Here’s the thing about Twilight: She is a bundle of contradictions.

Like, imagine you’re flying over the Everfree. There are some good clouds about. Cumulus. Light and fluffy, great for practising tricks on because they soak up the force of the impact if you crash. So you get comfy. You begin to test the limits of what you can do – and then bam! you're suddenly dodging your way through thunderheads which sprung up out of nowhere.

Imagine that, but as a pony, and you have something pretty close to Twilight Sparkle.

For instance, the mare eats like a pig at a trough. Have you ever seen her? She gorges herself. She’s a lion ripping apart an antelope, leaving scraps scattered across the place for the scavengers to mop up, except most of the time there are no scavengers, just cleaners who look like they’ve never had a happy day in their life.

But when I try to snack on some hay fries while I read the latest Daring Do what do I get? “Rainbow, you can’t eat food here. This is a library. I don’t care if you’re trying to be careful, you’ll get grease everywhere.” I mean, so what if I get a smidgen of food here or there? I try to be clean, which is more than you can say for her.

Anyway, point is Twilight is one weird gal. The girls and I love her for it, or despite it, but sometimes it makes her really hard to understand.

Which I guess is at the heart of what happened. We just didn’t understand.

It was two weeks back. Maybe three. Anyway, a few weeks back, Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie decided to host the town’s harvest festival. It was her first big gig as a party planner – the official, professional kind, not the kind she does for the hell of it – and she had a plan. Pinkie wanted it to be the most memorable festival in the history of Ponyville, the kind of event that has ponies talking for years afterwards, the kind they tell their kids about when they’re old and boring.

She had this big plan. She wanted produce displays, baking competitions, arts and crafts, sporting events, party games, carnival games, games, dance and music, and cultural events up the wazoo. She wanted bunting and banners hanging from every building, art in every park, wanted the whole place looking so gorgeous that it would “stick in their mind’s eye like icing glue”.

And naturally, she wanted us to help.

So we did. I managed the weather and helped with the banners. Fluttershy organised the petting zoo for the foals and chipped in when it came to music. AJ was busy harvesting, but she promised to bring her best when it came to produce and baked good and, drumroll please, cider. Sweet cider. Rarity did her usual decorating job, and Twilight helped with the actual running of things, although Pinkie Pie took care of most of that.

And, thanks to our help, the festival ran smoothly. Heck, that’s an understatement. It was everything Pinkie wished for – maybe not everything everything, but close enough. And I can’t emphasize enough how important the help of her friends was, especially yours truly. Not to boast or anything, but they probably couldn’t have done it without me.

By the end of it, we were exhausted. It took five days to set everything up, and a lot of running about before that just trying to make sure that we’d have all the stuff we needed when show time actually came. And then there was the festival itself. Looking back, it’s impressive that we pulled it off at all.

So, being tired, everyone took a few days to rest and relax – except for AJ who would probably smack you if you even suggested that she chill out. This was about the time that I began to pick up on one of Twilight’s quirks.

See, when I relax, I do one of three things: I practise tricks, I take a nap, or I read Daring Do. I did plenty of the first two over those days, but in the evenings I would head over to the library, pull out a novel, and lose myself in the world of Daring Do.

Usually, Twi would let me stay as long as I wanted. Sometimes, I crashed at hers, just read until I could barely keep my eyes open, and fell asleep on her couch. But on the first day after the festival, she did something strange.

She asked me to leave.

It was evening. The sun was setting. The few cirrus clouds in the sky were pink, like cotton candy teased apart by a curious foal. Little of the light made it into the library, and I was straining to see the words on the page. I was just thinking of asking Twi to fix me up a firefly lamp or a magic light to read by when she walked into the room.

The strain of the last couple of days still showed. She had these bags under her eyes that you would need luggage handlers to lift, real deep purple. Her hair stuck out at weird angles, like she’d fallen asleep and just woken up. And her posture – she was putting all of her weight onto one hoof, then slowly rocking around, transferring the weight between her legs as though it would give her other legs a chance to rest.

I thought of saying something, but before I had the chance to, she said, “It’s closing time, Dash.”

“That mean I can move to your couch?” I stretched, enjoying the way my back popped and cracked. “This chair’s kind of uncomfortable, even with all the cushions. I should set you up with some cloud cushions. Way comfier.”

Understanding came slowly to Twilight’s face, as though she was hearing me from the end of a long, dark tunnel. Her nose screwed up and her brows came together.

