it fast,” she said as she went through the kitchen, the long way around to the downstairs bathroom.

I shook my head, trying to shake all the bits back into place after Luna had knocked them out. The doorbell rang again, just as the blood flow was coming back to my brain. To say I was a little upset at the interruption would be an understatement. Dark thoughts formed in my mind as I strode to the door, ready to give whoever it was the brushing-off of their life. Maybe I could even give them a harmless little curse. Not everything I knew was deadly and immensely powerful. I’d studied a few prank spells back when I was a filly that I could probably still do.

Lost in my petty fantasies of revenge, I didn’t even think to check the peephole. If I had, I probably wouldn’t have opened the door.

Celestia was there, on my welcome mat, staring at me with seeming impassivity. The long cream-colored woolen cardigan she was wearing was pulled tight around her body with crossed arms, but it was ill-suited to protecting her from the storm and she was soaked to the bone. Some remote part of my brain recognized that the garment was like the one Luna had, if a bit longer to accommodate her height and in a color more flattering to her complexion – probably bought in a fever of sisterly shopping coordination. Even her jeans were the same, though her white button-up blouse was more ‘dressy’ than Luna’s t-shirt.

“Huh,” Celestia said, hugging herself just a little tighter as she lightly shivered on my porch, “it really is you. That’s a surprise. I almost didn’t believe it when I saw the sign on your lawn.”

Her eyes swept me from head to toe, revealing more emotion than her words or face let on. She was hurt, betrayed even. Though I could tell that that feeling wasn’t wholly directed at me, a measure of it certainly was.

The disappointment in those eyes, eyes so much like my Celestia’s, was too familiar. It was like the echo of the look Princess Celestia had fixed me with, grown larger and louder, finally having caught up after I’d spent a lifetime trying to outpace it. It wasn’t angry, but I still shrunk away from it. The shame of it still made me feel small, naked and young.

“Celestia… I… ah…”

“I want to talk to Luna,” Celestia said, interrupting me.

Before I could say another word, Celestia lowered her head and swept past me, stepping into the foyer to drip all over my floor. It didn’t even occur to my addled mind to resist.

“Luna!” Celestia called. She craned her neck around the corner, peeking into the living room. It was empty, so she turned towards the stairs and called for her sister again. “Luna, where are you?”

My wits came back with an almost elastic snap at the sight of Celestia going for the stairs. Twilight was up there.

“Hey, look, I don’t know why you’re here but right now isn’t a good time,” I said as I closed the door to shut out the wind.

Celestia turned, the soft look of betrayal going hard as she narrowed her eyes at me. Her hand came up to her throat and she brushed at the spot where her neck met the hollow of her collarbone.

“Yes, I can see you and my sister are very busy,” she said, her smooth voice dripping with ire like honey from the edge of a knife.

My hand went to the same spot on my own neck instinctively. There was something greasy on me. I rubbed at it and my fingers came away with a smudge of purple lipstick. When had that gotten there?

The wheels in my head started spinning up a yarn. Any old excuse to get Celestia to leave, even if it just meant threatening to call the cops. As long as Luna kept hid in the bathroom, I could make this work.

“Celestia?”

Ah, damn. Of course she decided to step out of the bathroom right at that moment. Nothing’s ever that easy for me, is it?

Probably should’ve expected it, though. Luna didn’t seem like the cowering type.

“What are you doing here?” Luna asked as she stalked down the hallway, her scowl deepening with every heavy step.

“I came to see where you’ve been going these last few days,” Celestia explained. Going by her tone, her nerves were frayed and only just south of snapping completely.

“So you followed me?” Luna all but growled in accusation.

Celestia held up her phone, waggling it showily before jamming it angrily into her pocket. “My name’s on the phone bill. All I had to do was report yours lost on the website.”

“How dare you… you... cyber-stalk me!”

“And what was I supposed to do, huh!?” Celestia snapped. She jabbed the air with an accusatory finger as she drew herself up to her full height. “You won’t tell me where you’ve been going, but obviously you were seeing someone. And even just asking you about this mystery person gets me the brush off! How am I supposed to know you’re not running off to some shady neighborhood or something?”

“Oh, so just because I don’t want to tell you about my love life, that must obviously mean I’m going to a crackhouse?” Luna shouted up at her sister, who was at least a half a head taller. “You’re unbelievable.”

Watching the two of them go at it made me think that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t have it as rough as I thought, being an orphan and all. Luna was right about this snowballing thing. The way they were both flexing their hands had me thinking that I might get to see a hot chick catfight if I let this play out. But as much as I would enjoy watching Luna get her hair all mussed up, I really didn’t want to sit back and watch it happen in the middle of my house. Especially with a fairly traumatized little girl upstairs, probably listening at her door by now.

Somebody had to be an adult here and – God help us all – it was probably going to have to be me.

“Okay, maybe you girls need to simmer down a little,” I said as I stepped up, placing my hands on Luna’s shoulders and gently pushing her away from her sister. Of the two of them, I figured she’d be the least objectionable to me putting my hands on her like that.

“You stay out of this,” Celestia said, refocusing her heated glare at me. “I just met you yesterday and today my sister is running off to your house? I talked to you about her, and you didn’t say a word about knowing her. Why would that be, huh? What exactly is going on here that you couldn’t just say, ‘Hi, my name’s Sunset Shimmer, I’m screwing your baby sister’? What were you really doing at Doctor Night’s office?”

Something in me cracked, shattering along with it any notions I might have had about being the cool voice of reason.

It was too much. The sound of her voice, the look in her eyes, the way she lifted her chin to look down on you while she was shouting – it was all too damned familiar.

Growing up means maturing. It means becoming a better person than you were ten years ago, one year, even a single day before. But no matter how much you grow and change, regardless of how far you come, that same basic temperament you had as a kid always sits right in the middle of all those layers of experience, waiting to burst out.

That rebellious little filly inside me reared up at Celestia’s words. She wasn’t my Celestia, but she was close enough that it rankled that angry child deep down inside me.

I wanted her out of my house and I wanted it now. Without even thinking, the power gathered in my chest and tickled its way up my throat, burning as it waited to fill my words with influence.

But it wasn’t my words that ended the conflict.

“Stop yelling at them!”

We all froze. The command was directed at Celestia, but the words washed over all of us like a commandment from above. Twilight didn’t have capital-P Power like I did, but for just those few words, her voice drowned out the thunder of the storm gathering outside.

I looked up the stairs to find Twilight standing at the top of the stairs, her tiny hands balled up up with white-knuckle tightness. Celestia followed my gaze and for just a second her knees went weak. She caught herself on the bannister with a hand, the other covering her mouth in shock as she looked into Twilight’s flushed, angry scowl.

“Stop yelling, Celestia,” Twilight said firmly. “Sunset’s not a bad person. She’s my friend.”

Celestia was up the stairs in a flash, leaping over two, even three steps at a time, stumbling in her haste to get to Twilight. As she pulled Twilight into her arms she let out a long keening wail that rang with a relief so powerful that it bordered on pain.

Luna pressed herself against me from behind. I could feel her shaking as she buried her face against my back and cried. Whatever anger she’d had towards her sister had evaporated, banished by Twilight’s appearance and the naked emotion in Celestia’s sobbing.

I let go of the power I’d gathered. I’d almost done it again, almost gave into my own weakness.

Luna was crying, and Celestia was crying, and even Twilight had been swept away by the mood. All I could do was stand there and listen to them cry their little hearts out.

“Goddamn it…” was all I could think to say.

* * *

I leaned forward in my chair, elbows on knees, as I watched Celestia’s face for any indication of what she might be thinking.

She was sitting on the couch, notably dryer and more composed than she had been when she got to my house. From the way she was holding Twilight, she might have been afraid the little girl might turn into smoke and blow away in the wind if she dared to let go. Luna was on the other end of the couch, still picking at the lint of her sweater and trying to look at anything that wasn’t her sister.

I shifted my weight and the chair squeaked and groaned beneath me. I’d gotten one of the chairs from the kitchen table, deciding that it would be better to face Celestia while I got her up to speed on everything that had been happening.

