FRIDAY, MAY 19, 9:31 PM
Rainbow Dash is literally shaking. “I dunno. Gaia Everfree could be some creature that got booted from Equestria and ended up in this world! That's what happened with the sirens!”
“Eh, sounded more like something that Timber was making up just to scare us. At least, I hope it was.” Applejack crosses her arms. “Last thing I want is to have camp ruined by some power-crazed magical creature.”
Popping a marshmallow into my mouth, I have to roll my eyes. When that Timber dude started telling us his “Gaia Everfree” story, I knew he’d manage to scare some of my classmates. But I figured the Rainbooms — especially the “Fearless” Rainbow Dash — would know better.
Timber’s story supposedly took place decades ago. But I’m the one who brought Equestrian magic to Earth. There aren’t any monsters in this world that I didn’t help create.
…Wow. When I put it like that, I sorta sound like a piece of shit, huh?
Focus on the marshmallows. There’s no problem in this world that corn syrup can’t solve.
“Hear hear!” Rarity says, smoothing out the bolt of fabric hanging over her arm. “We've had to deal with more than our fair share of those.”
I stop chewing. Rarity.
“At the Fall Formal, our musical showcase…”
Next to me, Twilight shrinks. Rarity, stop talking, please.
“The Friendship Ga—” Rarity notices Twilight and finally shuts up. She offers a nervous chuckle. “I mean, you know, everything turned out alright, of course!”
“Mm.” Twilight’s staring at the dirt. She turns completely away from us. “I’m kinda tired. I’m gonna turn in.”
Twilight walks away, feet dragging, and I feel an old fire sparking in my belly. I want to turn on my friends and tell them off, scream at them until they learn how to think before they speak.
But that’s not who I am anymore. For better or worse.
“Maybe lay off bringing up what happened at the Friendship Games?” I ask as soon as Twilight’s out of earshot. I try to speak slowly, evenly. “I think she's still pretty sensitive about it.” Do I really need to explain this?
Thankfully, they seem to get it. They all give me an apologetic smile — except for Pinkie, who takes a bite out of a half-melted marshmallow and with a full mouth says, “Our lips are sealed.” Weirdly, I trust that more than anything.
After the girls and I split up, I take a few minutes to just lean against a tree and think.
It’s been almost a year since I reformed. Why do I still get so angry at people? At my friends?
Centering breath.
Why can’t I be better?
The thought gets interrupted by a yawn wide enough to make my jaw hurt. It’s barely past ten o’clock — back home I’d be wide awake, and yet there’s something about field trips that just sucks the energy out of me. But then again, I do fall asleep in class, and this trip is essentially a weekend-long school day.
I lift myself off the tree and head to the tents. There’s no sign of Gaia Everfree as I creep through the forest, but thank the Goddess for the mosquito spray Twilight insisted we pack. I’d be missing five pints of blood by now otherwise.
When I reach the Sapphire Tent, I’m expecting silence, maybe Twilight’s snoring, which is louder than you’d expect.
I don’t expect to hear crying.
I rip the doorway flaps open, and Twilight’s head snaps up. She’s curled up in bed, knees to her chest, arms wrapped around them. Her face is red, splotchy, soaked with tears. Spike is laying at her feet.
I run to her. “Twilight, what’s wrong?” I ask, kneeling by her bed. “What happened?”
She recoils away from me. “Nothing,” she says, barely above a whisper.
Frowning, I glance at Spike. He just shakes his head. “I dunno! I came back to the tent and found her like this.”
“Please,” Twilight says. A gasping sob escapes her, and she buries her face in her knees again. “I’m just tired. Leave me alone.”
I sit down on the bed next to them. For the slightest of seconds my hand brushes against Twilight’s leg, and an itchy jolt shoots through my head — followed by a flash of white and purple.
“Is this about what Rarity said?” I ask.
Twilight curls up tighter.
A lay a hand on one of her knees. “C’mon, Twi. You can talk to me. Hell, I’m probably the best person to talk to about this.”
