Testi and Vesti and their story

Twinkle Star never hated this crowded street more. She knew she was catching up to Testi and Vesti, but she couldn’t see them through the crowd, nor was she able to walk fast enough and pass the ponies in the street so she could get closer. All she could to was try to feel the powers of the twins but it was hard. The powers weren’t exactly strong and with all these ponies around her it was hard for her to focus. While she tried to catch up with the twins, she thought about what her sister had just told her. Damina still alive? Really, why hadn’t Stelline mentioned it before? Of course Twinkle Star hadn’t asked about it as she really tried to avoid talking about family so she wouldn’t upset Stelline, but she could had at least mentioned it. She had met Damina for crying out loud, she had spend some time with her and these twins! Twinkle Star wondered how her aunt was. What had she been doing all this time? Living in an oasis in the desert, finding jewels? Of course, Damina was going to be the stone keeper of the Friendship Lands before the eruption. Twinkle Star didn’t really know much about the original magical stones, except that they were very important for the country in some other way. As the next stone keeper, Damina probably knew a lot about stones and jewels so that’s why she was able to make a living out of it, or something.

Suddenly Twinkle noticed the yellow and the pink ponies in front of her. It was them all right. Twinkle Star could feel the powers coming from them.
“Hey! Hey you two, wait up!” She yelled while she tried to make a way through the crowd and several ponies looked at her to see who she was talking to, including the twins.
“Ey! Yeah, you two! Wait up, I need to talk to you!” She yelled to the two ponies who were quite surprised to see a pony coming towards them like that.
“Who are you? What do you want?” They asked as soon as Twinkle Star had caught up with them.
It turned out the twins really looked alike though their colors were different. One of them was pink with pink mane which was tied together in a tail while the other was yellow with pink hair which was loose, but the expressions in their faces were really similar and they both had exactly the same eye color. They weren’t wearing any pendants which surprised Twinkle Star, though she immediately remembered they were born after the eruption so they couldn’t have had a pendant. Each of them was wearing a large pink bag which apparently was full of stuff as it looked as if they were going to burst open any second.
“I’ll tell you all about that later. I need to talk to you two and I don’t want to do that in the middle of the street. Will you two follow me to a place that’s more quiet?” Twinkle Star asked as politely as she could and she was a little surprised when the pink pony answered no.
“What?” Twinkle Star asked.
 “Why would we? We don’t know you. How do we know if you don’t mean to harm us?” The yellow pony said suspiciously while she inspected Twinkle Star from head to foot.

Twinkle Star smiled. Of course it was foolish of her to expect they would go with her just like that. They didn’t know she was their cousin, they had never met her.
“You two are Testi and Vesti right?” she asked and the two ponies stared at her in surprise.
“How do you know our names?” The yellow pony asked, still looking at Twinkle Star suspiciously.
“Because my sister told me. Stelline.  You two know her, right?” The ponies nodded and then looked at each other, and then back to Twinkle Star, with a surprised look in their eyes.
“Is she here with you?” The pink pony asked, looking around her.
“No, but she’s close by. Why don’t you two come with me? I’ll bring you to her.” Twinkle Star asked again.
The pink pony nodded. “Sure… We’ll come. But Stelline better be there.”

Twinkle Star led the two ponies back to the hairdresser’s shop, where Aline and Stelline were still waiting for her in front of the shop.
“Hey! You found them!” Aline yelled when she saw Twinkle Star approaching.
“Yeah I did. Aline, these are Testi and Vesti, children of my aunt Damina. Testi and Vesti, this is Aline, my best friend. And Stelline, well, you know each other, right?” Stelline nodded and softly said hi to the twins. As soon as they saw Stelline with her hat and cape the twins began to laugh.
“What on earth happened to you Stelline? You left your sense of fashion lying around somewhere?” The pink pony said, laughing, which made some ponies in the street looking at them.
“That’s not funny. You know, Stelline can’t walk around without it. What do you thing ponies will do when they find out she’s a unicorn?” Twinkle Star whispered to the ponies. She tried not to talk too loud as she didn’t want the other ponies in the street to hear.
“Okay, right.” The yellow pony said, trying to stop laughing. “So Stelline, how have you been? It’s been, what, five years?”
“It has. I’ve been okay, thank you.” Stelline answered.
“You know, why don’t we continue talking at my house? We’ll have something to drink and eat and we won’t be bothered by all these ponies over here.” Aline suddenly said, pointing at the ponies in the street, who were by now looking at them curiously. Twinkle Star nodded.
“Sounds like a good idea to me. You two want to come with us?” She asked the twins. The twins looked at Stelline who nodded. “It’s okay, really.” She said.

“Do you have chocolate there?” The yellow pony asked Aline, while she inspected her as she had been inspecting Twinkle Star earlier.
“What?” Aline and Twinkle star asked at the same time, both surprised. Chocolate? Who on earth would care about chocolate at a time like this?
“You know, chocolate. That brown stuff that tastes really good. You can make nice drinks from it as well.” The yellow pony said with a smile on her face.
“Eh… yeah, sure…” Aline said, still confused.
 “Good! We’ll come!” The yellow pony said.
“Lead the way!” Aline began to walk homewards and Twinkle Star walked next to her.
“Twinkle, don’t mean to sound rude or anything, but do you think these two are, like, sane?” Aline whispered to Twinkle Star, who began to laugh.
“I’ve been wondering that myself.”

