Project: TWILIGHT

by pjabrony

Chapters

• Chapter One
• Chapter Two

Chapter One

“Never answer an anonymous letter.”

- Poni Berra

“How could you answer it? You wouldn’t know where to send the answer!”

-Hasty Harness

Twilight Sparkle was a pony of routine. She could wake up without an alarm spell, attend to her morning ablutions, prepare the library, and open for business all on schedule. She didn’t even need a checklist. It allowed Spike to sleep in as he preferred, and kept her on schedule.

The rays of the sun beamed in through the window, warming and comforting her, and making the dust motes dance in and out of the light. From her perch on the second floor, she focused her attention on the door lock and felt her magic slip it out of the groove. It was nine o’clock, and another day had begun.

The staccato rapping at the door shook her out of routine and reverie. None of her regular borrowers or researchers would knock on the door when they knew the library was open. Indeed, nopony in Ponyville would. So who was it?

Twilight opened her mouth to yell, “It’s open!” but remembered Spike and went down to open it herself.

The stallion there in front of her—no, not worthy of the title of stallion, barely out of colthood—stood shuffling his hooves and fidgeting, never looking in the same place for more than a half second. His coat was the color of corn silk and his mane was cropped short. As near as Twilight could tell, somepony had just slapped a bowl on top of his head and shaved everything else. His bangs covered a good portion of a squat horn.

He turned to face Twilight at last, displaying the largest, thickest pair of spectacles that she had ever seen. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“Yes, I’m looking for…Princess Twilight! Oh, wow, it’s really you, Princess Twilight! Um, your majesty, I mean, um, I’m honored to meet you.”

“Calm down. You don’t need to kowtow.”

“To what?” he said. “Oh, wait, I know that word. Right, I should expect you to be smart like that. I would like to—that is, er, may I come in?”

Twilight tried to put a laugh and softness in her voice. “The library is open to the public.”

As he walked by, she took note of his cutie mark, a quill pen and glasses. Though it was impossible to tell, of course, she got the impression that it had appeared only recently.

He rotated in place, his mouth agape at the quantity or the organization of the books. Twilight approached with heavy footfall to get his attention.

“Oh, right. So I came across something in research—“

“Hang on. What’s your name?”

He rubbed his hoof against his side, offering it for a shake or a bump, then decided that he would be better served by bowing, then gave up on both. “I’m Hasty, your highness. Twilight. Princess Twilight, sorry. Hasty Harness. I’m a scholar at Canterlot. Student, really. I mean, I’m not in your class by any means, but I do research.”

“I got that. Really, you don’t have to be nervous.”

From above, Twilight heard the sound of blankets being tossed aside, followed by the clatter of something being dropped in the bathroom. A minute later Spike, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, ambled down the staircase with a toothbrush clutched in his claw.

“Twilight? Who’s this guy?”

Hasty resumed his expression of awe, but this time it was more wide-eyed than open-mouthed. “A d-d-d-dragon?!”

“Yes, Spike is—“ Twilight began, but was cut off by the scrape of Hasty’s hooves sliding across the wooden floor of the library.

“Stay back, Princess! I will fight off the dragon even if it takes my life!” He charged his horn with sparkling light.

“Look, Hasty was it? Spike isn’t dangerous. Well, he can be, but not to me.”

Hasty pulled off his saddlebag and let it flop to the ground. He fired a bolt of magic at Spike. It bounced off his leathery skin and struck one of the bookshelves, dissipating and shaking the books out of their perfect wall alignment.

“Princess, take to the sky before he captures you and takes you back to his lair! It’s what dragons do!”

With amusement in his eyes, Spike spread his mouth into a grin. But his expression fell when Hasty fired a second bolt. This one went off target and struck Spike on the claw, causing the toothbrush he was holding to drop to the ground.

“Really? Dude? I’m going to have to wash that now. Seriously, what is your problem?”

Twilight stepped in front of Hasty and spread her wings to make a stronger barrier. “Spike, go upstairs. I’m going to have to try to take care of this. Now, listen. Spike is my assistant. I’ve known him ever since he was born. He’s technically a dragon, but he’s harmless. Stop antagonizing him.”

The whine of the next spell that Hasty was preparing to cast tailed off to silence, and he stared at her. “You have a dragon for an assistant? That is just amazing! You’re incredible.”

“Mister Harness, was there a reason you came here?”

“Oh, right.” He turned back to his saddlebag on the floor, which had scattered scrolls in a haphazard arrangement in and around it. Pulling them all back into slots and pockets, he said, “I came across something in my research, and I had to bring it to you.”

“Why don’t we go into one of the private study rooms to discuss it?”

Ponies were starting to file in to the library, dropping off books for return and browsing around for others, or just taking them off the shelf to read. Twilight gave a small sigh and put the extra work she had to do out of her mind.

The library, on initial view, looked much smaller on the inside than it did on the outside, but there were many hidden wings and rooms, to say nothing of secret panels and alcoves containing mysterious books.  Twilight had always felt at home there. If she, given a hollow tree, had been tasked to design a library, it would have come out just as Golden Oak had. The shelves followed the contours of the wood which spoke of the decades of growth. Whoever it was had worked with the tree, not against it, even when they had built the projecting wing over the roots. Twilight led Hasty to this wing and paused to look out the large window covering the entirety of the back wall. With plenty of natural light, the ponies had the perfect environment for intellectual discourse.

“Now,” Twilight said, “begin at the beginning.”

Hasty reached into his saddlebag and pulled out a scroll wrapped tightly in a red ribbon. Twilight could see the yellowed edges of the paper and concluded that it was very old. As was the case for many such scrolls, it bore a mark of identification on the outside. This was wise. A pile of scrolls could be identical, and if a pony wanted to pick one out, she didn’t want to have to open each one.

