"You do not seek guidance, yet you have questions only one such as I can answer."

Weeellll... this one looked like she was authentic. A blonde unicorn with a snow-white coat and a veil calmly bid her to sit in front of her crystal ball. The shop was filled with all sorts of objects with not one defined origin, purpose, or theme; books, cloths, vials of mysterious liquids, something that looked local, others that looked eastern, others WAY eastern, and many other random objects - or apparently random, in any case.

"A quick, three-card reading is just five bits." She said, and Forest decided to get her fortune told, if only to see how did such a huge deck of cards worked. Seriously, those were hundreds of cards.

The cards were engulfed in a bright green glow.

"It's easier since you are a unicorn; just add your magic." She said.

Forest obliged, trying to do it like it was a regular levitation instead of her new method. The cards shone like they had been teleported, but other than that nothing happened. The teller picked up the first card.

"I see... a journey."

That was a typical fortunetelling tri-

"A journey from so far as to be unable to point the beginning in any map we have... odd for it to be said like that."

Alright, maybe not so typical.

"And a second one, less defined, yet intentional, ambitious, even." The teller laid down the card, face down, next to the deck before drawing another.

"I see trouble. Enough pain and adversity as to break the will of just about anypony, and yet it's so distant! It seems to me that the first journey left the most dangerous of them behind, although it is safe to bet that the troubling parts linger, hmm?" She placed the second card on top of the first one, then quirked an eyebrow at Forest.

Fortunetelling. Scarier in hindsight.

She drew the third card and frowned.

"It's in the past, but it says 'Unnatural End'." The fortuneteller glared at the card, and Forest started to panic - that dull, slow panic of those who barely care, but building up. "Obviously, you're here, but this brush with death was so close and so strange, I'm likely not going to see anything else."

"... why is that?" Forest managed to spit out. She steeled herself, determined to not let her thoughts show on her face.

"It happens all the time. The things I see are larger or smaller depending on impact and many other things - I once read the past of a mare that nearly drowned as a filly, and was able to see danger in a cruise she intended to go."

"I take it she cancelled." Forest was debating turning around and leaving Canterlot right then and there, or pray that it would resolve itself.

"Right. But, it was blurry; it was so similar, that only the other factors allowed me to see it. If there had been danger from an accidental fire, it, too, would be less clear, yet clearer than falling to the sea. Intentional things, particularly more direct, violent ones, may obstruct other details. This, however..." She glared at the card as if it had personally offended her.

"Whatever it was, it was an enormous event in your life - regardless of whenever you were aware of how close you came to death or not. I can't see anything smaller. It seems it can't possibly happen again, either, so I can't see what it was, or when, or where..." She huffed.

Forest sighed internally; changelings - and, curiously enough, a few Blackwatch grunts- had good acting skills in addition to great poker faces.

"It bugs me; you could have been eaten by a mutant monster, caught some unnatural disease, gotten tangled up in an anomaly of time and space, you could even have been turned into a zombie, and I can't see anything!" The mare slammed the card on top of the others, glaring with such intensity that she never saw Forest's eyes growing wider - and if she did, it would be more reasonable to think it was because of her own loss of composure.

"Well, my body is not a rotting mass of flesh, brains do not seem like an appetizing cooking ingredient and, to my knowledge, my actions are my own; we can discard reanimated zombie and voodoo zombie." She let out a brief chuckle, still slightly nervous.

"Hmm?" The fortuneteller glanced back, an eyebrow rising slowly before she waved a hoof. "Oh, right, right. It was just an example; it's too large and too blurry! Oh! I have an idea, wait a second."

With that, she teleported away, to the back room if the sound of marbles falling -and rolling- on stone was any indication.

"Yes? No, no, no! Ugh!" Judging by the sounds, most of the marbles fell to the floor. The fortuneteller reappeared in a flash, ears flat against her head in sorrow.

"I'm sorry, I can't read anything clear; all I see seems metaphoric... maybe you can make sense of it?" She said, offering a sheepish smile.

"I... sure." Forest agreed. She could feel how bad the other mare felt, and it was kind of uncomfortable to know she had caused it.

"I only picked up colors; something red that lost against something black, something white that was supposed to oppose the black, but became tainted by it - which I don't understand how's that possible- and it all turns quiet. It only said to keep an eye out for Blue."

"Blue?"

"Something about a blue pony for luck, and a blue thing on the ground for danger." She sighed. "Now I'm depressed."

Alright, so it was just something colored blue...

"I'm sorry I couldn't read your fortune." The fortuneteller apologized again, sliding Forest's money back to her. "Let me make it up to you."

"That's not necessary."

"No, really. I know this place, run by a couple of friends from away..."

*****

"Shiny!" Twilight greeted her brother at the door of the suite. "Come on in!"

He was a little red in the face, painfully obvious thanks to his white coat and contrasting sharply with his blue mane, and his breathing was a little uneven; Twilight knew there were a lot of stairs through the city, and the room the princess gave them was on top of a tower, but Shining Armor was supposed to have better physical condition than that.

"Hi Twily!" He smiled awkwardly and chuckled. "Sorry, I was running late and- erm! That's not important."

He coughed and walked inside, becoming a little redder.

"Shiny..." Shining heard Twilight say in that tone nearly every female knew how to use instinctively - the 'you'd better start explaining right now' one. It was nearly a perfect copy of mom's, too.

And a tiny bit like Cadence's, now that he thought about it. Made sense.

"I ran into a mare, holding her shopping in her magic. She... I... I startled her." His blush, for that was what it had been, intensified again. "She didn't drop anything, but looked distant for a few seconds, like she was remembering something... then she got mad."

