— ✶ —

Twilight was lost in thought as she swooped down to the ex-library to pick Spike up, though she was mindful enough to wait patiently at the door, both because this was his place now and she should respect that and so he could maintain the fiction that he was still living alone. He hadn’t introduced his girlfriend yet, so she wasn’t going to say anything.

It felt a little disingenuous not to tell him that whoever the turquoise dragoness was, she wasn’t nearly as good at sneaking a peek as she thought she was, but neither did she want to drag out all of his secrets and confront him with them. Frankly, she had lived here with Spike for long enough that it would have been embarrassing if she couldn’t identify the sound of claws on wood upstairs when she’d been talking to him, and sometimes that sort of arrangement necessitated a little bit of willful ignorance.

And sometimes it was a lot of willful ignorance. Twilight was very glad to be an only child; it had been bad enough growing up with ponies like her parents—mostly her mom, really—that she didn’t even want to think what it might have been like growing up with an older brother or something.

Still, her unwillingness to pry didn’t mean that she wasn’t intensely curious how Spike had acquired his own dragon immigrant on the same night she and Luna had been welcoming the others to the city, and she wished he’d open up to her.

Speaking of which, he seemed to be taking his time opening up to her in a more literal sense, too. She tapped her hoof, considered that it had been quite a while since she had knocked, and knocked again—with a little more ‘oomph’ this time, rattling the upstairs windows.

It wasn’t like him not to answer the door promptly. She wasn’t concerned quite yet, but if it had been nighttime, she might have considered taking a peek inside with her starlight. She’d avoided doing that so far since he had a right to his privacy, but it would have been better than actually barging in, which, if he didn’t answer, she might have to resort to just in case something had actually happened. It wasn’t likely, since there wasn’t much in a pony household that could actually injure a young dragon, but she’d be remiss if she didn’t at least make sure he was okay.

After a few minutes there still wasn’t any response, so she guessed there was nothing for it. She unlocked the door with her magic and stepped inside, assuaging any guilt she might have felt by telling herself that with the racket she’d made at the door, she wasn’t about to surprise anyone no matter what they were doing. There remained a niggling thought in the back of her head of what she might find at the end of her search for Spike and his girlfriend, but she dismissed the very idea as patently ridiculous. Admittedly, her perspective was skewed from multiple angles and she didn’t know very much about dragon maturation rates, but neither of Spike or his girlfriend were very much bigger than the egg that he had hatched from, so she was pretty sure she was safe on that front.

All the same, she took her time and made a lot of noise.

Without Spike to distract her, the old library felt… not quite eerie, but definitely empty. It was also, predictably, a little dusty, so she fetched a hoofbroom and dustpan from the closet with her magic and absently went about doing a little cleaning up as she meandered through the ground floor.

Not much had been done to disguise the fact that the tree had once been a library; empty bookshelves were built into the walls, and there were several round reading tables that were similarly a single piece with the structure, which had once been used to display several busts and artefacts relevant to the small rural town that Ponyville had used to be.

Actually, not much had been done—period. All of Twilight’s things—and a lot that she’d honestly had no claim to—had been removed from the ex-library, and very little had been put in its place. The kitchen, at least, seemed decently equipped and stocked, though she couldn’t say if any of the pots and pans were the same ones that had been there before, especially dirty and covered in spots of foreign metals as they were.

The messiness that went beyond simple neglect felt a little out of place, at first, but after a little consideration, she thought she understood. Spike had always been fastidiously clean, but he’s also never really had any choice not to be. It had been part of his job as her assistant, so of course there would be some pushback as he figured out what he actually wanted.

What she didn’t understand was the rest of it; the blandness, the emptiness, the impression that she’d just moved out only days ago instead of weeks ago. Rarity, at the very least, would have been all over this place picking out curtains and finding things to go on the shelves if she’d been given half the chance, no matter how busy she otherwise was.

Maybe that was the point, though. Rarity could have done it, and she could have done it to his design, but there was also some value in him figuring things out for himself, piecing together things that he discovered on his own, just one or two at a time.

Well, that was enough snooping—err, checking to make sure Spike was… alright, fine it was snooping, but only mild snooping; she wasn’t going to go looking in his room if she could help it. Unfortunately, just about the only thing she could say about that was that he probably didn’t sleep in the living room, kitchen or the bathroom, so she did what she admittedly should have done the moment she walked inside.