A silent moment passes. But then Twilight lifts her head just enough to look at me with bloodshot eyes. “Yes, what Rarity said. And Applejack. And Pinkie, earlier. And everyone else who talks about me behind my back.”
Part of me wants to smile and tell her it’s not true, no one’s talking about her, that’s silly. But I don’t, because she’s right. They do talk about her. They talk about both of us. Behind our backs and to our faces.
So instead I just nod. “Yeah. I get it.”
“No, you don’t get it,” Twilight says, lifting her head higher. She’s stuttering every other word, but there’s a venom in her voice that I’ve never heard before, and it paralyzes me. “You don’t. You’re strong, super cool. Everyone at CHS loves you. You’re not afraid of anything.”
I clench my fists. “That’s not—”
She clenches her fists right back. “I’m not like you. I’m scared, I’m always scared. That’s why I’m here crying. That’s why I can’t sleep. That’s why you” — she spits out the word — “always have to stand up for me.”
Anger boils in my stomach at that, but I try to ignore it. “I stand up for you because you’re my friend, and I want you to feel safe.” Not so you can throw it back in my face later.
“I feel like dead weight.” She scoffs. “And as soon as everyone finds out my magic is back, they’re gonna hate me again.”
“No one hates you.” I’m struggling to keep my voice down and to shut out my annoyance. “And the magic, here and back at the Friendship Games, isn’t your fault!”
Twilight bursts out of her curled up pose and shouts, “It doesn’t matter!”
Across the room, a burst of purple energy launches my backpack into the air. Spike barks and leaps off the bed. Even I jump to my feet, barely avoiding one of Twilight’s legs before it drives straight into my stomach.
There’s frenzy in her bagged eyes, in every gasping breath. The tears are falling even faster than before.
“It doesn’t matter that it’s not my fault,” she says, shuddering. “It was still me — is still me. I’m the one with the magic. I’m the one ruining everyone’s lives!”
She pauses, out of breath and probably expecting me to argue. I just stand there and let her breathe. Any anger I had is long gone.
A silent moment passes like that. Then she shakes her head, mutters what sounds like an apology, and leans back against her pillow. That gives me enough space to climb back onto the bed and sit facing her, legs crossed. Spike doesn’t hesitate either, hopping up and curling into Twilight’s lap.
“I thought time would make it better,” she says, petting Spike slowly. “I thought if I made friends, everyone would forgive and forget. But they still talk about it all the time.”
I consider a response, but can only manage, “Yeah.”
“And now the magic is coming back.” Her breaths pick up again and she squeezes her eyes shut. “And I don’t know what to do.”
It’s an impulse. I know it won’t solve anything, that I’m probably crossing a line. I know this is as much for my benefit as hers.
I lean forward, far enough that my back aches, and pull Twilight into a hug.
She’s rigid at first, freezing under me. But it doesn’t take long for her to bury her face in my shoulder, wrap her arms around my torso. I can feel every panicked heartbeat, and her trembling breaths travel down my collar and across my chest.
Instinctively, I start running my fingertips in a circular motion across her back. It’s what Princess Celestia used to do for me whenever I was upset, and even now, the memory is enough to put me at ease. With every circle, Twilight’s body loosens, until she’s basically slumped over onto me. Spike dodges out of the way.
Eventually the crick in my spine becomes unbearable and I let go. But Twilight doesn’t sit up again — she lays down and rests her head in my lap. She’s still hiccuping, still got her eyes closed. But the tears are gone, and the red is fading from her cheeks. I keep stroking her back.
It’s an automatic, repetitive motion. All the day's events — waking up at sunrise, the bus ride, the magic, the ghost stories, this — pull at my eyelids. Twilight’s breath is a white noise metronome. Thoughts slow down. Sleep approaches.
“How do you do it?”
Twilight’s voice slaps me awake. “Do what?” I ask through a mouthful of drool.
Twilight’s staring off at nothing, glasses crooked on her face. “How do you stay so happy when people bring up what you did? What we did?”