Luna had wanted to send Twilight out of the room, but Celestia had refused to let the kid out of her sight and Twilight had insisted that she’d be fine to hear the story. Twilight still hadn’t heard the whole tale, just bits and pieces, so in the end I’d decided she deserved as much as I could give her without getting… macabre.

According to the clock, the whole thing had taken nearly a half hour to tell properly – Twi-friendly edits included. Certainly longer than it had taken with Luna, but then again Luna had been there for some of it.

Celestia hadn’t said a word. She just watched me as I laid out the tale, like a cat staring at a shadow in suspicion. Even when I did a little show of magic at Luna’s suggestion, Celestia didn’t show more than a widening of her eyes as she tightened her hold on Twilight.

Now we were all just waiting for Celestia to come to grips with what she’d been told. I may have grown up magical, but I know it can’t be an easy thing to swallow the first time you hear about it. Twilight was a kid, young enough that her preconceptions of the world were fluid and allowed for the existence of magic with moderate ease.

Celestia? This one, too old to begin the training, yes. At least Luna had had the advantage of watching me slay a monster in a big, showy way.

“Okay…” Celestia said after a long, long while. “I see. You’re saying that… that Professor Night Light was… that all of this was because of some kind of wizard’s fight?”

“I don’t know why Night was targeted,” I explained. “All I know is that Twilight was who I could save, and now she’s here.”

Celestia pinched the bridge of her nose and took a few long, nearly hyperventilated breaths. “I think maybe you don’t understand what you’ve done here.”

I lifted an eyebrow at that. Even Luna had stopped picking at her clothes and sat up to fix her sister with an attentive look.

“First, thank you. I mean that. Thank you for saving Twilight... but you can’t just... just have her here!”

“I can’t?” I repeated, a little taken aback.

“She’s not a stray cat!” Celestia shouted. “You can’t just pick her up and bring her to your house! We need to tell someone she’s alive. This needs to be reported to the police and Child Protective Services, at the very least.”

“Out of the question,” I said. “Someone is looking for her. She needs to stay here where I can keep her safe.”

“The police can protect her,” Celestia said with conviction. She sat up straight, self-righteousness swelling her up like a balloon.

Twilight moved away from Celestia, squirming out of the older girl’s iron-grip like an eel and shoving her away. She scooted back, pressing herself again Luna, who she probably felt was her only ally on the couch.

“The police can’t stop monsters!” Twilight said. “I have to stay here!”

Celestia shook her head as she softened her glare. “Twilight… I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but there’s no such thing as monsters…”

“I saw it,” Twilight said. “It ate my mom and dad… and then it killed my big brother. Sunset carried me out of the house. She told me not to look, but I did. I saw what the monster did to him and I saw what she did to the monster. Don’t tell me that there’s no such thing. Not when I saw it with my own eyes.”

The way she explained that, matter-of-factly, like she was relaying one of her trivia book factoids, was enough to break your heart.

That night had been a horror show. Blood everywhere, the stink of death, the fire. I’d told her to keep her eyes closed as I carried her out past all that, but an inquisitive kid like Twilight? Yeah. I could see her trying to sneak peeks the way I’d caught her peeping between her fingers during that movie the night before. I was pretty sure she’d been having nightmares, but I could only imagine the terrors that must have been driving her into my bed these last few nights.

Celestia reeled back, shaking her head as she silently mouthed her disbelief.

“Twilight, no,” she said as she reached for the girl. “No, honey, you need to come with me. W-we can get you help, okay? Don’t you trust me?”

Twilight slapped the hand away. “You can’t make me leave, and you can’t help.”

Celestia held the slapped hand to her chest, cradling it like she’d just been stabbed. Tears were welling in her eyes as she stared at Twilight in abject disbelief. She looked up to Luna, as though her sister could explain to her what had just happened.

Luna didn’t have any answers for her, though. She just wrapped her arms around Twilight, as if shielding her from Celestia’s grasp.

Honestly… I felt bad for Celestia. I don’t think anything else could have wounded her like that.

That’s when lightning struck.

And when I say it struck, I mean it struck. Light poured in through the windows, bright and white as a strobe. Once, twice, thrice… I counted six strikes, six flashes of blinding light, by the time the thunder caught up.

I got up and ran to the front door. Something felt wrong. The magic in the air had been steadily building all day, but all at once it was a freight train smashing into my wards.

My porch was a poor shelter from rains like this. The wind was blowing so badly that the rain was falling sideways as much as down. The lightning came again, snaking across the distant sky until the clouds were wreathed in it like kudzu. The rumble of thunder that followed every burst of light shook the sky like the groans and yawns of a waking giant.

I heard movement behind me and held out a hand. “Stay inside!” I shouted.

Twilight obeyed, but Luna and Celestia joined me out on the porch. They stood together, gaping in astonishment.

“What is this?” Celestia asked in awe. It seemed like everything that had just happened in the house was forgotten in the face of the spectacle playing out in the sky. “I’ve never seen a storm like this.”

The clouds that had been building all day had finally closed in. There should have still been at least an hour of sunlight left, but the cloud cover had already blotted out the sun, plunging the city and the surrounding area into pseudo-night. The lightning continued to crash, never touching the ground, just zigzagging through through the darkness like the sky was cracking apart.

All at once I realized what I should’ve seen coming the second I set foot out the door this morning. This storm wasn’t some side effect of playing with a rain god’s power. All of that power was being focused into this storm, into doing exactly what it was meant for. This was going to be big.

Monstrously big.

“This is crazy,” Luna said, raising her voice over the steadily growing roar of wind and thunder.

I grit my teeth and pointed at the door. “Everybody back inside!”

Twilight darted back inside without hesitation, but Luna and Celestia had to be dragged in by the wrists, spellbound by the sight of the storm as they were. I slammed the door shut and leaned against it as I wiped the rain from my face.

Something touched my arm and I flinched, my hand balling into a fist instinctively. It was only Luna.

“Sunset,” Luna began, her voice trembling as she backed away warily, “that looks really bad… That’s magic, right? Is it going to get worse?”

“It’s magic, yeah, but it doesn’t matter how bad it gets,” I said with a shake of my head. “You’re safe in here. He can huff and puff all he wants, but this piggy built her house out of bricks.” I knocked on the wall for emphasis. “We’ll be okay.”

“But what about everybody else?” Twilight asked. “I’ve seen tornadoes and stuff on the weather channel. People could get hurt.”

People would definitely get hurt. I had no doubt about that in my mind.

The elements are an awesome, terrifying thing. Twisters that could lift entire trailer parks, tropical storms that demolished small coastal nations, volcanoes that wiped out entire civilizations… and that was just nature being nature.

The modern world had too few sorcerers. Human beings don’t remember what magic can do to nature. They don’t remember heat waves that could make deserts out of seas, or floods that stretched so far and wide that ancient man knew with absolute certainty that the whole world must have sunk beneath the waves. A god like Tlaloc, one that that ruled over storms, without a doubt had power enough to knock an entire city over like a giant toddler pushing down a bunch of wooden blocks and legos.

There’s a reason that magic is called supernatural.

But as I said, my house would be fine. I could already feel the spirits protecting my house working to direct the worst of the storm away. Even at the storm’s worst, there was nothing it could do to me once the magic surrounding my place was running full-tilt, even if it meant mine was the only house still standing in the county.

If I wanted to, I could just sit here on my ass, eating sandwiches and waiting for the sun to come up. The other guy no doubt had his own protection from the storm, otherwise he wouldn’t be doing this. It was an appealing, if cartoonish, thought that the next morning I could just walk over to the only other standing building in the city and end this whole thing – cartoonish in an incredibly dark way.

I didn’t like that that was the first place my mind went, but it was what it was.

“No, no, I refuse that premise,” Celestia declared. Her natural healthy tan had dimmed to a pallor closer to Luna’s pale complexion, but her face was set in defiance. “You’re trying to say that…” She jabbed a finger towards the door. “...that is some magical storm? A man did this? A human being conjured a storm with a wave of his staff like some kind of fantasy novel?”

Luna groaned, swiping away the moisture dripping down her forehead. “Celestia, I know this is a shock for you, but you need to catch up to the rest of us. There’s magic. Sunset showed you hers, what more do you need?”

