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The First Day

It wouldn’t be enough to describe the walk between worlds as a whirling tunnel of purples, oranges, greens, and reds. It wouldn’t be enough to mention the winds and the fury originating from everywhere and nowhere at once, nor the multiple gravities competing for a chunk of her body as she fell past their invisible sources.

Travelling between worlds always included that final flash at the end of the line—a perilous moment between light and darkness when you detached from consciousness, as a rising blob escapes from the floor of a lava lamp.

***

Sunset Shimmer found herself in a place without sound, with only a hard surface beneath her stomach and the light scent of soap in the air. She groaned, pushed herself off of whatever floor she’d landed on, and inhaled.

Her muscles tensed differently, flexed differently. When her hands should have splayed for leverage, she felt nothing from them—no cold, no strain, no numbness. She felt shorter. Her spine seemed happy to remain horizontal, though she had yet to rise to her feet. She lifted her head instead, working her jaw as if it had rusted over with disuse. She noted how their contours extended past the plane of her face.

The base of her spine flicked to one side, as if to shrug off the whole thing. For what was the big deal if she had a tail now, or hooves, or fine yellow hair covering most all of her quadruped frame?

It had been thirty moons since she had returned to the body of her birth, but she awoke a unicorn as if she had only gone to bed as one. She turned in place, hooves clopping on the floor, to look at the mirror that stood behind her.

“I should just go back there right now,” she growled, calling the image of that pink-haired menace so she could burn it in her mind’s eye. “Kick me through a dimensional portal without so much as asking, will she? It’s not like skipping down to Sugarcube Corner for a malt, you know!”

“Hello? Is somepony up here?”

Sometimes, a pony’s heart will kick her ribs so hard that all she can do, aside from checking for donkey genes in her ancestry, is curl up on the floor and hope no one sees her moment of weakness. As Sunset succumbed to this fate, her mind screamed at her, demanding why in the multiverse she heard that voice on this side of the portal.

Like two balloons rubbing together—except the pop they made would destroy the whole of existence.

Sunset had landed in a circular storage room of some sort, except its only contents at the time was the filigreed mirror leading back to her home dimension and one floored unicorn too stunned to make the crawl back. Two small, empty windows opened out to the blooming blue of a morning sky, while the clop of hooves echoed up from the spiral stair recessed into the wall.

Almost too late, she remembered herself. Her horn glowed with a turquoise aura—one to match the intense hue of her eyes—and the potent veil of a look-the-other-way spell cascaded over her just as a cloud of dark pink hair bounced into view.

It couldn’t be.

“Ooooh.” The pink earth mare in the stairway spotted the mirror. Her hooves made the most ridiculous sproinging sounds as she pronked her way over. Three balloons decorated her haunches, two of them blue and flanking the yellow one in the middle. Her big, blue eyes blinked and blinked as she looked the mirror up and down, chirping random bits of babble to herself before she plopped down in front of it.

She began making faces.

“Blehhhh! Hiiiiiiing! Grawrrr! This is the song that never ends! It just goes on and on, my friends! Some ponies started singing it not knowing what it was, and they’ll just keep on singing it forever just because this is the song tha—”

The pink pony whirled around with her big blue eyes contracted to the size of pencil erasers. Sunset leaped to her hooves, her spell dismissed and her nostrils steaming. If all of Equestria suffered pretty little heart attacks after hearing her yell that one word, so much the better, for it got that incredibly inconvenient pony to shut up.

For a moment, at least.

“Oh, there you are!” the other pony said, giggling. “Could you point me to the little filly’s room?”

Sunset’s jaw pedaled through the air a few times before it remembered it wasn’t a bicycle. Shaking her head, she took one more glance around the room. “Yeah,” she stuttered, racing her mind to the door in question before the words reached her tongue. “Go back down the stairs. It’s the second door on the right in the hallway.”

“Thanks!” said the other pony, waving. She trotted back to the stairway and began to descend, humming a tuneless ditty to herself as she went.

Sunset slumped onto her haunches and sighed. What were the odds that the first pony she’d run into—

“Wait!”

Sunset bolted for the mirror. The pink pony beat her to it. She came out of nowhere. In full mockery of Neighton’s Third Law of Motion, the equal and opposite reaction to Sunset bouncing off the pink pony never took place. Though this meant the world back there was spared a demise by doubled pink, it also meant more time spent with this thing.