“Spike!” she shouted. “Spike, are you here?”

No answer.

For just a second, she thought she heard something from the basement, but she couldn’t be sure, and as the silence stretched on, she suspected she’d been imagining it. She was just about to check anyway, when the door to said basement indeed slammed open to reveal Spike, bent over with his hands on his knees, huffing and wheezing, out of breath and clutching a letter.

“Hey,” huff, “Twilight,” he said, greeting her in between breaths. “Sorry—I—took—so—long. I was running—up the stairs—from the basement—when I got a letter—that sent me—all the way back down into a pile of junk.”

“Oh, sorry about that,” Twilight apologized, though she was distracted by the letter. “Is that from the Celestias? I can read it if you’re—oh, I suppose I shouldn’t assume it’s for me any more, should I? I think Luna mentioned you sending a few letters back and forth with Celestia.”

Spike wordlessly shook his head, still recovering, and handed it to Twilight as it was indeed addressed to her. Well, technically it was actually addressed to her and Luna, which was both new and kind of nice, now that she was faced with it. They hadn’t actually done anything official about their relationship or even go on a proper official date yet, exactly, but, well, they also hadn’t been subtle about it either—the lack of Twilight making dramatic speeches at court every other day being one particularly obvious sign that they’d gotten over what Rarity had charitable referred to as their ‘little snit.’

In any case, she figured it would be fine to open her co-addressed envelope without the co-addressee, if only so she knew if it would be worth interrupting her schedule to go tell Luna about it. In theory, she should also worry about interrupting Luna’s schedule, of course, but Luna tended to actively encourage it in most cases.

The letter, as it turned out, was simultaneously interesting and disappointing. Disappointing because it wasn’t an actual letter at all, and interesting because it was an invitation. “Huh, the Celestias are apparently having a coronation and ‘naming’ ceremony. Was this the only letter?” she asked, checking the back of the invitation and inside the envelope out of habit learned from a couple of years’ experience with Pinkie Pie. “It’d be odd not to invite—”

BELCH!

“I should have expected that,” Twilight deadpanned, singed and covered in letters.

— ✶ —

Twilight and Spike made sure to check in briefly at the demolition site to make sure that everything was going as planned and would continue to do so without them for the rest of the morning. The quarriers and demolition workers seemed to be doing okay, with the biggest problem the massive racket they were making each time they chipped away sections of the stone to expose the wood and crystal underneath. After a short talk with the men doing the work, they had her sign an exemption or two that essentially allowed them to forward any complaints to the mayor’s office.

The same mayor’s office that they were excavating.

The form did not include a forwarding address to the temporary offices that had been set up in Rarity’s tower. An oversight, Twilight was sure.

Twilight double and even triple checked, but they insisted that the exemption was all they needed. They clearly knew what they were doing, having all the necessary equipment and even barriers to prevent the debris from exiting the immediate demolition area, but Twilight still had a hard time not stepping in. She was pretty sure she had a spell that could dampen sound in an area, but they shooed her off, insisting that they needed to be able to hear anything that was going wrong anyway.

It was hard not to do the whole thing herself like Applejack had suggested; her desire to experiment and cut loose had only gotten stronger after Luna had brought up her potential to do anything an earth pony could do—or anything Discord could do, for that matter. It made her want to just get in there, let her magic go and find out what she was actually capable of.

That, of course, would defeat the point. Not only was she supposed to be building camaraderie with the common pony, but like with the possibilities that Applejack represented, it wouldn’t endear her to anyone if she just swished her horn and did a job that would otherwise have fed the families of a dozen or two laborers. Frankly, she thought that there were long enough waiting lists for any construction being done in the city that they didn’t need to be spending resources cleaning up her mistakes the hard way, but this was how Luna and Rarity had agreed to do it, and she’d specifically recused herself from the decision-making process.

There were always her other projects, though. The new library was a project for the city that would no doubt go much the way of the palace, if not more so, but she could do whatever she wanted with the… ‘third library’ she’d talked to Luna about. It didn’t even need to be in the city, though close by would be a good idea if she was going to hire ponies like she’d said. Maybe the Everfree crater? It wouldn’t hurt to have one less reminder of an alicorn’s ability to reshape the face of Equus with raw power… though given that she’d be reshaping the face of Equus in order to erase it, maybe that’d be just a tiny bit hypocritical.

