Jason woke up with a start when he heard the sounds of somepony banging on his front door. Lifting his head from the pillow, he heard the sound of rain smacking against Nightshine’s window, thunder rumbling off in the distance. He felt Nightshine stir in his grasp, latching onto his arm with her legs as she snuggled closer to him. “Hey sweetie...” Jason whispered as he sat up, his throat feeling rather dry. He scratched his messy hair with his other hand, choosing to let Nightshine hold onto the other. When her hold on his arm tightened, he lifted it up, letting Nightshine dangle beneath it. “Time to get up, Nightshine,” he said, smiling as he watched her loop her tail around his arm.

Cracking her eyes open, she licked her lips and let go with her legs, only to fall half a foot back to the bed. “Huh?” she asked as she lay on her back, rubbing her eyes with a hoof. “Where am I?” she asked, peering around the room.

“We’re in your bedroom, silly,” Jason said as he unlooped her tail from his arm. He tickled her belly with the tips of his fingers for a few moments before he slid his legs over the edge of the bed. “Were you dreaming about something?”

“Actually, yeah...” Nightshine rolled over onto her belly and laid her forelegs over Jason’s lap. “I was in the middle of a dream where we were hanging upside down on a tree in the middle of a wide open field. It felt so real...” She shivered as the sheets slipped from her back, so she scooted closer to Jason’s side for warmth. “Almost as if I was having a vision, but... you weren’t you.” She rolled over onto her back and laid her head in his lap as she stared up into his eyes.

Jason’s eyebrows furrowed at that. “What do you mean?” With his right hand, he opened Nightshine’s left wing and scratched her side normally protected by it, making her squirm away from his ticklish fingers with a surprised squeal.

With a giggle, she pushed his hand away and folded her wing back up against her side. “You were...” The sounds of insistent knocking on the front door broke her concentration. “Oh, is that what woke us up?” she asked with a frown, a fang slipping past her lips as she glared at her bedroom door.

“Yeah, and I think it might be Twilight... C’mere, you!” As he stood up, he pulled Nightshine into his arms and held her like he would a human baby as he walked down the hall and into the living room. With his free hand, he pulled open the front door to find Twilight standing by herself, shivering from the cold, wet rain. He looked past her for just a moment, wondering if the other princesses or guards were around, and when he saw that they were in the clear, he pulled the door the rest of the way open with a small sigh of relief. “Hey, Twilight,” he said, standing aside to let her in from the rain. After closing the door, he asked, “So... did everything go alright up there?”

Twilight lit her horn and purged all of the water from her coat as she walked past him to collapse on the couch. She pulled her hind legs up onto it and slid them underneath her. She glanced up at him, then patted the couch with a hoof. “Things went... well, they didn’t go so good.”

Great start to a morning... Jason set Nightshine down on the couch as he walked into the kitchen.

Nightshine folded her forelegs in front of her as she peered up at Twilight, who was avoiding her gaze. She cleared her throat once, then twice, but still, she did not look at her. Nightshine’s tail started flicking about back and forth as she fought to keep her ears from flopping down, but instead ended up making them perk up, then fall flat over and over again. With a sigh of defeat, she laid her head on her forelegs and let her ears flop down, her eyes never leaving Princess Twilight.

“Water okay for you two?” Jason asked from the kitchen, grabbing a few glasses from the cupboard.

“Yeah, I suppose that’d be fine, but do you have any coffee?” Twilight called back.

Jason paused, then put the glasses back. “Yeah, I can make some. Just gimme a few minutes!” He filled up his coffee maker with a few scoops of coffee grinds, filled it up with the right amount of water, then hit the button on the machine. In the time that the coffee was being made, he grabbed a few mugs and reached into the fridge for the creamer. He poured a little bit into each mug, then poured a little extra into Nightshine’s mug so that her coffee wouldn’t have any trace of bitterness in it. When the coffee was done being made, he poured equal amounts into each cup, then picked them all up as he walked back to the couch.

“Thanks,” Twilight said gratefully as she accepted a mug from Jason. She let it warm her hooves before she took a sip. “Ah...” she said with a content sigh. “I came right over from the train station, so I didn’t get to have my morning coffee.” She took another sip. “What brand is this? It’s actually pretty good! Well, better than the stuff I buy.”

“I don’t know, I just buy the most expensive brand at the shop.” Jason handed Nightshine a mug, watching her mimic how Twilight held her own mug. When Twilight lit her horn to bring it up to her lips, he couldn’t help but chuckle to himself when he saw Nightshine’s shoulder’s slump. Nightshine held it tightly between her two front hooves, then slowly brought it up to her lips while leaning down. “How is it, sweetie?” he asked.

Nightshine glanced at Twilight, then at Jason. “Well, I think it’s pretty good. Isn’t it supposed to be bitter, though? And a lot darker?”

“Yeah, if you drink it straight. I put in some creamer, just like I always do. Without it, it’s just too bitter for me to drink.” He sat back in the couch and took a sip from his own mug. “So, Twilight...” Her ears perked up at that. “What happened when you were talking with the other princesses?”

Twilight’s ears flopped down. “Well... I talked to them on your behalf, and things were... divided, to put it simply. Princess Celestia was fine with you adopting a pony of your own, as it shows her that you’ve accepted living here and that you’re making strides to become part of our community. The part she wasn’t fine with, though, was the part where I told her that you adopted a thestral. Princess Luna was shocked that a thestral filly as old as Nightshine was in an Equestrian orphanage, and she wanted to know all about you.” She looked down at Nightshine and smiled gently. “In a good way, I promise,” she said. “Anyways, I did my best to convince Princess Celestia that Nightshine was better off in your care. She wanted to contact the thestral embassy in Canterlot to invoke that law I told you about, but I managed to convince her to not do that, and trust me, that was hard.”