He did not open this one, but only lay it down on the table between them.

“A while back I was doing research on the Tale of the Three Tribes as part of a project for Hearts and Hooves Day, when I—“

“Hearth’s Warming Eve.”

“What?” he said. “I mean, I beg your pardon, Princess, but what did you say?”

“Hearth’s Warming Eve. You said that you were researching the Tale of the Three Tribes for Hearts and Hooves Day, but it’s a tale associated with Hearth’s Warming Eve.”

Hasty stared out the window. “Oh!” He drew out the syllable for a long count. “That does make a lot of sense!”

Twilight let her mouth drop, but then she waved a hoof and said, “Go on.”

“Well, as I said, I was doing research on the Tale of the Three Tribes, and—you know that story?”

“I think everypony knows that story.”

Fiddling among the items in his saddlebag, Hasty was making more of a racket than the library was used to, and Twilight’s eyes drifted toward the clock. “It all began with a mysterious blizzard that overtook the land and threatened to topple the peace that the three tribes had, precarious though it was.”

“Yes, I know.” Twilight raised her voice in intensity if not in volume. “What does that have to do with you?”

“Ah, yes, see, I was trying to fill in the end of the story.”

“What do you mean? We all know the end of the story.”

“Do we?” For a moment, Hasty had an edge to his voice, as if he were in a study meeting trying to figure out the best way to proceed on a project. But then he came back to himself and resumed his rambling. “That is, I always wondered how it went from the cave, where Smart Cookie, Pansy, and Clover the Clever formed their friendship, to the formal society we have. And where did Princess Celestia and Princess Luna come from? Were they part of the tribes? Were they from outside? In my opinion, there is a lot left out.”

For the first time, Twilight was more interested in what he was saying than in getting him out. She looked him over once more, but saw no signs of a great original thinker. Of course, she herself tried to look more friendly than smart, so looks could deceive. “Did you come up with this idea yourself?”

“Yes, actually. I had questions about the story and nopony could answer them.”

“All right.”

Hasty just sat there for a moment before he realized he was being invited to continue. “So, right, it’s difficult to find accounts of the time other than the Tale, and that makes some sense, since if they were busy setting up the land of Equestria, they didn’t really have time to record that they were setting up the land of Equestria. The records I have found were more from after things were established, and were on the order of, ‘My grandsire told me these stories about his grandam, and I decided to write them down.’ But some of those said that there were some scrolls from that time still in the archives, so I went there.”

Twilight had a vision of him tearing around among the scrolls that she had spent so much time on, and she wondered if the archivists were still recovering. “And that was when you found this,” she said, laying her hoof on the scroll that still sat rolled up between them.

“Yes. I had to spend a good deal of time restoring the message on the outside of the scroll, and then translating it.”

“Translating? From all I know, the ancient Equestrians spoke the same language we do. There were a few oddities such as ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ in place of ‘you,’ but other than that it should have been intelligible. Are you sure you didn’t just have it upside down?”

“No, that wasn’t it.” Hasty’s ears picked up, then drooped. “Oh, you’re making fun of me, aren’t you? I’m sorry, I know that I’m not that good at this. But I’m telling you, translation was necessary.”

“I’m sorry.” Twilight looked over at him, hanging his head. She tried to see the scene from his perspective. Coming to see a princess, a name famous for research, a larger-than-life figure, it had to be overwhelming. She rolled her eyes and wished inside that she could get past her first impressions. Even though he was annoying, it was understandable. “All right, tell me about the translation. Please tell me that you didn’t actually write it on the back of the scroll.”

“Certainly not. I know all about preserving the past unaltered. No, here are my notes.”

He floated out of his bag another, more contemporary scroll, and Twilight got to compare the two. The original text was indeed in Equestrian, but it didn’t make any sense. It was gibberish. But on the newer scroll, amidst dozens of crossouts and scribblings, there was a message.

“You didn’t translate this,” she said. “You decoded it. It’s like a cryptoquote that some ponies do for fun. Incredible work” But her mind was focused on the text itself.

When her eyes lit upon the writer, Twilight gasped and dropped the paper back toward the table. She and Hasty both tried to catch it in their magic fields. The purple and the yellow clashed to make a white, and each of them withdrew their magic just as fast as they had extended it. The paper landed on the table with a soft tap.

“This is incredible!” she said. “We have almost nothing from Clover the Clever. If these are really her words…you ran a dating spell on it?”

“What?! I don’t know those—oh, you mean to find how old it is. Well, in truth, I can’t detect more than a few hundred years; it’s really a precision spell, you know.”

“Do you have any objection if I run one?”

Hasty oriented the scroll horizontally between them. “Go ahead. It’s not mine personally. It belongs to the archive.”

Twilight focused. It had been a while since she had cast this spell herself. Picking it up just as a piece of paper was one thing, but actually feeling the essence of the scroll was more taxing on her horn. She had to send a pulse of magic through the fourth dimension and try to pick out a dim image of when the scroll was first written. Once the pulse came back to her horn, she ran through some mathematical calculations in her head.

“It’s definitely over a thousand years old. Closer to eleven hundred. That doesn’t prove that Clover the Clever actually wrote it, but it’s evidence. If only we knew exactly when those events happened. I’m going to go ahead and open it.”

Still fearful of damaging the scroll, she took two books from a nearby shelf and placed on over top of the end. Then she rolled it out slowly like a poster, landing the other book at the other end to prevent it from curling back up.

“Whoa! This is an even bigger mystery.” Hasty stood up on his chair and put his front hooves on the table. With a bird’s-eye view, he pored over the scroll, which was nothing but a mass of purple ink. “Why would Clover the Clever want you to have a scroll that looks like it was used as a blotter?”

