Twilight sighed and paced, wingtips twitching. No matter how desperately she tried to deny it to herself, there was no avoiding the conclusion. It was time for an extremely uncomfortable talk.

"Twiiiiilight," Spike said musically. He was sprawled spread-eagled on the ground, with one arm swaying in the air, claws clenched around a rolled piece of papyrus. "You got a ssssk. A ssskuuurr. Schkrrrroll." He giggled. "You know. A princess letter."

She ticked through a mental checklist she hadn't expected to need until his late teens—if ever. Inappropriate giggling, check. Confused affect, check. Unexplained lethargy, check. Bloodshot eyes, check. And even with the window of his room open, there was a weird sweet-and-sour charcoal odor lingering in her nostrils. All consistent—or so she had read—with combusting and inhaling the controlled substance known as "ash".

"Special delivery," Spike said. He weakly flung the scroll at her leg, and it bounced off and rolled back to him. "Oohhh wow, that was the worst throw." He picked the scroll back up and stared at it contemplatively. "Hey, did you get your letter? I should tooootally dictate your reply. I mean. Write. You dictate." His eyes unfocused. "Eeeeheeheehee. Our princess is a dictator."

Twilight winced. Deep breath. Hoof to chest, hoof out, exhale. "Spike," she said with calmness she didn't feel. "We need to talk."

"Oooookkkaaaay," he said, eyes crossed to stare at his nose as he slowly shaped his muzzle around the word. "About?"

"About—" Twilight said vaguely, her heart breaking at the thought of a direct accusation—"the life-threatening dangers of 'ash' abuse."

Spike blinked contemplatively. The room was briefly silent.

"The M.A.R.E. educational pamphlets?" he said, eyes refocusing. "I unpacked those Tuesday. Whoooaah. Twos-day. Display Two-36-C." He waved the claw curled around the scroll, blinked up at his claw, and thrust it at her. "Huh. You got a letter."

"NO, Spike, this is about YOU—" Twilight started, then cut herself off for another deep breath. She couldn't do this.

Where had she gone wrong? Was she being too lax in raising him? Were the annual interviews she conducted with all of his friends insufficient vetting? Had she assigned him too little reading about the countless dangers which could ruin the lives of young fillies and colts? In the face of so many unknowns, facing her failure directly like this hurt too much. Maybe if she found out who was supplying him, so she could cut him off without a potentially family-wrecking argument?

"Leeeeeettter," Spike warbled. "D. D is for 'Dear Twilight Sparkle, signed, Princess Celestia'. That's, um, lots of letters though. 'Dear', that's four, 'Twilight', plus eight—"

Spike's face suddenly went lopsided. He hiccuped. His chest jerked, and a blast of familiar green flame with decidedly unfamiliar red edging seared the air over his muzzle. Twilight took an involuntary step back as a second scroll bounced off Spike's muzzle and rolled away.

The odor of sweet-and-sour charcoal redoubled, and an entirely different sinking feeling gripped Twilight Sparkle's heart as her original devastation evaporated.

Spike giggled and dropped the first scroll to pick the second one up. "Singing princess-gram—" he started, but Twilight had already snatched it from his claw and lifted it to her nose for a sniff. Sweet-and-sour. With a burst of magic, she ripped the sun-crest wax seal off the pink-heart-festooned ribbon, to find a message in sloppy midnight-blue cursive:

Dear Ms. Lateypants,

super

Super

SUPER! IMPORTANT!

princess business in canterlot

asap like now!

Love, Us.

Twilight glanced at Spike. She re-read the scroll. She lowered it.

Her eye twitched.

---

WHAM! Twilight's purple field dissipated from around the heavy castle door as it slammed into the wall, and a cloud of pungent red haze billowed out of Luna's sitting room.

"WHAT," Twilight shouted, "is so thunderbucking IMPORGHBBL—" And she doubled over coughing, tears streaming from her eyes, as the full pungency of the sweet-and-sour hit her.

