'Twas Brilligby MadMethodChaptersOr About 4 O'Clock in the AfternoonOne of Those Days - Part 1One of Those Days - Part 2Or About 4 O'Clock in the AfternoonFalling was the last thing Twilight could remember. Down and down she went, but she did not tumble through the air. She was falling to her knees, crashing to the cold tiles beneath. She struggled to lift her head. When she did, the eyes that met hers were empty, cold, searching. Why are those eyes so familiar? Why did it hurt so much to see that face? Twilight’s vision grew grey around the edges. Only the face remained. It blurred as if seen through thick glass and was gone. The world was dark and Twilight was falling again. For well over twenty minutes, Twilight Sparkle did little more than lay on her side and wish her head felt more like a head and less like a walnut in a slowly tightening vice. She knew it was at least twenty minutes because each throb of pain within her skull pulsed a little over once per second and she had stopped counting at one thousand, two hundred twelve. She had not opened her eyes yet, afraid that the light that tinted her vision bright red behind her eyelids would only serve to worsen the pain that seemed to split her skull in twain. Still, being a practical mare, she knew she must get her bearings and cracked one crusted eyelid open just long enough to regret it. The ray of sunlight that flooded her vision did indeed refresh the intensity of her headache, but at the same time, she saw with relief that it was only a narrow beam of light pooling around her face and she gingerly rolled her head to her right, into the shade. Twilight moaned and groggily opened both lavender eyes to see a shadowy canopy of leaves several yards above her. For the first time since becoming conscious, she noticed the pleasant breeze, the gentle rustle of leaves and grass, and a fragrant scent that wafted in on the cool air currents. Long ago, she had learned that the best way to deal with large amounts of physical pain was to embrace it, allow the sensation to encompass one’s entire being so that there was nothing left to contrast the unpleasantness, thereby nullifying it until one felt they could better handle it or the pain itself faded. Having focused on the discomfort for so long, there had been no room in Twilight’s mind to sense the world around her and so the picturesque, peaceful forest she now found herself in was a pleasant surprise, albeit still rather alarming. She could not recall how she had come to be laying in a small clearing in a strange part of Equestria or even why her head felt like the victim of a steam hammer. She sat up and took in the surprisingly mundane surroundings, yet there was something peculiar about them she could not quite place. Towering oak trees with gnarled roots and twisting branches surrounded her like a crowd approaching something fascinating. She lay on a pale patch of dirt that was slowly being claimed by the surrounding grass. Or perhaps it was the other way around? Above her, leaves occasionally fell from the verdant jumble of branches and leaves as the mass was jostled by the stronger winds above the canopy. As Twilight stared, she observed what she assumed to be a curious optical illusion; upon tracing the outlines of any branch, she could not find where they ended. Leaves sprouted from thin twigs, but even those seemed to continue splitting and curling over and over and over and over and— “Ye’ll go mad, ye know?” Twilight whipped her head in the direction of the voice and immediately regretted it as the headache reminded her it had not vacated her skull just yet and it did not take kindly to sudden moves, forcing her to squeeze her eyes shut as she winced. The slight whimper she heard then had an odd doubled property and she soon realized both she and whomever had just spoken had made almost identical noises, simultaneously. When she opened her eyes for the second time, she saw something she would later describe to herself as ‘Flutter-bait’. Crouched behind a particularly thick clump of grass was an impeccably-dressed charcoal colored rabbit with pink eyes. His smart blue blazer was worn over a simple white button-up shirt and similarly blue tie. The lapel bore a small silver pin, but Twilight could not make out the shape through the combined haze of grogginess and cranial anguish, not to mention the crust she had still not rubbed from her eyes. She could make out his hat, however, a tiny, rain cloud grey jeff cap perched neatly upon his head with his upright ears poking up through the sides. She thought this curious until she realized it would probably be difficult for a rabbit to wear a hat if their ears kept knocking it off rather than helping to hold it in place. Effective lagomorph clothing designs aside, Twilight marvelled at the sight of the animal dressed in such a formal manner and peering at her with eyes so full of intelligence. Had this really been the creature that spoke? “H-hello?” She croaked. The rabbit’s ears twitched and he stepped some inches out from behind the green curtain, eyes growing impossibly wider. “Did ye jus’ talk?” The rabbit stepped fully into the clearing, though he remained a good distance from Twilight. He leaned forward and studied the mare from every angle he could, standing on his toes and leaning side to side as his eyes raked her visage. “Well, yes, but you spoke to me first, didn’t you?” She was already beginning to feel awkward as the rabbit’s eyes trailed over her body from her dark blue mane and tail, to her lavender fur, to the bright purple six-pointed starburst