“We don’t know that it is for me. Didn’t you consider that the ‘new princess’ referred to might just as easily be Princess Cadance?”

“But she was already a princess before I knew her. You’re the only one who I found out about becoming a princess.”

Twilight pulled her attention away from the scroll to stare at Hasty again. “Did you think the writer of the scroll would know that about you?”

“Oh, good point again. But even so, what would she have done with nothing but purple ink?”

“Maybe not what I can do. I’ve seen this shade of purple before.” Her tone had a meaning and a purpose that Hasty could hear.

“You have?”

“Yes. It’s the same substance that was used in a potion that Zecora showed me once. And only alicorn magic can change it from purple to white. I’m going to have to try the same spell.”

Now it was Twilight who climbed up on the table and stared down. Hasty pulled back as Twilight prepared her dark magic. Clearly he had never seen this type of magic before, but Twilight couldn’t worry about that as she concentrated. The purple bubbles gave way to a black beam that scanned over the paper. She ended the spell with a snap and panted with fatigue.

Hasty’s voice shook as he got back into his chair. “That scared me a little. But it worked! At least it seems like it did.”

When he looked at the paper, the scroll had filled in with writing in a thin calligraphy. Twilight gave it a once-over before she read the actual words, and it looked to her like any other academic scroll, written with an eye toward legibility and preservation. The only difference was that instead of being black ink on white paper, it was white ink on purple.

“She really was clever, wasn’t she?” Twilight was speaking more to herself than hasty. “Anypony else would have only seen a waste scroll, but the pony who would recognize it for what it was would be the only pony who could reveal its secret.”

“So what does it say?”

“It reads, ‘Dear Princess Celestia’.”

“What?!” Hasty knocked aside one of the books holding the scroll down, making the corner roll up and across the paper. Twilight glowered at him, replaced the anchor, and continued.

“’Dear Princess Celestia, for in all probability it will be you who reads this, after which you will destroy it. Perhaps this is the hundredth time you have destroyed this scroll. I have no intention of telling you how many I have made, or the methods I have used to conceal them. It is my hope, of course, that only one of these reaches its intended target. And that, I’m certain I have no need to inform you of.

“’The tactics you are using will also not avail you. Starswirl the Bearded cannot keep his eye on me all hours of the day, and you are so busy now, are you not?

“’On the off chance that this is the one of many that does reach another princess, I apologize for the above, and I’m sure that any suggestion that Princess Celestia is other than the model of integrity will come as a shock. And for the record, I respect and honor Princess Celestia. She is a good princess and a fine leader. But I must follow my heart in this matter.

“’What is it like, I wonder, over a thousand years in the future? How many ponies are there now? Has the blending of the Three Tribes made Equestria into a paradise? Is every pony now a god unto herself? Such things are spoken of today, and I have no doubt that there will be progress, but the promise of this era does not resonate with me. Perhaps this is because I am one of the few privy to Celestia’s secrets.

“’And that is the message I wish to send down through the ages to you, a secret that she wishes to keep for your own good. But I am of the belief that the truth is always better than concealment, and so I will put the truth down on paper, in this magical ink.

“’You are not, future princess, the mere chance production of your parents’ meeting. You were planned, orchestrated, as much as any strategy in a long-term war. This is the plan of Celestia that I have heard of, and confirmed in her notes.’”

Twilight held out her hoof, and Hasty just looked at it. Because hooves have rotational symmetry, he seemed to think that it was being put forth for him to pay homage, and so he leaned in his head. Twilight still had her head down, but feeling his hot breath on her hoof jerked it back and looked up at him.

“What are you doing?!”

“I…I didn’t know what you wanted.”

“I was waiting for the next scroll.”

She stared at his eyes, wondering if the confusion he was evincing was real or feigned. Whatever his flaws, Twilight could detect no dishonesty. “There’s a reference number at the bottom of the scroll. It’s not written in the alicorn ink. Didn’t you go and look for it?”

“A what now?”

Twilight put her head back down and counted to ten. Then she looked up again. “Are you really a student? All right, fine. Let me explain. Scrolls are cut to a standard length. This way, when you roll them up, you can stack them on a shelf. Now, sometimes a writer has to go longer than a single scroll, as is the case here. So what they do is to put a reference number on the bottom of the scroll, so that whoever’s looking for the next one can find it. Haven’t you ever seen those numbers on the bottom of a scroll?”

“Now that you mention it, I have seen something.”

“And didn’t you ever wonder what they were?”

“I just figured they were a kind of monogram. I was hoping to make one myself someday.” Hasty shoved the anchors off the bottom magically, then eyed the number. “But why would Clover the Clever—or whoever wrote the scroll—put a reference number for a scroll that she wanted to hide from Princess Celestia?”

“Hard to say. But she was a scholar who followed rules. Possibly she didn’t even think about it. It’s not worth wondering about.”

“I’ll get the other scroll immediately! If I run back to Canterlot I’m sure I can find it.” He looked around as if he was expecting Princess Celestia herself to burst in and ask questions.

“No, don’t do that. I’ll take care of it. I mean, thank you for pointing it out to me, but since it might concern me I should be the one to look into it.”

Hasty’s face fell, but he nodded and plodded out of the room, leaving Twilight to reread the scroll.

Ridiculous, she thought. There was no way that Clover the Clever could have foreseen the ascension of a princess from a thousand years. But the magical resonance of the age-testing spell still stung her horn. But what could she do? It wasn’t like she could just close up the library and dash off to Canterlot.

Could she?

She walked out of the side room and let the door slam behind her. Overlooking the room that had been her home and business for the most recent years of her life, she considered. Ponies were milling about, no one taking notice of the librarian above. Spike knew the work of servicing the patrons, and any researcher who needed a consultation would have spoken with her already. Why not? Most days there was more time than work, and Twilight had plenty of idle time. She could move items on her checklist.