Not much later they were back in Aline’s living room. Aline’s parents were still busy in their shop so they had the entire room for themselves. On the way home Aline had asked the twins who of them was Testi and who was Vesti and it turned out the yellow one was Testi and the pink one was Vesti, though Twinkle Star was sure she was going to mess those names up at least a few times. Why Damina had given her children these names Twinkle Star didn’t really understand. These names weren’t names from the Friendship Lands and they were definitely not from the Royal Family, while Damina’s other children actually had had a really royal name, in fact it had been Damina’s oldest daughter who had been named Daiya.

Twinkle Star thought it was a little weird to talk with these ponies. Actually, it wasn’t weird at all, which is why it felt weird to Twinkle Star. She had noticed every first conversation she had with a family member which she hadn’t seen since the eruption had been a little awkward, which of course was nothing but natural, but not with these twins. Twinkle Star found out she had a hard time seeing these ponies as family, as she had only heard of them short before she had met them. Of course she hadn’t heard of Fleur before she entered the castle, but she met her surrounded by her mother and Ivy…  It somehow felt natural to see her as family as well. These ponies however… She met them on the street surrounded by normal ponies. How was she supposed to see them as family?

“How have you two been the last five years?” Stelline asked the twins when they finally sat down and Aline was in the kitchen to make some hot chocolate and get some chocolate cookies, on which the twins insisted.
“Oh, okay. I mean, we have done what we always have, you know. Grow fruits to survive, dig up stones and jewels to sell… Nothing much has changed. ” Vesti said, while she looked around her in the room, inspecting all the furniture and, as Twinkle Star noticed, also her and Stelline.

Not much later Aline came out of the kitchen with a tray full of cups with hot chocolate and a plate full of chocolate cookies. “Here you go.” Aline said when she had put the tray on the table, “hot chocolate and cookies for all of us!” The twins looked grateful at Aline and each took a cup from the plate and a cookie. When Vesti took a bite she said
“This is just delicious!” With her mouth full which made her sister laugh.
“What is it in chocolate that you like so much?” Aline asked, when she too sat down in the couch, next to Twinkle Star.
“Everything, of course! I mean, what is there not to like? But we kind of ran out of money a week ago… so we weren’t really able to buy any.”  
For a while they just sat there, drinking their chocolate drink and eating their cookie, or cookies in Tesi and Vesti’s case. Nobody really knew what to say. Stelline had already introduced Twinkle Star and Aline to the twins and they already knew Twinkle Star was Stelline’s sister and thus their cousin.

“So, what made you two leave your home? I thought you always sold your jewels and stones in that little village on the other side of the desert.” Stelline asked the twins after a while. Vesti put down her bag and opened it. She took out a clear bottle of water and she put it on the table.
“This did.” Testi said and Aline frowned.
“A bottle of water. Really.”
 Vesti shook her head. “It’s not just a bottle of water, or so my mom says. It’s from that river that flows close by. My mom said it’s a purifying river. Used to flow in the old lands or something like that, I don’t know.”
“It did,” Twinkle Star said, a little upset by the disrespect these ponies showed for the river. “It’s name is Fiume and it’s a sacred river. It can purify anything, and it is able to communicate with royal ponies.”
 The twins looked at Twinkle Star as if she was a little crazy. “Anyway,” Vesti continued,  “like two months ago this person came to see my mom while we were in the little village. He had the most peculiar stone. It was completely round, but it was extremely dirty, you couldn’t even see what kind of stone it was, or wether it was some kind of jewel. We thought it was simply weird, just like the guy who brought it to us, but mom was really interested in it so she bought it for, like, way too much money. She tried to clean it, used all kinds of cleaning stuff she had, but nothing worked. She said it had to be purified, that it wasn’t really dirty like other stones, but that it was more like polluted. So she has send us out to get this purifying water from the river, and, well, here we are.”

So Damina knew of Fiume, Twinkle Star thought. Somehow she was really interested in this stone herself. A stone that couldn’t be cleaned, but had to be purified? She knew Damina knew a lot about stones, she wouldn’t just say something like that for no reason. Twinkle Star really wanted to see this stone for herself. Besides, she really wanted to see Damina as well. She clearly remembered Damina and she had been her favourite aunt when she was young, and she had always liked to play with Damina’s children.

“Twinkle…” Aline suddenly said on a threatening tone, “Are you thinking of what I think you’re thinking of?”
“What?” Testi asked.
“Well, maybe I am, I mean, I really want to…”
“Want what?” Testi asked again.
 “Oh no.” Aline sighed. “I was afraid of this.”
“Of what?” Testi asked again annoyed now because she was being ignored.
“Vesti, Testi,” Twinkle Star said, while she turned towards the twins, “How long is it walking from here to Karive desert?”
“Three weeks.” Testi said, but Vesti corrected her sister. “No, two weeks for any normal pony. Of course three, when you take Testi along.”
“Can somebody please tell me what is going on?” Testi asked quite annoyed this time, and a bit confused as well.

“Isn’t that obvious?” Aline sighed. “Twinkle wants to come with you two. She wants to meet your mother and see that stone. Come on, can’t you see it in her eyes?”