cutie mark that adorned her flanks. Finally, his eyes settled on her horn and a look of understanding followed by mild disappointment seemed to cross his features. “Oh yes, but Ah was just runnin’ my mouth, like ye do when ye talk to a tove because ain’t no one else ‘round to jabber at.” The rabbit replied. Twilight did not know what a tove was, but she could now hear an unmistakable Scoltish brogue on his tongue. She began to wonder if she was hallucinating. She had certainly never heard of talking, well-dressed rabbits from Scoltland before. The rabbit piped up again, “Ye’re a funny-lookin’ unicorn. What are ye doin’ layin’ about here?” Ignoring the rude remark, she flexed her extremely stiff limbs, preparing to stand. She was grateful to find they were not at all sore, as she had suspected. Grunting with the effort of forcing her legs to work, she answered the rabbit’s question in halting breaths, “I—ah—don’t know, I—hng—woke up like—ngah—like this.” She stood on four hooves and flexed each limb, hearing an occasional pop from her bones. Her head still throbbed with each beat of her heart and she squeezed her eyes shut against the pain reflexively. “Are ye...okay? Ye look like you tried to dance with a jabberwock.” He chuckled lightly. “What’s a jabberwock?” Twilight asked and cracked an eye open to see the rabbit was now looking at her worriedly. “Oh yes, ye need some help, lass.” He said, his tone suddenly grave. “Ye’d better come with me.” Twilight considered the rabbit again, checking his appearance and finding nothing had changed since she first looked upon him. This was a sign she was likely not dreaming nor hallucinating the being. She could still not rule out that possibility, but as she glanced about the forest once more, she remembered she did not have a clue where she was. If the rabbit lead her directly to a road or building, she could at least trust he was somehow real despite the fantastic nature of his appearance. Maybe the rabbit is some sort of golem or familiar, Twilight thought to herself. She had often heard of such fanciful forms being used by some of the more eccentric mages in Canterlot in the construction of magical servants. “Thank you, sir. Where to, though?” “Ah was jus’ headin’ to my friend’s place. His name is Bill and he might have somethin’ to help.” The rabbit added, “He’s no doctor, mind ye, but he knows a few things about makin’ one right from bein’ wrong.” Twilight’s feelings toward receiving help from this ‘Bill’ were dubious at best, but at the moment she knew her other options were limited. Limited, specifically, to wandering off into the forest blindly and becoming the victim of any predators that might come out once it got dark. “A-Alright. Lead the way, Mister…?” She paused to give him a chance to answer. “Ach! I seem to have lost my manners!” The rabbit said as he brought a paw to his forehead. For a moment, he patted his pockets as if looking for something and Twilight giggled at the joke until he continued to pat himself down, pawing at the insides of his blazer and reaching under his hat. She then gave him a quizzical look and he returned it with a sheepish smile. “Must have dropped them on the trail, somewhere. Anyway, the name’s Blake. Blake Rabbit, no relation.” “No relation to who…?” Twilight asked, doing her best to remember any famous ponies with the last name Rabbit. “We’d better hurry.” Blake said and turned from the clearing, gesturing over his shoulder for her to follow as he hopped along. Twilight rolled her eyes and began trotting to catch up. This day was already beginning to get more and more curious. Author's Note And we're off! I know this was a bit short, but chapters should come pretty frequently. EDIT: Added a little something to the beginning of this chapter to make things more interesting. One of Those Days - Part 1Twilight trotted to catch up with Blake as he scurried through the brush. He turned every few seconds to ensure the unicorn was still behind him and continued, bounding over thick arches of root and darting through patches of tall grass. This annoyed Twilight as she frequently lost sight of him, causing her to panic for a brief moment before catching a glimpse of his dark fur among the green several yards ahead. She found herself galloping to keep him in sight and was just about to ask him to slow down when they burst through a thicket and onto a clear path. Twilight skidded to a halt, catching herself before she would have tumbled over a short, but steep, ledge and down a long slope. The ground here was thoroughly worn down, the light brown of the earth exposed in a shallow trough just wide enough for three ponies to walk side by side as it meandered through the great trees and stones. Here, Twilight could see deeper into the forest where the oaks grew in thinner groups and what she saw was stunning. She had never seen a place that looked so wild and magical. Pony-sized mushrooms grew on thick stalks among the shadowy tangle of roots. Ferns with striped, spiraling fronds burst from the earth. Every color and shape of flower Twilight recognized, and more, seemed to be represented among the foliage. Stranger still, the entire scene was alight with a prismatic array of bioluminescence and buzzing lights that danced along the ground, bounding from fungus caps to stones and tracing hypnotizing patterns through the air. A gently babbling stream ran parallel to the path, cutting a winding channel through shelves of stone and boulders streaked with lime-colored moss. “Ye goin’ to stand there all day ‘till a bread-and-butterfly lands on