Sun Redacted

by daOtterGuy

Sun Spots

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La•zy Eye /ˈlāzē ī/ Noun

An eye with poor vision that is mainly caused by underuse, especially the unused eye in strabismus.

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It was a sunny day in Ponyville. Bright, harsh and frankly overbearing. Rays of light hammered into the world, piercing through whatever poor unfortunate pony’s eyes dared to exist in the space.

That was secondary to the current fixation of Twilight Sparkle.

Twilight Sparkle stared at it. The stare she used was the kind she employed when she’d encountered something new and interesting and desperately wanted to study it. A puzzle with no solution readily apparent that needed proper research and time to discover. Curiosity manifested within a single look.

She was perplexed. Befuddled. Confounded. Utterly bewitched by the new thing that had crossed her path. There was a slight irritation in her eyes as the sun beams had found their target in her staring pupils, but it mattered little to her at the moment. She had found a mystery, and she had resolved to be the detective to unravel it.

It was only a matter of time until everything fell into place and she had an answer to this truly mystifying fascination.

“...Twilight. Stop being creepy.”

Her mind snapped back to reality. She turned to look at her baby brother Spike who had an expression that said ‘you’re getting social norms wrong again’.

Curses. Which one was it this time?

Despite her personal growth made manifest by the wings on her back and the crystal castle she stood before, it was moments like these that reminded her of her considerable social failings.

She returned her gaze to her to its original position and was greeted by the pony of her fixation.

Ditzy Doo.

Pegasus. Mare. Light grey coat. Short messy blonde mane. Cutie Mark of six bubbles. Dressed in her postal service uniform. Single mother to Dinky Doo. Golden—

Ah, there it was.

“There’s something wrong with your eyes,” Twilight stated with the bluntness of somepony telling another what colour the sky was.

“Twilight, you can’t just—” Spike rubbed the temples of his face “—it's too early in the morning for this. You deal with this on your own.”

He walked back inside the castle, shaking his head.

“Yes, there is!” Ditzy replied enthusiastically.

“No, I mean there’s really something wrong with your eyes,” Twilight stressed.

Ditzy tilted her head to one side. Both pupils rolled along the outer lining of her eyes. The sun rays that had been blocked partially by Ditzy’s head assaulted her anew, causing Twilight to squint.

“Um, yes?” Ditzy replied. “I’ve known about my condition for a long time now. You see the doctor—”

“I know that! What I’m trying to say is—” Finally, what Twilight had said caught up with her. Deep shame bubbled up within her as she realized her faux pas. She decided to enact good friend tactic 37. “Oh my gosh, Ditzy, I’m so sorry. That was incredibly insensitive of me to say!”

“It’s okay, Twilight. I’m used to it!” Ditzy smiled brightly. “I’m just glad you haven’t gotten to the part where you start making fun of me about it.”

“No! Oh sweet sun, no! I would never—” Twilight took a deep breath, then exhaled “—Sorry. Can I explain?”

“Sure!”

“I was speaking with an old friend in Canterlot the other day and after having a long thrilling discussion on the possibilities of heat using the magnification of glass as a potential way to improve the heat retention of thermal baths found—” despite the positions of Ditzy’s eyes, she could still sense the blank stare “—Sorry. We ended up on the topic of optometry. Specifically, lazy eyes.”

“Oh!” Ditzy nodded, then tilted her head to one side again, both pupils rolling with her. Twilight found herself tracking the movement. “Why?”

“Science!” Twilight punctuated the statement with a flaring of her wings. She forced them back down. “Or, well, Moondancer had concerns about developing the condition due to her excessive reading habits.”

“Okay, that… sort of… makes sense,” Ditzy said.

“It does!” Twilight agreed. “Anyways, back on track, do you know what a lazy eye is?”

Ditzy pointed a hoof at her own eyes.

“No! Well, yes,” Twilight relented, “but! There’s something unique about how your eye actually moves.”

“... Randomly?”

“No! I mean, sort of? Look, a standard lazy eye doesn’t do what your eyes do. They move too much and seem to follow a pattern whenever—”

“Sorry, Twilight, but I have the rest of my route to complete, then I need to pick up my precious Dinky from school.” Ditzy waved a wing. “Good luck with whatever you’re doing!”

“Wait, no! You don’t understand! Your eyes—!”

Then she was gone, flying away and leaving Twilight with an unresolved mystery.

“...Dammit,” Twilight muttered.

---

A•ver•sion /əˈvərZH(ə)n/ Noun

A strong dislike or disinclination.

---

Twilight desperately pored over her books, searching for an answer. Ditzy refused to spare time for her to solve the mystery, thus leaving Twilight with her oldest friends to shed light onto this perplexing conundrum.

She flipped through pages and footnotes, indexes and glossaries, looking for any hint to the solution that was just out of reach. Just one clue. Any clue. Just ONE and she would—

“Um, Twilight?”

She fell backward with a squawk, wings and limbs flailing. Righting herself, she looked into a familiar face with familiar concern.

“Fluttershy!” Twilight greeted. “How are you? What brings you by?”

“...You forgot about the picnic with the other girls today, didn’t you?” Fluttershy deadpanned, expression flat.

Her brain ground to a halt. It frantically searched for the requisite memories, delved through cabinets for prior promises and came up with the appropriate answer.

“I forgot!” Twilight exclaimed. “I can’t believe—”

“It's fine,” Fluttershy interrupted. “You’re not late. We can head there now and still be on time, but it seems you might have…” She waved a hoof trying to find a proper word to use.