“I just realized something,” said the other pony, bearing down on Sunset as she tried to scrabble back for room.

“What?”

“You’re pretty.”

The pink pony’s eyes closed in contentment, and she hopped off toward the staircase with a large smile bridging her ears.

Sunset scratched the back of her head. As the multiverse had it in for her, she knew she wouldn’t be expunging the sight of those intense blue eyes pressed against hers for a while. Well, until she remembered how to pull off that memory-scrubbing spell.

“Wait!”

Sunset smacked her forehead, only to remember a moment too late how hard hooves were. The stars in her vision pushed out whatever lecture she had for herself for failing to make a break for the portal while she still had the chance. The other pony stood over her now, her chest heaving with exertion.

“What now?” Sunset demanded.

“You’re Sunset Shimmer,” said the other pony.

Sunset rolled her eyes. “I’m the butt of a cosmic joke, that’s what.”

“Like I’m gonna fall for that old gag, Miss Shimmer. My name’s Pinkie Pie.”

“I know who you are.” Gritting her teeth, Sunset concentrated a sheath of turquoise magic around her horn and released it, blinking to a spot a couple yards away from her interrogator. “Your other you just pushed me through that portal there. You should go visit her.”

Fortunately for space-time, Pinkie shook her head. “Nope! I’ve got to help the Cakes up here in Canterlot for the next two days. They just opened a new store a few weeks ago and they’re super bogged down with customers.”

Sunset’s brow furrowed as the dumpy matron of the soda shoppe on Brayton Street and her beanpole husband drifted into her mind’s eye. They had been talking of opening a second location, though that had been two years ago. Who knew if they had actually followed through since?

“And besides—”

The intrusion of a pink hoof bursting Sunset’s recollection brought the unicorn back to reality with all the subtlety of aggravated assault.

“Twilight told me that two Mes in one place would likely cause everything to explode.” Pinkie Pie rocked back and forth on her hooves as if she were only telling someone to expect a small shower later on. “Besides, I’m sure Other Me is more than capable of taking care of her on her own over there.”

Pinkie grinned. “Which means…”

Sunset recognized that gleam in Pinkie’s eye. It was much the same she’d once given off back when she was CHS’s princess regnant. The process of crystallizing nefarious schemes and plans never skipped over that insidious spark—and to see it manifest in this pony put more ice in her veins than the one time she conjured a Neighpalese blizzard in the exam hall.

“C’mon,” she cried, hooking her hoof around Sunset’s neck. “You’ve been away for forever. I’m sure you’ll want to see what’s changed since you left? I’ll even be your tour guide. I bet that’ll give me some ideas for your upcoming ‘welcome-back-to-Equestria-from-your-self-imposed-exile-even-if-it’s-only-going-to-be-for-a-little-while’ party. It’ll be a blast, trust me.”

Sunset had no chance to protest as Pinkie hauled her toward the stairwell. Pinkie stopped halfway down, her eyes crossed, and her back legs squeezed together.

She smiled. “First, though, I really need to go potty.”

***

“And over there’s the park,” Pinkie said, pointing toward an open, grassy terrace with flower bushes in planters and scrolled benches beneath the oak trees. “Ponies often go there to relax after a hard day at school or work. You know, fly a kite, read a book, go parachuting off the edge? One time, this mopey stallion totally forgot to take his chute with him, so I caught up to him and gave it back right there in the air. Hee hee, you should have seen the look on his face. He felt so silly after that.”

“The park,” she says, Sunset thought, keeping her jaw set. As if the Orion Green was the only one in this city. The pony bouncing next to her had whisked her from the public works of Aquarius Plaza to the governmental buildings of Gemini Quarter throughout the day, and the Canterlot native learned nothing new. She stopped volunteering the names of all the shops and buildings once she realized this insult to metabolic limits had no plans to cut her needless tour short. Sunset was no slouch in the fitness department, either, but she had to call a breeze spell to keep the sweat from matting on her coat.

“Hey, are you hungry?”

“Is there a reason you’re hanging off that sign to ask me that?” In truth, Sunset’s stomach had begun its slow condensation into a black hole hours ago, but heck if she was going to encourage this maniac. Even her Pinkie Pie would have asked this one to slow down.