yer tongue or are ye comin’ with me?” Twilight snapped her jaw shut and felt her face grow warm beneath her fur. “Oh, sorry I’ve just...never seen such a wonderful place.” She sighed. Twilight turned back to the trees behind her. That unplaceable peculiarity was still present, but the scene there was largely mundane. Brown boughs crowded together, soaring into the lofty green above and the monotonous carpet of ordinary looking grass was broken only by small patches of thistle and a thick bush tucked away every few yards in any direction. Even the land was generally flat and featureless save for stones of modest bulk pushing up through the tan colored dirt. “One side is so dull and the other looks like a dream.” Twilight remarked and looked at Blake inquisitively. The rabbit glanced to either side of the path and shrugged. “Much like the day, nothin’ goes on forever.” he said with mild impatience then added, “Even Fractal Forest.” Picking up on the subtle hint to get a move on, Twilight hurriedly trotted over to him. “Fractal Forest? Why is it called that?” She scanned the treeline as the pair began a brisk pace along the path, once more finding nothing particularly interesting about the place. “Take a look at that tree, there.” Blake gestured ahead and to the left at a stout tree with three thick branches reaching toward the canopy, falling just short of joining its leaves with the others around it. It reminded Twilight of a foal trying desperately to acquire a cookie jar sat inches from his grasp. “I’ll bet ye two good ideas ye cannae find the end of a twig on those limbs.” She smiled at the curious wager and began tracing her gaze along the crooked outline of a branch. The effect quickly became as disturbing as it was fascinating as Twilight found that, not only did the branch seem to split and grow new tendrils of wood as she studied its length, but as each new segment came into existence, Twilight sensed her own memory of the tree changing from the edge of her perception. Something small and hard collided with her cheek, striking the ground with a small thud shortly after, and Twilight looked down to see an acorn rolling to a stop in the dirt. Blake was standing farther down the path holding another seed in his paws and gazing back with a good natured smirk. “That was the third one I tossed at ye, lass. Told ye, didn’t I? Ye’ll go man starin’ like that.” “What was that?” Twilight breathed as she cantered back to her companion, continuing along slightly slower than before. “Jus’ a tree, only it keeps goin’ the more ye look, smaller and smaller ‘til ye cannae see it anymore, jus’ like everythin’ in there.” Twilight cautiously glanced back into the Fractal Forest, careful not to look at any one thing for too long this time. Understanding dawned on her as she finally grasped what had seemed so unusual about the forest earlier. Each new observation revealed more of the cracks in the stones, another set of ridges within the first on a section of bark, more and smaller blades of grass between the larger ones. It was as if everything was constantly changing, becoming more, yet never truly different than before she had looked. Something whizzed past her ear and she flinched, jerking her head back and causing the nerves in her still aching head to complain. Twilight glared, one-eyed at the rabbit who dropped the pebble he held and shrank behind a wedge-shaped chunk of blue stone etched with numerous spiral-shaped fossils. “Sorry.” Blake squeaked “I thought ye got caught up by the forest again.” “Thank you for your concern, but I’m fine. Next time, just call me or tap my shoulder, please.” Blake hopped on top of the stone, balancing unsteadily on the ridge as it rocked slightly from his sudden action, and bowed low. “Of course m’lady...um...” He paused and stood upright too quickly, almost tumbling backwards off his perch. “What did ye say yer name was?” “Oh, right.” Twilight chuckled sheepishly. Perhaps she had lost her own manners, she thought. She trotted to Blake with a polite smile and extended a hoof to the teetering rabbit. “My name is Twilight Sparkle. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Rabbit.” Blake looked at it for a moment as if deciding how best to return the greeting. After a moment, he reached out with both paws and took the hoof on either side, shaking it up and down twice. Twilight smiled wider at what, to her, was an odd way to return the gesture since she had expected him to bump his paw against her hoof. “The pleasure is mi—Oh! Ohhh! Oof!” Blake finally fell off the rock. Having unconsciously used Twilight’s hoof to support himself and suddenly lost that support as she withdrew it, he tottered precariously. His arms were twin windmills at his sides as he briefly attempted to balance on the leaning stone before landing on the path with a thud and a small puff of dust. Twilight giggled playfully at the display, having expected it to happen much earlier and taking a small, guilty pleasure in seeing the karmic justice wrought upon the seed-lobber. Blake himself chortled as he rose from the path, seemingly having half-expected the same. However, neither expected the stone to follow Blake’s downward path as gravity pulled it from the delicate balance in which it had been left. By degrees, the stone continued to lean, its motion too slow for either of the laughing pair to notice until it was too late. The ridge caught Blake fully on his ankle and he collapsed as a muffled crack sounded over the thud of stone violently meeting earth. His piercing scream cut through the placid forest air and