Day seven. Twenty hours left. Alright, Colgate. You can do this. You’re a big pony now.
It’d been six days since the last one. Thirteen days since the one before that. Twenty days before the one before that. And now, it would be one day until the next one.
Colgate walked up to a house, then knocked on the door. Breathe in... Breathe out. You got this. Don’t mess it up. Not on the last day.
A maroon earth pony opened the door. “Oh, uh... Hey, there, Colgate,” she said as she rubbed her eyes. “What uh... What brings you here at...” She looked at the clock hanging behind her. “...Four in the morning?”
Colgate smiled uneasily. “H-hey, there, Berry Punch. Remember that, uh, that l-letter you got from P-Pokey Pierce way back when? In, uh, in h-high school?”
Berry Punch looked at Colgate quizzically. “Um... Yeah, yeah, I do. What about it?”
Colgate scratched her forelegs. “Do you s-still have it?”
“Yeah, I do. I keep it in a—Wait, why?”
“I... I need to see it. Please.”
“What? I—No! That’s personal! Even if you’re my best friend, I can’t just show something like that to you!”
Colgate started to weep. “P-Please, Berry Punch! T-there’s no time!”
Berry Punch watched Colgate shiver in the dark. “Come in,” said Berry Punch. “What’s wrong?”
Colgate walked inside. “I nuh... nuh... need that letter. For suh... something important. Can’t say wha... wha...” She collapsed on Berry Punch’s floor and broke into tears. The saddlebags Colgate carried slid off her back and hit the floor with a dulled clink.
Berry Punch sighed, closing the door behind them. “Come on, Colgate. You can tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nuh... You... won’t... believe... me,” sobbed Colgate. “Please, just gi... give me the let... letter.”
Berry Punch cradled Colgate in her forelegs and stroked Colgate’s mane. “There, there, Colgate. You can tell me what’s wrong. I’ll believe you.”
“You di... didn’t before,” said Colgate, sobbing into Berry Punch’s chest.
“Before? You told me before?”
“A... A long time ago. Ma... many times.” Colgate eased up on her sobbing. You have to be strong, Colgate, she thought. You can do this. You have to. You must. “Just... just give me the letter.”
“Not until you tell me what’s wrong,” said Berry Punch with a tinge of indignation. “It’s the most personal thing I have, and you know that.”
Colgate sighed wearily as she wiped away the tears on her cheeks. There’s no other way. You’ve already tried them all. “Fine. You’re... you’re not going to believe it. But it doesn’t matter. So... so listen up.” Including this one. Stop delaying the inevitable.
Colgate pointed to her flank. “See this hourglass cutie mark? My special talent is time magic, right? I’m stuck in a time loop. I’ve been stuck in a time loop for about four years now. Must’ve messed up a spell real bad. I don’t even remember how it started. I’ve been living the same seven days over and over for four years. It’s always the same seven days. At first I thought that I just received all the time I could ever want, but then I realized... It’s like having to read the same book over and over again. Every. Week. Except it’s not a book. It’s my life.
“But then this... this thing shows up out of nowhere and sends me on this scavenger hunt. I don’t know what he has in mind, but he says he can help me. The things he’s asked me to get are inexplicably random. And the last thing on his most recent scavenger hunt is your letter. I’ve been trying to get it for about six weeks now. He and I are the only ones with memory of what happened in previous time loops. Not even the princesses have knowledge of it. I know this because I’ve asked them myself.”
Colgate took in a deep breath, then let it out. “And that’s it. So I need your letter.”
Berry Punch sat on the floor, dazed from Colgate’s sudden spiel. A brief moment passed in silence, then Berry Punch said, “I know you’ve been acting kind of strange this week, but... Colgate, did you hit your head on something?”
“So that’s a no?” said Colgate, lowering her head while still maintaining eye contact with Berry Punch.
They looked at each other in silence. The wall clock ticked with each passing second.
“I guess that’s a no, yeah,” replied Berry Punch.
Colgate sighed in resignation. Asking’s never worked. Threatening’s never worked. Distracting her, sending her off, knocking her out’s never worked. That leaves you only one option.