She hopped down, letting her wings carry her down, catching herself and taking a few steps forward to dispel her momentum. To her desk she headed, scanning her schedule and shuffling tasks into future days.

“Spike!”

He ran up. “Yes, Twilight? Was there a problem with that weird guy?”

“Spike, I’m taking the rest of the day off. You can handle things here, right?”

“Y-yeah.”

Twilight heard his hesitation, and before he could restore his expression she saw how wide his eyes went. “I understand. You wanted to say that I’ve never done anything like this before, right?”

“You caught that?”

She nodded. “I’m all right, but there’s something I need to take care of in Canterlot.”

“It’s all right. If anypony’s earned it, it’s you.”

Twilight raced to take care of the few jobs she could not delegate to Spike. Every three months, the Equestrian Railway published the schedule it would be following, and a copy was dutifully delivered to the library. Twilight found it and checked the time for the next train to Canterlot. Just enough time if she galloped.

Her mind was too busy with the routine of buying a ticket and boarding the train that she couldn’t focus on why it was that she was doing this anyway. But as she plopped into her seat and leaned against the window, feeling the cool glass against her cheek, it came back to her. She considered the scroll.

There was the possibility that it was a fake. Was there a way to falsify a scroll so that a mage would think it was over a thousand years old? Twilight could probably think of some, but it wouldn’t be easy. Certainly if it was a fake, it wasn’t Hasty who had perpetuated it. His ineptness and innocence had not been affected, if she was any judge of character. No, while it was physically possible to perpetuate a fraud of that nature, it made no sense. Even if it was a trap to get her out of Ponyville, a much simpler scheme would have worked. A clever trickster would have been simpler; a more inept one she would have detected. QED, the scroll was real.

She picked her head up. The train should have been moving by now, but still the station filled her window. By closing one eye and leaning down she could almost see the door she’d entered by. The flank of the conductor was sticking out, and his head bobbed like he was arguing with somepony. At last he pushed in, turned around, and gave the sign for all-aboard. The first burst of steam came from the distant engine, and the first knock of the wheels below her pushed Twilight on her journey.

If the scroll was real, there was also the possibility that Clover the Clever had been mistaken. If only she had the rest of the message, she could make a better guess. The psychology of it was all wrong. She had never known Princess Celestia to be anything other than the soul of benevolence.

Now the train was picking up speed. On the edge of her vision, grass and trees flew by in a blur. Somepony up ahead had a window cracked, and the breeze was vibrating her feathers. Faster and faster as the engine picked up steam, and the blur became a haze as it mixed with the smoke from the train. It reminded Twilight of those nights when she would study all night and the book would be the only thing her eyes could see.

She stopped looking. She had to think. What if Clover wasn’t wrong? What if there was some great scheme, and Princess Celestia had concealed some dreadful secret from her? It meant reordering her entire outlook on life. In a somewhat literal sense, it meant questioning whether the sun rose in the east.

That triggered another thought. If learning this secret meant losing the love of her teacher and friend, was it worth it? Twilight had no complaints about the way she was treated by Princess Celestia—or anypony else, for that matter. Why change the situation? Even if she only acted as if the scroll were fake or its author mistaken, would she lose anything for it?

She was approaching Canterlot. The train had left the open plain and was working its way up the foothills. The designers of the railroad had, in wisdom, limited tunnels and bridges, keeping to the contours of the land. Only once was Twilight cast into darkness, the tunnel entrance approaching at such speed that it felt more like a lantern extinguished than forward motion. The air in the train felt compressed and the earthy odor of the mountain rock permeated the car. Then she burst out into the light once more.

No. Truth was paramount. As a researcher, as a scientist, authority had to yield to reality. If something was so, then not even Celestia could make it not be. Twilight was a princess of Equestria. If a pony of that rank couldn’t be trusted with the truth, then nopony could, and that idea grated at her soul. If anypony, even a bumbler like that Hasty fellow who showed up just a few short hours ago, came to Twilight for knowledge, she would not deny them. She was a bearer of the Elements of Harmony, and one of those was honesty. That included being honest with herself.

The train slowed. The buildings of Canterlot now loomed before her. They were set back far enough from the tracks that she could see each one in its entirety. As a filly, they had been the comforting pillars, the protective barricades that held her to the city. Now, she saw them for what they were, homes and businesses, the place where ponies lived and grew together. As a princess, it was her responsibility to make sure that living was as smooth as possible.

It was Celestia’s responsibility too. Twilight reached her conclusion. She would bring the matter to her old teacher’s attention, learn the truth, and be done with it.

The train pulled into the station. Twilight was impatient now. Of course, the train had to be stopped gradually or everypony would be thrown forward into the wall. But as the rhythm of the wheels broke into individual knocks, she wanted to leap off while it was still moving. Instead, she waited for the final moment when the train leaned forward, momentum deciding whether to send the wheels forward another turn before giving up and settling back a step. She gathered up her beongings and descended to the platform.

The train station was not as familiar as the buildings. When she lived in Canterlot, Twilight had few occasions to travel to other cities, and when she did, it was her mother and father who handled the details of travel. An exit sign hung against the far wall, and beyond that was a street that she could walk blindfolded. Here was the store where the keeper had once given her free candy. There was the bookstore where they didn’t mind if she just stood there and read a book from cover to cover. Over there was the doctor where they had taken Shining Armor after he had been injured from some rough play and she had held vigil with her parents.

Her parents. Twilight had not seen them in some time, and she decided that, if the matter of the scroll concluded quickly, it would serve her well to pay a call. Unannounced, she would not impose or stay long, but surely they would be happy to see her. Now the question was which to do first. At the end of the platform the road split. To her left was the first tributary that would lead to the great road toward the castle. To her right the boulevard to the residential area her parents lived in. She hesitated a moment.