Twilight looked down, horrified, at the sight of the rabbit’s limb bent too awkwardly at the ankle to be natural. Blake was trying futilely to pull his injured leg from beneath the stone, emitting pained gasps as each effort only served to jostle the crushed bones. Twilight rushed to hook her forelegs beneath the stone and lift it from Blake’s leg, but it was too heavy and she did not have enough leverage. She grunted and heaved at the stubborn rock, yet it refused to budge. Blake’s cries of pain spurred her on, however, and Twilight drew from every ounce of strength she had. Still, the rock was as immoveable as it was solid. Blake moaned and panted on the ground. His eyelids were mashed fiercely together, his jaw set in a grimace of agony. Slowly, his head began to droop lower, coming to rest on the dirt and his paws, which had previously been clutching at his leg, seemed to rapidly lose tension. Twilight saw this and quickly moved to stand over him. “No,” she yelped, “Stay with me, Blake!”, but the rabbit had already faded from consciousness. He lay limp, his chest rapidly rising and falling for a few moments more then slowing to the steady cadence of a sleeper as Twilight fruitlessly continued calling his name and patting his cheeks with increasing fervor. When it became clear he was not going to respond, she fell to her haunches beside him, fear welling within her chest as a chill crept up her spine. Twilight’s thoughts raced as she tried desperately to find a solution to this sudden, terrible twist of fate. Ideas and knowledge, as surprising to her in its vastness as it was in breadth, passed through her mind like frames on a movie reel spinning in overdrive. It was nearly minute of this before a realization hit her with all the shock of ice water being thrown upon an unsuspecting napper. Twilight had no idea when or where she had learned any of the things that seemed to come as naturally from the depths of her memory as one might expect water to be drawn from a well. Furthermore, she was appalled that she had not come upon this fact much more quickly. No sooner had she awoken then she had been assaulted with nigh unbearable pain and then the pushy concern of a creature that, she felt certain at the time, should not exist. Not only that, but everything around her had seemed alien and unreal somehow. It was as if Twilight, even with the apparent amnesia she was slowly becoming aware of, did not recognize the reality in which she found herself. She could feel an awful new realization coming to her, one she knew would paralyze her where she sat, perhaps even cause her to faint with its gravity, and leave poor Blake at the mercy of the wilderness. She shoved the thoughts into a mental box marked for later and firmly put her mind back onto the task before her. Dozens of clever mechanical devices and techniques to lift heavy objects came to mind, but most were out of her reach due to a lack of resources, the angle at which the stone would need to be rolled or levered which would only serve to further injure Blake, or an acute lack of physical strength. She finally decided that the simplest design, a fulcrum and lever, would be her best bet at freeing her companion. Twilight darted her head back and forth searching for something—anything—that may help. She spied a dead, fallen branch within the Fractal Forest treeline that was thicker than both of her forehooves together although crooked and a poor shape for a lever. Beside it, having evidently been in the way of the larger and much heavier timber when it fell, was a long, reasonably straight stick. It was only half a hoof’s width in diameter, however, and still too fresh and flexible, she knew this from the ring of green where it had separated from the tree and the white fibers of wood showing there that look too much like cooked chicken meat she could remember seeing. Then something occurred to Twilight that sounded both foolish and madly logical, in a way. Blake had told her the forest had earned its name from the fact that it acted much as a fractal would. Twilight vaguely recalled a memory of being entranced by a moving image drawn from the results of numerous fractal equations. The ornate geometric designs in the vibrant lines and splashes of color twisted into eternally new forms, but at the largest scales, the image looked to be little more than a repeating pattern of spiraling swirls of blacks, red, and whites growing in diameter the further from the center of the image one looked. Twilight now hoped the forest would live up to its name and hold true to her own knowledge, even as she wondered at the validity of anything she thought she knew. Twilight leaned over Blake, checking to make sure his breathing was still regular and placid. He seemed fine, his face remained as calm as a child simply laying asleep in bed and may have seemed to be only napping to any other observer had his dire situation not been on full display. She looked over the leg that had been struck by the stone and noted the dark discoloration that was the start of a nasty bruise beginning from the area where the bone must have snapped. The flesh there rose in a gruesome knot where the flesh was straining to contain the fragmented skeleton beneath. The injury looked severe and it was possible there would be a significant amount of internal bleeding, Twilight mused. She sprang to her hooves with a jolt, heedless of the nerves still protesting within her skull, and dashed into the trees. She glanced back over her shoulder and whispered to the still form of Blake, “Just hang in there.” Author's