Starlight leaned against Trixie on the couch as Twilight finished recounting their story. Sunset had fallen asleep under Twilight’s wing. It had been a long day.

After a long pause, Starlight announced, “Everything you do is weird.”

“Considering what I’ve caught you doing…” Twilight raised an eyebrow. “You really want me to respond to that?”

Instantly, Starlight blushed. “Um… no. Sorry.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. Another scroll appeared above their heads. Twilight caught it in her magic and unrolled it.

“Huh. Brown and Clear’s wedding invite.” Twilight sighed and put it in the corner with the four dozen other wedding invitations.

“What’s the situation now?” Starlight asked.

“Well, the flower industry is booming,” Twilight said. “Candy sales are through the roof. And weddings are up by a factor of twenty.”

“Wait. So this… Narrative Cascade… it’s permanent?”

Twilight glared at the annoyingly adorable unicorn under her wing. “Only brown narrativium can force a pony to do things out of character. Pink narrativium just removes romantic inhibitions. The feelings were all real. Just suppressed.”

“Oddly specific,” Starlight commented.

“No kidding,” Twilight muttered.

“For somepony with that many shipfics,” Sunset mumbled. “You’re pretty judgmental.”

“Hey! You’re supposed to be asleep!”

“I like her.” Trixie giggled.

Starlight joined in. So did Sunset, who cracked an eye open to give Twilight an annoyingly adorable smirk.

Twilight sighed.

“What about Minuette and Moondancer?” Starlight asked.

“Dunno,” Sunset said as she stretched, then pulled Twilight’s wing over her like a blanket. Twilight would have been mad if Sunset weren’t doing it specifically because she knew Twilight found it annoyingly adorable.

“Nopony’s heard from them since the end of the Cascade,” Twilight said.

“That’s not strictly true,” Sunset said. “After all, we did go by Moondancer’s house and we heard some rather loud—”

“Nopony’s heard anything confirmed to be from them since the end of the Cascade!” Twilight shouted.

Starlight and Trixie snickered.

“Ugh, you three will be the death of me.”

“At least you’ll enjoy it!” Sunset said, her smirk never fading.

“Well, we should let you get some rest,” Starlight said as she pulled Trixie up and pushed her toward the door. “You’ve had quite the week. I promised Trixie a moonlit walk along the lake tonight after our picnic date.”

Sunset’s eyes popped open. “Wait a minute… since when have you two been dating?”

Starlight and Trixie both stopped. “What are you talking about?”

“You weren’t dating when we left for Canterlot,” Twilight said. “And the Cascade never made it outside the city.”

Starlight shared a confused look with Trixie.

“Trixie has been gracing Starlight with the pleasure of her romantic company for almost eight months!” Trixie proclaimed. “For the Princess of Friendship, you should pay closer attention to your friends.”

Starlight nodded and the two left, closing the door behind them.

A long silence stretched through the room.

“You think it’s still…”

“No.”

“Okay, just asking.” Sunset snuggled against her like some giant amber tabby. “So, the real question… assuming the Cascade hadn’t happened… would you have said yes?”

“I guess we’ll never know.”

Sunset glared at her. “No, really. I want to know.”

“But… that’s what you’re supposed to say.”

“Only for terrible shipfics.” Sunset smirked. “Like the ones in your attic.”

“I’m going to burn my attic.”

“Awww…” Sunset pouted. “But I really wanted to try some of the stuff from issue eighty-four and seventy-six!”

Twilight hesitated. “What about… issue twenty-nine?”

“Only if you promise not to burn them!” Sunset demanded. “And answer my question.”

“Eh. Fine. Worth it. I was going to say yes. There, happy?”

“Very!”

“Good!”

Silence.

“Can we try twenty-nine now?”

“Oh Celestia, yes.”

Twilight Sparkle's Secret Shipfic Folder provided by Horrible People Games.

I do hope you've all enjoyed this wild and crazy romp through Canterlot in this bizarre fusion of Half-Life 1, Back to the Future, Twilight Sparkle's Secret Shipfic Folder, Discworld and my own incurable shipping disorder. This also marks my first attempt at writing what I call "absurdist," a style similar to Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, who I strongly recommend to any reader of comedy, author of comedy, human, alien or extradimensional chaos god.

My one regret is I didn't have an extra ten thousand words. I could have gone on and on like this for who knows how long. I ended up only twenty words under the hard word count cutoff. It got to the point where I had a spreadsheet to help me track it properly. However, I learned a lot about word efficiency through this exercise.

Special thanks to two guest pre-readers: Ladrian and Heartshine! Ladrian's commentary is so damn perfect, especially for a story like this. Sadly, he had some brilliant ideas that I couldn't add because it would put me over the word count! I'm also happy to say that the ending of this story is pretty much exactly what he would have written anyway! Heartshine added even more to it with her wisecracks and insights, plus just being there for encouragement and a bit of kindness.

As usual, thanks to both Cursori and Little Tinker for their tireless efforts at helping me make my stories the best they can be.

Narrativium was outright stolen from the Discworld universe by Terry Pratchett, though Pink Narrativium was my idea. In addition, the lines by the Doctors are also the lines heard in the testing chamber before the Resonance Cascade at the beginning of Half-Life 1!

Don't worry about Doctor Freepony. After all, the right pony in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. I'm sure some mysterious, story-hopping agent of unknown forces made sure he was tucked somewhere safe and secure.

Great plot! It's almost time to hit publish! I should get to that!

Until next time folks, have fun!

-Novel