"Oh, Starlight!" Spike walked in with a mop slung over his shoulder. "There you are! You've been down here since this morning?"

Starlight Glimmer turned to face him with a glower.

"Sorry I asked—"

"No, Spike," Starlight said, quickly and consciously reworking her expression. "It's not you, it's this stupid assignment." She scooped up a dollop of clay and slapped it back into the glob on the table.

"Having trouble, how did Twilight put it, 'manifesting an expression of your most deeply-held dread'?"

"In the first place," Starlight said, "it's a pointless exercise. It's entirely possible to avoid talking about one's existential issues without some clay statue as a monument to them." She paused as she replayed the words in her mind. "I mean, possible to talk about them without and so on. More to the point, I don't have any sources of existential dread."

Spike looked back from hanging the mop on a Spike-reachable set of hooks on the wall. "Wow, really? Sounds pretty great to be you, Starlight."

"Not anything special, anyway, and nothing that can be expressed in clay." She spat the word like mud. "Sure, I feel the clutches of my own mortality sometimes, or worry that I'll die alone and forgotten and unloved, or that Celestia will some day lock the sun overhead and give everyone terrible sunburn, or there's that noise that Maud makes when she grinds her teeth, but none of those can really be made manifest in clay, you know?"

Spike paused mid-reach. "Wanna run that last one by me again?"

"Or, like, am I supposed to make a diorama of dozens of ponies with pitchforks and torches coming to take me away and drown me in a river with my hooves out of clay? With no magic allowed?" Starlight tore off another hunk of clay and slapped it back into the mass. "I mean... how?"

Spike slipped past her, a spray-bottle of glass cleaner in one hand and a rag in the other. "I was never a part of this conversation, was I?"

"And, sure, let's say I go with that teeth-grinding noise – how is that supposed to work in clay, anyway? It's not like I can sculpt Maud – I like Maud! It's that horrible, wrenching, grating noise that gets into your skull and... Spike, where are you going with that dolly?"

"Oh," Spike said, surprised, a loading dolly pulled behind him, nearly horizontal. "Your room, actually. We need to move your bookshelves a bit to make space for the tank."

"My room? Wait, what tank?"

"The – Oh, right, you've been down here since breakfast. C'mon up, we'll introduce you!"

"Introduce me? To who?"

[hr]

At the foot of the crystal stairs was a massive glass globe; a goldfish bowl on steroids. Starlight quickly identified Twilight in front of it, floating a book and a half-dozen pony-length pieces of thick rope around her, her expression that of frustrated lead, talking to herself in snatches.

"Oh, that's... yes we, ah, let's see turtle shell..." Moved the ropes, "right?" Looked at the tank. Rifled hurriedly through the book, skipping back and ahead. "Yellow... plankton... behind?" More page-turning, more rope. "Behind?" More looking. "Oh, behind!" Turned around.

"You know," Starlight said, "nevermind. I think I figured it out and I'm going to get started sculpting—"

"Don't go Starlight!" Twilight called. "Trying to talk to him is so frustrating! It's amazing that we even can communicate, and Fluttershy and I already have corrections for the translator who wrote this book, but it's so slow, awkward, and circumlocutious I'm starting to go out of my skull already. Oh, ah..." She paged through the book and wiggled the ropes again at the tank. "...Glimmer, I think?"

"Meet the ruling monarch of the Nautilus," Spike said. "Exiled for absolutely no reason whatsoever under pain of death and requesting asylum and temporary residence on land."

"Good, Spike," Twilight said, noticing him. "You have the dolly. Leave the glass polish here and take care of it upstairs?"

"You got it..." And up the stairs he went, dolly clanking behind him.

"Starlight," Twilight said, "meet his royal highness. Call him Ishmael."

It took Starlight a moment to realize that the globe was filled near to the brim several hooves overhead with water, and that there was a thing maybe twice the size of a pony floating there. "Uhuagh," Starlight started.

It was as though somepony had given a beard to a gigantic dollop of toothpaste. It was a bundle of blue-green silk wrapped around hovering pustule of phlegm. It was a wet paper bag spilling snakes forever. It had lidless, lifeless, alien eyes (presumably two, Starlight reasoned, though she only saw the one) half the size of its body, turned to flense away all pretense and ego to peer deep into her and reveal her soul or skeleton, whichever the (supposed) creature felt like devouring at the time.

"Muagh..." Starlight tried again. "H-hi?" She forced a smile and lifted a hoof to wave.

"Nodon'tdothat, Starlight!" Twilight yelped, her grip slamming Starlight's hoof to the floor so hard it hurt. "That gesture is a grave offense in his culture."

"Oh," Starlight managed. "Well, it was nice meeting you, your highness."

Twilight offered the ropes and book. "You can tell him yourself."

"Nope," Starlight chirruped. "I'm good. I gather he's lodging in my room for a bit, sounds great."

"Are you being difficult again, Starlight?"

"He can stay as long as he needs. I'm going back to the study and I'll just stay there for a few weeks." She started to bow, paused, and glanced to Twilight. "Any grave offense if I just turn and walk away?"

"Not to him, anyway," Twilight grumbled.

"Thanks!"

[hr]

Twilight trotted into the study, carrying platter of tea and sandwiches. Her tone was far more chipper than her sagging features. "Hi, Starlight! Sorry about before. I brought dinner."

"Thanks, Twilight." Starlight surreptitiously pushed the plate of veggie cuts under some muddy rags. "That's very kind of you."

"Oh! You've finished your assignment?"

"Almost. Once I realized what I needed to express, it was pretty quick work."

Twilight absently set down the tray and circled the table. "Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. It's a unicorn... is it yourself? You fear what you were? Or what you might become? I can't really make out the hair or the expression, and you haven't added a cutie mark to identify anypony specifically..."

"Excuse me for having to do it all with my hooves," Starlight muttered disdainfully.

Twilight didn't hear. "Well, we can talk all about it over this bite to eat, right? I can't wait to—"

"Nope," Starlight chirruped. Her smile never faltered. "No, I'm going to just stay in here for a good long while and you're going back outside and leaving me alone for a few days because you, Twilight, are unpredictable, dangerous, and absolutely terrifying."