Not that it wouldn’t work.

After leaving the demolition site to the demolition ponies, Twilight chose to make her and Spike’s first stop Rarity’s unfinished tower.

Rarity’s tower was one of the three that had been started before everything had come to a head and the collapse of the palace had pushed the construction of all of them back, the other two being Applejack’s and Rainbow Dash’s. Rarity’s, of course, had been the first—started early on as sort of a proof of concept and because she’d needed a proper place to work her dealings, and as a result even in its unfinished state, it was large enough that you could have fit the old town hall inside with room to spare—though not quite as literally as they had been trying to do since they’d lost the palace, and certainly not without constantly stepping on Rarity’s hooves.

Applejack’s and Rainbow Dash’s towers, on the other hoof, had come next because they alone didn’t require any particular consent from the ponies in question—Applejack’s tower being on the location that had used to be Barnyard Bargains and Rainbow Dash’s was just somewhere vaguely in the general area below that which her cloud house frequented.

Lastly, Fluttershy’s and Pinkie Pie’s towers were still up in the air. Rarity had just assumed that they’d replace their current residents, but both had special considerations to take into account, unless Pinkie Pie wanted Sugarcube Corner on the bottom floor of her tower.

…

Okay, so Pinkie Pie probably did want Sugarcube Corner on the bottom floor of her tower. Why was this an issue, again? Fluttershy, too, could absolutely come up with something that would serve her needs—it would just take a little more effort to integrate than the others, but that was fine. Twilight would have to mention it to Rarity when she got a chance to see what the problem was—assuming that it hadn’t all already been taken care of.

She did miss being the center of everything that happened, sometimes, but she’d get over it.

Maybe it was a good thing she was playing mailpony this morning; it’d been a while since she’d checked in on all of her friends… assuming she could find them. Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie in particular might have to wait until nightfall in case they were in Baltimare or low Equus orbit and she needed the starlight to locate them—not that even that was any guarantee.

Twilight, of course, took all of this into consideration and reached the only logical conclusion, which was to visit Luna first. Oh, and Rarity would be in the building too; she was being efficient.

That was the only reason.

— ✶ —

“Hello, Twilight,” Luna greeted her, amusement coloring her tone as she took in the sudden purple limpet attached to her side—and the limpet attached to the limpet. “Oh, and Spike, too, I see.”

Unlike Twilight, who had become quite inured to the dangers of flying after Luna had chucked her off their palace, Spike had not yet gotten used to the inclusion of Twilight’s wings in their daily schedule, so while his grip was quite different than the one that Twilight had on Luna, the emotions behind it were no less powerful and it took him a moment to realize they were on the ground. At Luna’s greeting, however, he cracked one eye open, then the other and breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, uh, hey, Princess Luna,” he mumbled quietly in response, silently urging everypony to look at anyone but him.

The ponies that Luna had been talking to seemed to have been put in a quandary that they couldn’t quite reason their way out of. On the one hoof, they had been quite abruptly interrupted by somepony who had suddenly appeared and latched onto the alicorn princess that they’d been discussing trade agreements with, while on the other, the pony who had progressed to almost indecently nuzzling said personage was herself an alicorn princess and one that most agreed it was unwise to cross.

…Or so Twilight assumed. Really, they just stood there gaping like fish, so she had to extrapolate a little. They seemed to moderately relax when Twilight loosened her grip on their diarch, though, so there was that, and said diarch was entirely unconcerned with the interruption as well. “So, what brings you here so early?” Luna asked, completely ignoring her previous guests. “It has been less than an hour since we parted this morning.”

That, Twilight answered by procuring the set of six invitations she’d received earlier and fanning them out. Spike had actually gotten one of his own, but there’d been no reason for him to bring it along. “We’re apparently being invited to a coronation and naming ceremony, but I’m guessing it’ll be the other way around. I’d like to see them try to get through an entire coronation without letting anypony use either of their names the entire time, though.”

