Little Keys

by Skijarama

First published 26th of April, 2020

After two long, painful years, Twilight Sparkle has finally regained her lost memories. Unfortunately, her remembrance has come at a terrible price...

After two long, painful years, Twilight Sparkle has finally regained her lost memories. Unfortunately, her remembrance has come at a terrible price...

Exiled from her home city of Canterlot and haunted by the whispering voice of Midnight Sparkle, Twilight has been tasked with opening a mysterious chest presented to her by the Tree of Harmony. To do this, she must prove to her friends - and to herself - that she is still worthy to wield the Element of Magic. But with her own mind threatening to swallow her whole at every turn, her task will be far from easy. If she is to succeed, Twilight must face her fears and come to terms with what she allowed herself to become, or fall prey to the shadow whispering in her ear...

Thankfully, she does not have to carry this burden alone.

---

Beware spoilers in the comments!

Edited by Chromio

The cover art was drawn by Hagalazka

This is the fifth story in the Little Flashes series. Reading through the previous stories is intensely encouraged to understand the events of this story.

Nightmares at Midnight

The pitch-black sky laughed at her.

Twilight Sparkle grit her teeth and tried to shut out the sinister chuckling of her own voice. Her hooves pummeled against a compact dirt road, carrying her along for the city of Canterlot up in the mountains. It was a beacon; a safe haven from the madness that chased her. No matter how hard she ran, though, the city never seemed to get any closer.

The sky laughed again. Twilight felt a presence by her side, a sickening chill that sent her heart racing and tore a frightened whimper out of her throat. “What do you think you’re doing?” a voice jeered, crawling up and down her spine.

“Go away!” Twilight snapped, forcing herself to run harder, no matter how much it made her legs burn or her lungs heave. She had to get to Canterlot. She had to get away from this thing that kept haunting her every thought.

“Where do you think you’re going?” the voice pressed on, undeterred. “To Canterlot? Do you really believe the ponies there will take any pity on you?”

There were... things by the sides of the road. Shadowy lumps and shapes that she dared not turn to look at. She didn’t want to see the bodies. She didn’t want to remember the ponies she had hurt. She couldn’t bear it.

“Or maybe you’re not looking for pity?” the voice asked, snickering into her very soul. “Maybe you’re looking for more memories to steal?”

“Sh-shut up!” Twilight barked, screwing her eyes shut and pouring every ounce of power she could into her throbbing legs. “That was you, not me!”

“For one so smart, you really are a willfully ignorant fool, aren’t you?” the voice cackled, slithering into her ears like a mischievous snake.

“I said SHUT UP!”

“You think you and I are any different?” the voice carried on, whispering into her ear, its cold breath howling in her skull like a blizzard. “Truly? Open your eyes, little girl. You can’t be rid of me. I’m a part of you.”

“NO!” Twilight’s eyes flew open. There it was! The front gates of Canterlot rested just ahead, at long last. They were closed, but she could get through them if she had to. “Even if you are a part of me, I will fight back! I refuse to be a monster like you!”

“Adorable,” the voice cooed. “Absolutely adorable. She’s so intent on denying the truth…”

Twilight shook her head, trying to force the voice out of her head. Just a little farther…

She slid to a stop by the gates, trying to open them with her magic. A spark of confusion shot through her when her horn did not respond. She lifted a hoof to rub at her forehead, only to discover that her horn was missing. Her eyes went wide, terror grabbing her already panicking heart in an iron grip. “W-what?! Where’s my horn?!”

“If you are going to deny yourself,” the voice whispered in her other ear. “Then I guess you don’t need all of yourself, now do you?”

“G-give my horn back!”

The voice gave no answer. Twilight’s pupils dilated. She reared up on her hind legs and pounded on the gates with her hooves. “Princess Celestia! Princess Luna! Please, let me in! I need help!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. Her own voice reverberated all around her, echoing in the silence of the night.

There was no answer. No matter how hard she beat on the gates or how loud she screamed, her desperate pleas for aid were left wholly and completely unanswered. She was left well and truly alone, stranded in the open with that thing.

“Did you forget?” the voice taunted her from behind. “You’re not welcome in this city anymore. The Princess of the Moon saw to that. They won’t help you. Nopony will. All you have is me. All you will ever have is me...”

Twilight dropped back onto all fours, coat bristling. The voice was right. Luna had cast her out of the city. She had banished her. Twilight was all on her own, no matter how cruel or unfair it was. Swallowing heavily, she unfurled her wings and rotated to face the owner of the voice.

She blinked. “Huh?”

Instead of the owner of the voice, she instead saw a tree made of blue crystals staring back at her, the Elements of Harmony set into its branches with hers set into the trunk. It glowed brilliantly at her, almost blinding. At the base of its trunk, rising from its roots, was a pedestal that opened like a flower to reveal a six-sided crystal chest. Each face was host to a keyhole.

Twilight swallowed heavily. “The… the Tree of Harmony?” she asked, looking up at the tree with her ears drooping. A hoof subconsciously lifted up to rub at her throat. A phantom pain danced across it, and she shuddered at the memory of having the literal life crushed out of her by its will when she had come back to it, Rainbow’s limp form in tow.

She wasn’t sure how she had moved from the road outside of Canterlot to the cave in the Everfree, but she supposed it didn’t matter now. The voice was gone for the moment. Twilight took a deep breath and slowly began to advance towards the tree.

Suddenly, gouts of flame erupted from the soil around the tree, creating a pressurized wave of heat that rolled over her and seared the interior of the cave. Twilight gasped, lifting a hoof up to cover her nose and mouth while her eyes widened. “My friends! Rainbow Dash!”

Illuminated by the firelight, Twilight could make out the prone forms of five mares and a baby dragon: Spike, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, and Applejack. All of them were unconscious and the flames were drawing closer to them. Twilight’s heart skipped a beat when she saw something moving in those flames. It was enormous; moving slowly and deliberately with malevolent confidence. Thunderous steps rocked the earth as it went, betraying the raw physical power of the owner.

The flames surged, reaching for Twilight’s friends like a million tiny hands.

“NO!” Twilight cried out, charging forward and reaching out for Rainbow.

Thunk.

“Gah!” Twilight gasped and fell back to her haunches as she ran face-first into an invisible wall. She rubbed a hoof over her nose before looking up in confusion. The air before her shimmered, rippling like the surface of a pond before a mirror materialized before her. She could see her reflection in its surface.

Something was off about it, though. Her eyes were all wrong. Her pupils had narrowed into draconic slits, her fur had darkened considerably, and her wings had turned curved and imposing like poisoned daggers. Peeling back her lips, she saw sharpened teeth and vampiric fangs, and trails of wispy, ghostly blue magic were leaking out of her eyes.

She took a step back. “W-what is this?!” she asked fearfully, her eyes glued onto those of her reflection.

Her reflection smirked at her.

The flames coiled around the bodies of her friends. Twilight cried out as they were all silently yanked back into the flames over the span of a single beat of the heart, vanishing from sight.

Shrieking with grief and confusion, Twilight hurled herself at the invisible barrier again, slamming into the mirror in the hopes of knocking it aside. It held firm, sending her back to the ground.

She rose again, her wings unfurling in a display of aggression. “Get out of my way!”

“Who says there’s anyone in your way?” the reflection asked with a cold laugh. A moment passed before a sharp pain shot through Twilight’s skull. Gasping, she fell to her haunches and clutched at her head.

She screamed in a mixture of pain and fear as she felt her horn growing out again. It wasn’t right, however., being pale blue and aglow with ghostly magic. She could feel her wings contorting and teeth sharpening in her mouth. “No! NO! STOP!”

“Midnight Sparkle is a part of you,” the voice whispered inside her mind, clawing at her senses like an angry lion. “I have always been a part of you. You can never truly get rid of me… you can deny it, and run from it, but you can never be freed of the truth.”

“Stop! Stop it!” Twilight shrieked, tears leaking out of her eyes as her pupils narrowed into slits. “Please, stop!”

“You cannot run from who you are.”

Twilight threw her head back, a long, guttural scream tearing past her lips. Her vision was flooded with darkness, and her soul went dark.

“Twilight, snap out of it! You’re having a nightmare!”

Twilight’s eyes finally snapped open, her terrified scream dying in her throat as the familiar and raspy voice of Rainbow Dash yanked her from her sleep. Rainbow was above her, looking to have just woken up herself. It was dark in their bedroom, and a quick glance confirmed that it was still night outside.

Twilight took several deep breaths to calm herself down, her hoof finding one of Rainbow’s and holding on tight. “R-Rainbow…” she whispered.

“It’s okay, Twi,” the pegasus whispered, leaning down to give her an affectionate nuzzle. “It’s alright. You’re alright. I gotcha.”

Twilight returned the nuzzle, glad for the display of affection and the comfort it gave her. It was just a nightmare. She was safe.

“...Thank you,” she finally whispered, allowing herself to relax into the mattress again.

Rainbow smiled and darted in to plant a quick kiss on Twilight’s lips. “Anytime,” she replied after pulling back.

Twilight blushed. “H-heh. Not used to you starting that…”

“I’m not used to even having it as an option,” Rainbow shot back with a roll of her eyes before flopping with no grace at all back to her side of the bed. Twilight noted that she kept both hooves on her though, effectively primed to yank her into being a little spoon at a moment’s notice.

“Heh. Fair enough,” Twilight mumbled, shimmying back and allowing Rainbow to embrace her fully from behind. The two fell quiet for a short while, giving Twilight the time she needed to calm down the rest of the way.

“So… do you want to talk about it?” Rainbow asked in a softer voice, nuzzling into the back of Twilight’s head.

Twilight didn’t answer right away. In truth, she wasn’t even entirely sure what any of it meant. Dreams were hard to parse at the best of times, especially without Luna’s help, and somehow, a spiteful part of Twilight felt that Luna wasn’t going to be helping her out anytime soon.

After a moment, Twilight sighed and shook her head. “No… no, I don’t. I just want to get back to sleep.”

Rainbow nodded into her mane. “M’kay. If ya change your mind, though…”

“I know, Rainbow,” Twilight said, looking back at her with a tender smile. “Thank you.”

Rainbow returned the look before cuddling a little closer and closing her eyes. “Gnight, Twi.”

Twilight closed her eyes and set her head down, trying to relax. She took in a deep breath and let it out, taking comfort in Rainbow’s hooves curled around her barrel and the pegasus’ fluffy chest warming her back.

“Goodnight, Rainbow. Sweet dreams.”

Clueless

“Another dead end…” Twilight thought, barely able to contain a growl of frustration as yet another thick book slammed shut on her desk. She might have wondered about how many books this made, but she just didn’t have it in her to keep track after the fifth. With a snort, she shunted it off to one side so it could join the rest of the wastes-of-time in their ever-growing towers of parchment and leather. The spire swayed uneasily from the book’s forceful landing, but it thankfully did not fall.

Twilight was sitting alone in the loft of the library, beams of midday sunlight streaming in through the window. Motes of dust danced aimlessly in the rays of light while hastily scribbled scrolls, diagrams, charts, and reference tables were scattered along the floors and walls. Stacks of books as tall as Celestia were tucked haphazardly into the corners of the room, each one less orderly than the last; a clear visual indication of Twilight’s waning patience.

She had been at this for hours. From the time she had gotten up, she worked tirelessly to try and find some reference to the Tree of Harmony and that chest it had grown after turning her back to normal. It’d been maybe a week since that incident—and since Twilight had regained her memories, too—but so far she hadn’t made any progress whatsoever in opening the chest.

No clues had presented themselves up to now. No Flashes or cryptic visions. Not even a vague feeling to guide her. She was left well and truly without a direction to go in. In a situation like this, with not even a clear starting point, what else was she to do but what she did best?

Lose herself in a pile of books and hope it leads to something.

The tomes she had scanned through so far had been interesting, but none were helpful. There were a few scattered references to the Elements of Harmony, but only ever in the vaguest and most cryptic of terms; a result of the near-mythical status the old artifacts had gained over the thousand years since Nightmare Moon was banished. Sadly, none of those references had been of any help, so Twilight moved on to more books.

Rainbow helped her at first, but the pegasus had eventually needed to take off. She may have been the Princess of the Skies, but she still insisted on volunteering to assist the Weather Bureau. Admirable, indeed, but it meant Twilight was down a pair of eyes and a mind that wasn’t attacking itself at every misstep.

Spike had been helping, too, but Twilight eventually sent him off to tend to some errands around town. In truth, those errands were just a thinly veiled excuse to get Spike out of the library and away from her. Twilight didn’t want to lash out at him when he had done nothing wrong. She just didn’t want to lash out at him, period. The drake had been one of her greatest friends during her time with amnesia, helping her just as much as Rainbow. She couldn’t repay that kindness with angry shouts and long-winded rants.

As a result of her concern and desire to remove Spike from her growing frustration, she was forced to do her work all on her own. This was both a blessing and a curse: a blessing because it meant she had no cause to hold herself back when she needed to vent her anger. She could shout and snarl whenever she needed without worrying about anypony poking at her about it.

The curse was almost enough to counteract the benefits. Between her nightmare and general anxiety, Twilight had not slept well the previous night at all. Combine that with a burning in the base of her skull that became worse and worse with every dead end or red herring, and she was beginning to wish she had kept the drake around to reign her in and pull her back down.

That thought was summarily put down as a memory from her youth resurfaced.

“Twilight, you’re scaring me… I really think you should take a break-”

Twilight turned her glare to Spike once more. For a moment, she trembled before opening her mouth. “Take a break? Spike, did you hear me the last time? Or the time before that?!” her voice rose from a cold growl to a harsh yell. “I don’t need to take a break! I’m fine and I just wish you’d stop bugging me so I can concentrate!”

“But -”

“BUT NOTHING!” Twilight all but screamed before turning her eyes back to her desk. “Just leave me alone!”

Twilight grimaced at the memory. She had been extremely young at the time. Only ten years old. A short temper was to be expected, but that had not made the ordeal any easier on her conscience. She had been guilt-ridden for several days after Rainbow and Fluttershy tore into her about it, and she had gone out of her way to make up for it.

With a deep breath, Twilight turned away from the desk and scanned the shelves, looking for another book to try and give herself a lead. The shelves in her room had been all but cleaned at this point, but there were still a few scattered about. She took the titles in, hoping for something related. Once or twice, she pulled one out to check the subtitle or read the description before putting it back when she deduced it had nothing to do with what she was trying to figure out.

It slowly dawned on her that there was nothing else in the library that could be related to what she was looking for. “But if there’s nothing else in the library, then… I’m flying blind,” she thought. Her eyes slowly widened, a chilly sensation seeping into her veins. If she couldn’t find a clue about that chest or how to open it, then...

The ice in her veins melted into fire. Her lips curled back into an ugly snarl as magic gathered on her horn. “You… you’ve got to be KIDDING me!” she seethed, her eye twitching. With a frustrated scream of rage and a stomp of her forehooves, she threw her head back, allowing a pulse of raw, uncontrolled magic to shoot out of her horn and rapidly spread throughout the room. A gust of intense wind was kicked up by the force, throwing books and parchment flying all over to scatter along the floor.

A moment later, everything was still again. Twilight looked on at the mess she had created, her rage forgotten and replaced with mortified shock. “W… w-what?” she breathed, her hoof wandering up to her chest. “...Why did I do that?”

“Why am I acting like this?!” she thought, a pearl of unease forming in her gut. She had just thrown the equivalent of a temper tantrum, like a spoiled child stamping his hooves and screaming bloody murder because he didn’t get what he wanted. Children had an excuse. Many of them got upset over the smallest things, and others flippantly threw blame around to avoid taking responsibility for their own mistakes. That was just how foals were. They didn’t know any better.

But Twilight wasn’t a child. “I do know better,” she thought, letting her face fall onto her desk and covering her head with her hooves. “I’m a grown mare, for pony’s sake! I shouldn’t be getting this angry this easily… ugh. What in Equestria is wrong with me?!”

A gentle knock came to the door. With a start, Twilight turned and looked to see Spike poking his head in, a nervous look on his face. “Uh… h-hey,” he greeted quietly. His eyes fell to the mess, widening with shock. “You, uh… y-you okay?”

Twilight sighed and nodded. “I… yes, Spike, I’m okay. Sorry, I just…” She lit her horn and carefully put everything back where she had found it. She winced at the sight of a few torn pages and bent covers. “I’m just stressed out… if I can’t open that chest, I can’t go to Canterlot and see my family… What are you doing back so soon? I would have thought those errands would take longer.”

Spike stepped all the way into the room, tapping his claws together over his chest. “Er… you sent me away two hours ago. I’ve been downstairs for thirty minutes, and Rainbow’s due to come home any minute.”

Twilight blinked and turned to look at a nearby clock. Surely it hadn’t been that long already, had it? Sure enough, she realized that she had sent Spike out at ten, and it was now noon. “...Oh.”

Spike stepped up to her side and held something up. Curious, Twilight looked and found a scroll clutched in his claws. He shuffled on his feet. “I just got this a little bit ago… I was coming up to give it to you when I, uh, heard the commotion.”

“Who’s it from?” Twilight asked, taking the scroll in her magic and opening it up.

“Your parents.”

Twilight froze at those words. Her throat constricted, and her wings twitched anxiously on her back. Her parents had sent her a letter. Were they upset with her about what happened? Had she hurt them when she was running around as Midnight? She swallowed heavily, unsure if she wanted to read the contents.

But she had to know what they thought. She took a deep breath and opened the scroll all the way before looking at the contents.

Dear Twilight.

We heard about what happened to you last week. We had heard the commotion from our house, but your father and I had no idea that it was you. Princess Celestia came by to talk to us and tell us what had happened. We’re so sorry to hear about what happened, and we hope we can come to see you soon to give you all the love and support we can. We know you’re not a bad mare, Twilight, and we want you to know, right now, that we don’t think any less of you for what happened. You were able to turn things around and give back everything you stole.

But we are worried about you… really worried. First amnesia, now a Fall? It’s incredible that you are able to bear that weight on your shoulders as well as you do. If you ever need somepony to talk to, you can always send us a letter, and we’d love to come to visit whenever possible if you need an extra shoulder or two to cry on. We know you’re all grown up now, but you will always be our little girl, and we will always be here for you if you need us.

It’s amazing, really, just how much you’ve accomplished since moving to Ponyville. You just keep finding ways to amaze and astound us. Even with what’s going on now, you’re still fighting on, as brave as ever. I don’t think either of us can ever truly express just how proud we are of you, Twilight. When I gave birth to you, I could never have imagined we’d have such a beautiful, strong, and gifted mare as you for our daughter. No matter what mistakes you’ve made, or what struggles you’ll face in the future, we have every confidence that you’ll face it with courage and come out on top like you always have before!

We love you with all of our hearts, Twilight! And we’re cheering for you!

Love,

Mom and Dad.

Twilight stared at the page for several seconds, her heart fluttering in her chest. She took a deep breath and held the parchment over her heart, a subtle warmth flowing through her veins from the page.

It didn’t help her find the keys to that chest, but it sure made her feel better. At least for the moment.

“Well, looks like that’s working,” Spike commented, a small smile creeping onto his face.

Twilight nodded and set the letter down on her desk. “Yeah… heh. Those two… I don’t know what I was thinking, assuming they’d be mad at me,” she muttered.

“They’re your parents,” Spike pointed out. “Angry? No. Worried? Absolutely, just like the rest of us.”

Twilight winced. Of course, everypony was worried. “I don’t know why I would expect any different…”

Before she could open her mouth about it, a brief tremor shot through the home, followed by the voice of Rainbow Dash calling from downstairs. “Hey! I’m back! Any luck?!”

“Does a Twilight meltdown count as luck?!” Spike called back over his shoulder, eliciting an undignified squawk from Twilight.

“Spike!” she hissed, glaring at him. “Why?!”

“Because you need some good old fashioned Sprainbow Therapy,” Spike stated without missing a beat, shooting her a cheeky sideways glare.

“How is chucking me under the chariot like that therapeutic?!”

“Because it makes us happy,” Rainbow answered as she sauntered casually into the room. Her mane was swept back from her time in the air, and a thin layer of sweat had built up in her fur, but she otherwise seemed fine. “And when we’re happy, so are you.”

Twilight glared at Rainbow indignantly. She thrust her nose up into the air and gave a loud, haughty huff. “...Jerks,” she mumbled, puffing up her cheeks.

Rainbow laughed at that, coming up Twilight’s side and draping a wing over her. “Aw, c’mon. Y’know you love it,” she said quietly, nuzzling into the alicorn’s cheek affectionately.

Twilight huffed again before lightly reciprocating the gesture. “...Yeah, I guess I do,” she admitted quietly.

“Victory,” Spike declared with an enthusiastic pump of his fist and a victorious grin. “Excellent!”

“You hush!” Twilight shot at him before turning back to her desk.

A few seconds passed before Rainbow got a more serious look on her face. “So… what was Spike going on about a meltdown?”

Twilight’s smile faded, and she leaned down to rest her chin on the surface of her desk. “Ugh… Not one of the books in this library has anything to tell me about the Tree of Harmony, or that chest, or anything about any keys to open it…” she mumbled, covering her head with her hooves.

Rainbow’s wing squeezed her closer to the pegasus, while one of her hooves rested on Twilight’s shoulder. “Hey…”

“I don’t know what I’m doing, you two,” Twilight continued, deciding to just bite the bullet and spill her frustration to them. It wouldn’t do her any good to bottle it up, after all. The mess Spike had walked in on was evidence enough of that. “I feel like I’m lost! I have to figure out to open that stupid chest, but I don’t even know how to start looking for the keys!”

“Twi…”

“Have they always existed, or are they things that have just magically appeared to go along with the chest?! I don’t know! And if I can’t figure it out, then I won’t be able to go back to Canterlot and see my family, or visit the library, or see Princess Celestia, or any of my old friends! I’ll be-”

“Twilight!”

Twilight’s head jerked up in surprise from the force in Rainbow’s voice. She turned to look and saw the pegasus’ deep pink eyes staring intensely into her own. A few seconds passed before Rainbow’s lips curled up into a devilish smirk, and she darted in to steal a kiss. Like a woodpecker, she was in and out before Twilight had a chance to react, leaving her flustered and confused with a healthy red blush on her cheeks. “W-wha?! B-but, I…”

“You, Twilight Killjoy Sparkle, worry too much,” Rainbow said lightly.

Twilight snorted.

“We’ll figure it out,” Spike added with an encouraging smile. He placed a claw on her hoof for emphasis and beamed up at her. “And ya know, if you’re stressing yourself out over this chest thing so much, why not send a letter to Princess Celestia? I’m sure she’d be willing to offer you some advice.”

Twilight blinked, her heart skipping a beat. “W-wha…? Send a letter to… Celestia?” she echoed. The idea hadn’t occurred to her up until now, and it seemed kind of obvious in retrospect. But at the same time, Celestia was one of the two beings who had delivered this sentence onto her in the first place, and she hadn’t done anything to reign Luna in before she slapped an exile sentence on top of opening the chest.

“And after how badly I hurt her daughter… stealing her memories like I did…” Twilight thought, her hoof drifting up to her chest as her mind wandered back to that terrible moment. She could still feel how much it had hurt when Rainbow had opened her eyes, only to look back up at her with no idea who she was…

Rainbow didn’t seem to share Twilight’s concerns. She pointed briefly at Spike with a sharp nod before giving Twilight a little shake. “Spike’s got a point, Twi. Mom’d probably be the best pony to talk to about this.”

Twilight didn’t say anything for a few moments, battling with the idea in her mind. Some small worm of bitterness and resentment snarled at her, commanding her to discard the idea and press on without Celestia’s help. “Celestia let this happen to you in the first place! Why should you humiliate yourself any further by begging for help from her?!” her voice snarled at her from somewhere inside her skull.

Twilight screwed her eyes shut, a subtle spike of pain worming through her skull. She immediately put a hoof to her chest and took a series of deep breaths, going through the motions Cadance had taught her, and Rainbow had re-taught her. In and out, in and out…

Her sudden need for that exercise did not go unnoticed, and she felt the claw and hooves on her giving her comforting squeezes. A few seconds went by before she finally calmed down enough and opened her eyes again. Spike and Rainbow were looking back at her with concern written all over their faces.

“...Twi? Are you feeling okay?” Rainbow asked, lifting a hoof to feel at Twilight’s forehead. “That looked kinda intense…”

Twilight shakily nodded. “Y-yeah, I’m fine. Just… just a headache,” she half-lied, lightly brushing the hoof away and turning back to her desk. “It’s not humiliating. She’s my teacher. Asking her questions is what I’m supposed to do. So I can learn!”

The voice between her ears had no rebuttal. Twilight took a deep breath before pulling forth a blank sheet of parchment and her writing quill with her magic. Without much thought, she began to write.

Dear Princess Celestia,

Over the last several days, I have gone through every single book in my library that I think might have some sort of connection to the chest presented to me by the Tree of Harmony. Since I have to open that chest to regain entry to Canterlot, I am devoting every ounce of energy I have to this task.

Unfortunately, there is nothing in my library that’s of any help. Not even a reference to get me started. I’m fumbling in the dark with no idea what to do or where to go for answers. Without some clue, I can’t hope to ever open the chest and make up for what I did as Midnight.

Twilight’s head twinged as she wrote that name, but she pressed on, ignoring it.

It’s beyond stressful. I’m getting more and more frustrated with every passing day, and I’m getting scared that I might never be able to make things right and go back to Canterlot. It’s eating me up inside, to the point that I just got done having a small ‘Twilight Meltdown,’ as Spike and Rainbow so affectionately put it.

That’s why I am writing to you now. If it isn’t too much trouble, I would be grateful for any guidance or advice you could give me. Anything would be a huge help here.

I look forward to your quick response.

Your faithful student,

Twilight Sparkle.

She looked the sheet over one more time to ensure it said everything she wanted. Then, with a nod, she turned and drifted it over to Spike. “Alright, to Princess Celestia, Spike,” she instructed simply.

Spike took the letter with a sharp nod. “Aye aye, Twilight!” he said. He breathed in and unleashed a gout of green flames over the letter, transforming it into a cloud of smoke and sparks. The cloud drifted over to the nearby window, which Rainbow saw fit to trot over to and open up so it could pass through unhindered.

“Okay, it’s on its way!” Spike proclaimed, sticking his chest out. “Now we just need to wait for her to write back!”

“Yeah, guess so…” Twilight nodded, looking ahead at the wall behind her desk.

A few seconds passed in silence before she felt a hoof on her back, and Rainbow spoke up. “Hey, why don’t we head outside for a little while?” she suggested quietly, guiding Twilight from her seat and for the door. “Ya know, get some fresh air, clear your head, get ya away from all these books.”

Twilight thought it over for a second. Outside, huh? She shrugged. “Hm. Sure? Why not?”

Rainbow put on a comforting smile. Without another word, Twilight allowed the pegasus and the dragon to escort her out of the loft and out of the library.

Ponyville had seen better days, that much was certain.

Twilight winced as she looked out over the town. It had only been a few weeks since the Plundervines rampaged across the region. Several homes had been torn to practical shreds, leaving a large number of ponies displaced or forcing them to room up with their neighbors until repairs could be completed.

Repairs which were well underway, and would probably be more or less done in just a few months. For as much damage as the town had suffered, Twilight knew that damage wasn’t exactly anything new to Ponyville. The town had rebuilt itself a few times already in the time she and Rainbow had called it home. It always took a bit of time, but in the end, everypony pulled together and put things back the way they were meant to be.

That didn’t stop her from frowning at the signs of damage, though. The library had been spared the worst of the carnage, thankfully, but the buildings surrounding it had not been so fortunate. In every direction she saw shattered windows and holes in walls, and she even spotted the broken legs of a dismantled furniture set puncturing the ground like a series of poorly aimed javelins.

It got worse the further she looked towards the Everfree. Many homes had been outright obliterated, one of which she knew to be Fluttershy’s cottage. Repairs were due to start on that building any day, as she understood it, but given it had basically been broken into rubble, a full rebuild was probably in order…

She gave off a quiet sigh and looked ahead. It was still hard for her to believe that all of that damage had come about as a result of Discord not being around to hold the vines in check like he had in the original timeline. If the scattered Flashes her friends had experienced were anything to go by, the vines had been almost docile in the original version of events. They had spread and broken things, to be sure, but they hadn’t been so violent or hostile…

Her train of thought was broken by a series of coughs and gags from her right. Curious, she turned to see Spike sitting by her side, a claw held up to his lips as his cheeks bulged out.

Rainbow, who had been sitting on Twilight’s other side, leaned over to look past Twilight. “Aw, sweet! Getting a reply, huh?”

“Uh- ulp- huh!” Spike gagged before his mouth opened wide. Twilight shied back as a comically unattractive belch tore out of his open maw, unleashing a torrent of green flames. The flames coalesced and gathered into one space before a scroll popped into existence, bound with the royal seal.

Twilight snatched it out of the air with her magic in a heartbeat and tore it open, equal parts anxious and excited to see what her teacher had to say.

My dearest student, Twilight,

I am sorry to hear that you have been having such a hard time with your task. In hindsight, it would have been prudent of my sister and I to try and render some more guidance before we left you. Alas, I fear that the exhaustion of the night’s events, not to mention my own emotionally unstable state after what I witnessed, led me to excuse myself. It is an old flaw of mine, one Rainbow Dash knows only all too well.

I will make up for it as best as I can right now, however. It makes sense that there wouldn’t be anything in your library that could give you answers, as even I am not sure what resides in that chest, nor do I have any ideas on how to open it. I fear that this is a test you will be taking at all times, rather than one you will actively have to study for. A trial of character rather than a trial of intellect.

After all, you are attempting to regain access to your Element of Harmony. If I had to speculate, I would imagine that to do so would require that you prove to the Tree that you are still worthy of wielding its power. As the centerpiece of the Elements, I have no doubts that this will be a very difficult trial to overcome.

I must caution you, however, against haste or recklessness. As true as it is that you are exiled from Canterlot until further notice, the fact remains that there is no further level to your punishment, and no time limit on the objectives laid out before you. I strongly encourage you to take your time and not stress yourself over it. Take some time to enjoy life and be with Rainbow Dash. With your memories restored, so too is your relationship, as I understand it.

On that note, there is one thing I must request: I need Rainbow Dash to come up to Canterlot as soon as possible. As she is the one appointed to oversee your progress, I need to go over the finer details with her, and I would rather do it in person. Rest assured, I will not devour much of her time. A day or two at the very most.

If you still insist on finding reading material to help you, however, I recommend you pay a visit to the library in the castle that Luna and I once lived in, deep in the Everfree Forest. I believe that there may be a book hidden somewhere in those ancient shelves that may be of some use to you.

I hope you find what you are looking for, and I want you to know, Twilight, that no matter what you did, I am ever hopeful that you will succeed, and that you may always reach out to me if you need guidance, or even just an ear to vent to.

Sincerely,
Princess Celestia.

Twilight set the letter down once she was done reading it, her brow furrowed. “A book in the library of the Castle of the Two Sisters…?” she wondered, thinking back to their previous expeditions to that place to see if she recalled anything helpful.

“Makes sense,” Spike pointed out. “Luna and Celestia did basically live on top of the Tree for a really long time. Decades, at least. There’s bound to be something that at least talks about it in there.”

“Yeah, probably,” Twilight acknowledged. She rolled the scroll up and teleported it inside before turning to Rainbow.

The pegasus grinned, puffing out her chest. “Okay, then let’s go! We can fly there and get a start right now! I don’t have anything else going on today!”

“Um, actually…” Twilight muttered, her ears drooping. “Princess Celestia said that she wants you to go and see her in Canterlot as soon as possible…”

Rainbow’s posture deflated. “W-what? Why? I mean, I’m real happy to go and see her whenever, but uh, I don’t think this is a social call.”

Twilight shook her head. “It’s not. She wants to talk to you about how you’re… overseeing my progress,” she said, her brow furrowing. A small spider of fire crawled along the base of her skull at the idea, but she was quick to banish it.

Rainbow opened her mouth to object, then gave off a quiet sigh of frustration. “Oh, yeah… that. Man, this stinks,” she grumbled, looking up at Canterlot. “Ugh. Guess our trip to the castle’s delayed till I get back, huh?”

“Yeah, probably…” Twilight replied, rubbing a hoof along her shoulder. She couldn’t keep a small drop of venom from dripping into what she said next. “...At least you get to spend some time with your family.”

She could feel the stares on her the moment she said that, and she immediately regretted it. She looked down at the grass beneath her hooves and clamped her mouth shut, her ears folding back.

A few seconds passed before Spike cleared his throat. “Actually, Rainbow, I think Twi and I can manage the trip to the castle while you’re in Canterlot.”

Twilight blinked. “Huh?”

Rainbow mirrored that remark.

Spike shrugged. “Well, I mean, it’s the most practical way to do things, isn’t it? You’re gonna be busy for a few days, probably, and searching through the whole castle’s probably gonna take a few days, too. Why do them one at a time when we can do both?”

“W-well, yeah, but…” Rainbow began before her words died. She looked at Twilight, her ears drooping. “Going back there so soon after everything we just got done going through…”

Twilight actually managed to put on a smile at that. She reached out with a wing to pull Rainbow into a side-hug. “I actually like this plan, Rainbow. It’s better than letting me sit around here on my rump with nothing to do but wait for you to come home. It’ll give me something to do, take my mind off things.”

“But-”

“And don’t worry, I’ll be safe. Spike and I can bring some of our friends with us to help keep us safe. We won’t be in any danger that we won’t be able to handle.”

“Especially if we bring Fluttershy,” Spike pointed out. “Her ability to deal with animals and stare them into submission will basically make the whole trip a cakewalk.”

“And with her house still due to be rebuilt, she’s between things right now, too,” Twilight finished with a short nod. “So as long as she’s alright with coming with us, I’m sure it’ll all turn out fine, and we can meet back here when we’re done.”

Rainbow stared at the two of them for a few seconds, mouthing uselessly like a fish. She eventually nodded, a small smile gracing her lips. “Heh, fair points across the board,” she acknowledged. Her smile faded, and she looked down. “Sorry, Twi. I don’t wanna baby you or anything, but… well, I’m just worried, that’s all.”

Twilight hummed and leaned over, giving Rainbow an affectionate nuzzle. “I know you are. And it means a lot to me. But I’d rather be on my hooves trying to be productive than sitting around doing nothing while you’re gone.”

Rainbow nodded in understanding. “Yeah, yeah, I hear ya. Just be careful, alright? It’s still the Everfree you’re gonna be running through. Place isn’t exactly friendly.”

“Trust me, I remember,” Twilight said with a roll of her eyes. “We’ll be careful, don’t worry.”

Rainbow stared at her for a few seconds, looking into her eyes as if to search for something. Whatever it was, she must have found it, as she finally relented and pulled back from Twilight’s wing-hug. “Alright. I’ll try not to,” she said while ruffling her wings. “So… we splitting up now, or do we wanna get some lunch first?”

“Definitely lunch,” Spike decided for Twilight, scampering over to Rainbow’s side. “Can we hit that hayburger joint farther into town?”

Twilight wanted to protest the idea at first, but the moment Spike mentioned hayburgers, a monstrous roar from her stomach silenced her words in her throat. Wow, she was hungrier than she realized. That, or hayburgers were just an easy cheat button for these two. One or the other.

Whatever the case, she stood up and walked over to join her two grinning roommates with a tiny blush and a roll of her eyes. “Eheh, sure. I could go for some calories right about now.”

“Just make sure you burn em off later,” Rainbow jabbed as they set off down the street.

“I run all over Ponyville with you every morning.”

“Twi, it’s hayburgers.”

“So? What’s your point?”

“Well-”

“Don’t answer that.”

As the trio bantered back and forth, their voices faded into the distance as they left the Golden Oaks Library behind and ventured forth into Ponyville. Their destination: lunch.

Author's Notes:

This turned out a solid two thousand words longer than I had been expecting.

I'm sorry this one took so long. Between a lack of sleep on many of the days I wanted to write this and some delays on the part of my editor, getting this sucker ready for publishing proved to be a bit of an ordeal. I can't claim with any confidence that future chapters will be faster, but hey, we can hope, yeah?

Butterflies and Bugs

Twilight may not have had amnesia anymore, but it seemed she had forgotten just how much she truly enjoyed the taste of a well-crafted, cheesy, gooey hayburger with just the right amount of hay, lettuce, and tomato. As soon as hers had arrived, she had lost herself in demolishing them, bathing her taste buds in the rich, wonderful flavor that chased away her fears and her doubts.

Then she had noticed the looks Rainbow and Spike were giving her, and suddenly no amount of good taste could smother the red tint that had covered her cheeks. Not for a lack of trying. She had tried to make sure some tomato sauce got on her cheeks to hide her blush, but Spike, being the ever- attentive assistant he was, was quick to pass her napkins and the like so she could clean herself up.

Of course, she knew full well they just wanted to tease her about it later. It would be miserable, but if she were being honest with herself, she really wouldn’t have it any other way.

Once they had wrapped up their meal, they made their way to Carousel Boutique. As they wound their way through the streets of Ponyville, Twilight noticed a few ponies giving her sidelong glances of confusion or concern. No doubt word of her little meltdown up in Canterlot had spread around in the days that followed, and those who knew her even slightly were unable to hide their feelings on the matter as she passed.

She did her best to ignore them, however, focusing instead on the boutique as it came into sight. A few of the windows had been broken down by the vines, but other than that, the shop appeared to be more or less the same as always. Twilight took a series of deep breaths to ease her mind and focus on the task at hoof. She went over the steps in her head as if it were a checklist. “Get Fluttershy, go into the forest, find a useful book to help me deal with the chest.”

Spike pulled ahead of the group and excitedly knocked on the door, an eager smile on his face. Twilight came to a stop a few paces behind him, waiting for an answer. Several seconds passed, and some rustling was audible on the other side before the door was opened by a pale blue magic aura. Rarity was on the other side, appearing disheveled, but nevertheless pleased by the surprise visit. “Oh! Twilight, Rainbow, Spikey-wikey! I wasn’t expecting you. Do you want to come in? I have some tea brewing.”

“Aw, heck yeah!” Spike agreed enthusiastically. He went to enter, but Twilight pulled him back by his tail with a roll of her eyes.

“Heh. Nice try, little guy, but we’re here for a reason, remember?”

Spike crossed his arms and huffed. “Hmph. Killjoy.”

“That’s my line,” Rainbow jabbed before looking to Rarity. “But Twi’s right, we’re not gonna be here for long. Is Fluttershy in right now?”

Rarity deflated somewhat at the news. She shook her head, eliciting a frown from twilight. “I’m afraid not. She went out a short while ago to meet up with a friend of hers, though she neglected to mention who,” she explained, gesturing vaguely. “She’s been very quiet lately. Even more than usual. Oh, the poor dear… she just hasn’t been herself since she lost her cottage...”

“Can you blame her?” Spike asked with a sigh. “A lot of things got messed up by those stupid vines.”

“You can say that again,” Twilight thought, reaching a hoof up to idly rub at her temple.

“Oh, don’t remind me,” Rarity complained, cringing back into her store. “Have you any idea how many of my dresses got torn to shreds by those horrible things? I’m going to have to close down for weeks just to get all the needed supplies to do my job properly again!”

“Well, I’d love to help clean up,” Rainbow said, scuffing the dirt at her hooves. “But I kinda gotta run up to Canterlot here in a bit. I’m just tagging along with these two to make sure they got everything covered, then I’m going.”

Rarity’s eyes shimmered with interest, and she poked her head farther out of her store. “Oh? Canterlot, is it? Do you mind if I ask what business you have up there? Important princess matters, no doubt.”

Rainbow winced, her eyes darting sideways at Twilight for a second. “Er… you could say that, sure,” she said carefully.

Twilight’s ears drooped slightly, her brow furrowing in mild irritation. At least Rainbow was being vague, for her sake.

Rarity seemingly caught on to something. She gave off a quiet, thoughtful hum before pulling back. “Say no more. I can tell a personal matter when I stumble across it. I shan’t pry!” she said in understanding. She offered Twilight a smile. “So, you are looking for Fluttershy, yes?”

“Yes, we are,” Twilight said, latching onto the distraction. “You said she went out with a friend?”

“I did indeed. I may be wrong, but I think they were making their way to the ruins of her cottage. Maybe you can begin your search there?”

“Sure thing. Let her know we were looking for her if she comes back, okay?” Twilight requested.

Rarity nodded. “But of course, darling.”

“Right. Thanks, Rarity,” Twilight said before turning and trotting back down the street. She could hear Spike and Rainbow moving to follow her. She glanced back between them at Rarity. “We need to be going. We’ll see you later!”

“Take care, dears!” Rarity called after them, giving a few waves of farewell before retreating back into her home.

Her voice could just be heard through one of the absent windows. “Opal! That is one of the only sheets of silk I have left! Off! And no claws!”

