Off on a Tangent

I burst into Twilight’s library, Minuette’s clone right on my fail, brandishing the notebook we’d found at Minuette’s place. “Twilight Sparkle, get down here!”

“Hey Lyra,” Spike said from the kitchen. “Twilight’s out.”

“Oh! Hi Spike. You’re alive?”

Spike rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I’m okay. Not feeling so hot, but I’ll live.”

“It’s just, Applejack said you were dead,” I explained. “Anyway, where’s Twilight. I need to murder her.”

“That’s a figurative murdering,” Minuette’s clone pointed out in case it wasn’t obvious.

“I think she went to Zecora’s,” Spike said. “She told me to wait here, and that if you showed up, I should kill you.”

I froze, and turned to the clone. “Do you think you could take it from here?” I asked her. She stared back at me, uncomprehending. “I’ve been asking Spike to eat me for ages, I don’t think I can pass this up.”

“I… I guess,” she said. “I mean, it’s not like we were going to actually do anything other than yell at her. Were we?”

“Not unless there was something in that notebook that would actually fix things, but that seems unlikely,” I said. “And I don’t know much about time spells anyway, so that would be up to Twilight. So can you go take this stuff to Zecora’s, while I stay here and get murdered by Spike?”

“Um, Lyra?” Spike said. “I’m not going to actually kill you.”

“But –“ I said, whining. “But Twilight said you had to!”

Spike rolled his eyes. “I think she was making a joke. She was really mad at you for something.”

“Look, Spike, have you been outside? The world is literally ending,” I said. “We’ve already lost individual leaves on trees and the dirt roads are like walking on sponges, not to mention our sense of smell. It can’t be long until we lose touch and taste, and then there wouldn’t even be any point in you killing and eating me. We have to do this now! It’s our last chance!”

“Lyra, I’m not going to eat you!” Spike said. “I told you, over and over again, I don’t do that!”

“But you’re a dragon!” I tried to give him my best puppy-dog eyes, but he was unmoved, folding his arms and looking down at me. “If you don’t, I’ll go and murder Twilight.”

“No you won’t,” he said.

“I murdered Time Turner already,” I said.

“Yeah, right. Just leave me alone, okay? I don’t feel like playing around with anypony right now. I’ve got a splitting headache and my stomach feels like I ate ten tubs of ice cream.”

So, I didn’t get killed by Spike. Yay. I was grumpy and stompy all the way through the Everfree, but nothing showed up to put me out of my misery. This part of the forest had never been very dangerous, and with the mists closing in on Ponyville it barely existed at all. I could tell I was walking on a dirt path, and that there were trees to either side, and that it was dark, but there were no details other than that.

We stopped outside of Zecora’s hut. We could tell that Twilight and her friends were inside, with Zecora, but not whether or not they were doing anything. Minuette’s clone didn’t want to enter the hut, because it seemed like we were on the very edge of where things were real enough for anything to happen, and if we went inside we’d be trapped, frozen as the idea of a bunch of ponies in Zecora’s hut, until even that faded away.

So instead we cooperated and used our magic to drag Twilight Sparkle outside, but as soon as she passed the threshold, she crumbled into dust, which vanished. We didn’t try to get anypony else.