The effects of the spell were clear to Twilight Sparkle. The scorched ground and the unconscious body of her friend lay in front of her. To her dismay, that body was not one of a human, but still the same pony that she’d become familiar with over the past few months. The spell had not worked, that much was evident. The most pressing concern was if Gerry was okay.

She dashed over and immediately checked to see if any magical effects had hit him. Much to her shock, nothing was different. All that effort and magical energy for nothing? Inconceivable. Such a massive release of energy couldn’t just disappear into the air, even a badly calibrated spell would have some kind of side effect…

Spike poked Gerry’s unconscious body with his claw, “Uh, Twilight…”

“I know Spike! I’m sure he’s just fine!” Twilight was trying to convince herself, not him. If she were somehow responsible for Gerry getting hurt, she’d never live it down. He’d placed a lot of trust in her to do this. She inspected his body with a trained eye but didn’t see anything different. “No signs of magical impact. And he’s still breathing!”

She didn’t know whether to be annoyed or thankful. The side effects from an uncontrolled spell with that amount of magic could be disastrous! Twilight’s mind scrambled for answers – the spell had been executed with her usual eye for detail, and she’d practiced and refined the technique over and over again. Twilight hauled his unconscious body onto the cart and realized that she couldn’t possibly pull him all the way back to town under her own strength.

“Darn it.”

“Woah! You’ve been spending too much time around AJ Twilight.”

“I don’t want Gerry to wake up in the middle of this mess we made.”

“I think you might be a bit late on that one Twilight, he’s coming to.”

The large body shifted, rippling brown fur illuminated by the high noon sun. Gerry came to in an unfamiliar place. “What happened? Twilight?”

“We’re still here. It seems that the spell just knocked you out cold, a complete and total failure…”

“I still have all of my legs, right?”

“Yes.”

“Thank god. Small miracles.”

Gerry climbed off the cart under his own power, but he was still unsteady on his hooves. Twilight assisted him with a little bit of her magic. There was a silence that lasted for nearly a minute. Gerry finally spoke again, “It didn’t work.”

“No. I’m afraid not.”

“Are you sure Celestia didn’t just scam you?”

“No. The book is entirely in-line with what I’d expect. It follows all of the appropriate magical principles. The only reason I can think of is that our execution is lacking.”

“But you spent so much time getting this ready. What more can you do?”

“…I don’t know.”

Twilight had a bad feeling. Deep inside her chest somewhere. A lead weight, a tightening of her stomach. Something wasn’t right but she couldn’t place her hoof on it. She’d expected Gerry to be much angrier about the failure of their first attempt. Was it not out of consideration? He understood perfectly well how much work it was, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t get upset. “Let’s just head back, I don’t have enough power to do that again today. I’ll have to dissect what went wrong.”

Gerry sighed, “Alright. I should head back to the farm, should I come back tomorrow?”

“That would depend on how long it takes me – I’ll find you! Hopefully I’ll have some answers ready.”

Gerry nodded and waved goodbye. Twilight mounted the cart and began the long walk back to the library. She wanted nothing more than to crash down on her bed and fall asleep on the spot. But she still had work to do and answers to find. The smell of paper and cover was comforting, and it temporarily eased Twilight’s intense feelings of anxiety.

She parked the cart outside the door and unlocked it. She didn’t like having to close the library so often, since there were a number of regular customers who would visit on days like this. But for Gerry’s sake she didn’t mind inconveniencing people for the occasional experiment. It was for his safety and health after all.

In Twilight’s opinion, Gerry had been nothing but patient. She put herself in his horseshoes and imagined waking up in a body like her brother’s or being turned into a dragon who stands upright. What a frustrating, no, terrifying feeling that must be. Spike went back to his usual chores while Twilight lugged out the huge tome that Celestia had gifted to her.

The book had barely been touched. Many of its writings were esoteric – written in the old ways with strange vocabulary and pluralization. What was not different were the spell diagrams, the standard had remained the same since the inception of the art as an art. Twilight understood it perfectly well – and there was no sign of chicanery on the part of the authors or Celestia herself.

It should have worked, but it didn’t.