“I imagine they will combine them and announce the names as they are crowned, Twilight,” Luna reasoned with a casual smile. “No matter how much the ponies of Canterlot may love their pomp and circumstance, the naming would likely fall a little flat in comparison if the two were—”

Luna was interrupted and everyone present caught off guard by a flurry of motion that resembled a tablecloth blown free in the wind. Twilight herself stumbled back as the invitations were ripped from her magic and she scrambled to catch them all, coming up one short. It was the keening “Eeeeeee!” that instantly identified the cause of the disturbance.

Out of all of Twilight’s friends, Rarity was the one who had most embraced her new inequine nature… in a manner of speaking. She went to great lengths to look like a flesh and blood pony with only a nip and tuck here and there for vanity, but what she held back in designing what was essentially a lifelike doll was completely unrestrained when it came to her attire. Rarity may have no longer filled the entire room as she had when she had first ascended, but she was no less extravagant and her presence hadn’t been hemmed as single inch. This morning she was a loose-fitting cream and powder blue dress with sweeping, rippled sashes and a healthy adornment of champagne pearls and cornflower-blue sapphires and just a tiny bit of lace here and there to draw the eye.

“Hi Rarity,” Twilight said, announcing herself to the demigoddess who wasn’t paying her a single iota of attention.

Rarity had already ripped open her invitation and was reading it as she responded distractedly. “Yes, yes, hello Twilight; Luna; Spike,” she greeted, only looking up from her invitation after she had read it what had to be three or four times. “Oh, I am sorry, dears, but I simply must get back to my workshop. This is such short notice and no doubt I’ll have to organize things on our end, too.” She didn’t so much run off as much as she coursed out of the room in a riot of formless fabric. “Cinders! Fluttershy! Come! We have coture to create!”

Wait, what? Twilight looked around for the ponies in question, but was only partially successful.

Cinders, she discovered, was apparently the tall, pink teenaged dragon who had just entered the room breathing heavily, grumbled something, and immediately turned around, walking out without a word.

Fluttershy, though, she didn’t see any sign of.

…Or at least, she hadn’t until a tiny yellow and pink hummingbird darted up to Twilight, stopped, nodded, plucked the letter out of Twilight’s magic and zipped off in a dash, following after Rarity and her assistant.

Right. Fluttershy was in the animals like Twilight was in the stars.

She was just gonna keep not thinking about that.

— ✶ —

Rather predictably, none Twilight’s suggested changes had been made to Sweet Apple mountain, nor any other solution to lessen the issues of having the Apple family all living so far out. Well, if that was how Applejack wanted it to be, Twilight supposed that it was none of her business. Flying high over the orchards, though, she spotted Big Mac and felt a little bad for him.

Unlike Applejack, who could probably now run the whole farm all alone without breaking a sweat, and Applebloom, who had the benefit of taking a pegasus carriage into school each day, Big Mac had to do everything the hard way if he wanted to get anything done or go into town—and that included hauling a cart of apples into town to sell, which she imagined was the most useful thing he had left to do. Even the finances, which had traditionally been his hidden talent was probably being handed off to Rarity now that she’d gotten her entirely metaphorical and benevolent hooks into Applejack’s business.

So, yeah, she felt bad for him, though he seemed to be taking it with his usual stoic aplomb, so maybe he was just doing what he was able and not worrying about it. It was a valid perspective, and Twilight endeavored to do the same.

Spike, on the other hoof, had precisely zero aplomb and was into the negatives for stoicism. “I know she needs help, but just picking up some random dragon off the street?” he whined, starting to gesture with his hands and quickly discovering that they were required safety equipment for Twilight’s flying.

Twilight rolled her eyes as she banked over to another row of trees, searching for Applejack. This was actually the first thing that Spike had said out loud, but his moodiness had been clear. “I can’t believe you’re jealous that Rarity hired a dragon assistant,” she said, teasing him lightly. “You did catch that it was a girl dragon, right? I thought you said you’d given up on her anyway?”

“I did—I mean—it’s complicated, alright?” he said, crossing his arms in a pout for half a moment before regaining his grip on Twilight.

“Are you alright back there?” Twilight asked, craning her neck to look at him and frowning. “Do you need a saddle? Because I’m not going around town wearing a saddle, sorry. I’ll have to look up a sticking spell…” She cringed when she remembered the fate of her books. “Maybe I’ll stop at the royal archives when we go to Canterlot for the coronation. It’s a good thing I never had the archives brought to Ponyville, though if I’d been setting it up, you can be sure as Celestia I’d have had every protective spell I knew on that library; tower collapse or not, the books would have been safe.”

