The Sun rose over Equestria.

If Twilight didn’t know any better, she would have said it did so languidly. Sluggish, almost, as if it didn’t want to rise quite yet.

She chewed on the inside of her cheek. It was a subtle thing, and difficult to notice, much like anything behind that serene expression of the princess Twilight pictured so many times. It wasn’t so much in the motion of the thing; the sun never rose very quickly, after all. It was really more of a mood that she picked up on. The sun, its color, its warmth, the whole painting of the sky was as bright and alive as it had ever been. But it was strained; stretched out too thin almost, as if there wasn’t quite enough light to pour over Equestria and the sky. It was trying too hard, afraid perhaps that being more subdued might lead some ponies to ponder why. Attempting to compensate, she realized, to cover over a feeling, or a mix of feelings.

Twilight knew what a relaxed sunrise looked like. She had only truly seen it once, though up until that moment she had thought otherwise. It was the morning after Luna returned. Twilight had been so excited, so exhausted from the last two days, so…so full of all kinds of feelings that she didn’t sleep at all her first night as a permanent resident of Ponyville. She stayed up, resting on the oaken floor of her balcony, not yet with its wicker furnishings, sorting it all out as she fidgeted with the strands in her tail. And then the sun rose. In it she saw a Celestia who had risen from bed unlike she had in the last thousand years, with an ease of heart and a lightness of burden that she likely couldn’t remember ever feeling.

This was not relaxed.

The sunrise after Discord had been sealed away wasn’t relaxed, but instead felt to Twilight more relieved than anything, though with something like uncertainty behind it. After the escapade at the Crystal Empire it rose confident and self-assured. Smugly, Luna had remarked, when Twilight made the mistake to comment on it that evening to Luna.

Twilight hadn’t bothered to watch the sunrise after the Changeling attack. It wasn’t because she slept through it. She had not rested well that night, having slugged off to bed immediately after seeing her brother and Cadance off in their carriage. She was in bed. She saw its light come in through the heavy curtains. But she ignored it. She didn’t want to see it; she didn’t want to try and surmise her mentor’s state of mind. After all, what if she had found herself somewhere inside of it?

Yes, the sun this morning felt wary of something.

Could Twilight guess?

Couldn’t she always guess?

Perhaps, if she had—

“Hey there, princess of the library, whatcha doin’ up so early?”

Twilight jerked on the wicker lounge, perched on her balcony, and looked up at Rainbow Dash. She was resting on small poofy cloud—what else? Twilight let out a slow breath. Ever since her coronation, Rainbow had taken to calling her that. She wasn’t sure whether it was out of affection, or something darker. She didn’t really want to think about it.

“Good morning, Rainbow Dash,” she said evenly. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that, with those rings under your eyes?”

“Ha!” Rainbow rolled onto her back in that playfully energetic manner of hers. “At least I have rings below my eyes. You don’t.”

Twilight coughed. “And that’s supposed to be a bad thing?”

“Yes,” Rainbow stated plainly. “Anypony up this Celestia-forsaken early ought to have rings under their eyes, as big as their cutie marks. It’s, you know, normal.” She drew the word out, emphasizing it with her hooves. “You don’t have any. Your face is pulled so tight I’d be worried it’s gonna rip in two.”

Twilight blinked, trying not to let a frown show. Rainbow smiled.

“So…” her friend began, “watcha doin’ up so early?”

Twilight rolled her jaw for a moment. Rainbow could certainly be…invasive. Only one way to deal with her when she was like that. Closing her eyes she shrugged.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Watching the sunrise, perhaps?”

“Sure.”

“Probing the depths of magic?”

“Always.”

“Working on those wing exercises I and Fluttershy taught you?”

“With diligence.”

“Hoofing me a barn-full of lies?”

“Applejack’s the one with the barn, not me.”

Rainbow Dash sat up on her cloud and regarded Twilight silently, not hiding the frown on her face. Twilight looked at her but then flicked her eyes away. She felt the beginning roots of annoyance start to sprout.