“I don’t know what I saw,” Celestia replied, though the conviction in her voice wavered just a little, “but even if I did accept that humans can conjure fire with their hands and make popcorn dance in the air with a thought, that’s a little bit below what’s going on outside.”

I watched Celestia and Luna go back and forth, still arguing even though a few inches of door and my magic were the only thing separating us from a murder-storm. I could tell, though, that the argument wasn’t what was important, just that they were having it. They’d both just had a shake, and arguing with one another was probably a calming draught of familiarity. Something they could prop up against their fraying nerves.

I looked down to find Twilight had moved to my side, her little hand gripping the hem of my shirt. “The bad man is going to use the storm to knock over the city?” she asked.

There was an odd lack of fear in her voice. Rather than being scared, she looked more curious than anything.

“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “Maybe… probably.”

“He could if he wanted to, though?”

“Yeah. He’s got a lot of power and not a lot of concern for human life. That’s not a good mix.” I put a hand atop Twilight’s head, petting her like a cat. It was soothing. “Aren’t you scared?”

“Nope,” she said, placing her hands atop mine as she shook her head. “I don’t know anything about magic, but you said we’d be safe. We’ll be okay while you go stop the bad man.”

I blinked at certainty in her voice, like it wasn't even a question that I would do something about this. “It… won’t be easy breaking a big spell like this…”

“That’s okay,” Twilight said. “I believe in you.”

Everything I’d learned since coming to the human world told me that I should let everyone else hang, that my only responsibility was to myself and the people in my house. My tutors had all been men and women who were more demon than human – and that had been the ones that hadn’t confessed outright to being actual demons. They were the type that only looked out for number one, and it had always been drilled into me that in a magic fight, you should never stick your neck out for someone else...

...but that was the logic of monsters. I didn’t want to be that. I wanted be good. I wanted to be the kind of person who wasn’t afraid to meet her own eyes in the mirror. Maybe even more than that, right at this moment, I didn’t want to let Twilight down. I don’t know what she saw when she looked at me, but whatever she saw, it was a better person than I was. I wanted to be that better person, even if it was just for a minute.

“If nobody else wants to, I guess I have to,” I said, groaning as I pushed away from the door, like a teenager reluctantly getting out of bed to do her chores. I gave Twilight one last pat on the head. “I gotta get something out of the basement. Do me a favor and go get my shoes from upstairs, yeah?”

I walked past Luna and Celestia, who’d stopped arguing to watch me pass. They were both far less tense than they had been before the argument – the magic of sisterhood, I guess. I went to the basement door at the end of the hall, flipping the switch as I descended into my study.

I’d kind of talked myself into a corner. Not that I couldn’t cash the check my mouth had written, but it definitely wasn’t going to be cheap. This storm was some serious stuff, and if I was going to break it, I needed something equally serious.

I went to the safe at the end of the room, kicking aside the beanbag as I went and unleashing a hail of crumbs from its folds. A empty box of girl scout cookies had been stashed under the bag. Well… I had told the kid she could make herself at home.

I knelt down and opened the safe, sighing at what I was about to do.

Have you ever have to break open a piggy bank that you’ve been saving for something big? You know that you need it, and you know that this was what all that saving was for, but you can’t help but feel sense of loss right in your gut as you break the bank.

That’s what I was feeling as I pulled out top-right drawer of the safe. It was originally a gun safe, double-wide, with an open side for long-guns and a side with drawers for handguns and various things like ammo and cleaning tools. Now the drawers were full of ingredients for potions and rituals, things that were rare or valuable enough that I wouldn’t keep them in my trunk or in a bag in the shed.

I pulled the drawer out all the way, slipping it completely from the safe. I ignored the dried and powdered things in the drawer and looked at the back, where I’d scotch-taped a little key. I got the key and replaced the drawer, then used the key to open the locked drawer at the bottom of the safe.

There are a lot of ways to control magic. Words, spells, music – pretty much any creative act that had symbolic value could be used to weave magic. So long as you could assign significance to the act, you could use it as a conduit for the arcane.

Me? I like writing. Always have. It’s why I took so well to runecraft. Magical writing has a lot of uses and a lot of perks. Probably the best perk of using writing as your tool for spellwork is that it lets you use ink when the occasion calls for it.

Inks and dyes of all kinds carry magic well, that’s just how they are. That’s why books and scrolls are such effective methods for storing magical knowledge and techniques. A proper magic book could communicate subtleties in the way the magic should be applied through the ink itself. Correctly tempering your ink was important, though, if you wanted your spellwork to last. It didn’t matter how fancy or clever your working was if the power you put into it ate away at the crappy ink you’d written it in.

Every sorcerer I’d ever met that worked with the stuff had their own process for making ink. It was just one of those things that properly trained magicians always had passed down from their masters, and they were often techniques that went back centuries. I’d learned more than a few methods myself, considering how many teachers I’d had in my life, and I’d taken little bits here and there that I liked best and kludged them together into something that fit me – a technique of my own that had been crafted more from motley than whole-cloth, but was uniquely mine all the same.

The familiarity I had with the stuff was the entire reason I was able to help Night Light in the first place. The flesh golem that had bitten him had probably had its teeth covered in magic ink.

I had two phials of ink in this drawer, each of them about the size of a small aspirin bottle and made years ago. The process is long and expensive, and I no longer had the resources to make anything of this quality, so each of these bottles was a precious treasure. Proud as I was of my handiwork, though, I knew these weren’t good enough for the job at hand.

I focused my attention on the third bottle in the drawer, the one resting by itself in a small box lined with soft velvet padding. I lifted it from the box gingerly, holding it up to the light and swirling the liquid around in the glass. There was only a little left, a little under half the bottle, which was itself half the size of the other two bottles. It wasn’t much, but it was just enough for one real big working – perfect for something fast and vicious.

He never taught me how to make it, but the first time Fiddler had shown me this stuff, he’d said it was squeezed from the darkness in a once-righteous man’s heart. I don’t know whether he meant that literally or not – while Fiddler never lied, he could often be infuriatingly vague to the point of abstraction – but the fact of the matter was that anything wrought by his inhuman hands was in its own class. Even just holding it in my palm I could feel the power in it, hungry and dark, like I was pulling the leash of a growling beast waiting for a command. This, right here, was the kind of power that people sold their souls for.

I closed up the safe, holding the bottle tightly in my hand. I went back upstairs and got my leather jacket out of the hallway closet. The phial of demonic ink went into the inside breast pocket and was zipped up tight.

Twilight was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs, my dirty boots clutched against her chest like precious objects. I took them from her and softly brushed flakes of dried mud off her pajama top.

“Spell is probably designed to focus on the city itself,” I explained as I sat on the stairs and tugged my boots on. “I can’t do anything about it this far from the epicenter.”

“You can’t drive in conditions like this,” Luna said worriedly.

“I’ll be fine, I’m a pretty good driver. A few months after I got my license I signed up for a stunt driving course so I could be like Steve McQueen.” I got to my feet and stroked Twilight's cheek with my thumb reassuringly. “Nobody leaves the house.”

I was trying to be casual, to reassure the girls that everything would be fine. Sometimes the only thing keeping panic at bay was one calm voice, and if in the process I got to look super cool in front of Twi and Luna, then all the better. Sadly, my attempt to stage a Brando-esque cool-chick exit was thwarted. Celestia was standing in front of the door, hands on her hips and feet wide apart, rooting her to the spot like she was challenging me to get by her.

“Move,” I said, jerking my head sideways to emphasize the command. The word came out a bit harsher than I meant it to. Maybe I was still a little angry from earlier. “I don’t know what you want to say, but I don’t have time to argue.”

Celestia, to her credit, stood her ground, set her shoulders, and looked me right in the eyes.

“I’m going with you,” she said with the surety of someone who was used to getting her way.

“I don’t think so.” I took a step to the side to try and squeeze my way past her, but Celestia mirrored the movement.

“You said that you were the only one who could protect Twilight, that you’re this all-powerful wizard-woman. If you want me on board with all this craziness, then I want to see it. I want you to prove it to me.”

I could feel that rebellious kid rising up inside me again and I fought to push her back down, back into the little dark spot in my heart where I buried all my worst urges and instincts. I could see where she was coming from, but I also just hated being questioned like this.