Note Hmm, I suspect I may have escalated things a bit quickly, but this is the story as it came to me. I'll let you readers tell me how it grabbed you. Please be sure to share your opinions and any advice you may have. Keep in mind this story has no editor and only one proofreader who is also the author, but don't let that stop you from being as honest as a southern country apple farmer. One of Those Days - Part 2Twilight was elated to find she was becoming quite small. Rather, as she ran, everything around her grew in size. At least, she hoped that was the case. The change was gradual at first, entirely unnoticeable, but the longer her hooves propelled her into the ever-darkening woodland, the larger the difference between one tree or stone and the next. She stopped every dozen yards, backed toward a tree and bucked the bark, leaving clear twin craters that exposed sappy, reddish wood beneath the deep furrows covering each trunk. These marks would serve as guides when she needed to return to the path through the unfamiliar terrain. Soon, she could no longer reach the trunks and found herself leaving her marks upon the massive roots that were now taller than she stood. She stopped to rest for a moment, her breath heaving. Her back legs throbbed from the double duty of carrying her and the constant impacts against the unyielding wood. Looking around hurriedly, she studied the environment. Twilight searched for something familiar and was rewarded. Farther along, in a direction only a few degrees off from the line she had made to get here, she spotted a familiar figure. Had the world around her remained at the scale it was before, the stout tree would have still reminded her of the greedy foal grasping for treats, but her theory of the forest was confirmed by a towering version of that previous sight. Its branches now seemed more like the thick arms of a colossal beast, outstretched toward the skies, preparing to thrust them down upon the earth and crush anyone below it. Suddenly, Twilight was very conscious of herself. She had galloped, headlong, into strange territory in a land she knew nothing about. What was more, she had left Blake exposed and quite vulnerable. Any predator that happened upon the injured and unconscious rabbit would find an easy meal. Twilight shuddered at the thought of waking to find one’s innards spilled on the ground beside them with some bleary-eyed creature hungrily grinding the soft flesh between its teeth. She cursed herself for being so foolhardy and rose to her sore legs, ignoring the burning fatigue. All she could do was push forward and make the best of her mistake. Twilight charged onward to the stout colossus. As she rounded another massive arch of root, she caught sight of something behind it that nearly stole her balance and cause her to trip as she stumbled to a halt. At this, she looked once more at the tree now towering above. Her memory of the other tree was clear and as precisely detailed as she had allowed herself to see while avoiding the hypnotic draw of the fractals. The picture in her mind’s eye was the twin of the specimen before her, yet there was one distinct difference. From the center of a yawning, black puncture in the earth, a thin, desiccated tendril of something that looked both fleshy and fibrous curved into the air, ending in a ragged, counterclockwise spiral. The dirt around the hole it rose from was crumbling and irregular as if eroded by many seasons of rain and snow, but it was not quite an ancient feature. Twilight looked back at the greying, worm-like arm and immediately pictured a grotesque segment of something pulsating and blood-colored thrusting up from the earth as it clung to the tree’s roots. Something within her told Twilight she had satisfied her own curiosity about the thing and she gladly tore her eyes from the sight. She continued around the tree, now keeping her eyes wide open for any potential predators as she marked her progress from what she remembered. Doing this, she noticed more of the holes with meaty roots protruding from them throughout the forest floor. The things looked unnatural and malign, as if they did not belong, as if they had once sprouted from some nightmarish teratoma long since excised from the heart of the world. She could not imagine what awful environment to which things like these must have been native, for they stood out among the lush environs much the same way gnarled scar tissue leaped from a beautiful face. Soon, the fallen branch she had been looking for came into view through the grass now brushing her ears where it had elsewhere only tickled her knees. Even having come to the conclusion on her own that the branch would be there, Twilight could not help feeling some hint of incredulity at what lay before her. The thicker, crooked length of wood lay next to a thinner, fresh segment. The larger was more akin to a log here, but the smaller was exactly what she had hoped to find. This one was not a stick, but a sturdy-looking rod thicker and twice as long as one of her forelegs. Wasting no more time, Twilight galloped to it and took a small segment jutting from the rod between her teeth and pulled. The makeshift lever was weighty, but not too heavy, though she would need to find a more comfortable way to transport it, lest she lacerate her gums to bloody mush dragging the unwieldy thing along the bumpy forest floor. The grass, while longer and considerably thicker would not hold well, nor did it lend itself to knotting, as Twilight found upon tearing a lengthy blade from the earth with her teeth and