“It was there,” Pinkie said, shrugging. Her dismount, Sunset had to admit, was flawless, sticking the landing on the tips of her back hooves. “How ‘bout we head over to Sugarcube Canterlot? I wanna show you what I brought Mr. and Mrs. Cake today.”

Perhaps it was because Pinkie finally had someplace new to show her. Maybe she was on the brink of stuffing everyone in this backward little kingdom for suffering this saccharine pest to live. Whatever it was, Sunset agreed to follow after her.

The shop had opened on the southern end of the Libra Promenade, the heartline of Canterlot’s retail and social culture. Sunset stopped in her tracks when she saw it for the first time—most of the buildings along this street boasted precise masonry embroidered with flowing curlicues and filigree, and often sported crenellated roofs or tapering, striped spires.

Back in the other world, Sugarcube Corner was just another street corner snack shoppe. It had an awning.

Sugarcube Canterlot was a cake.

Its four tiers towered over the other buildings along the Promenade, their edges rimmed with red blossoms the size of stallions and outrageous arrangements of fruits as big as stagecoaches. Sunset swore she smelled hints of marzipan coming off the building, as well as—

“—Mascarpone Meringue Madness.”

Sunset started at the voice in her ear.

Pinkie seemed not to notice as she kept on going. “Heh, this brings back memories.”

The line going out the front door triple-backed on itself in the street, with ponies shifting on their hooves and craning their necks over the mass of ponity before them. It was almost as if Princess Celestia was in attendance there—even Sunset had to admit that her yearly autograph lines at the front of CHS were shorter than this.

Then again, ponies did take up more space in lines. Maybe it all came out to a wash.

Pinkie led Sunset inside. Right away, Sunset knew she had seen full-service restaurants near the university with less traffic than this place. Cloth-covered tables, all of them occupied, littered the broad, circular floor. The line from outside passed beneath a central chandelier fashioned like a tray of cupcakes to the service counter along the back wall. The laughter and bustle of ponies eating and drinking together pressed on Sunset’s ears like a stadium crowd. A feeling crept through her gut like an arctic slime mold, cold and branching. But before it could spread from her stomach, Pinkie spirited her up one of the staircases hugging the outside walls up to the store’s second story.

They passed through a kitchen half the size of the seating area below, where a brigade of ponies in white aprons and hats prepared batters with huge mixers, chopped baskets of fruits, and slid wooden paddles in and out of wood-fired ovens all along the wall. Sunset barely had time to process this before Pinkie dragged her ever higher. The third level of Sugarcube Canterlot looked to be office space, but though it made less noise than the other levels below, ponies continued to stream up and down the hallway with bulk orders and customer invoices fluttering in their mouths and before their horns.

Only when they reached the top of the store did Pinkie let Sunset drop to the floorboards.

“Whew,” Pinkie wheezed, sliding down to join Sunset. “Busy place, huh?”

Sunset had nothing to say to that. Instead, she gazed around this new place, letting herself take it all in. She saw two plush beds along the far wall with hearts cut out of the footboards, a kitchenette and icebox, and a door leading away into what must have been a bathroom. For a studio apartment in Canterlot, this wasn’t a bad way to live. Sunset wasn’t surprised to see balloons tied to every corner of furniture, or streamers and banners hanging down from the ceiling and over the windows. A record player stood in the corner with a bell more appropriate for the horn on a cargo ship.

“Pinkie Pie?” called a fatherly voice from the stairs. “Was that you coming up just now?”

Sunset’s eyes went wide at the two arrivals in Pinkie’s doorway. Mr. and Mrs. Cake had been regulars in her life as a high schooler, so seeing them here as ponies turned her stomach a little. A stupid reaction, since she knew better than anyone how mirror dimensions followed through with their denizens, but all the same…

“It is,” said Pinkie, bouncing over for a hug. “Oh! Hey, Pound. Hey, Pumpkin.”

“Ah-glahh!” Two little foals, a cream-colored pegasus colt and a, well, pumpkin-coated unicorn filly crawled out from behind Mrs. Cake’s head and onto Pinkie’s neck. The filly all but inhaled Pinkie’s ear, dribbling saliva, while the foal butted the earth mare with his head.

How in the world was she laughing at all of this?

“I brought you a new friend,” she said, turning toward Sunset.

“Keep them away from me.”

Pinkie giggled. “Suit yourself.” She returned the foals to their mother and presented Sunset with a hoof. “Her name’s Sunset Shimmer.”