I don’t.
That’s the only answer that comes to mind as Twilight's question spins in my head.
The comments and gossip cut me as much as they do her. The difference is that I hurt everyone because I wanted to, not because some horrible headmistress baited me into it. I hurt my friends, and they still forgave me. So what right do I have to be upset? I’m lucky they even look at me.
Being kind, staying calm, turning the other cheek. That’s my job now. That’s why I’m alive.
But that’s my problem, not hers.
“It used to hurt a lot,” I say. Keep my breathing even. “Really. All the jokes and snide comments, they used to keep me awake at night. It felt like I’d never belong.”
I still lay awake sometimes.
Smile at her, even if she’s not looking. “But it got better. The girls, our friends — they mess up sometimes, yeah, but they love us so much. They’ll never give up on us, no matter how awful we used to be. Learning to accept that love is how I stay strong.”
Am I strong?
“Yeah?” Twilight asks through a whimper.
“Yeah.” I lean over, hanging my head near her ear. “I’m here for you, Twi. And I could never hate you.”
I feel Twilight swallow. She nods and closes her eyes.
The two of us go silent. I rub her back until the shallow breaths give way to snoring.
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Gosh, this one hits real good
Teenagers say the dumbest stuff.
Good thing Sunset's an adult in a teenager's body. She at least knows the right thing to say.
More please it's just getting good🥰🙏
I recognize that there will not be a precise answer because of the "real time" conceit, but approximately how frequently will this story update? If you anticipate updates roughly every week or so, I'll check it out now without fear that by the time of the next update, I'll have forgotten everything that's happened; if you expect gaps of three weeks or more, I'll wait and read it upon completion so I don't lose track of what's going on.
Uh huh...
Anger is apart of who you are Sunset. Even if you have indeed changed, it's still a part of you.
A job well done Sunset.
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From this point onwards, you should expect about one per week, occasionally more. Thanks for reading!
Now that’s the Equestrian way.
Some excellent fluff here, and I have to love Sunset’s double standard. When she blames herself for all the world’s magical ills and lets her friends constantly remind her of her past misdeeds, it’s just what she deserves. But it’s unacceptable when they do it to Twilight!
Poor Sunbutt Jr. needs a hug. So does Sci-Twi. Also therapy. Definitely therapy.
I've done a lot of bullying Sunset with her own thoughts over exactly this because it just makes sense that she would assume that. We know that the Sirens were a Starswirl the Bearded thing - and canonically he was out of commission for a long-ass time until Twilight brought him back, so the Sirens have been trapped in human-land for a long time (which still trips me out). But Princess Twilight learned that, and I don't remember her ever telling Sunset that bit specifically. Pretty sure the exposition was given in Equestria.
A lot of nerd rambling to say: I of course endorse this horse internal discourse.
God, yes, Sapphire tent comfort hour!!! And I'm someone who'll always prefer my Twilight characterizations with a little bit of antisocial venom in them. She's the disgruntled recluse learning how to love! It's what made her endearing to begin with, and both Twilights trended towards being less bitter and easily annoyed by those around them, which is completely fair and we love to see a healthy queen. But boy does it feel more like Twilight to me if she's got at least a little bite somewhere to her. Even a little sardonic humour, I'll take what I can get!
And the contrast between what Sunset says and how Sunset feels is properly heart-breaking. I'm so interested to see how that might be challenged as the year goes on. She clearly deserves to know she doesn't deserve bad treatment just because she was a bitch in the past. And accepting her anger as a healthy, if sometimes hard to manage emotion wouldn't hurt her either.
Regardless of what they learn or don't learn about themselves, I love seeing them naturalistically grow closer over time. Such is the fun of a slow-burn, I'm savouring every step.
Bonus points:
Far from being just continuity nods about Sunset's bad back (which is about to get worse), I can't understate how much it adds when a writer like you takes the time to think through how it would physically feel to be doing what the character is doing, in all the awkward, sometimes painful glory. Details!! They go a long way!!!
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yes. 100% yes.