attempting to fashion a simple harness from it. The fibers simply frayed and split like confetti as she bent and twisted them into otherwise secure tangles. Frustrated and increasingly anxious to return to the path, Twilight swept her gaze over the surroundings finding little more than a single spear thistle poking jauntily upward from a patch of crabgrass a short gallop away. Even in the deepening shadows of the forest canopy, the blossom at the top of the thistle was a violent shade of purple, rich and saturated. It nearly glowed in its vividness. The shock of its thin, curved petals rising from the stalk in a miniature explosion of color were all Twilight could see before she knew what was happening. In her mad rush to help Blake, Twilight had been thoroughly exhausting herself and was functioning on little more than adrenaline. As her empty stomach made its need apparent, her eyes had fallen on the petals of the thistle and lingered longer than she had intended to look. For a protracted moment, she considered the flower hungrily. Each purple blade drew her gaze over it and on to the next new petal, then the next, until they were too small to see from where she stood. She drew closer, unaware of her own movements while thoughts of nourishment faded. Soon, she was clambering over the broad shoots of crabgrass and staring fixedly at the weedy flower, all thoughts of rescuing Blake swept away as the fractals sprouted into being within her mind. Twilight’s world became a series of tiny journeys into other worlds of dusky purple blades rising over a mottled horizon. When the petals held no further frontiers, she would move on the jagged leaves and be lost among the rivers and canyons that played across their surfaces. The wind rose behind her from the direction of the wild forest, carrying with it the faint chirping of the earliest rising nocturnal insects. Something landed on a branch high above Twilight with a soft flutter. A bone white feather shook loose and gently glided down through the crisp air, passing across her vision, unnoticed. Had she not remained mesmerized, she might have looked up to see a handsome, chestnut colored hawk owl perched regally within a slanted golden ray of late afternoon light. The owl cocked her head, listening intently for prey with ears sharpened by eye sockets emptied of their organs long ago and far away. The duel she had fought with the mewling, repulsive things that had once been her own hatchlings had left her with two puckered craters set among a raised, crisscross of scars. Far below, she could hear the beating of a heart. She gave a high, echoing hoo and listened. The returning sound waves summoned a stark image of the forest to her mind’s eye with senses her stubborn will to live had forced into development. Locating a new perch nearer the ground, she silently swooped down and settled on a thin, drooping branch. From here, the heartbeat was louder, giving shape to the owner in the form of an equine sitting unnaturally still among a tangle of grass and thorny thistle leaves. The equine was far larger than her usual prey, but there was a subtle rustling among the grass and fallen leaves that was auspicious of the presence of nocturnal rodents and blind snakes. She heard the soft hiss of hard scales sliding over stones and arboreal debris as the critter drew nearer to the equine. Her dark, glossy talons flexed and she tensed her body in preparation for the dive that would end the snake’s life. She leaned forward and dove, her wings slicing through the air as she brought the scythes of bone on the ends of her legs forward. The attack ended in a flash of maroon and a bright ribbon of blood arced through the air, spilling from both ragged ends of the owl’s torn neck. Each piece tumbled in opposite directions, landing several yards apart. The snake continued along the floor, tittering eerily with each flick of the blindingly white tongue that danced in and out of its mouth. Twilight remained unaware of anything but the fractals as the creature that had so casually snuffed the life of the owl slid over a back hoof and up the mound of her thigh. Still tittering, it slithered along the valley of her lower back, between her shoulders, finally winding its way around her stiff neck and resting its own head atop the neatly cut mane. It waited, tasting the air and watching with eyes a rotted yellow that cast a dim, greasy glow in the fading light. The snake would not have blinked, even if it could, as glowing cat’s eyes materialized in the outstretched palm of a branch that looked remarkably like an arm. It met the lofty gaze bearing down on it from between the curled, gnarly fingers, matching every bit of the feline disdain with the mischievous humor twinkling within the bright gems of its eyes. Several moments of pregnant silence later, a white crescent split the air under the eyes, forming the beginnings of a crudely grinning face. A smooth, baritone voice emanated from the grin. “Pray tell, serpent, what do you plan on doing with that Stranger?” the face spoke, primly clipping consonants and drawing out vowels in a manner of speech that alleged to give its owner an irreproachable air of knowing, command, and dangerous cunning. The snake replied in a croaking voice that seemed constantly on the edge of laughter, “Come out from that no-where and we’ll talk, cat.” “Or what, morsel?” the cat replied, sternly, still smiling. “Or I’ll kill her right this second.” The snake tittered. “The unicorn interests you, I know.” With a grating sound like harshly chiming glass, ringing metal and a