“I’m not putting clouds in here. Maintaining them would be difficult for a start, not to mention the risk of them hitting one of the bookcases and ruining a whole shelf of books. The moisture damage . . .” Her eyes went faraway and she shivered. “And no,’ she continued, “I mean the library is closing, and I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

I looked up at her, confused. “Why can’t I just chill like usual?”

She glanced away. “I want some time to, uh . . .”

I waited, then said, “Didn’t know ‘uh’ was an activity.”

“It’s a project,” she blurted. “I’m, uh, working on a project.”

“What kind of project?”

“A history project. Yes. I’m tracing the history of, uh, some old books I found.”

I nodded slowly. “Okay, then. And why do you need me to leave?”

“I’ll be setting up some rituals to help me track their thaumalogical imprint, and I really need to concentrate,” Twilight said, more certainly now.

“Sure, whatever,” I said. “Mind if I take this home for the night? Daring Do has just escaped King Kommodo’s lair.”

Twilight smiled. “Of course.”

At the time, I suspected that Twilight wasn’t telling me the truth of why she was kicking me out, but I didn’t have any firm reason to doubt what she said. I mean, tracking the history of dusty boring books? Twi did that kind of for shits and gigs. Why would I doubt her?
But the next day, she kicked me out again, right on sun-down. She looked tired, but not as bad as the day before, and she seemed a lot more certain of herself than she did the day before.

I didn’t question her. Heck, a week went by before I started wondering what the heck she was up to, and that was only because what happened at lunch.

I guess I oughtta say something about that. See, every week we have lunch together, all six of us. Someone new chooses the place every week. This week it was Rarity, and she had picked this fancy-schmancy place called La Belle Bleu.

I called it fancy and I mean that. It was in the centre of town, where an old café used to be before the owner sold off the deed and moved to Hoofington. The new owners were from Fillydelphia. They had decorated the place with baskets of flowers and pots of little cactia, given the whole café a paint job. Basically, they had gutted the old café with a machete and put in its place the kind of tiny-portioned, there for the prestige not the food, expensive outlet Rarity lived on.

It was depressing.

By the time I arrived, everyone was there but myself and Twilight. I pulled up a seat, ignored the glare from Rarity when the chair squealed against the floor, and glanced through the menu. Nothing interesting. Well, interesting and cheap. I was living on a Weather Team budget.

AJ made some remark about how I was always running late for a mare who enjoyed being the fastest, and I shot back some insult which was definitely better than hers. With that over, conversation resumed and I let it fold over me like a familiar blanket and didn’t really take interest until Twilight showed up.

It wasn’t interesting that Twilight was late. No, that happened often enough that nobody was surprised. (Late despite being obsessed with tardiness – see how these contradictions pile up?) What interested me was something she said, or didn’t say, shortly after arriving.
She came in looking harried and a bit edgy, and made herself a spot at the table with little fuss. “Sorry, girls,” she said. “I got caught up with some stuff at the library.”

I laughed. “Is that your way of saying you overslept?”

Twilight blushed, and that was all the answer I need. The others giggled along with me. AJ was the first to resume the conversation. “Don’t worry about it none, sug. We all have late nights every now and then.”

“Some of us more often than others,” I said. I might have been sneering.

“You know what they say about glass houses, Rainbow Dash,” said Rarity, giving me that catty Got You Darling look of hers. “Besides, Twilight always has a good reason for her sleep-ins, don’t you darling?”

“Well,” Twilight said, rubbing the back of her head. “I got a caught up in a good book.”

“Ooh! Was it how to make origami books?” Pinkie asked. “I read that one and it was super duper good! They said to use thin paper that you could buy from a speciality store, but I didn’t have any of that, so I thought wouldn’t it be cool if I made an origami book out of sugar paper, because that it really thin, but it didn’t work out and that’s why the book on origami books is full of icing, I’m sorry.”

“Ah,” was Twilight’s reply.

I saved her the effort of formulating a response. Smart ponies like Twi struggle to think of stuff to say after they hear Pinkie speak, but I never have that problem. Wait. Uh, nevermind. Anyway, I said, “You were probably working on that project of yours, weren’t you Twi?”

This is where Twilight should have giggled the way she does when she feels embarrassed about one of her all-nighter egghead projects. But she didn’t. She just looked at me blankly for a second, and then something dawned on her. You could actually see the realisation being made.

She quickly said, “Oh yes, all night,” but I’d seen that hesitation, and now I knew for sure that she was lying to us, to me.