Three feminine cheers erupted from within the haze. "Whoooo finally!" a voice that sounded like a pitch-upshifted Cadance said. "Come in and close the door, sis, you're ruining the hotbox."

Twilight backpedaled out of the cloud. She gritted her teeth. Her horn flashed. With a loud pop that yanked nauseatingly at her eardrums, and a great burst of wind, the red haze in the room vanished.

Three bloodshot-eyed alicorns blinked back at her. "Awww," Cadance said, voice dropping to her usual pitch over the course of the word.

Luna coughed deeply into a hoof and set down a small paper cylinder, whose tail end had thin red smoke curling up from glowing embers. Twilight's heart froze. There it was, in living color. Incriminating evidence.

"Twilight," Luna said—stare slowly focusing, a frown curling onto her muzzle—"you did not teleport that smoke to any ponies, did you?"

Twilight hadn't thought her rage was capable of increasing. "NOW you're concerned about secondhand ash smoke?" she shouted. "After CORRUPTING and ENDANGERING my—"

"Twilight," Celestia interrupted, and because it was Celestia, Twilight shut up. "Where did it go."

"A nearby volcano," Twilight said icily. "Now if you'll—"

Luna and Celestia groaned and facehoofed.

"Fire elemental advisory?" Luna said.

"Fire elemental advisory," Celestia said. "But that can wait. Come on in, Twilight."

Twilight held her ground, wings quivering. "What," she hissed. "Are. You. Doing."

The other princesses turned to look at each other. Twilight belatedly noticed that Cadance's mane had transformed into a gauzy translucent curtain, shimmering around the edges and blowing in some ethereal breeze.

"Didn't you get our letters?" Celestia said.

Twilight exploded. "YES, and that's the PROBLEM! How DARE you allow your drug-compromised judgment to condemn my faithful assistant to a destiny of deviancy, degeneracy and death—"

"Oh, is that what this display is about?" Luna interrupted, and giggled. "As the cool fillies say, Twilight, becalm thy mammaries. Your seneschal is unharmed."

Twilight opened and closed her mouth. Of all the ways she had thought this conversation could go, needing to lecture the ruling princesses of Equestria on basic science was not one of them.

"How can you SAY that?" she finally managed, pulling three M.A.R.E. pamphlets from her saddlebags and shoving them into the princesses' muzzles. "For that matter, how can you do this to yourselves? Sure, the drug feels harmless the first time or two—and eventually works its way out of your body, if you stop using it—"

"Twilight—" Luna said.

Twilight raised her voice and pushed on. "However, repeated doses cause toxins to accumulate, creating progressively more serious side effects, with the euphoria of the high masking the damage and driving its victims back to the drug more and more often—"

"Twilight," Celestia said.

But this time, not even her mentor's interruption was going to stop Twilight from saving the princesses from themselves. "Leading in chronic users to organ failure and even complete neurothaumic collapse! So when you say that first hit of 'ash' does no harm, it's the first step on a slippery slope—"

A floating pink feather, its shaft wrapped in a pinker field, brushed Twilight's horn. "Gah!" she shouted, her speech forgotten. She reared back and flailed her forehooves.

There was stifled laughter from the three alicorns. "Old babysitting trick," Cadance said, and reached for the smoldering stick of shame. "Come on, Twilight, calm down and have a seat."

"No stop stop gaaaah!" Twilight shrieked and giggled as Cadance's feather tickled her some more.

Celestia hoofed the cigar from Cadance's glowfield and took a long drag, closing her eyes before contorting her muzzle to blow out a perfectly circular ring of red smoke. "I'm beginning to actually wonder," she said, "if she didn't read the letter."

Cadance let out the breath she had been holding, blowing a stream of smoke out herself. "Twilight not reading? Seriously?"

"I know!"

Cadance giggled and poked Twilight with the shaft of her feather. "You know, Chrysalis, I'm not even mad. We've got enough for five."