“So that’s how it is, then,” said Colgate. She then suddenly pointed behind Berry Punch and shouted, “Look out behind you!”
“What?!” shouted Berry Punch. As Berry Punch turned around, Colgate reached into her bag and drew out a knife.
Berry Punch expected an assailant, but she saw nopony. “Colgate, what was that abou—”
Before Berry Punch could finish, Colgate brought the knife across Berry Punch’s throat. Berry Punch hit the floor with a whump.
Colgate sank to the floor, dropping the knife as Berry Punch’s blood pooled around her. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You’ll be fine by tomorrow.”
She hung her head and chuckled hollowly to herself. Well, you’ve done it. You’ve killed your best friend. Now you just have to ransack her house to look for some stupid let—
“Mommy? Auntie Colgate?”
Colgate turned around. On the stairs stood Ruby Pinch, looking through the wooden railing at her mother’s still body. Colgate sighed again. Right, Pinchy. Can’t forget about her. But do I really have to... Yes, Colgate. Yes, you have to.
“Don’t worry,” said Colgate. “She’s just...” Her mouth slacked open as she picked the knife off the floor. “Sleeping.”
Ruby Pinch screamed as loud as she could and ran back up the stairs. Colgate could hear a slam above. Floating the knife, she ran up the stairs and kicked down the door to Ruby Pinch’s room. Ruby Pinch was crying with her back against a corner.
“Why?” she asked. “Why, Auntie Colgate?”
Colgate looked down at Ruby Pinch. “Because, Pinchy, I can’t have you telling anypony.”
“I won’t tell! I swear!”
“Sorry, Pinchy,” said Colgate. “It’s too late.” Colgate drove the knife into Ruby Pinch’s tiny chest. Ruby Pinch coughed up blood for a little while, then fell over, motionless.
Colgate released her grip on the knife. Her heart was beating so fast that she thought it would burst—not that it would matter much to her if it did. Breathing heavily, she left Ruby Pinch’s room.
Alright, she thought. Now to go to through every last drawer in the house to look for that letter.
And so she did. She searched high and low throughout the house, looking through every drawer and every cupboard, inside every photo frame, under every floorboard. But, even after the sun had set, she still could not find the letter.
Colgate lay down on the living room couch and pensively stared at the chandelier. Under her desk, check. In the kitchen, check. Inside, over, and under the mattresses, check. I’ve checked just about everywhere. Unless she burned it or ate it or stuffed it in a wall... Hm? What’s that?
At the base of the chandelier was a glimmering gem. Colgate focused energy into her horn, then tore the chandelier out of the ceiling. The gem, attached to a box with a safety pin embroidered onto it, fell to the ground. Colgate picked it up and opened it, revealing an old rolled slip of parchment with sloppy writing scrawled on it.
She pulled the letter out of the box and began to read it aloud to herself. “Dearest Berry...”
Several royal guards broke down the front door. She dropped the letter.
“Hooves in the air!” shouted a pegasus guard with his wings flared. The other guards filed into the room, then dispersed to search the other rooms. “We’ve come to investigate the screaming reported to have been heard this morning,” said the guard. He pointed at the blood on the floor. “Is there anything you would like to tell us?”
“Found something!” shouted another guard from the kitchen. “Two ponies, dead. One adult female earth pony and one unicorn filly.”
Colgate sighed. It wouldn’t have been the first time she was arrested, and it wouldn’t be the last. Murder, however, was new to her. The guards subdued her, led her out the door, and put her in an armored carriage. She would be sent to Canterlot where she would be processed.
As the carriage exited Ponyville, Colgate looked down at her hooves. Though she had no blood on them, she could feel it soaking into her skin. She looked distantly at the town she had grown to know all too well over the last two hundred weeks. The clock tower struck twelve.
And then she saw black.
Colgate woke up in her own bed to a bright sun and Berry Punch yelling outside. “Wake up already!” Berry Punch said through the window. “You promised me we’d go shopping today!”
Colgate stared emptily at her hooves, then looked out the window.
Day one, she thought. One hundred and sixty hours left.