Well, maybe not lying. The word’s too strong. But she was definitely withholding the truth and that didn’t sit well with me. You might not know this, but I look out for my friends, and if there was something bothering Twilight enough for her to hide it from us, by Celestia I was going to find out what it was.

When lunch was over, we all said our goodbyes and went our ways. All except me. I flew up to a small cloud above the café. From there, I kept an eye out for Pinkie Pie.

She emerged last, alongside Applejack, and walked with her back to Sweet Apple Acres. Flying as fast as two ponies walk isn’t a whole lot of fun, let me tell you, and I was beginning to question whether it was worth trying to catch Pinks alone. But at the border of the farm, she wrapped AJ in a hug, then started coming back to Ponyville.

That was my chance. I plummeted towards her, wings tight against my barrel. When I was within spitting distance, I cupped the wind and landed beside her with barely a sound.

“Ooh, Dashie, that was cool. I bet not everypony can pull that off. You must be pretty proud of yourself.”

Now, not everypony can pull off a stunt like that. Most would wrench a joint or strain a muscle. Only years of training allowed me to do it, and I was pretty proud of myself.

Wait.

“Pinkie, did you just— you know what, never mind. I’m here about Twilight. Did you notice anything, I dunno, kind of odd about her at lunch?”

Pinkie pursed her lips and hummed thoughtfully. “Nope!” she said at last.

I sighed.

“Unless you count that weird pause when you said that thing about the thing?” she added.

“The project?”

“Yup! In that case, I would say she was acting strangely.”

I nodded. So it wasn’t just me, then. I decided to tell Pinkie Pie what had happened at closing time. Pinkie Pie listened carefully, and when I was finished, she said, “So you think something is bothering her?”

“Yeah, basically.”

“What could be bothering her that she wouldn’t tell her best friends in the whole wide world about? Her BFWWW’s?”

I shrugged. “That’s what I wanna find out.”

We spent the rest of the walk back into Ponyville talking over what it might be and how we could find out for sure. We came up with no definite problems and no sure solutions, so we figured out a time to meet and parted ways.

In the lead up to the meeting, I tried to press Twilight for information about her project. If she slipped up, I could call her out and get to the bottom of what she was really doing.

She didn’t slip. The first time I pressed, all I got was a promise that she would show me some of the work if I was interested. The second time, I was “treated”, quotation marks intentional, to the boringest, dullest, it-would-be-less-painful-to-beat-yourself-to-death-with-a-rock-est lecture ever. Seriously. When I got home from that one, I spent two hours doing free falls while blasting rock music and reading Daring Do’s fight scenes – all just to get that rubbish out of my head.

Urgh, just thinking about it hurts.

Anyway, if Twilight had been trying to get me off her back, she succeeded. I didn’t go back to the library once before the meeting came around.

When I say meeting, I mean it casually. Like, it wasn’t black suits and briefcases, sitting around an oval desk. It was cupcakes and coffee, sitting at a picnic table in Greenfields Park.

We had been sitting for a while, actually. Pinkie brought with her a basket of freshly baked cupcakes, and they were delicious.
While we ate them – Pinkie eating six for every one of mine – we chatted about normal stuff, but after the last cupcake was gone, the mood changed. Pinkie stopped joking, stopped laughing and talking, and sat quietly for a minute, which, for Pinkie, is like taking a vow of silence. Just when I was starting to feel uneasy, she spoke.

“What is bothering Twilight?” she said softly, more a question to herself than to me.

“I dunno,” I replied. “But it started after the harvest festival. Maybe something happened to her?”

Pinkie shook her head. “Nah-uh. She was helping me plan everything. We stuck together like glue or icing or glitter.”

“Glitter?”

“It’s the herpes of the art world.”

“Okay. Well, uh, you couldn’t have been together all the time. There must have been some time when you were separated.”

“Like glue,” she said, miming her hooves being stuck together. Her eyes widened. “What if it was me? What if I’m the problem?”

“You did something that caused her to start kicking me out around closing time?” I said. “Yeah, somehow I don’t think so, Pinks.”

Pinkie hummed and scratched her chin. I imagined dozens of different thoughts bouncing around her skull, most of them off-the-walls and off target, but a few of them frighteningly accurate in the way Pinkie sometimes was. At last she opened her mouth to speak, and I leaned forwards intently.

“I got nothing,” she said.

I leaned back and sighed. Frustrating mare, I tell ya. “That makes two of us.”

“We should do a stakeout,” Pinkie suggested.

I shook my head. “We’re not trying to catch her sneaking out. We’re trying to catch her staying in.”

“A breaking and entering?”

