BLINK AND MISS IT
by Ponydora Prancypants
I wish I wish I wish ...
I wished to be a part of the plan, et voilà. I wish this wasn’t happening, but there he stands, as existential as life, and he turns, and he sees me. I made a terrible mistake, and have no more than a second to spare.
I wish—teleportation always involves a heavy-hooved pinch of wishful thinking—and half a half-second ticks away, and I’m gone. Blink and you’d miss it.
As I panic-stricken slide through the crazed panes of dimensions I see a steep slope slanting toward me and know I am slipping into an inevitable lifetime of self-recrimination. Because I thought to look through my telescope.
To gain perspective. To plan. To recover my stolen breath.
To wish.
I wasted the first half of the half-second comprehending the ramifications of my tactical error. His nose for magic is sharklike now; he could have detected a drop, and I am a boiling ocean. I was marked before I lit on the platform and set my eye to the eyepiece. But the irresistible homing pigeon directive that took me here didn’t consider the consequences. Home, it cooed in my breast. Home. Home. Take me home. Country roads. Ponyville. Home.
Stupid pigeon heart. My mind is racing with avian celerity.
In the West of Trottingham lives an earth pony,
He says, ‘I don't fly, but my pigeon does.
And when I open his crate,
I forget my natural state
And soar on pegasus wings.'
These purple feathers came complete with a bird brain, or I would have resisted the primordial urge to retreat to my knothole, and transcended my inner foal’s desperate need for security. A tattered, patched-up old security blanket that was blue once is already wisps of ash scattered in my memory-cluttered head. Ashes, ashes, we all run out of time in the end. Time to fly when I’m not having fun. Half a second is what I’ve got. Must remember that.
He’s twenty ponies tall and colored like the fire department. Did I really need to go home to look at him through my telescope?
Sometimes when my body is scattered across the interstices between realms my thoughts get scattered too, especially when I’m anxious.
A champagne cork pop as the spell dissipates, and I’m in the bosom of hearth and books, where Rarity popped the first cork of many at my post-coronation celebration, not so long ago. Didn’t drink the hot sauce that time.
The heady aroma of binding adhesive and musty parchment welcomes me. Smells like books. I know what a burned book smells like. The acrid memory is gravid with horrible inevitability.
Have you ever seen a dragon sneeze?
Have you ever seen a horsefly?
He gave me a new copy of The Astronomical Astronomer’s Almanac to All Things Astronomy. Well, a new old copy. It’s been out of print for ages. He tracked it down, because of course he did. I can see it, shelved in its proper place. Catalogued.
I often find myself cataloguing things subconsciously, especially when I’m anxious. Making inventories. Tallying. Mental checklists. And I don’t want to think about the smell of a burned book in this singular sub-second.
My bust of Belleropone is in its place, the old stallion maintaining his dignity to the end. Forget his illustrious years of service, how many Rainbow Dash near misses had he survived, after taking seven hundred years to find his way to a library reading table?
Check.
A bevy of birch besoms. A bantam basket for a baby drake. A bottle of brownish balls from the Bizarre Bezoar Bazaar.
Check. Check. Check.
The antique lectern sagging under the heft of the complete unabridged dictionary of modern Equestrian. Alicorn, it says. 1. noun. al-uh-corn. A winged unicorn, such as the royal Princesses of Equestria. An etymological amalgamation derived from the Old Unicorn words ala, meaning wing, and cornu, a horn. The spelling has inexplicably morphed to match that of the completely separate word for the substance comprising the core of a unicorn’s horn. 2. noun. A chump, a naif, a doe-eyed ingenue who, in her zeal for more, always more, heedless of her qualifications, arrived at the present situation wherein an important municipal resource cum personal residence cum trove of every meaningful object in a young, foolish pony’s life is about to be shivered to splinters. See also Princess Twilight Sparkle.
An alewife is a fish, and a fishwife probably drinks too much. It doesn't make sense.
The plan.
Take the magic. Hide. How could I hide? Keep it secret, or your friends will be in danger. Or? How could they ever have kept safe, with Discord against us? I used to ask questions first. It's a little late now, don't you think? Well excuse me, Princess.
A new plan: get the owl, and get out.
But the checklist is growing, as is a checklist's wont. The chalkboard with my latest work on Fermare's Last Theorem. Check. Check. Check. Testing. One. Two. Three. Prepping Rainbow for her test. One. Two. One. One half-second. Time keeps on slipping.
Suddenly I can think of a better use for Starswirl the Bearded's one-time-only time travel spell than telling myself not to worry.
Gala dress.
Birthday dress.
Frilly cuteceañera dress.
Silly costume princess dress.
Spike would always clear the mess.
Not this time.
But I didn’t start the fire.
Check.
My starry night bedspread. Telescope. Zoetrope. Magilectroencephalograph. Photographs. Epitaph. The girls. Spike and his little phoenix. Yellowed damareotypes of my grandparents. My brother. The lights are low and the entire library is a camera obscura with a pinhole projecting my memories upside down for one fleeting moment longer. The heretofore life and times of Twilight Sparkle. I don't dare blink and miss it.
Smarty Pants got out. Good girl. She is always so on top of things.
Most of the chemicals in the basement are flammable.
And so are books.
Check.
The scoundrels on my overdue list are now heroes.
Check.
Time to check out.
Get the owl and go.
He is sleeping peacefully on his perch, of course. This is just another day at the office.
The blast has connected, and the walls are suffused with a blood red glow, highlighting the subtle differentiation in the vascular cambium of the tree, reminding me that it is alive. Was.
At least fifteen-hundred years removed from the acorn. Before we ponies were even strangers in a strange land.
The Apples found it here, already strewn with scrolls that fell to dust when touched. Who left them? Who compiled the hidden book of lore that led me to the Mirror Pool? How many other secrets will never be uncovered. Mysteries for another Twilight Sparkle in another corner of the multiverse. I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely.
Time's up.
The world is bursting around me and the ringing in my ears sounds like singing. I must go to him. I won’t look back. Yes, I will.
And when I open his crate,
I forget my natural state.
I wish.
Fly home, Your Majesty,
Make my wish come true.
Je suis la princesse des pigeons.
I squeeze a startled mass of feathers against my breast.
Too late now for anything else.
Time to shoot first, and ask questions later. Like a Princess.
Still
I wish I wish I wish ...