“’Mfine,” Spike grumbled, continuing to clutch onto Twilight for dear life. “If you can do that, why not just cast the spells on the whole palace?”

“Don’t be silly, Spike,” Twilight chided. “These spells draw their energy from the erudite appeal of books, and can only be used to protect bookshelves.”

“Really?” Spike asked, bewildered and—good for him—more than a little suspicious.

Twilight let out an annoyed huff. “No, of course not! Yes, they should have been cast on the entire palace; do you think Canterlot just sits there on the side of a mountain thanks to the mystical powers of budget cuts and good intentions? I don’t blame Luna since she isn’t up on the latest protective spells and it wasn’t her job anyway, but somepony in the mayor’s office cut corners, and we don’t even know who to fire because half the records have been destroyed and the other half are a mess.”

Twilight made an effort to calm herself after her short fit of pique as she flew in silence and they’d covered another two orchards by the time Spike spoke up again. “It doesn’t have to be about…” Spike remembered not to gesture with his claws this time. “…That. The thing with Rarity, I mean.”

“Well…” Twilight hmmed, considering her words. “No, it doesn’t have to be about that, but it still is, isn’t it? I’m sure Rarity has needed help as much as Luna or me—or the mayor, for that matter. That help could have easily been you if you’d wanted it, but…”

“It’s complicated,” Spike concluded, seeing where she was going.

“If it helps, Spike,” Twilight added as she made another turn and finally spotted Applejack. “I’m sure Cinders is her second choice. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but all these new dragons…”

“Need some help? Yeah, believe me, I’ve noticed.”

— ✶ —

“So, this is just an invitation, right?” Applejack asked, raising an eyebrow at Twilight after having read the card inside the envelope. “Ah don’t actually have to go?”

The sentiment didn’t exactly surprise Twilight, but she was a bit flummoxed and offended all the same. “It’s an invitation from the Celestias, yes, you have to go!” she hissed out, though she quickly felt guilty and backpedaled. “…Well, okay, no, you don’t have to go.” She looked down and kicked the duff and detritus of the orchard floor with her hoof. “But you should. At the very least, it’ll give us all a chance to get together. I was going to take this opportunity to check in on everypony, but Rarity ran off before we could even talk, and a hummingbird took Fluttershy’s invitation. After you, that just leaves Pinkie and Rainbow Dash, and…”

“And they ain’t really the conversation type?” Applejack extrapolated.

“Well, yes,” Twilight said, glancing at the sky as if one or both of them could be up there listening. “But I’m also still kind of peeved at Rainbow Dash.”

“Yeah?” Applejack asked, ears perking up in curiosity. “What’d she do this time?”

“She was… insinuating things about my parentage involving Discord when I was not in the mood,” Twilight admitted unhappily. “It really wasn’t the best time for joking around; in fact, it… might, kind of be what made me snap, in the end, so long as we’re bringing it up.”

“Aw jeez,” Applejack said, rolling her eyes.

“Hey,” Twilight objected, a little indignant. “In my defense, I’ve read the kinds of things ponies write about Celestia and Luna—and me, for that matter, before I ever became an alicorn in the first place. Ponies might actually take something like that seriously!”

Applejack gave Twilight a deadpan look. “You do realize that ‘that sorta thing’ is actually what happened with the Celestias to make them half-dragon or whatever it is they count as, right?”

Twilight failed to respond to that, jaw hanging open for longer than she’d like to admit before snapping it shut in a scowl. “Applejack—I’m going to say this in the nicest way I can: Can you please, please stop coming up with these revelatory common sense insights about alicorns? It’s distressing.”

— ✶ —

The stop to deliver Applejack’s letter ended up taking less time than actually finding her had. Once Twilight’s piece had been said, Applejack had expressed her desire to get back to work, so she and Spike had left and made their way back to Ponyville, where Rainbow Dash proved no easier to engage in conversation, though in the pegasus demigoddess’ case it was her apparent absence that was doing the talking.

