Twilight was in her bedroom, stuck on a spell. Each time, she would read the instructions more carefully, cast it more carefully, fail, and swear.

“Okay... so think like you’re—that’s what I did. And then... wait, why can’t you do that? That makes about as much sense as creating matter by thinking hard enough. Whatever, I guess I’ll do it again....” She made a purple ball of magic appear for a second, then it disappeared. “Fuck.”

Spike came up. “Are you still trying to cast Deep Violet?”

“It’s hard, all right? What hard things have you tried lately? Nothing. So don’t be making fun of me when you’ve never even—”

“I’m not making fun of you, I’m just confused about what use you could have for it.”

“One, because it’s another way to kill ponies, and B, because it’s really irritating that I’m having so much trouble learning it and I can’t let it win.”

“Yeah, you can already kill ponies, so what’s the point? And didn’t you say it’s supposed to take a long time to learn a death spell?”

“Yeah, but I’ve never felt so stuck before. I wish some pony I loved would come in here and calm me down and offer motivational services.”

“Well, I hope you make a breakthrough.”

Twilight waited a minute, then went on the balcony. “Since you clearly didn’t hear me the first time,” she said to the sky, currently sunset amber, “I said I wish some pony I loved would come in here and calm me down and offer motivational services. You know what you did after I said ‘it can only go well’ yesterday, so I think it’s time you paid me back.”

Ten seconds later, Rainbow Dash came into view, and she flew to meet Twilight.

“Hi, Rainbow Dash.”

“Hi. I heard you yelling at the sky for me, so I decided I’d come.”

They went inside. “You want to have sex, right?”

“I just came here to feel like I’m doing something.”

“Is that a yes?”

“It’s a no.”

“Well, there’s something else I want.” She levitated the book over. “Look.”

“It’s a bunch of big words.”

“I’ve been trying to learn this spell all day and I feel hopeless. I’ve tried every possible combination, every weird interpretation of every sentence, nothing works.”

“Well, I’m not the one to go to for this. Maybe this just isn’t your day?”

“But it’s going to be in my head until I can figure it out. I’ll just get more stressed. You can at least give me some generic motivational talk, right?”

“No.”

“Well, if you can’t do that or have sex, then you’re useless and I want you to leave. Right now. I hate you.”

“Okay.”

And so nothing was changed from the situation one minute ago. Two days passed, and Twilight was still obsessed with the spell, having looked for it in numerous books and online sources, which all either didn’t have it or paraphrased the original book she used.

“If the weather forecasts are to be believed,” Twilight said, “It’s going to be a cloudy night. It’s a good thing I want it to be as clear as possible.”

“Why does it need to be as clear as possible?” Spike said.

“Because then Rainbow Dash won’t have a place to sleep.”

“Why would that be a good thing?”

“Because she’ll come here.”

“That didn’t work out last time.”

“Well, maybe she’ll be horny this time.”

“But then she’d come over anyway.”

“But what if she’d rather sleep on a cloud?”

“Then you don’t want her to be happy.”

Twilight sighed. “I lost an argument with Spike.”

“So? He’s pretty good at it.”

“I’ll see you in a bit.” Her horn glowed for a second, then she passed out.

Four minutes later, Rainbow Dash flew in.

“Hey, Spike. What’s up with Twilight?”

“She knocked herself out for losing an argument with me.”

“Er... seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay....”

By the time Twilight woke up, Rainbow was already asleep.

“Oh, wow. That’s nice.”

“You aren’t going to wake her up, are you?”

“Of course not, but still. Really, I should look on the bright side, I can do asleep Rainbow Dash stuff.”

“Like...?”

She slowly lifted the blanket off. “Dammit, she’s face-down. Chest-down, anyway. How am I supposed to clop to this?”

“Don’t?”

“Spike, I’m gonna fucking explode if I don’t clop.”

“That’s how you always feel after you wake up. You’ll be fine.”

She stepped up to the bed, then looked back at him. “I’m gonna clop. Get out of here.”

He weighed his options for a brief moment and left the room. Twilight sat down and clopped, then she was bored instead of horny. With reading just frustrating, she was rapidly running out of activities, and she sat there for a minute simply wondering what to do. She could read something else. She could do something besides reading, if she was really bored. But there was only one thing she wanted to read, and there was only one other thing she could convince herself she felt like, and Spike hadn’t done anything worthy of torture recently.

A couple hours later, Rainbow got up.

“Twilight? Oh, there you are.”

She was on the upper bunk, reading a plain brown book with no text on the cover. “We’re having sex or you’re leaving.”