“Lady,” I said, my voice straining to maintain an even tone, “I don’t care if you’re on board. I’ve got sorceress business to attend to.”

The light flickered as an especially loud crack of thunder shook the air.

“Didn’t you just say that you didn’t have time to argue?” Celestia asked flatly.

I turned back to Luna, who’d pulled Twilight against herself protectively, and silently pleaded for help with my eyes. All I got in return was a defeated shrug that I read as, “She gets like this.”

“Fine,” I said with a sigh as I leveled a tired look at Celestia. “You do what I say, though, unless you want to get hurt.”

I hadn’t meant that to come out as a threat. Seriously, I didn’t.

Celestia just stepped aside and held out a hand like a bellhop ushering me towards the door. “What are we waiting for, then?”

* * *

Driving into the city went about as well as I could have hoped.

With the wet roads and hard winds, I’d passed more than a few fender-benders. Conditions like this, the smart move was to pull over, but nobody likes getting caught in the rain and too many people were risking it.

Just before we’d got to outer edge of downtown, I’d almost gotten t-boned at an intersection by an old beater that approached the red with a little too much momentum and ended up hydroplaning halfway into the intersection. Quick reflexes and a good set of tires had saved the day, but I was pretty sure Celestia’s fingerprints were now permanently pressed into the dash.

We didn’t talk much. I was too focused on driving and Celestia was too busy fussing with the loose cuffs of the old jacket I’d pulled out of the hall closet for her. The nice wooly sweater she’d had sure was pretty, but it had gotten soaked, and wouldn’t do much as an actual garment against the elements even if it hadn't been. The jacket was an orange windbreaker made from that plastic stuff that crinkles with every movement. It was what I wore when I did yard work in the cold, so the cuffs were dirty and one of the pockets was half torn off from getting caught on the corner of the workbench in my shed, but at least it would keep her dry.

I couldn’t help but notice when she put it on that it was a little tight on her. She and I are about the same height, but her chest was definitely more… expansive than mine, so her volume was straining at the zipper.

A hard gust of wind blew down a crossroad, kicking up rain as it went and pushing my poor car hard enough to shove us out of our lane and into the oncoming. I corrected us quickly, but Celestia sucked in a heavy gasp as I swung back into the right lane.

“How much further?” Celestia asked. I could hear her straining to not let her voice quiver, but she was definitely scared.

“Two blocks,” I answered.

She nodded and went back to worrying the cuffs of the jacket and scanning the area for anything that might hit us.

“This is a nice car, by the way,” she said.

“Thanks, I’ve had Philomena for a while. Restored her myself.”

Celestia gave me a queer look, one eyebrow quirked, before turning back to her passenger-side vigil. “My grandmother had a parrot named Philomena…” she muttered just loud enough that I could barely hear it over the roaring heater and the sound of thimble-sized rain hitting my car.

I laughed nervously.

The last two blocks were slow going. I didn’t much want to test the tread on my fairly new tires against half-flooded streets, so I kept it under 30, despite my hurry. Luckily most of the other drivers had started to wise up and were already on the side of the road and taking refuge anywhere they could.

I pulled us into the parking garage of a fancy hotel and was lucky enough to find a spot up on the second level. Let me tell you, I would’ve been mighty embarrassed if I’d let the city get flattened because I couldn’t find a parking space. That wouldn’t have been very heroic.

“What are we doing here?” Celestia asked.

“Tall building,” I explained simply as I turned off the car and double checked to make sure the ink was still in my pocket. “A lot of magic is about your intent. If you want to do something with the sky, you need to make an effort to get closer to it. Close as you can.”

It was more complex than that, but the explanation was good enough for a layman and Celestia seemed satisfied by it. She just gave a sort of grunt in understanding and followed me out of the car.

We went down a flight of stairs to the bottom floor of the garage and took a short walk through a covered walkway into the hotel. It was one of the city’s older buildings – not quite historic, but old enough that you could call it a landmark. Canterlot City didn’t have much in the way of skyscrapers, and the nine-stories of the Le Grand Canterlot – stupid name, I know – made it one of the tallest buildings around. There were taller, sure, but those were further into the city, and were business offices where I would’ve had to deal with more security getting to the roof. Plus, the hotel was far enough from other tall structures that I wasn’t very likely to get spotted screwing around on the roof by some accountant looking out his window from a bigger building.

The hotel’s cavernous lobby was about what you’d expect in something up-scale but just shy of ‘ritzy’. The building was old enough to have been remodeled a few times, and you could see the seams of the redecorations if you looked close enough, but it was clean and everything from the gold-plated fixtures to the smartly pressed staff uniforms screamed, “We cost a bundle.”

The beautiful lobby was a bedlam, packed with people who’d run in to escape the rain. A mass of soaked, shivering bodies was pressed against the glass-walled entrance, staring with unblinking worry at the spectacle outside. The constant hum of tense conversation was enough to drown the sound of rain pummeling the asphalt. Some of the patrons had even come down from the rooms upstairs to complain to the staff – some about the noise, others about windows that had been blown out by the storm. A man and woman in matching bathrobes were berating a cute girl behind the counter about the shoddiness of the building’s construction, as if she had had a hand in or control over such things.

Celestia kept close to me so we wouldn’t get separated in the throng as I led her towards the emergency stairwell. We passed the lounge on our way, where people had gathered around the bar to stare at the televisions reporting the storm with the kind of captivated attention usually reserved for a World Series game.

“We’re taking the stairs?” Celestia asked as I held open the door for her.

Ladies first, after all.

“Power might go out,” I said. “Believe me, I’d much rather take the elevator, but I sure don’t want to get stuck in one. It’d be a real shame to be climbing up an elevator shaft Die Hard-style when the building collapsed on us.”

Celestia paled at the mental image and hurried through the door.

As expected, the service stairwell was the opposite side of the coin to the gorgeous lobby. The cement-gray walls showed what the structure was like when the building’s bones were stripped of the meaty bits of faux-luxury gilding the rest of the hotel. The stairs were lit with whining utilitarian fluorescents, and more than one of them was flickering, just on the edge of burning out. The smell of smoke – mostly tobacco, but with a definite hint of ‘other’– was soaked into the concrete, despite the big ‘No Smoking’ signs bolted to the wall on every floor.

We made it up to the fourth floor by the time the predictable happened and the lights went out.

I took out my phone and thumbed on the light, which earned me a disgruntled noise from Celestia. Maybe she was expecting me to conjure light from my eyes, or something. A second or two later her own phone was on and adding its light to mine.

Nine stories isn’t all that much, but the lights going out slowed our steps a bit. Darkness is just one of those things that makes you more cautious, even when you’re used to it, like I am. It didn’t help that the sound of rushing wind was leaking into the stairwell like the tortured moans of a ghost. It was downright spooky, and I know from spooky.

As we climbed, the sound of doors opening and closing echoed up the stairwell towards us from time to time. People on the lower floors that hadn’t already gone to the lobby were apparently braving the spooky stairwell and heading down in drips and drabs. At one point, a door below us opened and a young boy’s voice very loudly proclaimed, “Oh, Hell no!” before the door shut with a bang.

I needed that laugh.

My foot eventually hit the landing of the ninth floor, splashing in a puddle of water that had gathered in a groove in the concrete. There were two doors, one leading to the ninth floor where the penthouse suites were, and a metal security door barring access to another set of stairs behind a steel cage. Water was dripping down from the level above, where the roof access was.

The security door was locked with some stupid keycard panel. Back when I used to have money, I spent a lot of time in nice hotels, and most of those places had the same kind of security doors. Sometimes I’d decide to go up to the roof for some sunbathing or something and I’d hex the door open, so I knew that breaking a lock like this always set off alarms in the security station. Luckily, the power was out, so there was no security system to alert when I placed my hand on keypad and shoved it with my magic.

It wasn’t anything artful, or even something as intricate as picking a lock with magic. I was in a hurry so I just used brute force to twist the metal around until it wasn’t in my way anymore. The door swung open, creaking on cold hinges, and bits of metal and plastic fell out of the mangled remains of the keypad with a jangle. I climbed the last flight of stairs, noting briefly that Celestia’s footsteps were a few paces further than they’d been on the way up.