Her shouting was still vivid in his memory; he stood with his hindlegs just a little bit closer together. Royal guard or no, there are things one simply can't take without reacting.

"Don't worry, Steel saw everything, so it all got cleared up." Shining smiled, then put on a flat face. "I need a shower."

"Ehh... sure? I mean, sure!" Twilight replied, trying to perk up her brother. "Mom forgot the camera, Spike wanted to catch up with them, so dad is keeping them company! They'll be here soon, but my friend still isn't here; you have time."

"Thanks, lil' sister." He smiled warmly, finally relaxing.

Shining Armor disappeared deeper into the suite, leaving Twilight alone with her thoughts for a short while.

Somepony knocked on the door, although it would be more accurate to call it a pounding.

”Forest! Erm, are you feeling well?" Twilight asked with a little uncertainty, given that the mare on the other side was scowling like she had done when Dash had startled her.

Forest blushed slightly as she entered, scoffing, while her trailing bags went to a nearby table.

"There was this idiot who crashed into me. Seems like he was going at a gallop and rounded the corner without taking care." Her tail pressed against her as she gritted her teeth. The whole thing made a few unpleasant absorbed memories surface, and... "On top of that, I almost dropped my things."

She would have, if not for her reflex having been to pull things closer to herself. She felt exposed due to the memories conflicting with her new body, after all.

"I... I don't know why I reacted like that." She eyed one of the bags in particular, and Twilight followed her gaze. "Sure, that bag might be the last jar in perhaps the whole market, but the thought of losing it, along with... That." She growled softly.

Twilight put two and two and two together, and determined that she had to calm her down before Shining got out of his shower.

"What is in the bag?" Step one, assess damage without rousing suspicion.

"A spice my father used to use." The heat left her voice, replaced by a forlorn sigh. "It's just a cooking ingredient, though... it's not like it's that important..."

Twilight saw her chance.

"Of course it's important!" She said, placing a hoof on her friend's shoulder. "It's like the princesses said; you don't have to let go of everything. They might not be here, but they are never really gone."

Forest hadn't bothered to ponder the implications of her Blacklight infection or what that meant to her humanity for any meaningful length of time, much less her most recent change of scenery - or species...

But she did know something.

"I guess I just miss them." Forest said, but, contrary to even her own expectations, she managed a tiny smile. "They had the habit of telling me every last bit of what they were cooking; I remember the recipes perfectly."

Forest's prior memories were readily available just the same way as the new ones, thankfully.

Too bad it made nightmares much too intense and common. Most of Mercer's group had that problem to tell the truth - well, those that weren't socio- or psychopaths; the desperate ones just looking for a way to survive in a city where one was either prey, 'potential risk', or 'potential test subject'.

Unsurprisingly, those thoughts killed the smile.

Twilight twitched - she had been so close! She saw the smile; full of longing and small, but a smile all the same! Real! Not a mask born of politeness!

"They were cooks?" She tried to coax a little more pleasant memories, fairly certain that whatever had soured the mood had been a random thought - the transition had been way too fast, and Forest did have the habit of going on a tangent.

"My fa- dad was." She remembered that Twilight and the others told her that she didn't have to act so cultured around them. "Had he been a pony, I'm sure he would have earned a cooking cutie mark."

Trying to picture her father as a pony fit for a girly cartoon show got a sad chuckle out of her, same for a changeling, actually. He would... hmm... it was likely that he would have freaked out a little, before her mother calmed him down. Cooking-wise, he would have taken the restrictions as a challenge.

Twilight gave her an encouraging nuzzle - or so she hoped; Twilight wanted Forest to keep going, lest she be forced to endure the sight of a friend with empty eyes speaking hollow words.

"He taught mom the art of the desserts some time before I was born, and she got so good at it that he left them to her. She wore this frilly pink apron whenever she cooked." Mom... wouldn't have cared in the slightest if Forest had turned into a mare; she would squeal like a little girl and braid her mane and tail, that and try to get her to do all sorts of girly things together, like dressing her up.

Forest would have let her.

Mom would also have punched the lights out of anyone that dared to give 'her baby' any grief about it.

"That is- born? Changelings don't come from eggs?" Twilight, it should be noted, also went into wild tangents whenever there was something to learn.

"I'm not an insect!" Forest hissed and scowled at that, making Twilight flinch under her glare. She would have buzzed her wings in irritation, but in disguise...

"Sorry! Sorry... I-I thought..." Twilight stammered, taking a step back on reflex. Forest's annoyance made her feel really uncomfortable, which she speculated was from her predatory origin leaking through her disguise.

"Ugh. Look, could we just drop it? I really didn't need to imagine my mom as a pony laying an egg." There was not enough vodka and whiskey in this or any world to make a mortal man forget something like that, much less a Blacklight; still, she closed her eyes and rubbed her muzzle in an effort to do so.

"Sure." Twilight nodded stiffly, now suffering from a similar image.

"Thank you." Forest answered, remembering her manners.

"Twily, I hear somepony, is your friend he- !?" Shining Armor gasped and flinched; there, in front of the door, was the last pony he wanted to see.

"You!" They both pointed at the other, one significantly angrier than the other.

"Oh, for pony's sake..." Twilight mumbled.

Author's Note

Forest doesn't know of Mercer's demise, obviously. It'll be a source of stress, also obviously.

I don't think it's that hard to guess what the blue things are.

I accidentally hit the Publish button instead of the Edit one yesterday.