She was answered by an angered hiss.

Rainbow snickered under her breath. “Yeah, that seems about right.”

Twilight winced when Fluttershy’s cottage came into view a short time later. While she had seen plenty of broken down homes so far, she had yet to lay eyes on the quiet, isolated house that had housed one of her oldest friends for the last few years, and none of them had prepared her for the scene of obliteration that now sat before her.

The cottage had been reduced to a pile of rubble and splinters. The walls had all been broken down and shredded, piled haphazardly around in a wild fashion. The chimney had been broken mere feet from the base, sending pieces of brick and stone scattering over the remaining ruins. The earth all around it was torn and shredded, to the point that the little stream that once wound its way through the front yard had actually been partially dammed, creating a muddy waterfall that flowed over a mound of dirt in the heart of the stream while dampening the surrounding soil.

The damage extended beyond the yard or house. Trees had been uprooted and broken in half, lying scattered all over the area, or even jutting up from the torn soil with the roots turned toward the sky, as if they had been thrown like javelins. Boulders and stones had been thrown as well, as could be seen by the trenches many had at their bases. All in all, it looked almost like a detonation of an impossible scale had erupted not far away, and the poor hovel had been caught in the blast zone.

Of course, the truth was nothing quite so flashy, though no less grim. Supernatural vines created by Discord a thousand years ago were the culprits, and they had surely done their job in sowing chaos and destruction.

Twilight stopped at the top of the hill just before the yard, sweeping her eyes slowly across the scene of devastation with a limp jaw. She labored to fully grasp the enormity of the damage, her mind stalling as she took in every little detail. “This is what happened to Fluttershy's house…?” she asked in barely even a whisper.

“Told ya,” Spike said glumly from her back. “Those vines messed up everything.”

“Yeah…” Rainbow agreed, her muzzle scrunching up in disdain. “...Kinda makes me wish I could beat the tar outta the guy who made ‘em.”

“Oh, I’d love to do a little more to him than that,” Twilight’s voice said inside her head. “A simple beating is too good for that worthless creature! Total destruction, like what I had to suffer, would suit him far better-”

Another pang of pain in her skull. Twilight grit her teeth, forcing herself to ignore the bitter voice and countering it with her own. “No! I’m better than that! Discord’s a monster, but that doesn’t mean I should let myself become one because of him!”

Twilight stood still for a few seconds. The pain in her skull faded, and she took a slow, gentle breath to soothe herself. Spike and Rainbow were already pulling ahead. With a quick shake to renew her senses, she cantered after them. The ground squelched and bled water as she went, a by-product of the excess water seeping into the soil from the dammed stream.

The bridge that crossed over the stream was, for a mercy, still intact, although it was far from being in perfect condition. Small chunks of it on the right side had crumbled away, leaving a jagged gap for anypony not paying attention to step in and fall through. There were cracks and marks scattered across it, but it was otherwise fine, by the looks of things.

It was as she crossed that small bridge over the stream that Twilight noticed Fluttershy. The yellow pegasus was sitting in front of the cottage, her face hidden from view by her long pink mane. The vast majority of the animals that had once taken residence in her home were nowhere to be seen - either temporarily relocated to trusted caretakers, or scattered to the wilds. The only one that remained was Angel Bunny, who was sitting by her side with an uncharacteristically sullen appearance.

Fluttershy didn’t appear to have heard their approach yet, her attention fixated solely on the broken remains of her home. Oddly enough, though, Twilight didn’t see anypony else. Her only company was Angel...

“I thought Rarity said she came here with a friend…”

“Hey, Fluttershy,” Rainbow called as they drew closer, causing the other pegasus to jump with a startled squeak.

Fluttershy sprang to her hooves and spun around to face them. The alarm on her face immediately gave way to a warm smile. “Oh! Rainbow, Twilight, Spike!” she greeted. She looked down at the ground, shrinking back shyly. “Um… you startled me.”

Angel glanced back at them with an uninterested frown before focusing back on the ruins.

“Heh, sorry,” Rainbow apologized, ruffling Fluttershy’s mane. “Had to get your attention somehow.”

Fluttershy puffed up her cheeks in mild annoyance before pulling herself together and offering her company a warm smile. “I guess. Um… so, uh, can I help you?”

“We’re heading into the Everfree Forest,” Spike proclaimed before Twilight had the chance to. “Was wondering if you wanted to tag along.”

Fluttershy’s eyes widened. “W-what?! The Everfree Forest?!” she squeaked in fear.

Rainbow gave Spike a flat glare. “Real smooth, buddy.”

“What?” he asked with a shrug. “She asked.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Ugh. Fluttershy, we’re specifically going to the Castle of the Two Sisters. Spike and I are going to be doing some research in the library there, and we were hoping you could come along.”

“Um… c-couldn’t you go with somepony braver?” she asked quietly. “Instead of, um, me?”

“We could,” Twilight acknowledge quietly. “But we figured we’d ask you first. Rainbow can’t come; she’s heading for Canterlot as soon as we leave, and Rarity’s, well, Rarity. You’re between things right now, what with… well…” she gestured at the cottage solemnly. “But more than that, you’re really good with animals. If there are any that don’t like us in there, I’d rather deal with them peacefully, and you’re our best option for that.”

“If you don’t wanna go,” Spike added, speaking more gently than before. “That’s fine. But we’d really like your company and your help.”

Fluttershy took those words in, her anxious posture slowly relaxing. She idly reached a hoof up to her throat, wincing. “Um… I guess I can go if you really want me to come… but, uh… can I bring someone with me?”

Angel glanced up at her in mild disapproval.

Rainbow frowned. “Ya know, that reminds me… Rarity said you came out here with a friend, but I don’t see anypony else. You were all alone when we showed up,” she said, glancing around. “Did they go away or something?”

Fluttershy perked up and shook her head. “Oh, no! He’s inside!” she said excitedly. She quickly rose to her hooves and spun around. “Thorax! Can you hear me?!” she called out.

Twilight’s eyes widened. “Thorax?!” she echoed in surprise. Thorax was here?! That was news to her.

In response to Fluttershy’s call, a long, lanky mouselike creature with black fur and blue eyes poked its head up from the rubble, holding what appeared to be a square of paper in its mouth. It was about three feet long and moved with speed and agility fitting for a creature of its stature. It scurried across the rubble, then jumped down to land in front of Fluttershy.

The moment it did, it was consumed in a swirl of green flames. Sure enough, Thorax the changeling emerged from the embers, the square of paper in his mouth turning out to be a photo, now that Twilight could see it.

Thorax pulled the photo out of his mouth with his magic and passed it to Fluttershy. “Here ya go. It’s the only one I could find,” he said.

Fluttershy reached up and took the photo in her hooves, a tender smile on her face. Twilight looked at the photo over her shoulder. It was a shot showing Fluttershy as a young adult surrounded by her family. Zephyr, as a mid-teenager, was off to the left side of the photo, leaning casually against Fluttershy’s side with a big, dorky grin on his face. Their parents were seated behind them, smiling gently at the camera.

It was a pleasant scene, all in all. If Twilight had to crack a guess, it was the last one she had taken before moving for Ponyville.

“Thank you, Thorax,” Fluttershy said quietly. She reached down and tucked the photo into a small sack that was at her side.

Thorax beamed at her turning to face Twilight and the rest of the new arrivals. “Hey, guys! I wasn’t expecting to see any of you here,” he said in greeting, his wings buzzing briefly on his back.

“Heh, ditto,” Rainbow remarked with a friendly smile. She gave Thorax a clap on the shoulder. “What are ya doing here, man? I thought you’d be up in Canterlot with Wind and Squall.”

“Well, I would be, and I was up until earlier today,” Thorax said. “But once I heard about Fluttershy’s house and everything that happened, I had to come down and make sure she was alright.”

“That right?” Rainbow asked with a raised eyebrow, her friendly smile morphing into a knowing smirk.

Thorax’s eyes widened as a tiny bit of red came onto his cheeks. His eyes turned up somewhat, and Twilight got the impression that he was seeing something the rest of them couldn’t. “...Uh… y-yes?”

Angel covered his face with his paws in a failed attempt to stifle some very high-pitched giggles, an evil look in his eyes.

“Rainbow, Angel, don’t give him a hard time,” Fluttershy scolded lightly. “He’s come a long way to spend some time with me, so be nice!”

“Hey, I didn’t say anything,” Rainbow said innocently.

Angel made a squeak that could only have meant “You should!”

Twilight looked between them all for a few moments, working through the interaction in her head. Thorax was suddenly very bashful looking, Fluttershy was standing up to the tiniest hint of a perceived threat, and Rainbow had the most malevolent of teasing smirks Twilight had ever seen on her.

“She only ever gets that look when she’s poking fun at me,” Twilight thought, frowning. “And she only gets away with that because she’s known me for so long. That and we’re in a… oh… OH.”

It clicked in her mind with the resonance of a cannon blast. Twilight’s eyes darted back and forth between Fluttershy and Thorax in surprise, her mind reeling. It was hard to imagine, but now that she thought about it, it was actually kind of obvious, in retrospect. She probably would have figured it out a lot sooner if she hadn’t been an amnesiac for the last two years.

Thorax, no doubt sensing her realization, was quick to change the subject. “S-so! You three! You’re here! You weren’t a minute ago! Eheh, uh, explain?”

“They want to go into the Everfree Forest,” Fluttershy explained. “To the big castle there. You remember?”

Thorax blinked and nodded. “I think so… why?”

“We have some research to do,” Spike explained. “Twi and I are going for sure, but Rainbow’s gotta go up to the city. We figured Fluttershy’d be a good pony to have along.”

“Mhmm,” Fluttershy acknowledged. “And I’m going with them. But, uhm, if it’s alright with you, I was wondering, Thorax, if you’d like to come with us?”

Thorax stared at her for a second, then at Twilight and Spike. She could practically see the gears turning in his head before he nodded along. “Ah… okay, sure. Yeah, I can come along. When are we leaving?”

“We can go at pretty much any time,” Twilight said, glancing up at the sky. “If we head out now we should be able to reach the castle before the sun starts going down.”

“Oh,” Thorax said, blinking. He turned to Fluttershy. “Uh, is there anything else we wanted to do, or…?”

Fluttershy shook her head. “No, I don’t think so…”

Thorax nodded. “Then… I guess we’re ready when you are.”

Angel reached up and tugged in irritation on Fluttershy’s man, drawing her attention. He glared up at her expectantly, his forelegs folding over his chest. Fluttershy giggled and lightly picked him up. “Oh, and of course you can come too, Angel.”

Angel nodded as if there was literally no other answer Fluttershy could have given him.

“If that’s the case,’ Rainbow piped up, spreading out her wings and giving them a few slow flaps to stretch them out. “I should probably be getting a move on. Canterlot’s right there, and I don’t wanna keep mom waiting for too long.”

Twilight turned to face her, feeling some disappointment at having to watch her friend go. “Right… fly safe, Rainbow,” she said softly, glancing down at the pegasus’ wing. It had been injured during the Plundervines incident, and while it had recovered, she had the feeling it was still kind of tender. “And be careful with your wing.”

Rainbow grinned confidently. “Don’t worry, Twi. I’m not that dumb.”

“We wanna put that to a vote?” Spike asked with a cheeky grin.

“Nah. We all know you’d totally rig it against me,” Rainbow snorted. She stepped forward, focusing her attention on Twilight. “If anypony needs to be careful here, it’s you, Twi. Don’t stress yourself out too much, okay?”

Twilight winced at the reminder of Celestia’s advice. She offered up a small nod before reaching out and pulling Rainbow into a gentle embrace. “I’ll try not to…” she whispered.

Rainbow nodding into her shoulder. “Good… if it all starts getting to ya, just have Spike whack ya or something,” she said, a small edge of mirth creeping in at the end there.

Twilight snorted. “Heh. Sure. I’ll get right on that.”

Rainbow leaned back with a smirk.

Twilight capitalized on the moment to lean in and press her lips against Rainbow’s. It was short-lived, as the pegasus immediately yanked her head back with a furious blush the moment she regained her faculties. “T-twilight! Not in front of others!” she protested weakly.

Twilight lidded her eyes at Rainbow and spoke in a low purr. “Aw, but why not? You’re cute when you squirm.”

Rainbow’s blush grew several times more intense. “B-but, y-you, I… GUH!” she groaned before backing out of the hug and flapping her wings, launching herself heavensward. “I’ll get you for that!” she shouted back at Twilight as she disappeared into the sky.

Twilight laughed heartily. “I look forward to seeing you try!” she called after Rainbow, though she had the feeling the pegasus did not hear her as she disappeared into the sky.

Author's Notes:

Fun fact: Angel was not originally meant to be here, but my editor made it a point to ask, and now Angel is gonna be in the whole story arc. Yay for me!

Fun fact 2: I imagine you've noticed, but I will not be highlighting plot arc names this time around: At least not on an individual basis. We have one arc for each of the keys in this story, but i will not be naming them so as to avoid spoiling which one is which and any other relevant details.

However, if it appeased anyone with OCD like me, up until we get closer to the end, we can just call this collection of arcs

The Sealed Chest Arc

Under Peaceful Boughs

Twilight looked up into the branches of the trees overhead with an uneasy grimace. Once upon a time, the Everfree Forest had all but petrified her with fear due to its alien nature as a primal zone. The unpredictable weather and truly wild animals had both proven to be potentially dangerous obstacles the first time she had entered this dark forest, three years ago.

However, she had set foot under these boughs numerous times since then. Each visit had done more and more to assuage her fears and anxieties. She learned to appreciate the solemn, almost haunting beauty of the woods that enveloped Equestria’s former capital. The weather did as it willed, and there was something to be admired about that. The animals lived their own lives, free of pony influence, and for as scary as they were as a result, they were nevertheless fascinating creatures to behold.

Needless to say, her fear had faded with time, replaced with cautious fascination… Until her most recent visits. Her throat tightened reflexively as the memory of having her lungs filled with blue sleeping gas filled her mind, and a cold shudder ran down her spine as she recalled Rainbow’s weight settled there.

She was not pleased to be back here. She hadn’t thought about it back in Ponyville before they set out, but now that she was here, the memories of what she had endured under these trees festered in her mind like an open wound.

Alas, it seemed the other members of the group did not share her reservations.

“Huh. Ya know, I haven’t actually been here since that whole mess with the queen,” Thorax noted, looking up into the branches with a thoughtful look on his face. “I remember everypony warning me that the Everfree was a really dangerous place, and at the time I was too scared of everything else to question it. Now, though?”

“It’s not as scary as it used to be,” Fluttershy acknowledged with a slow nod. “But I think that might just be us getting used to it…”

“Or we were blowing it out of proportion,” Spike ventured with a noncommittal shrug.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Fluttershy countered. “This place is still super dangerous. It always has been.”

“Fluttershy’s right,” Twilight cut in, eager for the chance to distract herself from her own haunting thoughts. “The Everfree Forest is nothing to sneeze at. We’ve simply gotten used to navigating it and being in danger.”

She stopped in place, her muzzle wrinkling in thought. “Although, I’m not sure if it's a good thing that I can say that with such certainty…”

Spike rolled his eyes. “Eh. Comes with being a wielder of an Element of Harmony, I guess,” he said, gesturing at her and Fluttershy. “You and the others are like the textbook definition of superheroes.”

Fluttershy squeaked. “Oh! Oh, no, I don’t think I’m a hero. I don’t even have the costume for it…”

Thorax gave her a soft smile. “Well, uh, not all heroes wear capes, you know.”

Fluttershy blushed and hid behind her mane. Angel, who was situated on her head, stuck out his tongue in mock disgust before snickering in devilish amusement.

Twilight rolled her eyes at the adorable display before focusing ahead. Superheroes, huh? A fun notion. “Although not one I can really agree with.”

A tingle ran down Twilight’s spine, and she shuddered involuntarily. A faint, echoing snicker sounded somewhere in the depths of her mind, causing her to frown. “Heroes don’t hurt the ponies they love, after all…”

Her dropping mood must have been more visible than she had thought, as the others soon silenced their discussion to focus on her in concern. She noticed them staring and jumped in her skin before clearing her throat and putting on a sheepish smile. “What? Why are you looking at me like that? Is there something in my mane?”

Thorax shifted uneasily on his hooves as the group’s pace slowed considerably. “Well, no… it’s just that…” he looked over her head at something she couldn’t see, his brow furrowing. “...You’re the most uncomfortable pony here. I can see it in the air. Something has you really on edge.”

Twilight’s heart skipped a beat in her chest, and she inwardly cursed herself for forgetting that she was standing beside an empath. She shook herself and looked away, her ears drooping. “I-I’m fine. Just…”

Fluttershy tugged on Thorax’s hoof, slowly shaking her head at him. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words caught in his throat. He must have sensed the emotions coming from Fluttershy and discerned that that topic was not open for discussion. He slowly nodded and gave Twilight an apologetic smile. “Sorry, Twilight. I won’t ask.’

She relaxed and nodded at him. “Thank you. I’m sorry, but it’s just… really sensitive,” she said sheepishly, rubbing her shoulder with a hoof.

“It’s also none of his business,” her voice sneered in her skull. “Where was he when you learned that Rainbow was lying to you? Where was he when you reduced the observatory to ashes? Where was he when you went on your rampage? Oh, that’s right. Hiding away in his home like a scared cockroach!”

Twilight blinked, screwing her eyes shut. “You need to be quiet!” she barked back internally. “You’re not helping! Just shut up!”

She heard a dismissive snort between her ears before the voice faded into the back of her mind. She took a deep breath to calm her nerves and focused ahead. She noticed Spike by her side as she opened her eyes. He tapped the tips of his claws together over his chest, his eyes boring into her. “Twi… are you okay?”

She sighed and shook her head, subtly nudging him away from Fluttershy and Thorax so they could speak with some privacy. “Honestly? No, Spike, I’m not,” she admitted, bringing a hoof up to her temple. “I’m just… ugh. This whole situation is getting to me… let’s just find those books and get this over with, alright?”

Spike stared at her for several long seconds. Then he wandered closer and placed his claw on her shoulder, trying to impart some comfort. “You’ll be okay. We’re here for ya. And no matter what, I won’t let you turn into Midnight again.”

Twilight smiled down at him, her heart warming from the gesture. She unfurled a wing and draped it over the dragon, pulling him closer. “I know you won’t, Spike. Thank you…”

He grinned up at her. “What can I say? It’s what I do! Number one assistant Spike at your service!” he declared, thumping a fist against his puffed up chest.

“Oh, he won’t let you turn again, will he?” The voice whispered, sending a chill down Twilight’s spine. “Hmph. How adorable. The dragon thinks he’s useful.”

“Shut. The heck. UP!”

The voice cackled before once again receding into silence. Twilight did her best not to let her frustration at its jab show on her face. Instead, she focused on the feeling of Spike’s warmth pressing against her side and began counting the steps she was taking to the castle.

The remainder of the trip passed by in something of a blur for Twilight. For a mercy, they encountered no threats on the way. It was as if the local wildlife was still afraid that there may have been some Plundervines still lurking around. The signs of destruction left behind by those malevolent weeds were more bountiful the deeper in they went; torn soil, uprooted trees, overturned stones, scattered burrows. She could only imagine how Zecora must have felt in all of that chaos.

“Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever saw her in all of that mess… I wonder if she’s alright.” She thought as her mind wandered back to the moments when the vines had lashed out at her and her friends, with her barrier just barely keeping those despicable growths at bay. She had struggled against them, as had her friends. Zecora had probably been hard-pressed to escape.

It was pretty late in the afternoon when, at long last, the Castle of The Two Sisters came into view. The group came to a stop at the edge of the ravine that surrounded it to take in the sight. Angel took the opportunity to hop down from Fluttershy’s back and scuttle around to look at everything, though by her insistence he did not venture far.

Twilight didn’t pay the wayward rabbit any mind, though. Her gaze was focused solely on the castle. At first, she had been relieved to see the old place. It would provide shelter from the elements, and the knowledge she sought would hopefully be found somewhere within those crumbling halls. But as time went on, her mind wandered back to her last visit, and her blood began to chill in her veins.

She did her best not to look down into the ravine where she knew the Tree of Harmony resided. Yet despite her effort to not look toward it, some paranoid part of her mind imagined that it was watching her like a hawk. She could almost feel it, a sensation on the back of her neck, watching her every move.

Watching her. Assessing her. Judging her every decision with a critical, unbiased eye.

She shook her head, forcing herself to focus. “We should probably head inside,” she said, turning back to the others. “We only have a couple hours of light left. If we don’t hurry this along we might have to spend the night here, and I’d rather not do that if we can help it.”

Fluttershy lifted her head from the bush she had been looking into, Angel following her up by the ear. She turned to Twilight, wincing as the bunny pulled himself back up onto her head. “Oh! Ouch- uh, right!”

Thorax glanced at the bridge and frowned. “Hm. That thing’s pretty rickety… we should fly over.”

Twilight nodded. Without a word, she spread her wings and deposited Spike on her back. Then with a few flaps, she took to the air. Thorax was close by her hooves, Fluttershy right behind him. They crossed the distance without issue, and soon were setting down by the aging wooden gates of the castle.

“It’s been a long time since I was here,” Thorax noted, looking up at the towering spires and squinting.

“Two years or so,” Twilight acknowledged. She pushed the doors open with a quick pulse of magic, to which it responded with a shuddering groan. The entrance hall greeted them, and Twilight’s eyes found the ancient pedestal where she had first found the Elements three years prior.

She led the way through the halls without issue, calling back on their last trip through these halls. She knew the way, more or less. She cast her eyes across the broken, mossy stones, the shafts of evening sunlight streaming in through the broken walls and ceiling.

“Ya know,” Spike suddenly spoke up, looking around with a raised eyebrow. “I remember Rainbow talking about that old legend about this place last time we were here. Ya know, the one about that piece of Nightmare Moon that stuck behind?”

“I did some reading up on that, actually,” Thorax said, his wings twitching on his back as a small smile lit up his face. “Wind was studying history, and I studied some of it with her, and came across the legend. Apparently that ‘dark magic’ takes the form of ‘the pony of shadows’ at night.”

“Pony of Shadows?” Fluttershy mumbled, tugging on her mane. “That doesn’t sound nice…”

“Lucky us, it’s just a myth,” Twilight dismissed, glancing over at Thorax with newfound appreciation. “Even if there’s dark magic infecting these halls, we were here long enough last time to know that it’s basically inert. We’re fine.”

“See, normally I’d call you out and say ‘we’re totally gonna meet him,’ because that’s just how our luck goes,” Spike jabbed with a cheeky grin. “But you have a point. Nothing happened last time we were here. Well, other than letting Starlight out of her cocoon.”

Twilight’s smile faltered at the mention of the other unicorn. She slowed slightly, glancing over at Fluttershy. “Yeah, Starlight… I remember her. Do we know what happened to her after she left?” she asked.

Fluttershy shook her head. “I don’t think so. I never heard anything, at least,” she said softly. She looked down, an edge of guilt creeping into her voice. “I do hope she’s doing okay. We really hurt her…”

Twilight sighed, a pearl of regret forming in her own gut as well. “Yeah… we did,” she admitted, thinking back on the lilac unicorn. How many things had gone wrong because they had set out to find her? Just about everything bad that had happened to them could be traced back in some way to that mission and the consequences of their actions.

“I’m sure she’s doing fine,” Spike said comfortingly from Twilight’s back. “She’s a tough mare, and by the looks of things, she was going to do some soul searching last time we saw her. If we ever see her again, I totally bet she’s gonna be a lot better.”

“Heh. I hope so,” Twilight said quietly. Her eyes trailed off before landing on a familiar plaque over an open archway. Her heart skipped a beat with excitement, a grin appearing on her face. “Oh! I think we’re here!” she declared, breaking into a sprint for the archway.

She ran through the archway and, sure enough, found herself in the library. Her grin grew, accompanied by an ecstatic squealing noise as she took it all in again. She had browsed these shelves once before, but that didn’t at all mitigate her excitement at seeing it all again. Besides, there was a lot in here she hadn’t even had a chance to take note of yet.

As her eyes drifted up to the second level and all the shelves there, she began running in place. “Oooh! I take it back! I can totally spend the night here! No problem!” she declared, her wings fanning out.

Spike chuckled on her back. “Yep. That’s Twilight for ya.”

“Don’t ruin this for me! I will slap you!”

“Sure you will.”

Twilight groaned in exasperation before gently bucking her hips, sending Spike flying off to land on the floor a few inches behind her. “Ow!” he protested, rubbing at his back as he got up. “What was that for?”

“A stand-in for the slap.” Twilight declared pointedly, sticking her nose up into the air with a delighted smirk.

“Ugh.”

Thorax and Fluttershy filtered in after them, looking around with wide eyes. It was Thorax who spoke next. “Wow… it’s just how we left it.”

Twilight blinked and actually took in the details. Thorax was right. Everything was exactly as they had left it. Well, save for an inch of dust that had accumulated to cover everything. But she saw the familiar places they had arranged. Bundles of pillows her friends had used as makeshift beds, piles of books they had gone through and determined to be of no help to their cause at the time, and even the now long-shriveled and dried remains of the cocoon that had housed Starlight shoved out of sight into an empty corner.

Even the books were still where they had left them, scattered across the tables. A few were even open. Her jaw fell open in shock and dismay. “Oh my gosh… how could we leave it all like this?!” she asked, slapping a hoof to her temple. “It’s such a mess! I can’t find anything with it all scattered around like this!”

Now, Twilight knew that, in retrospect, they had been in a rush to get gone and out of the forest before Chrysalis’ minions had a chance to find them. They had more pressing matters to worry about then put everything back.

But that was then.

Now…

Spike’s shoulders sagged. “Oh, no…”

Twilight spun around to look at the group, her eye twitching. “Welp! Guess we’ll just have to put everything back where we found it!” she declared, lighting up her horn. “In fact, why not just organize the whole place?! It’s been a thousand years, it’s due for an arrangement!”

The entire library lit up with lavender light as Twilight pulled every book from the shelves at once.

Spike turned to shoot a glare at Thorax. “This is your fault,” he accused bluntly.

Fluttershy giggled at the changeling’s sheepish look. “Oh, it’s okay,” she said reassuringly before nodding at Twilight, who was now losing herself in the process of sorting everything so it could be sorted to the shelves again. “Let her get it out of her system. We all know how much she loves organizing things…”

Spike tried to look disapproving, but the farce did not last long. He sighed and put on a weary smile. “Yeah, I guess. I… kinda missed getting to sort things with her.”

Fluttershy glanced sideways at him. “Huh?”

He sighed, his smile turning strained. “...When she had amnesia, she never did this. She didn’t remember that it was something she loved to do… And I’m not gonna lie, I kinda missed it.”

With that, Spike stepped forward, ready and willing to help Twilight reorganize the entire library in Celestia and Luna’s old castle. Fluttershy, Thorax, and Angel shared a glance before nodding and stepping forward to help out however they could.

The Ancient Library

It had taken longer than anypony was expecting for the books to get even partially sorted. Twilight had been so eager to totally reorganize a library that she forgot to consider the fact that she had no idea how any of these had even been organized before, and she had to go through the books one by one to figure out where to place them. As a result, her normal filing systems became utterly impractical.

Disappointing as it was, alphabetical order would just have to do.

Around an hour and a half later, everything had been reshelved in loosely alphabetical order. Twilight frowned at it, her cheeks puffed up in annoyance. “...Spike, that ‘E’ book is in the ‘C’ section.”

Spike glared at her. “Twilight. No. Bad. Stop.”

“But-”

“Stooop it.”

Twilight puffed up her cheeks at him even more, her wings ruffling at her sides. “Hmph. Now who’s the killjoy?” she asked in a deadpan.

Spike chuckled in amusement and lightly punched her on the shoulder. “I might be a killjoy, but you are always gonna be the killjoy!” he declared with decisiveness.

“Oh, uhm, I don’t know about that,” Fluttershy muttered, tugging absently at her mane.

Spike turned to her with his arms crossed. “Fluttershy, I’ve lived with this nutty book pony for, quite literally, my entire life. If I say she’s the killjoy, she’s the killjoy.”

“Um… okay.”

Twilight rolled her eyes and playfully shoved Spike. “Oh, hardy har.”

Thorax looked on from Fluttershy’s side with an amused smile. Angel was situated on his head, using his horn as a makeshift handhold so he didn’t fall off. “Heh. Well, you’re in higher spirits, at least,” he pointed out, nodding at Twilight with a warm smile. “You were kinda down earlier.”

Twilight hesitated before nodding. “R-right. Yeah, I guess so,” she admitted, rubbing the back of her head. “Sorry. But hey, I got it out of my system! And now all these books are ready for us to explore and read!”

“That they are,” Spike agreed, hopping down from her back and walking forward a few paces. “So, how we doing this? I mean…” he gestured at all the books. “There’s a lot to cover here.”

Twilight looked up again, her eyes shimmering with anticipation. “There is. There really is…” she mumbled dreamily. There were so many books in here, she honestly wasn’t sure where to start. Her heart sped up just a little at the thought of reading so many of them. It may have been her imagination, but she could have sworn her mouth was starting to water-

A carrot then clocked her in the side of the head, jarring her from her trance. She gave off a quiet grunt and shook her head before turning to face the offender. She found a smugly grinning, unrepentant Angel Bunny staring back at her, his paws rubbing together.

A few giggles went around the group before Twilight huffed and spoke up. “Ugh. Spike has a point, there’s a lot of books here, and we’re kind of going in blind,” she said, raising her voice to address the whole group. “We’re looking for any information that’s connected to the Tree of Harmony, the Elements of Harmony, or anything even remotely related. We’re looking for clues about the chest that it presented to me. It has six keyholes, so I am assuming there are six keys needed to open it. I have no idea where to begin looking for those keys, though, and that’s what we’re here to fix.”

She turned and gestured widely at the chamber. “But like Spike said, we don’t really know a whole lot of the books in here, so we’re going to have to do this the old fashioned way. We’ll go through each section one at a time and pick up any books we come across that sound like they might be related. Then we’ll come together and scour them for any clues.”

She turned and began to point at each member of the group, one at a time, as she dished out instructions. “Spike, I want you to browse through ‘A’ through ‘F.’ Fluttershy, I want you to get ‘G’ through ‘L.’ Thorax, ‘M’ through ‘S.’ I’ll take ‘T’ Through ‘Z.’ Let the rest of us know if you find anything particularly noteworthy when going through your books so that I can skim them. I’m probably the fastest reader here, so that will give the rest of you a chance to scour other options. Sound like a plan?”

There were no objections, although Fluttershy did glance over at Angel with a curious frown. “Um… what about Angel? Can he do anything to help?”

Angel began furiously squeaking and waving his paws around in a clearly negative gesture.

“If you didn’t want to help, why did you come along?” Fluttershy asked with a raised eyebrow.

Angel opened his mouth and pointed at it emphatically.

“Oh. Well, if you help us, I’ll give you extra carrots on top of your regular dinner. Does that sound good?”

Angel crossed his arms and looked away.

“Extra extra carrots?”

Angel glanced back at her as if tempted, before resolutely returning to his refusal.

Fluttershy put on the sweetest smile she could, her eyes shimmering. “Pretty please?”

Angel gave off a high-pitched sigh before turning back to her and letting out a begrudging series of squeaks. Fluttershy clopped her hooves together with a smile before turning back to Twilight. “Angel can help me with my books.”

“Good idea. The rest of us can’t exactly understand the little guy,” Spike agreed. “So, A through F, right?”

“Right,” Twilight confirmed, glancing up at the roof. Her brow knitted with mild annoyance. The light streaming in through the grand window in the back was turning a dark shade of orange. They were definitely not going to be heading back today. “We’ll look around for a couple hours, then we should probably try and get some rest. We can keep looking in the morning if we haven’t found anything by then.”

“And if we don’t find anything tomorrow?” Thorax ventured carefully. “How long are we planning to stay out here? I mean, Wind and Squall are going to be worried if I take too long, and this castle is in the middle of the Everfree Forest…”

“Not to mention Rainbow,” Spike pointed out, his lips curling into a frown. “We all know how she gets. If you aren’t there when we get back, she’s probably gonna get real worried real fast.”

Twilight paused, her ears drooping. That was a problem, wasn’t it? Rainbow had always been excessively protective of her, and given recent events, Twilight could only imagine she would be even more so than ever before. The mere idea of making the pegasus needlessly worry, especially with how much anxiety she was still trying to deal with…

“...If we don’t find anything by the end of tomorrow, then we’ll head back the next morning,” she decided with a firm nod. “If worse comes to worst, we can always come back and keep looking another time.”

Spike gave her a thumbs up before turning and waddling off for the ‘A’ section. “Sounds good. Let’s hop to it!” he called back over his shoulder.

A general vocalization of agreement came from the others, and they all scattered to their assigned areas. Twilight watched them all go for a second, taking the chance to internally appreciate everything they were doing for her right now; to go so far out of their way for her sake, especially Thorax, given he wasn’t nearly as close to her as Fluttershy or Spike.

“I really have the best friends in the world,” she thought, smiling softly. With that warm thought chasing away the cold that had taken up roost in her heart, she set off for the ‘T’ section.

Sadly, it turned out that ‘the best friends in the world’ was not synonymous with ‘the best at finding information in a thousand-year-old library.’ Twilight resisted the urge to groan under her breath as yet another tome of red herrings and dead-end leads snapped shut before her muzzle, affording her a view of the others.

After they had collected their first batch of books, they all assembled at a nearby table and got to work skimming over what they had found. As they had planned, anything that seemed particularly relevant was shuffled over to Twilight for her to pore over while the others kept searching in broad strokes. It was definitely effective, albeit somewhat slow, and a backlog was starting to form. Twilight was a fast and thorough reader, but even she had limits, amazingly.

However, Twilight’s reading speed proved to be all but irrelevant. She had forgotten about the old dialect these books were written in, and it took quite a while to get fully accustomed to what each one was trying to tell her. Once she had it down, the information was fascinating, she had to admit, but translating the old, antiquated letters and speech patterns had slowed all of them down significantly, adding a layer of frustration to what would have otherwise been a relaxing and thought-provoking study session.

More layers of frustration would be added with each and every book Twilight went through. Each one had something that seemed somewhat related: notes on ancient relics or places of power, common arcane trends between such locations and objects, and the typical methods of interacting with or getting around any relevant hazards.

But none of them really had anything to do with the Tree or the Chest. Anything even remotely close was still too far detached or off-topic to be of any help. The Tree of Harmony and the Chest were wholly unique magical forces, and it was becoming more and more apparent with time that the odds of anypony having encountered anything similar in the past were slim to none.

Unable to resist the groan any longer, Twilight heavily brought the book down onto the table with enough force to jostle the rest of its contents. She took a few seconds to breath and calm herself down, not wanting a repeat of what happened back in the Golden Oaks.

“...Um… are you okay?” Fluttershy’s tentative whisper of a voice called out to her, drawing her attention back to her assembled friends.

Twilight shrank down into her seat when she realized all of them were looking back at her with varying degrees of confusion and concern. Thorax took it a step further, actually looking apprehensive. Twilight swallowed heavily and sighed, gingerly pushing the book away. “I’m sorry… I was hoping we’d have gotten somewhere by now, but, well… nothing, yet. I’m starting to think this might be a lost cause.”

Spike frowned. “But… it was Celestia herself who sent us out here,” he pointed out. “She told us, no doubt about it, there is at least one book in here that can help you.”

Twilight scoffed and slid out of her seat. “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time she was wrong about something,” she said, unable to keep the bitterness from slipping into her voice.

“Twilight?” Fluttershy called after her, the pegasus rising up from her seat.

Twilight paused, the coals in her skull dying out. She sagged, her ears drooping before turning back to face her fillyhood friend, offering her a small smile. “I’m okay, Fluttershy… I’m just going to talk a little walk and clear my head, okay? You all can keep reading if you want.” She didn’t wait for a response. She set off down the first row of books she came across, eager to lose herself among the shelves and get a hold of herself.

As she left the light of the candles behind, she was soon enveloped in near-total darkness. Twilight slowed her pace to a snail’s pace, mindlessly ambling between the shelves. She took a deep breath, holding her hoof up to her chest. She allowed the musty, dusty scent of ancient books to fill her nostrils and soothe her thoughts before breathing out and pushing her hoof away. She repeated the motion once, then twice, and finally a third time before, at last, she felt more or less like herself again.

The breathing exercise did not, unfortunately, do much to chase off the confusion and anxiety in the back of her mind. Her spikes of anger were becoming increasingly concerning. How long could she go like this before one of them was too much for her to handle? What if one of them came about and she lost control, lashing out at her friends? What if she hurt them? What if she hurt Rainbow?

She shuddered, leaning against the side of a bookcase with a hushed whimper. It was a terrible thought and an even worse possibility. The worst part, though, was that it was entirely possible, and she had no idea what to do to prevent it.

She remained like that, slumped against the case, and tried to dissect some course of action she could take in her mind for quite some time. Eventually, she was pulled out of her morbid worrying when the tell-tale scraping of claws on stone reached her ears. She looked back to see Spike waddling into view, bathed in the flickering orange glow of the candlestick held in his claws.

“Hey… you feeling any better?” he asked tentatively as he drew closer.

Twilight nodded. “A little,” she said, a half-truth at best.

Spike hummed. He set the candlestick down before coming closer and putting a claw to her shoulder. “You’ve got a lot on your mind,” he said softly. “But you’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out. We always have before, this won’t be any different.”

Twilight took a deep breath and smiled down at him. “Heh… I hope you’re right about that,” she said, reaching down to pat him on the head.

“I am!” he assured her. “I don’t think I’ve been wrong about that yet!”

Twilight gave a more energetic laugh at that. She pushed herself away from the bookcase and nodded down at him. “Alright. If you say so,” she said in agreement, deciding there was no harm in trusting his word on the matter for the time being.

He flashed her a toothy grin before turning to head back for his candlestick. “Anyway, we’re thinking we’re gonna wrap it up and get some shut-eye. We’re all getting kinda tired, and we might be able to work better with some actual sleep.”

“Sleep, huh?” Twilight echoed, starting to follow after him. Now that he mentioned it, she was pretty tired. Some rest would probably do her a world of good. If nothing else it would help her clear her head so she could focus better on the morrow. She took a few steps after the baby dragon, igniting her horn to light the way.

When they emerged from the shelves, Thorax and Fluttershy were already pulling over the various pillows that had been laid out before, dusting them off for use. Angel was looking at them impatiently, tapping one of his feet against the table. He glanced back as Twilight and Spike returned, then squeaked and chattered at Fluttershy.

“Just a moment, Angel, we’re almost ready,” Fluttershy told him.

Angel, apparently, did not approve of this. He gave off the tiniest draconic growl that Twilight had ever heard, rolled up some invisible sleeves, and then leaped for a chair that sat between him and Fluttershy, probably to use it as a launchpad to accost the pegasus. He landed on the backrest, already crouching to pounce.

And then the chair tilted backward.

Twilight’s eyes widened when she heard the sound of gears grinding, and her eyes caught the glint of old steel as the chair tilted back at a strangely uniform angle. Angel squeaked in alarm, falling from the chair’s backrest to land with a tiny thump on the cold stone below.

“Oh my goodness! Angel!” Fluttershy exclaimed, quickly reaching down to pick him up. “Are you okay?!”

Angel made angry, indignant rabbit noises.

“Oh, thank goodness!”

Twilight frowned at the bunny, her feathers ruffling in irritation. She was happy to tolerate him because of how much he meant to Fluttershy, but she could not for the life of her ever figure out why Fluttershy liked him so much. He was like an angry little devil.

“Uh, guys?” Thorax suddenly spoke up, drawing everyone’s attention to him. His eyes were glued onto the wall on the other end of the table, his ears pointing forwards. “There’s something in the walls.”

“What?” Twilight asked, swiveling her ears forward as well.

Sure enough, she could hear something moving in the walls. A steady ticking sound, like gears moving together in some great clockwork machine. It was getting louder, too, and she could feel a subtle tremor in the floor to accompany it.

“Angel, what did you do?!” Fluttershy asked, her ears folding back. “Is it a trap?! Are we in danger?!”

In answer to Fluttershy’s question, two of the bookcases that sat against the wall suddenly lurched forward with a crack of stone grinding on stone. A cloud of dust was kicked forward from the sudden movement, drawing an alarmed squeak out of Fluttershy. She quickly dove behind Thorax for cover as the changeling spread into a defensive stance.

The bookcases then opened out like a sliding door, revealing an archway hidden in the wall that led to an isolated chamber. Twilight’s eyes widened at the sight. Two windows were set into the back wall, one depicting a stylized abstraction of the sun shining down on the Equestrian countryside, while the other showed a crescent moon over a collection of stars. Tapestries that were practically untouched hung between the windows, shifting slightly in the aftermath of the secret door’s thunderous opening.