“Become obsessive?” Twilight finished.

“...Yes.”

“I mean… yeah, fine. I have. Spike has been on my case the last few days over it.” Twilight groaned. “ But I can’t help it! The subject is so fascinating!”

“The subject being…?”

“Ditzy Doo’s eyes. Wait, no, don’t look at me like that!”

“Twilight.”

“It’s not what you think!”

“You know she’s been—”

“I know! I know.” Twilight hung her head. “It’s just so unusual for a pony with her condition to have it behave the way it does, even if she’s had it since foalhood.”

“She didn’t have it as a foal,” Fluttershy said.

“Wait, she didn’t?” Twilight asked, surprised.

“No, she developed it around middle school. It was back in Cloudsdale and—” Fluttershy furrowed her brow “—Well, the details are a little vague since the sun was so bright out that day, but Ditzy had looked up in the sky, and then her eyes came down like that.”

“What?!” Twilight exclaimed.

“What’s what?” Fluttershy asked.

“That’s not—!” Twilight shook her head. “You know how lazy eyes work, right? They don’t just happen like that!”

“Twilight.”

“No! Don’t ‘Twilight’ me. This doesn’t make any—”

“Enough.” Fluttershy cut through the air with a wing, glaring at her. “This is beyond rude and insensitive of you. I understand that you can get caught up in things like this, but Ditzy doesn’t like ponies drawing attention to her condition and she has done nothing to deserve this treatment. You’re gonna end up really hurting her. Drop it.”

Twilight was ready to argue the point, but stopped herself. Fluttershy was right. She’d gone too far.

“...You’re right, sorry. Let’s head out.”

Fluttershy smiled.

---

Sun Spot /sən spät/ Noun

Any of the dark, irregular spots that usually appear in groups on the surface of the Sun (its photosphere), lasting from a few days to several weeks or more.

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Twilight munched on her salad outside her favourite restaurant. She was alone and seeking shelter from the harsh glare of the sun. Though she adored her mentor, she couldn’t understand the logic of the Princess to make the sunlight this obscene mid-autumn.

She noticed Ditzy fly by in the distance. It reminded her that she owed Ditzy an apology, especially after the dressing down Fluttershy had given her the day before.

“Ditzy!” Twilight called out, waving.

Dinky altered her course and flew toward her. The sun’s rays were so strong and at an angle that they outlined her in a halo of light, casting harsh shadows against the ground.

Despite herself, Twilight watched as Ditzy’s eyes rotated… away from…

“Hey, Twilight, what can—”

“The sun,” Twilight interrupted. “Your eyes move away from the sun.”

As soon as she said it, Twilight felt as if she shouldn’t have. Like something’s unwanted attention had been drawn to her, and now it was fixated on her next actions. It was uncomfortable. Its gaze felt like it had dissected her, peeled away the layers of her body to see the core of her very nature. She felt naked in a way that made her too vulnerable and she desperately wished she had something to cover her in that moment.

After hearing her revelation, Ditzy stared at her with an unreadable expression. Now in the know, Twilight could see her pupils hide from the sun’s gaze as its rays bore down on her, adjusting to every movement of Ditzy’s head.

“...I don’t remember much,” Ditzy said. “The whole thing is mostly just a bunch of bright sunspots in my memory, but I saw something I shouldn’t have when I looked at the sun.”

“... What was it?” Twilight asked.

“...Something,” Ditzy said. “There was Something in the sun.”

That feeling of attention grew causing Twilight to fidget and sweat under its gaze.

“I don’t understand,” Twilight said.

“Nor should you,” Ditzy replied. “Look, Twilight. Sometimes it’s better not to know.”

“What?! That’s—”

“I saw Something. Something so bad that my eyes now refuse to even look at it.” To prove her point, she turned to look at the sun and her eyes rotated away. “I know you feel that you have to know, Twilight, but take my advice.

“Don’t look at the sun.”

Ditzy flew away leaving Twilight with her thoughts.

This was ridiculous. ‘Don’t look at the sun’. It was the symbol of Princess Celestia. She would never allow Something on her sun! To choose willful ignorance of the unknown went against everything she stood for. The worst a pony could get from looking at the sun was a momentary bout of sunspots remedied easily by some shade.

Of course, there was an easy solution to this. Just look at the sun.

She’d done it before… hadn’t she? At the Summer Sun Celebration. Wait, no Celestia had blocked it out of view during that. Maybe by accident? But she always looked away quickly or had her eyes shaded by a hoof.

Though she’d never thought about it deeply before, Twilight had never truly looked at the sun.

Well, she could remedy that quite easily. It was a bright sunny day, not a cloud in sight and it was the simplest solution imaginable.

That gaze stared more intently at her, egging her on. She was almost certain that the gaze belonged to— No, there was no Something in the sun. But, Twilight knew that if she didn’t look now, she’d never do so. If she wanted an answer, she had to go through with it.

Just look up.

Why was she full of dread? Why did her body shake? Why did the world seem to be viewing her with such intense intent, like there was about to be a massive turning point that would change everything going forward?

She just had to look up.

It would only be for a moment.

Just look up.

There was no reason to be scared—

J U S T L O O K U P.

Twilight Sparkle looked up.

Comments

[TCC56]

And this is why you should tell the others, Celestia.

[JadeDaUnicorn]

Celestia kept the other Princesses in the dark because she wants to protect them. Only for one to get hurt by this lack of knowledge.