rush of air, the eyes and smile were suddenly framed by a wicked mockery of a widely grinning cat’s face. The crescent dimmed and was filled with large, blood-spattered blunt teeth. The canines, however, were fangs ending in deeply stained red points. His dark grey fur was marked in all quarters by swirling tendrils and bands of black. The eyes were accented in simple patterns reminiscent of flames licking up from the corners. Another slash of black pointed down from the bottom of each eye and a spiked curve followed the lower lip of the cat’s smile, completing the appearance of a grim, feline jester. “The unicorn means nothing to me. It's what she might know, that I'm after. I will ask her how she came to Wonderland, but what becomes of her after is not my concern.” The snake laughed its high, tittering laugh though this time there was real humor in it. “I’m afraid that’s not going to happen, just yet.” “Do you say so?” the cat purred. “I do. You see, this one has come here broken.” The snake reared the tail that had been trailing down Twilight’s back and patted her head, despite its inadequate length to do so earlier. “Her memory is not quite what it used to be. At least, she remembers her name, but she will need time to gather the pieces of herself together again. She's had such a great fall.” “Time does not wait on the plights of lost fools and he is getting away from Wonderland once again.” The cat remarked. “Lost she is, indeed, but this Stranger is far from foolish. Although,” the snake paused, lifting the dark strands that fell over her forehead with its tail and lightly flicking the tip of her horn, “she’s not herself, at the moment.” “Whoever she was is not who she will be again. For her own sake, she had better find a useful person to become.” The cat’s head faded with another discordant chime, the wide grin disappearing last. He reappeared in his entirety before the oversized thistle, grin first. The head sat upon a boney neck attached to a body that could have belonged to the starved remains of a dead stray. The right shoulder possessed a blade-like protrusion thrusting upward into the air and each limb ended in hefty paws with four cruelly molded claws, perpetually extended. The cat leaned forward, studying Twilight’s blank expression. Her eyes moved, ever so slightly, and she turned her neck the barest fraction as he watched. He hummed thoughtfully as he took note of the six-pointed magenta starburst on her flanks and the pointed spiral horn. “This Stranger is most definitely not from Alice’s world, but she may be of some use in the coming days, after all.” The cat turned his eyes to the snake again. They glowed with their own yellow light, but his shone like the incandescence of a searing forge. “Guide her to the Vorpal Blade, serpent.” He said as the chime sounded and he became translucent, then nearly invisible. “And pray she has the will to wield it or she may be wielded by it.” The snake watched as the last of the cat’s deathly visage dissipated in a vaporous swirl. When it was sure the he would not return, it slithered from Twilight’s shoulders and encircled the thistle plant. In a blur of maroon scales, the cleanly severed violet bloom rose a short way into the air as the leaves and stalk of the plant were brutally torn from the earth. The stalk was cut and shorn of its leaves, the thorny greens tossed into the breeze. The snake’s tail darted forward to catch the flower by the short stem still attached, leaving the rest of the stalk to fall dully to the ground. All of this happened in a few small fractions of a second, before Twilight snapped out of her hypnosis. She gagged as vertigo batted her sense of direction around in a cyclone of nausea and confusion. Morphing geometries swam before her eyes, clouding the world in a turmoil of writhing, swirling colors. As her vision soon began to clear and she managed to maintain her unsteady posture, she squinted at two points of light before her. A scream of terror caught in her throat as the form came into sudden focus. “For you, Twilight.” The snake cooed as it extended the thistle blossom to her. The scream came anyway. Author's Note I always loved the dialogue written for the Cheshire Cat in the American Mcgee's Alice games. Everything he said was so eloquent and poetically worded. I hope I captured just a little of that.
Or About 4 O'Clock in the AfternoonFalling was the last thing Twilight could remember. Down and down she went, but she did not tumble through the air. She was falling to her knees, crashing to the cold tiles beneath. She struggled to lift her head. When she did, the eyes that met hers were empty, cold, searching. Why are those eyes so familiar? Why did it hurt so much to see that face? Twilight’s vision grew grey around the edges. Only the face remained. It blurred as if seen through thick glass and was gone. The world was dark and Twilight was falling again. For well over twenty minutes, Twilight Sparkle did little more than lay on her side and wish her head felt more like a head and less like a walnut in a slowly tightening vice. She knew it was at least twenty minutes because each throb of pain within her skull pulsed a little over once per second and she had stopped counting at one thousand, two hundred twelve. She had not opened her eyes yet, afraid that the light that tinted her vision bright red behind her eyelids would only serve to worsen the pain that seemed to split her skull in twain. Still, being a practical mare, she knew she must get her bearings and cracked one crusted eyelid open just long enough to regret