“Princess Twilight!”

She heard the voice before she saw the corn-silk fur enter her vision. “Hasty?”

“I didn’t realize that we were on the same train. This is perfect! Now we can hunt for the second scroll together!”

Twilight sighed. Her plans were being put on hold.

Chapter Two

“I looked like this when I was young, and I still do”

- Poni Berra

“No you don’t! You’d look older!”

-Hasty Harness

The streets that a moment before had been the comforting reminder of her filly-hood home now raced past Twilight’s vision as she struggled to keep up. It made it all the worse that she didn’t want to keep up, and that only the principles of decorum and bonhomie kept her associating with Hasty Harness.

He was dragging her toward the library at the center of Canterlot. His walking style was half-gallop, half-trot, interspersed with constantly having to get out of the way of ponies who were traveling in straight lines. Frequently he would come to a complete stop, distracted by something on the road, or by Twilight herself.

At last she had enough and pulled up to a stop. Twilight was accustomed to using her telekinesis to halt a friend who was running away, but she didn’t want to use it on Hasty. Although magic wasn’t like direct contact, it was touching another pony, and that wasn’t done between strangers. Instead, she stomped her hoof as she stopped to make it clear that she wasn’t moving any more. It worked to that degree; Hasty stopped and turned around.

“Stop, just stop. I hadn’t even decided on my next course of action yet.”

“But we have to find the next scroll. It’s all my mistake that we didn’t have it to begin with, so let’s fix that and move on.”

Twilight stared at him, still trying to get a read on exactly who he was. She felt that he was considering this just another research project or worse, a kind of game. “Have you considered if we shouldn’t speak to Princess Celestia first? She might be able to tell us the whole story without us running all over Canterlot.”

“Ooh, that’s right! You could probably just go right up to Princess Celestia and ask her. Could you introduce me? I’ve never gotten to talk to a princess before! I mean, other than you, and I haven’t talked to you for that long, and you didn’t even want me to call you princess, so you don’t count really.”

“No, listen, the point is that before you ran up to me in the station, I was considering what to do. If you’re going to be a research student, you’re going to have to learn how to think and analyze a situation before acting.”

“I know that,” Hasty said. “At least, I know it in my head, although I can’t always follow through with it.”

The traffic of Canterlot flowed around them. Although Twilight was a known figure, most of the Canterlotites were used to celebrities walking among them, and they understood that such ponies didn’t want to be bothered when going about their business. Still, she realized that they were taking up space on the sidewalk, and she hustled Hasty near the wall of a building, pressing her body against the brick.

“All right,” he said. “But here’s what I’ve been thinking. What if asking Princess Celestia is exactly the wrong thing to do? What if she forbids us from researching it further? What if the scroll’s really right and she is hiding some dark secret?”

“See, this is the problem I’m talking about. You shouldn’t speculate when you can gather information. Now, one way to do so is by looking for the second scroll, and that does seem the likely course of action. Investigating the message of the first scroll from other directions is also an option. But what isn’t right is to throw out conclusions and then try to make your tests fit them.” Twilight felt her sides under her wings flare up with heat as she realized her hypocrisy, having just spent the better part of a train ride doing what she was telling Hasty not to do.

“What directions?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Hasty gave no impression that he was impatient or upset that Twilight had missed what he meant. “You said that we could investigate the message from other directions. What did you have in mind?”

The thread of Twilight’s mind from when she was standing, indecisive, at the train station returned to the front of her mind. All at once it tied together with Hasty’s question. “For example,” she said, stretching out the words to give her brain time to catch up. “I was just considering paying a visit to my mother and father. Consider that the scroll, in essence, casts doubt upon my parentage. Now, I’ve never had any indication that they were anything other than the most doting and devoted of parents. So, if instead of racing off to Celestia I was to drop in on my folks and, without bringing up the scroll, confirm that there was nothing shady about how I came to be their daughter, that would be a point against the scroll’s legitimacy.”

“You have a point. All right. Let’s go and talk to your parents.”

Hasty kicked off of the wall and was ready to head back out of the street. Twilight stuck out a hoof like the gate of a toll booth to block him, and his chest bumped against it. Both of them withdrew with a swift motion. “Right,” he continued. “I shouldn’t just take action without completing the analysis. We should stay and consider our other options.”

“Actually, what I was going to say is that seeing my parents does seem like a good move, but I think it would be better if I go alone. They have no idea who you are, and meeting a stranger tends to put one on a different footing than being greeted by the daughter you haven’t seen in a while, doesn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t have a daughter I haven’t seen in a while. Or one I have.”

Twilight rubbed her temple. “What I’m saying is this. I’m going to go back in that direction—“ She pointed down a road that curved away to an unseen distance—“and drop in on my parents. You should take a different tack. Now, if you want to go back to the library and search, you may do so. But, I would advise caution. Don’t displace the other scrolls. Don’t bring up that you didn’t know about reference numbers. And, should you find the scroll, wait for me before opening it. In fact, just leave it where you find it.”

“I got it. Divide and conquer. You go one way, I’ll go the other, and we’ll find the answer in the middle. All right. I am ready for this.” He cracked his hooves and looked both ways on the street before sneaking down the road like a stereotypical secret agent. Twilight shook her head and walked down the curved road.

Having been pulled along by Hasty, she was no longer taking the quickest route. It would require a few detours to get back to her neighborhood. Twilight didn’t mind. Canterlot was a fine city for a walk in. All around were tourists with cameras taking pictures of the tall buildings or the sculpture that stressed the cosmopolitan nature of the area. She tried not to look up at any of the spires herself. The tourist’s instinct was hard to resist.

