This was impossible.

 Telekinesis, that is, the manipulation of objects via one’s horn, was easily the simplest spell in any unicorn’s repertiore, one that many foals practically learned via instinct, most even before receiving their cutie mark. Even those whose jobs had no sort of magical requirements used the spell, often several times a day, if not more, as it was an unquestioned facet of everyday unicorn life.

Yet here stood one of the finest magical prodigies in Equestria’s history, staring into an empty scroll. Empty because she could not muster the strength to lift the quill to write upon it. Try as she might, as hard as she could concentrate, the lavender mare grew far closer to bursting a vein in her forehead than causing the quill to budge.

This doesn’t happen. This couldn’t happen. Not to anypony, and especially not to her. Yet it was true; something was causing her magic to become sapped. Was she sick? She didn’t feel as though she was coming down with anything. Tired? It was hard to say, for the panic had shunted her wide awake. Or maybe, just maybe... she was out of practice.

That too seemed impossible. But was it? Sure, she used her magic every day, but if she truly was such a prodigy, logically she would have to train harder than anypony else to keep up that level of skill. So perhaps it was true, and she did indeed let her abilities atrophy. Which, of course, could mean only one thing. It would be imperative that she take the time to relearn this, the most basic of all unicorn spells; to return to the place where foals were taught to harness their first inklings of the arcane: Magic Kindergarten.

“Twilight?”

That must have been them. She didn’t know how, but somehow, Celestia knew. She knew that her most faithful student had turned into her most spectacular failure, and had done no less than dispatch her royal guards to drag the unicorn back to Canterlot to relearn what she by all means should know.

The classes... the fillies... the names, the taunts... so much laughter, yet so few reasons to crack a smile...

“It’s okay. It’ll all be okay! I don’t need this dumb old magic anyway, right? I can just go live as an earth pony! I’ll wear a hood all the time so nopony can see my horn, and I’ll run a roadside stand selling apple fritters! It’s foolproof! Absolutely nothing can stop-”

“Twilight?”

“Oh who am I kidding this is hopeless!” The unicorn’s heart raced, her breathing becoming even heavier than the apparent weight of that Discord-cursed quill. “But I don’t care! I’m not going back, you hear me? I’m not going back! I’m never going back!”

“Twilight! Wake up!”

“You’ll never take me! I’ll fight every last- huh what?”

Twilight Sparkle looked from side to side, up and down. There was the window, broadcasting the night sky despite the sun being out when the guards came knocking. Her bed, which she was currently in, a far cry from a few seconds ago pacing around the room in a daze. And, finally, a baby dragon and number one assistant, looking understandably concerned given the unicorn’s apparent fate, though she was beginning to suspect the troubles were of a different sort.

“Twilight!” the dragon said. “Good, you’re awake. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine... I guess.” Twilight shook the few remaining cobwebs out of her head, trying to make sense of all this. “Spike, why did you wake me up in the middle of the night?”

“The Princess is here!”

“She’s what? Spike, why didn’t you tell me sooner? Did she say why?”

“She said she wanted to talk to you... something about your studies?”

“My... studies?” Twilight’s lavender coat practically paled to white at the thought. What could she have possibly done to warrant an emergency meeting? At this time of night? Where the Princess comes to visit her? “Okay, Spike. Don’t worry. Don’t even begin to worry. It’ll be fine. I have a plan. All I have to do is get Rarity to make me a hooded coat, and Pinkie to teach me some recipes, and everypony else to build me a roadside stand-”

“Twilight? Are you there?” This was no royal guard; the voice was much more calm, delicate, and regal. None other than Princess Celestia herself.

“Okay... Spike! New plan! You distract her, and I’ll jump out the window! Sure, I might fracture a leg, but that’s okay, ‘cause legs heal. So then I’ll limp over to Rarity’s and hide out there for a few weeks until-”

“Twilight Sparkle,” Celestia announced as she opened the door to the unicorn’s bedroom, “have you been up all night studying again?”

“No! I’m sorry I’ll try harder please don’t send me...” Twilight paused, mentally replaying what had just transpired. “Wait, what did you say?”

Celestia spoke again, her voice calm yet stern. “Have you been up all night studying?”