A collection of pillows was set up by the bookcase, half purple, and half pink. A reclining chair not unlike Rarity’s fainting couch was against the opposite wall. A dusty round wooden table was off on the right side of the room, a grey cup set down on its surface. In the very center of the room was a stone pedestal, at the top of which was a thick, leather-bound book that looked to have been made by hoof.

Twilight swallowed and stepped inside, lighting up her horn to see better. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the book above all else. She approached the pedestal, briefly looking around for any signs of a trap. There were none to be had that she could see, thankfully, so she approached the pedestal.

The Journal of the Two Sisters.

Twilight’s eyes widened. She took the book in her magic and flipped it open, skimming the first few pages with interest. There was a short entry accompanied by a collection of rudimentary sketches depicting hidden chambers, a long corridor with hooves reaching from the walls, and a trap door.

The blurb of text read: “I love to duck behind the paintings, and though the hall of hooves still gives her a bit of a fright, the trap-door slide is Luna’s favorite!”

Twilight turned the page, finding more sketches and another paragraph or two of text. The sketches depicted an elaborate pipe organ with lines connecting it to various seemingly random objects: a wall sconce shaped like a hoof, a suit of ancient pony plate armor, a trap door, and an extravagant throne.

“Soon, the Organ to The Outside will be finished! I can hardly wait!”

“Huh… interesting,” Twilight muttered, lightly lifting the book in her magic and turning to the others. “I think this might have been the book Celestia was talking about.”

“Oh? How do you know?” Fluttershy asked, poking her head out from behind Thorax.

“Well, for one thing, it’s hidden,” Twilight pointed out, gesturing to the room around them. “Secondly, she specified one book, and that it would be hidden. Third, this is her and Luna’s old journal from when they were fillies!”

“So… do you think maybe she talked about the Tree in there at all?” Spike asked, raising an eyebrow.

Twilight beamed. “I have no idea! But there’s one way to find out!” she declared before flopping down onto a nearby cushion and turning to page one. “I’m going to read through this for a while. You all go ahead and get some rest.”

“How ironic,” her own voice grumbled in her skull. “Taking advice from the very pony who punished us in the first place; from her brown childhood ramblings, no less.”

Twilight’s smile faltered, her nostrils flaring. She did not dignify the voice with a response this time, however, instead focusing on the words on the first page. A few moments passed in silence before the voice spoke up again. “Ignoring me, are you?”

“You’re just a symptom,” Twilight thought clinically. “A side effect from my last blunder. All you are is an irritating voice in my head, and I don’t have to listen to anything you say.”

“Adorable,” the voice chuckled in amusement. “You’re still not getting it.”

“It’s adorable that you think this conversation is still open.”

“Ooh! The worm has some bark!” The voice exclaimed in a condescending tone. “Such a pity she has no bite. She never will. Not without me.”

“I said the conversation is closed.”

“Then why are you still talking?”

Twilight snarled deep in her throat but did not continue. She tuned the voice out as well as she could, pouring all of her focus into the book beneath her. A few seconds passed and she slowly began to relax into her pillows, a sense of calm coming over her. She quickly lost herself in the words of her mentor, finding no small amount of fascination from looking at her hoofwriting long before it gained the elegant twists and curls she had come to know when she was growing up.

She abruptly jarred from her reading when the others came back into the room. Curious, she looked up to see they all had their pillows floating behind them in Thorax’s magic. Spike and Fluttershy were at the head of the group. The pegasus stepped forward and smiled. “Um, is it alright if we sleep in here with you?” she asked gently. “You know, to keep you company?”

Twilight looked at them all for a moment, before a tender smile crept onto her lips. “I don’t mind at all, Fluttershy. Make yourselves comfortable,” she said, nodding next to her.

In a flash, Spike hopped onto the pillow next to her and leaned against her side, a sleepy smile on his face. “Aw yeah, best mattress in the house,” he snarked before giving off a loud yawn.

Twilight snorted and draped a wing over the baby dragon, pulling him closer. “Yeah, yeah, just remember, this mattress moves. And it’s made of flesh and bones, so don’t get too grabby! Your claws are sharp.”

Spike nodded, burrowing his face into her fur behind her foreleg. “Uh uh,” he mumbled before falling quiet.

Fluttershy and Thorax set themselves up on her other side, laying out their pillows and getting comfortable side by side. Twilight glanced over at them, her smile growing. They were clearly cuddling closer than she would expect for somepony as shy as Fluttershy, and she didn’t miss the almost-protective way Thorax draped his wing and foreleg over her shoulders.

“I’m happy for them, I really am,” she thought to herself before turning back to her book. “Now, let’s see what Celestia left for me…”

Spite

“You do realize… if you let me go through with this, then you won’t remember me at all when you wake up, right? It will be as if you never even knew I existed.”

Rainbow Dash swallowed heavily, looking into Midnight’s eyes. Midnight stared back, her eyes narrowed with skepticism and doubt. The chilly night air felt as if it was clawing at their throats, suffocating them with tension and anxiety.

Eventually, the pegasus shakily nodded her head. “I know that… but… if it means saving you from turning into this and saving our friends, then no price is too high.”

Midnight blinked. She then huffed and stepped forward, her horn flaring up with ghostly blue magic. “Fine. Then hold still,” she instructed simply. She reached out with her magic, not giving Rainbow a chance to speak before she ensnared Rainbow’s body in a vice-like grip. Rainbow’s eyes bulged in their sockets, her mouth flying open in a silent scream.

“Wait… this is wrong…”

Midnight yanked Rainbow down so their muzzles were less than an inch apart. Her lips curled into a sadistic smirk before she closed her eyes and pressed the tip of her horn to Rainbow’s forehead.

Rainbow screamed.

“Wait, no, STOP! This isn’t how this is supposed to happen!”

Midnight couldn’t help it. She chuckled deep in her throat as Rainbow kicked and squirmed feebly against her restraints. Her smile grew when she felt Rainbow’s memories starting to trickle into her mind, a veritable flood of information about her life. There were more memories of Twilight Sparkle than memories Midnight had of anything. It was overwhelming.

Several seconds passed. Rainbow’s screams withered and died away into silence, and she fell limp in Midnight’s grasp. The Fallen Alicorn looked the body over with a disappointed frown. There was so much information she had just gotten, yet somehow, it wasn’t enough.

“Hmph… just another disappointment,” she scoffed before throwing the unconscious body to one side as if it were no more than an empty wrapper to be discarded in the trash. “I shouldn’t have expected anything else from you.”

“NO! Go back! GO BACK!”

Midnight held her head high, her wings spreading out. “It’s not enough… I need more,” she declared, emitting a low, insane laugh before resuming her slow, measured pace through the silent streets of Canterlot, leaving the body of Rainbow Dash behind among all the others.

“STOP!”

Twilight jerked awake with a barely-contained shriek of terror. She bolted upright, gasping for breath as cold shivers ravaged her body. Her heart hammered wildly against her chest like a tribal drumbeat, filling her frantically-swiveling ears with their steady, constant rhythm. Her eyes darted left and right, taking in her surroundings.

She was in the hidden room in the Castle of The Two Sisters. Spike was curled up to her side, stirring from the sudden disturbance, but otherwise remaining asleep, thankfully. Fluttershy and Thorax were right where Twilight had left them, curled up together on the pillow adjacent to hers.

A few seconds passed before a relieved sigh snaked its way out of her. “It was just a nightmare,” she thought, slumping back onto the pillows. Her eyes wandered down to find the Journal of The Two Sisters open beneath her, the current drawing depicting Starswirl the Bearded with his head held high and a stern frown on his old, wisened face.

“I must have fallen asleep while I was reading…” she thought, gingerly closing the book with her magic. She looked over towards the window, trying to gauge the time. It was dark outside; although, if she had to guess, she’d say the sun was due to rise in the next couple of hours.

With a quiet sigh, Twilight slowly pushed herself up to a standing position. Spike grumbled in his sleep as she rose, one claw limply reached out for her. She smiled down at him and gently ran her hoof along the back of his head before turning for the door and slipping out. She knew she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep like this. Quickly recovering from nightmares was always Rainbow’s specialty, not hers.

Twilight paused mid-step at that thought, her ears drooping. How long had Rainbow been suffering from periodic nightmares at this point? It felt like forever. A few years, at least. Ever since Discord.

Of course, for most of that time, Rainbow had been lucky enough to have her aunt looking out for her, diving into her dreams whenever they turned dark to chase away the nightmares. Heck, it had gotten to semi-regular therapy sessions, for crying out loud!

“Oh, how sweet,” Twilight’s voice snickered bitterly between her ears. “Rainbow Dash has a nice, loving aunt to chase away her bad dreams. Such a shame that Luna couldn’t care less about your suffering.”

Twilight grimaced, her ears drooping. She quickly slinked away from where her friends were sleeping, hopeful that Thorax’s empathic senses wouldn’t pick up the growing resentment the voice was trying to cultivate inside of her. Soon, she was out of the library and ambling aimlessly down the halls, her mind wandering while her eyes took in the moonlit landscape outside.

“Do you think your anger is something to be ashamed of?!” the voice demanded, a spike of pain tunneling through Twilight’s skull after a moment, causing her to come to a stop and clutch at her temple with a hoof. “It’s NOT! You were wronged by Luna, and you know it! You have every right to feel angry with her! Her scorn and hostility led to me, by her own admission, didn’t it?!”

“Maybe it did,” Twilight shot back, snarling deep in her throat. “But you just said she admitted it! She apologized! She knows she was wrong!”

“What good are her apologies?! They don’t make right what she did, and she has done nothing to make amends!”

“I’m sure she will!” Twilight countered, shaking her head. “Just wait. You’ll see!”

“Hmph. I suppose we will.”

And just like that, the voice went quiet. Twilight stood still, listening for it to speak again. When it did not, she gave off a sigh and kept doing. “You’ll see…”

Following her little argument with herself, Twilight continued wandering the halls of the castle. She let her thoughts drift where they may, so long as they didn’t go back to the other who spoke with her voice. To think of it would serve no end but to feed it, make it stronger, and egg it on. She had no desire to do that, and so she thought of literally anything else.

Her hooves carried her out of the corridors and into a large antechamber. Tapestries ancient and exquisite hung from the walls, each one deprived of their former majesty by the coming of Nightmare Moon and the inevitable march of time. Piles of rubble were strewn about, haphazardly stacked here and there. Holes had long ago been blasted or eroded into the walls, allowing a haunting, ghostly howl to echo through the chamber.

Once upon a time, this chamber might have been beautiful. She could absolutely see the signs, looking at it all right now. The masonry was masterful, the artistic vision of every archway, pillar, and window could not be denied, and the care and attention that had gone into the tapestries transcended even the finest works Rarity had made. Quite the accomplishment.

To see it all laid to waste like this… an old, forgotten ruin most ponies dared not even approach out of fear for what surrounded it. A historic site left to be reclaimed by nature… once, it was the capital of the entire country. Now? Little more than a waymark, a stand-out feature of the landscape to tell Twilight and her friends where the Tree of Harmony was.

“This place… it could really use some fixing up,” she thought, slowly coming to a halt. “A bit of dusting, maybe clear out the rubble. The masonry is pretty much shot, but I don’t see a reason why the tapestries couldn’t be restored with a bit of time and effort. The windows would be kind of tricky, especially with so many of them blown out, but it could be managed.

“Heh. Maybe my friends and I could do it. Fix this old place up,” she thought, a small smile spreading on her lips at the idea. It would be a nice little side project, now that she thought about it. Something for her to fill her time with, to distract her from all of this Chest stuff, especially when it really started to get to her.

There was also the detail of restoring an ancient historical site from just over a thousand years ago, with who knows how many ancient books, relics, artifacts, and secrets scattered throughout its halls like sprinkles on one of Pinkie’s birthday cakes. That was enticing, too.

A mammoth of an undertaking, but the more she thought about it, the more she began to appreciate the idea. It would take a long time, for sure, but she could already imagine the ways she and her friends could contribute.

Applejack would be able to haul the rubble and debris out of the ruins, Rarity could fix up the tapestries while providing her own artistic vision for replacements for the old windows. Fluttershy would be good for clearing out or relocating the various insects and bats that called this old place home. Rainbow would be ideal for keeping the weather clear while everypony else worked, and she could help Applejack with clearing the debris. Pinkie could be Pinkie. Add onto that Twilight and Spike working together to keep them all organized and on-task, and an impossible task would become very possible, very quickly.

She closed her eyes, imagining it. The Castle of The Two Sisters restored and renovated. She envisioned a pathway leading through the Everfree Forest, a safe route for ponies to come and see the old castle where their kingdom had once been based out of. It could practically become a museum on ancient Equestrian history and culture, with ponies shuffling from one chamber to the next, reading and studying all about their own home.

She was sure Princess Celestia would be thrilled by such an outcome. This had been where she lived when she was a foal, right? She and-

Twilight’s eyes snapped open, her pupils dilating, her enthusiasm dying away then and there.

Luna had once called this place her home, as well. And in her descent into madness as Nightmare Moon, she had reduced it to rubble…

“Why give her the satisfaction?” the voice whispered, barely at the edge of Twilight’s senses. “She broke it. Let her fix it.”

It said no more. Twilight took a deep breath before letting it out in a full-bodied heave of a sigh.

Before she could give much thought to what it had said, something else caught her attention. Somepony was coming. Twilight lifted her head and turned to look at a nearby open archway. She couldn’t see down it from this angle, but she could hear somepony trotting down with slow, even steps.

Her brow furrowed. Something was off. She didn’t recognize that pattern of steps, and the way they sounded as they clacked across the stones reminded her of Thorax’s chitinous hooves rather than hers or Fluttershy’s. Thorax didn’t walk that fast, though—not to mention he should still be asleep.

Twilight’s eyes widened, her heart jumping into her throat as a changeling drone slowly stepped into view, head held low and eyes looking directly at her. It was a female, her black chitin marked with a few small scars. A line on her shoulder, a chip off her hoof, and so on. Her wings and ears were down, and her every step conveyed an aura of submission.

Twilight took a step back, her jaw falling open. “W-what?! What are… who are you?!” she asked, immediately going on high alert. The last time she had encountered a changeling other than Thorax, she had…

The changeling slowly sat down on her haunches and bowed her head. “H-hello… you must be Twilight Sparkle, r-right?” she asked in a surprisingly quiet, timid voice.

Twilight blinked, taken aback. She swallowed the lump in her throat, slowly unfurling her wings just in case she needed to spring into motion. “That depends… who are you, and what do you want?” she asked carefully.

The changeling lifted her head, though she did not meet Twilight’s gaze. She seemed scared to look directly at her. “Um… m-my name is Spiracle. I served alongside Thorax two years ago during the attack on Canterlot…”

Twilight’s heart burned a little in her chest. She stepped back a few feet, her eyes narrowing. “...Really? And why are you here, now?” she asked.

Spiracle winced under her venomous tone before speaking. “I… I-if it would be permissible, I was hoping you could take me to speak with Princess Rainbow Dash,” she said quietly, reaching a hoof up to rub at one of her forelegs. “I’m not welcome at the Hive anymore… I’m here in Equestria seeking asylum if I can get it.”

“Asylum?” Twilight echoed, raising an eyebrow. “What did you do that you need something like that?”

Spiracle grimaced, her face contorting with shame. “...I deserted from the hive after the Queen was sealed away. When we all went home, it all just… fell into chaos. It wasn’t safe for me anymore, and without a queen to lead us, I feared my home would never recover… And so I left.”

“A deserter? Like… Thorax?” she asked slowly, her eyes widened. The heat in her breast abated somewhat as she considered that. She didn’t seem to be lying so far. If anything, she seemed like she wasn’t all that different from Thorax. A lot more quiet and hesitant, maybe, but in fairness, Thorax had gone through his own trials back then. He had grown stronger and more confident as a result.

“Who cares?” the voice asked a moment later, drawing a cold gasp out of Twilight. “Are you forgetting what happened the last time a changeling crossed your path?”

The world flickered for a moment. Twilight sucked in a deep breath, her muscles locking up as tingles began to dance across her shoulder blades. The smell of burning fur wafted up her nostrils, and her body began to feel colder than the harshest blizzards the Frozen North had ever thrown at her.

“The last time you met one of these things, they murdered you!” The voice went on. Twilight grit her teeth as her skull began to pound with every beat of her now-burning heart. “They killed you in Rainbow’s hooves! They stole away your life, and they stole your memories for two years! You have no reason to humor this creature’s ridiculous request!”

Twilight’s blood was beginning to boil. Her teeth ground together behind her lips as a fury she didn’t even know she had been suppressing slipped into her eyes. Spiracle shrank back from her, her eyes going wide in fear. “M-miss Twilight?” she asked in a jittering voice.

Twilight peeled her lips back into an ugly snarl. “Get. Out.”

Spiracle’s ears drooped, her entire posture withering on the spot. “But… But I don’t have anywhere else to go-”

“Do you think I care?!” Twilight demanded, her horn sparking to life. Some small part of her cried out that she should stop and reign herself in right now, but the memory of her own death spurred her on, silencing any dissenting voices in a heartbeat. “Why would I care about you?! Do you have any idea what you creatures have put me through?! What you put my friends through?!”

She stepped forward and shoved Spiracle back, sending the drone sprawling to the floor with a cry. Twilight went on, undeterred. “Rainbow Dash almost lost her life, and she’s still trying to recover from the psychological damage you monsters gave her! She has a permanent scar on her hoof that I see her staring at more than she should! All of my friends were forced to run for their lives from their homes across an arctic wasteland just to get away from you! And to top it all off, right at the end, when we thought we had won, I was killed by one of you!”

Spiracle backed away along the floor, visibly shaking with fear under Twilight’s rage. “I… I’m sorry-”

“SORRY?!” Twilight snapped. She threw her head back, barking out a hideous laugh before it devolved into an infuriated growl. “Who does that help?! What does your ‘apology’ make up for?! Nothing, that’s what! Being sorry won’t give me back the two years I spent without my memories, it won’t cure Rainbow’s PTSD, and it will not get rid of the voice that I have to listen to every time I close my eyes!”

Spiracle rolled onto her hooves but kept her belly close to the floor, her ears folded back. She opened her mouth, fishing for words, but nothing came out.

Twilight huffed angrily. “...Just get out of here. If you come near me or my friends again…”

She did not complete the sentence. She merely lit up her horn and narrowed her eyes. That was enough to get the message across. Spiracle, with a frightened cry, rose to her hooves and broke into a mad sprint away from the chamber, her tail tucked firmly between her legs. Twilight watched her go, staring after her until she was out of sight and the sounds of her hooves sprinting along the stones faded into silence.

The quiet that followed was deafening. Twilight was breathing heavily after her outburst. Her lungs were burning, and it felt as if the air itself was trying to strangle her. She felt heavy all of a sudden and stumbled off to one side, leaning against a broken pillar for support while her mind reeled.

“Twilight?!” Spike’s voice echoed from the way she had come, and Twilight’s heart all but stopped in her chest. How much of that did they hear? How much of that had she even said? How much of it was really her? A horrible feeling of sickness and nausea overcame her, and she slumped to the floor, one hoof clutching at her head.

“...What did I just do?” she asked in a broken, strangled whimper.

A flurry of steps entered a moment later. In a heartbeat, she felt Spike’s claws and Fluttershy’s hooves on her, trying to comfort her and pull her back. She could hear them asking her what was wrong, but she couldn’t parse the words through the ringing in her ears or the numbness in her mind.

Eventually, though, the presence of her friends won out over her horror. Her gaze lazily drifted to look up at them, and she saw Fluttershy, Spike, and Thorax all looking back at her in confusion.

Spike spoke first, his voice weak and anxious. “You… you weren’t in the room,” he mumbled, tapping his claws together. “We got worried about you, and we came looking…”

“We heard you screaming at somepony,” Fluttershy added, her ears drooping. “And we heard them running away and crying. What happened in here?”

Twilight opened her mouth to speak, but no words came. She looked past Fluttershy, locking gazes with Thorax. He stared back at her with a grim frown slowly appearing on his face. “Twilight… who was it?”

Twilight gulped down another breath before speaking. “...Spiracle.”

“Spiracle?” Spike asked, confused. “Who's that? Kind of a funny name.”

“It sounds like a changeling name,” Fluttershy noted, tapping at her chin. The color then visibly drained from her face, and a tiny, strangled squeak of fear came from the bottom of her throat as the implication set in. “OIh, dear… is there another changeling here?”

“Spiracle…” Thorax suddenly spoke up, his eyes having flown wide open. He took a step forward, his expression turning urgent. “Spiracle was here?! Really?!”

Twilight shakily nodded. “Yeah… she s-said she wanted to talk to Rainbow. S-she wanted to ask for asylum… that she ran from the Hive.”

“Oh, wow,” Spike muttered, crossing his arms. He looked up at Thorax. “Guess somepony’s following in your hoofsteps, huh?”

Thorax frowned. “I mean, maybe… but…” his expression hardened, and Twilight wilted away from him. “What did you say to her?”

“I… I…” Twilight stammered, her throat constricting in a bid to keep the words in. “I… I told her to leave… I warned her to never come near me or my friends again…”

Fluttershy’s eyes widened, her hooves flying up to cover her mouth. “Oh my goodness…”

Thorax’s ears drooped, and he, too, flinched away. “Oh, no…”

Spike blinked. “So… that’s what all the screaming was?”

Twilight nodded.

A few seconds passed before Fluttershy rose to her hooves. “...And did you mean any of it?” she asked in a remarkably firm tone.

Twilight flinched as if struck. “I… I don’t know…” she mumbled, clutching at her head again.

“Lies,” the voice sneered. “You meant every word.”

“Hold on a sec,” Spike suddenly cut in, as if remembering something important. He turned to face Thorax again. “Did you know her?”

He nodded. “Uh-huh. We worked in the same unit under my brother back in the lead-up to the invasion. She was an infiltrator and spy, gathering intel for the most part. In fact, it was, uh… it was her who brought word that you guys had left Ponyville without telling anypony where you were going.”

“So she kinda caused the invasion to happen when it did?” Spike asked.

Thorax sighed. “Well, yeah… but I can vouch for her. She’s a good sort. She wasn’t all that different from me; shy, quiet, timid. Not as gentle as me, not by a long shot, but she was still nice. She was one of the only drones besides Pharynx I ever got along with…” he lifted his head to stare at Twilight. “And you sent her away? You threatened her?”

Twilight didn’t answer for a few seconds. When she did, her words were strangled. “I didn’t know…”

Thorax didn’t reply for several seconds. He grunted and kicked at the ground before turning and trotting for the nearest archway. “I’m gonna go look for her.”

“Huh?” Fluttershy called after him. “But, Thorax-”

“If she was at the hive when Pharynx went back, maybe she knows something about what things were like after Chrysalis was defeated!” he said, coming to a stop by the door. “I have to know. I have to know what’s going on back home.”

Fluttershy and Spike stared after him for a few minutes. Fluttershy sucked in a deep breath before placing a hoof on Spike’s back. “Take Twilight back to the library,” she instructed simply. “Take care of her while we’re gone, okay?”

Spike nodded. “Uh, right.”

Fluttershy stood and made her way after Thorax after that. Together, the two departed the chamber, leaving Twilight alone with nothing to keep her company, save for Spike, and the rampant confusion and dread that were raging like a hurricane in her mind.

Author's Notes:

Fun fact: Spiracle, much like Stinger, was not originally meant to have much of a role in things. She was a throw-away character back in Choices. But then Stinger became a secondary antagonist in Consequences and is still somewhere out there. So I figured, what the hay? Why not bring back another member from Thorax's old squad? Give the old bug a chance for some meaningful character development alongside Twilight.

Somepony Has To

The next hour passed in a hazy blur for Twilight. Spike had gently guided her back to the secret room in the Library and gotten her settled down on the pile of pillows. He had talked to her every here and there, and she knew she’d responded, but for the life of her, she just could not remember what they talked about. The memories were being overshadowed by the disgust clawing at her heart.

“That was so STUPID of me!” she internally chastised herself for what must have been the millionth time. “Princess Luna warned me! She TOLD me not to listen to her! She would know, she’s been here before!”

She gave off a long, tired sigh and buried her face into the pillows, trying to chase the cold in her chest away with her own body heat. She felt Spike’s claw resting on her shoulder, giving a firm, reassuring squeeze. “It’s okay, Twilight. When we get home, we’ll get you some help. You’ll be fine, I know it.”

Twilight shivered at the idea. Getting help? Was she really at a point where she needed that now? Or had she ever gotten back to a place where she didn’t? For all of the time she had spent without her memories, she needed Rainbow and Spike to help her figure herself out. Maybe, in the warmth of the moment, she had just assumed that getting her memories back would be the moment where she could totally go back to her old self.

It would have been childish to think everything could go back to normal so easily. No… she was simply at a place where she could start to recover. Clearly, though, she couldn’t do that alone. She needed help, and she knew it, no matter how much it stung to admit it; even to herself.

Twilight was pulled from her grim musings by the sound of approaching hooves. She lifted her head with a start as Thorax and Fluttershy walked into the room, grim expressions on their faces.

Twilight leaned forward. “Guys. Did you find her?”

Thorax sighed and shook his head. “No. We didn’t. Spiracle was always an expert infiltrator. If she doesn’t want to be found, we’re not gonna find her…” he said, scuffing the floor with a hoof.

“And it’s still dark outside,” Fluttershy added, glancing out through the nearby window. “And it’s not safe in the forest, especially at night… It would be safer to wait until the sun’s up before we look for her out there.”

Twilight’s ears drooped. “...Oh,” she exhaled, looking away. Another shiver ran through her body. She curled up into the pillows in a futile effort to chase away the chill.

Spike tapped his claws together pensively. “Um… so, what do we do now?” he asked slowly.

Thorax sighed and sat down with his back to the wall. “Ugh. We wait until sunrise, I guess…” he said in defeat. Twilight could imagine he had argued to try and chase Spiracle into the woods already, only for Fluttershy to shoot the idea down out of fear for his safety.

Speaking of Fluttershy, the pegasus came up to Twilight’s side and settled down beside her. “Um… when that happens, Twilight… I think we should take you home,” she whispered, carefully draping a wing over Twilight’s back.

Twilight’s eyes widened. “W-what? But…” she protested weakly before gesturing out the door. “The books! We still haven’t finished-”

Fluttershy narrowed her eyes, and Twilight’s words died in her throat. The pegasus spoke a second later, her voice firm and leaving no room for argument. “Twilight. You are not okay. Ever since we got here, you’ve been getting more and more agitated and irritable. Being here, clearly, is not the right thing for you right now. So I am going to take you back home to Rainbow Dash, and then we are going to figure out how to help you.”

Twilight stared at Fluttershy for a few moments, slack-jawed. Now Fluttershy was insisting they get her help. Was it really that bad…?

“What do you think?” Her own voice asked in a deadpan.

Twilight swallowed heavily. “You’re in my head, aren’t you?”

“You talk as if that’s new.”

“Maybe it’s not. But you didn’t talk until recently.”

The voice gave off a hum, but did not carry the discussion any farther. Twilight visibly relaxed with relief as it backed off. She leaned into Fluttershy’s side, taking what comfort she could in the pegasus’ presence. “Fluttershy, I… I don’t know… I want to find Spiracle, too. I want to apologize to her…”

Fluttershy offered her a comforting nuzzle. “And you will… just as soon as Thorax finds her and brings her back.”

“Hm. I guess,” Twilight relented. But as much as she paid lip service to that plan, something about it just rang hollow inside of her…

A few seconds passed before a big yawn from Spike drew all eyes to him. He looked around once he realized everyone was staring, a blush forming on his cheeks. “Uhuh… sorry. We kinda got up earlier than I was expecting…”

Thorax chuckled weakly at that before looking to the window. “Well, we’ve still got a couple hours until sunrise… might as well get some more rest, huh? Especially if you’re all heading back to Ponyville.”

Fluttershy nodded. “Right. Good idea,” she agreed before nodding down to Twilight. “You, too.”

“Heh. Yes, mom,” Twilight replied, finding the strength to crack a joke thanks to Spike’s little display.

Fluttershy tsked a few times with a shake of her head. “Ah ah ah, none of that cheek, young lady!” she said in a faux stern voice.

Spike rolled his eyes. “Oh, please, what are you gonna do to stop her?”

“Don’t ask her that,” Thorax interjected, shuddering in his shell at some unsettling memory. “Trust me. You don’t wanna know.”

Fluttershy nodded in approval at him, her smile growing wider.

Twilight’s expression blanked. There was an implication there she was not entirely sure she wanted to explore.

Spike, however, had no such reservations. He scratched the side of his head with a raised eyebrow. “Wait, what does that mean?” he asked.

Thorax winced before curling up on the ground and closing his eyes. “Get some sleep,” he instructed simply, clearly not wanting to keep that discussion going.

Spike was starting to look worried, now, his claws tapping over his chest faster than before. “What does she do? Thorax?!” he asked, waddling a few paces over to the changeling. “Come on, tell me!”

Fluttershy giggled before lowering her head to the blankets. “Let him sleep, Spike. He’s really worn himself out from all the running around we did,” she instructed quietly. “Come lay down. You need sleep, too.”

Spike looked between them for a few seconds before sighing and nodding. “Oh, okay. But he’s gonna tell me what you’d do one of these days!” he decided, most likely a fatal mistake, before hopping over and retaking his position under Twilight’s wing.

Twilight managed to give off a quiet laugh at that before closing her eyes as well. She felt the two adjust a few times to get more comfortable before they all fell still, and the room fell into silence. Twilight took a deep breath, savoring the warmth of her long time friend and baby dragon, eager to get some more sleep. Who knew? Maybe some rest would do her some good, especially if a certain somepony didn’t screw with her dreams.

Sadly, sleep did not come for her. Even as the others fell sound asleep around her, filling the air with insectoid chitters, draconic snores, and equine breaths, Twilight was unable to follow them. The warmth afforded by Fluttershy and Spike soon began to lose meaning against the cold feeling of shame that had set up shop in her chest, digging a nice, spacious hole for itself.

The worst part, however, was the fear. Once or twice, she felt herself starting to doze off, only for the memory of her nightmares to snap her back to wakefulness with no mercy whatsoever. They were always so vivid and clear, and she never knew that she was dreaming until she at last awoke.

Eventually, she gave up on getting back to sleep and opened her eyes. It was still dark out, though the first hints of light could be seen creeping up on the horizon. The sun would be up, soon. When it rose, Fluttershy and Spike would take her back to Ponyville, while Thorax would stay behind to find Spiracle and bring her to Ponyville in order to talk to Rainbow. Twilight could apologize to her then, right…?

She shivered again. Why couldn’t she be happy with that outcome? Why couldn’t she just go with it? She had already ruined the situation here more than enough, so what was stopping her from accepting what was most likely the best course of action?

Her eyes fell, a solemn frown splitting her muzzle. “Because it isn’t what I want, is it?” she thought to herself. “What good will my apologies be worth if I wait that long? If I let her come to me? What will that prove? What will that do? As far as she’ll be concerned, I’ll have just capitalized on a moment where we were around each other to save face… and really? She will be absolutely right…”

“Who cares?” The voice asked, sounding just as tired as Twilight felt. “Spiracle is a changeling. And in case you forgot Thorax’s testimony, she was the one who kicked off the attack on Canterlot by bringing word of your absence to Chrysalis. That entire disaster is her doing.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Twilight thought back, too tired to even shout in her mind. “It was Chrysalis’. She was their leader, and it was her decision to make in the end. Spiracle was just following orders, like Thorax. And just like him, she has deserted from the Hive.”

“Pfft. Do you really believe that?”

“If you’re a part of me as you keep claiming, then go ahead. Tell me I don’t.”

There were several long seconds of silence before the voice scoffed in irritation. “Alright, fine, I’ll give you that one.”

Twilight’s lips curled up into a small smile. “Wow, really? I didn’t realize you had the ability to admit defeat.”

“And what does that say about you?”

Twilight’s smile grew, and she slowly pushed herself up to her hooves. “That I don’t give up. Not on what I believe in.”

“We call that character trait ‘stubborn,’” the voice mocked.

“And we call you ‘schizophrenia,’” Twilight shot back without missing a beat.

“Cute. Also inaccurate,” the voice snarked. “But let’s roll with the notion that Spiracle isn’t lying to you, for now. So what? She committed horrible war crimes by enabling the queen to launch her invasion. And I am certain you remember the awful trauma you and the ponies you love had to endure because of it. She’s a criminal. She’s an enemy. If nothing else, she should face trial for her crimes, shouldn’t she?”

Twilight frowned, hesitating. Her first instinct was to point Thorax out as an example, but he had been a special case. He had been supplying them with intel and advice on how to fight back against Chrysalis the entire time he had been with them, not to mention actively assisting their every effort. He had been a staunch ally from the moment he arrived in Ponyville with Wind Whisper.

There was no conflict like that now, though. Equestria was at peace, and all but recovered from Chrysalis’ invasion. There was still some residual damage leftover in some of the larger cities that got hit—mostly Canterlot—but that was it.

“Exactly,” the voice went on. “If Thorax finds her, she needs to be punished for what she did, and for doing nothing to prevent it. Her coming here seeking asylum was an act of desperation, nothing more. She isn’t our ally, she isn’t our guide, and she is not our friend!”

Twilight grit her teeth behind her lips. A few moments later, though, a small smile spread on her face. “No, she isn’t… but that doesn’t mean she can’t become one.”

With that, Twilight carefully slipped away from the mound of pillows. She heard Spike and Fluttershy stirring behind her, but thankfully, they did not wake. She sneaked across the room on the tips of her hooves, casting furtive glances at the others every few steps to ensure they did not wake to stop her. As soon as she was out of the room, she unfurled her wings and flew out of the library.

“Where do you think you’re going?” the voice asked.

“To find Spiracle,” Twilight replied, out loud this time. “I’m going to find her, apologize for what I did, and I am going to bring her back into the castle so we can sort all of this out. And this time, I am not going to listen to anything you have to say about it!”

“After everything you’ve endured?!” the voice snapped, the sharpness in its voice causing Twilight to briefly falter in the air. “After the agony of losing your life, your memories, and your sanity, because of what those creatures did, you still plan to help it?!”

“Yes, I do!” Twilight replied, pressing on.

“Why?! Why do you care about her, anyway?!”

“Because somepony has to!” Twilight snapped, pumping her wings harder. “And because it’s the right thing to do! I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I hurt her just out of petty spite! Changeling or not, she’s hurting, too, and I am not going to feed that anymore!”

“You’re making a mistake…”

“Maybe I am, but this time it’s my mistake to make, not yours.”

“Tch. Fine. Have it your way. Just don’t come crying to me if she stabs you in the back.”

“She won’t.”

“And how do you know that?”

Twilight took a deep breath, a small, serene smile appearing on her face. “...Because Thorax trusts her,” she said softly. “And I trust him.”

“That isn’t exactly a compelling argument.”

“Miles better than anything you can suggest.”

To that, the voice did not have any comebacks, thankfully. Twilight breathed a sigh of relief as merciful silence filled her head once more, allowing her to focus on the task ahead of her.

Spiracle

The Everfree Forest was a strange place. During the light of day, it could be seen as a place of solemn beauty. Being an ancient Primal Zone, it was perhaps a rare watermark of what Equestria had been like before the pegasi domesticated the weather across much of the landmass, or the earth ponies tamed the land itself: tranquil, wild, serene, and unpredictable.

In stark contrast to this was the ominous aura the forest took on during the night. Under the shroud of the moon and stars, it became a dark, brooding, hostile place that promised pain and suffering to anyone stupid enough to dare venture under its claw-like boughs. Malevolent beasts of all shapes and sizes hid away in the darkness under the branches, glowing eyes piercing the dark and just waiting for some poor soul to wander too close.

And then there was the forest in the light of the approaching sunrise. It struck a paradoxical middle ground between frightening and enchanting, terrifying and enthralling. The shadows beneath the canopy promised misery and wonder both, while the calls of the animals that called the forest home somehow soothed, but also unsettled, the soul.

Twilight looked down on it all from high in the air, her wings pumping slowly and evenly to keep her aloft. She swallowed heavily, watching the leaves sway as a gentle breeze ran through them. She followed the ripple of movement with her eyes until it disappeared into the distance.

“...This might be a really dumb idea,” she eventually said out loud, her lips quirking into a crooked smile.

“You said it, not me.”

Twilight scoffed before drifting forward, doing her best not to give the voice any attention. She focused her eyes down on the branches below, looking for any sign of the renegade changeling she had flown out here to find.

She must have been flying over the forest for fifteen minutes before she finally realized that it was probably a lost cause. The forest canopy was already dense enough by the edge of the ravine, leaving only a few scattered pockets where she could see the ground. It was only a few dozen yards from the ravine before the canopy became too thick to see anything meaningful. Just rolling hills of green, drooping leaves.

Swearing under her breath, Twilight came to a stop and spun in a slow circle, racking her brain. Spiracle was bound to be out here somewhere, right? If what she said earlier was true, then it stood to reason she had been eyeing Twilight for a little while, now. That meant she probably had a campsite of some description set up not far away. Assuming Spiracle hadn’t broken camp after Twilight’s outburst, then finding that would be her best bet of also finding her.

Swallowing heavily, Twilight descended beneath the forest canopy not far from the edge of the ravine. She spared a glance down towards the Tree of Harmony’s cave, and a tingle ran down her spine. It was watching her. She knew it.

“I can’t mess this up…”

Twilight took a deep breath before facing deeper into the forest. It loomed ahead of her like a great gaping maw, the gnarled branches reminiscent of crooked fangs and grasping claws ready to snatch her away to some unspeakable fate. The way the ground had been torn and shredded in places after the Plundervines passed through only added to the unsettling imagery. Twilight’s throat involuntarily stiffened, her breaths becoming a little strained as her memory of being suffocated by sleeping gas filtered into her mind.

She shook her head to dismiss the image after a moment. Setting her jaw, she set off at a brisk pace, eager to get this over and done with. The more time she stood around feeling sorry for herself or what she had been through, the more time the others had to wake up and realize she was gone again, and she planned to find Spiracle and put things right before they had a chance for that.

“An optimistic plan,” the voice noted. “Considering the sun’s already starting to rise. They’ll be waking up any minute now. Do you really think you can find Spiracle before Thorax, Fluttershy, and Spike find you?”

Twilight nodded. “I do.”

“How come?”

“Because I know they’ll search the castle first. That gives me at least a little room to breathe. Plus, this forest is big. They’d need to find my tracks first, and that could take a while.”

The voice hummed but did not follow up on that for the moment, allowing Twilight the freedom she needed to focus on her search. Her efforts were slightly hindered, however, as her mind wandered back to her three friends back in the castle. She didn’t doubt they were going to be worried about her, and a significant part of her ached with guilt at making them worry like that.

“But I have to do this on my terms,” she told herself, trying to bury her guilt. “They’ll understand.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Twilight frowned in irritation. “Don’t you have something better to do than bother me all the time?”

“Not really.”

Twilight grunted in annoyance, about ready to tear into the voice and give it a solid piece of her mind for being such a persistent pest. Before she could get the words out, though, a sound caught her ear. She froze, perking up her ears, and waiting for it to come again. A few seconds passed until it did, loud enough for Twilight to make it out.

Whimpers.

Twilight slowly turned to face the sound. Ahead of her, the trees formed a line that was almost a wall, and she couldn’t see through the shade they cast. But there was something whimpering on the other side of that veil, and it sounded familiar.

Twilight smirked triumphantly. “Hey, look, I think I found her.”

“Congratulations,” the voice deadpanned. “Would you like a medal for this magnificent achievement, or would you prefer a biography?”

“Oh, shut up.”

Whatever witty retort the voice had, Twilight drowned it out as she approached the whimpers. She moved slowly and carefully, not wanting to startle Spiracle if the one whimpering was indeed her. A small bead of worry began to form in Twilight’s gut as she drew closer. Why would Spiracle be whimpering? If she worked as an infiltrator, as Thorax had suggested, it implied that she was at least emotionally mature enough to hold her composure.

“Being in a position of power does not mean you can’t have childish meltdowns,” the voice snarked. “I mean, just look at Rainbow Dash.”

Twilight went rigid, her coat bristling and her pupils dilating. “Don’t talk about her like that.”

“Why not? I’m right.”

“She’s suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, grief, and probably depression!” Twilight shot back, her ears flattening back in barely-contained rage.

“And?”

Twilight growled deep in her throat before screwing her eyes shut and taking a deep breath. She didn’t give the voice the satisfaction of a response this time. She didn’t expect it to understand Rainbow Dash’s condition, nor did she expect it to ever learn to. She did her best to drown out whatever remarks it made before carefully pushing through the wall of foliage.

