Moondancer threw herself on to her couch and sat there. She sighed, and casually fired a beam from her horn into a lightbulb above her. It turned on, and she squinted at the sudden change from total darkness to bright light. She looked around the room and saw the mess all around her - books were chucked all over the floor, there was a toppled desk in a corner, and a few pairs of broken glasses were scattered around the room. Almost every corner of her house had spider webs all over it. The pony was already quite comfortable on her couch, and couldn’t be bothered to get up to grab the book she wanted to read. She used levitation magic to bring it to her, instead - the height of laziness, but she didn’t care. She opened it and began to read. The book was about some old colt called Starswirl the Bearded - she had read it a bunch of times. At this point, she was just re-reading books for something to do. It wasn’t like she was going to go outside at any point.

Moondancer sighed again and dropped the book, swapping it for a small shard of glass in the corner of the room. Once again, she used her levitation spell to bring it up to her, and she looked at her reflection in it.

Moondancer was a faded yellow mare. Her mane was a red with purple and violet highlights. Back when she was a filly, she had styled her mane just like Twilight Sparkle - she had practically worshipped her back then for her amazing magical skills. Now, however, even hearing Twilight’s name made her shudder and scoff. She had changed her mane style to be as different to Twilight’s as possible - instead of the simple, flat style that she used to adopt, she now wore her mane tied up above her hair by two beads.

  “Ugh!”

Moondancer threw the shard of glass across the room and it hit the wall, shattering into tiny pieces. She sat there and - for a third time - sighed, a much deeper sigh this time than before. Suddenly she heard a knocking on the door, and the familiar voice of Minuette calling for her.

  “Hey, Moondancer? We’re going to the donut place today. Do… do you wanna come out?”

Moondancer hesitated. At first, she didn’t want to say anything, but she knew they wouldn’t go away until they got an answer.

  “Go away, Minuette. I don’t like donuts. I never have.”

Moondancer heard Lemon Hearts chime in:

  “Oh come on, Moon! You love donuts! You said so the first time we met!”

The yellow pony felt a pang of sadness when she heard that. The first time they met… that was so long ago, wasn’t it? She couldn’t even remember how long ago it was.

  “I said go away. All of you. I’m… I’m studying…”

  “Yeah right, Moon. I bet you’re reading that Starswish the Bearded book for the billionth time! Come on, come out - we can talk.”

Moondancer hesitated again. She was reading that book, even if they had got the name wrong. They knew her so well…

“No means no, guys. And stop calling me Moon. I don’t like it,” was Moondancer’s reply.

Outside, Twinkleshine closed her eyes and shook her head. Minuette turned to Lemon Hearts and saw that tears were welling up in her eyes. Lemon Hearts closed her eyes hard, and when she opened them, the tears were mostly gone. Minuette sighed.

  “Come on, girls. Let’s go,” she said. Next Chapter: 03 - The Reason Estimated time remaining: 49 Minutes