"I'm not a changeling!" Twilight protested, feeling her face heat as the conversation slipped away from her. "And don't change the subject! You've exposed my number one assistant to a potentially lethal substance—"

"It's not," Luna interjected. "I just said."

Twilight pressed a hoof to her temple. "The scientific literature—"

"Was written," Celestia said, "for ponies. Dragons smoke ash to stimulate growth."

Twilight paused.

Cadance floated the cigar in her direction invitingly.

"Okay," Twilight said slowly. "That very nearly sounded like a logical rationale for your actions. However, you seem to be ignoring the fact that we are ponies."

"Alicorns," Luna mumbled, raising a hoof.

Twilight's eye twitched. "Yes. Alicorns who have to not only rule, but set a positive example for, an entire nation of ponies."

"That would be a great deal easier," Luna said petulantly, "if you would close the door."

Twilight screamed, slammed it in their faces, and stomped away.

---

"Twilight?" Rarity's voice was muffled by the thick crystal door.

"Go 'way," Twilight mumbled, curling into a slightly tighter ball and pulling down yet another set of sheets and towels onto the immense pile covering her.

"Please, darling," Rarity cooed. "We're your friends. We're here for you—you know that. But we cannot assist unless you will inform us what the problem is."

Twilight moaned. "I have learned a dread secret no pony was meant to know. My entire life is built on a foundation of lies. All that is good and holy is naught but a gilded mask atop a seething mass of rot and corruption."

Outside the Friendship Palace's basement linen closet, it was silent for a moment.

"Sheesh, Twilight," Rainbow Dash said. "Yes, it was a little disconcerting learning that Horson Scott Cart was just a pen name for Prince Blueblood, but it's not like we can't appreciate his novels independent of the author."

"That wasn't—wait, WHO is WHAT?!" Twilight burst from the pile and pulled the door open.

"GOTCHA!" Dash shouted, yanking Twilight forward by one leg while Applejack's lasso cinched around her neck. A brief struggle later, three ponies were piled atop Twilight and Pinkie Pie was cramming an emergency cupcake in her muzzle.

Twilight chewed, swallowed, then took a long breath and sat up. "Okay, you know, that actually helped. You girls are the best." She hugged her friends unsteadily, then her lips curled into a smirk. "Heh. I've got to admit, Dash, you were pretty clever tricking me out with a shocker like that."

Dash gave her a blank look. "You mean that isn't what you were upset about?"

Twilight froze. Then she teleported back into the closet and slammed the door back shut.

There was muffled pounding from outside. Twilight teleported the contents of her basement to the front lawn.

Sweet, sweet silence followed. Twilight flung herself backward onto the pile of linens, closed her eyes, and wallowed in exquisite despair.

"You know," Fluttershy said quietly, "the year I won the Junior Championships of Ssh, the World Grandmaster got disqualified for having entered her title match two days after dying. The scandal destroyed the sport—that's why I abandoned it for flight school." She was silent for a moment. "They say to kill your heroes, but I'm pretty sure that's not what they meant."

Twilight rolled over, trying to find a less awkward position atop the linens. "It's much worse than that," she moaned. "Worse even than Blueblood being one of the nation's top authors. The princesses are all drug addicts."

"Oh, my," Fluttershy said softly, and placed a comforting hoof on Twilight's shoulder. "That does sound horrible."

Twilight whimpered and nodded, feeling tears brim in her closed eyes. Fluttershy gently stroked her mane. Twilight choked back a sob and shifted, resting her head against Fluttershy's throat.

It felt so good just to be held. The tears receded.

"Fluttershy," Twilight finally asked, "what are you doing in my linen closet?"

"I snuck in while they were dragging you out," Fluttershy said. "I figured you'd be back."

"Well, what else am I supposed to do? I caught Celestia, Luna AND Cadance in a back room of Canterlot Palace smoking ash. I tried to intervene but they blew me off. And they sent Spike a letter for me! They got him high!"

Fluttershy stroked Twilight's mane for long seconds. "I'm sure they must have had a good reason."