A long pause filled the room as Twilight thought over the sentence once more. “Was... I supposed to be?”

Celestia smiled. “I would prefer if you didn’t.”

Twilight breathed an enormous sigh of relief. “Oh! Oh good. Very good. Very great! No, no, I went to bed a couple of hours after sunset. I’d say that’s about when most ponies go to bed, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, that is perfectly fine. Excellent work, Twilight.”

Another pause, even longer and more stifling. “So... is that it?” Twilight smiled nervously.

Celestia frowned. No. No, that couldn’t be it. If that was indeed it, then she’d have no reason to be in Twilight’s company and would have to fly back home... and spend another sleepless night staring at the sky. “No... not necessarily... um... your friendship reports?”

“My... reports? What about them? Aren’t I doing a good job-”

“Oh, absolutely. You’re an excellent student, really. However... personally, I think it would be a good idea if you... organized all your reports into a sort of-”

“Done!” Twilight stated proudly, levitating over a thick binder full of papers (with not a small amount of relief that she was fully able to do so). “This is a copy of every friendship report I’ve sent you since moving to Ponyville. All of them numbered, stamped, summarized, alphabetized, sorted, collated, and ironed.”

Celestia raised her eyebrow. “Ironed?”

“Well... some of the pages were a bit crinkly.”

The alicorn flipped through the pages, quite impressed. Twilight had done a marvelous job of this. Too marvelous, in fact, being that project was designed to burn a few hours, yet here it was completed in a manner of seconds. Still, she could hardly fail her student for that.

“Do you like it?”

“It’s... fantastic. I certainly wasn’t expecting you to go to this much trouble.”

“Well, after all that happened before when I was tardy at giving you my report, I realized that while I shouldn’t have a let a small problem turn into a large one, proper preparation would have prevented the small problem in the first place! And I imagined that at some point you would have asked for such an assignment, so I went ahead and did it.”

“You... don’t say.”

“It’s a good thing I thought ahead, isn’t it? Though to honest, I didn’t expect you to suddenly come here to ask me for it in the middle of the night...”

“Yes. Well, I don’t blame you. This was something of a spur of the moment idea...” Celestia frowned in thought. “So... is there anything else that you need?”

“Not really... I don’t think.”

“Ah. No, no, that’s fine. I merely wanted to ask. I should probably let you get back to sleep... at least one of us should be able to.”

“You can’t sleep? Princess, I thought you didn’t have to sleep.”

Celestia sighed. “Strictly speaking, I don’t. Anymore. However, with Luna’s return to her throne I have... large gaps of free time during the night hours, and I would like to do as almost all of my subjects do and fill them with sleep.” A light groan left her mouth as the alicorn shifted her gaze. “A task I am finding far easier said than done.”

“Can’t you just do... other things?” Twilight asked, then paused to consider her question. “This is why you’re here, isn’t it?”

Celestia’s gaze shifted again, still not quite making eye contact. “Perhaps, but as your mentor I believe that I should take every precaution to ensure your studies go as intended.”

“They are, right?”

“Of course they are.”

“So... um... Princess, forgive me for asking, but... did you wake me up in the middle of the night because you’re bored?”

Celestia subconsciously took half a step back at the thought. “What? Oh, no. No, most certainly not. I don’t get bored. I simply... have a surplus of free time and little to fill it with. It’s quite different when you think about it.”

Twilight pondered the situation. “You didn’t have free time before?”

The princess groaned, trying not to roll her eyes and failing. “Officially, yes. Unofficially, my ‘free time’ activities are things carefully scheduled and structured to give myself the appearance of empathy with the common citizen. I would argue against it more fervently if it didn’t appear to work.”

 “Well, in that case... what did you do in your free time before you had all these royal duties?”

“You mean... before Discord? Back when I was a filly?”

“Well... I suppose, yes.”

“Oh, well... that was thousands of years ago. I could hardly do anything similar these days.”

“Things couldn’t have been that different, could they?”

“Not entirely, but... I’d rather not go into the details.”

Twilight shrugged. “If you say so.”

