Spike: Twilight, calm down. It's just a test.
Twilight: Just a test?
Twilight: JUST A TEST?! Princess Celestia wants to give me some kind of exam, and you're trying to tell me to calm down because... IT'S JUST A TEST?!
Spike: (puts on army helmet and a suit of pillows) Uh... yes?
(Twilight growls angrily as her horn begins to glow)
Applejack: I'd say she's handling things pretty well, considering...
(cut to a wide shot of Ponyville; an explosion is heard, and the library is seen being blown sky-high)
—My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, "The Crystal Empire (Part 1)"
The question confused me at first, then…
I remembered what I'd been worrying on and off about since I had woken up yesterday; it may have only been indirectly mentioned by a disembodied voice in my dream, but had still hung around in the corner of my mind, waiting for a moment like this to leap out and seize me. All of my anger was almost immediately drained out, replaced by a feverish, icy feeling of fear. And with it gone, I was finally able to take in the effects of my outburst.
While I had been shouting, something had been happening to my surroundings, something I wasn't even aware of until it had stopped. It was as if I had been building up some sort of charge that was humming violently in the air around the room, threatening to go off at any second. But the instant I stopped shouting, that charge had immediately vanished, replaced instead by an air that felt tense and numb.
Four pairs of eyes were looking at me now. Mom was still towering over me, her stern expression still intact, but I could see tears in her eyes again. Dad looked like he was torn somewhere between anger and fear, the same sort of expression he had worn the time he caught me eating rat poison when I was four. It was the girls' faces that made me feel the worst though; Minnie, still curled up in Dad's lap, and Mimmie, looking up from the pages of a children's book she had found, were both looking at me as if worried I was about to hit them.
"I... I don't..." I stammered, unsure of what I was saying.
