Living with Starlight the Psychopath [mind games/AiE]

Starlight tries to be good but is incapable of understanding the concept. She is a pure-blooded psychopath. For her, it is like being good in an RPG in which everyone else is an NPC: nothing but manipulation, and because everyone else has always been an NPC, she has no reference for what real goodness is. She never will.

Nevertheless, I love her, even in large part due to it.

I had just woken up. It was Sunday morning. I wrapped my arms around her.
“Good morning Anon,” she mumbled.
Habit, I realized. She was half-asleep. No ulterior motive.
I continued hugging her, then crawled out of bed. She curled up a bit and winced her eyes only slightly.
Manipulation. I showered.

Afterward, she was in the kitchen cooking breakfast. This meant she wanted something. She is an intelligent mare; I knew she knew I knew this. But with her it is always like game theory: playing along is a Nash equilibrium. It keeps her kind.
“If you know ignorance, do you know ignorance?” she asked.
I expected a request, but I had once insinuated that if she were to ever bore me, I would leave. Leverage is good. The obvious meta-ironic answer to her question would have been ‘I don’t know,’ but I found it a rather pedestrian riposte. Better to turn the tables on her.
“Do you?” I asked.
She paused.
“If you think so.”
The undertone was an antimetathesis of the original premise: she was as ignorant as I thought she was, yet it was I who was ignorant. Clever mare.
“I’d like to go to the aquarium today,” she said.
There’s the request. She didn’t even ask if I'd like to. She could have gone alone, but she tends to enjoy my company. It's how I know she loves me. It's probably the only way she loves me.
“We’ll go,” I responded.

When we arrived at the aquarium she wished only to see the sea slugs. For some odd reason, she loves them. I had once gotten her a plush sea cucumber, but she threw it away.
“When threatened, sea cucumbers eviscerate themselves to ensnare predators in their toxic intestines, which they then regrow,” she said.
I enjoyed seeing her happy. We continued around the aquarium as she volunteered facts about sea slugs.
“If you cut a sea cucumber into pieces each piece can regrow into a new sea cucumber.”
“The Blue Sea Slug feeds on the Mane-Of-War.”
“Nudibranches concentrate toxins from the sponges they eat.”
I found her lovely. When she immerses herself in a topic, she forgets her constant manipulation. I loved the usual repartee, but she was almost a normal pony when like this. It was sweet, but I was glad it was seldom.

When we had arrived at the aquarium she had conveniently forgotten to bring any bits. She is a superb liar and passed it off as an accident. As we walked home I thought that even if it were an accident, it would be ideal if I made her remunerate; every pawn is necessary, and this was a matter of her perception of me. She knew I would not leave her over something so small, that at worst I would view it as a lesson that I must always anticipate this. I considered stealing the bits from her to make a point, but that would break the equilibrium. It would be silence that would cut my losses. She had won the aquarium bits, though her goal was not the bits but to make a point.

I must frequently worry about theft. She had implicitly stolen those bits from me, but that was my fault. I had let down my guard. Near the beginning of our relationship, I had to concoct a calibrated safeguard to prevent her from considering outright larseny. I always leave a few bits on my desk as a decoy and clandestinely keep a larger sum of bits in a locked desk drawer for which I hide the key, but not extremely carefully. The bulk of my salary is in a vault. My concoction is a mind-game, and the strategy is this: She knows the bits on the table are a test. She might then think the larger hidden sum of bits is genuine when it is, in fact, the real test. However, on a tertiary level, the level at which she surely is, she would realize that it is a two-fold test, that I am assiduous in monitoring and preventing her inclinations, too assiduous, and she would therefore not attempt to steal from me. She has not stolen from me yet.

When we returned from the aquarium, I retired to my studies as she studied and practiced magic in our shared room, our room which she had long appropriated for herself.

I knew that she had once mind-controlled her friends because she didn’t realize it was wrong. She was just trying to get what she wanted. Like her mentor, Twilight does not betray the breadth of her sagacity, but in private conversation, I had learned that she had seen through Glimmer from the start; this is why she had been firm but not angry after Glimmer's mind-control. I respect Twilight for her commitment to friendship, for her prudential extension of friendship even to this psychopath.

There was one final layer of a particular safeguard I had been meaning to effect; I made my plans for it, read the afternoon, made dinner, and summoned her to join me.

“Did you have a nice time at the aquarium Anon?” she asked. She did not actually care. For her, dialogue is a game.
“I had a very nice time," I responded. "Sea slugs have interesting defenses. If you mind knowing what I think of them, I don’t know.”

It was a true statement, but also intentionally odd. She is a brilliant mare; I knew she would take note. "Mind knowing." "Defenses." "Don’t know." I had arranged with Twilight not to know what mind-reading defenses she had lain, for I knew that if I knew, Starlight might be able to discover them. I wished for her to think that I might be saying that such an attempt would be fruitless, yet not be confident my sentence had any undertone at all. After all, friends trust friends and knowledge is power. And I can never risk giving her an inch of power.

She paused after hearing my response, as if thinking, and asked,
"If you know ignorance, do you know ignorance?"
"If you think so," I said.
"I do."