Another sleepless night, yet this time not within the castle grounds. Fly off the balcony and enjoy a stroll around the slumbering streets of Canterlot. Why didn’t Celestia think of this sooner? Of course, she did practically have to escape her own castle without the guards noticing, as royal protocol still dictated that the princess be accompanied by an entourage for protection. She always thought that was stupid of course. Even if there were ponies out there who wished to assault her, and she imagined there were as nopony is one hundred percent liked, including her, it would be easy enough to dismiss them before they could touch either her or the guards.

Technically, it would be a banishment to the local jail, though she chose not to use that term anymore to describe it, as everypony associated banishment with the moon.

It was an isolated incident. It happened exactly once. If she was clear of mind it would’ve happened exactly never. At least that’s what she told herself.

No matter the case, it was over now. Luna had forgiven her. That was the important part.

Celestia continued her walk, wandering around before stumbling upon the Canterlot Museum of Equestrian History. She chuckled to herself a bit at the thought. For most ponies, a tour of the building would be an enriching, if a bit dry, look at Equestria’s past. For her, the walk around would be nothing less than a nostagic look back.

“Hmm... what I did as a filly... I suppose it would be nice to remind myself.”

She tried the door. Locked. Of course it was locked; the museum had long since closed for the day. However, there also didn’t appear to be anyone guarding the area...

As with any security worth its salt in a unicorn-dominated town, the lock was magically resistant, but that meant little against Celestia’s ability. For that matter, even Twilight was apt enough that she could easily pick locks if she wanted to.

Celestia made a mental note to never teach Twilight how to pick locks.

With a click, the door unlocked as the princess went inside, a small part of her idly wondering if this was what the guards were supposed to be protecting her from. Not that it helped.

“Your highness, there has been a break-in at the history museum!”

Luna looked up from her work with shock, practically leaping out of her seat, coming a few feet from the guard tasked with giving the dire news. “What transpired to cause this?”

“We don’t know, ma’am. The culprit appeared to have fled when they tripped the alarm system.”

“Was anything damaged or stolen?”

“Nothing damaged, ma’am. Even the lock broken to enter was picked cleanly. However, the culprit stole several of Princess Celestia’s personal effects.”

Luna’s eyes grew wide. “Has she been told?”

“No, ma’am. As per the new protocol, while the moon is risen you have the prerogative.”

“Then as my first act of duty, I shall inform her myself. Dismissed, guard.”

Running down the palace hallway was hardly regal, but Luna didn’t care at the moment. These were nothing less than her sister’s memories the thief had stolen, and though she was confident that the culprit would be caught and justice served, this didn’t change the fact that Celestia needed to know.

“Tia!” Luna shouted, practically slamming the door open, “Something horrible has-”

The sisters both froze. Celestia stared at Luna, suddenly realizing that she had forgotten to lock the door; Luna stared back at Celestia, wondering what she was doing reading to a plush rabbit so ancient that it looked like it could crumble to dust at a touch.

Luna took everything that had happened in the last few minutes into account... and began to snicker.

Celestia, however, was still frozen. “You saw nothing.”

“Perhaps, but even a blind mare may infer.”

“This is... rehearsal, Luna. I have an important meeting tomorrow morning with the ambassador from... erm, Hare... Island?”

Luna nodded, still smirking. “Quite. And in your wisdom, you felt it apropos to trespass and steal what appears to be-”

“I did not steal Sir Bunnykins! He was mine! You can’t steal something that was yours to begin with.”

“So you indeed took it from the museum then.”

Celestia paused, looking back at the rabbit. “I might have...”

Luna continued to chuckle. “You are aware that as Princess of the Night, it is my duty to report such crimes, as well as the circumstances surrounding them.”

“You wouldn’t.”

Luna thought for a beat before speaking. “No. No, I suppose I wouldn’t, for I do not as of yet have an adequate bargaining chip. Oh well, that is how it is. Good night, Tia. Please try to get some rest.”

Celestia breathed a sigh of relief as Luna closed the door. “She... you don’t think she would tell anypony, would she?”

Sir Bunnykins declined to answer.

“Sure, she can be a bit of a brat sometimes, but I do think she’s more reasonable than... why am I asking you?”

Sir Bunnykins remained in stoic silence.

Celestia looked from side to side, then playfully stuck out her tongue at the toy. “You’re no help.”