She had never realized it before, but the city had multiple personalities. Unlike Ponyville, which radiated the small-town atmosphere anywhere you went, Canterlot combined the tourist traps with the efficient functioning of the Equestrian government. So a rolling hill of grass would be overlooked by the dour gray stone of the treasury building where Princess Celestia directed the economy so that nopony would have to eat the grass on the hill.

Thinking of Princess Celestia spurred her to hasten on her journey. She cut through the field of grass, earning a scowl from a traffic officer on the street. Back on the main road, she passed by a salt-lick bar and caught a glimpse of the window. There was a mix of the high-class stallions and the tourists in clothes more ostentatious than functional, but they all seemed to be getting along. The city worked.

Now she was coming to roads more familiar. Was this the street where she had walked with her father and kicked a rock the whole way? Right, and there was the street where the signpost had fallen down and, for many years, she believed the street had no name.

Now the memories were flowing back as she entered the residential section. There was the stationery store where she would accompany her mother on her shopping trip and the storekeeper would give her candy. But—had it closed? She reached it at her walking pace. No, it had moved uptown, according to a sign.

Things changed. It always happened, but somehow Twilight felt that her home section shouldn’t. As she walked she thought back to the course her life had taken. If she had won her wings and crown in Canterlot, that would have been one thing. If she had simply moved from being a student in the big city to a librarian in a small town, that too would have been an expected advance. But doing both had only made clearer how far she’d risen. Now for the first time, with everything stable, she was able to see that she had never had the chance to just be idle and small while the bigger ponies took care of things.

I’m going to have to try to recapture that feeling when I’m with mom and dad, she thought as she approached her old home. Taking a deep breath, she trotted up to her home.

A quirk of the house was that while it had a front door, ponies who knew the family entered at the side. The front door led right into the sitting room without any hall or foyer, while the side door had a wall beside it suitable for hanging coats or dropping off saddlebags. This allowed Twilight Velvet to maintain her sitting room in a pristine state. Twilight Sparkle had entered the side door so often that it had become rote. Only now that she was knocking on the door did she realize how incongruous it was with how everypony else arranged their homes.

She rapped on the door and waited. That moment of quantum determination where one never knows if the person on the other side is actually there passed, and then she could see the silhouette of her mother through the lace curtain that had yellowed through uncounted years of exposure to the sun.

The knob turned, the warped wood pulled away from the frame, and there was Twilight Velvet.

“Twilight! What a surprise! Come in, come in.”

The first hurdle had been cleared. Her mother was home and was not so busy that she held back from inviting her.

“Is everything all right?” Twilight Velvet continued.

“Yes, it’s not an emergency or anything like that. I was just in Canterlot and I remembered how long it’s been since I’d seen you, so I decided to come round.”

She looked around. Very little had changed. The washtub was still in the corner, ready to be used as a table when her mother wasn’t washing clothes or napkins. The stove still had its pilot light burning so that they didn’t have to strike a new flame when they wanted it. And yet a new scent was in the air. It might have been some candle that Twilight’s mother was burning, or it might have just been the lack of Twilight’s own body odor, but however accurate her memories were, she was now a guest in her childhood home.

“Well, I’m glad you did,” Twilight Velvet said. “You know that the door will always be open for you. Actually, a locking spell that you know how to undo wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

That was a good idea, Twilight Sparkle thought. Her mother, though of course never having discovered true New Magic, was as adept as any unicorn at adapting the spells she needed. Who could say that, if the timing hadn’t been different, it might not have been her gray coat that wore the wings?

In addition, her mother was smart. Doting, as every mother was, but brilliant, in her own way. If there was anypony that Twilight could have a conversation with on her level, it was her mother. She focused and approached her topic.

“Where’s dad?” she began.

“Just ran out to pick up a few things for dinner. In the meantime, would you like some tea?”

“Yes, thank you. Can I ask you something?”

Twilight Velvet opened her eyes wide. “Of course. What is it?”

“How did you and dad meet?”

“Oh, my. Well, I should certainly remember that occasion.” Twilight Velvet’s eyes twinkled both with remembrance of the event and amusement that her daughter should be so curious. As she put the teakettle on the stove she kept looking at Twilight Sparkle’s face. “Why do you ask? Is there somepony you’re hoping for a special meeting with? Or just looking to finally find him and get married?”

“No!” Twilight Sparkle said hastily, but then tried to be less angry. “I’m just a little curious about your lives before Shining Armor and me.”

“All right. Let’s see. I met your father at a party. That was really all of it. I went to the party, he was there, we talked and started dating.”

“What kind of a party?”

“Just one of those Canterlot affairs that ponies throw to have a good time. Normally I don’t go to them, but on this occasion I felt as though it would be good to get out of the house. I wasn’t looking to meet any colts. So I went and had some food and drinks, talked to a few friends and some strangers, and then your father was there.”

Twilight Sparkle would normally be taking notes, but this wasn’t supposed to be an investigation, just an informal conversation between mother and daughter. But it handicapped her, and she tried hard to pay attention to make sure she didn’t miss any details. “How did he come to go to the party?”

“He had just gotten back from a stargazing trip and wanted to relax.”

From the similarities of their cutie marks, an observer could be forgiven for thinking that Night Light and Twilight Velvet shared the same passion. But in Night’s case the two moons on his flank were literal. An astronomer by avocation, he had spent many a night peering into a telescope, and had also planned many trips into the far country where the angle on the night sky was different and the light pollution of Canterlot was absent.

An idea popped into Twilight’s head. If she could prove that one of his excursions had overlapped with the time of her conception, it would lend credence to the scroll. “Did he ever make a list of the trips he made?” she asked. “I think that would make fascinating reading.”

“Not a straight list, no. But all his observations are on record. I’m sure you could piece together the schedule. Of course, once we planned a family, he had to hold off on that. He was a very loving father and said plainly that he wanted to care for his foals, not miss them growing up. I don’t think he left the house between my two pregnancies.”

