“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.