Chapter 1

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Starlight Glimmer teleported into the library and hung there, levitating in her own telekinesis. The unnatural stance always made her look slightly disdainful.
"Twilight!" She exclaimed, "I've got it. It's ... it's brilliant." She blinked. Starlight was not a natural at friendship.
"That's to say, it's ... err... diabolical in its cleverness? and bad! grrr!" That she had even thought of somepony's feelings when she had new magic to think about was really spectacular progress, and Twilight was going to really appreciate it and compliment her on it once she got to the point and told her what she'd worked out. There was only one thing that "it" could be. The Curse. Twilight had been obsessing about it for years now.

"There's no way a simple spell can last that long. Bind it to an artefact maybe it'll last maybe a thousand years, but if the physical object gets damaged it's over- entropy wins every time. Its a lot harder to embed it in something alive, like a tree, because they change, but they grow and self-repair so sometimes it's worth the effort, but a tree with a parasitic spell this powerful would be stunted and probably die. I could build spellplex with self-repair functions, but it would still need to draw power from somewhere."

"It is you and Sunset. The curse-spell draws power from your love. Your win condition is to stop obsessing over Sunset and get on with your life."

"You know, like all your friends have told you to at the regular intervention-party every week for the last year?"

Dearest ſtarſwirl,

I've been having the moſt peculiar dreams. Not peculiar in content, but ſtrange in detail and conſiſtency, for þey return every night, but þey do not repeat, but continue, as if I had returned to a þeatre. I fear þat they foretell pain and loſs. Pleaſe come quickly.
Clover

Twilight frowned as she puzzled through Clover's hornwriting. The letter was wedged into on of Starswirl's journals at a date slightly that which the records gave for Silver Wing's execution. It fitted with the theory but didn't really add anything. She leafed ahead in the journal; Starswirl's familiar writing proving much less of a challenge. Starswirl reaches the court. Silver Wing already dead. Clover inconsolable. Record of Clover's description of her dreams. Description of a feast. Starswirl's dreamwalking trick; a description matching Princess Luna's that the dreams were more like memories. Pages of exquisitely erudite theorising about the dreams. Political fall out from the execution. Princess Platinum being surprisingly reasonable. Testable theory about the dreams. Trials; failure. Second testable theory. Description of lunch. Trial of second and third theory. Failure. Some sort of crisis that sent him haring off across Equestria...

Nothing. He was a busy pony, the dreams had stopped with the execution, he had other things to do.
"Maybe," came the treacherous little thought, "he could recognise a brick wall when he was slamming his horn into it."

2
"But really Princeless, I can't just go around breaking things because you asked me to. I'm ... reformed. What if somepony saw me just casually smashing things. There would be all sorts of screaming and some very tiresome panic. I don't break things just to see the pieces on the floor any more."
Twilight scowled "Please. This is <i>important<\i>."
"Just so you and Sunlit Diner can engage in some frankly insipid hoof-holding, I should put forth my frankly awesome chaos powers, undo all the good work I've done building trust with the ponys and just start tearing things up."
"Her name is Sunset Shimmer! You are literally omniscient! How can this be hard for you?"
"Well she never cared enough to come to my reformed villain parties, so I can't be expected to remember her name."
"You have reformed villain parties? Wait you're distracting me."
"Oh yes. Jokes about turning into a literal demon are much less hurtful coming from someone who has been there themself. You should tell your human friends."
"Would the time I brainwashed the whole town into needing a rag doll qualify me for admission? I'm really much better now." The thing about embarrassing yourself in front of Discord is that he never cared enough to make something of it.
"No. I want Sunpet, and we can't have you both. "
"If you broke the curse we could both go..."
"Now what sort of friend would I be if I just solved all of your relationship problems with magic? No, my mind is made up, no matter how funny it would be to do exactly as you ask and watch you suffer the hilarious consequences, I shall be a good friend and insist that you sort this out the hard way, with honesty and communication."