“So... can you get to the end?” Jason asked, trying not to sound mean. “You’ve got me sitting on pins and needles here.”

“Sorry!” Twilight blushed as she took another sip of coffee. “I can draw things out sometimes. After much discussion, Celestia let me study the law books for as long as I needed to, and halfway through, Luna even came to help me out. When I asked why, she felt like she had failed Nightshine by not being able to sense her presence in the dream realm or something like that. She thought it might be because of her being a thestral, but she told me that she’d been able to get into the dreams of her guards before, but not often...” She rubbed her chin, then took another sip. The hoof she was holding her mug in started to shake as she set it back on the couch. She fluffed her wings, then licked her lips. Twilight looked Jason dead in the eyes, then said, “The laws were clear. A foreigner cannot adopt a pony from another race, even if you are a legal citizen here in Equestria. I checked up on that and made sure that your papers went through from several months ago. Even though you’re not a pony, you’re still a citizen of Equestria.”

Nightshine couldn’t help but whimper. As tears formed in the corners of her eyes, she shoved her mug off the couch with her hoof. She saw Twilight’s horn light up, stopping the mug from shattering on the floor, though a little bit of coffee did spill onto the floor. Nightshine blinked many times as she struggled to find Jason’s leg through her blurry vision. When her hoof found it, she curled up next to him and buried her muzzle into his belly, trying to escape Twilight’s words that kept swirling through her head.

Jason felt bile rise up in his throat. He laid a hand on Nightshine’s head, then ran his fingers through her mane as his shirt grew wet with her tears. “What about Nightshine? Is she a legal citizen of Equestria?” he asked, struggling to keep himself calm.

“Actually, I couldn’t find anything about that when I was looking through the records up at the castle. I should have stopped by the orphanage to find out, but I had very little time. If the castle doesn’t have that information, I doubt the orphanage would.”

“Okay...” Jason said slowly. “So since I’m a citizen, does my adopting Nightshine make her a citizen automatically?”

“Technically, no, even though it’d be nice. She’d have to apply for citizenship just like you had to do, but if she doesn’t have a legal guardian here in Equestria, that cannot happen. And since the law says that a foreigner cannot adopt another foreigner, Nightshine would be taken from your care, and another agency that I can’t remember the name of right now would temporarily take care of her until they figured out what to do with her. With her age, she’s in a gray area when it comes to the law. Technically, since she’s under eighteen, she’s still considered a minor, and even though the law concerning sending younglings back to their own countries mentions only fillies and colts, it doesn’t specifically name an age.” Twilight sighed again. “Celestia still thinks it would be best to send her back to her own country. Since we don’t have proof that she was born here, Celestia wants to consider her as a foreigner in regards to the law. I thought that would be the end of it, but Luna spoke up against her, in our favor.”

“She... she did?” Jason asked with wide eyes. “I always thought they agreed on everything.”

“Most of the time, yeah, they do, but Luna felt so strongly about this that she felt like she had no choice but to oppose her sister. Much to my disbelief, Luna made a compromise with Celestia, but... I’m not sure if you’re going to like it,” she said, finishing her last sentence in a soft voice as she glanced away.

“I’ll do whatever it takes to keep Nightshine by my side, Twilight,” Jason said, his voice firm and strong. “Anything...” He picked Nightshine up and held her against his chest, letting her wrap her forelegs around his neck.

Twilight took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You’d be surprised at what Celestia agreed to. It’d require a massive sacrifice from you, but she said that if you agreed to her terms, the law in question would no longer have any effect.” She took another deep breath, then finished the rest of her coffee in one go. “Remember how I said that a foreigner cannot adopt another foreigner?” Jason nodded at her, his eyes locked on hers. “Well... if you weren’t a foreigner, then your adoption of Nightshine would be of no issue.” She bit her bottom lip as her eyes searched for any signs of realization on Jason’s face. “And then we could put all of this behind us.”

Nightshine’s breath caught in her throat. Her eyes went wide and her ears shot up straight. She trembled as she remembered her dream from earlier that morning. Oh... my... gosh... was my dream really a vision? She wiped her wet eyes with a hoof and sat back on Jason’s lap, then slid down onto the other side of his legs, keeping her forelegs on top of his thighs as she stared right at Twilight, trying to stop her smile from growing. Her tail swished back and forth against the arm of the couch as she waited for Twilight to finish revealing the solution to their problem.

“Twilight, what exactly are you saying?” Jason asked. When he felt a Nightshine poke his leg with an insistent hoof, he looked down at her. She was no longer crying, instead, she looked like she was waiting to hear if she’d won the winning numbers for the lottery. She stared up at him with beaming eyes, so couldn’t help but smile at her. When she smiled back, her fangs slipped passed her lips. He felt just how tense she was just from how her forelegs were trembling resting upon his legs. A bright flash of light shined through the windows for the briefest of moments, followed by a particularly loud clap of thunder that made him jump a little.

“Well...” Twilight cleared her throat and coughed softly. “Believe me when I say that this is the only option available if you want to keep Nightshine. I tried to offer Celestia other solutions, but she was adamant that this was the only option. So...” She rubbed her forelegs together, biting her bottom lip as the words rested on the tip of her tongue. “If you want to stay together, you would have to let me turn you into a thestral.”

I was right! Nightshine thought as her head whipped up to look at Jason’s face. She nearly giggled as she saw his mouth hanging open wide. He stayed stock-still as he stared at Twilight, so she laid her head on his chest and nuzzled him until he looked down at her with a similar look. Her ears flicked up to stand tall and rigid as she shot her biggest, most reassuring smile at him, praying with all of her heart that he’d say yes.