There was no lock on the roof access. It was just a regular fire door with a sign bolted to it warning off guests and other non-staff personnel. Wind and rain were seeping in through the crack under the door as it rattled in the frame.

This was it. I took a deep breath and turned off my phone. I stuffed it into my jacket and zipped it up so it wouldn’t get wet. Celestia put her phone away, too, plunging us momentarily into darkness. I grasped the locking bar, my palms stinging against the ice cold steel as I tried to open the door. The heavy door only opened a few inches before a gust of wind slammed it shut again. I braced my shoulder against the metal and put my weight into it, forcing the door open.

I stepped out onto the roof and onto a wet, thunderous, blinding Hell.

The rain wasn’t falling in sheets. It was a solid mass of water, like a giant’s hand pressing down on the earth below. The wind was no better, pushing and blowing from every direction at once. Even through a leather jacket I could feel the bite of the cold rain.

I held a hand over my eyes, shielding them from the pounding rain as I looked into the sky. The clouds were churning violently, spinning with twisters that hadn’t yet touched down and were covered in lightning, lighting up the sky like the midday sun.

A very small part of me briefly wondered if maybe I should have just stayed home after all.

“You’re going to stop this!?” Celestia shouted from behind me.

I ignored her as I stepped further out onto the roof. I had to half-crouch as I leaned against the wind buffeting me. If I wasn’t careful I’d probably get tossed over the edge. For once in my life, I would have loved to have been a little heavier.

Once I was a safe distance away from Celestia, I took a deep breath, steadied myself, and reached for my magic.

The power leaked out of my body, spreading out, touching everything around me. The air, the rain, the building and the people inside, Celestia. Most importantly, I could feel the magic empowering the spell.

I’d felt this unsettling magic before through my wards, and it certainly didn’t feel any better now. The greasy feeling of death magic was thick around me. I could vaguely sense patterns in the magic, showing me intimations of the mechanisms of the spellwork, written in the clouds like shifting runes. I’d never seen a weather spell like this. This was real old world craftsmanship, and if I weren’t standing directly beneath it, I would probably be impressed.

The magic in the formation was reaching a peak, practically humming like a finely tuned engine waiting to shift into gear. When it did, the bottom would fall out of the sky and Canterlot City probably wouldn’t be more than smear of mud and charred earth.

I reached into my jacket and pulled out the bottle of ink. My hand hesitated for half a second on the stopper, the selfish hoarder inside me shouting that there had to be another way. Maybe there was, but I didn’t have time to figure it out, so I yanked the stopper free and tossed it aside.

The magic infused in the ink burst out of bottle like compressed air. The rain falling in my immediate vicinity slowed from a deluge to a stream, from a stream to a trickle, and from a trickle to nothing. In the span of a single breath, the rain around me stopped in midair, the droplets of magically-tainted water suspended like a beaded curtain. Outside of the influence of the ink, the rain was still falling and the wind was still whipping mercilessly, but none of that could reach me.

I tilted the bottle, pouring the ink out. The phial emptied, a stream of pitch black darkness falling only a few inches before pooling into a bead the size of marble. I kept tilting the phial, slowly, with a lover’s care, spilling far more ink than the vessel should have been able to hold. The bead grew fat, and by the time the last drop fell from the glass it was the size of a softball.

I threw the phial away, letting the wind carry it off somewhere. I had no more use for it.

I held out a hand and dipped a single finger into the ball of ink. It was warm and familiar. The power in it sang and the seed of fire that Fiddler had sown in my bones all those years ago sang back in chorus – a crescendoing duet of fire that was terrible and cruel and so, so, so comfortable.

This was what was dangerous about taking magic candy from demonic strangers. It always felt good.

I lifted my hand and drew a line in the air. The trail of ink was so flawlessly dark that it would have stood out even against the moonless sky. The searing brightness of the now constantly crackling lightning above was a perfect canvas for this.

I drew another line, and then another. I was going on instinct and experience alone to feel my way through shaping the spell. There was no thought here, just art. I was a being of magic, born of it and tempered in its fire. I let that magic guide my hand as I drew the sigil in the air above my head.

The spell in the sky above was a masterwork. It was a stained glass mural wrought with skill and beauty, because yes, even at its ugliest and greasiest, all magic was beautiful to me. I could have matched that beauty stroke for stroke, and I probably would have even enjoyed the challenge, but I didn’t have to. I didn’t need to be tricky or clever. I didn’t need to craft a glass mural of my own to fight his art.

If you’re fighting glass, all you need is a hammer.

So I kept crafting my hammer, careful to get everything just right. Demolitions isn’t just about smashing things, there’s an art to it. I had to hit the spell just right so the magic would disperse harmlessly, otherwise the backlash of unchained magic would do the job that the storm was meant to.

Fiddler’s ink moved as though it had a life of its own, filling in the cracks and imperfections in the spell, making it more majestic with every tweak and alteration to my design. Fiddler’s will was infused in the stuff. It was like he was here with me, guiding my hand and teaching me a better way to do what I wanted to – just like the good old days.

I could feel the dam holding back the sky magic getting ready to burst, but I wasn’t about to let that happen. My sigil was already finished.

The runework was tethered to my magic, drinking greedily from the well of my power. My heartbeat was racing, my breathing ragged and my lungs burning with cold and a seemingly bottomless thirst for air.

I reached up and gripped the sigil. My skin was tingling, burning, like I was holding on to live electrical wires. I ignored the discomfort and closed my hand with a grunt of effort. My fingers passed through the lines like smoke, breaking the circuit of power and releasing the spell. The sigil vanished in a puff of swirling ether.

The sky went still. The wind, the rain, the lightning, even the sound of thunder froze, hanging in the air like an opera singer holding a note.

And then the sky broke open with a boom. Not like thunder. More like an old radial tire busting with bang and a whuff of air. The clouds scattered, blowing away into nothing as the last of the shed rain fell to the earth with a splash.

Silence.

Silence all the more eerie and unsettling for the abrupt end of the storm’s cacophony. It made the sound of sirens and firetruck horns blaring in the distance an otherwordly croon.

“What a waste,” I said, sighing to the open sky as I caught my breath. “It was a beautiful thing.”

I ran my fingers through my hair. It was all frizzed up, but it was nothing I couldn’t smooth over with a brush.

I walked back to the stairwell on jittery legs to collect Celestia. She’d fallen on her ass into a puddle and was staring at the clear moonlit sky like she’d never seen it before. She was a city girl, so maybe she hadn’t. I know I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen the stars over Canterlot City so clearly.

I grabbed her by the elbow and hoisted her to her feet.

“Come on, girl. Let’s get some coffee in you.”

* * *

The ICLOP was open. A little thing like an apocalyptic mega-storm wasn’t about to deter the good men and women of the service industry – not as long as they worked for tips. The place had survived almost completely unscathed. Aside from a few broken tree limbs that had blown in from somewhere and lodged themselves under a couple of cars in the lot, you couldn’t even tell anything had happened.

I held the door open for Celestia and the little jingly bells tied to the handle announced our arrival. I was surprised to see Cheese Cake working. She usually tended to the night crowd, but it was still pretty early in the day for her to be on shift. Still, I was always happy to see her, and the familiar smile she gave me as our eyes met from across the room washed away a bit of the fatigue I was feeling.

She finished with the customer she was pouring coffee for and sashayed her way over to greet us. “Sunset, child, you sure picked a heck of a night to come in,” she said with a laugh that filled me up like warm soup. “Did you see the sky suddenly clear up like that? Craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Hey, Cheese,” I said. “Yeah, that was nuts. You’re here early.”

“Ugh, I know,” Cheese Cake said with an exaggerated sigh. “Shift Skipper called in sick again, so I get to work a twelve hour shift today. It’s fine, though, a lot of people came in because of this crazy storm so I made some good tips.” Cheese Cake tilted her head to the side, as though noticing Celestia behind me for the first time. She reached for the menus next to the cashier’s station and pulled one out. “Table for two and the usual?”

“No usual tonight,” I said with a shake of my head. I actually was pretty hungry, but I’d just have to pick up something on the way home. “Just two cups of something hot and some privacy, please.”

Cheese Cake put the laminated menu back into the little cubby, giving Celestia quick glance up and down. She nodded, crooked a finger, and spun on her heels. “I think I can get something for you in the corner,” she said as she wound her way past the customers.