As she had suspected, a campsite came into view, albeit not one she had ever seen the likes of before. There wasn’t a tent in the traditional sense. Instead, there was a vaguely igloo-shaped dome of green resin with one side open to the world and supported by a thick, slimy green pillar. A makeshift fire pit sat in the heart of the small clearing, and a pair of makeshift saddlebags made from yet more resin was leaning next to them.

Also, as Twilight had suspected, Spiracle was there. She was sitting on her haunches by the fire pit, a pained grimace on her face as she dug through her saddlebags. “Come on, come on… I know I had at least a few more bandages, didn’t I?” she asked through clenched teeth. She winced, screwing her eyes shut and throwing a hoof down to her left hind leg. Twilight’s eyes followed the movement before going wide.

Spiracle’s leg had obviously suffered some sort of injury in her retreat. The chitin along her hip had been shattered, exposing the grey, rough skin that sat underneath. It was swollen and bruised, and Twilight did not imagine it felt good to try and walk around like that.

“Sweet Celestia…” she breathed.

Spiracle’s ears twitched at the sound, and she quickly rounded to face Twilight, her lips peeling back to show her sharp teeth. “Who’s there?!” she demanded in a loud hiss, although it was evident she was trying, and failing, to suppress a groan of pain as she put weight on her injured leg.

Twilight quickly held up her hooves, falling to her haunches in the process. “Woah, woah, hey, easy! I’m not here to hurt you,” she said, her ears folding back.

Spiracle blinked, her hostile expression melting away and replaced with a frown of confusion. “What…? Twilight? What are you doing here? I thought- ACK!”

“Oh my gosh!” Twilight gasped as Spiracle collapsed to the ground, her injured leg giving out under her. Twilight quickly rose and cantered over to get a better look, and she realized that the wound was a lot worse than it looked. “What happened to you?!”

Spiracle groaned before opening an eye and glancing up at Twilight. “...Giant lizard made of rocks jumped me on the way back,” she said through grit teeth. “Got a pretty good chomp on me before I got away…”

Twilight winced. “A cragodile… They’re nasty, and probably still wound up after all the chaos the Plundervines caused,” she said, slowly sitting back on her haunches. Her eyes fell on Spiracle’s saddlebags, and she noticed that they were largely see-through. She saw a small roll of bandage wrap at the bottom of the right pouch.

Spiracle sucked in a breath before rolling onto her back and slowly sitting up onto her haunches. “Gh! Ack! Ow, that hurts, ow, ow…” she protested as she went.

“Here, let me help,” Twilight offered, putting her hoof to Spiracles back to support her as she went up. A few seconds passed before the drone was sitting upright, and she gave off a relieved sigh. Twilight smiled and withdrew her hoof. “There you go. That’s better. Here, let me get some bandages for your leg.”

Spiracle watched, transfixed, as Twilight reached into the right pouch with her magic and withdrew the bandages. Twilight began to unroll a long strip of gauss, looking down at the injury again to get an idea of how much she would need. A queasy grimace spread on her muzzle at the sight of Spiracle’s brutalized flank, and she realized that she was probably not the best pony for the job. Fluttershy would be better.

For now, at least, she could ease the pain. Fluttershy could do a better job later. With that determination in mind, Twilight leaned down and carefully applied the bandages to the wound, wrapping them around a few times before tying it off at the end to apply some pressure. She leaned back a moment later to survey her work.

It was sloppy, but it would do the trick for now. Spiracle looked down at the bandaged leg, visibly relieved and already looking less pained. She then looked up to Twilight and tilted her head. “Thank you… but, um… I don’t mean to sound ungrateful or anything, but… uh… why are you helping me like this?” she asked quietly. She looked down and away, her ears drooping as if in shame. “I mean… you made it pretty clear how you felt about me back in the castle…”

Twilight’s heart withered in her chest at the reminder. She gave off a weak sigh and looked down at the ground. “...I know. I’m really sorry about before,” she apologized meekly. “I’ve just been dealing with some really personal problems, lately. Been struggling to overcome some ‘inner demons,’ you could say. It’s been driving me up the wall for a while, now, and… I guess I took my anger over it all out on you… It was wrong of me, and it was stupid, and I want to make up for it.”

Spiracle eyed her in surprise. She fidgeted in place for a few moments, briefly reminding Twilight of Fluttershy before she spoke again. “Really? How do you plan to do that?”

Twilight hesitated for a moment before lifting her head. “Well… I’ll start by hearing your story. All of it. I didn’t listen to you back in the castle, and that was a huge mistake…”

Spiracle blinked a few times before looking away, running a hoof over her shoulder. “Um… well, uh… oh, jeez. Where do I start?” she asked sheepishly.

Twilight put on a reassuring smile. “How about you start with what happened after Chrysalis was sealed?”

Spiracle was quiet for a few seconds before nodding her head. “Well… after the battle in the Empire, all of us drones just sort of… felt it, I guess. We just knew that we had lost, and that we needed to go home. The whole trip back was silent, and when we returned to the Hive, nobody said much of anything. It was completely silent for three days…”

Spiracle turned to Twilight with a distant, horrified look on her face. “Do you know what that’s like? To be surrounded by noise at all times when home, with drones flying around and chattering, constantly working, always in motion, only for it all to go completely still? It was the most harrowing thing I’ve ever experienced… even worse than that shadow in the snow…”

She shuddered, hugging herself. “And then, when there was noise again, it was just… chaos. There was no order, no structure. Everyone just… started yelling and arguing and fighting. The throne was empty. We had no queen. There was nobody there to give us direction or purpose. Our clutches were unattended for the first time in centuries, and no one knew what to do… I lost count of the fights that broke out on just that first day alone… It was horrible.”

Twilight winced and looked away. “I’m sorry you had to go through that… But remember, we were defending ourselves up in the Empire. We only did what we had to do to protect ourselves from the swarm. Chrysalis was an immediate and existential threat to me and everypony I love. I don’t regret sealing her in that tree. As far as I see it, Chrysalis was a monster. She got what she deserved.”

“Maybe…” Spiracle mumbled before shrugging. “It doesn’t matter now, though. It’s done, and the hive practically fell apart because of it. Everyone started squabbling over food and resources, and factions started springing up as powerful drones began clawing for the throne, fighting each other off. The hive practically became a battleground… Eventually, the fighting became so bad I decided I couldn’t stay anymore. But I was too scared to leave, at first. I was petrified by the idea of being alone out here, no idea where to go or what to do, but I was just as petrified of staying at the hive, where I could get caught up in the crossfire at any moment...”

Then Spiracle lifted her head, a tiny smile appearing on her face. “But then, my old commanding officer, Pharynx, began to vie for the throne himself… and the speeches he gave… He told everyone of his brother, Thorax, and how the pacifist runt of the hive had discovered something not even our queens had managed to discover.”

“How to feed properly, right?” Twilight asked carefully. “How to get love without hurting others? How to stop being hungry all the time?”

Spiracle nodded. “Exactly! A lot of drones blew off his words as the delusional ramblings of the brother of a soft-headed traitor, but I know Pharynx! I worked under him for years, and I know that he trusted his brother. Thorax had found a way to end our hunger, and he found a place to call home here in Equestria! When I heard about him, I knew I had to come looking. I had to come find him. But… I had no idea where to look, at first. Equestria is such a big place… I’m used to only having one ‘colony’ as my entire nation within the hive. Having so many cities and towns across all this land, just… confused me.”

“Cultural whiplash,” Twilight noted. “Yeah, that’ll get ya… It took Thorax a while to adapt, too, from what I heard.”

“Well, he had a place to call home right from the start,” Spiracle commented with a slightly jealous tone. “I didn’t… When I first came to Equestria, I showed up as just myself. And how was I greeted?”

Spiracle sighed and idly kicked at one of the stones around her fire pit. “...With an angry mob, torches, pitchforks and all. They ran me out of town before I even had a chance to explain myself or ask for help…”

Twilight sighed, placing a hoof on Spiracle’s back. “I’m so sorry… Ponies aren’t typically malicious creatures, but… well, a lot of us have a bad habit of holding grudges, and a lot in smaller villages tend to be unhealthy in their superstitions… I know. Ponyville had plenty when I moved there.”

Spiracle hummed quietly at that. “Well… I wandered around after that, just trying to find somewhere that would be willing to accept me. I eventually started taking on new identities with every town I visited, trying to blend in, learn a few things, and get some love in my belly. But it was never enough… and when the ponies were kind to me, I…”

Twilight wilted. “You started snarling and hissing, right?”

Spiracle nodded. “Yeah… I’m starving, and whenever I smell so much love and kindness around me, I just… I can’t hold it in! I’m barely keeping it in around you right now! I barely ever got more than a snack before I was forced to bolt for the hills…”

With every word Twilight heard, the guilt she felt for her previous anger explosion grew several times stronger. This poor drone had been run off so many times, now. She had been denied a chance at friends or happiness purely because of what she was, and when she finally saw a chance to obtain both, the very pony she had sought out to grant them—her last hope, practically—had shot her down in a wild rage.

“That is not how I’m supposed to be,” Twilight thought despondently, her ears drooping.

“But it is who you are,” the voice muttered.

Twilight closed her eyes. “No. That’s who you are. I’m nothing like you.”

“Denial denial denial,” the voice droned in irritation. “When will you open your eyes to the truth?”

“Just shut up and leave me alone. I’m busy.”

With that, Twilight took a deep breath and put on a warm smile. “Well… if you’re so hungry, then…” she began before spreading out her forelegs, exposing her chest. “You can have some of mine if you need it.”

“WHAT?!” the voice bellowed in alarm. “Are you serious?!”

Spiracle didn’t seem to be faring much better in response to the offer. Her mouth fell open while her eyes went as wide as saucers. She stared at Twilight for a few seconds, her glowing blue eyes shimmering with barely-restrained hunger. “W...w-what?” she finally managed to stammer out, completely taken aback.

Twilight nodded at her, trying to ignore the way her heart was thumping anxiously against her chest. She thought of every nice thing she could imagine about Spiracle. It was regrettably little right now, but she hoped it would be enough. “If you need a little love to keep yourself going, I can let you have some… You know, to make up for how I treated you before.”

Spiracle licked her lips, seemingly without thinking about it. Her eyes locked onto Twilight’s chest, right onto where her heart would be. “I… a-are you sure?” Spiracle ventured timidly. “I really don’t want to hurt you… and if I start, I might not be able to stop…”

“Do you need any more assurances that she’s not evil?” Twilight thought inwardly at that.

“Have you ever heard of the concept of a lie? Because I don’t think you have.”

Twilight elected to ignore that before nodding at Spiracle. “I’m sure. If I think you’re taking too much, I’ll stop you,” she assured.

Spiracle hesitated for several seconds before looking up and around Twilight. She blinked again, and her eyes flew wide at something Twilight couldn’t see. “Oh… oh, wow…” Spiracle whispered, clutching a hoof up to her belly as it let out an audible rumble. Then, without another word, Spiracle opened her mouth.

Twilight winced when she felt something tugging on her chest. She watched with uncomfortable awe as streams of pink light began to emerge from thin air and from her chest. They drifted lazily down before flowing into Spiracle’s mouth, illuminating everything inside and affording Twilight an exceptionally detailed look at a changeling maw.

Spiracle began to hiss and snarl, a small trickle of drool leaking out the corner of her mouth as she feasted on what Twilight had to give. Her wings twitched and buzzed on her back, and she rose to her hooves instinctively. Twilight cringed back, tensing involuntarily as Spiracle took on a threatening, predatory pose like she was about to pounce. Twilight did not move beyond that, however. She forced herself to stay perfectly still and wait for Spiracle to make the next move.

Finally, after almost a minute, Spiracle screwed her eyes shut. The hissing in her throat cut out without ceremony as she clamped her muzzle shut and looked away. All at once, the tugging sensation on Twilight’s chest ended, and she was suddenly overcome by a feeling of tiredness. Twilight gave off a heavy sigh before falling forward, barely catching herself with her forehooves.

“I’m so sorry,” Spiracle mumbled a moment later. Twilight felt a pair of hooves on her back gently easing her up into a sitting position. Spiracle was staring back at her with a worried, uneasy frown. “I couldn’t stop. I haven’t eaten so much since I left the hive, and… instinct just… took over. I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

Twilight shook her head, keeping one hoof planted to her chest over her heart. She shivered as an unnatural cold spread through her body, but she was quick to put on a smile. “It’s o-okay. I v-volunteered for this. I’m glad I could h-help.”

Spiracle relaxed somewhat. She withdrew her hoof and stepped back to give Twilight some room to breathe. Several moments passed in silence before Twilight’s breath steadied and she was able to focus. She shook herself to chase away the hollow chill in her heart and gave Spiracle a tender smile.

The changeling drone smiled back before shifting awkwardly on her haunches. “S-so… um… what now?” she asked, a crooked smile on her face.

Twilight slowly rose to her hooves, wobbling slightly as she did so, and held one out to help Spiracle stand. “Now, we head back to the castle. We can have Fluttershy patch up your leg while Thorax talks to you.”

Spiracle’s eyes widened as she stood up, using Twilight to support her weight. “Thorax is with you?!” she asked.

Twilight nodded. “Yeah. He was visiting Fluttershy when I asked her to come with me and Spike out here, and so he decided to come along. You two used to be friends, right?” she asked while guiding Spiracle slowly out of the clearing.

Spiracle hummed, looking up at the sky. “Um… sort of? I didn’t really have anything against him, honestly. He seemed really nice, but… well, I didn’t get to talk to him very often. I didn’t want to earn any disfavor from the queen by associating with the runt.”

Twilight shrugged. “Well, he clearly thought pretty highly of you, since he vouched for you,” she said before focusing forward. “I’m sure he’ll have a lot of questions for you about what things were like back at the hive. And then, once you’re all patched up and caught up with him, we can take you back to Ponyville, and you can talk to Rainbow about being granted asylum.”

Spiracle relaxed at that, leaning more into Twilight’s side. She gave off a relieved sigh and let her head hang down low before speaking in barely even a whisper. “...Thank you.”

Twilight smiled over at her. “You’re welcome.”

A Little Kindness

The return trip to the castle was, thankfully, uneventful. Twilight escorted Spiracle out of her campsite and into some more open space, allowing the changeling to use her as a crutch for the duration of their trek on hoof. As soon as they had a sizable opening in the forest canopy overhead, though, there was no longer a need for Spiracle to lean on her, as the two of them spread their wings and took to the air.

Twilight kept close to Spiracle the whole way, just in case. Her wings weren’t injured, but Twilight knew, first- and second-hoof, that enough physical pain in other parts of the body would easily distract one from their flying. She hovered a few feet to the changeling’s side, ready to reach out and catch her at a moment’s notice.

Spiracle’s face was contorted into a perpetual grimace of pain the whole way, but she bore it well. Twilight was genuinely impressed by Spiracle’s resilience and composure. She must have been allowing herself to appear so vulnerable before because she was all on her own, a notion reinforced by how quickly she had sprung into a defensive stance when Twilight had stumbled upon her camp.

Soon enough, the Castle of The Two Sisters came into view. They passed over the chasm that surrounded it, affording Twilight a momentary opportunity to look down at the cave where the Tree of Harmony resided. She could just make out the faintest hint of the blue glow the ancient growth gave off.

“Twilight!”

Twilight jumped as somepony called out to her, and she looked down and ahead to the speaker. Her heart leaped into her throat when she saw Fluttershy and Thorax flying up to meet her from the castle’s entrance, with Spike riding on the former’s back. It had been Spike that called out to her, his eyes wide and his face painted with relief.

Twilight smiled and waved down at him. “Hey, guys!”

Her smile became strained when she saw the disapproving look in Fluttershy’s eyes. Thorax was more shocked-looking than anything, but really, it wasn’t his ire she was afraid of earning. Twilight slowed herself to a halt, holding out a hoof to make sure Spiracle did the same. She took a deep breath and forced her smile back onto her face as the others came up to meet her face-to-face.

“Where have you been?!” Spike demanded the moment Fluttershy came to a stop. Without waiting for a response, he leaped from her back, undeterred by the many yards of empty air that separated him from the ground. Twilight yelped, drifting back before reaching out and catching him as his arms wrapped tightly around her neck in a bone-crushing embrace. “I was so worried about you! We all woke up and you weren’t there! I thought… I th-thought you’d run off again, like… like…”

He couldn’t finish the sentence. Twilight’s blood went cold when she felt him shudder in her grasp, burying his face deep into her chest fur. Her ears folded back in regret. She had hoped she could get back before they had a chance to really worry about her, but evidently she had not succeeded.

Resisting the urge to sigh, she pulled Spike closer and nuzzled him affectionately atop the head. “I’m sorry, Spike. I would have said something, but, well… I knew you’d all try to stop me.”

Spike looked up at her, his eyes shimmering. “Of course we would have!” he exclaimed, balling up one of his hands into a fist and thumping it against her. “It’s really dangerous out there, especially at night! And after everything that’s happened, I just-”

“Shh,” she soothed him quietly, pulling him closer and resting her chin on his head. “I know. I’m sorry. I just had to take care of this… I’m sorry I scared you.”

Spike shook his head but didn’t say anything else. Twilight gave him a reassuring squeeze before lifting her eyes to look at Fluttershy and Thorax. They had drifted back a little bit to give the two some room. Fluttershy was smiling at them, although the faintest hint of disapproval was still in her eyes. Twilight winced. She was probably due for a Fluttershy scolding here in the next little while.

Thorax, on the other hoof, wasn’t even looking at her. His eyes had instead locked onto Spiracle, who had similarly drifted back to afford Twilight and Spike their little moment. His eyes were wide, and his jaw was open. He eventually noticed Twilight looking at him and clamped his jaw shut before speaking. “You… you found her,” he said quietly.

Twilight nodded slowly and turned to gesture at the changeling beside her. “Yeah… I had to make up for what I did wrong, so I came out here to look for her. And I found her…”

Fluttershy’s eyes drifted from Twilight to study her company and immediately locked onto Spiracle’s bandages. Her eyes flew wide as saucers. “Oh my goodness! You’re hurt!” she exclaimed, flying in to get a better look. Spiracle squirmed slightly, emitting a quiet squeak of surprise as the pegasus drew into her personal space to inspect the injury. “How bad is it? What did this?”

“U-uh, a c-cragodile, I think,” Spiracle mumbled out, seemingly not sure how to take Fluttershy’s proximity. “At least, that’s what Twilight called it.”

“I bandaged her up as best as I could,” Twilight explained. “But I’m not a doctor, or even really any good at first-aid. I brought her back not just so we could talk this out properly, but also so you could treat her better.”

Fluttershy nodded. “Right. Can you walk?” she asked, all business.

Spiracle hummed, wiggling her injured leg a little bit. “I can… I might need some help, though,” she acknowledged.

“Okay, let’s get you to the library, then,” she said, gesturing down at the castle. “Follow me, please.”

With that, she took the lead, flying down for the castle. Spiracle lingered for a moment before following after her, casting a glance at Thorax. To Twilight’s pleasure, she actually smiled at him before vanishing into the castle after Fluttershy. Thorax stayed behind with Twilight for a little longer, his expression one of relief. He turned to face Twilight, his lips twitching up into a smile. “...It was kinda stupid of you to go flying off on your own like that, but… you found Spiracle. I appreciate it, Twilight, really. Thank you.”

“I was just doing what I thought I had to,” she replied, glancing down at the ground far below with a solemn frown. “...I couldn’t wait for you all to get her and apologize then. I had to make things right on my own terms.”

Thorax nodded. His eyes drifted down to Spike, who had fallen silent in Twilight’s embrace. His brow furrowed, and his smile fell away to be replaced by a worried frown. He didn’t say anything, though. Instead, he turned and flew down after Fluttershy and Spiracle. Twilight held back for a few more seconds before gingerly placing Spike on her back and taking off after him.

A short time later, everypony was back in the library, comfortably nestled on the various pillows that were scattered about the secret room. Fluttershy was seated next to Spiracle, tending to her wounds with a first-aid kit on hoof, while Thorax sat in front of them, eagerly talking with Spiracle. Both of them had warm smiles on their faces, and it was pretty apparent that they were happy to see each other.

“So Pharynx really started vying for the throne?!” Thorax asked, his wings giving an excited buzz while his eyes lit up.

Spiracle nodded. “He did. And by the time I left, he was really making some progress. Although, uh, I don’t think it’s going to be easy on him…”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” Thorax agreed, glancing to one side with a fond look of remembrance. “But Pharynx is tough. As tough as changelings can be. He’s strong, he’s smart, and he doesn’t take anypony else’s nonsense…”

Fluttershy smiled at Thorax as she finished applying a new layer of bandages to Spiracle’s leg, much better than Twilight’s previous haphazard attempt. “I’m sure he’ll do just fine,” she said sweetly.

“So am I,” Thorax agreed. “And when it’s all over, with any luck, maybe Equestria and the Hive can finally be on peaceful terms! Make all the other drones finally see just what they’ve been missing out on!”

Spiracle hummed at that. She gave Fluttershy a thankful smile before turning back to Thorax. “Maybe… I’m not sure it’ll be that easy, but I guess you can hope,” she said, not sounding quite as enthusiastic about the idea as Thorax. She quickly sobered up, though, giving Thorax another friendly smile. “B-but enough about me, for now. I want to hear about you, Thorax. It’s been such a long time, and from the sounds of it, you’ve been busy.”

Thorax smiled sheepishly while rubbing a hoof along his shoulder. “Eheh, well, I’m not sure if ‘busy’ is the right word. I’ve just been living in Canterlot with a family of thestrals, working at a local theater—sometimes even as an actor—but mostly I just move stuff around on set.”

Spiracle tilted her head. “...What’s a theater?”

Thorax blinked. “...Oh, yeah, that’s right, we don’t have those back at the Hive, do we?”

“Not really, no.”

“Okay, well, a Theater is this big stage where actors come on to put on a performance, telling a story to an assembled audience by acting out the events in the story,” Thorax explained, pausing here and there as he tried to find the best way to explain the foreign concept.

Spiracle listened with fascination as Thorax went on and on about his life, his work, and the various misadventures and instances of culture shock he had been through since arriving in Equestria.

All the while, Twilight looked on from the other side of the room with a big smile. Spike was still leaning against her side, with one of her wings draped lovingly over him like a blanket. The two hadn’t said much since they had gotten back.

Eventually, though, Spike shifted to look up at her, his face still showing his relief from earlier. “...I’m really glad you’re okay,” he mumbled, pressing closer to her side.

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Spike, you make it sound like I was going off on some dangerous odyssey. I’m sorry I scared you, but it wasn’t really that bad, was it?” she asked lightly, hoping to ease his concern.

It did not work. Spike’s expression hardened with disapproval, and she felt him tense up under her wing. “Twilight… the last time you flew off after being angry like that, you turned into Midnight.”

Any mirth Twilight had been feeling in that moment was immediately squashed like an ant under a buffalo’s hoof. Her ears drooped, and her smile fell away. “O-oh… I…”

“I was scared it might have happened again,” Spike went on, closing his eyes. “You need help, and for a minute there I was scared that we should have gotten you that help sooner. I mean, if you had gone back to being Midnight, then what would we do? What would you do? I mean, you have your memories back…”

“Spike…”

“Would you go after Spiracle? Or the Hive itself?” Spike continued, getting lost in his paranoid hypotheticals. “Or would you go after the Tree for rejecting you?”

“Spike, please.”

“What would Rainbow have thought? Would she blame herself again?!” Spike screwed his eyes shut.

“Spike, that’s enough,” Twilight finally cut him off in a low but firm voice. She leaned down and nuzzled him on the head, pulling him as close against her side as she could with her wing. “It’s okay… I’m fine. And I promise I won’t turn back into Midnight. She’s gone.”

“Lies.”

Twilight did her best to ignore that snarled whisper. She leaned back and smiled down at Spike as widely as she could. “And I won’t go running off like that again without telling you where I’m going, either. That’s also a promise. So chin up, okay?”

Spike stared up at her for a few moments before smiling and nodding. “O-okay… if you’re sure.”

“I am,” she assured him. “Pinkie promise.”

“Do the chant.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Ugh. Alright. Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.”

That seemed to be enough for Spike. His smile grew, and he gave off a satisfied hum as he snuggled up against her again. Soon enough, his breaths became slow and rhythmic, and Twilight realized he had fallen asleep against her side.

Twilight closed her eyes and took the chance to get a little rest, basking in the warmth of Spike nestled up close to her, and the happy voices of Thorax, Fluttershy, and Spiracle talking not far away. She took in a slow, deep breath before letting it out with a gentle smile. She had scared Spike, yes, but it had all turned out alright in the end, hadn’t it? And she could do better next time something like this came up.

“I told you,” she thought, her smile turning ever so slightly smug. “I told you I had this handled.”

“Even a broken clock is right twice a day,” the voice remarked dismissively.

Twilight’s smile became strained. For the moment, she elected not to pursue that discussion any further. As it was, it would be better to take it as a compliment and carry on.

Eventually, though, her moment of rest and inner reflection came to an end. A hoof tapped her on the shoulder, drawing her attention. Looking up, Twilight was greeted by Fluttershy’s face. Spiracle and Thorax were still happily chatting in hushed voices on the other end of the room.

“Hey, Fluttershy. How’s her leg?” Twilight asked in a hushed voice as the pegasus settled down beside her.

“She’ll be just fine,” Fluttershy replied with a simple nod. “It might take a while to heal, but she’ll be okay. Changelings are very strong creatures.”

“Heh, tell me about it,” Twilight replied. “Thorax turned into a dragon once.”

Fluttershy’s eyes drifted to the changeling in question, a far off look coming over her eyes. “Yeah… he did. I wish I had gotten a chance to see it…” she said quietly, her lips curling up into a soft smile.

Twilight observed Fluttershy from the side for a few moments, one of her eyebrows taking a trip up north for the summer. A few seconds passed before she smiled and lightly nudged the other mare in the side with her elbow. “So… are you and Thorax… you know, I’m not surprised.”

Fluttershy’s ears shot straight up, her cheeks turning a faint shade of red. “W-wha-?! I, uh, um… How did you... well, but, uh, I uh…” she babbled before withdrawing behind her mane, a series of embarrassing squeaks slipping out. “How obvious is it?”

Twilight giggled quietly, placing a comforting hoof on Fluttershy’s back. “Not super obvious, actually. Really, my big clue was how quick Thorax was to fly down here and help out after he found out about your house. That, and, well, everything with you two over the last two years: the letters, the way you sometimes gushed about him, how you spent most of your time with him at my brother’s wedding. Although I didn’t catch on until Rainbow gave him an evil smirk at your cottage. She only ever gets that look with me when she’s messing with me, and she knows she only gets away with it because I’m her girlfriend.”

Fluttershy let off another withering squeak before slowly poking her face out from behind her mane. “Um... okay,” she murmured sheepishly. “Just… don’t go telling anypony else, please. I mean, unless you have to.”

Twilight’s smile faltered. She tilted her head to one side curiously. “Huh? Why not?” She asked.

Fluttershy emerged fully from her mane and tapped her hooves together in front of her chest. “Um… it’s just that… I’ve never, you know, been with somepony like that before. It’s all really new to me, and I’m still trying to figure it all out. And, you know, it’s a little private.”

Twilight’s expression softened with understanding. It made sense. Fluttershy was, true to her name, the most socially reserved out of the entire group. Out of all of them, she would probably want and need the most space to herself to sort through it on her own and get used to it, and sharing the details of her love life with everypony else wasn’t really something Twilight could see her doing.

At the end of the day, though, it wasn’t Twilight’s business. She withdrew her hoof and nodded. “Alright, I understand. Really, I’m still trying to figure out how Rainbow and I are supposed to do this.”

Fluttershy blinked at her. “Really?”

“I had amnesia for two years,” Twilight reminded her, shuddering slightly at the memory. “Our whole relationship was put on pause for that entire time. Now that my memories are back, though, it’s back on, but… well, I mean, she and I already live together, and we have been living together since we came to Ponyville… I mean, do she and I start dating now, or are we past that point already?”

“Um… I don’t know?” Fluttershy said weakly with a very useless smile.

Twilight gave off an exaggerated groan of dismay. “Ugh, neither do I! It’s weird. My love life is weird.”

Fluttershy giggled at that before leaning over to give her a reassuring nuzzle. “Well, even if your life is weird, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. You and Rainbow have so much chemistry, and I know you two love each other very much. I know you’ll figure something out together.”

“Heh. Yeah, I guess we will,” Twilight agreed, taking a deep breath. She looked ahead, her eyes finding Thorax as he and Spiracle both suddenly broke out into laughs over something one of them had said. “Heh. Those two seem to be happy.”

Fluttershy nodded. “Mhmm… Thorax talks about the Hive sometimes, you know. I think he really misses it…”

Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Really? I mean, after everything I’ve learned about him, I thought he’d never want to go back.”

“Oh, he doesn’t,” Fluttershy clarified with a shake of her head. “He was treated horribly there. But, at the same time… it’s home to him. He was born there, raised there, and before he met us, his entire life revolved around there. All of his old friends are still there… He gets this really sad look whenever he talks about it…”

She looked down, her ears drooping. “I think, more than anything, he just misses being with his own kind. As much as he loves Wind, Squall, and the rest of us, he just… I don’t think he feels quite right, yet. Like there’s something missing...”

Twilight hummed, looking at Thorax again, more closely this time. Now that she was really looking, the depth of the happiness in his eyes was far more profound than she had at first thought. His every movement was laced with ecstatic energy, the big smile never once left his face, and his wings just could not hold still. He was like a kid bouncing around with excitement at getting to go into the candy shop.

Fluttershy watched him, too, a deeply pleased smile on her face. “But now look at him. He has another changeling to talk to again, after all this time. Somepony who will get it when he starts going off about how emotions taste, or who can understand how he sees the world…”

Fluttershy turned to Twilight, and her smile grew. “And you made it happen, Twilight.”

Twilight blinked. “Huh? O-oh, well, I mean…” she cracked a sheepish smile and rubbed the back of her head. “I mean, kinda? I came dangerously close to messing it all up…”

Fluttershy hummed. “Maybe… but in the end, you didn’t. You did the right thing, you showed her a little kindness, and now we can all help her,” she whispered. She then closed her eyes, and when next she spoke, there was something to her words, something deep and distant. “I’m proud of you, Twilight… thank you.”

Twilight blinked, her heart skipping a beat. All at once, a pressure on her heart and soul that she had not been aware of was lifted, at least partially. She gave off an instinctual sigh of relief, her entire body relaxing all at once. A pall that had been hanging over her ever since she had gotten her memories back began to thin, though it did not disperse entirely.

Twilight closed her eyes and smiled, leaning over into Fluttershy’s side. “Hmm. Thanks for saying that, Fluttershy. It’s the least I could do,” she said softly before falling silent, allowing the happy chatter and laughs of Thorax and Spiracle to echo in her mind.

Come to think of it, she had gotten very little sleep over the last few nights, and their joy was soothing…

With a content sigh, Twilight relaxed entirely into Fluttershy’s side, allowing herself to follow after Spike into the world of dreams. This time, for a mercy, there were no nightmares awaiting her.

Polynite

By Fluttershy’s insistence, the group elected to remain in the castle for the rest of the day. Spiracle’s leg needed some more time to heal up, after all, and all of them needed a little bit of time to wind down and relax after the burst of confusion and stress that Twilight’s meltdown had caused.

Twilight initially objected to the idea when she woke up from her little nap, wanting to get home to Rainbow to make sure the pegasus didn’t start worrying. Thankfully, though, Spike was on top of things, and in short order had sent a letter to Rainbow explaining that they would be a little late and that they’d be bringing some company.

After that, things had quieted down. Twilight stayed in place for the vast majority of the day, only occasionally getting up to stretch her legs or read some more of the books in the library. She even picked out a few to bring back with her to the Golden Oak. They were just going to waste here, she figured. Back at home with her, they might at least be preserved and start to serve a purpose again after centuries without use.

The tomes were more of a side note, though. The book she delved into the most was Celestia and Luna’s old journal. One would be hard-pressed to find a moment where she didn’t have her nose buried in its ancient, miraculously well-preserved pages. She read it almost like she was possessed.

She wasn’t possessed, of course. She just thought it was really interesting. To read through the thoughts of her mentor, the oldest known pony in the world, when she was little more than a filly? Learning about how she and Luna used to squabble and bicker about the tiniest things before Starswirl the Bearded would chastise them and bring them into their next lessons in magic? Learning about how the various mechanisms in this old castle worked…

Apparently, the “Organ to the Outside” she had read about before was actually a sort of control station, located deep in the castle’s basement. Every key not only played a note on a gigantic pipe organ that could be heard through the entire castle but also made things happen. Secret passages, trap doors, magic fires, and so much more were all controlled directly by this one, ancient musical organ.

Celestia, of course, had used it almost exclusively for the purpose of pranking the ponies who worked in the castle.

“Another successful song! While archivist Ghast Coin was coming to take Luna’s dirty dishes, I opened a trap door and sent him sliding into a super-secret ball pit that Luna and I made last week! He then got really cranky and grumbled something about ‘beasts’ and ‘shops’ before going away, all huffy. It was so much fun! Starswirl won’t approve, but that old unicorn has no sense of humor.”

Such tales were plentiful, and each one served to soothe Twilight’s anxieties just a little more. It soon became clear to her why this was the case. Never once in all of these pages did Celestia worry about the future. She enthused about it. She anticipated it. She didn’t dwell upon it. If anything, she barely gave the future much thought and simply lived in each moment, tackling the problems as they came to her and solving them one at a time.

When one considered the chess-master Celestia was known to be in the modern era, to see her own hoof writing depicting such casual, free-spirited shenanigans, they may be hard-pressed to think it was the same mare.

Yet it was. That same mare was Twilight’s former teacher, and her foalish innocence somehow made the future a lot less scary. As if to compound that note, the voice in Twilight’s head was mercifully silent for the rest of the day.

Finally, as the sun was beginning to set, Twilight curled up to get some rest. As the waking world drifted away from her, her thoughts drifted back to Ponyville, and to Rainbow Dash.

“We may not have found out how to open that stupid chest,” she thought as her eyes drifted closed. “But I don’t think she’ll mind…”

The following morning, the group got their things together and set off from the Castle of The Two Sisters. Twilight relished the flight home, taking the opportunity to relax and soak in the scenery while the wind rushed by her face, blowing her mane back and soothing her senses. More than once she found herself closing her eyes to take a deep breath before remembering the extensive safety lessons Rainbow had drilled into her ever since she started teaching her how to fly.

Spiracle, Fluttershy, and Thorax talked quietly every so often during the trip. Spiracle had taken to gushing over Angel Bunny and how “adorable” he was. At least, she had been gushing about that, until the little devil decided to use her horn as a replacement for a carrot when Fluttershy let the changeling hold him.

Needless to say, Spiracle’s opinion of the foul creature was now far more in-line with everypony else’s. Except for Fluttershy.

“I swear, that mare has Stockholm Syndrome if she can stand his behavior,” Twilight thought with a bemused roll of her eyes.

Soon enough, the trees began to thin, and Ponyville came back into sight. Twilight could already feel her body loosening up at the prospect of getting back to the library. She briefly glanced back at the others, and her eyes settled on the two changelings in their company.

Two.

Twilight frowned and slowed her flight until she was side-by-side with Spiracle. The changeling eyed her curiously. “Hm? What is it?” she asked.

Twilight gestured at her. “I don’t mean any offense, but you should probably disguise yourself as something other than a changeling when around ponies until Rainbow gives you all the all-clear. Thorax has had two years to earn everypony’s trust, but I can’t say the same about you, and I don’t want anypony causing a scene. We’ve had enough drama,” she said in a low voice, not wanting to accidentally upset the changeling.

Spiracle blinked, then gave a solemn nod. “Right… makes sense,” she mumbled before closing her eyes. A moment later, green flames swirled around her body, and when they parted, Spiracle had been replaced by a wholly unremarkable pegasus mare with a dirt brown coat and a dusty blonde mane and tail. Her eyes were still a piercing emerald green, while her imagined cutie mark was three ladybugs caught in a whirlwind.

Twilight shuddered at the sight of the ladybugs and quickly tore her eyes away. “Y-yeah! That should do the trick!” she blurted, her muscles tensing up.

Spiracle flinched back. “Uh… are you okay?”

“Fine! Perfectly!” Twilight squeaked imperfectly.

Spike, who was situated on her back, glanced down at Spiracle. Judging by the low, amused chuckle he let out, it was safe to assume he had spotted the source of Twilight’s distress. “Pfft, ha! Ahem, sorry Spiracle, there’s no way you could have known this, but Twi’s got an intense phobia of three things: quesadillas, snakes, and ladybugs,” he listed off matter-of-factly.

Twilight groaned, hiding her face in her hooves. “Ugh… the only memories I wish I didn’t get back…”

Spiracle gave off a sheepish giggle before her flanks lit up with more flames, burning away the ladybugs and replacing them with dragonflies. “Sorry. Is that better?”

Spike gave a sage nod. “Should be.”

Twilight groaned before lowering her hooves. The Golden Oak Library was in sight now, thankfully. Without wasting a minute more, Twilight tucked her wings in at her sides and entered a sharp nosedive for the ground. Mere moments before she would have struck the dirt, she fanned out her wings, slowing her descent until she gracefully touched down just in front of the entrance.

“Not today, dirt!” Twilight declared triumphantly under her breath, kicking the ground. “No kisses for you!”

“A shame,” Spike teased while hopping down from her back. “Watching you face plant for months was hilarious.”

Twilight rolled her eyes, following after the drake for the door. “Hardy har. Let’s just get inside.”

Spike didn’t need to be told twice and pushed the door open. The inside looked more or less as they had left it, though Twilight did notice, with a mild degree of annoyance, that some of the books had been taken down from the shelves and then left open on the coffee table. Definitely Rainbow’s handiwork.

Fluttershy, Spiracle, and Thorax followed the pair in, closing the door behind them. Spiracle looked around with wide eyes. “So this is what it looks like on the inside…” she whispered, trotting up to one of the walls and running her hoof along one of the many alcoves that formed the shelves. “It almost reminds me of the hive… it’s very organic-looking.”

“It is a tree,” Spike pointed out. He turned to the rest of the room and cupped his claws around his mouth. “Rainbow Dash! We’re home! And we brought company! You here?!”

Muffled movement from upstairs answered his call before the bedroom door opened, and a rainbow blur shot down into the room. It came to a stop in mid-air over the center of the room, allowing Rainbow Dash to come into focus.

Twilight’s heart skipped a beat. It may have only been a few days since she had last seen her, but it sure felt like a lot longer.

“There you are!” Rainbow declared, dropping down to the floor and lunging in to give Twilight a big hug. “Oh, man! When you guys weren’t here when I got home yesterday, I was real worried! I woulda sent you all a letter, but I don’t have a horn.”

Twilight grunted from the impact before returning the hug. “Heh. Sorry. We’re alright, Rainbow. We just got a little sidetracked, that’s all,” she said before her eyes fell on the scattered books. Her smile faded. “I see your worry didn’t keep you from making a mess of my carefully ordered books, though.”

Rainbow leaned back with a sheepish grin. “Eheh… sorry. Kinda had to pass the time somehow with you and Spike gone.”

Twilight made a show of glaring at Rainbow before smiling and quickly returning the books to their places with a precise flick of her magic. “Well, I guess it’s not a big deal,” she said before backing up.

Rainbow gave a sigh of relief before glancing at the others. “So, how’d it go? And, uh…” her eyes settled on Spiracle, and her brow furrowed. “...and is this that pony Spike mentioned in his letter?”

Spiracle shied back, suddenly appearing extremely self-conscious. “Uh… y-yes, Your Highness,” she mumbled, shrinking back against the wall. “Um… uh… I’m not a pony, though.”

Any amusement or mirth that had been in the air quickly faded away, and a sudden tension filled the room. At least from Twilight’s perspective. She glanced back and forth between Spiracle and Rainbow with a small bead of doubt building up inside of her. It had been two years since they faced the swarm, yes, but Twilight didn’t know if that was enough time for Rainbow to totally get over it. That disaster had damaged all of them for a long time, after all.

“You losing your memories after being murdered being the most prevalent,” The voice noted in a quiet growl.

Twilight huffed. “Shut the hay up. It’s too late for you to talk me out of this. Spiracle’s here, and it’s out of my hooves.”

“So it is. All that remains is to wait and see how magnificently this is going to backfire in the future.”

“You sound so sure that it will.”

“And you sound so sure it won’t,” The voice countered. “Time will tell who is correct. The broken clock, or me.”

Twilight snorted before returning her attention to the scene unfolding before her.

“You’re not a pony?” Rainbow echoed, raising an eyebrow. “Then… what are-”

“She’s a changeling,” Thorax said, stepping forward. “She’s a friend of mine. I can vouch for her. She’s a good one.”

