Rejuvenation

Disclaimer: I do not own My Little Pony, nor am I profiting off this literary venture.

----

Twilight yawned her way into the waking world.

Yesterday had been fun, maybe the most she'd had in... A while. It had been new, exciting and terrifying all in equal measures.

But it was another Tuesday.

Just another Tuesday.

She brushed her teeth, brushed her mane and made her way down to the dining room to have her breakfast of toast and coffee.

She froze in the doorway.

She'd offered a bed to the other Twilight after they'd been told that, until they'd finished examining him, there wasn't anything that could be done for Spike.

She could've sent her to the princesses.

She could've sent her to a random hotel.

She could've just left her to sleep on a chair and wait indefinitely for the doctors to tell them whatever magic afflicted Spike.

But what was the point? She wouldn't see the result of the choice, and this Twilight was the most interesting thing that had happened to her in ages.

They'd stayed up late into the night talking, retiring just shortly before midnight.

Before the alternate Twilight would disappear and she'd wake up to the morning sun of another Tuesday.

She couldn't believe her eyes.

"Good morning, Twilight!" Her alternate said through a mouth full of toast.

Twilight slowly walked herself over to the table and sat down, eying an infant dragon messily stuffing his mouth.

She latched on to the morning paper and pulled it to herself as a steaming mug slid across the table to her.

'Wacky Wednesday Hi-jinks!' was the header for the news that morning.

Wednesday.

She didn't understand.

She chewed, slurped, sipped and nodded without listening as Twilight and Spike and Pumpkin Spice all talked, trying to figure out what had happened.

She hadn't felt a Wednesday in...

Months?

Well, she'd repeated the same day for multiple instances numbering well over sixty, so it was technically months.

Except that it was still the same day.

Did that count?

Twilight wasn't sure.

She made some off-hoof excuse, freshening up? And walked away.

She needed to check on the mirror.

She needed to see to the enchantments!

She wasn't even aware she'd been running until she skidded to a stop in her library.

The books that had been knocked over yesterday were still strewn about. The chair was still knocked over.

The mirror was broken.

Twilight didn't understand.

She'd broken the mirror more times than she cared to count. Sometimes in a fit of peak, other times by pressing just a little too hard on the enchantments.

It never stayed broken though.

The shards were never still on the floor the next Tuesday.

What was different?

Twilight cleared a spot of floor with her magic and sat down.

She'd done absolutely everything she could think of regarding the mirror. Poking it, prodding it, activating and deactivating it. Manually unstringing every spell on it and in it.

So how had the other Twilight managed to break it, unintentionally at that, in a way that stuck?

Twilight mulled over the facts as she knew them.

Alternate Twilight had propelled herself through resistance to bring Spike home. She had also absorbed whatever magic had been used in anchoring the portal on the other side.

She was also not a native entity to this world, meaning that the transformation magics that would refit an individuals body to match the world they were moving to would have been activated regardless of the attempted lock.

So, in short, Twilight had been both accepted and rejected by the magic.

And it wasn't flexible enough or aware enough to work around that.

She broke it. That's really all there was to it.

Alternate Twilight broke the mirror.

From the other side!

Twilight threw her head back and laughed. She cried and she laughed because it was so simple, but something just beyond her abilities.

And she didn't think she'd enjoy any other Wednesday as much as she was going to enjoy this one.

Difficult and stressful as it was going to be.

----

"It was nice of her to let us stay here, huh Spike?" Twilight had known nearly the moment she'd seen her, the alicorn was her.

Herself.

Except not.

It was weird.

"And all this food!" The dragon shouted with his mouth full.

Twilight didn't know how much Spike had changed since jumping through those rifts, he was definitely smarter and could talk.

But he was still a dog under it all.

"It's just some eggs and toast, hardly anything special." The pegasus, Pumpkin Spice, she was nice. She didn't seem to understand the severity of everything that was going on and changing around her, but at the same time, she kept doing her job.

It was admirable, in its own way.

"Yeah, but you made it and it's good, doesn't that mean it's special?" Spike asked between bites of buttery toast.

"Oh, you are just absolutely adorable!" The pegasus actually picked the dragon up out of his seat and hugged him, excitedly spinning around in a circle once before she plopped him back down and trotted off to the kitchen.

Twilight had absolutely no idea where Spike learned to do that.

It would be something handy, err, hoofy?

Let's stick with handy.

Handy to learn how to do that. Compliment people and not confuse them.

"This is your third plate, aren't you feeling full?" And it'd been different each time. Apple jelly and poached eggs first time, strawberry jam and scrambled last time and this time had been buttered toast and sunny side up.

He'd inhaled everything.

"Nope." He patted his belly. "Still hungry."

"You keep eating like this Spike, you're gonna get fat." And that would be a nightmare.

Trying to keep a dog on a diet always got the dog to making their caretaker feel guilty.

"Wait. What's fat?" He actually put down the slice of toast to ask.

"It's what happens when you eat too much." Or have a glandular condition or a mix of either of those two with a sedentary lifestyle.

"Fat sounds awesome!" Twilight's hoof met her face.

"That's not-"

"I wanna be fat!" Spike stood up in his chair, toast dangling in a claw held up over his head as though he'd said something profound.

She had no idea where to start disabusing him of that idea.