“Oh, how delightful,” Mrs. Cake said, forming dimples on her pudgy cheeks when she smiled. To her surprise, Sunset felt something relax within her as heat suffused her face.

“Is she from around here?” asked Mr. Cake.

“I grew up here,” Sunset snorted. Her ears folded as she listened to her tone there, but from the way Mr. Cake smiled at her, she decided she hadn’t spoken too far out of line.

Mrs. Cake lit up. “That’s wonderful, dear. We’re sure you’re a very busy pony, so we wouldn’t want to impose on you. But, it’d be nice to befriend a local so we can know how to run this place better.” She wiped her brow as she turned to her husband. “It’s much more hectic here than Ponyville, that’s for sure. Are you hungry, Sunset?”

Sunset was never a pony to let others speak for her—not even her stomach throwing its loudest tantrums. “A little,” she allowed.

“You should try one of these, then!”

Sunset struggled to keep her features neutral while Pinkie fished something out of the curls of her tail. Really, her tail. She came up with a blue box the size of a textbook and set it down on a nearby table. Sunset followed her over—something about that box had disabled every survival instinct in her brain.

Inside the box were twenty-four spheres of chocolate the rough size and texture of ping-pong balls. While Sunset took a closer look, Pinkie began bouncing up and down in place.

“You know what truffles are, right?” she began. “They take a second to bite into and forever to lick it all off the back of your teeth after that. You’d think that’s a lot of chocolate. But I didn’t think they took it far enough. So I took some truffles, injected them with melted chocolate, and then I injected the melted chocolate with another truffle, and basically kept going until I couldn’t stuff them anymore. Then I tried one and it was like a bomb went off in my mouth. What do you think I should call them? I’ve got it narrowed down to ‘bombolate’ or ‘chocolomb.’ Hmm, maybe I could call it a ‘chocobombolate’ instead. Yeesh, these choices.”

Sunset didn’t catch her head tilting further and further toward the floor until Pinkie looked like she was hopping on the wall. No, wait. That was the wall. While Pinkie continued to bat her two names back and forth like a cat and a ball of yarn, Sunset floated one of the chocolates out of their box and held it in front of her. It felt as heavy as a chunk of lead, but her stomach didn’t see what could go wrong if she went ahead and tried it—

“Nononono notlikethat!”

Pinkie’s warning came too late. The moment the edge of Sunset’s teeth bore down on the little treat, it launched her into the air like an uppercut to the roof of her mouth, boxing glove and all. Firecrackers were safer to eat than this thing, but that line of thought ended when her head hit the floor. Only a dim part of her registered how fortunate she was to stay awake the whole time, though things went warm and hazy for a bit after that.

“Whoa whoa whoa.” Pinkie’s voice floated out to her as if through water, and Sunset felt a hoof slip beneath her back and lift her off the floor. Her head flopped over Pinkie’s withers while another hoof searched through her mane. For some reason, the brushing motion made her head feel even woozier. She had a good chunk of Pinkie’s mane across her nostrils, and it smelled of bubble gum and cake frosting.

Kind of nice, actually… It felt good to rest her head a bit, too.

“No brains. That’s a good sign.” Pinkie helped Sunset off the floor and steadied her on all fours. Blue eyes maneuvered in front of hers, like skies untroubled by rainclouds, or—

Sunset blinked. Where had that line of thought come from?

“You told me to try one,” she protested, still feeling the hit in her memories.

“Yeah, but not all at once, silly filly.” Pinkie laughed again, as Pinkie did. “I guess I should ask how you’re feeling right now, though.”

“How I feel?” Sunset waited for it to come to her—more out of habit than out of desire, by now, but she knew how she tended to snap at people who caught her off guard. But she kept waiting, waiting, even if it was only a second or so longer than she expected, and nothing along that line came to mind.

Instead, she realized she still had the taste of chocolate in her tongue, while a pleasant warmth lined her stomach and settled there. Her belly no longer grumbled for attention.

“Pretty full, actually,” she admitted. Once she took a step back from it all, she stumbled over a chuckle buried beneath the mental calamity. It was easier to let out than she thought.

Pinkie Pie pumped her hoof and leaped into the air. “Whoo hoo! All righty, then. Let’s head on out of here so I can show you more of the city. What do you say?”

