I woke from syrupy somnolence to a gentle burr-ring burr-ring. Rested, comfortable, satiated; bright morning sunshine warmed my skin. A day ago this hour, I had been stalking Twilight Sparkle before her 8 AM lecture on cutie mark connections.

And today, this?

I lay legs folded on the bed with the red sheets thrown to the wood floor, my head propped on a toasty living furred pillow. The smell of perspiration, our hard earned sweat really, filled my nose and proved it was no dream. His belly where I rested rose gently with his every breath. Opening my left eye, I could see his cutie mark that, thanks to real time and time loops, I'd seen bloom like a flower on his flank many times. The fine hair, and the skin beneath, were colored, forming an array of yellow book-shaped tiles half-circling an orange sun trailed by three purple four-point stars. Turning my head slightly, the hairs sparkled in the sunlight and moved as my breath caressed them.

I knew a spell, Equalization Therapy, that could reach down through the skin, muscle, all the way to the nerve bundles of his spine, and extract the magic organ from his body and soul without damage to him or it. Both of my personalities now found the thought repellent, but as the hours went by, the part of me that had crafted the spell dominated—the part that had used it to help psychologically damaged ponies in need of friendship without the hierarchal inequality special talents fomented.

It was as if my use of the annotated Star Swirl scroll had overlaid me over another purer me. One of us was an alternate, but since we had both used the same scroll in conjunction with the cutie map, we both shared the same sin. The question was, which alter was more real?

If I was, I did not deserve this happiness.

Which didn't mean I was going to refuse it. In a real sense, since the scroll had burnt to cinders on my arrival in this parallel universe, I had little ability to change the circumstances.

I felt Sunburst stirring and said, "Please turn off the alarm clock." (I didn't know where it was.) I closed my eyes and returned to the bliss of the moment.

He just chuckled. More of a mirthful rumble that resonated through his body and through my jaw into my ears. I rose up to look at him.

As had he, muscular and strong, still reclining, craning his neck and upper body to meet me muzzle to muzzle with a kiss that reached from his soft lips deep into my soul, and left me tingling all the way to my hooves—breathless.

I burst into tears.

Sunburst was my husband—but I had never married him. Yes, strong memories of shared fun and adventure—and my body's tendency to melt into his at his merest caress or kind word—mocked me, but I totally understood her pride at their long association and their marriage at sixteen. And she cried with me at the mirroring unpleasant memory of my first stallion, a rough borough street boss at a somewhat younger age. Hers was a life of support and fidelity that I could barely match with the memory of my last partner, Double Diamond; at least he had adored me.

Her husband; my soulmate. All I had ever wanted in life was my friend. Him. I had accepted I would never find Sunburst, whose talent to levitate and manipulate hundreds of things at once had lead him to escort caravans beyond the griffon lands. Without him, I had made my life as torturous to the soul as Tartarus was to the body, trying to fix the entire world when all I had needed was to fix myself.

And now my soulmate kissed me deeply. We had spent the night together with him trying his very best to help me forget all the bad things that had happened to me, finishing my sentences, and surprising me with delights as if he read my mind. My personal memories were of his foal-self abandoning me when his cutie mark appeared. Thanks to the time loop she and I shared, from different points of view, I had seen Sunburst helping fend off a strange future-Starlight when past-Starlight, thanks to Rainbow Dash's Rainboom, had gotten the cutie mark of a doubled four-point star and comet-glimmers we now both bore. Sunburst-the-husband had proven to be the gentle, caring, adventurous stallion I'd had known he would become, that and so very very much more.

But he was her Sunburst, not mine.

I hadn't volunteered to clarify to anyone what had actually transpired, even that I had traveled through time—especially that I wasn't her. I hadn't told him, but let him believe. Let him treat me as if I were only her, let him love me; I had taken advantage of that.

I felt like a cheater. I felt unclean.

The bed mattress bounded beneath me and the springs squeaked as he righted himself and nuzzled me. "Dear heart, you are beginning to worry me."

Through waning tears, I saw kind green eyes. The white blaze on his face glowed in the dawn light. His red mohawk had flopped over in his sleep, no longer held by spiking gel, and if anything, he looked cuter. Call him Cutie, my alter said. He likes that.

He said, "I have been trying to make you happy."

"And you have," I whispered, controlling myself so as not to let that come out as a wail of anguish. "C—cutie"

He smiled and levitated a tissue to dab at my eyes. "Well, then. Now that I've dried those tears of joy, let's get you ready to go!" He turned and swished his short red tail in my face. "It's going to be a big day for you, you know!"

I stood on the bed to avoid being made to sneeze, stifling a giggle. The wobbly vantage point provided a great view of the muscles rippling in his back, causing my breath to quicken. "Big day?"

The alarm clock continued going burr-ring.

His magic opened the mahogany wardrobe and moved garments that scritched on hangers. "No stuffy frilly mayor's frock for you today. Something dashing— diplomatic looking— fit for a pony plenipotentiary, perchance?" He pulled out a velvety black blouse with emerald epaulets that hinted at her Element of Charisma. "And I'll straightaway find your assistant Mare and tell her she's taking over for you for a few days." He turned, beaming at me with his biggest white-toothed smile, waving the blouse in the air.

That's right, I had won the election the year before the 1000th Summer Sun celebration. Miss Mare had never become mayor.

He tossed the frock and I caught it in my magic. "Let's be about it."

Burr-ring.

"No time for a bath, either. Hope folks like you smelling horsey like I do."

"But—" My alter had no memory of an urgent meeting today.

Burr-ring.

"Oh, yeah. Forgot to tell you. I got the purple sea carrots to make you kippered carrots and onions for breakfast. I'll teleport a breakfast bento, and an overnight suitcase, to Twilght's castle—"

He even knew Proper Step's recipes from when I was a foal?

Burr-ring!

Ugh! I looked everywhere but didn't find a clock. Under the bed, maybe? "Could you please shut the alarm‽"

He just began chuckling devilishly, his huge chest moving as he did. "It's your big day, dear heart. The day you've dreamed about," he said walking to the bed, reaching past me. I watched in fascination as he rubbed his cheek against my flank. My pulse doubled, tripled. Then he kissed my cutie mark and I gasped.

Though I nearly collapsed on the bed from shaky legs, gazing at him through purple phospenes that clouded my vision, I suddenly saw what only my cheeky husband would have gone out of his way to rudely, lovingly, indicate.

My cutie mark pulsed.

I shrieked and jumped off the bed, shouting "Celestia on rollerskates!"

While he rolled on his back, laughing, I actually circled myself a few times like a foal, chasing my tail, trying for a better look-see at how the coloration could blur, and shift, and ring, but, of course, the effect was magical, not physical like on an octopus.

Was there something wrong with the omniscient Tree of Harmony? I had corrupted time itself using its idiot cutie map! So, of course, it had now chosen me to solve a friendship problem with ramifications across Equestria? Was the thing flipping nuts?

Or—or, was it testing me?

Sunburst read my mind, "You always wondered why the map never chose you for a mission." He rolled upright, hiding a view of him that could have distracted me utterly. "Whatever that reason was, something's now obviously changed. It thinks you're the right pony, right here right now."

"Ponyfeathers!" Still, my alter was jumping up and down in my head in glee.

He laughed. "Get dressed my love, Madam Mayor, O cherished emerald Element of Charisma. I'll see if I can get time off. You're obviously going to need me to keep you centered as you muddle through some piddling political mis-adventure with princesses, knights, and elected knaves."

Piddling? I snorted. With him, it might just be fun.

Author's Notes:

Now, all I have to figure out is why the map called her. When I learn that, I'll be sure to write about it.