"They said it was 'Super! Important! princess business'. With exclamation marks and everything." Twilight shifted and sighed. "And there was another letter I didn't read."

Fluttershy froze. Then her hoof resumed stroking, much more tentatively. "Y-you know, Chrysalis," she stammered, "I'd have f-fed you if you just asked nicely."

Twilight facehoofed. "Look, I'm not…Spike was high at the time, okay? They were clearly high when they wrote me. The scroll stunk to the heavens of ash, and I was still in denial. I teleported it into a volcano."

"Oh. Um. Okay." Fluttershy breathed, then resumed her stroking. "Maybe you should give the princesses a chance to explain?"

"They got high on ash and scrolled me," Twilight said. "What is there to explain?"

---

"Well, you see," Celestia said, "that's what keeps us immortal."

Twilight felt her eye twitch again. "What."

Celestia refilled her teacup and poured a second cup for Twilight, setting it down on her balcony table and staring out at the broad expanse of Equestria as she sipped. "That's what keeps us immortal."

"I heard you the first time." Twilight eyed the tea suspiciously. "But the science."

Celestia sighed. "It's normal Jasmine. It goes well with the also-perfectly-normal honey on the side table by the tower door. And you really didn't read my letter. What were you doing in Canterlot, then?"

"I got your second one," Twilight said as she sipped the tea straight. She stifled a grimace and floated the honeypot over. "Let's just pretend that never happened. Explain from the beginning."

Celestia paused, eyes rolling heavenward as she thought. "Ah, right, that letter," she said sheepishly and took another sip. "We…ah…you must understand, with pure ash uncut with preservatives, you don't get much time to prepare, and you don't have long before it goes bad. We kind of started without you."

"Yes," Twilight said acidly, "I got that. What was the rush, exactly?"

"Well, obviously, Philomena died."

"…," Twilight said, somehow pronouncing the silence.

For the first time, Celestia turned her head to look inquisitively at Twilight. She set her teacup down and sighed. "We really are starting from the beginning, aren't we? Twilight, what do you know about ash, aside from that vapid Mothers Against Recreational Entheogens propaganda?"

"Nothing, because I'm not an addict, Princess! I can recognize signs of its use, in case I need to help ponies—but ash ruins bodies and lives, and I don't need to know any more than that!"

"Not even what it is?"

"Fine-grained calcinated flakes of P. apoda," Twilight quoted automatically, and her brain finally put two and two together. "Wait. Ash…it's phoenix ashes!?"

Celestia nodded. "There are several reasons it's a controlled substance; among the most important is that dragons hunted phoenixes nearly to extinction before Equestria set up breeding programs. The other, more important, is that ingesting ash smoke induces thaumic transformation in the user. The material's not toxic, per se…it's just that the average pony is magically resistant enough for their body to fight the transformation, and autoimmune effects create the toxic symptoms that all the literature warns of. For inherently magical creatures, such as dragons and alicorns, the effects are exactly the opposite: healing, empowering, and invigorating."

Twilight stared numbly at her tea. "Okay. Sure. Frankly, I'm still stuck on the part where you were smoking your dead pet."

Celestia laughed musically. "Pet? Come, Twilight, you know exactly how intelligent phoenixes are. Philomena XCVIII's family long ago made a pact with us, to voluntarily donate their bodies to Equestria after their tenth combustion leaves them too weak to continue the revivification cycle. In exchange, they serve as honored diplomats in Canterlot, living a life of peace and luxury. It's the ultimate in mutually beneficial arrangements."

"But you're smoking your…companion, then. She doesn't even get a proper funeral! Don't tell me that's not sick."

Celestia shrugged. "I suppose, from a limited point of view, if you focus on the lack of burial? But look at, say, the ash-scattering of the pegasi of the Fire Skies—or the wakes of the Old Country, where everypony got stinking drunk and wandered away from the body. Funerals take many forms, Twilight—and isn't the smoking a funeral in itself, honoring my time with her and uniting us in the great circle of life?"