Oh no, were the first words to cross Sunset’s mind. But then she looked at Pinkie, still smiling as brightly as she had back up in the mirror room. What got this pony down, for Pete’s sake?

And why did she have to be the one giving the tours around here?

“I’ve got a better idea,” Sunset told her, grinning. “Why not let me take you someplace this time? I lived here, after all.”

***

How many years had passed since Sunset had set hoof in this part of town? Not that it could have been that long ago at all, but her heart performed a small somersault as she took in the cathedral facade of Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. Ponies of stone stood rampant upon the tall corners of the institution, above stained glass windows chronicling the deeds of Equestrians of days long gone.

Sunset led Pinkie through its halls as the late afternoon light pooled against the walls. Those few students still there long after the final bell passed them by with plenty a curious glance at the earth mare who walked among them, but she remained unchallenged as Sunset took her upstairs.

They reached a hallway in the top central section of the main campus building, stopping before a pair of varnished cherrywood doors with brass handles. The unlocking spell returned to her at once, but this was no illegitimate entry.

Not exactly, at any rate.

She walked in after Pinkie, pausing to take in the old scent of polished marble and venerable wood. They stood within a rotunda the size of a concert hall, with an opulent crystal chandelier hanging from the domed, frescoed ceiling. Thick glass windows with solid brass muntins formed the western wall of the room, and they poured rich orange light over the enormous, eight-pointed sun inlaid within the center of the floor. A broad, white balcony waited beyond the windows, affording a view over the lawns of the Leo Quadrangle, and the schools and universities that formed its borders.

“Few ponies ever set hoof in here,” said Sunset, sauntering toward the windows. “Not even the highest administrators and instructors at the School possess the spell to enter. Only two ponies are ever granted access to the High Solarium. Princess Celestia is the first. The second: her pupil.”

Sunset looked over her shoulder and grinned. Pinkie was as still as she had ever been, only looking up at the ceiling with her mouth opened wide in wonder.

“I would have thought she’d change the spell once she cast me out and took a new student on.” Sunset paused at the high glass door leading out onto the balcony and pushed it open.

“It’s so big,” Pinkie exclaimed, scampering after Sunset. “But there’s nothing in here. No poofy cushions, no books, not even a snack table.”

Sunset snickered. “That’s the point. It’s big because I learned big spells in here. The last thing you want there is a bunch of furniture flying around and demolishing your face.”

“What if you wanted to practice force fields?”

The question stopped Sunset halfway out to the balcony. Behind her, she heard the whoosh of heavy wooden desks spinning through the air, the basso bumping of said desks ricocheting off a barrier, the intertwining tingle of two ponies’ magic—and laughter. She heard the melodious chuckling of a princess, and the squeaking giggle of a younger filly.

Sunset looked over her shoulder. The room quieted behind her, leaving her with only Pinkie Pie before the door, blinking and smiling.

“What made you say force fields?” she asked.

“Twilight’s really good at them,” Pinkie said, nodding. “Why wouldn’t it be the same with you?”

Sunset tensed at the comparison. The laughter of the past echoed in her memory once more, timeless melody and nascent giggles mingling in the light, but without the specters of the ponies they belonged to, she could not say the latter laugh was all hers.

On that day, thirty moons ago, Twilight had transformed her. Princess Twilight had transformed her, deflecting the arrow of her life from its course toward a field of targets ever dancing just beyond its trajectory. To think that same pony had once passed through this sanctum, taking it as her own as she took the Princess as her own, just as Sunset had done once before…

She said nothing, only forging outside to take a seat close to the balcony’s edge. A breeze bearing the scents of hazel and juniper played through her mane and tail, while the sun’s late rays arced over the mountains to the west, soaking into her coat and dazzling her eyes.

“Are you going to see her?”

Sunset didn’t need to ask who Pinkie was talking about, not when “her” avatar burned before the two of them. When was that pony going to learn when others were having moments to themselves? Sunset sat herself down on the balcony while Pinkie took a place next to her. That was fine.

Pinkie leaned her head on Sunset’s shoulder, which… was that not fine? Sunset cycled through her options in her head, surprising herself when the one that appealed to her most told her to play along. A few hours ago, she would have been happy to lens the light of the sun to reduce that pony to vapors.

Why hadn’t she thought of that when she had the chance to act?

