Twilight Sky Over Canterlot

Twilight Sky Over Canterlot is a fanfic by Foxxy Hooves (TwilightFlopple). Taking place over approximately 24 hours, it details a trip Twilight makes to Canterlot. The nature of magic and how it may be fueled by hope, dreams, friendship and love is broached several times.

Style
It is narrated by Twilight Sparkle in the past tense and from a first-person perspective. Plot progression is slow and frequently interrupted by Twilight reminiscing about her past and her friends in Ponyville, giving the story a somewhat dreamlike and melancholic feel. Some sections forego traditional prose formatting and punctuation.

Summary
Some time after Boast Busters, Twilight is called back to Canterlot. She has left almost 300 books there, and Celestia is asking her to take them with her to Ponyville. She travels there alone, in a balloon. Once in Canterlot, she meets Trixie in a crowd. Wit her wagon destroyed by the Ursa minor, Trixie has had to become a street performer, and the predominantly unicorn populace of the capital city is not as impressed as the denizens of Ponville had been. Twilight buys her coffee, and while she can't resist giving Trixie a lecture about pride and public humiliation, she also gives her hope that she can rebuild her old life. Surely she met someone in all her travels, Twilight suggests, who could lend a helping hand.

Later that day, Twilight receives the books from Princess Celestia, all of which are associated with memories, not all of them happy. She borrows a wagon from a gardener and moves the books out of the castle. On the way back to her room at Canterlot University - which is still reserved for Twilight and where she is staying when in Canterlot -, she comes upon an old book shop. She enters and loses track of time looking at the books; when she is finally reminded by the owner that the shop's about to close, it is night time.

Not yet tired, Twilight ventures into the royal gardens. There, she encounters Princess Luna, softly singing to herself in a variety of the language not used in hundreds of years. She tells Twilight that since her return, she has become accustomed to standing in a particular spot from which she can see Ponyville in the distance. Every night, one window continues to be lit, one pony appreciating the night after everyone else has gone to sleep. Luna laments that this night, of all nights, there is no light; Twilight quickly realizes that the pony Luna is referring to is herself. To make her feel less lonely, Twilight takes the Princess to an abandoned grain storage silo below Canterlot University which has been turned into a student hangout. Despite the late hour, the place remains quite busy. The two move to a quieter area and drink, first tea, then more potent liquids.

The next morning, Twilight somewhat unwillingly gets out of bed to tend to her books. She takes the wagon to a balloon she has tethered outside Canterlot and puts the books in it one by one. While she is doing so, she has a feeling of being watched. It's Trixie, who has decided to leave Canterlot after she lost a place to stay. Sensing the reason, Twilight offers her a spare room in the Ponyville library, saying that even though she has no reason to help Trixie, she would still like to make a friend of her. Trixie does help Twilight load the books into the balloon, but declines to come to Ponyville, saying that she knows someone in Stalliongrad who might fix her up with another mobile home.

Twilight has an idea and starts weaving a transformation spell on the cart she'd borrowed from the palace worker. While Trixie looks on and imagines her perfect magician's wagon, Twilight turns her dream into a reality. Overwhelmed, Trixie starts sobbing, and Twilight casts off, lifting herself and the balloon into the sky. When she is already quite far from the ground, Trixie yells up at her, saying she'll visit her in Ponyville after all, and acknowledging that Twilight is the "greatest unicorn in all of Equestria". Twilight doesn't think so. She knows that the magic that keeps her afloat would have not been possible an hour earlier, when she had struggled even with lifting the books into the balloon's basket. It was her helping Trixie that had made her not only feel good, but powerful enough to levitate several hundred pounds worth of books and basket and pony, overcoming gravity.

External link

 * The story on Equestria Daily