“Have you heard back from the princess yet?” Rainbow finally asked, her tail swishing back and forth over the edge of the cloud. Twilight felt her muscles tense but she kept her face straight. Remember what Applejack told you, she thought to herself: poker face.

“No.”

“Nervous?” Rainbow asked, rather lamely Twilight thought. She gave her Pegasus friend a look.

“Right. Got it.”

It was silent for a few minutes after that. Twilight set her mind back on the sunrise. She remembered the one after her transformation. It was big and proud. Proud of what? Did she even need to ask? There was so much promise in it, so much hope. Twilight drank the whole thing in, every drop alleviating the clawing apprehension in her gut. There was such a sense of great expectation in that sunrise. It was if Celestia was spelling out her hopes for her in color.

That was the last sunrise she had watched, until now.

“Well don’t worry, Twi, I’m sure the princess will send you a letter today. Hay, she may even come down here herself to give you the good news. You are her, like, favorite student after all.”

“Not student,” Twilight corrected, still looking out at the distance. “Not anymore.”

“Oh…right. Uh, colleague? Fellow princess?”

Twilight just shrugged. She wished Rainbow would go elsewhere.

“I’m guessing you have somewhere to be, Rainbow Dash?” she asked, raising her eyebrow. Twilight caught the slight wince her friend made; Rainbow didn’t like being kicked out, brushed off, or shooed away. A touch of guilt pricked her, but she promptly sat on top of it.

“Well?”

“Yeah, of course I do,” she said, overcompensating a bit. “I’d still be in bed otherwise! Applejack requested a bit of early rain for her orchard. I told her those trees would wait until the end of week, just as fine as any other tree around here. But, you know, AJ. So here I am, up at the crack of Celestia’s flank, er—dawn.”

“Why so early?”

“Hay if I know. AJ tried explaining, I think. Tried. All I heard was apples apples apples apples apples.” She blew a few strands of her mane out of her face. “But, you know, she can wait a bit. I flew by and saw you sitting out here, and watched you stare at the sun rising for ten minutes without blinking,” she said, a touch angrily. Probably in defiance of Twilight trying to politely ditch her. It was the politeness that got her, Twilight knew. Rainbow preferred ponies to be straightforward with her. You could insult her to her face (not without the consequences), but if you really wanted to prick a nerve, you would do it underhoof.

“So I just wanted to, you know…make sure you were, you know, cool and all,” she finished, awkwardly shifting atop her cloud.

Twilight suddenly found it so easy to smile, and she gave a big pretty one for Rainbow Dash.

“Dash, thank you for your caring, but I’m fine. Trust me.”

Dash looked at her for a moment, biting her lip. “Uh-huh. You know, Big Mac has your smarty pants doll.”

Twilight frowned, feeling very uncomfortable. Why was she bringing this up? “Yes. And?”

“Just thought I’d remind you. You know, about why he has it, or how he got it in the first place, or—”

“I get it!” Twilight snapped a bit. She immediately took a quiet, calming breath. “Yes, Rainbow I know. And believe me, if I get the urge to magically cast the town into a frothing, foaming rampage of mares…again…I will let you know right away.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Pinkie Promise?”

“Are you Pinkie?” Twilight asked flatly.

“I don’t know. Are you Princess Celestia?”

“W-wha?” Twilight fumbled. She tried to swallow quickly but found it harder than she expected. “What did you say?” she managed to force out, suddenly feeling her sense of inner balance give way.

Rainbow just looked at her plainly, her tail continuing to swish. She couldn’t see it in her face, but Twilight knew there was a challenge from somewhere in that body language of hers.

“I said, are you Princess Celestia?”

Twilight felt her face flushing red and hot.

“Of course not! What’s that even supposed to mean?! You know, I used to think you had a brain in that thick skull of yours, but now I can see it’s just where all that raggedy mane grows from.”