They first made their way to Rainbow Dash’s cloud house, then the weather station and even her favorite napping cloud, coming up empty-hooved each time. Twilight considered heading back to the cloud house and just leaving the letter there, but she wanted to talk to her friends, damn it!

…

Okay, so ‘wanting’ to talk to Rainbow Dash was a bit of an exaggeration, but that wasn’t the point. She wanted things to go as she’d planned and she didn’t want to not talk to Rainbow Dash because of what had happened, which was basically the same thing.

Twilight flew around awhile, thinking of places she could check and hoping to just run into her if all else failed, but even that failed and eventually it was clear that she was just wasting her time.

Fortunately, Pinkie Pie, would be much simpler to find, as she actually had a job with hours. She might not be at that job at right this moment—Twilight pretty much expected she wouldn’t be, given her track record—but the Cakes would know when she would be. The bell on the entrance of Sugarcube Corner tinkled merrily as Twilight walked in, followed soon after by Spike, who was stretching out stiff muscles after a morning of clinging tightly to Twilight’s back.

“Welcome to Sugarcu—OH!” Mrs. Cake gave a start as she saw who had entered her shop. “P—Princess Sparkle!”

Oh. Twilight’s heart sank as she wracked her brain, trying to remember if she’d seen the Cakes since she’d become an alicorn, but came up blank. She’d been to Sugarcube Corner at least a couple of times—most notably the very first day she’d been out in public after Rainbow Dash had thrown her out of the library without a disguise—but it had always been Pinkie Pie running the register when she’d stopped in.

Resigned, Twilight levitated Spike back up onto her back to present a more familiar picture, though it was probably a lost cause with her sparkling, ethereal mane and glimmering regalia. She missed the days when all she had were wings to hide. Well, day. She’d had six hours of it, anyway. Situations like this would be a whole lot easier if her divinity wasn’t staring ponies in the face.

“Hey, Mrs. Cake,” she greeted, lifting her front legs up onto the counter and propping herself up to see what was available, presenting herself as a customer instead of the celestial being who had recently had a part of herself split off and try to kill her. She really hated having to actively try to look harmless, as it felt like manipulation to her, but it was better than blatant.

…Not that she and Luna hadn’t made a habit—or even an art—of being blatant anyway, but they’d long since given up on trying to please everypony, and it was fun.

“I’ll have…” Twilight scanned the display and saw one thing that jumped out at her, not because of what it was, but for what Pinkie Pie had once suggested she use them for. “Huh. I’ll have some bear claws, actually. Give me an even dozen.”

Maybe visiting Rainbow Dash would be fun after all.

“O—of course, dearie! Right away!” Mrs. Cake squeaked in a tone that would have been more appropriate for Pinkie Pie than the plump mare who quickly turned and began filling a large, flat pastry box.

“So, Mrs. Cake,” Twilight began, causing the mare in question to drop and discard one of the pastries. “Any idea when you’re going to see Pinkie Pie again? I have an invitation for her that the Celestias sent through Spike, and I guess I could leave it here for you to give her, but I’ve got something else I want to talk to her about as well, and it’s also just been a while since I’ve talked to her.”

Mrs. Cake stopped boxing pastries and turned her head to look at Twilight with something nearing trepidation. “Did you say you have an invitation for her? As in… for a party? And she hasn’t picked it up?”

Twilight thought about that for a moment, then went to fish the invitation out of her saddlebags, suspecting she might find it missing, but no, it was there and she pulled it out to show Mrs. Cake.

“Oh dear,” Mrs. Cake muttered in worried tones. “Oh dear, oh dear; I hope nothing’s gone wrong.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow at Mrs. Cakes’s reaction and put the invitation away. “Did she go somewhere where that’s a possibility? Last I heard, she was still visiting random towns and giving them the Las Pegasus treatment—without the crater, usually.”

Mrs. Cake quickly finished packing up Twilight’s pastries and brought them over to the counter. “I wouldn’t think so,” she said, glancing outside with concern. “Not too long ago, she took a cake and a box of party decorations and said she was going to meet her friend to celebrate once they made her a Wonderbolt. Oh, when I say ‘her friend,’ that’d be Rainbow Da—”

“Yeah, I got that,” Twilight interrupted, feeling a headache coming on.

There were not enough facehoofs in the world for what she was feeling right now.