Cheese Cake was good as her word. She moved us past the small knot of customers that had stayed after the rain had cleared up. She kept walking towards the back, near the window opposite the bathrooms and kitchen, where nobody would bother us save for a lone man in a trucker hat and hunting jacket picking at the scraps of his plate. After seating Celestia and I at the booth she went to fetch us our coffees, served us, then turned to the man and got him to leave.

She wasn’t rude about it, of course. Cheese Cake was a professional, whose livelihood depended on her ability to chat up customers just as much as mine did. If anything, she was probably even better at it than I was. It didn’t even take two minutes before she’d talked the man out of his seat and ushered him towards the register, tossing a wink at me as she led her victim away with the hypnotic sway of her generous hips, like a Pied Piper for middle-aged men.

Celestia and I were alone now, just us and our coffees. Cheese knew my preferences and had left a pile of sugars on the table next to my cup. I busied myself sweetening up the cup while I let Celestia stew in her thoughts. She’d been quiet the whole way back to the car, and the whole drive over, too, for that matter. She hadn’t even spared me so much as a look, choosing instead to just glare at whatever happened to be flashing by the passenger side window.

Can’t imagine I’d ever had a more awkward cup of coffee, but then again, awkward had been kind of a theme since Night Light had dragged me kicking and screaming into this nutty scenario.

I took a sip, careful not to burn myself on the molten iron that Cheese Cake called coffee. It was just a shade below boiling and didn’t taste much different from the gas station stuff, but it came with bottomless refills and only cost two bucks. The heat felt good after having been out in the freezing rain, and did the job of heating my insides in a way that Philomena’s heater couldn’t.

Sufficiently warm, I pulled out the pack of cigarettes I’d brought in from the car and put one between my lips. I lit up, cupping a hand over the end, the way you would when trying to block the wind. We were indoors, but the act covered the fact that I wasn’t using a lighter, just in case someone was looking our way. I took a long drag, filling my lungs with more warmth, and blew the smoke out the side of my mouth so it wouldn’t hit Celestia in the face.

“You’re not supposed to smoke in these places anymore,” Celestia said, frowning as she stared into the mug between her hands. She took a sip, grimaced, and grabbed two of the sugars for herself.

I took another drag. “The waitress is a friend,” I said. The mugs had been served with a little saucer as a coaster, so I pulled mine out from under the cup and tapped my ash into it. “She doesn’t care as long as I don’t do it all the time. It bothering you?”

“Not really,” Celestia replied as she tried her coffee again. “I actually kind of miss the smell. I quit a few years ago.”

“I did, too,” I said with a chuckle.

Celestia smiled. It wasn’t much, barely a grin, but it was a smile. It didn’t last long, though, and disappeared in the span of time it took for her to take another long, slurping sip of coffee.

“So is this what we’re going to do?” she asked as she set her cup down. “We’re going to sit here and drink coffee and pretend that I didn’t just see you…” Celestia slumped forward, resting her palms against her forehead as she groaned behind the stringy curtain of damp hair that fell over her face. “I can’t believe this is really happening.”

“If it counts for anything,” I began, “we weren’t going to keep this a secret from you forever. It was just going to be until I get rid of this other practitioner. I would have liked to have eased you into the idea.”

Celestia pulled her hands to the side, parting the curtain of hair enough to look at me. “He was going to kill everyone, wasn’t he?” she asked in a timid voice that didn’t suit what I knew about her.

“Yeah.” I tapped out some ash.

“Why? What would he get out of that?”

“Maybe he thought it didn’t matter how many people he killed as long as Twilight was in the pile,” I said with a sniff. “Could also have been he’s smart enough that he knows another magician is hiding her and he wanted to see if he could flush her out. Hell, maybe he was just throwing a tantrum and decided to cut loose with something particularly nasty. Some guys just get off on exercising their power over the straights.”

Celestia made a disgusted face. “Is that what you call us?” she asked. “The ‘straights’?”

“Just a turn of phrase. We’re not running around calling people Muggles or anything stupid like that. Some guys call regular folk ‘mortals’, though. As if they were immortal, which is a laugh.” My cigarette was almost finished, maybe just a puff or two before I was at the filter, so I snuffed what was left and lit another without even debating it. I’d earned a second smoke. “Everybody dies, no matter how hard you fight it and no matter how much power you’ve got, even the ones that are only mostly human.”

Celestia made a face at that last bit. It was the same sort of green “I just got a stomachache” look that Night Light had given me when I’d explained magic stuff to him.

Speaking of stomachs, mine growled at me, obviously upset that the only things I was putting into my body were coffee and smoke. While Celestia chewed on my words, I reached over to the little tray of condiments and seasonings at the end of the table, to the saltines that were left there for customers to crumble into soups.

“So what now?” she asked. I’d been getting asked that a lot lately. Was starting to wish I had a good answer for it.

“Nothing for now,” I said around a mouthful of over-salted crackers. I took a half-step out of my seat and grabbed the crackers off the next table over, too. “I’ve got friends looking into some things for me. Hopefully I can find this other wizard soon.”

“What are you going to do when you find him?”

“I’ll make him go away.”

Celestia leaned in, chewing her lip apprehensively before she asked, “How?”

I smacked my lips dryly and took a drink of coffee to wash down the crackers. “I’ll make him go away,” I repeated.

Celestia’s mouth opened to say something, but no sound came out. After a few moments of silently hanging agape, she closed it, defeatedly, and leaned back against her seat. “So Twilight will be safe in your house, then?”

I nodded.

“That’s good,” she said, wringing her hands. “I hope… I… Would it be alright if I stayed over?”

The selfish part of me wanted to tell her no. Luna had suggested staying the night, and the lower half of me was still really interested in making that happen, even after the interruption of having to break apart the most epic storm magic I’d ever laid eyes on. There probably wouldn’t be much hanky-panky going on if Luna’s big sister was sleeping downstairs. Actually, thinking about it, Twilight probably wouldn’t give us much alone time either, if her habit of sneaking into my bed was any indication.

I could understand Celestia’s wishes, though. If it were me, I definitely would have insisted on staying over.

“That’s fine,” I said, nodding.

“Thank you.” Celestia slumped in the seat, visibly relieved at my acceptance. “You’re a good person.”

Something inside me swelled. Maybe it was pride, or a sense of relief. Whatever it was, it lifted up, buoyed by Celestia’s words. Luna had told me I was a good person, and even if I didn’t believe it myself, it still felt good to hear it from someone I liked. Hearing it in Celestia’s voice, though? That felt good. Better than I like admitting.

That feeling didn’t last for very long, though.

“You’re a good person,” she repeated as she sat up straight, her knee brushing lightly against mine under the table as she pushed herself up. She leveled a look at me that was all steel and lace. “I know you’re good, and that’s why I know you’re going to agree with what I have to say.”

I lifted an eyebrow in suspicion at the tone in her voice. The cigarette I’d been smoking was half finished and dangling from my lips. I put it down on the impromptu ashtray and held out my open hands, inviting Celestia to continue.

“Once this is all over, once you’ve made this other person ‘go away’,” her nose wrinkled like she smelled something bad, “I want you to do the same.”

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I want you to go away,” Celestia said, calmly, coolly, as though she wasn't telling me to piss off. “This isn’t… this isn’t how the world is supposed to be. Magic? Monsters? Kill-storms that come right off heavy metal album covers? Are you kidding me? I don’t belong here, and neither does Twilight.”

Celestia pushed her coffee aside and leaned forward on her elbows. Her gaze was hard, but not unkind, and colored with just enough pity to make me feel small again.

“Twilight doesn’t need this. What happened to her is… it’s beyond awful. She needs help, she needs to be a normal little girl. That can’t happen if she’s hanging around with you, and you know it. When this is all over, I’ll take her. It won’t be easy, but I have friends in social services that will help me smooth things over with the authorities. I don’t know what story I’ll tell them, but I’ll make it work out even if I have to use every single dime of my trust fund to bribe every man and woman in City Hall. I’ll raise her as my own daughter and she’ll never want for anything. Clothes, food, books, college, anything she wants is hers. She’ll be normal, and she’ll be happy... but that will never happen if you keep coming around. Every time she sees you it’ll just be a reminder of what she lost.”