“I wasn’t.” Sunset kept her eyes on the western horizon. “You pushed me here when I didn’t want to go, remember? Well, not that you’d remember that, exactly, but I told you how that happened.”

“Why wouldn’t you want to be here?” Pinkie waved her hoof out over the Quadrangle, the city beyond, and the valley far below, where the meandering ribbon of Canterlot River shimmered in the light. “You’re a better pony than you were before. I’m sure the Princess would love to see how far you’ve come.”

Sunset looked at Pinkie with furrowed brows. “How can you say that? You hardly even know me. I’m only here because you wouldn’t let me leave.”

“Pffffffft.” Pinkie’s eyes crossed as she broke into another one of her giggle fits. “Please. A scholar of the highest arcane arts, mentored by the wisest pony to ever live, versus a silly little mare from a rock farm who works in a kitchen three days a week. Am I really the one who’s keeping you in Equestria?”

Between the sun and Pinkie’s pearly-white smile, Sunset chose to gaze at the former. Her heartbeat kicked up in her chest. No. This was a different sound. This was the sound of golden shoes coming to rest on the white stone, and the focused, measured pull of breath. Her coat stood up as the air around her hummed and carried filaments of arcane flame.

A bright sheen rang through the air as the final edge of the sun retreated beneath the mountains. A babe, tucked into bed.

Sunset whirled to her left, eyes wide and with breath caught in her throat. The only presence there was the wind.

Wind and memory.

Memory and silence.

“Every month,” said Sunset, returning her gaze to the horizon, “I came out here with the Princess to watch her lower the sun and raise the moon.” A small smile crept across her face as she let herself fall into her story. “I was eight years old the first time we came out here. I knew more magic than most of the upperclassmares at the school. This part of Canterlot belonged to us and us only.

“If you think I ever asked myself why she chose me, you’d be wrong. I’d never been more sure of my life’s calling than on those evenings I spent with her. My cutie mark says it all. I poured myself into my studies until I surpassed every expectation she had of me.”

Sunset blinked. Then she frowned, snorting. These were memories she had locked away, buried, abandoned. No one had ever been welcome to know them. Now—now she had taken an utter stranger into her most inviolable sanctum for a grand tour.

She felt Pinkie rest her head back onto her shoulder, followed with a little nudge. “She must be proud of you,” Pinkie said.

“Was,” Sunset corrected her. “She’s not my teacher anymore.” What the heck. She had boarded this train knowing the tracks would dump her into this pit. “I was the best student she ever had.”

“What happened?”

“Hm?”

“What happened when you weren’t her student anymore?”

She may as well have slapped Sunset in the face with one of the Princess’ shoes. The unicorn’s eyes widened before she could stop them, and her hoof rose in kind. Only after Pinkie backed away, eyes just as wide, did Sunset catch herself. She was above petty assault, but there it was, waiting in the air.

She lowered her hoof with a sigh. Open doors deserved visitors, and Sunset had thrown hers wide the moment she stepped out of Sugarcube Corner. This was on her. “I lost the support of the only pony to ever believe in me,” she said, her voice stony. “What do you think happened after that?”

Pinkie chewed her lip as she digested Sunset’s words. Her eyes pointed at Sunset’s chest, but the unicorn sensed they were focused on something far, far behind her. “You left Equestria, pursuing what you thought was your destiny in another world, where you spent several years gaining power and followers until you could—”

“Good grief,” said Sunset, planting her hoof over Pinkie’s mouth. “You’ve never heard of rhetorical questions, have you?”

Sunset’s brain caught up with her two moments too late. Deliberately, she transferred her hoof from Pinkie’s muzzle to her own forehead and closed her eyes.

“Don’t feel bad,” Pinkie said, patting Sunset’s other hoof with hers. “And I do know what a rhetorical question is. Ponies make funny faces when I answer them.”

“No!” Perhaps it would be easier to play along with the local universe every time Pinkie flipped it over with some act of hers, because Sunset burst out laughing. “That’s not what that means at all.”

Pinkie only grinned at her.

Something came unstuck inside of Sunset, compounding her laughter as it fed back in on itself, and for a split-second she felt lighter inside. An answer to her own question lined up in her head, and when she came down from her absurd little outburst, she found herself able to speak without clenching up.