So much for that. “Go on, then. Tell me about the rest of the party.”

Twilight Velvet grinned. “I’m sure you’d like to hear that it was love at first sight, or that he was some sort of great romantic who proposed to me that very night. But it wasn’t like that. We spoke a while—his passion for the night sky was obvious, and he talked about that. I admired a stallion who cared about something so much. And though I was the better mage, he was no slouch with his horn either. But I could show off my talents and impress him. At the end of the evening, he asked for my address. Two days later, he wrote me a letter asking if he could see me again. Well, I wasn’t so naïve that I couldn’t recognize when I was being asked out.

“From there, we proceeded on the usual dates that young foals went on. Dinners, plays, dancing—one time he took me out to show me the stars as he watched them, but I didn’t enjoy that much.”

“And then you got married?”

“He did ask first. I got an invitation to his home for a candlelight dinner. By that time I knew he was getting ready to propose, although I didn’t know it was going to be that night. I had had my mane put up that day, so it wasn’t bumping against my neck as it usually does. Beyond the candles was only the glow of our magic as we ate our food. Then I picked my head up because I heard the baritone tinkling of his magic come closer. He had put down his fork and brought out a ring from somewhere. He asked; I said yes.”

Twilight Sparkle reviewed the story in her mind. It was a typical courtship of the time, similar to many she had heard from her friends. Indeed, was it too perfect? Could it be something that her mother had made up as a cover story? She could question her father, see if his recollections matched up—no, this was not an investigation, and she was not a detective. If she was wrong, and she hoped she was wrong, her relationship with her parents was too important.

She couldn’t make accusations, only suggestions. “So there was no outside influence on your meeting?”

“What do you mean, dear?”

“Well, like, there was no other stallion who really wanted you to marry him? No one like Prince Blueblood who thought he could have any filly he wanted?”

Twilight Velvet laughed. “Oh, dear! I know you probably think of me as quite a fetching mare, but the truth is that I’m considered plain. More so when I was your age. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t find the right stallion for you.”

Her mother had missed the mark again. She thought that Twilight Sparkle was still looking for information on how to land a husband. But that was good, let her continue to assume that, and forget about her doubts.

It was time for another leading question. “And what about when you had children? How did that go?”

“Now that was a special time. I assume you don’t want the details of how we began.”

“Ah, no. That’s not what I meant.”

“Well, when I had Shining Armor, that was a special time. Our own family was overjoyed, of course, but then when Princess Celestia showed up—“

Twilight Sparkle spat out her tea. “What?!”

“Oh, yes. There was a tour she was making of the midwifery, one of those publicity things she does to show that she’s still a princess of the ponies, and not above us. And it happened to be the day after Shining was born. I had him there all swaddled with his little horn sticking out of the blanket. She came over and wished me the best, asked whether I’d had a colt or a filly, what I named him, and so on. It was only a minute, but still, the princess herself!”

It was possible, of course. As a princess herself, Twilight Sparkle knew that it was good to get out and greet other ponies. It inspired them. But still, what were the chances that Celestia would come on the exact day that her brother was born? Or, the day after, to be strict. But of course, it wasn’t her birth she was at, so even if there was something odd about it, it was the wrong point in the timeline.

“She never said anything about me, then?”

“Not until the day you wowed everypony with your incredible display of magic. Is that what you want to hear about?”

“Thank you, no,” said Twilight Sparkle. She took another sip of tea and floated down the cup till it clinked on the saucer. “Keep going with Shining.”

“There isn’t much more to tell. We brought him home the next day, still giddy both from the experience and from Princess Celestia’s visit. But fairly soon your father began discussing having another child. After all, he said, very few unicorns are only children.”

That was a good point. It was part of a greater cultural trend. Earth ponies tended to have big families, and they were also the best at settling new territory, so the population didn’t explode. Pegasi, on the other hoof, tended to only have one child, but, partially for that reason, tended to marry and have children with unicorns or Earth ponies. And in the middle, the unicorns usually kept to replacement-level breeding. Two foals was a kind of tradition for unicorns.

“I was a little unsure,” Twilight Velvet continued, “but your father seemed convinced.”

“Convinced?”

“Yes, he was definitely in favor of it.”

“But you said, ‘convinced,’ as though somepony had talked him into it.”

“No. Although, funny you mention it, I think he did say that someone, one of the midwives perhaps, had reminded him of the practice of unicorns having two.”              

Twilight Sparkle had a vision in her head of Princess Celestia surreptitiously giving an order to the midwife to ensure that this couple planned to have a second child. She sipped more tea and let the vision become a fantasy. A few years later, Celestia raising some sort of parthenogenetically created demon foal, swapping it out with whoever actually emerged from Twilight Velvet,  and then disposing of the extra. She shook her head to clear it out. “All right,” she said. “Tell me about me.”

“You were very similar. We went to the same place to have you. Although you were smaller, it was more difficult having you. They say that about fillies, that they steal their mothers’ beauty.”

“Can’t be the case with me. You’re still gorgeous and I’m plain.”

“You are not plain. Just look at how innovative your manestyle is.”

“It’s the same as yours!”

Twilight Velvet winked to show the humor. “Well, thank you for the compliment. Anyway, after that our family was complete. Once Shining Armor realized that his calling was to go into the royal guard, and once you evinced your special talent with magic, we were the proudest we could have been of both of you.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

Twilight Sparkle finished her tea, the last dregs going down with a bitter taste that quickly dissipated. Her mother floated the cup over to the sink where she began to scrub it. One advantage of being a unicorn was keeping your hooves dry for such tasks.

“Now,” Twilight Velvet said, her back still turned. “Why don’t you tell me what all this is really about?”