For Twilight it was perplexing but there was a rational explanation. Something that she hadn’t considered, or maybe overlooked. Magic, outside of rare circumstances, doesn’t just not work. Even a badly mangled spell would have some kind of effect, even a simple transfer of energy from caster to target. Twilight thought back to how she was admitted to her alma mater.

…

Twilight hadn’t said anything to Gerry at the ball, but now the knowledge was burning a hole in her mental pocket. Celestia had wormed her way into talking with Big Macintosh. The conversation had started innocently enough – Celestia inquiring about the health of the Apple family, an amusing anecdote about one of Mac’s ancestors who she knew personally. There was no reason to think that anything was truly amiss.

Until she brought up Gerry, or Toffee. To Mac, who knew nothing about Gerry’s past, where he came from, or why he held such a resistance to many of the feminine norms that had been pushed upon him. Twilight would have rather had Celestia pull out some of her teeth than listen to the discussion that followed.

Gerry and Twilight both knew that Mac had something of a crush on her, but for Twilight the extent of his admiration came as a surprise. That wasn’t the bad part though, Celestia didn’t know how Mac felt until then. She isn’t a mind reader. But her justification for casting the original spell had made Twilight think. Celestia was a deeply compassionate leader, to a literal fault. The individual opinions of her subjects don’t matter when she feels she’s in the right. To an outside observer it would come off as sociopathic, like moving chess pieces around a board of her own making.

But she was a second mother to Twilight. She knew.

Celestia would weep when a funeral procession would pass through the middle of the city. She’d become visibly upset when she came upon an injured animal. And for all of her knowledge and wisdom, she would struggle to understand why ponies would intentionally take a path of most resistance. To her, it was unfathomable that anyone would avoid taking the easy way out, to spare themselves pain both physical and emotional.

She would meddle, gods in the sky would she meddle.

She’d meddle with Twilight; she’d meddle with her brother. She’d meddle with Gerry – a confused man dropping through a hole in the sky. Because to her, why wait? Life for others was short, and that time should need not be spent in agony. Twilight had never given that behaviour a second thought. Pairing up her staff like a matchmaker was cute. Stopping Twilight from being a picky eater was helpful. Taking away Gerry’s choice because she assumed that he’d be the same as another human was malicious.

Twilight didn’t like it. It was a side of her teacher that she thought she’d never see. Celestia had made a mistake, a real one. Not being pictured consuming too much cake again. An honest, harmful mistake that couldn’t be so easily rectified. Twilight could not fit the puzzle together. It was against everything she knew about Celestia. The only explanation that she could think of – Celestia and the human she mentioned were close, very close.

She slammed the book shut, the force of the air pressure blowing her mane up into the air. What was there to do except wait and see? Twilight did not want to cast such a powerful spell again until she was certain that there were no side effects. Twilight did what she usually did. Tended to the library while it was still open. Prepared dinner for her and spike and turned into bed early. Celestia was right about one thing, there was only so much time in the day for mortals like her.

Author's Notes:

A huge thank you to:
Evo
Korenav

For supporting me on patreon.

I turned down a full-time job yesterday when I realized that I didn't want to do it.

Call it naive, but I want to pursue the things that I really care about. Writing is one of them. I'm a few hundred dollars short of being able to do this as a job, but dreams are dreams - I'm going to keep plugging away until it happens. I just want to thank you all again for reading my work, you're the people who make the effort worth it.

I've been a temperamental arsehole recently. Turning it down was the hardest choice I've made in years. I'd staked a lot of my self-esteem on getting a job and earning something for myself, but was it worth abandoning all of the things I'm passionate about to do it? I've found a new sense of resolve I suppose. I want to make something of the hobbies and talents that I have, instead of giving in.

So again, thank you for sticking with me while I left these stories to rot for so long. I considered cancelling Adjustment a few times because I couldn't get it straight in my mind. This story has gone to a dark place, darker than I intended in the original. Maybe I can't make light of such a serious thing as easily anymore.

But I'll finish it soon! We're near the ending. And it might not make people happy. I always considered this as something of a disaster story, a breakdown of the relationships and identity... even in the original version that I didn't consider so much. Don't kill me when we get there!