“That sounds . . .” My eyes narrowed. “. . . kind of illegal.”

“An infiltration!”

I shrugged. Close enough. “Yeah, sure. An infiltration. What’s the plan, then?”

Pinkie smiled, showing a few too many teeth. “Leave that to me.”

I didn’t exactly feel confident in leaving the details of the plan to her. Pinkie was a great party planner, but when it came to other things, her plans tended to be a bit – how should I put it – excessive? Over the top? Hair-brained and unreliable and overly complex? All of those things, really. Pinkie’s schemes could rival those of a villain in a Daring Do novel.

So I wasn’t exactly surprised when I received what was labelled a ‘secret missive’ some time later that afternoon. It came attached to several balloons and a confetti popper. Not exactly secret, but whatever. I opened it, and the message inside told me to meet Pinkie in the bushes outside the library at six p.m sharp – closing time.

I passed the afternoon helping out the weather crew and practising a few tight-space manoeuvres. It helped burn some nerves. When evening came, I headed over to the library.

As I drew near, I heard a voice hiss my name. I looked around, and heard it again, coming from a copse of bushes in someone’s garden. I glanced around, hoping that no one was watching, and approached the bushes. When I came close, a hoof flew out of the foliage, looped around my neck, and dragged me in.

I blinked, and when my eyes opened, I found myself in a small hollow space in the centre of the copse, facing what looked like a frizzy haired ninja.

“Pinkie Pie,” I said. “The heck are you wearing?”

“It’s a stealth suit!” she chirped back. “Twilight gave it to me when we broke into the Canterlot vaults to steal forbidden time magic.”
What. I laughed uneasily. “That’s a good one, Pinks. You’re kidding right?”

“No, it really is a stealth suit,” she said. Her smile didn’t waver. “Anywho, Twilight has just closed up shop, so now it’s time to do some shop-lifting.”

“Shop-lifting?”

“Lifting ourselves into that shop, silly. We’re going to get in through the window.”

She pointed towards the library and I followed her hoof. On the second floor, one of the windows had been left halfway open, probably to let in the breeze. It wasn’t large enough to squeeze through – not for me and definitely not for Pinkie – but if Twilight had Spike maintaining it, which she would have, then it would be greased up like a freshly cooked hayburger. We could open it without any fear of making a noise.

“Okay, so once we are in, what’s the plan?”

“When ponies are doing sneaky experiments in movies, they always go into the basement. We will take out the dragon, sneak downstairs, and capture ourselves an elusive alicorn.”

“Except for taking out Spike, that sounds like a plan.”

Pinkie bobbed her head. “Yessiree.”

“So how are we going to do this?” I asked.

“Like this,” replied Pinkie.

She ducked between the bushes and disappeared from view. I pushed my head through the bushes. I could see the library clearly, but not Pinkie Pie. I squinted, and saw a shadow detach itself from a fence and skitter across the ground like a hunting spider. The shadow disappeared into the shade of a tree, then reappeared on the far side, rolling towards the library. Again it disappeared, and reappeared this time and the base of the library, below the open window. It crouched, tensed, and leaped, landing on a branch beside the window.
I nodded, impressed. Now it was my turn.

I stepped out of the bushes, brushed some stray bit of plant out of my fur, opened my wings, and with three strong beats covered the distance between myself and the branch. I landed beside Pinkie, who pouted.

“That wasn’t sneaky at all, Dashie,” she said.

I shrugged. “It’s Twilight. You could march up to her door with a battering ram and she wouldn’t notice until you came into her room, took away her books, and tied her up in rope.”

Pinkie waggled her eyebrows. “Are you into that kind of thing?”

My face felt hot for a moment. It wasn’t a blush, I swear.

“Sh-shut up,” I retorted.

“Gags as well?”

I groaned. “I— You— Forget it. Are we going to do this?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Pinkie said, with more innuendo than I cared for. She pried open the window and wiggled through. After a pause, I followed.

Now, a lot of ponies call me a loud-mouth, and noisy, and boastful, inconsiderate, rude – a whole bunch of things like that, often listed off by Rarity whenever I piss her off. But when I want to be quiet, I can be; and when I slipped through that window onto Twilight’s bathroom floor, I was.

Yet, for all my quietness, somehow Spike managed to hear me.

He must have been up there sweeping or something, because he was close enough to make out the sound of my hoofs clicking against the floor. He stopped whatever he was doing, and the bathroom fell into silence. Pinkie Pie, who was standing on her hind legs beside the door, glanced back at me in alarm. I gave her calming gesture: Wait.

