The Love Postulate

by SirDucky70

The Elements

Twilight was always a studious mare for better or for worse. She had well perfected the art of destroying her sleep schedule either for the sake of studying a new concept, getting caught in a loop of following up on the research that she’s already studied the n’th billionth time, or Continuing to organize and plan out every action she would take for the next month. She really had no shortage of things that could take her attention and run with it.

Or at least she used to.

After Twilight moved to Ponyville, her priorities began to slowly shift away from her studies of the sciences and into the studies of the new friendships she had made and how it had changed her.

Because Celestia, if it didn’t change her.
Twilight could feel her wings flutter slightly at the thought. That slight bit more of a reminder that she isn’t who’s she once was. Now looking back on it, her past actions are mostly laughable like when she tried to explain pinkies ‘pinkie sense’. She got hurt a lot from that endeavor. Kinda like when I went back in time just to try and tell myself not to worry about the future and only ended up making myself worry about the future.

Twilight continued to muse about her many misadventures. A good deal of which we’re caused by her own insatiable desire to analyze everything. Her eyes caught the clock at one point and noticed that it was already 11:00 PM. This caused her to give a light shake of her head as if to dispel her inner dwellings on past events. She had to stay focused on the present after all.

“If only the present were more interesting.”

Twilight put her cheek on her hoof before it wandered up to rub at her lightly aching temple. Meanwhile she reached out with her magic to the top of her ‘to read’ pile and levitated the next book down to her desk. She glanced absent mindedly at the significantly smaller stack of finished books next to her and her gaze, once again, was attracted to the clock. Yep, still moving. For a second Twilight felt irrationally irritated at the passage of time but decide to shake it off and start reading.

“Oh joy, Diacanterus’ Mathematica, nothing like ancient equirians and their affinity for convoluted equish.”

Twilight rolled her eyes and started to read the convoluted old equish, or at least try to. She didn’t even get one chapter in before a headache developed. She groaned and instinctively almost called out for Spike to take a note to order a translated version. The “s” slipped off of her tongue and she sighed, Spike was already in bed. And not only that, but she was in her personal study corner of the castle library. She could’ve screamed for him and he would have been none the wiser.

She looked up and around at the crystalline walls of the castle. Though her friends may have done their best to make the castle feel more of a home, it could never be the same as the golden oaks library. The constant lingering stuffy smell of old ink and parchment etched into the walls, the echoing silence gently pierced with pages turning and quills scratching on paper, and those times when the silence was shattered by one of her friends' shenanigans or spikes’ tomfoolery. A tear fell gently down twilight's cheek and she gulped trying to wash the memories back down.

“Well, what’s done is done.”

That statement made her scoff at herself, that’s the same thing she’s said over and over the past few months. Almost every day now that she thought about it. If only she could convince herself to listen. She sighed, closed Diacanterus’ works and shoved it away from her. She pushed a bit too hard and it fell onto the floor making a loud bang. The resulting echo bounced around the library and leaked into the long empty corridors of the castle. Twilight winced from both the sound and knowing that she disrespected a book. She levitated the book up off the floor, inspected it to be sure that it wasn’t damaged in any way, then floated it up to the top of her discard pile. She put her head in her hooves and looked up at the clock once again.

“11:30, ugh. At this rate, I won't have a clue on how to make a proof for anything better yet a proof on magical frequency synchronization.”

Twilight had been studying one of Starswirl's famous conventions in magic. The magical frequency synchronization convention or MFSC. It was a very daunting task for any respective physicist and has remained unproven through the many decades since Starswirl's passing. Twilight, in particular, had tried to solve it five different times now but always came up empty hooved. Recently with the lack of projects from Princess Celeastia though, she had decided to try again. Only this time she had a theory that a better understanding of math would help her. In particular, proofs. Unfortunately for Twilight, complex math was not something she found particularly interesting to study. Twilight's wings twitched slightly and she spread them so she could see her feathers.

“I’m gonna have to preen tomorrow or Rainbows gonna kill me.”

She folded her wings back along her back but her gaze lingered on them. Her mind wandered to how different her life had become since she got them. She was suddenly thrust into the position of being a princess. Not just any princess though, the princess of friendship. It was a lot of pressure to say the least. Suddenly she was supposed to be the one that everyone came to for a friendship problem. Not that she didn’t love to help her friends, but she needed to have answers for them. In science and math answers are easy. Their black and white, night and day, yes or no, correct or incorrect. It’s simple. But with friendship? She had only known friendship for 2 years up until the point that she became the princess of it. How could she-

GONG!

Twilight yelped and snapped her neck around to search for the offending noise.

GONG!

Twilight's eyes settle on the antique grandfather clock that Applejack had given twilight a few days ago. She let go of a breath she didn’t know she was holding and started to grumble.

“Stupid clock, I need to give that thing back to applejack, I knew she didn’t wanna get rid of it anyway.”

Applebloom had managed to convince Applejack to have a barn sale a few days ago. Of course, anypony who was anypony knew that Applejack didn’t want to get rid of anything, but Twilight thought the clock would add a bit more of an antique feel to the library and maybe make it feel more like the golden oak library. Instead, all it does is jumpscare her every hour on the hour.
Twilight turned her gaze back to the less intrusive clock on her wall to see that it was, Indeed, midnight. She rubbed the side of her head with her hoof to try and push away the headache and decided she would only do one more book for the night. At that, she levitated down the next book in her pile. This one was a reduced version of Euclop’s Elements. She opened it to the first page and breathed a sigh of relief as this version was translated from old to modern equish. Twilight read through all of the basic obscure definitions of basic math principles that made up the first 6 pages. They were so basic that it was hard for twilight to see how they would be of any use. She was about to start skimming through to see if it had anything to do with proofs, when she found them. Except they weren't proofs, they were postulates.

Postulates are ideas that are assumed to be true so that other ideas can be built upon them. Twilight didn’t think too much about the ones she read, it was all just trivial geometric stuff somepony figured out and defined ages ago.
Twilight rolled her eyes,snapped the book shut, and put it on the discard pile. She got up from her chair and shivered as her hooves touched the cold crystalline floors. The winter months were rapidly approaching and that meant that the castle would start to feel colder than usual. She stretched a loud pop out of her neck and back.

“That’s enough for a night.” She said as she walked away from her desk and started down the labyrinth of crystal halls toward her distant and waiting bed.

“Maybe I should just start looking into more princessy subjects to study. Anything that doesn’t have to do with rigorous mathematical proofs.”

Twilight shut the door to her bedroom and sat on the foot of her bed. The sheets glow with the purple-lavender hue of her magic as she pulled them open for her. She yawned,

“Maybe I should focus on answering friendship problems,” twilight tucks herself under the downy soft sheets. “S,not like there's proof for friendship.”

At that she drifted off to sleep.

Or at least she should’ve. Her final sleep deprived statement made her mind start to piece together an idea.

“Why not make a proof about friendship? I mean, at the very least trying to make proofs about something I’m supposed to know very well will get me the experience I need with proofs to work on Starswirl's convention…”

After thirty minutes or so of mental back and forth over this idea, her eyes opened again and she reluctantly pulled herself out from under her warm bed, set her hooves back down upon the cold crystal floor, and trudged back to the library. The time it took to walk back to her desk only made her unwilling and tired body further cave into Twilight’s now buzzing and work ready mind. A look back to her nemesis of time told her it was two in the morning.

“It’s gonna be a long night.”

Author's Note:

This chapter is old and will not be part of the finished story.

Thanks for giving a shit.

Comments

[SirDucky70]

Of all the stories I’ve seen, this is the most recent.

[Mystic Sunrise]

11747734
.