Celestia’s eyes narrowed as she jabbed her index finger on the table pointedly, hard enough to rattle the dishware.

“And before you argue, let me ask you... what if something like this happens again in the future? Not to Twilight, but to you. I’m not going to pretend I know anything about your world or however you want to call it, but if there are people running around with enough power to level a city with a storm, I can’t imagine that you, someone who has enough power to fight someone like that, haven’t made some enemies. You’re a good person, but you’re dangerous. I don’t want that danger around Twilight, and I’m betting you don’t either. It’s for the best if you just quietly step out of her life once this is all over and don’t ever, ever come back. I’d even consider it a personal favor if you did.”

Celestia stood up suddenly. She pulled a billfold out of her pocket and thumbed through it before placing a crisp new fifty under her coffee. When you leave a big tip like that, it’s not about the service, it’s about making a statement that you can afford it.

Celestia turned to leave, but hesitated after just a couple of steps. She turned back and added, “And everything I said goes for Luna, too. Stay away from her. You’re a good person, but that doesn’t mean you’re good enough for my sister.”

Celestia walked out of the restaurant with her head held higher than when she came in. I followed her with my eyes as she strode out the front door and into the parking lot. She went to my car and tried the passenger-side door. It was locked, but she just went around to sit on the hood, her dramatic exit and her pride seemingly undiminished by being locked out.

I don’t know how long I sat there staring into my coffee. It must have been a while, because by the time I felt Cheese Cake’s hand on my shoulder the cigarette I’d left smouldering in the saucer had burned itself out.

“You okay, child?” Cheese Cake asked, concerned. “That woman say something to you?”

“Nah, nah, it’s…” I coughed. My throat was feeling real dry all of a sudden, so I took a drink of my now lukewarm coffee. “I’m dating her sister… kind of.”

“Ah,” Cheese said with a knowing nod. “I’ve been there… Well, I’m glad you’re getting out there at least. I was starting to worry about you.” Cheese Cake picked up the money that Celestia had left and held it up taut between her fingers, snapping it showily. “Why don’t we just use this to pay your tab, eh? That’ll show her.”

* * *

Author's Note:

Took a while to get this out~ Sorry. Holiday months are always a bad time for me. Didn't help that this was an especially hard chapter to write for some reason.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it and that you'll join me next time!

Please be excited!

Comments

[TraceOfAmber]

So glad to have this story back <3

[vren55]

*eyebrow arches*

Celestia, you idiot control freak. I mean I love you and all but srsly.

[TheStratovarian]

This is quite the bleep force out in celestia, and how honestly stupid she is being. All things considered, where is asking the person that saved your life, saved the city. To walk away and let your desire go? There's stupid, and holy bleep are you wanting to get killed here. Ah well, cant fix stupid. Still, huzzah on this update.

[punzil504]

What an emotional roller coaster.

I can certainly understand Celestia's POV, but it doesn't mean that I have to agree with it, even if Sunset herself doesn't seem to know what she wants to do after this plays itself out... with Twilight or Luna.

[wolfstorm56]

Pretty good chapter. Celestia is being such a jerk though lol. I mean I can get where she's coming from, but she's being really selfish about it.

I loved your descriptions of the magic ink and the dispelling scene. Great worldbuilding.

[PhycoKrusk]

You have a real knack for painting scenes (pun maybe intended), particularly where there is a lot of action happening. This is one of those times where I could envision the rooftop happening on the silver screen, right down to the effects. Bravo.

As for Celestia, well. "This isn't how the world is supposed to be?" Well, maybe not. But that's how the world is, and there is nothing she can do about it; she can no more make magic go away than she could stop the sun's movement across the sky.

And she knows it. She knows exactly how powerless she is in the face of this adversary, in the face of reality. She also knows that she can exert some degree of power over Sunset. That's how "control freaks" work; it's how humans work. We like to have control, and what we like to have control over the most is ourselves. When we can't have that, having control over someone else often feels like the next best thing. It's not, of course — no manner how many people someone can dominate, it will never stop them feeling their life is spiraling out of control (for those who feel that way) — but it takes the edge off for a little bit.

Celestia tried to control Luna, and is trying to control Sunset, and I guarantee will try to control Twilight, because her life is falling apart and she feels like she has no control over herself.

[NeuroticScientist]

Before I read this chapter, I feel like mentioning that when I saw this in my feed page, this is what went through my head:

"Holy shit, it updated. It lives. IT LIVES! IT LIIIIVES!"

I think I spend too much time on the internet.

EDIT: After reading this chapter, I kinda want to punch Celestia in the teeth.

Also; EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE THIS CHAPTER WAS AMAZING!!

[Hatter]

Nice. This story is very picturesque in how much detail goes into the surroundings. It gives it an ambience.
Also:

All I got in return was a defeated shrug that I read as, “She gets like this.”

I think there might be only single quotation marks here if nobody is actually talking?

[Bellephoron]

I definitely agree, while I can understand where Celestia is coming from her attitude of 'I don't understand what's happening, so I'm going to make it go away' is unpleasant.

[Twilight_Crow]

Oh, an update! The story goes on, how wonderful! Thank you very much.

Nice world building and character building. I really like how "human" the characters are, they make mistakes, learn and adapt to situations. The story feel so... organic, yes that.

[Nali]

Each new chapter as enthralling as the last.

[Damen]

7873874 now to be fair, she was just mirroring things Sunset had already said, albeit more aggressively.

[Dream of Ponies]

It's alive, ITS ALIVE! *evil cackle*
I'm so happy to see you alive and writing again. Your work has always drawn me in like few others and you've done it again. The tale you weave of something completely foreign yet somehow familiar is amazing. The fact they act human in the face of the supernatural is just perfectly written.

Also get bent Celestia. Sometimes the one you least expect is the best person for the job.
I for one would absolutely adore a sorceress Twi. Can we call her SciTwi? SorcTwi? Eh, WIP.

[Mitch H]

Jeez, I really hope Mr. Mystery Weatherwitch isn't rope-a-doping. Because boiling off a bit of magic to *wipe the city off the map* just to get Sunset out in the open? That goal seems to have been accomplished. Sunset's lucky if she didn't get back-tagged or something in the course of the heap big dispell.

For instance, can these magic wards stop someone from setting the house on fire? Reminds me of that scene in the recent Luke Cage series, Luke goes bigfooting around proving he's bulletproof - and the bad-guy sends someone to fire an ATGM into the first floor of the apartment building he lives in. "You might be bulletproof, but Harlem ain't".

[Dream Dusk]

Wow... this perfectly describes the weather??? were having.

(a moonsoon every January to February here in the philipines, I'm not used to this cold )

Edit/Addon/s: Finished reading the chapter and OHHHHH BOY, that was awsome! I bet Twilight's curiuos brain is going to ask for more magic.

Edit - Again: Dont worry about your slow updates, the wait is well repaid with each chapter being magnificent.

[TraceOfAmber]

7874916 I'm just hoping that the author doesn't take inspiration from this scene.

[Dream Dusk]

7873841

she can no more make magic go away than she could stop the sun's movement across the sky.

Well thats a bit Ironic... for Celestia at least... Oh oh oh imagine Sunset or Celestia telling this to each other

[immolation12]

But if Sunset leaves, how are we supposed to get her to train Magical Girl Twilight?

[NeuroticScientist]

7874664 Yes, but the fact is that she doesn't know her. So far, all her interactions with Sunset include being friendly with her in Night Light's office, barging into her house without asking for permission after cyber-stalking her sister, seeing Sunset save the entire city with magic shortly before getting her coffee, and telling Sunset she's not good enough to take care of Twilight or Luna, despite the fact that she just took care of an entire city.

Like others before me pointed out, this is most likely her reaction because she's feeling like she's loosing control of her life, but that doesn't change the fact that she's being an absolute bitch.

No one fucks with my bacon-hair waifu.

[Quantum_Shift]

Write more, or I call the shocky-monkeys.

(Foamy the Squirrel reference, if its unclear)

[megabyte97]

It is disturbing how much shit can come about if Sunset leaves.