We waited. Nothing came from the other side of the door, and then there was a sound: the click of claws on wood.
“Twilight, is that you?” asked a young, raspy voice.

Pinkie Pie mouthed something at me. I didn’t get it. I shook my head, and she repeated it.

Take out the dragon.

I sighed noiselessly. Okay, we were going to take out the dragon.

Spike’s footsteps approached the door, then stopped. The door knob creaked and turned. The door crept open. I caught a glimpse of purple scales and a huge green eye, and then Pinkie moved.

She flung open the door and grabbed Spike with her front hooves, forcing something, a hoofsock, I think, into his mouth. The dragon was stunned. He didn’t resist as she yanked him into the bathroom and bound him with rope. Then she pushed him into a corner and pressed her nose to his.

“Okay, kid, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Easy way, you stay here and don’t make a sound. Hard way, I tie you up and gag you. Which will it be?”

“Pinkie,” I said. “He’s already tied and gagged.”

Her eyes narrowed. “So he picked the hard way. Tough kid.”

I shook my head. “Come on. Let’s find Twilight.”

Pinkie slinked out of the bathroom. I gave Spike a conciliatory look. “Sorry, squirt. Them’s the breaks. Hang tight, all right?”

Spike didn’t so much as blink. I think he was still trying to comprehend where the sock had come from.

I joined Pinkie Pie on the upper floor. Twilight was nowhere in sight, which meant that she was probably downstairs in her basement already, doing whatever it was she was doing. Something nefarious, I was beginning to suspect. I pointed towards the ground floor, and Pinkie nodded.

With the bare minimum of squeaking, we made our way down the stairs and over to the basement door. It was locked.
“Is this door normally locked?” Pinkie whispered.

“How should I know?” I whispered back. “Not usually. Twi sometimes goes down to grab books, but she never locks it behind her.”
Pinkie took a deep breath. “Dashie, we may have to come to terms with the fact that our good friend Twilight has descended into evil. And into this basement. And if we go down there, we will have to face her terrible might. We may not survive.” She put a hoof on my shoulder. “I just wanted you to know that out of all my friends, you are the one that I enjoy breaking into other people’s houses with the most.”

“Same here,” I said, then frowned. “Wait, does that mean you break into houses with other— ”

“Hush now. Pinkie’s picking locks.”

Pinkie Pie patted me on the head, which moved her up several places on my prank list, and bent over the door. She pulled white powder from somewhere, put it in her mouth, and then suck on the tip of her mane. She slid the tip, and just the tip, into the lock and counted for several seconds. Then she twisted her head, and the door popped open.

“Hard icing sugar,” she explained. “Works a treat!”

Sometimes I think Pinkie Pie has a little too much fun messing with my head.

The door opened onto a staircase which led into darkness. Just visible at the bottom was a faint orange glow. A candle, maybe. I traded looks with Pinks and took the first step.

As far as mare’s go, I’m pretty fearless. Completely fearless, actually, except for two small things. The first is hooficures – can’t stand them. The second fear is dark staircases.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t freak out or anything. I definitely do not get the shivers, the kind that feels like an elf is tiptoeing along your spine in slippers of ice. Nah-uh. I just feel mildly anxious is all. Not cowardly at all, not after the number of staircase-loving creatures of darkness my friends and I have had to deal with.

So yeah, I was walking down those stairs feeling a little bit out of sorts, and my mind began to turn over the facts of the last week or so. After the festival, Twilight had seemed exhausted and drained, had kicked me, one of her best and closest friends, onto the curb at closing time. She had kept doing so for the past fortnight. When I pressed her, she claimed to be researching a book, but wouldn’t give out any details. Throw in the creepy staircase and it was easy to imagine that the book might not be something Princess-Approved. Might be something a little bit evil.

In short, when I stepped onto the staircase, I thought I was going to help a friend. When I got to the bottom, I was preparing to attack an apprentice necromancer.

Staircases. I hate ‘em.

It didn’t help that at the bottom of the staircase was another door. It was made of black wood and in the gloom it seemed to suck in the light, chew it, swallow it, belch and call for more. I didn’t want to touch it.

“Dashie, are you going to open it?” asked Pinkie Pie.

I gulped. “Maybe, uh, we should open it together? Like, at the same time.”

“That’s what together means, silly.” Pinkie put a hoof on my shoulder. “Let’s do it on three.”

I took a deep breath.

“One.”

Heck, I was Rainbow Dash. The kids loved me. Mares and stallions swooned at the sight of me. I could do this.