Rainbow’s expression hardened considerably. She glanced at Thorax before focusing intently on Spiracle, her wings twitching against her sides. “...Show me.”

Spiracle took a deep breath, then dispelled her disguise. The changeling drone returned to the world, still backed up against the wall, and making herself look as small as possible. “My name is Spiracle, Your Highness,” she said slowly and carefully. “And, uh… W-well, I was hoping you’d be willing to let me stay here in Equestria.”

Rainbow blinked. She took a slow, measured breath before taking a step back. “...I’m listening.”

The following discussion went on for quite some time. Twilight watched as Spiracle recounted her story, with some insights into Changeling culture and society provided by Thorax from time to time. Twilight and Spike sat with her, while Spiracle, Fluttershy, and Thorax sat on the loveseat across from them.

All the while, Rainbow listened with rapt attention. She didn’t say much, aside from taking the time to ask the occasional question or for clarification. Her expression was incredibly hard to read, and Twilight found it somewhat unsettling. It was uncommon for Rainbow to get a look like that on her face, especially for so long. She normally wore her emotions on the cuff of her sleeve.

“I think that’s about everything,” Spiracle eventually said, her story drawing to a close. She drew back, looking down at the floor with her ears folding back. “So, um… I g-guess my fate is in your hooves, now.”

Fluttershy draped a foreleg over Spiracle’s shoulders in an effort to comfort the uncomfortable drone. Twilight wilted at the sight of Spiracle’s anxiety. She looked to Rainbow to find that her face was still impossible to read.

The pegasus princess leaned back in her seat, taking a few deep breaths as she collected her thoughts. Several moments passed in silence, and with each one, Twilight’s own doubts grew more and more.

Finally, Rainbow opened her eyes and looked directly at Spiracle. “Well… I can’t say that I’d be willing to trust you most days,” she began slowly, her tone surprisingly calm. “I went through a lot of stuff because of our conflict with the changelings, and I knew just how good you guys can be at deception when you need to be. You were planning the attack on Canterlot for quite a while before you found your window and took it. Under any normal circumstance, I’d assume you were a spy sent by whoever was in charge at the hive to keep an eye on us.”

Spiracle flinched as if she had been struck, shying away from Rainbow’s stare.

A few moments passed before Rainbow’s eyes drifted to Thorax, and then to Twilight. “...But this ain’t exactly a common situation, is it?” she asked, her tense expression softening.

Spiracle perked up, looking hopefully to the princess. “W-what do you mean?”

Rainbow hopped down from her seat and approached Spiracle. “Well, for one thing, you have Thorax vouching for you, and I trust Thorax. We would never have stopped Chrysalis if it hadn’t been for him. I trust his judgment. Twilight’s vouchin’ for ya, too, and I trust her with my life. She was the one who convinced me to trust Thorax, and now she wants me to trust you. So if she says you’re okay, I believe her.”

“So, that means I can stay here?” Spiracle asked, leaning forward while her wings gave an eager buzz.

Rainbow paused, her expression becoming strained. “Well, see, that’s a bit more complicated. See, I can suggest that you get Asylum, but it’s actually outside of my jurisdiction. I’m the Princess of the Skies. The weather is my main focus, most days,” she explained, offering a non-committal shrug. “So if you want full-blown asylum, you’re gonna hafta talk to my mom or my aunt up in Canterlot.”

Spiracle hummed quietly, offering a timid nod of understanding. “I think I understand… so, uh, I need to go to Canterlot and seek out the ruling alicorns, and then they can help me?”

Rainbow nodded. “Pretty much. I can send word ahead that you’re coming, though, and let ‘em know I trust you to behave yourself. Should help your chances.”

The room fell quiet for a few minutes as everypony pondered this new information. Soon, Spiracle nodded and gave Rainbow a thankful smile. “Thank you, Princess Rainbow Dash. When should I go?” she asked eagerly.

Rainbow chuckled and lifted a hoof as if to calm her down. “Well, I’m not gonna have ya go alone, first of all,” she said before pointing at Thorax. “You’re gonna go back to Canterlot with him. He’s trusted there already, more or less. He can take care of ya until you meet with mom.”

Thorax blinked. “Oh. Okay, I can do that. But, uh…” he glanced sideways at Spiracle, his brow furrowing. “Where do you think Spiracle’s going to wind up?”

“Dunno. It isn’t my call,” Rainbow reminded with another shrug. “Probably somewhere in Canterlot, though. If Squall and Wind don’t mind the company, maybe she could bunk up with you guys for a little while.”

“I don’t want to impose too much,” Spiracle pointed out, shifting uncomfortably on her haunches. “I just want to be safe and accepted.”

“Well, this is step one for that,” Rainbow stated matter-of-factly.

Fluttershy nodded along. “Wind and Squall are really good ponies, Spiracle. Trust me. I’m sure they’d be happy to have you, at least for a while.”

Spiracle hummed quietly in response, taking what comfort she could from the pegasus’ words.

Rainbow, seemingly satisfied, returned her attention to Thorax. “When do you think you’re leaving?”

Thorax got a sheepish look on his face. He scuffed a hoof along the seat under him, not quite meeting Rainbow or Twilight’s gazes. “Er, well… I was actually kinda supposed to be back yesterday. I’m actually late, so I should probably be heading back as soon as we’re done here.”

Fluttershy turned to him, visibly disappointed. “...Oh.”

He smiled back at her, one of his wings drifting over to brush against her side. “Hey, I’ll come visit again real soon, okay? I can help rebuild your cottage when I do!” he said enthusiastically.

Fluttershy’s smile returned at that. She leaned over to give Thorax an affectionate nuzzle, a tiny blush forming on her cheeks. “Oh, um… alright. I look forward to it.”

Rainbow smirked. “Hah. Adorable.”

Twilight’s brow furrowed, her mind wandering back to Fluttershy’s earlier request for her relationship with Thorax to be left alone. Rainbow hadn’t been there for that conversation, though, and now wasn’t really the time to go into detail with it. Some other method would have to do to silence her for now...

With an evil smirk, Twilight surreptitiously lifted a book in her magic and lightly thwacked it against her prismatic girlfriend’s flank. An audible ‘smack’ resounded through the air, drawing all eyes toward Rainbow just as her eyes widened, and a very undignified squeak shot past her lips. She quickly spun around to face the only other magic-user in the room. Twilight answered by shaking her head and holding the tip of her hoof up to her lips in a ‘shush’ gesture.

Rainbow gave off a low, indignant growl. “Why, you… I’m gonna get you for that.”

“I’m sure you will,” Twilight shot back with a coy smirk. “But later. We have company right now.”

Rainbow ruffled her feathers in annoyance. “Hmph. Time to fix that, then!” she said before turning to Spike, who had been watching the exchange with an amused grin. “Spike! Letter!”

Spike sprang down from the couch, throwing a smart salute, though his smirk persisted. “Ha! Right away, Princess!” he barked before running over to a nearby shelf and procuring a scroll and a quill with practiced ease.

Rainbow rolled her eyes at his enthusiasm. “Okay. So. Ahem,” she cleared her throat before reciting what she wanted her letter to say.

“Dear Mom,

Just as a heads up, Thorax is probably going to be stopping by there in the next day or two with another changeling with him. Her name is Spiracle, and she’s come to Equestria seeking asylum. Apparently, Thorax knew her back when he was still in the hive, and he’s vouching for her. I trust his judgment, but the decision isn’t really mine to make.

I’m sending them both up to Canterlot to speak with you when you get a chance. They can tell you all the details when they get there. If I try to recount her story in this letter, it’s gonna be, like, seven pages long and full of mistakes, so best to let it come from the bug’s mouth.”

“Er, no offense,” Rainbow suddenly said to Spiracle.

Spiracle raised an eyebrow. “Um… none taken?”

Satisfied, Rainbow continued.

“Also, on a related note, Twilight, Spike, Fluttershy, and Thorax are back from the castle. I haven’t had a chance to really talk to them about how it went yet, though. Seems like they’re okay, though.

Talk to you later, mom.

With love and awesome,

Rainbow Dash.”

Twilight barely restrained a snort of amusement as Rainbow wrapped up the letter. Of course she’d close it off like that. Humbled as she was, she was still Rainbow Dash. Nothing would ever change that, it seemed.

“That it?” Spike asked.

“Mhmm. Send it,” Rainbow commanded.

With a nod, Spike blew green flames over the rolled-up letter. It dissolved and vanished into the flames, flying out through a nearby open window as wisps of greenish-gray smoke. “There, it’s on its way!”

“Sweet,” Rainbow nodded before turning back to Spiracle. “You guys might wanna get a move on, then. Canterlot might be right there, but it’s still not a short trip. The train is gonna be your best bet to getting there on time if you wanna have this meeting today. I can walk ya there if you’d like.”

“I’ll come, too!” Fluttershy insisted, springing up from the couch. “To see them off.”

Thorax gave Fluttershy a gentle smile. “Heh. Thanks, Fluttershy,” he said before lightly hopping down from the couch and holding a hoof out to Spiracle. “Come on, let’s go. Have you ever been on a train?”

“No, I haven’t,” Spiracle said as she took his hoof and leaped down. Curiously, though, her eyes settled on Twilight, an odd look on her face. Her mouth opened as if she had more to say, but no more words came out.

Twilight met her gaze with an encouraging smile and a nod. “Go on. This is what you sought us out for, isn’t it?” she said softly.

Spiracle bit her lip, her eyes shifting with indecision. A few seconds later, she gently pulled her hoof from Thorax’s grasp. “Hold on. There’s something I have to do first,” she said. Without waiting for a response, she cantered over to her translucent saddlebags resting by the door and opened them up. Twilight raised an eyebrow as the changeling dug around in the pouch for several seconds before withdrawing with something cradled in her hooves.

Twilight’s eyes widened as the sight of a smooth, egg-shaped gemstone, colored the same green as changeling magic and about the size of a small tangerine. She might have thought it was an emerald at first, but as Spiracle brought it closer, she realized it was too opaque. More than that, as she got a closer look, she realized there was a gently pulsing light from within the stone, almost like a heartbeat.

“This is a piece of polynite,” Spiracle explained. “It’s a rare gemstone, largely found in tunnels under the Hive. It’s been naturally infused with changeling magic over centuries of exposure to it. That’s what the light is…”

Spiracle held it out to Twilight, a gentle smile on her face. “It pulses like this whenever a changeling is nearby. It reacts to our presence, and… I want you to have it.”

Twilight’s eyes widened. “Wha… Spiracle…” she said softly, eyeing the stone. It was beautiful, drawing her to lean in for a closer look. With her eyes this close, she could actually see the swirls of magic just beneath the surface, making it ripple like the surface water of a pond.

“Woah,” Rainbow breathed from the side, eyeing the stone herself. “That’s pretty neat, actually. But why are you giving it to Twilight?”

Spiracle looked down, her ears drooping. “I… I know that you’ve all suffered a lot because of my kind. I don’t expect that this would ever be enough to make amends for everything you went through, but maybe it can be a start. Maybe this can help protect you from any others that might want to hurt you.”

Rainbow’s expression visibly darkened, and Twilight immediately knew exactly who she was thinking about. “Stinger. She’s still out there, isn’t she?”

“But also,” Spiracle went on. She looked back up and met Twilight’s gaze. “I want to say thank you. You gave me this chance, Twilight. I have nothing else I can give you… So please. I insist. Take it.”

Twilight swallowed heavily. On the one hoof, the stone was gorgeous, and if Spiracle was telling the truth, it could be invaluable in the future, especially if Pharynx failed to claim the throne and they had to deal with the changeling swarm again. On the other, every instinct was telling her to refuse the gift; to tell Spiracle it was a part of her home, and that she should carry it with her.

“And give up a way of defending yourself against Stinger?” the voice asked skeptically. “Don’t be stupid. We both know she’s still out there, and we both know she’ll happily kill us again if given the chance. We can’t take any chances with her. Take the stone.”

Twilight swallowed heavily. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, the devil on her shoulder made a good point. And so, with some reluctance, she reached out and gently took the stone in her hooves. “...Thank you,” she whispered quietly, giving Spiracle a warm smile. “I’ll take good care of it. I promise.”

Spiracle’s smile grew. “No. Thank you. I won’t forget this…” she said before backing away and giving Twilight some time to stare into the gem without any distractions. The way the surface shifted and rippled drew her attention, occupying her thoughts in an almost hypnotic manner. It was strange. The longer she stared, the more she felt like her muscles were beginning to relax.

This stone… it was important, somehow. Not just due to the significance of how she attained it, either. Something about it spoke to her very soul, whispering that someday, she would have need of it. She held it close to her heart and closed her eyes. It was warm to the touch if only a little. That warmth spread to her heart, and then to the rest of her. A pleased smile formed on her face, and she took a long, deep breath.

“Hey, you coming, Twi?” Rainbow’s voice cut through the silence that had filled Twilight’s mind, drawing her out of her impromptu reverie.

Twilight blinked and looked up. Rainbow, Thorax, Spiracle, and Fluttershy were all assembled by the front door, which now stood open. They were looking back at her curiously.

She smiled at them and shook her head. “I think I’ll stay here, actually. It’s been a crazy few days. I’d like a chance to just relax and read a little bit.”

“Fair enough,” Rainbow acknowledged before stepping outside and motioning to the rest. “Kay, c’mon.”

While the others slipped outside, Spiracle lingered in the doorway for a moment. She looked back at Twilight one more time, boundless gratitude shining in her eyes.

Twilight nodded at her. “You’re welcome. Spiracle. Goodbye… and good luck.”

Spiracle’s eyes shimmered slightly. “...You too,” she said softly before stepping outside, closing the door behind her.

Moonlit Assurances

“I’ve seen this before…”

Twilight’s breath came in heaving gasps as she galloped down the road toward the gates of Canterlot. The world was shrouded in darkness, and a sickening, twisted perversion of her voice was following her wherever she went. She could just make out the shadowy lumps that, after a glance, she discovered were pony bodies scattered by the roadside, the face of each one flashing through her mind. Their screams of pain and terror as she tore their memories of her out of their minds echoed in her ears, eliciting a terrified whimper.

“Help me!” she cried out as she reached the gates, throwing herself against them with everything she had. Pain exploded across her shoulder from the impact, and she went falling back to the ground with a grunt of pain. Scrambling, she rose back to her hooves and began to hysterically beat on the gates. “Celestia! Luna! Cadance, somepony! Anypony! Please, let me in! Help me!”

“Oh, how easily you forget…” her voice cackled ominously from behind her, sending a chill down her spine. “Will this little scene start repeating itself, I wonder?”

“Mom! Dad! Somepony open the door! PLEASE!” Twilight went on, trying and failing to tune out the sadistic malice in her counterpart’s voice.

“Nopony is coming, Twilight,” the voice cooed, right into her ear. Twilight went rigid, her heart turning to ice as she felt its breath tickling her ear. “Not from here. You’re alone.”

Twilight growled as anger and rage swelled inside of her, like a swirling bonfire. She turned and spun on her hooves, her horn flaring to life with a burst of magic. “SHUT UP!” she shouted at the top of her lungs.

To her surprise, the scene before her was different. In the moment she had taken to turn around, the world had completely changed. No longer did she stand in front of the sealed gates of Canterlot. Instead, she was in the cave that housed the Tree of Harmony. She could see the ancient growth standing on the far side of the cavern, glowing softly with divine light.

Twilight took a few seconds to collect herself. How had she gotten here? She knew she had been outside of Canterlot just a moment ago. Had she been teleported? She hadn’t felt the familiar sensations, though. Maybe a portal?

Whatever the case, she was here, now. The air had fallen completely still; even the sound of wind outside was inaudible. The only things making any noise were her trembling breathing and the furious thumps of her heart pounding wildly against her ribs. She swallowed heavily and slowly began to approach the tree, the scrape of her hooves on the stone floor sending a chill down her spine with each step.

The air before her shimmered as she drew near. Slowly, but surely, a mirror wall manifested into existence in front of her, barring her passage. Her reflection stared back from inside of it, looking exhausted and tired. Her reflection’s mane was frazzled and messy, her eyes were drooping and bloodshot, and her fur had darkened considerably.

“What… is this?” she asked softly while raising a hoof out to the mirror. Her heartbeat sped up in her chest, and it felt as if her ribs were constricting her lungs. Some primal part of her began to cry out and scream, demanding that she turn and leave the mirror behind right now, but she just couldn’t stop herself.

Her hoof made contact with the mirror. It was like ice to the touch.

Her reflection then grinned at her.

Twilight gasped as the image suddenly burst into cyan flames, and when they parted, the ghostly, haunting visage of Midnight Sparkle stood before her, eyes narrowed with sadistic delight.

“Embrace me!” the reflection called, stepping through the mirror and reaching out for Twilight.

Twilight staggered back, a frightened scream tearing past her lips. “No, NO! Go away! You’re not real! I got rid of you!”

Midnight lunged after her, faster than she could respond. Before she knew it, she was completely enveloped in a strangling embrace of hooves and blade-like feathers. The world was soaked in darkness and wisps of ghostly magic. She struggled and squirmed, but to no avail. She was held tight.

“You can never be rid of me…” Midnight cooed into her ear almost as if a mother to her child. “Never. Now, embrace me.”

“Go away…” Twilight whimpered, her struggles starting to weaken. Something was pulling the strength from her body. “Just leave me alone… please…”

Midnight giggled softly but otherwise did not deign to answer Twilight’s pathetic plea. The embrace grew tighter and tighter. Twilight screwed her eyes shut, biting back the urge to scream as the tendrils of ghostly magic began to probe at her head as if to burrow inside. She jerked and thrashed a few more times with the last vestiges of her strength, but to no avail.

As if for no reason, though, the dark was lifted. Twilight’s eyes flew wide open as a wave of cool, refreshing air washed over her. The apparition of Midnight faded, and the rest of the scene was rapidly joining her in doing so. Everything lost its shape and form, dissolving into little more than faint wisps of smoke that soon bled away to reveal an open night sky. A million stars shown down on her, each one a brilliant lantern against a curtain of obsidian. An ocean of clouds spread out before her, and she felt herself resting in them as if they were pillows.

She blinked a few times, confused. “Wha… what? What’s going on…?” she asked, looking around.

After a few moments, her eyes found a disturbance in the surface of the clouds, and the sound of hooves trotting slowly and gently across a hard surface reached her ears. Twilight sprang to her hooves and assumed a defensive stance, her wings spreading out. Whatever was coming for her this time, she would not afford it the same luxury of catching her off-guard as she had with Midnight.

To her shock, however, no threat emerged from the smoke. Instead, trotting up, as if from an invisible staircase, the full moon rising into the night sky behind her, grand and majestic, was none other than Princess Luna.

Twilight’s wings sagged, her eyes flying wide open. “Wha… Princess Luna?” she breathed, shocked by the display.

Luna nodded, a small smile on her face. “None other, Twilight Sparkle.”

Twilight blinked, taking a few steps back. She folded her wings up at her sides and assumed a defensive, withdrawn tone. “You… what are you doing here?” she asked. She then looked around again before gesturing vaguely. “And where is here?!”

Luna gave off something between a sigh and a laugh before turning to face the moon in the distance. “I had forgotten how long it has been since I spoke to you like this… This is a dream, Twilight Sparkle. Your dream. and I am here because you need me to be.”

Twilight paused, looking around. “A… a dream?”

It made sense now. The world changing so rapidly around her, the mirror just appearing out of nowhere, Midnight’s impossible emergence, and then the sea of clouds. None of this would be possible in the waking world. Where else could she have been?

“Indeed. You were having a rather disturbing nightmare,” Luna explained, trotting forward a few paces. “And so, here I am, to chase it away and offer you guidance on how to avoid it in the future.”

As the realization dawned on Twilight, so too did a cold irritation. She turned to face Luna directly, a bitter scowl replacing her initial shock. “I don’t buy it.”

Luna blinked. “I… pardon me?”

Twilight stalked forward, the back of her skull starting to burn with frustration. “I’ve been having nightmares like this for weeks, Luna, and you’ve never once shown up before! You’ve always left me to my own devices! Yet suddenly now you decide to show up and help me out?! What’s the catch?”

Luna flinched away from Twilight’s outburst, her ears drooping, and immediately Twilight’s heart withered with guilt in her chest. She quickly lifted a hoof to her mouth, her ears drooping. “I… I’m so sorry, I… that wasn’t-”

“No, Twilight. You need not apologize,” Luna comforted her softly. She looked away and slowly fell to her haunches with a tired sigh. “Your hostility is understandable. You are right. I have been neglecting your dreams. But please understand, it was not out of a desire to see you suffer, nor was it out of laziness.”

Twilight lowered her hoof from her lips. “Then why was it?” she asked slowly, careful not to let herself lash out again. “Why did you ignore me? I really could have used your help a few days ago, Luna, but you weren’t there. What changed?”

Luna took a deep breath before facing Twilight again. “...I… was not aware of the severity of your condition, I am afraid. I was made aware when I spoke with Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy in their dreams this night. Fluttershy expressed an unsettling amount of worry and concern for you and your mental health. She replayed for me the moment she and the others found you slumped against a pillar in the old castle, gasping for breath after scaring away Spiracle. Rainbow regaled me with her recollections of your shortened temper and sudden, seemingly unprompted outbursts of violent anger…”

Luna rose to her hooves, her wings ruffling against her sides. “They both bade me come to you and offer you my aid, and so here I am. I am sorry that I have neglected you for as long as I have, Twilight Sparkle, and I mean to earn your forgiveness by making amends for that neglect.”

Twilight stared at Luna for several seconds, her jaw agape. Fluttershy and Rainbow had both asked for Luna to help her? It made sense, of course, as Fluttershy was one of the more vocal voices in asserting that she needed help of some kind.

She took a deep breath and looked away. “I… I’m not sure I want your help, Luna… and I’m not sure you even want to help me. Looking back on our history, all of that animosity…”

“I was unfair to you,” Luna acknowledged regretfully. “I was so blinded by a desire to defend my niece that I harmed you. I was a hypocrite, I was a fool, and I accept full responsibility for my part in the events that transpired in Canterlot… but if you do not desire my help, then I cannot force you to accept it.”

Twilight turned to Luna again, her ears perking up, just slightly. “But… how can I be sure that those old habits are dead?”

Luna’s lips curled up into a tiny, gentle smile. “...Because neither my sister nor my niece would ever let me live it down if I hurt you again. But more than that…” her smile faded, and a more solemn expression came over her. “...I know what it is like to struggle with your dark side, and so I know full well the psychological torment you are suffering. It is an agony I would wish on nopony… So if I am presented with an opportunity to lift that agony, then I shall do all in my power to do so. There has been enough pain.”

Twilight stared at Luna for several moments, considering her and her words with great care. It didn’t sound like the Alicorn of the Night was lying. However, at the same time, she made it sound far easier than it probably was to bury their old animosity and carry on unobstructed. Part of her wanted to deny the offer, if only out of spite.

Before that train of thought could continue any further, though, her mind wandered to Rainbow and Fluttershy: two of her oldest friends and one of them was actively her girlfriend. They had been watching her crumple in on herself for a while now, and if Luna was being honest, they had asked Luna to set aside their differences and help her. If she denied Luna, didn’t that mean she would be denying them?

Besides, who else could she really turn to for aid in this scenario? Standing before her was the first alicorn known to have undergone a Fall, and from all accounts, she had stayed in that state for far longer than any of the others. Celestia had fallen for mere moments in the Crystal Empire in a desperate bid to defeat Chrysalis, and Twilight had only been that way for a single night…

Given the nature of dreams, as well, Luna was uniquely positioned to be an incredible help. She had accomplished wonders with Rainbow in their dream therapy if Rainbow’s outward behavior was any indication.

There really wasn’t a choice here.

Twilight sighed and met Luna’s gaze. “...Okay. Fine… How can you help me?”

Luna visibly relaxed, as if a great weight was lifted from her shoulders. She gave Twilight a grateful smile before turning to look out at the sea of clouds again. “First, I must know the severity of your condition. I presume, judging by the testimony of your loved ones, that Midnight has spoken frequently?”

Twilight grimaced. “Er, yeah, you could say that. She was really talkative up until we brought Spiracle back to the castle. She’s been kind of quiet since then, only piping up here and there.”

“As is to be expected,” Luna said thoughtfully. “As you know, becoming a Fallen Alicorn requires an influx of immense emotional stress to surpass the pony’s capacity to cope with it. Now that you have imbibed in that part of yourself, it has a voice. As such, as your stress and emotional turmoil rise, so too shall Midnight become ever more vocal and eager to pull you back into the darkness.”

Twilight blinked in surprise. “Oh… so, there’s a predictable pattern to it?”

“Predictable, no. But it can be moderated,” Luna clarified, turning to face Twilight directly. “So, for the duration of this struggle, my most prominent source of advice would be to do your best to avoid stressful situations. Find your peace wherever you can and hold onto it for whatever it is worth. Breathing exercises, personal meditation, enjoying hobbies. Make use of whatever you have at your disposal to dispel your stress and to soothe your heart and mind. The more at peace you are with yourself, the quieter Midnight shall become.”

Twilight hummed at that, her brow furrowing in thought. “Find my peace, huh…? Well, that would be a lot easier if I didn’t have an exile from my home city and the most cryptic task Celestia has ever given me looming over my head all the time!”

“Do not dwell upon those.”

Twilight stared at Luna in shock. “...What? But you’re the one who banished me from Canterlot!”

Luna sighed and came forward. “Please understand. You did cause great harm to the population of that city. Though you returned their memories, their minds are yet scarred by the experience. The nightmares they have suffered have been numerous and severe, and as one’s dreams are haunted, so too shall their neighbors’ be. It is my duty to dispel such fears, and it is my fear that allowing you back into the city so soon after that night would only invite pain and tension on ponies who are yet still reeling from the night of the Plundervines.”

Twilight gave off a quiet grunt of frustration. While Luna’s argument made a bit of sense, it was still upsetting. “I mean… I understand that, but that’s my home, Luna.”

“I know, and I am sorry,” Luna said softly. “But if it is any consolation, the city isn’t going anywhere. There is no time limit on opening the chest, either. You must not force yourself to open it when doing so has evidently done naught more than cause you stress and anger. Take your time… relax. Worry less about your future and instead focus on the present.”

Twilight blinked. Celestia and Luna’s old journal wandered into her mind, and before she knew it, she and Luna were suddenly seated in the secret room in the Castle of The Two Sisters. The journal sat in front of her, open to the page about the Organ to the Outside.

Luna peered down at the page, seemingly undeterred by the shift in scenery. Her expression flattened. “Ah. I see you found our old journal…” she mumbled dryly. “Tia’s old writings fill the majority of the pages, I assume you noticed.”

“Yeah, you didn’t write much in it,” Twilight observed, lifting the book to her face. The words were blurry and muddled, impossible to make out. Probably because she had only read the thing once, and so didn’t have it all memorized yet.

“For I had my own,” Luna elaborated with a distant smile. “I cherished the privacy of my own thoughts and ideas. As much as I love my sister, she was perhaps a bit… too nosy in our youth. Especially since I am the little sister. She abused that authority far, far too often.”

Twilight hummed quietly, tracing a hoof over the page. “...Celestia didn’t worry much about the future, back then.”

Luna was quiet for a few seconds. “...No, she did not. She was a very energetic and carefree filly. Easily the more reckless between us in those early years.”

Twilight smiled at that before gently closing the book. “...Maybe you’re right… Maybe I should focus more on the now…” she mused quietly. A thought occurred to her, and she looked curiously up to Luna. “What did you do, out of curiosity? To find your peace when dealing with Nightmare, I mean.”

Luna’s smile faltered. She looked away for a moment, her brow furrowed and her lips drawing into a thoughtful line. Suddenly, the world twitched and blurred, and the secret room was replaced by a majestic forest scene. The moon hung directly overhead, shining its light down upon a small island in the center of a serene pond. A gracefully curving tree rose from that island, its leaves a vibrant pink in color and its trunk a rich, midnight blue. A bed was positioned by the base of the trunk while a great harp sat off to one side. Surrounding the pond were more trees of varying gentle colors, each swaying softly in a subtle breeze. Dragonflies and fireflies danced across the surface of the water, while the air was filled with the distant calls of owls and crickets.

“...I came here,” Luna said quietly, rising to her hooves. Twilight watched as she walked down to the water, and then across it as if it were solid. “I spent much of my time after you and your friends turned me back to normal in a coma-like sleep while my adult body restored itself. In that time, my struggle with Nightmare Moon was… far more real. Far more tangible. To escape her cloying voice, I would come here…”

She sat by the harp and placed a hoof on the frame. A calm smile came over her. “...And I would play the most wonderous melodies I could imagine. I basked in the quiet and the shade; in the light of the moon and the stars I so love. I gave myself to thought, and song, and story. I weaved a world of peace, and it was mine. My world… just me. Me and all the dreams I could imagine.”

Twilight blinked several times, her eyes wide. Slowly, afraid to disturb the serenity of this sanctuary, she unfurled her wings and gently flew across the pond to join Luna on the island. “Wow… I had no idea…” she whispered. Her eyes fell on the harp, her ears perking up. “And… you taught yourself how to play the harp?”

Luna laughed, idly plucking a few of the strings, giving off the most heavenly notes Twilight had heard from such an instrument. “To say I taught myself would, perhaps, be an exaggeration. Were you to present me with one in the waking world, whatever melody I played would be… less than impressive. But in a dream, anything is possible.”

The Princess of the Night plucked the strings a few more times, teasing Twilight’s ears with the promise of a wonderful song, before cruelly turning away from the divine instrument to face Twilight again. “But what of you, Twilight? What makes you happy? What brings you your peace?”

Twilight paused, but only for a moment, for that was all it took to find her answer. “My friends. Especially Rainbow Dash.”

Luna hummed at that. “Ah, yes. And with your memories thus restored, your relationship with my niece is, at least, devoid of obstructions,” she observed quietly. She then rose to her hooves and stepped forward until she was directly in front of Twilight. “Then for you, Twilight Sparkle, I suggest you simply take this time, and this opportunity, to be with her. Forget your obligations to the chest. Forget your obligations to the Tree or my sister, at least for now. Pursue the love you and her so fervently share. You have waited long enough, I feel.”

Twilight blushed at that, not quite sure how to respond to Luna’s poetic way of putting it. She coughed awkwardly into her hoof. “Ahem! W-well, I, uh… I’m not sure, uh… how.”

Luna’s expression flattened. “...I beg your pardon?”

“Hey, give me a break!” Twilight whined, her blush dialing up to eleven. “I’ve never been in a romantic relationship before, okay?! The way Rainbow and I found out we loved each other was in the middle of a massive, world-shattering crisis! We already live together, too, so have we just skipped the dating stage?! How can I gauge where I am at with her? I’ve never done this before and I have no idea how to do it!”

“Have you considered contacting your sister-in-law?”

“I… have not!” Twilight squeaked, her eye twitching.

Luna laughed at that before stepping back. “Well, far be it from me to encroach upon her domain. But if I may offer at least one small piece of advice…”

Luna then lifted from the ground, as gravity had just stopped pulling on her, allowing her to drift up into the air. “Your relationship with Rainbow Dash is one of a kind… but much like there is no time limit upon your quest to open the chest, there is similarly no rush to figure out all of the tiny details about your relationship. Just do what feels right and natural, and your heart will lead the way.”

Twilight stepped after Luna, her eyes widening. “I… I guess so, but… where are you going?”

“Alas, I am afraid there are yet more dreams for me to tend to this night,” Luna said apologetically. “Though you are a priority, yours is but one mind in a sea of literally countless… I cannot always be here for you.”

Luna’s expression softened considerably at that, her wings slowly spreading out. “However, you need not rely upon me alone. You are a fortunate mare indeed to have such a wonderful group of friends at your side…”

As she said this, spectral depictions of Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Spike, Rarity, Applejack, and Pinkie Pie all faded into reality under her wings.

“Where I cannot, they may help ease your burdens. All you need do, Twilight Sparkle, is call on them to do so.”

Twilight’s lips slowly curved up into a tiny smile. “Right… I will. Thank you, Luna.”

Luna nodded. “You are welcome, Twilight. Now, I bid you sleep well. I shall speak with you again when next your dreams require it.”

And with that, the princess disappeared, fading away into the full moon behind her. Glowing now with its pale glow, the sky swallowed Twilight’s vision whole, soothing her mind and her muscles.

And then she woke up.

Two Years Overdue

Twilight gave a quiet murmur of contentment as she returned to the waking world. She could feel the warmth of the sun against her face, and the notably different warmth of Rainbow Dash snuggled up against her back. She hummed softly and cracked open her eyes. The sun was only just starting to come up in the distance, casting its gentle orange rays across town. A narrow line of that light slipped in through the gap in the curtains, just enough to rouse her from her slumber.

All was quiet there in the loft of the Golden Oak, and Twilight was perfectly content to leave it that way for now. Stifling a yawn, she shimmied back until she was pressed closer to Rainbow’s belly and closed her eyes. A tiny giggle slipped past her lips when she felt Rainbow nuzzling into the back of her neck.

“Mmf… G’morn…” Rainbow drowsily mumbled, her hooves curling tighter around Twilight’s own belly.

Twilight hummed and craned her neck to get a look at the sleepy pegasus. She barely kept herself from giggling again when she saw how messed up Rainbow’s mane had become after a long night of sleep. The pegasus had the worst cases of bedhead ever.

“Heh… Morning, Dash,” she whispered in response, setting her head back down.

Rainbow hummed, nuzzling her again, but did not speak. The two fell into a long, companionable silence after that, neither saying a word, merely enjoying the peace of the morning and the warmth of the other.

Eventually, Twilight shifted in place, slowly rotating around until she was facing Rainbow Dash directly, drawing a confused groan of dismay from the pegasus. “Hey, stop movin’. I’m tryna hug ya…”

Twilight rolled her eyes and rubbed her nose against Rainbow’s. “Sorry. I just wanted to look at your face, is all,” she said, not being totally dishonest.

Rainbow cracked open an eye, her lips faintly curling up into the beginnings of a self-absorbed smirk. “Yeah? Is it lookin’ good?” she asked.

“You look like you drank a mug of cider and bathed in a tub of it,” Twilight replied without missing a beat, her eyes drifting up to Rainbow’s rat's nest of a mane. “It’s kind of impressive, really.”

Rainbow pouted. “Yeah? Well, you look like… like… uh… fwah…” she grumbled before leaning forward and burying her face in Twilight’s chest fur, murmuring something unintelligible.

Twilight giggled and pulled the pegasus closer, using her wings to envelop both of them in a feathery blanket. “What was that? I couldn’t hear you.”

Rainbow mumbled again before pulling her head back just enough to speak. “...Your chest is soft,” she said before burying her face again.

Twilight laughed at that, resting her chin on Rainbow’s head. “Nice dodge, Rainbow.”

“Mmph. Thanks.”

With one last giggle, Twilight fell silent, simply enjoying the feeling of Rainbow pressed up against her. She gave off a relaxed sigh. This. This was perfect. She could stay right here until the end of time and be perfectly happy, she decided. Just her, the warmth of the morning sun on her back, and her sleepy girlfriend cuddling her in the bed they shared. Peaceful. Serene. Tranquil. Not a care in the world.

The serenity, sadly, was doomed to be short-lived. Twilight’s smile faltered as the contents of her dream began to resurface in her mind: Luna’s sudden intervention, their brief tension, the revelation of Rainbow and Fluttershy’s spoken concerns, and Luna’s gently given advice.

Twilight’s brow furrowed, and she leaned back a bit to look into Rainbow’s face. The pegasus blinked open her eyes to stare back at her, looking a little confused. “Hm? Wha? Somethin’ wrong?”

“I, uh… I had a dream last night,” Twilight whispered, her smile fading away entirely. “A nightmare, really…”

“Oh yeah?” Rainbow asked, swiftly coming to her senses. She pulled Twilight a little closer. “I thought that’s what it was…”

Twilight blinked. “Huh?”

Rainbow sighed. “Ya kinda started tossing and turning in the middle of the night. Jostled me. Woke me up. I was gonna wake you, but you calmed down pretty quickly. After that, I figured I’d let ya sleep and just cuddled ya from behind. And that’s, ya know, why I’m big spoon this morning.”

Twilight blinked. It had never even occurred to her that she had typically been the one doing the holding in the past. She blushed and giggled sheepishly, her ears folding. “Aha, yes, right, okay, that makes sense…” she said awkwardly. She then rolled onto her back and looked up to the ceiling, her serious expression returning.

“...What was it about?” Dash asked a moment later, keeping one foreleg under Twilight.

Twilight hummed. “I was… running. Along the road up to Canterlot. It was pitch-dark out, and something was chasing me. It kept… talking to me, in my voice, taunting me, mocking me. When I got to the gates, they wouldn’t open…” she began to recount the dream, a chill starting to seep into her veins. “I called for Celestia, Luna, Cadance. My mom and dad. Anypony to open the gate and save me… But nopony came. And then the… the thing was on me.”

“Thing?” Midnight asked in offense. “You know perfectly well what I am, don’t use such derogatory terms.”

“So says my inner demon who calls me an idiot on a routine basis!” Twilight shot back, not allowing her frustration with the inner voice to manifest on her face.

“But then… the thing was gone. And… Luna was there,” she went on, turning her head to one side to look at Rainbow.

Rainbow’s eyes widened, and she propped herself up on her elbow. “She did? That’s good. She give ya good advice?”

Twilight nodded. “She did, after we worked through some… personal issues, I guess. But…” she met Rainbow’s gaze again, her brow tilted with anxiety. “Rainbow… she told me that you and Fluttershy told her about how I was doing.”

“Of course we did,” Rainbow replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. A few seconds passed before a look of alarmed realization dawned on her face “What, did you not want us to? Are you still angry with her after, well… how she treated you?”

Twilight shook her head. “No! Well… maybe I am, a little, but that’s not the point,” she relented with a tired sigh. “I just… is it really that bad?”

Rainbow grimaced, then nodded. “...Your anger issues? Yeah, they’re pretty bad. I’ve never seen you blow up so much over such little things. I mean, it’s usually a lot of little things all piling up that get to you, not one or two minor inconveniences… And after what happened in Canterlot, I...”

“...You’re worried I might Fall again?” Twilight asked knowingly.

Rainbow opened her mouth as if to offer a denial, but she held her tongue. A second passed before she sighed and nodded. “Y-yeah, I guess. I mean, I know that you being really… angry with m-me is what led to you Falling in the first place. And now you’re so easily agitated, and I just… I wanna look out for you, ya know? I just got you back…”

Twilight smiled, then leaned in to give Rainbow a soft kiss on the lips. The pegasus stiffened at first, then quickly reciprocated the unprompted gesture of affection. A few moments later, they parted, faces flushed and eyes shining with newfound wakefulness.

“...I appreciate it, Rainbow,” Twilight whispered to her with a warm smile. “I really do. Luna’s talk with me was pretty helpful, actually… so thank you.”

Rainbow’s distant look reformed, her trademark smirk—albeit a smaller version—returning. “Heh. Anytime, Twi,” she said casually. “What did she suggest you do?”

Twilight hummed, her smile fading as she thought back on her chat with the Princess of the Night. “Well… she told me not to worry too much about the Chest, or my banishment from Canterlot…”

“I don’t see you doing that.”

“Shut up,” Twilight bit back playfully, giving Rainbow a little shove. “I can focus on other things instead!”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “Uh-huh. I believe you.”

“I’m serious!”

“Like what?”

Twilight jabbed Rainbow in the tummy with a hoof, making her burst out into breathless giggles and roll away. Twilight then rose to her hooves and positioned herself over Rainbow, her hooves on either side of the pegasus’ head. She made direct eye contact with Rainbow, whose giggles swiftly fell silent. She stared back up at Twilight like a deer in the headlight of a speeding train, her eyes wide and transfixed by Twilight’s.

Twilight grinned and poked her in the belly again, gently this time. “You, you featherbrain.”

Rainbow blinked a few times, and Twilight could practically see the cogs turning in her head as her sleepy mind processed that. “...Oh.”

“As it so happens,” Twilight purred, leaning in just a little closer. “Luna also suggested that I focus on spending time with you…”

Rainbow blushed furiously at that, her wings twitching at her sides. “Ahah, ahem, uh… h-how so?” she asked sheepishly.

Twilight paused at that, her own train of thought grinding to a sudden halt. She slid back and off of Rainbow with a thoughtful hum, her brow furrowing. “Uh… well… Honestly? I dunno. This is all kinda new to me. Ya know, the relationship thing.”

Rainbow propped herself up on her elbows, looking briefly disappointed about something, but was quick to regain her composure. “Well, I mean… Ya could just, I dunno… kiss me? And stuff?”

“See, we already do that,” Twilight pointed out. “And that’s kinda the assumed default state in a romantic relationship, isn’t it?”