“It’s nothing, I was just curious. And nostalgic.”

“I don’t mind if you lie, but don’t expect me to believe it. I’m not dumb, you know.”

As Twilight Sparkle had remembered, her mother was smart. And she did not enjoy lying either, even if it was more of a lie of concealment. “I found an old scroll—or rather, someone else found it and brought it to my attention—that told a fantastic tale of me not being your actual daughter.”

“It mentioned you by name?”

“Well, no. It talked about a new princess, so I sort of concluded it was me. When I say it out loud it seems kind of silly.”

Twilight Velvet returned to the table and sat down. “Oh, Twilight. Every young pony, at one time or another, dreams of being something more than they think they are. Shining Armor used to play at slaying vicious dragons or leading the guards against an invasion of griffins that would last for years. But he did get to defend Canterlot against the changelings, and you did have the chance to become a princess. The difference with you is that you don’t realize how important you are to everypony. Be content.”

“I see your point. But you say that everypony thinks like that?”

“Just about, yes.”

“Including you?”

That brought Twilight Velvet up short. But she recovered. “Yes, even me. But my mother sat me down and gave me some good advice. She said, ‘No matter what you think you’ve lost, you’ll always be Twilight Velvet.’ Trite, maybe, but it resonated with me.”

“Grandma Twilight said that to you?”

Twilight Sparkle had not seen her mother’s mother, Twilight Twinkle, in many years, not since she was a little foal. They had never been close, but what she remembered was of a kindly old mare who held her close and watched over her with devotion.

“Yes. And still does. We write each other whenever we can, but she is getting up there in age. You should send her a letter once in a while too, you know.”

“I should. I don’t know how often the mail goes out there, but give me her address.”

Twilight Twinkle lived far to the south in the San Palomino dessert, far beyond where the railroad went. Mail delivery depended on pegasi who wanted to make a long journey.

After writing the address on a scroll, Twilight Sparkle thanked her mother for the tea, the advice, and the visit.

“And I do appreciate it when you just drop by,” Twilight Velvet said. “Even if you don’t have some crazy reason for doing so.”

As Twilight Sparkle stepped out of the house into the bright sun, she reflected more on the last part of the conversation. She muttered to herself. “I’m going to have to try to get closer to my grandmother. Mom’s right, I might not have much more time to know her better, so I should take advantage while I can.”

She trotted down the road to the train station. Her eyes still adjusting to the light, she almost didn’t see the pony charging at her until he was on top of her.

“Princess Twilight.”

“Hello, Hasty.”

“Princess! I did what you told me. I went back to the archive. I got the call number off the first scroll and looked up the second. Do you know what happened when I got there?”

Twilight didn’t respond, waiting for him to keep going. But Hasty wasn’t speaking either as she realized that he wasn’t making the question rhetorical. “What happened?”

“It wasn’t there!”

“So you derived the lookup method, went to the place where the scroll should be, didn’t find it, and conducted a thorough search, all in the time it took me to have a visit with my mother?”

“Well, no.” Hasty looked down at his hooves and pawed at the dirt of the road.

“I thought not.”

“In fact I finished about a half-hour ago and came looking for you. But you said that your time with your mother was very valuable, so I wanted to wait until you were free.”

Twilight huffed a heavy sigh. “Why don’t we go back to the archives? I’ll show you how to properly look things up, just in case you made a mistake. If we find the scroll, we can dismiss this once and for all. If we don’t, then I have an idea of what I want to do anyway.”

Hasty took the lead and, for the first time, Twilight let him. He had just come from the archives, and she wanted to think and reminisce by herself anyway. If he did say anything, likely she could just nod and carry on. It was how she operated. Although she had her friends and Spike, Twilight still had inner thoughts that she liked to keep to herself.

They walked toward the center of the city. Hasty was taking a curious route, with lots of turns, rather than using the major boulevards. Twilight wondered if he wasn’t having his own youthful fantasy about being some sort of spy.

“Is there a reason we’re going this way, turning at every block?”

“I figure it’s the fastest way. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but we’re diagonal to the archives and the streets only go horizontal and vertical on the map, so we take a lot of turns to try to get as close to a diagonal as possible.”

Twilight didn’t bother to correct him. The section of Canterlot they were in wasn’t even perfectly square. But some youthful fantasies were fine.

They entered the archives, and Twilight wanted to take over, but she let Hasty retrace his steps. He did seem to be adept with searching spells, and he had the discipline to keep the stacks organized as he worked his way through them. He was a promising archivist, if not a researcher, and, watching him work, for the first time Twilight felt that he might not be so annoying. She felt a muscle in her neck relax.

“It appears as though you’re right,” she said at last. “The scroll is not here.”

“Which could mean that someone absconded with it.”

“Or it never existed in the first place.”

His face fell, and Twilight felt a little ashamed.

“I…I really thought we had something important.”

“Listen. Research isn’t about what you find in the world. It’s about what you get in knowledge and in method. Working hard and studying is its own reward. If you don’t like the chase, the search for knowledge, and the putting together of data to form a conclusion, then you’re in the wrong position.”

“I do like all that.”

“Then keep at it.” Twilight put a hoof on his shoulder. “Just don’t lose yourself to crazy schemes.”

He nodded. “So what now?”

“Well, in my visit with my mother I didn’t find out anything I didn’t know, but I was reminded of something I should know. Or rather, somepony.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. My grandmother. I haven’t seen her in too long. And so I’m going to plan a trip to see her. If nothing else, this has shown me that I can take time away from the library and not have everything fall apart. Thank you for that, by the way.”

Hasty brushed some dust that had come from the scrolls off his coat. “You’re welcome. When do we leave?”

Twilight stared at him. He was being serious. The knot at the back of her neck returned.