Accident
Pain
That's all she felt.
Her glasses slid off her face, the left joint snapped and broken. She could see through the red haze that it was cracked, and on the verge of shattering.
She mustered enough energy to crack open her left eye, then winced and shut it tight due to the scar that ran through it. She barely opened her right eye, before immediatly shutting it down as well. It was only a second, but the image was still burned into her retena.
Oh god.
He would be declared dead on the spot. The airbag would be declared faulty, and would untimately be the catalyst for the immediate recall of 5,000 Dodge Challengers distributed to the Greater Canterlot Area. A malfunction in the manufacturing process would mean that the deployment mechanism would fail in the event of a crash. With no means of stopping him, Shining's head ran through the dashboard, and into the car HUD. The force needed to rip off a steering wheel was apparently achieved, as Twilight could see that the wheel was snapped in two, one lodged into his ribcage, the other through his...
The morgue couldn't find his left eye, and decided to put a eyepatch over it when they had to call Cadence over to confirm the body and get Twilight.
All she could see was red, all she could smell was blood.
The truck driver, Berry Punch, would be charged with DUI and Manslaughter. He was under suspicion for drinking on the job, but management wasn't going to spring the breathalyzer on him until he dropped off this last load in the Canterlot Warehouse. He would get 5 years in prison, followed by a course in AA.
Twilight could barely hear over the sound of ringing and police sirens. She could barely make out Sunset screaming for her, trying to dig her out of the wreakage. She could see Applejack push her to the side, before activating her geode and trying to rip off the door itself, but was unable to due to the wreak of the 18-wheeler blocking her.
Through it all, Twilight saw that the radio was still working. The Ford F150 that her brother got installed just before he came to pick her up from the library. The screen was cracked, and the radio was tuned to a station running a list of old swinging music from the mid-1900's. One song flashed on the screen.
How lucky can one guy be...
The funeral was large for a private one.
Apparently, Shining undervalued his reputation with his subordenates. A promotion to Captain didn't work well with a unpopular LT, after all.
When they began to head down the road to the cemetary, they were given a police escort and a straight shot through the lights and intersection, with each car falling in behind after their section was finished. By the time they got to the Sparkle Estate where they buried her Grandparents, a full police escort, with motercycles and cars and a honest-to-god helicopter, brought them into the estate.
It was tradition in the Sparkle Family to have all major family events catered and planned by other family members. Case in point, the priest was her great uncle, the burial was preformed by her aunt and uncle, and the after-celebration was *supposed* to be catered by her cousin. This funeral was special, as it was the first one in over 50 years where it wasn't fully staffed by the Sparkle Family.
Everyone was shocked when Pinkie managed to pull off a after-celebration without breaking out the alcohol like it was a frat party.
As her brother was lowered into the ground, and his coffin was shut for the last time, Twilight dared herself to look at his eyes one last time. It stared back, almost pained. She shut her own eyes, a pained wimper coming from her throat. Beside her, Sunset walked up, and flipped Twilight to face her, before she buried her face into her shoulder and cried.
She cried,
and cried,
She cried so much that they missed the after-celebration themselves.
Her parent's hired people to pack her lab.
The reasoning was sound. They didn't want her to stay in the childhood home where Shining used to live. She didn't want to live in the home where Shining used to live. It pained the both to split apart, but they didn't want her to suffer in the home full of so much memories.
Each lab piece, each tech and spec that was carefully packaged into boxed full of boxing pellets held memories of Shining in one way or another, whether it was in the form of him walking in while she experimented, or if it was him buying the item for her. She was always spoiled rotten by him. He would laugh her request out the door, before he would go online and buy the better model for her, and he would never complain. He wouldn't complain even if she spent a week all alone in her room, rarely ever seeing the light and other student's. He would just smile, and pull out his card, before going online once more.
She could take it, she told himself. She could take it...
For about 5 minutes.
The moment she went inside Sunset's apartment for a overnight before she would move in, she broke down on the couch. Sunset would slide up next to her, pulling her in tight. She would whisper words of reassurance, but they would do little against the torrental tide of tears and memories. She would cry, and cry, and keep on crying until she fell asleep.
When she woke, it was already midnight. Next to her, she could feel Sunset's sweet breathing on her neck, the bare contact between breath and skin made her tingle. As Twilight thought back to the week, she began wondering why god made her ife like this. Why he couldn't give her the perfect world that everyone asked her. In a perfect world, she would be in her room, about to snuggle right next to Spike.
In a perfect world, her father would come in to tuck her into bed.
In a perfect world, her mother would come in with a half-finished manuscript, giving it to her to proof-read.
In a perfect world, her brother would walk in, and he would ruffle her hair, and he would hug her goodnight.
But this wasn't a perfect world, and her brother was still dead.
She believed that her breath would become laboured, that she would break into a quiet sob once more. However, that never came to pass. As her breathing began to level out, and her stress levels stopped shooting so high, she could begin to hear a melody so sweet, so nice. She would tilt her head ever so slowly, wondering just what stopped her panic attack once more. She peered over Sunset's sleeping figure, and saw something placed on the coffee table.
It was a radio, and a fairly new one at that. It seemed to be a Samsung black-box, with it's current setting tuned to the same radio station that was playing during the accident. She peered at the box, so enchanted by it's songs, that before knew it, the song ended and she heard the radio host come back on the air, announcing another song by one...Dean Martin?
How lucky can one guy be...
Twilight heard those words, before she slipped into blissful sleep and unconsiousness. To her, she fell asleep, quietly listening to the smoothness of Dean as he sang Ain't That a Kick in the Head. In reality, however, thing began more differently.
She began squirming around slowly in the real world, her eyes darting around, before eventually they settled down, and her eyes narrowed. With a small murmur, she broke Sunset's grip of her to head to the bathroom. Inside, she flipped the light switch, and the room came to life. She walked up to the mirror, and Twilight Sparkle stared at her.
Yet Twilight Sparkle did not stare back in kind.
As the entity stared at itself with cold eyes in the mirror, a unassuming fact popped into her head, found and memorized due to Twilight's little stint of fasination of with Medieval History of England and ireland in the past.
Tara: Irish Gaelic: refers to the Hill of Tara, or Teamhair na Rí, the legendary seat of the High King of Ireland
Tara, The entity thought to itself, before it smiled with a sense of both wickedness and glee, "Such a fitting name for a Queen."