“Er… maybe?” Rainbow shrugged. “I’m not an expert here, Twi. You’d have better luck asking Rarity how this crud’s supposed to work.”

“But Rarity isn’t my girlfriend,” Twilight pointed out matter of factly. “You are. And our relationship isn’t exactly the picture of a common romance, either, so Rarity’s advice would probably not be super applicable anyways.”

“Give her five minutes,” Rainbow deadpanned. “Just five. She’ll figure something out.”

“Well, even if that’s the case,” Twilight rolled her eyes for what felt like the millionth time that morning alone. “Again, she isn’t my girlfriend. You are. And, well… I feel like, however we do this, it should be figured out by us.”

Rainbow forced herself up onto her haunches, stretching out her wings in the process and filling the air with a few deeply satisfying pops. “M’kay, fair point. What were you thinking, then?”

“Well, we already live together,” Twilight pointed out, gesturing at the library around them. “Hay, we sleep together, too. And we’ve been doing at least one of those things for the last, what, three years?”

“Somethin’ like that,” Rainbow confirmed.

“So, if my admittedly limited understanding of these things is anything to go off of, then in a usual relationship, we’d basically be past the dating stage by now.”

“Kay, I’m following you so far.”

“But our relationship, again, isn’t exactly normal. I mean, I first found out you had feelings for me in Hollow Shades, and I didn’t finally put two and two together and get four about my own feelings until we were in the Crystal Empire, and all of that was in the middle of the most stressful string of events we’ve lived through.”

Rainbow’s expression darkened somewhat. “Er, right…”

Twilight paused, immediately regretting how she had put that. For a brief moment, it had slipped her mind that she’d died back then, and how hard Rainbow had taken it. She placed a hoof on Rainbow’s shoulder and gave her a comforting smile. “...The point I’m getting at is we never even had a dating phase. We just kinda… uh… ‘noveled’ it, I guess.”

“Noveled it?”

“Yeah, you know. Like all those romance novels Rarity likes to read.”

“What, the trashy ones?”

Twilight’s comforting hoof shoved Rainbow lightly. “No, Rainbow, the classy ones.”

Rainbow smirked. “You make it sound like Rarity thinks there’s a difference.”

“Oh, for the love of- You know what I mean!” Twilight whined, her wings flaring up in mild exasperation. “I’m talking about the ones where the lovers go through some harrowing experience and, in the process, discover they love each other, kinda seeming to skip the dating part of the process altogether. That? That’s us.”

Rainbow blinked, tilting her head to one side. “Are… are you saying we’re characters in a romance novel?”

“Oh, I hope not,” Twilight scoffed in dismissal. Being a character in a book. How ridiculous. “After everything we’ve been through, if it turned out we were the product of somepony’s imagination, I’d probably punch him.”

“You and me both,” Rainbow agreed, lifting a hoof as if for a toast.

They shared a short laugh. Twilight regained her composure a moment later and went on. “But, the point is… We skipped a step that I think a lot of real romances kinda need. And, so…”

“Do we need it, though?” Rainbow asked skeptically. “I mean, I already know you like the back of my good hoof. Isn’t dating supposed to be the ‘getting to know the other one’ part of the process or something?”

“Rainbow, this is about the process,” Twilight deadpanned. “There is an order to this stuff! I won’t feel right if we just go around skipping steps and jumping around in the order of events!”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Guh. Okay, so, what? You wanna take me on a date or something?”

“YES!”

Rainbow blinked, her smile fading. “Uh, I was kinda kidding.”

“And I,” Twilight shot back, poking Rainbow in the chest again. “Was not.”

Rainbow’s cheeks flushed again. “Uh… do we gotta? I mean, I love you to bits, yeah, but…” she cringed, her wings poofing up as if to shield herself from view. “You know how I feel about showing it where others can see…”

“I mean, it doesn’t have to be all full of kisses and hugs and all that,” Twilight pointed out. “That’s for when we’re in private, anyway.”

“Well, I mean, then what do we do on a date? Cause kissing and hugging and making you squirm are kinda the hallmarks from where I’m sitting,” Rainbow complained, giving Twilight the impression that, somehow, neither of them were very well-educated on the finer points of having a love life.

Nevertheless, Twilight smiled and took one of Rainbow’s hooves in hers. “Well, we can just… be together, you know? Go somewhere nice, talk, kill time. Just the two of us. That’s how it usually works.”

Rainbow stared blankly at her for a moment. “So… what we normally do, then?”

“Spike is usually with us,” Twilight pointed out. “This would be just us. You and me. Nopony else…”

Rainbow hummed thoughtfully at that for a few seconds. She then gave a noncommittal shrug. “Okay, I guess… Where do you wanna go?”

“Let’s start simple!” Twilight chirped, her wings giving an exciting flap. “Let’s just go and get some lunch later! Eat out, somewhere nice.”

Rainbow chuckled and nodded. “Okay, I guess that’s fine. Just make sure it ain’t a salad joint, alright? I need my carbs!”

Twilight’s grin grew, and she threw herself against Rainbow in a warm hug. “It’s a date!” she squealed delightedly, the force of her body knocking Rainbow back into the bed.

“Oof! Heh, yep, it is,” Rainbow replied, chuckling. She patted Twilight on the head a few times before falling still and quiet. The two remained there for a while, perfectly still and silent.

Twilight hummed, burying her face in Rainbow’s chest fur. Her stomach was filled with a swarm of butterflies, making her feel like giggling like a lunatic. She couldn’t stop the giant, goofy grin from spreading on her muzzle as a four-word sentence repeated in her head over and over again.

“I have a date. I have a date!”

Her train of repeating thought came to an end when Rainbow cleared her throat. “Uh… you gonna lemme get up so I can shower? Can’t take you out to lunch looking and smelling like this.”

Twilight groaned in refusal, cuddling closer. “No. You can wait a few minutes.”

Rainbow smiled and let her head fall back. “Heh. Okay, fair enough…” she mumbled quietly, before allowing a serene silence to fill the room.

Author's Notes:

And so the opening mini-arc comes to a close.

Pinkie's Squad

Several weeks have passed since Twilight Sparkle returned from the Castle of the Two Sisters with Spiracle. In that time, she has done her best to follow the advice practically everypony close to her has given her, finally opting to spend more time focusing on the present and less fretting over a future that she cannot rush. To this end, she has devoted much of her time to Rainbow Dash and finally establishing their relationship in a more formal way. During her time with the pegasus she never would have imagined herself falling in love with, her anxieties have seemed to be drifting further and further away.

Alas, not even Rainbow’s soothing presence is enough to chase away her fears in full. Subdued though they may be, they still linger in the depths of her mind, simmering softly and waiting for the time when they might make themselves known again...

Twilight’s breath came in heaving gasps as she galloped down the road. Sweat poured down her brow, her lungs strained for air, and her legs burned with every step she took. It was dark out, or very nearly, with only the faintest hints of sunlight breaching the distant horizon. The world around her was very quiet, to the point that, save for her own labored breaths, the only sound audible was that of her hooves pummeling the soil, and those of another’s just to her side.

She grit her teeth and focused forward, pumping even more power into her legs. She couldn’t afford to let anything distract her. She had to move faster! If she didn’t, then-

“Aaand I win!” Rainbow’s voice declared from her left as the pegasus pulled ahead at the last second, crossing their arbitrary finish line in Ponyville’s marketplace with a whoop and an only slightly awkward front flip.

Twilight slid to a stop, gasping for breath and glaring at the pegasus in spite. “Ugh. Darn you! I was this close to winning!” she complained, using the tips of her feathers to emphasize her point.

Rainbow took a breath and smirked back at her with a shine in her eyes. “Yeah, you were. Gave me a run for my money,” she acknowledged between her own labored breaths. “But ya still got a long way to go before you can match my speed.”

Twilight puffed up her cheeks indignantly, then dragged herself over to slump against a tree that sat beside the road. Rainbow joined her a second later, reaching into a pair of saddlebags she was wearing to withdraw a couple of bottles of water. She passed one to Twilight while keeping the other for herself.

Twilight sighed as she took the bottle. “I guess… I just thought I’d be faster by now, you know?” she asked quietly. “I mean, we’ve been running together like this for how long?”

“A while,” Rainbow answered vaguely, shrugging her shoulders. “But ya gotta remember, you were out cold for a few days there back in Canterlot. Your muscles kinda lost some progress during that.”

“Oh, right,” Twilight muttered, her brow furrowing at the subtle reminder of her little stint with unconsciousness after returning the Elements to the Tree of Harmony. She had almost died doing that, she recalled. Then, of course, pretty much as soon as she woke, up she went and turned into Midnight and everything just spiraled out of control after that.

Thankfully, Rainbow didn’t give Twilight much of a chance to get lost in the past. The pegasus reached over and gave her a friendly nudge, smiling. “But hey, you’re definitely getting better. Who knows? A few more weeks of you really pushing your limits and you might actually get faster than me on the ground!”

Twilight returned the smile. “Heh. What about in the air?”

“You’re an alicorn, so that’s cheating, and we don’t count that,” Rainbow dismissed matter-of-factly.

Twilight snorted in amusement. “Cheating?” she asked playfully, leaning over slightly and lowering her voice. “Oh, it sounds to me like you’re just a little jealous…”

Rainbow rolled her eyes before turning and poking Twilight directly on the nose with her hoof, causing the alicorn to go cross-eyed and shut up. “Nah.”

A few seconds passed before Twilight shook her head and puffed up her cheeks in mild annoyance. “Oh, why you…” she muttered under her breath. Rainbow’s smirk did not let up in the slightest.

Before the situation could ‘deteriorate’ any farther, a high-pitched gasp echoed through the air from not far away. Twilight recognized that voice and immediately braced herself before turning her head to face the source.

“Dashie! Twily!” Pinkie Pie squealed from the now open door of Sugarcube Corner, her mouth stretched wide into an ecstatic grin. “Oh, sweet! I didn’t know you two would be here this early! This totally saves me, like, thirty seconds!”

Rainbow raised a hoof in greeting. “Sup?”

Twilight tilted her head. “Saves you thirty seconds?”

Pinkie vibrated for a second before perking up as if remembering something. “Oh! Wait, hold on a sec!” she declared before sprinting back inside. Twilight stared at the doorway for a moment, narrowing her eyes expectantly. She picked a number in her head and began counting down.

“Six… Five… Four… Three… Two… One-”

Pinkie Pie came sprinting back out, a miniature tray balanced on her back with six vibrant blue cupcakes on it. She slid to a stop in front of the two resting mares. “Sorry, had to get your cupcakes!” she said, setting two of the cupcakes down in front of them.

“Cupcakes? This early in the morning?” Rainbow asked with a raised eyebrow. She did not refuse hers, though, taking it without hesitation.

Twilight frowned as she looked over hers. “It’s Pinkie. Sugar is good for literally any meal of the day.”

Pinkie nodded emphatically. “Uh-huh! Eat up, you two! I wish I could stay and chat, but I gotta bounce! Gotta deliver these to the rest of our friends!” she sang before replacing her tray on her back and sprinting off at a full-tilt gallop, soon fading from sight.

Rainbow and Twilight shared a bewildered glance. A second passed before they both shrugged at the same time and dug into their newly acquired snacks. It would probably completely undo all of the calories they had just burned off from their run—and then some—knowing Pinkie Pie. It was worth it, though, as far as Twilight was concerned.

She was proven correct as she sank her teeth into the soft, moist, delightfully sweet frosting. A little shiver wiggled its way down her spine at the divine taste. Ever and always, Pinkie was the finest baker Twilight had ever met. So good was the little pastry, in fact, that Twilight’s usual table mannerisms decided now was an appropriate time to take a vacation, much as they did whenever Spike was brave enough to make her hayburgers.

As she began to mercilessly devour her cupcake, Rainbow leaned slightly away from her with a face that couldn’t decide if it was entertained or a little scared. Nevertheless, she gave a tiny smile. “Heh. Jeez, Twi. You hungry?”

“Shush. Cupcake,” Twilight dismissed through the food in her mouth before going in for yet another bite. As her teeth bit into it again, though, she paused. There was something else in the cupcake. Something that was decidedly not as tasty as the rest of it. It was long, soggy, and felt exceptionally out of place.

Resisting the urge to gag, Twilight pulled back and stared at the offensive ingredient with a critical eye. She blinked in confusion when she saw that it was, in fact, a narrow slip of paper. “...What the hay?”

“What? What is it?” Rainbow asked before taking another chomp out of hers. Judging by the scrunched up face she made afterward, Twilight knew she had found the same thing.

“That,” Twilight said simply. Her horn lit up, and she carefully extracted her own piece of paper in her magic. There was something written on it.

“Pinkie Pie is assembling the squad! Please meet in her room in Sugarcube Corner at your earliest convenience!

P.S: Sorry about the paper in the cupcakes. There are more in the room. One for everypony!”

“So… we’re ‘the squad,’ now?” Rainbow asked with a hint of mirth as she cast aside her slip. “What’s Pinkie want us for? Something come up, you think?”

Twilight hummed in thought, turning the slip this way and that in curiosity. Eventually, she shrugged, rolled it up, and rose to her hooves. “With that mare, who knows? But let’s go see what she wants. She went to all the effort of bribing us with more cupcakes, and I, for one, don’t intend to refuse.”

Rainbow snorted, following Twilight for the door. “Wow. You that easy?”

“When it’s Pinkie’s cooking,” Twilight said as they stepped aside, flinging her rolled up ball of damp paper into a trashcan nearby. “Always.”

Just like Pinkie promised, there were yet more cupcakes to be had in the second-floor room that served as Pinkie’s bedroom. It wasn’t long after Rainbow and Twilight took theirs and got comfortable that the others began to pile in, one at a time. Each looked suitably tired for the hour, frazzled by Pinkie’s all-too-early exuberance and grumpy from the unexplained summons.

First came Rarity who, in spite of her best efforts, was unable to hide her exhaustion from the rest of the room. If Twilight had to guess, she would assume that the fashion designer must have been in the middle of some multi-day project and was behind on her sleep. It would go a long way in explaining her sagging posture and the fact that her makeup was not at all up to standard.

Then came Fluttershy, who was far more animated than the unicorn. Though still clearly waking up, she at least had the energy to sit down with Twilight and Rainbow and strike up a conversation. It was mostly mindless small talk and idle speculation about what in Celestia’s name Pinkie Pie was up to. Their theories ranged from the mundane to the comically absurd.

One such idea was that Pinkie’s pet alligator, Gummy, secretly wanted to take over the world and Pinkie was assembling his greatest threats in one place so they could all be eliminated at once. Rainbow in particular took that idea and just ran with it for far longer than was needed, really diving into the details.

“Hey, if you’re so into the idea, why don’t you write it?” Twilight jokingly asked, interrupting Rainbow just as she was getting to the part about evil crystals powering a coffee machine.

Rainbow paused and glanced over at Twilight with a wrinkled muzzle. “What? Me? Write? Ya do know who you’re talking to, right? I’m not an egghead writer.”

“Coulda fooled me,” Twilight replied with her lips curling up into a predatory smirk. “With the creative tangent you’ve been on? You could write a whole series of silly short stories around that concept.”

Rainbow spluttered incoherently for a moment, her wings ruffling at her sides. “Well, I mean, y-yeah, but… having a good idea isn’t the same thing as, ya know, making it good.”

“Hm, Fair,” Twilight conceded with a shrug. “Knowing you, you’d need an editor… or twelve.”

“Hey!”

Before Rainbow’s indignation could be acted upon, Pinkie Pie and Applejack finally entered the room, the former leading the way while the latter pronked along cheerily behind her.

“Pinkie snared y’all too, huh?” Applejack asked with a tired smile.

“Oh, um, I don’t know if snared is the right word, but… yes,” Fluttershy replied.

“Naw, she just lured us here with sugary treats,” Rainbow replied casually, leaning back in her place. She turned her attention to the pink mare in question and nodded in greeting. “So, Pinks. What’s going on? What’cha need all of us for?”

“Yes, I would quite like to know that as well,” Rarity agreed with a curt nod, drawing Twilight’s attention to how one or two hairs in her mane were out of line.

Pinkie Pie happily cantered into the center of the room before slowly spinning in a circle, as if to ensure she had everyone’s attention. Then, once she was sure she had them all focused, she spoke.

“I’ve called you all here because my big sister Maud is coming to Ponyville in a few days to spend the week with me and I need all of you to help me prepare everything I’m gonna need!” she belted out in one long breath.

Applejack raised an eyebrow. “Huh. Pinkie bein’ to the point. Never thought Ah’d see the day.”

Twilight hummed in thought, tapping a hoof to her chin. “Maud, Maud… I don’t think I’ve heard of that one, yet…”

“Oh, she is the best!” Pinkie declared while thrusting her hoof into the air. “She’s super smart and likes poetry like you, Twilight! she’s really strong and fast, like Rainbow and Applejack! She has a pet she loves to bits and takes good care of, like you Fluttershy! And she’s totally into fashion, like you Rarity!”

Rarity’s eyes widened. “Oh, is that so? My oh my, that is quite an impressive assortment of skills and traits, Pinkie Pie. She sounds remarkable!”

“Darn straight!” Pinkie replied with a sharp nod and happy quiver of her tail.

“Okay, so- what was her name again? Maud?” Rainbow asked slowly.

“Ya-huh!”

“Okay, so, Maud’s pretty awesome according to you, that’s great. But, uh… why do you need all of our help?”

Pinkie turned to Rainbow, bouncing in place with a mixture of excitement and anxiety. “Because, Dashie, I haven’t had a chance to pick up all of the things I need! I don’t have all of the rock candy I need to make her rock candy necklace!”

There was a moment of silence. Fluttershy leaned in. “Um… Rock candy necklace?”

Pinkie Pie nodded. “Mm-hmm! Here, lemme show ya,” she said while withdrawing a notebook and a pencil from her mane with a hoof. She took the pencil in her mouth and quickly began to sketch.

After a second, she spat away the pencil and held the notebook out for all to see, revealing a series of simple-yet-charming depictions of Pinkie and another mare, presumably Maud.

“It all started when Maud and I were fillies on the rock farm,” Pinkie began, pointing to the first sketch, which showed off a crude, but charming, view of a farm in the middle of a largely-barren field surrounded by big boulders.

“Ah never really got the point of rock farms, to be honest,” Rainbow said with a shrug of her shoulders. “I mean… you can’t eat rocks.”

“Not with that attitude you can’t!” Pinkie shot back.

Twilight chuckled before nudging Rainbow in the side and whispering in her ear. “Rock farms are basically just another word for a permanent home for miners. They’re built in regions that are exceedingly rich in natural mineral resources, like metals and precious gems but are otherwise too inhospitable to sustain a large community like a city. Rock farmers are ponies, typically earth ponies, with enough endurance and survival knowledge to survive in environments like that while getting at the rare and highly sought after resources right beneath their hooves.”

“Oh… so, Pinkie’s a miner, then,” Rainbow confirmed slowly.

“Her family’s a mining family,” Twilight clarified. “But we all know she’s a baker.”

“Kay, I think I gotcha,” Rainbow said before nodding back at Pinkie. “Sorry, you were saying?”

Pinkie took that as her cue to continue and went on, pointing to the next picture in line. “You see, when I was reeeaaally little, Maud taught me the Pie family rock candy recipe. She even told me the secret ingredient! Which is a secret, but it’s totally rocks.”

Applejack snorted in amusement. “Sounds like somethin’ Spike’d like.”

“Oh, absolutely!” Pinkie agreed, pointing to the next sketch that showed her and Maud dropping large pieces of colorful candy onto a needle on a string that was three times their size. “But anyway, after that, she showed me how to string them together into a necklace! And once we were finished, we’d trade!”

Pinkie closed the notebook and stashed it back in her mane. “Maud and I have been trading rock candy necklaces ever since I moved to Ponyville. They’re how we make sure we’re always on each other’s minds, and that no matter how far away I am from her or the farm, she’s still my big sister and bestest friend!”

“Aaaw, that’s a real sweet lil tradition there, Pinkie Pie,” Applejack said, a warm smile replacing her groggy frown.

“It certainly is,” Rarity agreed. She leaned forward, her smile being replaced by a skeptical frown. “But, and not to be rude, Pinkie, darling… are you positive you require our aid to make one for her?”

Pinkie turned to Rarity and tilted her head. “Well, I’m not making one just for Maud, silly! It’d mean the world to me if you could all meet Maud when she turns up! Ever since the Plundervines—and even since all of that sad stuff with Chrysalis and the Empire—she’s been super duper worried about me all the time! I want her to meet all of you and get to be friends with you! That way, not only does my sister get to have five of the very best friends a mare could ask for, but she also gets to see that, with all of you, I’ve never been better, and she really doesn’t need to worry about me so much! And with how much she has in common with all of you, I just know you’re all gonna be getting along great!”

“And to commemorate that,” Twilight went on, the realization clicking into place. “You’re going to want all of us to trade necklaces too?”

“Not quite, though that is a fantastic idea!” Pinkie replied without missing a beat. “What I’m actually gonna do is make one for each of you, too! It’s a super special tradition in my family, something only the closest of ponies share, so showing Maud that I can share it with all of you will let her know that I have the best ponies in the world looking out for me!”

Pinkie turned in place, her eager smile slowly morphing into a more uneasy grimace. “Buuut… she’s gonna be here in, like, two days. And If I’m gonna make and taste-test enough rock candy to find the perfect flavors for each of you, I’m not gonna be able to do it all on time!”

“Oh, so that’s what ya want our help with?” Applejack asked, raising an eyebrow. “Making the candy?”

“Goodness, how much candy do you need if it will take six of us?” Rarity asked, taken aback.

Pinkie spun around to face her. “Yes!”

“Yeah, saw that comin’,” Rainbow muttered under her breath with an amused smirk.

Twilight giggled at that, not quite picking it up as Pinkie began to go into a long-winded spiel about different flavors and how to make them. A few seconds passed before Fluttershy suddenly intervened, trotted timidly up to Pinkie, and putting a hoof on her chest to stop her. “Pinkie Pie, um… maybe you’re working yourself up a little too much over this?”

“Yeah,” Rainbow agreed, glancing sideways at Twilight again. “Like, ‘Twilight with a late return’ worked up.”

Twilight’s face lit up with red, her eyes glaring daggers into Rainbow’s very soul. “Wha- HEY!”

Rainbow snickered before leaning back in her spot and casually throwing her hooves behind her head. “I get that this tradition is a big deal Pinkie, but I gotta agree with Flutters on this one. You’re kinda overthinking it.”

“Ya don’t need a mountain of rock candy,” Applejack agreed with a nod. “Ya know yer sister better than any of us. And ya know all of us really well, too. Ah don’t think yer gonna need as much help as yer makin’ it out to be.”

“We’d be delighted to meet Maud, though,” Rarity chimed in. “Perhaps we could arrange to meet her in the grassy hills just past the train station? The view of the mountains is simply divine—an ideal place for a picnic!”

Pinkie looked around at everypony for a moment before taking in a long, deep breath, then letting it out in a relaxed sigh. “Whooo… Thanks, guys. I’m just really excited cause I haven’t seen her in a while and I’m really nervous because she’s always so worried about me over here after everything we went through. I just don’t want her to keep worrying so much, and I really want her to meet all of you and like you and know that I’m okay so she doesn’t have to feel so worried for me.”

“Pinkie, Pinkie,” Twilight cut in gently, bringing the mare’s tangent to a halt. She smiled gingerly at her before nodding. “We understand. And we’d love to meet her.”

“She’s coming in a few days, right?” Rainbow asked.

“Uh-huh. The day after tomorrow, if her train doesn’t get delayed.”

“Well, then that gives you plenty of time to whip up the rock candy,” Applejack said with a nod. “And while Ah don’t think ya need the mountain ya were makin’ it out to be, Ah wouldn’t mind helpin’ with a batch or two. Apple Bloom could use the treat if ya don’t mind me takin’ some home.”

“Much the same for Sweetie Belle,” Rarity agreed. “The poor dear’s been having nightmares ever since those Plundervines came through town…”

Pinkie smiled at all of them, beaming from ear to ear. “Eeee! Thank you girls so much! We don’t have any time to lose!” she declared before turning and sprinting down the stairs at full speed. “Follow me, everypony! We got ROCKS to make!”

Twilight rolled her eyes at Pinkie’s enthusiasm, falling into stride with the others as they descended the steps. A nice distraction was just what she needed, and this was proving to be pretty distracting.

“Trying to forget me already?”

Twilight briefly froze at that tell-tale whisper. She shook her head, doing her best to push it aside, and followed after the others, ready and eager to lose herself in the chaos that was anything involving Pinkie Pie.

Boulder-Faced

The next two days passed by in a thankfully uneventful blur for Twilight. She largely spent her time relaxing and being together with Rainbow, with some intermittent contact with the others thrown in here and there to make sure they were all prepared for the upcoming picnic with Maud. During that time, Twilight had, in the hopes of having some more knowledge to strike up a conversation with her, done more thorough research on rock farms in general, even going so far as to briefly attempt to interview Pinkie Pie for her firsthoof accounts.

It wasn’t long, however, before she realized that Pinkie is Pinkie, and Pinkie tended to go off on these long-winded tangents about anything and everything that had nothing to do with what Twilight was trying to get her to focus on. So she pretty quickly gave up on that idea.

Rainbow and Spike had even warned her. Why didn’t she listen?

Whatever the case, following that failure of journalistic methodology, the day came. It was a fairly pleasant day, too, with only a few clouds peppered haphazardly across the summer sky. A refreshing breeze washed over the countryside outside of Ponyville, carrying with it the lush smell of grass and flowers, along with the more subtle aroma of the Everfree Forest.

Twilight took in a long, deep breath, closing her eyes. She savored the air as it filled her lungs, invigorating her body, and awakening her senses. She let it out a few seconds later with a content smile, opening her eyes back up. She was laying down on the red and white checkerboard-patterned picnic blanket that had been set up by Applejack a few minutes’ walk away from the train station, with the rest of her friends, sans Pinkie, scattered around her.

Rainbow was laying down beside her, using the side of Twilight’s barrel as an impromptu pillow. The pegasus’ eyes were closed, and her chest rose and fell in slow-but-even intervals, advertising that she was, unsurprisingly, taking a nap to pass the time. Fluttershy wasn’t far away, sitting on the other side of Twilight and looking at Rainbow with a small smile. She probably found the sight of her slumbering fillyhood friend to be cute.

Angel Bunny, who Fluttershy had insisted on bringing, did not seem to share that notion and was currently busying himself with exploring a smaller basket with four muffins in it.

Rarity was on the other side of the blanket, a wide-brimmed sun hat on her head with a ring of small, well-cut gemstones carefully stitched around the band. Spike sat with her, predictably, listening intently as she talked to him about something or other, her eyes glued to the pages of a magazine she had brought along to pass the time while they waited. Her white cat, Opal, was currently laying down a short ways away, bathing in the sun.

Applejack was off to the left, Winona keeping close to her side, idly munching on a spare apple she had brought along for her enjoyment. She had been considerate, though, and brought along one for everypony else, including Maud. They were all stored in one of the several picnic baskets they had brought along, each one loaded with lunches for the ponies gathered around.

Quite some time passed like this, in blessed silence and tranquility. Eventually, though, the peace was bound to end. The loud, piercing tone of the train’s whistle cut through the air like a knife through butter in the distance, announcing its arrival. The loud sound drew Rainbow out of her slumber with a start and a groggy murmur. Twilight smiled and looked down at her just as Rainbow opened her eyes.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” Twilight said in a soft voice. “Sleep well?”

Rainbow blinked at her a few times. “I, uh… wha? When did I…?” she babbled, still apparently not quite lucid. She glanced around a little before it seemed to click, and her eyes widened.

“Oh, heck! Did I fall asleep?!” she squawked in a very undignified manner while flailing to get back up into a regular seated position by Twilight’s side.

Twilight giggled, though she elected to say nothing, if only for the sake of sparing Rainbow’s ego. Fluttershy seemed content to remain quiet as well, but alas, the same could not be said of the remaining three members of the group.

“Yup, you fell asleep,” Spike said with a knowing grin. “Used Twilight as a pillow, too.”

“Ya looked mighty comfy, there, RD,” Applejack added, adjusting her hat with a snicker. “Kinda wish the train didn’t come by yet.”

“I quite concur,” Rarity agreed, smirking at the now heavily-blushing pegasus. “It was quite adorable.”

Rainbow groaned, hiding her tomato-colored face with her wings. “Uuuugh. You guys are the worst.”

Twilight rolled her eyes, draping one of her wings over Rainbow’s back and glancing at the others. “Okay, that’s enough, you guys,” she said, though, try as she might, she could not hide the mirth in her voice.

Rarity tittered into her hoof. “Oh, yes, of course. Forgive us, darling, but it is all too rare that we get to see you really embrace that side of yourself,” she said, nodding at Rainbow with a reassuring smile.

“And there’s nothing wrong with being cute,” Fluttershy added, leaning forward to get a better look at the still hiding Rainbow.

“Yup,” Spike agreed. “It’s good to see you relaxing again, Dash.”

Rainbow huffed, lowering her wings a second later to glance expectantly at Applejack.

The farmer shrugged. “What? Ah ain’t apologizin’.”

Twilight snorted and shook her head, giving Rainbow a gentle squeeze with her wing before pulling back. “Well, anyways, Pinkie and Maud should be along pretty soon,” she said, not-so-subtly redirecting the topic. She squinted past the group in the direction of the station, looking for any sign of the colorful duo.

Her efforts were rewarded a few minutes later when a certain pink mare came into view over the top of a nearby hill. Pinkie was bouncing merrily along the path that led to their designated spot, no doubt humming some cheerful lullaby to herself.

“Hey, guys!” Pinkie’s voice came a moment later, drawing all eyes to her. “Maud’s here! Maud’s here! EEE!” She closed the remaining distance in no time at all, coming to a stop right by the edge of the blanket. A humongous grin adorned her muzzle, and her eyes were shining with anticipation and excitement.

“Nice! Where is she?” Rainbow asked, glancing past Pinkie the way she had come. Twilight followed her girlfriend’s gaze, expecting to see some similarly bright and energetic mare bouncing along to meet them.

“She isn’t quite as fast as me,” Pinkie explained, spinning around to look back toward the station. “But she’s so super duper excited to meet all of you!”

“Isn’t quite as fast?” Twilight thought, her brow furrowing. “If we can’t see her yet, that must be quite the understatement. The station isn’t that far…”

A long, awkward silence filled the air as the group waited. And waited… And waited. Twilight’s muzzle began to scrunch up, and she glanced at Pinkie. “Uh… are you sure she-”

“Oh! Oh! There she is!” Pinkie chirped, pointing. Twilight followed her hoof, figuring that Pinkie’s sister had just gotten turned around for a second in this unfamiliar terrain- No, wait, the hilltop was still empty.

Fluttershy coughed awkwardly into her hoof.

Finally, finally, Twilight saw movement. Very slow, very deliberate, very boring movement. Where Twilight was expecting bright, vibrant colors akin to Pinkie Pie, there was instead the dullest shade of gray she had ever seen, combined with what looked to be a very basic frock of a dull teal, and a desaturated purple mane that was even straighter and flatter than Twilight’s.

That must have been Maud.

Twilight blinked. “Is… is she moving?”

“Took the words right outta my mouth,” Rainbow mumbled.

Pinkie, not at all deterred by their confusion, bounced eagerly in place a few times. “We’re over here!” she squealed to her sister, her voice echoing all around them in the otherwise-quiet countryside.

It took what felt like forever, but, at long last, Maud came to a stop a few paces away from Pinkie. A flat, borderline emotionless expression rested on her face. Her teal eyes, perhaps the most colorful part of her, swept across the group, settling intently on Twilight and sending a chill down her spine.

She didn’t say anything. She just focused on Twilight for several seconds, making the alicorn feel increasingly uneasy as if she were being judged. Then, Maud did something quite unexpected. She suddenly knelt down and… sniffed the ground?

Twilight’s mind blanked, her expression twisting with abject confusion.

“Hmm. Sedimentary.”

There was a beat before Rainbow spoke up. “Huh?”

Maud lifted the object of her interest: a single grey rock, and held it up for the others to see. “This is a sedimentary rock,” she elaborated, her voice devoid of emotion, tone, or anything truly noteworthy. Perhaps the most distinguishing part about it was the abject lack of anything distinguishing.

A familiar voice growled in the back of Twilight’s head. “Seriously? This is who Pinkie dragged us all this way to meet?!”

Twilight fought the urge to scowl. “Shut up. We just met her!”

“Yes, and this first impression is just beyond enticing! Truly, we have spent our time well coming out here when we could have been trying to find more of those stupid keys!”

Twilight briefly glanced off to one side, avoiding Maud’s gaze. “Look, can you just shut up and leave me alone for five minutes?! I’m busy!”

“You’re wasting your time,” Midnight snarled before Twilight felt her withdrawing. “But fine. Do whatever you wish. Just don’t come crying to me when you realize how much progress you could have been making right now.”

With that, Midnight fell silent, allowing Twilight to refocus on the discussion at hoof.

“Real pleased to meet ya, Maud,” Applejack greeted, tipping her hat, following up on something Rarity had said. “Ah’m Applejack. These here are Fluttershy, Rarity, Spike, and our resident lovebirds, Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash.”

Maud blinked slowly, her eyes focusing on Twilight. “I know.”

Twilight’s heart skipped a beat as Maud stared at her again. She swallowed heavily, taking a step back. “Eheh… you, uh, you do?” she asked, trying to keep an anxious tremor from creeping into her voice.

“Pinkie’s told me a lot about all of you in her letters,” Maud clarified, her tone still as bland as ever. “Of course, I didn’t need her letters to know about Rainbow Dash.”

“Lemme guess,” Rainbow chimed in with a flat look, idly toying with the end of her mane. “Cause I’m a princess?”

“Yes.”

Rainbow shrugged in defeat. “Geh. Yeah, go figure. Everypony knows about me for that,” she grumbled in mild dismay.

Rarity chose that moment to speak up, too. “Well, we’ve certainly all heard a great deal about you over these last two days, Miss Maud,” she said, giving her mane a stylish toss. “Pinkie Pie would not stop enthusing about you. It is quite clear that you mean a great deal to her, and that you possess a truly expansive skillset!”

Maud blinked. “I like to try new things,” she confirmed bluntly.

“Oh, that’s marvelous, dear,” Rarity continued, expertly hiding her brief hesitation from Maud’s lack of enthusiasm. “In particular, Pinkie told me that you share my love of fashion.”

“I’m really into expressing myself through my wardrobe,” Maud acknowledged, glancing down at her basic frock, the most movement Twilight had seen from her since she picked up the rock.

“And what is the delightful frock you’re wearing right now saying?” Rarity pressed a hopeful glint in her eyes.

Maud tilted her head, actually getting an expression on her face. Namely, mild bewilderment. “It doesn’t say anything. It’s a dress.”

If ever there was a look of true devastation, surely Rarity had it now. Twilight winced, her mind racing. This was not at all how she imagined Maud, from how Pinkie had described her. Of course, she figured, her first mistake was taking Pinkie’s word for, well, anything.

“Just now catching onto that one, are you?” Midnight snickered.

Twilight ignored her.

“O-oh, well, yes, of course,” Rarity mumbled, backing away and sputtering quietly to herself as she tried, and failed spectacularly, to find some way of reviving the discussion.

Thankfully, Winona, who had been keeping quiet by Applejack’s side, saw fit to interject at this time. The small canine hopped forward with a few happy barks, her tail wagging in excitement.

Applejack followed after, a little less smoothly than Rarity had. “So, this is Winona,” she said gesturing at her dog. She then turned and pointed to the few other animals assembled at the picnic. “And that there’s Opal, and that there’s Angel.”

Maud looked to each pet in turn, then glanced at Twilight and Rainbow. She raised an eyebrow.

Rainbow leaned back. “What? What’s with the look?”

“You don’t have pets?”

Twilight froze at that, her ears drooping. A few seconds passed before she shook her head. “No, not really. We never really had cause to get one,” she admitted.

“Closest we had was that owl that broke into our room one night,” Rainbow noted with a thoughtful frown. “But I chased it off.”

Twilight turned to Rainbow with a surprised look. “What? You did? When was this?”

“Sometime before Discord showed up,” Rainbow replied casually. “You’d exhausted yourself on some big research project or other. Something to do with space? I dunno. Point is, I spent, like, an hour trying to get you to go get some sleep. You needed rest, and I didn’t want some nocturnal bird waking you up in the middle of the night, so I shooed him off.”

“Huh. Missed opportunity, maybe?” Spike ventured.

“Yeah… maybe,” Twilight muttered, rubbing the back of her head. It was strange, but somehow, she suddenly felt like she was missing something.

“W-well, what Ah was gettin’ at,” Applejack gently retook the wheel, turning back to Maud and smiling. “Is that Pinkie told us y’all have a pet, too.”

“He’s in my pocket,” Maud replied, not at all distracted by Twilight’s sudden thoughtfulness.

Fluttershy, who had been hanging back up till now, suddenly came forward with a large smile at the prospect of meeting a new animal friend. “Oh my! You have a pocket pet? Like a tiny squirrel, or a fluffy mouse, or a baby bird?!”

“It’s a rock,” Maud said while reaching into a chest pocket and withdrawing a single stone, perhaps three inches from one side to the other, and depositing it on the ground at her hooves. “His name is Boulder.”

Fluttershy recoiled slightly.

Several seconds of silence fell over the assembled mares as everyone tried, and probably failed, to make sense of what it was they were seeing. Growing desperate, Twilight turned to Pinkie in the hopes that, somehow, the otherwise unfathomable mare would make sense of this situation.

She would be disappointed. Pinkie Pie simply threw a hoof into the air and squealed again. “This is gonna be the best, most awesome-fun week EVER! I can’t wait for us all to become bestest friends!”

Midnight’s voice snarled in Twilight’s mind. “Somehow, I doubt that.”

“The worst part?” Twilight thought, repressing the urge to sigh even as her friends gave off sheepish, awkward laughs and half-hearted agreements. “...I think I agree with you on that.”

Midnight hummed pleasantly at that but otherwise spoke no more.

The following interactions with Maud were not very different from the introduction. One of Twilight’s friends would step forward in an attempt to break the ice, bringing up what Pinkie had told them they had in common and then would be thoroughly disappointed when Maud put an incredibly boring or outlandish spin on it. Rainbow’s attempt had been particularly agitating, and Twilight’s confusion had soon given way to legitimate frustration.

She had poked Maud, citing that Pinkie said she enjoyed playing games. In response, Maud had explained in her bland way that she and Boulder sometimes played a game called ‘camouflage.’ She described it as being like hide and seek, but way more intense. Her eyes had even widened for a second as if she were making some half-hearted attempt at showing emotion.

Then Pinkie Pie doomed them all by insisting they play it as a group. In answer, Maud picked Boulder up and unceremoniously hurled him into the nearest collection of rocks she could find. From there, it was a simple matter of finding him and bringing him back to Maud. For the first ten minutes, it had actually been somewhat enjoyable for Twilight. Her admittedly limited knowledge of geology—and its aberrant big sister, rockology—had afforded her an academic angle in the game that she was only too happy to stretch out.

Then Rainbow had pointed out to her in a hushed tone that they were literally trying to find a rock in a pile of rocks, and any enjoyment faded away. She loved that mare to death, but sometimes Twilight wondered who the real killjoy between them was.

They had been going for a while now, and Twilight’s patience was beginning to run thin. She turned over yet another rock and peered underneath with a grimace. “Oh for the love of… Come on, Boulder, where are you? I wanna go home.”

There was nothing but dirt and a small centipede under the rock. Twilight set it back down and looked around, taking stock of the situation with the others. There was a general air of combined frustration or boredom amongst her friends, and she couldn’t say she blamed them. The only one who wasn’t in a sour mood by this point was none other than Pinkie Pie, who was, paradoxically, having the time of her life. She kept bringing rocks up to Maud to eagerly ask “is this him?!” before zipping off to find another one.

“Well, at least one of us is having fun,” Rainbow, who was next to Twilight, grumbled irritably under her breath. “I get the feeling Pinkie might be a little biased, here.”

“They’re sisters,” Twilight pointed out dryly. “Of course she’s biased. On the plus side, you know what that word means now.”

Rainbow paused, her muzzle scrunching up. “Wha… huh?”

Twilight giggled, stopping in place to lean into Rainbow’s side for a moment. She allowed the warmth of the pegasus to cool off her frayed temper before speaking. “It was back in the Empire, just after we got into the palace. You and I found that nice room and were getting ready for bed, and I remember us talking about how biased you were towards me, and how you didn’t know how science works.”

Rainbow’s eyes widened as the memory came back to her. “Holy… you remember that? That was years ago!”