“Just let me wake up.” She went downstairs, and after a couple minutes came back up. “Hi, I woke up.”

“I want to eat one of your feathers.”

“What?”

“Your feathers. I want to pluck one off and eat it.”

“Er... can feathers be consumed by ponies?”

“Yes, I’ll live.” She came down. “Can I have one? Please?”

“Um....” She took a feather and put her hoof out. “Here.”

Twilight took it with magic and put it in her mouth. The atmosphere gradually became static and quiet as she, with closed eyes, took her time to chew the feather and extract every last bit of flavour out of it, whilst Rainbow stood in front of her and watched. After a minute, literally, she swallowed the feather and opened her eyes.

“Did you... like that?”

Twilight tackled her and kissed her, and sex ensued. Twilight’s orgasm scream was audible to everyone in a seven-kilometre radius.

“I love you,” Twilight said as they continued to cuddle.

“What?”

She tightened it into a hug. “I looove you.”

“I can’t... let me go.” She did, and Rainbow got up. Rainbow tapped the floor a few times. “I can’t hear anything. I can’t hear myself talking right now. I think you made me go deaf.”

“Um... go to Zecora?”

“What?”

“Uh....” She went downstairs, came back with a pencil and paper, and wrote “ZECORA”.

“That’s what I was thinking. Can you teleport us there?”

She shook her head.

“But it’s nighttime. Something’s definitely going to eat me.”

“Then wait until tomorrow,” she wrote.

“I mean, I guess I don’t have to hear anything tonight....”

“See? You’ll be fine.”

“I don’t think I’m coming over again for a while, though.”

“Sorry.”

“I don’t care.”

The next day, she went to Zecora, who had to go all the way to the very furthest point of her house from where she was to get the door.

“What’s the problem?”

“I’m deaf.”

“I don’t have anything for that.”

“So? What can you do?”

Zecora shook her head.

“No? You mean you can’t do anything?”

She nodded.

“I can’t just be deaf forever. Is there anything I can do besides go to you?”

She shook her head.

“Fine. I’m gonna go back to Twilight and beat her with a blunt thing. Because it’s her fault, not because I’m abusive. Well, both, I guess.”

She went back to the treehouse.

“Rainbow! You did come back!”

“Zecora couldn’t fix it, so I’m gonna beat you with a blunt thing. Wait, what are you cast—”

“Okay, now what? Uh... I could take her to the normal hospital. Could they do anything? Would I look like an idiot for bringing her there? Where else can I go? You know what, I’ll just take her to the normal hospital, and if they laugh at me, I’ll kill them all.”

She teleported directly into the lobby of the normal hospital.

“Can you do anything?” she said to the receptionist.

“What’s the problem?”

“I made—there was a really loud noise unrelated to me and now she’s deaf.”

“Why is she unconscious?”

“Can you fix her?”

“We can fix the unconsciousness.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

She teleported back.

“Well, now what I can do?” She dumped Rainbow off her back. “Hope it’s only temporary? That’s all I can do, really. But if it’s not, then... then I guess I’ll get depressed, and then everypony will try to fix me and pretty much the world’s greatest therapists will all try to help because I’m Twilight, but nothing, therapy, pills, nothing can ever fix the cause of my depression so I’ll just be sad despite everything science has to throw at me and I can’t even kill myself because the universe will end so I’ll pretty much literally be in hell.”

She put Rainbow on her favourite bed, she thought until she realised it was probably Applejack’s, got cozy in her own favourite bed, and hoped really, really hard. The next morning, Twilight was brushing her teeth and—wait, is this just two minutes of someone brushing their teeth? I swear, you keep Jerry in charge for five minutes and this is what always happens. And now transcriber #2 is complaining that that joke wasn’t funny enough. Because it wasn’t. Yes, it fucking was, not everything we type has to be basic facts. “It’s kind of our job”, she says, when this show is supposed to be funny so our job is to be funny. I think we should make the text version worth reading, not just a lesser version of the actual show. Anyway, Twilight was around when Rainbow got up.

“Rainbow? Uh, fuck, where is it?” She looked around in a slight panic.

“Twilight?”

“What?”

“I can hear you.”

She looked at Rainbow. “Really?”

“Yeah. I guess it wasn’t permanent. I’m still going to beat you, though.”

“I know where a good piece of metal is. Will you forgive me once you’re done?”

“Yeah.”

“Thank you.” Next Chapter: Chapter 41: Nourishment Estimated time remaining: 15 Hours, 41 Minutes