Whoop de freaking do Celestia, you alienate the one person who you know that practices magic. Never mind the people who will come afterwards looking for Twilight. It might not be instantaneous, but Sunset dispelling this storm with a powerful demon's magic is going to set off a chain reaction, and whether or not you like it, ignoring a problem is not going to make it go away.

[Hopeful_Ink_Hoof]

Well that was an entertaining chapter. Not what I expected her to do with the ink though, or that she would use ink in the first place. So A+ for creativity on that. I can see where Celestia is coming from in the end, and can sympathize, but can't entirely agree. Although, I suppose that is the point.

On a critical level, one mistake sticks out to me. The end of a sentence is missing:

I grabbed my phone without thinking, and before I knew what I was doing I’d sent Luna a text asking if she was

[punzil504]

7875350

Yum, yum, yum... human hand...

[Dream Dusk]

7875287 Sunset can leave but what about twilight? does she want to leave?

Reading this again, I can't get enough of it.

[Flutter616]

Fuck that was metal

[Heidao]

Way to go killing the mood Celestia

Binged read in one sitting, I love this, I love that the chapters are long

But seeing the dates mapping the gaps between updates, hurts my soul

[shy sad jaded shard]

Ya lets piss on the magic chic cant see anything bad about that

[ForSpite]

I was just lamenting the lack of updates to this a couple weeks ago, so it's good to see a new chapter.

As to the events of the chapter, it's probably best for Sunset's frame of mind that this Celestia isn't a giant horse. It creates more separation.

[PFisken]

I... I honestly can't fault Celestia.

It's different when you read a story, but I think if it was real life, it was your real sister and a real child, that would actually probably be the *right* thing to do, it not necessary the nicest thing to do.

Of course, depending on how it plays out, that might change. It might be that Twilight can't be divorced from the magic world. In that case, trying to keep Sunset around is the best alt.

[Posted]

We'll see whether what Celestia wants is even possible. There is a non-zero chance that Twilight 'Pajama Bottoms' Sparkle is not so separate from the supernatural side of things as Celestia would like.

[Dragonwaz]

7885540 I can, she's been a bit of a super nosy bitch so far. I'd expect her to come to a similar conclusion but rather then figure out Sunset's intentions or really anything about her she just goes around ordering and being bossy.

[Web of Hope]

Yes Tia, level threats at the most legendarily hard-headed temper the world has ever seen. Just watch where that'll get you before your sister finds out. And she will...

Lovely to see this story rise from the grave, can't wait for more

[Aenbr]

When I think of your Sunset Shimmer, I think of this:
pre13.deviantart.net/5edb/th/pre/f/2016/268/d/c/20160911_by_girlsay-daisogv.jpg

[e520]

It occurs to me that the sorcerer wanted twilight for a reason, that isn't going to change and celestia sure as hell cant protect her from that

[the frank]

Ouch. That ending hurt. Extremely well written of cource and I Love the voice of your Sunset. But still, ouch.

[mutualism_is_nice]

Most times I come on this website, I just cringe and wonder why I still come back to it. This story embodies the reason I come back. It's a diamond in the rough. The writing is professional quality and the story is intricate and believable(not just some cringey-fantasy bull). Great story, can't wait to see the outcome.

[PrincessCadenza]

oh I do wish this gets a new chapter soon....the suspense and the waiting are killing me!!!

[ponytrash]

Aww. I caught up to the latest chapter.

I read most of this today.

[IcefireInfinite]

This isn't your average everyday writing. This is... advanced writing.

Everything about this story is on point with being incredible. The banter, the supplementary effects, the references that are used as help for imagery, the impeccable forethought and explanations for why characters "do what they do" and for why an event happens or any information pertaining to it; it all adds up to an awesome story that I am graced with the pleasure of reading.

Absolutely amazing work. This is a cut above even the good.

[JAK0723]

Will this story continue? I think I'm enjoying this more than TwiGuard, honestly.

[Arkonfleight]

This is excellent and dramatic and all, but who names their kid Shift Skipper? Who hires someone named Shift Skipper?

[Vigriff]

Celestia, I understand your concerns but you need to reign in your control freak nature.

[Skulljack17]

8367233
Shift is only a nickname. And so is Skipper. Their real name is Shifty Steal Skipperton. The Third. And they probably got the job from their folks, like their uncle, but were made to work at a different location so as not to get too much suspicion thrown their way. Theirs is a long and storied history of drama and suspense that will unfortunately never come to light, as it is too dark even for this tale.

Either that or it was a gag that was too easy to pass up.

[BlueMoonHarlot]

King, you named a character who skipped their shift fucking Shift Skipper

[Aemon Targaryen]

“And before you argue, let me ask you... what if something like this happens again in the future? Not to Twilight, but to you . I’m not going to pretend I know anything about your world or however you want to call it, but if there are people running around with enough power to level a city with a storm, I can’t imagine that you, someone who has enough power to fight someone like that, haven’t made some enemies. You’re a good person, but you’re dangerous. I don’t want that danger around Twilight, and I’m betting you don’t either. It’s for the best if you just quietly step out of her life once this is all over and don’t ever, ever come back. I’d even consider it a personal favor if you did.”

She really talk as if doing a personal favor to her was a great honor.

[Whisper Spirit]

“Once this is all over, once you’ve made this other person ‘go away’,” her nose wrinkled like she smelled something bad, “I want you to do the same.”

What the f*ck Celestia

“I want you to go away,” Celestia said, calmly, coolly, as though she wasn't telling me to piss off. “This isn’t… this isn’t how the world is supposed to be. Magic? Monsters? Kill-storms that come right off heavy metal album covers? Are you kidding me? I don’t belong here, and neither does Twilight.”

It may "not how the world is meant to be" but it's how it is and it's certainly not Sunset's fault

“Twilight doesn’t need this. What happened to her is… it’s beyond awful. She needs help, she needs to be a normal little girl. That can’t happen if she’s hanging around with you, and you know it. When this is all over, I’ll take her. It won’t be easy, but I have friends in social services that will help me smooth things over with the authorities. I don’t know what story I’ll tell them, but I’ll make it work out even if I have to use every single dime of my trust fund to bribe every man and woman in City Hall. I’ll raise her as my own daughter and she’ll never want for anything. Clothes, food, books, college, anything she wants is hers. She’ll be normal, and she’ll be happy... but that will never happen if you keep coming around. Every time she sees you it’ll just be a reminder of what she lost.”

Who are you decide whats right for Twilight

“And before you argue, let me ask you... what if something like this happens again in the future? Not to Twilight, but to you . I’m not going to pretend I know anything about your world or however you want to call it, but if there are people running around with enough power to level a city with a storm, I can’t imagine that you, someone who has enough power to fight someone like that, haven’t made some enemies. You’re a good person, but you’re dangerous. I don’t want that danger around Twilight, and I’m betting you don’t either. It’s for the best if you just quietly step out of her life once this is all over and don’t ever, ever come back. I’d even consider it a personal favor if you did.”

Sure she's dangerous and probably has made some enemies but it's not her fault and it's Twilight's choice over whether to hang out with her not yours

Celestia turned to leave, but hesitated after just a couple of steps. She turned back and added, “And everything I said goes for Luna, too. Stay away from her. You’re a good person, but that doesn’t mean you’re good enough for my sister.”

I hate it when people try to prevent people from being friends or dating because one isn't "good enough"

[Ibliscorn]

This chapter alone would make a fantastic episode of a show that runs an hour long….it’s just that good and uses each minute without feeling like it was unnecessary.

Cool seeing Sunny using some heavy duty magic and sadly like others, I can see where Celestia is coming from…..but also how it’s a foolish, good natured stance

[Plotbuster]

It's funny how Celestia didn't consider the possibility that this guy might just be the tip of the iceberg. This fairly heavy practitioner is after Twilight. Who says he's the only one, not just the one that found her first?

I get where she's coming from, but seriously. This is some pretty high density stupidity. With this kind of domineering personality I feel kind of bad for this Celestia. She isn't going to have a thousand years of loneliness and regret to teach her some humility. Add that she literally slapped her sister full force and she doesn't really have a leg to stand on as far as what's good for Luna.

All that aside, this story is legitimately excellent. Glad I finally got around to reading it.

[ilubatar nuctemeron]

Cheese Cake <3!