“It was,” Twilight acknowledged, smiling gently at Rainbow. “But I also got all of my memories back a month ago. A lot of things you’ve totally forgotten are still really fresh to me. Plus...”

She gently took Rainbow’s hoof in hers, lifting it up. “That was the night after I finally admitted that I loved you… not just to you, but to myself. That night meant a lot to me…”

Rainbow’s lips curled up into a loving smile, and she squeezed Twilight’s hoof in turn. “Heh… fair enough. I kinda… I had other stuff on my mind that night, though…”

Twilight’s smile faltered. She remembered. She had been laying in a bed separate from Rainbow’s for a while until she had heard the barely-stifled whimpers. At the time, she had simply thought the stress of the situation and her fear for her family were the culprit, but in retrospect, she knew better. Rainbow had been carrying the weight of her contract with Sombra on her shoulders, a weight that had only made her already-guilty conscience so much worse.

On instinct, Twilight quickly leaned in to steal a quick kiss, making Rainbow stiffen up in surprise. When Twilight pulled back, she gave Rainbow a reassuring smile.

Before the two could say or do anything else, Maud’s voice rang through the area, raised only slightly. “I found him.”

Just like that, Twilight’s good mood evaporated. She turned back to Maud, one of her eyes twitching as Maud lifted what might as well have been just any old rock from the pile.

“Does that mean we’re done?” Applejack asked hopefully.

“Mhmm,” Maud acknowledged as she put her “pet” away.

“Unbelievable,” Midnight sneered. “Do I need to keep telling you how much of a waste of time this was?”

Twilight closed her eyes. “Don’t you have some way of entertaining yourself?”

“Well, I suppose it has been somewhat enjoyable watching you all dig your hooves through the dirt.”

“Forget I asked,” Twilight dismissed with a slow shake of her head before focusing back on Rainbow. The pegasus looked just as unamused as everypony else.

“Eee! Nice job, Maud! That was super fun,!” Pinkie declared, bouncing in place with her typical energy. “We should play again!”

Before Twilight could stop herself, the word came tearing past her lips. “NO!” She shouted, her voice carrying a lot more volume and intensity then she had meant.

Twilight’s ears folded back in shame as everypony turned to her with shocked eyes, all of them taken off guard by her sudden outburst. Spike, in particular, appeared anxious, his claws already lifting to hover over his chest. “Twi…?”

She blinked at him, her heart twisting in her chest. Quickly, she shook her head and put on an apologetic smile. “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to shout… Uh, I just, uh… I think it might be better if Rainbow and I took Spike back home,” she tried, though she knew her excuse sounded even weaker to her friends than it did to her. “We’ve been out here for a while, digging through the dirt and rocks. He could use a bath. We all could.”

Rainbow frowned. “Huh? Me too?”

Twilight lightly kicked her with a hind leg. “Yes Rainbow, you too.”

Rainbow leaned down and lifted a wing, taking a few experimental whiffs. Her eyes bulged in their sockets, and she visibly recoiled. “Ugh! Okay, yep, bath, gotcha,” she relented, quickly folding her wing tightly against her barrel to trap the offending odor.

“Aw, that’s okay,” Pinkie said with a wave. “You all go and get cleaned up! Maud and I will probably swing by some other time to hang out some more! You still have to hear her poems!”

“Eheh, yeah, that sounds… great,” Twilight said weakly, even as she was starting to take her leave. Rainbow was following close behind, though it was clear from her facial expression that she was tagging along out of concern for Twilight than out of any desire to leave her other friends. Spike came over as well, looking much the same.

“Have fun, girls!” Twilight called over to the rest of them before smiling at Maud. “And you, too, Maud.”

Maud didn’t answer. She just stared back at Twilight. Her gaze, despite carrying no discernible emotion, was yet again enough to make Twilight flinch back. It was all in the eyes… And whatever it was, it surely did not care for her.

Maud’s gaze remained locked on to Twilight, boring into her very soul, until the hills finally severed their line of sight and Twilight was alone with Rainbow and Spike.

The moment they were out of sight, Rainbow trotted ahead of Twilight and spun to face her, a disapproving look on her face. “Okay, Twi, what the heck was that?” she asked slowly.

“Anger issues again?” Spike ventured gingerly, placing a claw on Twilight’s shoulder for support.

Spotting her out, Twilight sighed and nodded down at him. “Y-yeah…” she said quietly.

Spike sighed, wrapping his claw around her leg in a side hug. Rainbow’s expression softened with concern. She took a step forward and placed a hoof on Twilight’s chest, staring into her eyes. “When’s the last time Luna talked to you?” she asked softly.

Twilight blinked, taken off guard. She had forgotten that Luna was supposed to be keeping in touch with her, and even more so that Rainbow was in on it. She took a second to rally her thoughts before she spoke up. “Um… not since the first time I brought it up.”

Rainbow nodded and withdrew her hoof. “Alright… do you want me to get her attention next time she pops into my head? Ya know, so she can help you out?”

For a fraction of a second, Twilight wanted to refuse. She was quick to shoot down that notion, reminding herself that Luna was genuinely trying to make amends for her past misconduct. She nodded. “Sure, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“For your sake?” Rainbow asked, taking a position by Twilight’s side and draping a wing over her withers. She gave Twilight a big smile. “Nothing’s too much trouble.”

Twilight relaxed, leaning into Rainbow’s side and basking in their shared body heat. She took a few quiet deep breaths, savoring the contact, before pulling back and nodding. “Thank you… Now, how about those baths?”

Rainbow blinked. “Wait, you were serious?”

Twilight giggled and lightly bumped her hip against Rainbow’s before walking forward again. “I just got a faceful of you and your aroma. And you got a good sniff earlier, remember?”

Rainbow sputtered incoherently for a moment before sighing and taking off after her, Spike close in tow. “Yeah, yeah, good point.”

The trio shared a small chuckle at that. Twilight was grateful for the moment of levity, eager to chase away her recent misstep, and that silent, unreadable stare from Maud.

Maud's Trust

The Golden Oak Library was, more often than not, a peaceful and quiet place. On most mornings, even the resident loudmouth pegasus was content to keep her voice down after she and Twilight got back from their routine runs. Combining that silence with the ever-present fresh, earthy smell that permeated the interior—not to mention the taste of Spike’s always fantastic cooking—and one would have a recipe for a very nice morning.

Twilight Sparkle was enjoying the quiet just then, her eyes glued to an old Daring Do book that floated in the air in front of her, courtesy of her magic. A plate of breakfast sat on the table in front of her, largely consisting of leftovers from the previous night. Spike had wandered out a short while ago to read his comics in the other room, leaving Twilight all on her own.

On most other occasions, Rainbow would already be up so that she and Twilight could go on their run. However, her work with the weather team the previous afternoon had, apparently, left her far more worn-out than usual. When Twilight had woken up, Rainbow was still sound asleep. The sight had been too adorable for Twilight to even think of disturbing it, and so, at the cost of missing a little exercise, she decided to let Rainbow sleep in today.

Thankfully, it was Rainbow’s day off.

“Woah no!”

Suddenly, the peaceful silence that Twilight had been enjoying was dashed against the stones when a loud crashing sound emanated from the living room alongside a loud, indignant squawk from a certain pegasus princess. Twilight paused with her fork halfway to her mouth and lifted her book to see what all the commotion was about.

Rainbow Dash had just crashed down the stairs, coming to a sprawled-out stop at their base. A lampshade had made its home on her head, somehow, and Twilight could just imagine a bunch of baby birds flying in circles around it.

“You okay there, Rainbow?” she called out, her voice a mix of concern and amusement.

“Yeah yeah, I’m fine, just… slipped,” Rainbow grumbled as she forced herself back to her hooves. She pried the lampshade off her head to reveal that her mane was still a mess from all of her tossing and turning, and dark bags were still situated under her eyes. “Guh…”

Twilight chuckled at that, setting her book off to one side. “You need to pay better attention in the mornings.”

Rainbow gave off some unintelligible grumbles as she stumbled into the dining room. Her eyes soon found the plate that had been set aside for her, and her stomach gave off a very loud, audible grumble. “Yeah, whatever. I hate mornings…”

Twilight laughed into her hoof as Rainbow staggered past. “Oh, trust me, I know. I remember how often I had to forcefully roll you out of bed in the first year we lived here,” she said, recalling several such instances, including the morning before Discord began his rampage.

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Rainbow growled as she took her plate. “Ugh… so, what’s the plan?”

Twilight blinked. She quickly took a bite out of her breakfast as Rainbow sat down before speaking up. “Uh, what do you mean?”

Rainbow gestured vaguely. “Ya know. Today. What are we doing? Is it just a lazy day, do we wanna go on a date, are we gonna go see Pinkie and Maud? What?”

“Go see Maud?” Midnight snarked. “Ah, yes, the biggest waste of time in this entire village.”

“If you could not talk,” Twilight snapped right back. “Ever.”

“I’m sure you’d love that, wouldn’t you?” Midnight asked with an audible sneer.

“It would be better than having to listen to you throwing your bile around every time something unpleasant comes up!”

“Well, then, with that compelling argument, I guess I will just have to say… no.”

Twilight resisted the urge to groan in frustration. She shook her head and focused on Rainbow, who was looking back at her in confusion. “I don’t know. Probably just take it easy. You worked yourself pretty hard yesterday, so it might be better for both of us if we stayed away from anything draining.”

“...Like Pinkie?”

“Like Pinkie.”

Rainbow hummed at that. “Meh. Can’t say I can argue with that,” she said before digging into her breakfast.

Twilight spent the next few hours relaxing. As soon as breakfast was done, she migrated out to the central room to read on the couch. To her surprise, but not to her displeasure, Rainbow Dash joined her to read over her shoulder after she got out of the shower. Every so often, one of them would talk about what was happening in the pages, reminiscing about some part or other of the older books. Spike kept to himself, for the most part, only occasionally making some cheeky remark about how he lived with a couple of nerds.

Alas, their quiet reading time eventually came to a sudden and unwelcome end when a series of sharp knocks was heard at their door. Twilight winced and glanced up at the source of the sudden sound, an irritated frown on her muzzle. “Ugh… who is that?” she asked, not hiding her annoyance at being interrupted.

Rainbow shrugged, hopping down from the couch. “I’ll get it.”

When Rainbow opened the door, Twilight blinked in surprise at the sight of none other than Pinkie Pie standing on the other side with an enormous grin on her face. Maud Pie stood behind her, staring up at the branches overhead with expressionless eyes. Twilight was sure there was an emotion in there somewhere, but she just couldn’t see it.

“Hi, Dashie!” Pinkie chirped enthusiastically, bouncing once in place for emphasis.

Rainbow leaned back, surprised. “Oh! Uh, hey, Pinkie… We weren’t expecting you,” she said awkwardly, her eyes darting over to Maud. “And you brought your sister, too.”

“Of course she did,” Midnight snarled. “She couldn’t just take the hint and leave us be, could she? The oblivious idiot.”

Twilight was unable to keep her coat from bristling at that remark. Barely biting back a snarl, she shoved a bookmark into the novel and set it aside. She looked down to hide her face from the others so she could scowl without incident. “Don’t talk about my friends like that!”

“What are you going to do about it?” Midnight asked with an infuriatingly audible smug smirk. “Yell at me? Cause a scene? Throw some more denials onto that impressive pile you’ve been hoarding?”

“Shut UP!”

Midnight cackled between Twilight’s ears, a sinister sound of sadistic enjoyment. She did not, however, speak up again, allowing that harrowing sound to roll up and down Twilight’s spine like an army of ants.

She took a few deep breaths and looked up, focusing on the new arrivals. Rainbow had just stepped aside, allowing Pinkie and Maud to step inside unobstructed. Pinkie was in the middle of speaking to Rainbow in a long, excited spiel.

“So then I thought—gasp!—it would be really good to have Maud see all of Twilight’s books and stuff! She’s super into poetry and literature and stuff, and so is Twilight, and so I thought that, in the right environment, the two could totally hit it off! And what better place than the place where you keep all of the books?!”

“I mean… I guess?” Rainbow answered, glancing over at Twilight with a hopeless look. “You, uh, ya gonna help me out here?”

Twilight nodded and stood up. “Sure. Good to see you Pinkie, Maud.”

“Hey, Twi!” Pinkie chirped, waving enthusiastically.

“Hello.” Maud deadpanned.

Twilight’s eye twitched once. She cleared her throat and put on a small smile. “Well, Pinkie went through all this effort… might as well humor her. Besides, I didn’t exactly get a good chance to talk to Maud about the things I like last time we met… Maybe she’ll surprise me?”

“Or you’ll just be let down again,” Midnight quipped. “Which seems far more likely to me.”

“Well, that’s my call to make,” Twilight shot back, resisting the urge to snort. “So just shut up and let me do my thing.”

“Tch. Fine.”

With that disgruntled resignation, Midnight withdrew again, allowing Twilight to focus entirely on Maud and Pinkie. “So, Maud… Pinkie Pie keeps saying you’re into poetry and literature? Have you ever read anything by Quill and Ink? Or Flourish Prose?” she asked, trying to keep her hopes tempered.

Maud glanced over at a nearby shelf. “I prefer to read my own poetry,” she said bluntly.

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “You write poetry?”

“She sure does!” Pinkie declared, bouncing over to where Spike was still sitting. He had lowered his comic and was simply watching the scene unfold. Pinkie leaned down and whispered to him loud enough for the whole room to hear. “You should totally pay attention, Spike! Maud’s poetry is the best!”

Twilight gave Spike a pitying smile before focusing on Maud. It was poetry. How bad could it be? “Well, I’d love to hear some.”

Rainbow looked to Twilight with an uncertain look. “Uh, you sure that’s-”

Too late. Maud had begun.

“Ahem.

Rock. You are a rock.

Grey. You are grey.

Like a rock.

Which you are.

Rock.”

A heavy silence fell over the room, punctuated only by Pinkie’s enthusiastic, if quiet, clapping.

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “...What was that?” she asked skeptically.

“A poem,” Maud answered.

“You sure?” Spike questioned, scratching the side of his head. “I mean, I’m not an expert or anything, but it just kinda sounded more like a string of factual statements than a poem… does that count?”

“It totally does!” Pinkie answered for Maud.

Maud nodded. “I’ve written thousands.”

Twilight felt her heart skip a beat at that word. Thousands. As in plural. More than a single thousand. More than ten sets of one hundred.

“This next one is about rocks,” Maud said. “They’re all about rocks.”

“Okay, I take it back,” Midnight suddenly piped up. “Watching this train wreck is amazing.”

What felt like an entire geological shift later, Twilight thumped down tiredly at the dining room table, a distant, hollow look on her face. She and Rainbow had both excused themselves from the living room after Maud’s seventh poem recital, much to Midnight’s protests. Somehow, the little inner voice had taken a perverse amount of pleasure in the spectacle.

It was probably because it made Twilight uncomfortable, and that was practically food for Midnight’s soul.

Putting thoughts of her inner demon aside, Twilight quickly downed a glass of water in an effort to refresh her senses. “My brain feels like gravel,” she mumbled when she was done, setting the glass down to one side.

“That’s a type of rock,” Rainbow murmured to her left before downing some of her own.

“It’s a lot of small rocks added together,” Twilight corrected with a snort.

“Oh, good, even better,” Rainbow drawled, thumping her face down onto the kitchen counter. Her next words came through muffled. “Because the last thing we need is more rocks.”

“Rocks, rocks, rocks,” Twilight agreed, laying her head down on its side to stare at the wall. “So many rocks…”

“I dunno, you guys, it—heh—it didn’t seem that bad to me,” Spike commented from the entrance, trying and failing to stifle a series of amused snickers.

Twilight turned her attention to Spike, pouting at him. “Yes, because you were watching our brains melt, not listening to Maud’s poetry recital.”

Spike shrugged his shoulders.

“And for once, the little brat and I are in agreement on something,” Midnight chuckled in a surprisingly light tone.

“Shut up,” came Twilight’s immediate rebuke.

The trio spent a short time in silence after that. Spike came forward and took a seat off to Twilight’s right, his smile fading away in favor of a neutral look. He briefly eyed Twilight, and for a moment, she was worried she had let some of her irritation from Midnight slip through. Luckily, he did not press the matter for now.

Rainbow sighed and sat upright, a bewildered frown on her face. “Honestly, I’m having a hard time believing that those two are related,” she said, gesturing vaguely at the door. “I mean, Pinkie Pie is the most hyper thing I have ever met, but Maud’s, like, the total opposite of that.”

“I see what you’re getting at,” Twilight agreed with a grimace. The sheer gap between Pinkie Pie’s behavior and Maud’s was staggering, to put it mildly. Where one would go springing around the room and squealing her fuzzy pink head off, the other would just… stand there. Maybe she’d even blink, if fate was feeling generous. Perhaps offer a one or two word acknowledgement that, yes, there was in fact something happening, and then go on to either admire the local geology or recite poetry about it. Probably.

To be fair, Twilight reminded herself, they were essentially grasping at straws here. They had known Maud for all of two days, and only spent a collective couple of hours with her. There was a pretty good chance that Maud had a lot more to her, and that Twilight simply hadn’t seen it yet. Pinkie certainly seemed to think that Maud was wonderful in almost every sense…

But at the same time, Pinkie had a penchant for exaggeration…

“Meh,” Rainbow grumbled after a moment, resting her chin in her hoof. “That mare is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an igneous.”

“Enigma,” Twilight corrected automatically.

“No. I mean igneous. It’s a type of rock.”

“Ah, there it is,” Twilight thought with a groan, placing a hoof on her head in a futile bid to quell her rising headache. “Oh, please, no, not more rocks…” she complained.

In response to her complaint, somepony cleared their throat from the doorway.

Startled, Twilight sat bolt upright to find Maud Pie standing in the doorway, staring at them with that ever unreadable expression on her face.

“Holy cow, that mare’s quiet!” Twilight exclaimed internally. How had Maud managed to sneak up on them so quietly?!

Rainbow was similarly startled. She spun in her seat to look at Maud with wide eyes. Her face quickly contorted into a crooked smile when she saw who it was. “Oh, hey, Maud. How, uh… how did you sneak up on us?”

“Please,” Maud dismissed bluntly. Twilight blinked. Did she just...

Before Twilight had a chance to ponder the word choice, Maud stepped up to the chair directly across from her. She glanced down and gestured at it. “May I?”

Twilight blinked a few times, her mind taking a second to catch up. She nodded. “Oh, uh, sure, yeah, make yourself comfortable.”

Maud sat down, her eyes fixing themselves to Twilight. “I was hoping to talk to you. Without Pinkie listening in.”

“Huh?” Spike asked, mirroring Twilight’s thoughts. “Why not? And where is she, anyway? That pony’s practically been glued to your side since you showed up.”

“Because she won’t like what I need to say,” Maud replied, never taking her eyes off of Twilight. “And I asked her to go talk to the rest of your friends. She wants us to all spend some ‘one-on-one’ time together. To help us click.”

“Huh. And you just abused that plan to be alone with us?” Rainbow asked, leaning back in her seat.

“Yes,” Maud answered bluntly.

Twilight swallowed heavily. What could Maud possibly have to talk about with her that Pinkie Pie wouldn’t like? Well, a lot of things, probably. But for her to dislike it enough that her own big sister felt the need to send her away first? Red flags began to go up in her head, and she had a hard time keeping her sudden feeling of unease from showing on her face.

“So, uh… w-what do you want to talk about, then?”

Maud stared at Twilight for several long seconds, her eyes narrowing with a visual emotion. Suspicion.

“I know about what happened in Canterlot.”

Twilight’s heart skipped a beat, a horrible feeling of coldness swelling outward from her core. She swallowed again, her ears lowering. Of course Maud had heard. Hay, Twilight wouldn’t be surprised if all of Equestria knew about her Fall and the disaster that followed in her wake. It hadn’t exactly been a secret event, and all of the memories she had stolen of her abhorrent actions had been returned to their rightful owners… not to mention her victims had numbered in the dozens.

It had been a hair’s breadth away from being so much worse...

Even if word of the event hadn’t spread to every corner of Equestria by now, this was Pinkie Pie’s sister. And unless the secret was a surprise party, there was not a chance in Tartarus that Pinkie could keep anything secret from those she cared about for long. She just didn’t have the fortitude or patience to do it.

Twilight coughed weakly into her hoof, looking away from Maud in shame. “I… r-right, of course you do… W-what did you hear?” she asked, hoping against hope that maybe Maud’s knowledge of the disaster was blown out of proportion.

“What does ‘blown out of proportion’ even mean in this context?” Midnight asked with a surprisingly calm tone. “You stole the memories from dozens of ponies, causing immense psychological pain to all of them in the process, including a princess of Equestria. And, if Luna’s recounting of the aftermath is anything to go by, many of those ponies have been having nightmares about it. I don’t know what proportions that could reasonably be blown up to without entering the realms of unbelievable absurdity.”

“I heard from Pinkie Pie that you turned evil,” Maud explained bluntly. “That you turned into somepony called ‘Midnight Sparkle,’ and went on a rampage through Canterlot, stealing memories from innocent ponies.”

Twilight looked down, the chill in her veins growing worse. “I… y-yeah, that’s about right,” she confessed with a sigh.

“Is this why you’ve been so worried about Pinkie?” Rainbow asked gently, leaning forward slightly. “I mean, I can’t say I’d blame you, if so. It… it wasn’t exactly pretty.”

“That, and more,” Maud confirmed. “I’ve actually been worried about her off and on since she moved to Ponyville. But this was the last straw. I had to come make sure she was really going to be okay around you.”

“You don’t exactly seem worried,” Spike noted. “I mean, you’re always kinda… blunt? Dull? Boring?”

“Spike!” Twilight chastised lightly, though there wasn’t very much energy in her voice.

Maud shook her head. “No. He’s right. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I don’t exactly express my enthusiasm in the same way as my sister. That doesn’t mean that I don’t care, though,” she said before catching Twilight’s gaze again. “And I’m really worried about her being around you. She kept telling me in her letters that you were fine now, and that everything was going back to normal. But that’s not true, is it?”

Twilight opened her mouth to try and assure Maud that yes, everything was in fact fine. However, the words would not come. How could she say them when they would be little more than lies? She licked her lips and looked down, her shame building. “...No, not entirely,” she eventually confessed, bringing a hoof up to rub at her shoulder.

Maud’s gaze intensified considerably.

Before Twilight could speak up about it, though, Rainbow suddenly spoke up, leaning forward. “W-well, she’s been having some anger issues lately. It’s a side effect from what happened. But we’re helping her work through it, bit by bit!”

“Yeah,” Spike added, pumping a fist in the air. “She’s kinda grouchy, but we’re here to keep her calm and down to earth.”

Twilight looked back and forth between the two of them, taken aback by the sudden outbursts of support. A few seconds passed before a tender smile graced her lips. Of course they were standing up for her… why wouldn’t they?

“I noticed the anger issues,” Maud said, nodding at Rainbow. “Back when we were playing camouflage. Pinkie was worried about you after you all left, you know. They all were.”

“Of course she was,” Twilight lamented, a sickening feeling building up in her gut.

“It’s a mess,” Rainbow conceded after a moment, her earlier bravado simmering down to something more somber. “I’m not gonna lie to you, Maud, it’s all kinds of messed up. But I wasn’t kidding when I said we’re doing our best to help her out.”

“And besides, Midnight’s gone now,” Spike pointed out. “So, little outbursts of frustration aside, she’s basically back to her old self! Everything is going to be fine, you’ll see!”

Maud looked between them all for several seconds, her expression softening somewhat. A few seconds later, she focused on Twilight again. “...Is there anything else?” she asked slowly. “Anything else that I should know about?”

Twilight swallowed heavily. A few seconds later, she opened her mouth and spoke. “No. Nothing important, at least.”

Maud studied her for what felt like an eternity. Eventually, she nodded and slowly stood back up. “Okay.”

Rainbow blinked. “Huh? What, is that it?”

“Yes.”

Twilight watched maud rise in abject confusion. She had been expecting some long-winded speech about how Pinkie meant the world to her, and how if Twilight ever hurt her, there would be a reckoning or something; overprotective big sister stuff, but no. Maud was just getting up and walking away.

“Why?” She asked before she had a chance to think better of it.

Maud paused in the doorway. “Because Pinkie Pie trusts her friends,” she said a moment later. She glanced back over her shoulder. “And I trust her.”

She didn’t wait for anypony to reply. Without another word, Maud stepped out of the dining room, vanishing from sight. A few seconds later, the sound of a door opening and closing rang through the library, plunging everything into a heavy silence.

Author's Notes:

Fun fact: I totally got the idea for Maud to be suspicious of Twilight from the following comment.

It was a good idea and I decided to run with it as a sort of sub-plot for this part of the story. :)

Rock Wall

For the remainder of the day, Twilight found herself struggling to focus. Her confrontation with Maud—and all of Midnight’s subsequent comments about her past actions in Canterlot—left her distraught and distracted. Rainbow and Spike had caught on pretty quickly and were always moving to either cheer her up or, at the very least, make sure she didn’t forget that she wasn’t alone.

Their efforts were successful, by and large. Though they were unable to undo her fears and anxieties, they were, at least, able to make her feel not so overwhelmed by them. Their presence and affections grounded her in reason, allowing her to tackle her anxieties one at a time and with a clear head.

The night eventually came, and Twilight was thankful for a dreamless slumber. No nightmares haunted her, and when she woke up, though it was far from the most restful sleep she had ever had, she nevertheless felt ready to move on and take on whatever the new day brought to the table.

She opened her eyes when, at last, she felt the warmth of the sun washing over her face. The light of morning streamed in from between the blinds, casting the silent room into shades of orange and yellow. Twilight gave off a quiet yawn before nuzzling into the back of Rainbow’s head, the pegasus held to her chest in Twilight’s hooves.

“Mmph. Is it morning already?” Rainbow mumbled, stirred awake by Twilight’s ministrations.

“Looks that way,” Twilight replied, lifting her head from Rainbow’s mane to look at the window again.

“Guh. I don’t want it,” Rainbow lamented. She rolled over and buried her face into the pillow with an indignant huff. “Go tell mom to put it away.”

“But she’s your mom,” Twilight pointed out with a roll of her eyes. “Not mine. You tell her.”

“But then I’d have to fly and stuff. I don’t wanna move.”

“Well, you can take one of three options here,” Twilight reasoned with a playful giggle. “You can either A, Fly up to Canterlot to request that Celestia put the sun down for another few minutes, all of which you would then use up on the flight back, B, lay here and ignore the day, or C, get up on time.”

“Twilight?” Rainbow said, turning her head just enough to glare at the alicorn from the pillow.

“Yes?”

“You suck.”

Twilight giggled again. She gave Rainbow another affectionate nuzzle. “And yet you’re dating me,” she said in a teasing voice. “Who sucks more? The sucker, or the sucker who dates her?”

“The purple egghead who’s teasing me.”

“And that is a fair point,” Twilight conceded.

The two fell into blissful silence after that, simply enjoying the warmth of the other while along with the slowly growing heat of day. Every so often, they drifted into idle chatter, being sure to keep their voices down to not disturb Spike. Eventually, though, they had to get up. The day wasn’t going to wait for them, no matter how much they may have wanted it to.

Twilight was up first, as Rainbow insisted on another ‘five minutes,’ or, as Twilight had long ago translated into ponish, ‘until Twilight makes me get up.’ Not that she minded. She took the chance to hop into the shower and be alone with her thoughts for a little while. Her mind inevitably wandered back to Maud and Pinkie, and what the excitable one of the two was bound to try and make them do to bond with Maud.

Of course, she knew that Pinkie had gone off yesterday to meet with each of their friends one by one, hoping to make them bond with Maud via one-on-one time. In fact, unless Twilight was mistaken, that had been the whole point of bringing Maud to the library and having her recite rock poems for a while.

“Such a shame it didn’t work out,” Midnight sneered from the depths of Twilight’s thoughts.

She scowled and closed her eyes, trying to drown out the voice in her head with the white noise of the shower.

“Why are you ignoring me?” Midnight asked ‘innocently.’ “You know I’m right. She wasn’t even here to be friendly with you, but to interrogate you!”

“She’s just worried about her sister!” Twilight bit back, her teeth grinding together behind her lips. “And with you still hanging around, she has every right to be!”

“She doesn’t even know about me!” Midnight countered with an audible roll of her eyes. “But I suppose that makes sense. She’s worried for her poor, sweet, delusional, and willfully-ignorant sister. The one who can’t see the monster her friend turned into.”

“The only monster here is YOU!”

Twilight shuddered as an unnatural chill crawled down her spine from the base of her neck. It was horrible, like a malevolent grasper was reaching for the base of her tail and making sure to slither all along her body on the way for the sole intention of making her uncomfortable in her skin.

Then, for just an instant, a pair of ghostly eyes flashed at her through the darkness of her eyelids. “What’s the difference?”

A series of deafening booms filled Twilight’s ears, making her heart skip a beat and land in her throat. Her eyes snapped wide open, the unnatural chill in her body growing infinitely worse. She took a series of deep breaths, trying to calm herself down from the sudden onset of anxiety she had just undergone.

The booms came again, now recognizable as a series of knocks on the door. A moment later, she heard it open just a crack before Spike’s voice came through. “Uh, Twilight? You gonna come out of there anytime soon? You’re gonna use up all the hot water.”

Twilight blinked. Use up all the hot water? She hadn’t been in the shower for all that long, had she? She poked her head out from the curtains to look at the baby dragon. “What are you talking about? I’ve only been in here for a few minutes.”

Spike raised an eyebrow. “Um, no? Twi, you’ve been in there for over half an hour. Rainbow’s already up and waiting for her turn.”

Twilight blinked again, her mind taking a second to register that fact. Glancing behind the dragon, she could just make out the brighter glow of light from the bedroom beyond. There was no denying it. Somehow she had quite literally lost track of time.

“But how? It hasn’t felt like that long! A few minutes at most!”

She nodded her head a moment later, a lump forming in her throat. Now that she thought about it, this wasn’t the first time she had experienced a moment like this. She recalled a moment mere days after she had gotten her memories back when Spike had gone for groceries, and before she had even noticed, he had been back for a while.

“Is this a side effect of Midnight?” she wondered to herself, a pit of dread forming in her gut. “To make me lose time? To lose myself in my head?”

A few seconds passed before Twilight shook her head and shut off the flow of water. It didn’t matter. Not now, at least. “Sorry, Spike,” she called as she stepped out, reaching for a towel with her magic. “I guess I got lost in my head.”

A bit of an understatement, but not a lie in the slightest.

Spike raised an eyebrow. “Again? You okay?”

“I’ll be okay,” Twilight assured him with a small smile. “Go let Rainbow know I’ll be out in a bit, okay?”

Spike eyed her for a moment longer before slipping out, closing the door behind him. Once she was alone again, Twilight released a heavy sigh, lifting a hoof to rub at the bridge of her nose. What other nasty tricks was Midnight going to pull on her? It was worrying to ponder. Especially if Twilight wasn’t able to quell her little inner demon. If Midnight managed to egg her on enough, spur her to enough rage and anger...

She quickly shook her head, dispelling the notion. It would do her no good to dwell on such a hypothetical scenario. Midnight’s influence, while agitating, was mercifully limited. Twilight just had to focus on ignoring her and finding her peace, as Luna said, and soon enough, these little bouts of personal insanity would end. Midnight would not get any new powers to lord over her or dictate her actions. She wouldn’t.

“But what if…”

Twilight again shook the thought away. Once she was dry, she slipped from the bathroom to the sight of Rainbow waiting impatiently on the bed, looking about as tousled and unkempt as she usually did when she first woke up. The pegasus smiled on seeing Twilight emerge. “Finally! Did ya save any hot water for me?” she asked as she leaped from the bed.

Twilight nodded, hiding her worries behind a smile of her own. “There should be some left for you, sleeping beauty.”

“Hardy har,” Rainbow mock-laughed back as she passed, lightly thwacking Twilight upside the head with the back of her wing. “Spike’s making breakfast downstairs. Go eat something.”

“Right, I will!” Twilight replied just as Rainbow vanished into the bathroom.

She made her way downstairs, and her nostrils were met with the ever-stimulating scent of Spike’s cooking. She followed the smell like a bloodhound and soon found the drake working away in the kitchen.

He glanced over at her. “Well well, look who finally came back from the realm of eternal rain!” he chirped in greeting.

“I get it, I lost track of time!” Twilight shot back with a roll of her eyes. “Ya don’t need to rub it in.”

“Actually, I kinda do,” Spike countered without missing a beat. “I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t, and it’s all part of that sprainbow therapy!”

Twilight’s expression flattened into a deadpan. “This again? What even is sprainbow therapy? I mean, I know it’s supposed to be therapy for me from you and Dashie, but what’s the format? What are the principles? What are the moral and ethical guidelines? Did either of you take the time to figure all of that out?”

Spike’s lips curled up into perhaps the cheekiest grin she had seen on his face yet. And it scared her.

“Why, I am so glad you asked! Because yes, as a matter of fact, we did!”

Twilight’s jaw dropped. “What? How?! WHEN?!”

“To answer your questions in order, with a lot of patience from me and grumbling from Dash, and when you weren’t looking,” Spike replied before holding his head up with pride. “And I think I like the end result.”

Twilight’s eye twitched. “Oh yeah? Well, go on then,” she said, stalking over to the dining room table and taking a seat. “Tell me about it.”

Spike turned to Twilight and lifted a claw. “The practice of sprainbow therapy is founded on three core principles. Principle one, you need Spike the dragon, Twilight Sparkle, and Princess Rainbow Dash. Principle two, Spike and Rainbow Dash then tease and harass Twilight wherever they get the chance.”

Twilight’s expression flattened. “Gee, that sounds so therapeutic.”

Spike lifted the third claw. “And third, we don’t let her forget that she isn’t alone. We let her know she can always count on us to listen to her and lift her spirits however we can, whenever we can.”

Twilight snorted. That was about as cheesy as could be expected. Nevertheless, she smiled at him. “Well, while your methods are a bit… questionable,” she said slowly, leaning back and holding her head up as if she were a professor at an upper-class university. “I cannot say I can totally argue with your results.”

“And that,” Spike declared before turning back to his cooking. “Is the whole point.”

Rainbow came down to join the duo soon enough, and Twilight took some time to grill both of them on the finer points of this ‘sprainbow therapy’ practice that Spike had actually taken the time to organize and define. Spike was happy to go into detail, but there was no end of mildly-disgruntled grumbling from Rainbow.

Though she loved to tease Twilight to no end, she didn’t like trying to codify it like this. Too ‘eggheady,’ as she had eloquently put it. Spike, on the other hoof, had decided to sit down with Dash and get it all sorted purely so that they could have it on hoof to show Twilight that their affectionate teasing and whatnot came with due diligence and proper procedure. While it was invariably a joke as a result, Twilight could still appreciate the effort, at least.

Though that did nothing to make the constant jokes about her lack of cooking skills any less annoying. She could learn how to cook whenever she wanted! Seriously!

Eventually, their discussion wound down, and the trio was content to enjoy their breakfast in peace. When it was all gone, they remained at the table, happily chatting away the morning, enjoying some time to themselves. That was until a knocking came to the door. Twilight looked up from a book she had pried from the shelves and turned toward the sound. “Huh?”

“I got it,” Spike said, hopping down and making his way out of the room. Twilight watched him go before turning back to Rainbow.

“Who do you think it is?” Twilight asked curiously.

The pegasus shrugged her shoulders. “Meh. Dunno. Probably Pinkie, though, if I had to guess. She’s been kinda off-the-wall active lately.”

Twilight frowned, turning her attention back to the living room. “Yeah… she has,” she said, her tone dropping somewhat. Her thoughts began to wander to her conversation with Maud again.

Rainbow’s expression soured. “Twi?”

Twilight was quick to cast aside the thought. She shook her head and smiled at Rainbow.

Before either of them could speak any further, an unexpected sight made itself known in the form of Spike returning to the room with a trio of mares following close behind him. Twilight leaned back in surprise at the sight of Fluttershy, Rarity, and Applejack stepping forward.

“Girls,” Twilight greeted, genuinely stunned by the sudden arrival. And so early in the day, too. “What are you all doing here?”

Applejack frowned, taking the lead of the pack. “Howdy, Twi, RD. Er… We all know it’s kinda early and all, but we were wonderin’ if y’all had a little bit of time to talk about somethin’.”

Rainbow craned her head back to look at the others with a knowing frown. “Lemme guess. Maud?”

Rarity blinked. “How did you- Oh, hum. I suppose it’s not exactly hard to deduce, is it?” she asked, her snout wrinkling.

“Should we really be talking about this when Pinkie isn’t here?” Fluttershy asked meekly, her ears drooping. “I mean… it’s her sister.”

Applejack sighed, turning to her. “Ah know it ain’t exactly upfront of us, but y’all and Ah both know that if Pinkie were here, she’d never let us really get goin’...”

Twilight raised a hoof like a foal in school, for she had a question. “Uh, excuse me. What are we talking about?” she asked.

Applejack turned back to her, her brow furrowing. “Well… Pinkie and Maud went round Ponyville all of yesterday. Did ya know that?”

“I recall Maud mentioning that she sent Pinkie to talk to all of you about ‘one on one time’,” Twilight said slowly. “But I didn’t know if they actually committed to it.”

“Oh, they did,” Rarity said, stepping toward the table. “Would you all mind if I sat down?”

“Oh, not at all,” Twilight said, gesturing to the empty chair.

Rarity took the seat with a relieved sigh. “Whew. Thank you, dear.”

“So, Pinks and Maud went to see you all yesterday,” Rainbow recounted, leaning back casually in her chair. “And how did that go?”

Several seconds passed in a tense, awkward silence. Twilight’s eyes flitted from one face to another, and she saw some variation of the same thing on all of them. Not one of these mares had established a meaningful connection with Maud, did they?

“Bad, got it,” Spike said what everypony was thinking with his customary bluntness.

Fluttershy shied back. “Well, bad might be a bit extreme… Maybe, a teensy bit underwhelming?”

“That’s a word to use,” Applejack muttered.

“Darlings, please,” Rarity gently scolded. She took a deep breath before meeting Twilight’s gaze. “Yes, it was… less than ideal. Pinkie had hoped that one-on-one time would suffice to bring us all closer, help us connect more, and see the things we have in common with her more clearly. For example, she brought Maud to my boutique in the hopes that we could connect over our shared sense of fashion, or so she claimed.”

“Didn’t go great, I’m guessing,” Spike said.

Rarity sighed, resting her face in her hooves. “I know she doesn’t mean anything by it, but the mare’s tastes are just… incomprehensible to me. I mean, when I volunteered to make a lovely new outfit for her, she just pointed at a dish towel—a dirty dish towel—and said she’d take that! I mean,” she shot up with an aghast look on her face. “Far be it from me to offend Pinkie’s sister, but goodness gracious, Maud, it looked like it fell in the dirt! And heavens save you if you even attempt to have a conversation with her on the finer nuances of fashion design!”

Rainbow cringed. “Youch. I mean, I’m no fashion geek or anything, but a dish towel?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. “That’s a bit weird even for me.”

“You at least know stylish when you see it,” Rarity said, planting her face in her hooves again. “You only really lack an understanding of subtlety.”

“I can vouch for that,” Spike agreed.

Twilight thrust her hoof into the air again. “I second that.”

Rainbow pouted at the two with her cheeks puffing up and a tiny red tint coming to her cheeks. “Do ya gotta? Right now? When the others are right there?”

Twilight smirked playfully at her other half. “Oh, please, tell me that there is a better time.”

“You are disgustingly sweet to that moron, you know that?” Midnight asked with a gagging noise.

Twilight’s smile twitched, but she otherwise did not respond.

Rainbow’s wings ruffled in annoyance before she turned to Fluttershy. “Okay, Fluttershy, be my bell here. What was your time with Maud like?”

Fluttershy tilted her head, looking confused. “Your… bell?”

“As in saved by the bell,” Spike clarified. “She wants you to change the subject.”

“Oh. Okay,” Fluttershy agreed with a warm smile before clearing her throat. “Ahem. Well… my time with Maud wasn’t so bad. She went along with me while I walked a forest trail around the edge of town. A lot of my little animal friends tend to relax around there, so I can spend time with them and hear about anything I should know about deeper in the woods.”

“Sounds relaxin’,” Applejack noted.

Fluttershy nodded. “Oh, yes, very relaxing,” she confirmed before her smile faded. “Maud was quiet for the most part, just following along. When I saw her looking at a particularly scary-looking spider, I told her all about how they’re actually very sweet and helpful, and keep other, more dangerous insects away.”

“Huh. So she actually was interested in the wildlife?” Twilight asked in surprise. Of course, if anypony was capable of connecting with Maud, it would be-

“No. she was looking at the rock it was standing on.”