"Well," Twilight said. "Um. That is…hm."

She heard the tower door creak open, then click shut. "Think of it this way, Twilight Sparkle," Luna's voice said. "You are shocked at the disrespect toward a fellow creature, yes? But is it truly any sicker than gryphons eating meat, or ponies milking their cattle tenants?"

Twilight lowered her head and sighed. "You two are right. I mean, if I stop and think about it…the ash is bringing you into a state of altered consciousness characterized by intensified connectedness, relaxation, and euphoria. What better tribute to a friendship? That's about as respectful as it gets." Her voice grew faint. "I'm sorry. I messed up as a new princess—and as a friend. I should have joined you."

"It's alright." Celestia gave her a neck-hug. "I know it must be hard to accept at first, Twilight. If we could get ash's effects in any way that didn't involve the passing of a friend, believe me, we would. But that's the way our world works, and we do everything we can to honor it."

Twilight nodded, and even managed a weak chuckle. "Of course, if you want to talk about sick, go through the portal to the human world." She shuddered. "They've got a drug like ash there—except it IS both non-toxic and plant-based, and they make it illegal anyway!"

Celestia blinked. "What? Why?"

"Supposedly, because of its mental effects," Twilight said, with a helpless shrug.

Luna winced. "How barbaric. Can you imagine the mindset it takes to ban a plant that isn't toxic to ponies?"

---

Objectively, Twilight thought, the silence when she stepped off the train onto the Ponyville platform couldn't have been nearly as awkward as it felt.

Rainbow Dash coughed. Rarity covered her nose discreetly with a hoof, but not discreetly enough that Twilight didn't see her taking a sniff. Applejack stared into Twilight's eyes, one eyebrow quirking upward in silence. Fluttershy's nose wrinkled, and then her eyes widened, and her lower jaw quivered. Only Pinkie Pie seemed unfazed, but then, Pinkie Pie was Pinkie Pie.

It was Rainbow that broke the silence. "Uh, hey," she said, gesturing over Twilight's shoulder at the shimmering red-to-purple-to-midnight-blue gradient that was shimmering in the aether. "I like what you did with your mane."

At that, Twilight almost teared up. She was feeling so on Rainbow Dash's wavelength right now.

"I'm, um, dead, um, birds, got to go," Fluttershy squeaked, plastering on an expression that might have been charitably interpreted as a smile. "But I'm sure there's a very good explanation…?"

"I missed some important princess business," Twilight mumbled, craning her head around to look at the vibrant colors of the sky. "But it turns out that Philomena Ninety-Eight had a cousin."

Paper crinkled against her chest. Twilight re-leveled her head to look into Applejack's eyes, and caught the M.A.R.E. pamphlet in her horngrip as Applejack withdrew her hoof to tip her hat and silently depart.

Twilight tried to stifle a giggle. She couldn't help herself; the whole thing was just so perfectly ludicrous. Then Rarity's muzzle curled into a frown, and Twilight burst out laughing, and Rarity stepped in to say something and flinched back at the sweet-and-sour scent of Twilight's breath. She stalked off catlike, tail up like Opalescence after falling off the sofa, and the aphorism clicked how pets were exactly like their owners, and there was Rainbow Dash glancing between her and Rarity as her brain dragged its shell through the motions, until zip she was gone in a very un-turtle-like-fashion, and it was just Pinkie Pie bouncing alongside Twilight back home toward the castle.

"They'll come around," Pinkie chirped in between pronks. "Just give them a day or two with the copies of 'Alicorns: Putting The Fun In Funerals!' that I left on their kitchen tables. So, what was her name?"

"His," Twilight said automatically. "Skysong the. Umm. L-X-I-th, I think?" Suddenly realizing that her brain wasn't telling her hooves how to walk, Twilight jerked her gaze downward and focused on her front hooves, which ended up with her moving in an uncomfortable half-limp, dragging her hinds behind her as she figured out how to coordinate four limbs at once.