“Really? I thought was where all that ear wax kept coming from.”

Twilight didn’t respond to that, but decided to simply glare at her friend. And she knew glares; she was good friends with a certain princess of the night.

Unfortunately, as her friend, Rainbow seemed impervious to it, as the others did. Perhaps she would write that in a friendship report to the princess someday…if she still wrote friendship reports.

Twilight eventually looked down at her hooves, drawing a small circle in the ground with her right one.

“Well, I guess that’s where Scootaloo heard it from.”

“Excuse me?”

“She always does mimic you so, you know.”

“What are you talking about?” Rainbow asked heatedly, up on all fours on her little cloud. Twilight didn’t look up, unable to hide a small smile. A part of her was telling her to stop it, begging her to just let it all go, to not drive it forward, but she was deaf at the moment.

“I don’t know,” Twilight said innocently, “are you Rarity, or Applejack?”

Silenced impregnated the air.

Twilight didn’t have to see her to know she caught her meaning. Rarity and AJ were the only two among them that had sisters, after all; real sisters.

With nothing else to look at, and strictly—but smugly—avoiding the gaze she could feel burning into her, Twilight found the sunrise catching her eye again.

The sun, the sun, the sun.

What did it want from her? Wasn’t its message always so clear; wasn’t Twilight always so able to read into its desires? Into the words it wrote into the sky and the morning clouds?

Hadn’t it spoken to her for most of her life—spilling, pouring, hinting, winking what it wanted from her? Tapping it out on marble floors with gilded shoes?

Had she missed something? Is that why she was out there now, sitting on her balcony, in the wicker lounge the princess gave her, watching—reading—the sunrise? Was she searching for clues? Why hadn’t she done so after the changeling incident? That was worse, after all. Celestia had been metaphorically slapped in the face in front of everypony, and then imprisoned. In her own city.

Not that she said much about it to Twilight. The princess had been relatively silent towards her, ever since Twlight’s…lashing, before she was flung into the caverns below Canterlot.

She had certainly given the princess enough opportunity to speak to her, if she wanted. She stood by herself next to the punch table for ten minutes after all, while Celestia stood off by herself, twenty hooves away. Ten long, painful minutes.

So the sun rose the next morning, and Twilight only buried her head under her pillow.

But then after Sombra it had been so beautiful—so confident! And then, once a princess herself, she had felt such hope and encouragement from it!

Twilight wimpered. What had she missed?

“I’m going.”

Twilight looked up slowly, her head trying to clear itself enough to focus on the blue Pegasus above her. Rainbow’s voice felt a bit like running your hoof along rough stone. The frown she wore, coupled with the rings beneath her eyes—which Twilight could have sworn were deeper—gave her a sudden vision of Rainbow being twenty years older. Twilight shuddered.

“You are?” she asked, her tone careful and neutral.

“Yes. AJ will have my hide if I don’t show up soon.”

“Good luck.”

Rainbow looked off in the direction of the orchard and sighed, before hopping off of her cloud and landing in front of Twilight, startling her. What was she—?

Twilight tilted back as Rainbow brought her face within a few inches of hers. “Are you alright?” she asked carefully, but with a thrust of determination behind it.

Twilight gazed back into her friend’s eyes, and felt her heart begin to melt. After what she had said to her, and she was still making sure she was okay…

Twilight opened her mouth, but no answer came.

After a few moments Rainbow gave up, turned, and flew off without another word.

Twilight sank to the floor of the balcony, her strength fleeing from her. She felt the warmth of the sun, and she had no strength!

“Rainbow, I’m so sorry. I’m just a confused old mare. Please forgive me.”

Inside her study, which was directly behind her, laid an open scroll on her writing desk, it’s golden wax seal broken in pieces.

Its message, short.



Twilight,

I have spent much time deeply considering your request, and I am sorry to tell you, but my reply is no.

Sincerely,
~Celestia



Twilight sighed as she looked out at the sunrise again.

“I’m just a confused old mare.”