Absolutely none of them. It was official, Twilight decided. They were doomed.

“Go figure,” Rainbow snorted in dismay.

Fluttershy sighed. “I honestly should have known. She’s going to that big university about rockology, so of course, she’d be more interested in the rock then the spider,” she lamented. “If I just knew something about rockology or even geology, then maybe I could have struck up a conversation and held it.”

“Rockology, geology,” Spike parroted before lifting his head. “Is there a difference?”

Twilight leaned forward. “A bit, yes. Geology is the science that deals with the physical characteristics and substance of the world, its natural history, and the forces that act on it. This heavily involves rock formations and minerals. Rockology is similar but exceptionally more in-depth and technical. It’s not just about the physical characteristics and the forces that act on them, it’s also the forces they exert back on the world. It’s a science heavily used when using magic crystals to create enchantments since you need to know exactly how the crystal will react to what magic to create your desired effect.”

Spike nodded along slowly. “Okay, okay… I think I get you… I think… maybe.”

“Well, it definitely flew over mah head,” Applejack said. “Just like most things about Maud. When Pinkie brought her over, Ah thought it’d be good to have her help me make up a batch of apple cider. Ya know how easy it is to chat it up with somepony when yer cookin’ together, right?”

“I know that,” Spike agreed before glancing at Twilight. “Twilight, though-”

“You can stop right there, buster,” Twilight shot him down with a saccharine smile before he could finish that sentence.

Applejack chuckled at the bit of banter before shaking her head. “Well, try as Ah might, ah just couldn’t hold a discussion with her. She just didn’t talk much. One or two words… Ah even gave her the easy part of peelin’ the apples. Not a lotta attention goin’ into that part. But, well… Ah guess they peel things differently on the rock farm, cause she just took a rock and beat the thing into a literal pulp!”

Twilight blinked in shock. “She beat it?!”

“Yup. When Maud was done, there weren’t no apple left, just a smear o’ juice soakin’ into the table. Left a mighty impressive stain, too.”

“So suffice it to say,” Rarity picked up, lifting her face from her hooves again. “None of us had a particularly stellar time trying to bond one-on-one with Maud.”

“And Pinkie Pie’s still goin’ on and on ‘bout sharin’ this friendship necklace tradition with us…” Applejack added.

“But we’re just not sure we’re really friends with Maud,” Fluttershy finished with a solemn frown. “Even when we all really tried…”

Applejack stepped forward, adjusting her hat on her head. “And that’s why we came here to y’all. We were hopin’ that maybe y’all saw somethin’ we missed, and had a better time with her. Maybe give us some insights or somethin’?”

Twilight and Rainbow shared a glance.

“Oh, boy,” Rainbow grimaced. “You wanna recount it, or should I?”

“I will,” Twilight volunteered, though she felt uncomfortable doing so. She took a deep breath before shifting to face the others directly. “Maud did come by here yesterday before she met with all of you. And… well… I don’t think she was planning on being friends with me.”

Rarity blinked. “How do you mean?”

Twilight fidgeted anxiously in place for a moment, wrestling with her thoughts. She took another breath before she went on. “You see, before she sent Pinkie to talk to all of you, Maud recited a bunch of poems she wrote to me, and, while they were all structurally fine, they were all about rocks. I couldn’t find much to say about them. So already, there was a bit of a disconnect. But then…”

She adjusted her wings and looked down. “She sent Pinkie off to talk to you, and used that time to… confront me.”

Fluttershy gasped. “Confront you?! About what?!”

“About… Midnight,” Twilight eventually forced the words out, a chill racing down her spine.

A heavy silence fell over the room. Everypony glanced between themselves for several seconds, only adding to Twilight’s growing discomfort. She tried to continue, but all that came were false starts and worthless workings of her jaw. Finally, Rainbow saw fit to save her and picked up the tale.

“See, that was the incident that drove her to come here in the first place,” Rainbow said, gesturing vaguely. “To Ponyville, I mean. Maud heard about what happened with Twilight, about what she did when she was Midnight, and she was scared that Pinkie might have made friends with a dangerous pony. She more or less admitted to keeping an eye on Twilight specifically, watching her like a hawk the whole time. And when we were alone, she interrogated Twilight to make sure she wasn’t going to be a problem to Pinkie or something.”

Applejack sighed, sliding her hat off. “Aw, shoot. Ah can’t really blame her fer that, honestly…”

“Indeed,” Rarity agreed with a slow nod. “I say this with no offense meant to you, Twilight, but if I heard that Sweetie Belle was close friends with somepony who I knew had committed horrible crimes, I would certainly be worried for her until I could take her friend’s measure for myself.”

Fluttershy frowned. “Zephyr didn’t have many friends when we were growing up… but most of them were a lot like him… and not in good ways.”

Spike raised an eyebrow. “That guy has good qualities?”

“Spike!” Twilight chastised lightly.

“He’s stupid, stubborn, lazy, and clueless,” Rainbow said bluntly before meeting Fluttershy’s gaze in understanding. “But he’s not a bad pony. But Zephyr’s not the point here.”

“Right…” Applejack agreed, turning her attention to Twilight again. “So, judgin’ from all that, Ah’m guessin’ y’all didn’t hit it off once ya showed her ya ain’t a threat?”

“Not a threat, huh?” Midnight mused absently. “Hm. That’s an idea time will test.”

“If you lay a single hoof on them…!”

Midnight laughed at that. “Lay a hoof on them? Oh, heavens no. Why would I ever do that? After all… they’re your friends.”

Twilight shuddered before sighing and shaking her head, both in answer to Applejack’s question and to dismiss Midnight from her thoughts for the time being.

“Ugh… I just feel so helpless, dears!” Rarity complained, throwing her head back as if to shout at the heavens. “Pinkie Pie is going to such lengths to try and have us bond with her sister. And I want to, heaven knows I want to!”

“But we’ve all tried,” Applejack lamented.

“And we’ve all hit rock walls,” Rainbow finished with a sigh. “So… what? We throwing in the towel?”

“I don’t know if we really have much of a choice,” Twilight said sadly, looking down at the table with her ears drooping. “Pinkie wanted us all to bond with her so Maud could see that Pinkie’s in good hooves, and so we could all share their rock candy necklace tradition. But… that tradition is only for the best of best friends, and…”

“We aren’t,” Applejack finished with resignation. “Are we?”

A general muttering of acknowledgment passed throughout the room. As much as it pained all of them to admit it, in spite of their individual best efforts over the course of the last couple of days, none of them had really managed to click with Maud at all…

And that just left one final question.

Spike sighed and leaned against one of the table’s legs. “So… who gets to tell Pinkie, then?”

Squares and Circles

Twilight swallowed heavily as she and her friends walked together down the street towards Sugarcube Corner. Rainbow was to her immediate left, while the rest of their friends were scattered loosely around them. Spike, however, had elected to hang back and remain in the library. His excuse had been that he wanted to tidy the place up. A clumsy excuse, given that there hadn’t even been a chance for things to get messy yet.

The reason for the excuse, however, was plainly obvious, and Twilight envied the fact that he had been in any position to excuse himself at all. Though he was part of the group, especially for her and Rainbow, it went without saying that Pinkie hadn’t really had him in mind when she brought Maud to Ponyville.

Maybe it was because Maud was an aspiring rockologist, and Spike ate rocks. Especially gems. There might have been a bit of a clash there. Maybe. Oh, who was she kidding? Maud was so good at keeping her emotions well and truly hidden that the most Twilight could imagine from her was a slight tilt of the eyebrows. At most.

Whatever the reason, Spike wasn’t the highest on Pinkie’s priority list when it came to her list of ‘ponies to have bond with Maud.’ Twilight and the others were all on that list in big bold letters, though. Twilight couldn’t sit this one out. She had to be present for the coming conversation, no matter how unpleasant it might wind up being.

“Are we sure we really want to do this?” Fluttershy meekly asked, coming up to Twilight’s side with her ears drooping. “I really don’t want to hurt Pinkie’s feelings…”

“None of us do, darling,” Rarity said soothingly. “But alas, If we don’t say something, I get the feeling Maud will…”

“Yeah. The mare’s harder to read than a rock, but she is honest,” Applejack added with a slow nod.

Rainbow shrugged. “Maybe she would. But who knows? She’s harder to read than one of Twilight’s history books,” she said.

Twilight stumbled at that, an indignant squawk coming out of her. “Hey! My history books are not hard to read!” she protested, her cheeks puffing up in agitation.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Keep telling yourself that, egghead.”

Twilight groaned. She lightly smacked Rainbow on the back of the head with her wing, eliciting a few amused chuckles from the others. A brief moment of levity to help lift their spirits before they inevitably had to take the plunge.

The plunge that came far sooner than Twilight would have liked. Mere moments after their giggles died down, they rounded the bend to find Sugarcube Corner waiting for them just up ahead. They could already see movement inside, a surefire indication of Pinkie’s presence. The bakery had been closed down for a few days at her request so that she could tend to the whole Maud situation in peace, and the Cakes had been gracious enough to comply with the request. They had taken advantage of the time to focus on taking care of their twins and being with each other.

Twilight hesitated somewhat, slowing down her pace. She was suddenly second-guessing herself, the urge to abandon this course of action making itself known. She hadn’t been wanting to do this at all, but she felt like she needed to. Pinkie deserved to know. She needed to know, especially after all the effort she had put into things. Twilight knew this, and yet that sense of need was crumbling into dust, leaving her with no other desire than to turn tail and run back to the library so she didn’t have to deal with this.

Alas, she was not afforded the chance to make that decision. Before she could voice her concerns, the door to the bakery slammed open. Pinkie Pie stepped out with a gigantic grin on her muzzle. Her eyes landed on the group, and she visibly had to restrain herself from prancing in place. “Great! You’re all here! This saves me the time of looking for you!” she declared.

Applejack put on a crooked smile. “Aheh… yeah. Here we all are,” she said awkwardly. She turned back to the others. None of them could meet her eyes.

Pinkie was oblivious. “Well, Maud’s out looking for rocks, so now is the perfect time for us to make your super best friends rock candy necklaces!” she squealed, throwing a hoof into the air as if expecting a chorus of assent that matched her own excitement.

Silence was her answer. The ecstatic grin on her face slowly began to unravel as she realized her friends couldn’t meet her gaze, and all of them were looking away with despondent looks. Pinkie frowned, leaning forward in concern and confusion. “Hey, girls? What’s wrong?”

Nopony said anything. Twilight looked around, biting her lip. She could see all of them working their jaws, clearly trying to work up the courage to speak their minds, to tell Pinkie what they had all agreed to tell her. None of them could make themselves do it. They looked up at Pinkie, they saw her innocent blue eyes staring back at them, asking them to tell her all that ailed them.

How could they let her down like that? That was probably what was going through their heads. Hay, that was what was going through Twilight’s mind. This mare had made them all smile and laugh more times than any of them cared to count. She was one of their biggest sources of optimism every time things turned for the worst.

In spite of that, in many ways, she was so like a child… and it was never a fun thing to break a child’s heart.

Twilight’s heart skipped a beat when Midnight scoffed between her ears. “Honestly, Pinkie Pie is a grown mare. If she can’t take a little bit of hard truth every now and then, then that is no fault of yours. So just tell her how oblivious and stupid she’s been so we can all be done with this depressing scene.”

Twilight inhaled sharply through her nostrils, but she was quick to shut down any desire to retort. She had to focus, and though her inner demon had worded it in the wrong way, she wasn’t entirely wrong. Pinkie Pie did need to know…

“Well, uh…” Twilight finally began, although her voice was tentative and weak. She winced back when Pinkie Pie and all the others placed their focus squarely on her. She took a deep breath and kept going. “I’m not sure now is really the best time to be making best friend rock candy necklaces…”

“Why not?” Pinkie asked. The question came immediately, lined with even more confusion.

Twilight winced. “Uh…” she began, but further words would not come. She glanced helplessly to her friends, hoping for one of them to pick up the slack. Rainbow didn’t seem to be in any position to do so, though, resting her chin on Pinkie’s mailbox and hiding her muzzle with her hooves as she was.

“Well, darling, you see…” Rarity tried to start, but the words quickly died in her throat as well.

“You’re ever so thoughtful to share your special bonding ritual with us,” Fluttershy went on, managing to put on an appreciative smile. It faded a second later, and she averted her eyes. “But…”

Pinkie leaned forward slightly. “But what?”

“Oh my gosh this is pathetic,” Midnight sneered. “Just get on with it!”

A tingle of fire ran across the base of Twilight’s skull. She winced, but soon enough, she managed to find her voice. She took a deep breath, let it out with a heavy sigh, and spoke again. “Pinkie… We’ve all been trying really hard to get closer to Maud. You know that. You brought her around to all of our homes yesterday. You saw us trying our best, all of us.”

Pinkie nodded along, seemingly oblivious. “Uh-huh.”

Twilight took a few steps forward, her eyes glued to the ground. “But… I don’t think it’s really been working. Some ponies just don’t… match, I guess. They don’t get along and ‘click’ as nicely as, say, we do.”

Pinkie Pie tilted her head. “Huh? But…”

Twilight pressed on. “I know you love your sister, Pinkie, we can all see it. And… I can tell that she really loves you, too,” she said, recalling how Maud had expressed her worries about Pinkie’s wellbeing around Twilight. “And we all care about you, too. But… I’m not sure if that’s enough for us to click with Maud like you do. I mean, you’re her sister. You grew up with her. You can see things in her nopony else can… Things that none of us can.”

Pinkie’s eyes widened as the realization began to set in. “What? But… b-but, Twilight! She recited poetry to you! You love poems!” she protested, taking a few steps forward.

“I love poetry,” Twilight rebuked gently. “But that doesn’t mean every poem I hear is going to be a gem. There’s also a lot more to me than just books and words, you know. Same for all of us. Applejack is more than apples and honesty, Fluttershy is more than animals and being shy, Rarity is more than fashion and creativity. Maybe Maud has these things in common with us, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to become the best of friends.”

Pinkie’s eyes darted between all of her friends, her expression becoming more and more strained. “But… b-but… I…”

“I know you really want us all to get along with Maud,” Twilight pressed on, finally managing to meet Pinkie’s gaze. “But… I just don’t think it’s going to happen… no matter how hard you try to make it. It’s like trying to fit a square block into a circular hole…”

She looked back at the others. “...Something is going to have to break before you get anywhere.”

Several seconds passed in silence. Twilight took one more deep breath before turning back to Pinkie. The mare’s expression was one of pure disappointment. Twilight winced, her heart skipping a beat with regret. Maybe she could have worded things a little more gently?

“The mare has enough sugar coating in her life,” Midnight snarked. “Let her eat her daily dose of reality.”

Twilight sighed and looked down. “...In the end, we really appreciate all the effort, Pinkie, and we’re touched that you want to share this tradition with us. But…”

“None of us would feel right about it,” Applejack picked up, finally taking the pressure off of Twilight. “If it’s supposed to mean we’re the best of friends. Because… well, Pinkie… we aren’t.”

Pinkie stared down at all of them for several seconds. She eventually looked away and gave off a heavy sigh. “...Okay. I understand, you guys,” she muttered, clearly disappointed. A few seconds passed before she gave them all a weak, but understanding smile. “Just… thanks for giving her a chance… Now, uh…”

She looked back inside and cringed. “...If anypony needs me, I’ll be trying to figure out what to do with two hundred pounds of rock candy.”

With that, Pinkie slipped back inside and shut the door quietly behind her.

A heavy silence fell over the group. Eventually, Rainbow broke it with a tired sigh. “Welp, I feel horrible.”

“You didn’t even say anything,” Applejack noted gently.

Rainbow shrugged. “Meh… Just… didn’t wanna be the one to let one of my best friends down this time, I guess.”

“Dash…”

Twilight winced. Of course Rainbow felt that way. How many times had she blamed herself, justifiably or not, for the pain of her friends? Just off the top of her head she could recall several incidents where Rainbow had fallen into pits of self-loathing over what she perceived as her own mistakes. Turning her back on her friends to Discord's influence, attacking Starlight on the Friendship Express, being absent for Chrysalis’ attack on Canterlot, her deal with Sombra…

“And hiding the truth from you,” Midnight reminded in a whisper. “About how you died.”

Twilight winced and closed her eyes. Too many times had Rainbow beaten herself up, as far as Twilight was concerned. So of course, Rainbow wouldn’t want that responsibility this time…

“...Let’s go home, Rainbow,” Twilight said quietly, turning to leave. “I think we’re done here.”

Author's Notes:

Fun fact: The last two chapters weren't originally supposed to exist in their current format. This conversation with Twilight and Pinkie was supposed to take place during the chapter with the poems, but due to the added sub-plot of Maud's doubts about Twilight, this scene got nudged back a little in the pipeline. That's a big part of why it's so short compared to the others.

Pinkie's Solution

Twilight yelped in surprise when a series of loud knocks reverberated throughout the Golden Oak Library. She opened her eyes and sat up, looking around in confusion. She was in her room, and Rainbow was next to her, slowly sitting up with a less-than-pleased grimace on her face. Judging by the orange light of the sun piercing the pulled curtains over the window, it was early morning.

Who in the hoof could be knocking this loud this early in the morning?!

“Ugh… Twi?” Rainbow asked in a drowsy mumble as she slid out of bed.

“Yes?”

“I’m gonna kill ‘em.”

Twilight frowned. “Rainbow, come on, don’t talk like that,” she lightly scolded, though she had to admit, the idea was not without its merits.

“We can blow them up the second we open the door,” Midnight cood maliciously.

“No, no. It’s too early for you,” Twilight deadpanned in her mind. “Go back to sleep.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re awake.”

Twilight resisted the urge to sigh in frustration as she followed Rainbow down the stairs. She cast a glance over her shoulder to see Spike poking his head out of his bed basket. His expression was one of pure irritation.

“Can you soundproof the room for me?” he asked groggily.

Twilight managed to smile at that. Her horn lit up, and a thin coat of lavender light blanketed the room before fading away. Just like that, the insufferable knocking became all but inaudible. Were it not for the door now standing open after Rainbow’s exit, it would have been completely silent in the room.

Spike gave a thankful smile, a half-hearted thumbs-up, and then withdrew into his blankets.

Twilight watched him for a moment before turning to follow after Rainbow. Her ears folded against her head in a vain attempt to drown out the continuing knocks as soon as she crossed the threshold and shut the bedroom door behind her.

Finally, there was a moment of blissful silence as the door opened, followed swiftly by Rainbow’s voice echoing through the house. “What the- Pinkie?!”

Twilight came to a stop as soon as she heard that, her ears perking up. Pinkie? What was Pinkie doing here, especially this early in the morning, and making a tribal drum out of their front door? She frowned. Her thoughts drifted back to the last time she had seen the party mare outside of Sugarcube corner, and how they had all, as a group, systematically upset and disappointed her...

Suddenly, she had a bad feeling about all of this.

“The foal just can’t take a hint, can she?” Midnight seethed in irritation.

Twilight ignored her and quickly made her way down. She emerged into the living room to find Pinkie Pie bouncing up and down energetically in front of a now very concerned-looking Rainbow Dash. Twilight mirrored that concern the moment her eyes fell on Pinkie’s face. There were dark bags under her eyes. She looked as if she hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep. There was also a very subtle twitch in her left eye.

“Heya, guys!” Pinkie chirped, waving a hoof in the air manically.

“Er, hi,” Rainbow replied awkwardly. “Uh… you okay-”

“Pinkie Peachy!” Pinkie cut Rainbow off with a series of unhinged giggles. She then reached into her mane and pulled out a simple bright blue box, the same type one might carry donuts or pastries in. “Here, I got a present for you!”

Without waiting for a reply, she shoved the box into Rainbow’s chest, forcing the pegasus to react and snatch it up before it could fall to the ground below. Rainbow glanced down at the package, then up at Pinkie again. “Uh… thanks?” she asked in abject bewilderment. “But, uh… couldn’t you have… I dunno… delivered it a little later? It’s kinda…” she glanced over at the nearest clock. Her eyes widened. “What the- Seven?! Pinkie, it’s seven thirteen in the morning!”

“Oh, I know,” Pinkie replied without missing a beat. “But I spent all night trying to figure out what to do for this, and when I finally came up with it, I spent all night putting it together as quick as I could, and when it was all done I just couldn’t bring myself to wait any longer, and so I decided to come and let everypony know right away! It’s okay, you don’t hafta answer right now!”

Twilight stepped forward, struggling to keep up with Pinkie’s rambling tirade. “Pinkie Pie, slow down, you’re not making any sense.”

Two sets of eyes landed on Twilight.

Rainbow opened her mouth to speak, but Twilight cut her off. “Yeah I know, realized it the moment I said it,” she said in defeat.

Pinkie nodded sagely as if all had suddenly become right with the world.

Which it most assuredly had not. Pinkie still had yet to explain herself. Twilight cleared her throat and tried again. “What I mean, Pinkie, is that even this seems a bit weird for you. You don’t usually show up, and you’re usually very considerate about your friends' feelings - if not their personal space. So for you to just arrive and wake us up this early with a random present… I mean this with no offense-”

“Liar.”

“...But this is a good way to make your friends angry with you,” Twilight finished, ignoring Midnight’s jab.

Pinkie hesitated for a second before taking a step back. “Er, right. Sorry, guys. I just couldn’t wait any longer, really.”

“So… what’s the deal, anyway?” rainbow asked, glancing down at the box in her hooves. “And what the heck is this?”

Pinkie perked up and smiled again. “Oh! That! Just open it up! You’ll understand everything soon enough!”

She reached into her mane and felt around. Twilight tried not to think about it when she heard who-knows-what rattling around in that bottomless pocket. Was that a cat meowing? Soon enough, Pinkie withdrew her hoof and grinned. “I still got a few things to do this morning, so I’ma go get right on that! See ya later, love gators!”

Rainbow and Twilight both blushed at that, the pegasus moving to retort. Before she could utter even a single syllable, however, Pinkie was already gone, bouncing out the door and slamming it shut behind her with all the grace and tact of a drunk tic-tac.

A few seconds passed in silence while Twilight tried to wrap her head around what just happened. A second passed before she shook her head and focused on the box in Rainbow’s hoof. “Well… that happened,” she deadpanned.

Rainbow gave a stiff nod. “Uh, yeah, it did,” she replied before turning to the alicorn. “Any idea what that was all about?”

Twilight sighed and trotted over, taking the box in her magic. It didn’t feel especially heavy in her grasp. She scrutinized it before looking to Rainbow and giving the ‘present’ a gentle shake. “No idea. But the answer’s probably in here. Probably.”

Rainbow frowned skeptically. “Ya sure about that?”

“Well, Pinkie said so, so absolutely not,” Twilight shot back. In truth, this could have been just about anything. Given recent events, though, and the unhinged way in which Pinkie had conducted herself, Twilight was inclined to feel at least a little anxious. She glanced down at the box, frowning, and gently pried open the lid.

She was met with the sight of two cupcakes with what appeared to be rainbow-colored frosting and a note.

“Dear Friends,

I had the greatest idea on how to bring everypony closer together with Maud! I know you all told me that you really tried and that it didn’t work out, and I don’t wanna overdo it with all of this or make you upset with me, but it would mean the world to me if you’d give her one more shot! I’ve set up something special that should help everypony get close right outside town, in that grassy patch where you first met her!

Please meet there at 3:00 PM today. If this doesn’t work, then I Pinkie Promise, I won’t try to force this anymore.

Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye!

Your Friend, Pinkie Pie.”

Twilight’s ears slowly lowered as she read the note. It made sense. Pinkie was one of the most stubborn ponies she had ever known. To assume that she would give up or back off on this Maud business so easily was nothing short of lunacy.

Rainbow came up to Twilight’s side and read the note over her shoulder. Soon, her own expression mirrored Twilight’s. “...Oh. Well, that explains that,” she said quietly.

Twilight sighed before setting the box off to one side. “Right.”

“Don’t bother going,” Midnight scoffed dismissively. “You’ve already stated your case. Pinkie’s refusal to look at reality is no longer your concern.”

“She’s my friend!” Twilight snapped back, resisting the urge to grit her teeth.

“I have noticed,” Midnight sneered. “And I am not impressed.”

Twilight’s coat bristled, but she otherwise did not favor the devil on her shoulder with a response. Instead, she simply turned and went for the stairs. “Well, we’ve still got a while before this thing of Pinkie’s. Let’s get some more sleep.”

Rainbow nodded, following after her, offering up no complaints.

Twilight didn’t sleep as well as she would have liked, following that. She spent some time tossing and turning, off and on sharing whispered small-talk and idle speculation with Rainbow about what Pinkie had in store before finally managing to fall back to sleep. When they returned to the waking world some few hours later, just after noon, Twilight’s senses were far more awake, albeit still far from where she would have liked them to be.

The minutes crawled by slowly. A mixture of curiosity and anxiety over Pinkie’s plan clawed away at Twilight’s senses. Knowing Pinkie Pie’s penchant for overblowing even the simplest of things, and her complete lack of regard for the laws of physics, the solution she had come up with could have been anything from a simple Pinkie Party to a cannon that would yank a meteor out of the sky with a grappling hook attached to the ammunition.

Or something just as ludicrous. Really, it could be anything with that mare.

Eventually, though, the time came to set off. Twilight and Rainbow quickly took turns in the bathroom to make themselves decent enough to be in public. Spike volunteered to remain behind in the library to keep an eye on things and do some reorganizing in the basement. The shelves down there were a little behind and needed a good switching around, as far as Twilight was concerned, so it worked out nicely.

It was another typically pleasant day in Ponyville when they stepped outside, and the warmth of the sun did wonders to chase away some of Twilight’s nerves. As her eyes wandered to the south, though, she frowned. There was a dark, very noticeable storm front in the distance.

Rainbow caught her looking and spoke up. “Ponyville’s due for a lot of rain,” she explained simply. “And there was a lot of excess from Cloudsdale. They figured they’d ship it here since we’ve been in the middle of a bit of a dry spell since the Plundervines did their thing.”

Twilight hummed but did not otherwise speak. She instead simply focused her attention on their destination. The field just outside of town where they had first met Maud.

Go figure that Pinkie’s last attempt to make all this work out would take place right where it started, huh?

“Snared ya again, huh?”

Twilight jumped in her skin at the new voice. She turned to look and saw Applejack approaching from the side, a knowing look on her face.

Rainbow nodded. “Yup. Got us at seven.”

“Hmph. Eight for me,” Applejack noted with a grunt. “Filly’s slowin’ down. Lucky her Ah’m usually up at that time.”

“I dunno how you can do that,” Rainbow snorted in disbelief. “Eight in the morning? No decent pony could be up that early! Not without some serious grouchiness.”

Applejack rolled her eyes and lightly nudged the mare in the side with her elbow. “Oh, hardy har, RD. Just cause y’all are a late riser don’t mean the rest of us are.”

“I hate to interrupt,” Twilight cut in with a frown. “But Applejack, do you have any idea what Pinkie’s grand plan to make us closer to Maud is? I’ve been trying to piece it together in my head, but I can’t think of anything.”

Applejack hummed in thought, then shrugged her shoulders noncommittally. “Yer guess is as good as mine, Twi. Pinkie’s been less predictable than a ferret that got into Granny’s cider stash durin’ silly season.”

“Oh, that’s an image in my head now,” Rainbow frowned.

Applejack shrugged again. “Wish Ah had a better idea. All we can really do is see what she’s got planned.”

Twilight couldn’t really argue with that. And apparently, neither could the rest of their friends. As they made their way, Fluttershy and Rarity soon joined them, having apparently taken a brief detour to grab lunch, just in case they would be at this for a while.

Soon enough, slowly but surely, the buildings thinned out, and the train station came into view. The group didn’t give it a second thought, striding right past it. As they came over the next hill, however, Twilight’s eyes latched onto something that had not been there last time.

The serene, grassy hills outside of Ponyville’s train station had been marred by what could only be described as a linear jungle gym. There was a transparent red slide, a ball pit stuffed to the brim with fabrics and cloth of all colors and textures, a wall of books, a poker table with a very confused looking Harry the Bear, Angel Bunny, and Otis the Coyote sitting around it.

Had Pinkie abducted them?

What was perhaps the most alarming part of this entire construction was the colossal pile of massive rocks stations at the end of it, with a gargantuan boulder balanced haphazardly on the top. It looked as if a stiff breeze would be enough to cause the entire thing to fall apart, sending giant stones rolling everywhere.

“Uh, would anypony like to explain what the hay we’re looking at?” Rainbow asked with a raised eyebrow. She jumped a few feet into the air and squinted at the construct as if to divine some clearer purpose. “Because I am beyond confused.”

“Whatever it is,” Rarity said, drawing Rainbow’s attention. She gestured ahead, and all eyes turned to see Maud standing at the base of the creation, with an ecstatically bouncing Pinkie Pie coming right for them. “I get the feeling we are about to find out.”

“Heya girls!” Pinkie greeted, sliding to a stop in front of them. “I’m so glad you could make it!”

“Uhm, hi,” Fluttershy greeted meekly. “Um… What is this?”

Pinkie’s grin grew wider. “Oh, this little old thing? I call it: Pinkie-Rainbow-Rari-Twi-Apple-Flutter-Maud FUN TIME!”

“That explains literally nothing!” rainbow protested vehemently.

Pinkie came forward and grinned up at Rainbow, still bouncing in place. “It combines everypony’s interests into one super fun activity that we can all do together that will bring us all that much closer together!”

“That still explains just about nothing!” Rainbow insisted.

Pinkie giggle-snorted before gesturing for the others to follow her. “Probably better if I show ya! Come on, Maud’s waiting for us already!”

And with that, the pink mare began to happily frolic towards the looming construct. The others shared an uneasy glance before setting off after her at a much slower pace. Applejack broke the silence with a worried tone. “So, is it just me, or does this thing look kinda… flimsy?”

Twilight had noticed that herself but didn’t really have a chance to properly process it with how absurd it was and Pinkie’s attempt at an explanation. The whole construct gave the impression that it was a rush job, and very much an improvisation. Just about everything was either made of or framed by wooden beams that crisscrossed at irregular patterns, held in place with loose smatterings of nails and duct tape. It was all quite impressive, to be blunt, but it didn’t exactly look safe, either. Especially those rocks. Where had Pinkie even gotten those?

None of them had a chance to question it. The moment they came to Maud’s side, Pinkie began talking all over again. “So, as you can see, the P.R.R.T.A.F.M, or Purrtafm, if you want, is a course composed of all the things we all love! There’s an applesauce tunnel for Applejack, a pile of pretty shiny things for Rarity, a wall of books for Twilight, a game of poker with animals for Fluttershy, cupcakes for yours truly, and it’s all a race for Rainbow Dash! Plus there’s the rockslide at the end for Maud!”

“Okay, that kinda explains it,” rainbow admitted, scratching the back of her head. “But it also raises a whole lot of other questions! When did you have time to even think of all this, much less build it?!”

“And what are Angel, Harry, and Otis doing here?” Fluttershy asked in surprise on finally noticing the trio of animals. “They were back at home when you came to see me this morning.”

Pinkie grinned. “Haha, please.”

Maud turned to look at Rainbow. “What were you expecting?”

Rainbow sighed and dropped back down to the ground. “About what I got, really,” she said in defeat.

Pinkie giggled before taking a few steps back. “Hehe! Here, lemme take a quick run through all of it for ya, just so you all know the route!”

“Pinkie,” Applejack spoke up in a firm but gentle voice. “Are ya sure about this? This thing doesn’t exactly look all that safe to me.”

“Of course it’s safe!” Pinkie chirped. “I made it!”

“That’s the part that worries me.”

Pinkie laughed and waved her hoof in dismissal. Twilight’s frown deepened. There it was again. That almost manic, unhinged look.

“The mare’s gone insane,” Midnight snorted. “Fantastic. Well, at least we get to watch it all fall down on top of her.”

Twilight stiffened and briefly closed her eyes. “It’s not going to do that. It looks weak, but this is Pinkie Pie we’re talking about. This is a mare who can defy the laws of physics! Literally, I’ve seen her do it!”

“Until she gets reminded of them, yes yes, I know,” Midnight grumbled. “But who said I was referring to the construct? Even if it doesn’t crumble, it’s pretty obvious just how desperate she’s gotten if this was her ultimate solution. This isn’t going to work. It’s just another waste of her energy and our time!”

Twilight wasn’t able to stifle a growl at that but kept it quiet enough that she was sure nopony else heard it. She opened her eyes, ignoring any further remarks Midnight had to make, and instead focused on Pinkie Pie. She didn’t miss Maud giving her a sidelong glance for just a moment, though.

Pinkie finally went into motion, jumping headfirst into the red tube. Twilight now saw the apple sauce and cringed when Pinkie leaped from the other side and into the pit of fabrics.

“PINKIE!” Rarity shrieked in alarm, her marshmallow face somehow going ashen. “THE FABRICS!”

“It washes out, silly!” Pinkie called back before barreling through the wall of books, much to Twilight’s growing chagrin.

“How dare that mare disrespect those books like that!”

Pinkie continued to work her way through the course, loudly shouting back at everypony else to explain what she was doing and how it related to everything else. But Twilight’s attention was slowly starting to come away from that. Something was wrong. She wasn’t sure what, but she could tell. Her wings ruffled anxiously at her sides, and she turned her attention to Pinkie. Her instincts began to scream at her to warn Pinkie, to get her out of there. Now.

“Pinkie!” she called out, unable to stop herself.

Pinkie, who was currently in a tall wooden tower topped with a pink plastic dome and floating cupcakes, turned to look at her. “Yeah?!” she shouted to be heard through the wall. An audible groan passed through the woodwork, sending a spike of adrenaline through Twilight’s veins.

“I think we get it! You can come back, now!” Twilight shouted, her eyes darting around the construction. Was it starting to sway? There wasn’t any wind that she could feel.

“But I haven’t gotten to the rockslide, yet!” Pinkie called back with a roll of her eyes. “Just gimme a sec, I’m almost-”

Snap.

Twilight’s heart dropped out of her chest. In one moment, everything fell into absolute chaos. One of the four wooden beams that held the tower Pinkie was in aloft suddenly snapped near the base, sending the whole thing lurching to one side. Pinkie fell out of view inside the dome with a high pitched shriek.

“PINKIE!” Everypony shouted at once, quickly moving forward. Twilight flared her wings and lit her horn, preparing to teleport Pinkie out. She needed to be fast, the tower was collapsing.

Unfortunately, her concentration was broken when the ground beneath her hooves began shaking. Alarmed, Twilight looked around for the source of the disturbance, and her eyes fell on what Pinkie had dubbed the ‘rockslide.’ It appeared that the tremors caused by the tower’s sudden loss of stability had upset the boulder on top, and the entire mound was crumbling. The large boulder rolled down the slope to crash to the ground below, causing the earth to lurch and tremble.

Twilight couldn’t focus on her spell through all of that, and by the time she managed to focus back on the tower, it was too late. Twilight cried out as the dome crashed into the red tube, sending it toppling over as well with a deafening, cacophonous crash and a spray of dust mixed with applesauce.

Twilight shielded her eyes as well as she could from the cloud of dust, coughing a few times when it washed over them. She grunted and focused on her horn. They didn’t have time for this! Pinkie needed them! With a pulse of magic, a burst of powerful wind expanded out from her, pushing the dust away from them and revealing the damage.

Twilight’s stomach twisted into a knot. The entire course had collapsed on itself. It was an absolute mess. She could already hear raised voices from the direction of the train station. No doubt ponies waiting for their ride to arrive had heard the commotion and seen the cloud of dust and pulse of magic. The site would probably be swarming with curious onlookers soon enough.

That was no longer of importance. Twilight shook away her shock and broke into a sprint towards where the tower had fallen. “Pinkie!” she called out, fear and dread clawing away at her heart. She could hear the others sprinting behind her, and to her surprise, Maud rapidly pulled ahead, a look of pure, unfiltered terror on the usually bland mare’s face.

When they reached the tower, there was no sign of Pinkie. Dirtied cupcake remains were smeared and scattered across the churned soil, while shattered shards of pink plastic littered the ground like shrapnel. The basket of the tower was upside down, having come away from the main pillar after striking the tube.

“Pinkie! Just hang on, we’ll get you out!” Rainbow shouted, already grabbing onto the wreckage and lifting with all her might. “Please be okay, please be okay, please be okay!”

Twilight glanced at Rainbow for a second before lending her magic to the effort. To her surprise, the basket almost seemed to weigh nothing in her grasp. The reason became apparent when she saw Maud bodily shoving the basket up with her shoulders with an audible grunt of strain. The whole thing lifted up and tilted back, crashing onto the grass and lurching the ground again.

Another cloud of dust formed, and Twilight flapped her wings a few times to try and clear it. She squinted through the dirty haze for any sign of Pinkie. She saw Rainbow and Maud kneeling down, with Fluttershy rushing to join them. Her throat tightened at the sight of a curl of disheveled pink hair.

“Huh. Whaddya know?” Midnight mused in surprise. “It literally fell apart on top of her.”

Twilight froze, her blood starting to boil in her veins. “What. Did you. Do?!”

Midnight scoffed. “What makes you think I did anything? All I can do is talk to you, remember?” she demanded incredulously. “You can hate me as much as you like, but don't waste our time with accusatory hoof-pointing. This wasn’t me.”

Twilight snarled before shaking her head and cantering forward to join the others.

Her eyes widened. Pinkie’s eyes were closed, and her lower body was pinned beneath more wreckage that Applejack and Maud were working to clear away. Rainbow was kneeling at Pinkie’s side, her hooves hooked under the unconscious mare’s armpits, ready to pull her out. Fluttershy was waiting for her to be freed, no doubt to look for injuries.

“Twilight!” Maud called, looking back to Twilight with desperation in her eyes. “Help me lift this thing!”

Twilight was briefly taken aback by the intensity of the request. She didn’t hesitate for long, though. Her horn sparked into life, and she set about grasping the wreckage. She groaned with the strain. It felt like somepony was taking a hammer to her cranium, but she didn’t care. Slowly but surely, she lifted much of the debris from the collapse and floated it several yards away, freeing Pinkie and clearing the scene of the disaster, for the most part.

Once she set the wreckage down, she let off a sigh of relief and fell to her haunches. She took a moment to catch her breath before focusing on Pinkie. Her chest was starting to darken and swell in an eerily familiar fashion. Twilight winced, memories of the Crystal Empire briefly dancing in front of her eyes.

“Is she gonna be alright?!” Applejack asked, adjusting her hat and kneeling down by Pinkie’s side now that the wreckage was gone.

Fluttershy lightly felt around Pinkie’s chest, her expression one of complete and utter focus. A few seconds passed before she looked up, the color draining from her face. “Oh my goodness… Um, I think so, but she needs to see a doctor right away!” she said, pulling her hooves back. “She has a few broken ribs, and, um, I think she might have suffered some other trauma lower down.”

Maud took one of Pinkie’s hooves in her own, her ears drooping. “Pinkie…” she whispered quietly. “What were you thinking…?”

Twilight looked down, closing her eyes. Somewhere deep inside of her, the knee-jerk thought that this was somehow her fault sprang into the forefront of her mind. Their inability to bond with Maud, her visit spurred on by Twilight’s Fall, and then the decision to tell Pinkie that it just wasn’t working when it all meant so much to her…

She was quick to shut down that idea. This wasn’t her. This was an accident. Something like this could have happened to anypony, and she wasn’t about to linger on the past.

“Are you sure it could have happened to anypony?”

Twilight went rigid at that, her eyes widening. “What?”

Midnight merely hummed, however, and did not deign to give her any further information. Twilight growled in frustration. However, before she could follow up on that, Maud’s voice cut through her thoughts, drawing her back to the situation at hoof.

“Teleport us.”

Twilight blinked and looked up. She saw Maud cradling Pinkie, looking back at her with a pleading look in her eyes. Everypony else was already gathering around and looking to her expectantly.

Twilight only hesitated for a moment before nodding. Whatever went wrong here didn’t matter at the moment. Pinkie Pie was hurt and needed help. Until she was taken care of, nothing else mattered.

Twilight stepped forward to join the group, though she paused when she saw Rainbow. She hesitated. “Rainbow… are you sure-”

“I can handle a teleport, Twi,” Rainbow cut her off without hesitation. “And I’ve gotten a lot better. Just do it. Don’t worry about me.”

Twilight hesitated for a second, her heart twisting in her chest. She really didn’t want to cause Rainbow any pain today, but they didn’t exactly have any time to lose. Besides, she knew better than to argue with Rainbow when she got that look on her face. With a hesitant nod, she lit her horn, focusing on the Ponyville Clinic farther into town.

With a large flash of light and a loud pop, the group of seven mares disappeared, leaving behind nothing but the ruined remains of Pinkie’s solution.

Author's Notes:

...What? Stop looking at me like that, this is par for the course with me.