3
"Oh wow so your saying that you and Sunset are going to be reincarnated and remember being you and Sunset for ever and ever and ever! You are so super-lucky! Just imagine all the fun you can share with those ponies in the future! You'll have to have lots and lots of super-fun adventures and go to the best parties and eat the best cakes! So future you and future-Sunset can remember them for ever and ever and ever. I mean it would just be the worst if future-you had to dream an entire life time of you sitting in a library growling all frustrated at old books! Can you imagine?!"

Pinky just didn't understand what was important, Twilight thought. So what if all here future reincarnations had a sequence of terrible dreams about their loved ones dying prematurely followed by a much longer sequence of dreams about growing old falling asleep face-down in ancient books inter-spaced with staring longingly into a swirling portal-mirror? They had to understand, right? They probably wanted dreams like that. Long, boring dreams about waiting for inter-library loans. They'd be able to follow her research! Maybe they'd build on it. They could cite her!

Maybe Pinky had a point.

4
Dear Pony-Twilight,
So this is a bit odd, but are you sure about the reincarnation thing? I know it doesn't happen here. I mean, I can't prove that it can't happen, and maybe it does for a few people but the numbers show that in most cases it doesn't. There are nearly eight billion humans right now, and there were only one billion 200 years ago, so like 87.5% of people are either on their first or second reincarnations, and if you go back a bit further, the population was really low; only 0.1% of people can have more than 60 incarnations.

Also Sunset is trying to do something with squishy feelings. Can you make her stop, or at least leave me out of it? I have techno-magical data to analyse; I'm sure you appreciate how important that is.
Human-Twilight

It didn't matter; if human-Twilight was right it just made her and Sunset more special. And Sunset was special. She was clever and surprisingly sweet and she cared about other ponys so much. She'd left for them even though it hurt.
So why was Twilight spending more time daydreaming about breaking the curse than she was about seeing her afterwards?

5
I have listened to all your tale / you have reached a choice which must not fail.
Pick from between these two:
To break the curse / and make things worse
between Sunset and you?
On the other hoof/ let it stand as proof
that a long-distance relationship / is not so terrible a trip

By this point, Twilight was stressed enough and in a bad enough mood that Spike had had to run interference and, once the two of them teleported home, grumbling about "useless mysticism", he baked apology-cake and headed out in to the Everfree to deliver it.

The palace libraries in Ponyville, Canterlot and the Everfree were exhausted. The The inter-library loans from across Equestria had petered out, and Twilight still had no useful progress. All her magical tests on herself had shown nothing out of the ordinary- at least not against her base-line. She'd even done luck-trials, which wasn't even a thing. It turned out her chances of throwing a 1 on a chance-cube scaled with distance from Sunset and - she'd shuddered when she'd considered the test, and then done it anyway - eagerness to observe Pinky Pie.

There was one research library that she hadn't go anything from, but that was because the lost library of Sidith was lost beyond the Dragon wastes. Twilight was eager to go on an epic quest of friend- and librarian- ship past the dragon lands, but she had royal commitments and Celestia put her hoof down. Twilight could wheedle her way around her friends attempts at interventions well enough, but Celestia could make reasonable suggestions over a cup of Jade Goddess that no one dared cross. Starlight and Spike went instead.

Dear Twilight,
Everything is great out here in the dragon-lands. I don't know what the concern about dragons being mean was about. I've made lots of new friends, who are all a bit on the rough side, but they all seem very obliging.
Starlight Glimmer

Dear Twilight,
One way to make friends and influence dragons is casual giganewton telekinesis combined with shield spells. Starlight stumbled onto it on the way across the dragon wastes and I haven't been able to work out how to tell her that they're just impressed by how frightening she can be.
Spike

Dear Twilight,
The lost library of Sidith is now the found library of Sidith. Go team!
SG

Dear Twilight,
The lost wisdom of the ancients is mostly some calender and agricultural systems. Some impressive but sadly dated astronomical observations. The bits of magical theory I've managed to decipher are neither impressively advanced nor bizarrely alien. Looks like a dud. It's almost like progress was a thing. Spike's making a full catalogue, but it doesn't look good.
Starlight

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