A rump-bump from Pinkie shocked Twilight out of her stagger and back into a normal trot, and Pinkie gave her a wink and leaned in.

"Soooo, is the funeral OVER over," Pinkie stage-whispered, "or do you still need some help sending him off?"

A very friendshippy grin slowly spread across the Princess of Friendship's face.

"Well," she said, "as a matter of fact…"

---

Epilogue

Twilight slowly exhaled, feeling a pleasant tingle in her chest as a thin cloud of red smoke streamed into the infinite cerulean ocean of the sky. The grass was cool against her back and the sun warm on her belly, and a gentle breeze caressed her, carrying the scent of apples uphill from the distant orchards. Pinkie giggled from her left, and a muscular purple claw reached over from her right to pluck the cigar from her horngrip.

"Gotta say, this tastes awfully bitter," Spike's mellow, deep voice said, and she saw his barrel-sized chest inflate out of the corner of her eye as he sucked in a robust lungful. He was looking damn good at one-and-a-half times her size.

"Well, you know," Twilight said, taking the cigar back. "Preservatives. Extremely unhealthy, but really, all that does is cancel out some of the smoke."

"It is a weensy bit disrespectful," Pinkie said, "but on the other hoof, it does let you extend the party as long as you want." She reached for the cigar.

A thought filtered through the increasing muddle of Twilight's contented thoughts, and she pulled the cigar back. "Hooooold on. Speaking of unhealthy. You're a pony."

Pinkie giggled, loud and long, and when Twilight glanced back from her face to the cigar, it was already in Pinkie's mouth, embers flaring bright red at the tip. "Silly filly," Pinkie said when she finally exhaled, shadow-play images dancing in the smoke rising from her mouth. "You know better than that."

"I guess I do," Twilight said sheepishly. "Wrote a friendship letter and everything." She made a sweeping gesture with a hoof, watching smoke curl around her pastern, lowering her voice to whisper dramatically. "The world is full of things beyond understanding."

"That's so deep," Spike murmured, and Twilight giggled. His voice was so deep. That was so perfect.

She passed him the cigar. He sucked in another big lungful, marred by a cough that spewed a thin red cloud out. "Reminds me of that quote from that funeral book on the kitchen table. What was it?" He waved his claw vaguely in the air, the cigar trailing a line of smoke. "Something something let the world be?"

Twilight plucked the cigar from his claws with her magic. "You tell me. I've been too busy with this ash thing to finish my preliminary review of the new arrivals."

"Ah," Spike said, taking a long breath of fresh air and plucking a piece of grass to examine in his claws.

"But we must be humble and allow the world to come to us as it is," Pinkie quoted, voice distant. "It is in convincing ourselves we know the shape of each thing that we lose sight of the shape of everything."

Twilight took another long drag and exhaled, trying to blow a smoke ring like Celestia's. It came out a solid oval cloud. "That," she said, sticking her tongue out at the smoke.

Pinkie giggled. "Twilight, not reading? Seriously?"

"I know, right?" Twilight said, and that sent her into a wheezing fit of laughter at the funniest thing in the whole damn world. "You know, Chrysalis, I'm not even mad," she managed to say to herself in between gasps. "I've got enough for four."

Pinkie collapsed into gales of helpless laughter with her. Spike stayed silent.

"…You mean it?" Spike said as Twilight caught her breath.

Twilight opened and closed her mouth, and finally decided she felt too damn good to spoil the moment. Ah, buck it, she thought, and offered him the cigar.

Spike stared at it, then at her. "Ah, buck it," he said in a suddenly husky feminine voice, and a blast of green fire wreathed his form. The changeling queen crooked a leg-hole around the cigar, drew it to her mouth, and took a long drag. "He was going to come out looking for you any time now anyway."

"Hey, I think that's Spike coming up the hill," Pinkie said, reaching for the cigar.

"The universe is so on your wavelength right now," Twilight whispered, and they hoofbumped and stared at the sky together, and all was right with the world.