“Two.”

I could definitely do this.

“Three!”

We both threw ourselves into the door. It held for an instant, then burst open, and we went sprawling into the room. I regained my hooves first, and crouched low to the ground, ready to pounce or dive for cover – whichever the situation demanded.

The situation demanded neither. As soon as the initial shock of our entrance passed, a voice cried out, “What the heck are you doing?”

I surveyed the room for the voice. If it belonged to a necromancer, it was definitely going against convention. Instead of cold stone and mouldy floors, it had clean but scratch floorboards and comfortable furniture. No corpses, but plenty of bookshelves, and, on the far side of the room, a fire that crackled away undisturbed. Beside it, holding a thin paperback in a field of lavender magic, was Twilight.

She didn’t look amused.

“Stopping you from . . . raising the dead?” I tried uncertainly.

Her brows came together like thunderheads. “What?”

“Well, uh— Pinkie, explain.”

Pinkie, who had fallen into a stack of chairs when she burst through and was still extricating herself, gave me a look that said: What do you expect me to do about it?

I sighed. “Okay, let me start from the beginning.”

I started from the harvest festival, and told her everything from there. After I mentioned the first time she kicked me out, the tension left Twilight’s body and she sagged, as though she had been bracing for a blow that had passed her by. She gestured for me to join her by the fire, and after a moment, Pinkie joined us too.

I told her about my suspicions, about her strange reactions, about how I thought the book thing was a lie and Pinkie thought so too. I finished with our arrival at her house, leaving out the bit with Spike – the less she knew about that the better.

We sat in silence for a while, and then I asked the question I needed answering. “So why have you been kicking me out?”

Twilight sighed. The bags under her eyes weren’t as big as they were a week ago, but they were still there and they made her look years older.

“I . . . Look, please don’t be offended,” Twilight said quickly. “I love both of you and all of the girls. You’re my best friends, and you’re more than I could ever deserve.”

“Aww,” Pinkie cooed, nuzzling Twi’s neck. Twilight hesitated, then returned the gesture.

“You’re my best friends, but I . . .” Her head fell. “. . . I need time alone, away from you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “You’re the princess of friendship.”

“I know,” she said, looking up at me. “But think, Dash. Before I met you guys, I lived alone. My only real friends were the princess, my brother, and my babysitter. I wouldn’t ever give up the life I had now for that, but you have to understand I grew up being alone. Being around ponies every second of every day . . .” She sighed. “It’s stressful. I need time away from that. I’m sorry.”

I think she was expecting me to shout at her or feel betrayed or something stupid and over the top like that. I didn’t. Instead, I thought.
Did it make sense? Sort of. I liked to have my own space as well, but I never felt guilty about it. If I got bored of company, I left to enjoy my own. It seemed natural to me.

But for Twilight it was some complex issue, all knotted in on itself. I couldn’t understand thinking that way – I don’t think I want to – but the issue was clear enough:

Twilight is a mare of contradictions, and she doesn’t always know how to deal with them. That’s why she’s got friends like me, who say what needs to be said.

“Twi,” I said. “It’s no big deal. Ponies need time alone. Heck, I’m on my own more often than not. It’s natural. You don’t have to feel bad about it.”

“But I’m supposed to be the embodiment of friendship,” she said a little thickly.

Pinkie moved forwards and placed a hoof on her shoulder. “Friends listen to friends and they respect each other’s boulders.”

“Boundaries.”

“Batteries. I don’t prank Fluttershy because she gets really upset and puffy-eyed and cries a lot and then I feel really bad and have to apologise and bring her lots of cupcakes. I don’t think anything bad because of it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “So you need a little alone time. Pfft, so what? Doesn’t make you anything less of a friend.”

Twilight was quiet. She lowered a head, and for a second I thought she was going to say something more about being alone. She didn’t. She reached out and wrapped her legs around our necks and drew us into a tight hug. Pinkie returned it immediately, and then so did I.

We sat like that for a while. “I’m so lucky to have friends like you,” Twilight said at last. Her voice was thick with emotion.

I smiled. “Right back at ya.”

We hugged and talked and did a whole bunch of girly stuff which you don’t need to hear. Just know that I did not cry and was generally cool throughout.

Afterwards, we headed back upstairs to discover that Spike had managed to worm himself across to the staircase and was in the process of wriggling down it. The kid’s got guts. More guts than Pinkie and I, because as soon as Twilight realised what had happened, she shouted us out of the house and chased us halfway down the street, launching books at our tails.

We might have laughed as we ran.