“When I started out as the Princess’s student, I had discovered more magic on my own than most upperclassmares had read about.” As an illustration, she conjured a ring of turquoise fire in the air before her horn and began molding it into different shapes and loops before putting it away. “I was just so adept at spellcasting that I didn’t really notice how foals my age stayed away from me while the older ones taunted me.

“Then I grew older. That’s when I noticed what the other ponies had done to me for years. No table in the cafeteria was reserved for the Princess’ student at lunchtime; everypony just moved to different tables. Books I put holds on in the archives went missing from the collection. I’d receive notes from the Princess to meet her in the Aquarius District or in some alley in Virgo Plaza, only they weren’t from her.”

Pinkie had come to rest her head on Sunset’s shoulder again as the top of the sky began to cool into purples and deep blues, the first stars twinkling into view. “I could get past all of that,” Sunset said. “They couldn’t touch me there.

“So, instead of attacking my weaknesses, they denied my strengths. I’d hear them in the hallways as I passed, saying how I was bound to mess up on my next exam, that my grasp of magic was only by luck, that the Princess would get herself another student soon.” Years after the fact, Sunset could remember the glares she attracted where she walked. “I worked and worked, and proved myself worthy of their respect time and time again—but all they wanted to see me do was fail.”

How she remained calm, saying all of this, she didn’t know. The wind picked up again, and without the sun to warm it, it nipped at Sunset’s coat as if to say she was no longer welcome there. She resented it only because that meant getting up, and the curly pink mane spilling over her back kept that part of her more cozy than she wanted to admit.

Any victory against the elements would be a hollow one, though. Sunset nudged Pinkie off of her and got to her hooves, teasing out the creaks and pops in her legs and topline. “I shouldn’t say any more,” she said. “Thanks for listening, I guess.”

“Anytime,” Pinkie said. She held her hooves out to the sides—an invitation Sunset didn’t want to accept just yet. She was being petty, of course. But she had given a lot of herself that night to some pony with no business knowing about it, and she wasn’t ready to give away the rest by miles.

“I don’t do hugs,” she said, even as she recalled the warmth of Pinkie’s mane and the comfortable weight of her head on her shoulder.

Pinkie only rolled her eyes with a grin. “Did you still want to see Princess Celestia tomorrow?”

Sunset paused. The sooner she got away from this place, the better—this pony asked questions with more punching power than a diving dragon. “No.”

“Aw, pouty-pants.” Pinkie stuck her tongue out, but her eyes took care of the smiling for her. Ridiculous. “Why not? You’ve got a place to stay here in Canterlot, right?”

“No again.” Sunset wanted to kick herself. She wasn’t being honest here. Twilight Sparkle’s words from earlier echoed in her mind. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about her, it’s that she never, ever gives up on a pony. Maybe she refused to advance Sunset’s education as far as she deserved to learn, but she’d made it clear as Crystal Empire snowmelt that she’d only ever had one pony who made her feel happy.

Pinkie’s jaw dropped. “You don’t? How ‘bout you stay with me in Sugarcube Canterlot tonight? I feel super bad that you weren’t able to see the Princess today, so you’ll get a chance to do that tomorrow.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Digging deeper and deeper.

Pinkie dug right after her, almost as if her cutie mark should have represented a talent in relentless pursuit. “C’mon,” she said, latching onto Sunset’s hoof. “I bet you haven’t slept over at anypony’s house in forever.”

This time, Sunset couldn’t say anything. She’d never been to a sleepover in her life. Besides, with a pony like Pinkie, a sleepover probably meant nothing more than obnoxious partying through the night. “Thanks for the invitation,” she said when the words returned to her, “but I’ll pass.”

“Oh, don’t be like that,” said Pinkie, dragging her back through the Solarium. “You’ve been through a lot today, so you just need a good night’s rest. You’ll wonder who you even were when you wake up tomorrow morning, believe me.”

***

Sunset Shimmer stared at the holiday lights meandering along the ceiling like something out of Baby’s First Milky Way, a poor mare’s starlit sky where square rafters and stray balloons blotted out the simulated heavens. The fluffy covers over her barrel kept her on the warm side of comfortable for the springtime, and the little mattress beneath her had run out of cool spots for her hooves a while ago.

She had no questions about who she was. That part was clear enough. The only pony who puzzled her was over there in the other bed, snoring lightly in the senseless chasm between intruder, hostess, and confidant.

How such a pony could have convinced her to stay… Sunset closed her eyes and turned on her side.