it. The ray of sunlight that flooded her vision did indeed refresh the intensity of her headache, but at the same time, she saw with relief that it was only a narrow beam of light pooling around her face and she gingerly rolled her head to her right, into the shade. Twilight moaned and groggily opened both lavender eyes to see a shadowy canopy of leaves several yards above her. For the first time since becoming conscious, she noticed the pleasant breeze, the gentle rustle of leaves and grass, and a fragrant scent that wafted in on the cool air currents. Long ago, she had learned that the best way to deal with large amounts of physical pain was to embrace it, allow the sensation to encompass one’s entire being so that there was nothing left to contrast the unpleasantness, thereby nullifying it until one felt they could better handle it or the pain itself faded. Having focused on the discomfort for so long, there had been no room in Twilight’s mind to sense the world around her and so the picturesque, peaceful forest she now found herself in was a pleasant surprise, albeit still rather alarming. She could not recall how she had come to be laying in a small clearing in a strange part of Equestria or even why her head felt like the victim of a steam hammer. She sat up and took in the surprisingly mundane surroundings, yet there was something peculiar about them she could not quite place. Towering oak trees with gnarled roots and twisting branches surrounded her like a crowd approaching something fascinating. She lay on a pale patch of dirt that was slowly being claimed by the surrounding grass. Or perhaps it was the other way around? Above her, leaves occasionally fell from the verdant jumble of branches and leaves as the mass was jostled by the stronger winds above the canopy. As Twilight stared, she observed what she assumed to be a curious optical illusion; upon tracing the outlines of any branch, she could not find where they ended. Leaves sprouted from thin twigs, but even those seemed to continue splitting and curling over and over and over and over and— “Ye’ll go mad, ye know?” Twilight whipped her head in the direction of the voice and immediately regretted it as the headache reminded her it had not vacated her skull just yet and it did not take kindly to sudden moves, forcing her to squeeze her eyes shut as she winced. The slight whimper she heard then had an odd doubled property and she soon realized both she and whomever had just spoken had made almost identical noises, simultaneously. When she opened her eyes for the second time, she saw something she would later describe to herself as ‘Flutter-bait’. Crouched behind a particularly thick clump of grass was an impeccably-dressed charcoal colored rabbit with pink eyes. His smart blue blazer was worn over a simple white button-up shirt and similarly blue tie. The lapel bore a small silver pin, but Twilight could not make out the shape through the combined haze of grogginess and cranial anguish, not to mention the crust she had still not rubbed from her eyes. She could make out his hat, however, a tiny, rain cloud grey jeff cap perched neatly upon his head with his upright ears poking up through the sides. She thought this curious until she realized it would probably be difficult for a rabbit to wear a hat if their ears kept knocking it off rather than helping to hold it in place. Effective lagomorph clothing designs aside, Twilight marvelled at the sight of the animal dressed in such a formal manner and peering at her with eyes so full of intelligence. Had this really been the creature that spoke? “H-hello?” She croaked. The rabbit’s ears twitched and he stepped some inches out from behind the green curtain, eyes growing impossibly wider. “Did ye jus’ talk?” The rabbit stepped fully into the clearing, though he remained a good distance from Twilight. He leaned forward and studied the mare from every angle he could, standing on his toes and leaning side to side as his eyes raked her visage. “Well, yes, but you spoke to me first, didn’t you?” She was already beginning to feel awkward as the rabbit’s eyes trailed over her body from her dark blue mane and tail, to her lavender fur, to the bright purple six-pointed starburst cutie mark that adorned her flanks. Finally, his eyes settled on her horn and a look of understanding followed by mild disappointment seemed to cross his features. “Oh yes, but Ah was just runnin’ my mouth, like ye do when ye talk to a tove because ain’t no one else ‘round to jabber at.” The rabbit replied. Twilight did not know what a tove was, but she could now hear an unmistakable Scoltish brogue on his tongue. She began to wonder if she was hallucinating. She had certainly never heard of talking, well-dressed rabbits from Scoltland before. The rabbit piped up again, “Ye’re a funny-lookin’ unicorn. What are ye doin’ layin’ about here?” Ignoring the rude remark, she flexed her extremely stiff limbs, preparing to stand. She was grateful to find they were not at all sore, as she had suspected. Grunting with the effort of forcing her legs to work, she answered the rabbit’s question in halting breaths, “I—ah—don’t know, I—hng—woke up like—ngah—like this.” She stood on four hooves and flexed each limb, hearing an occasional pop from her bones. Her head still throbbed with each beat of her heart and she squeezed her eyes shut against the pain reflexively. “Are ye...okay? Ye look like you tried to dance with a jabberwock.” He chuckled lightly. “What’s a jabberwock?” Twilight asked and cracked an eye open to see the rabbit was now looking at her worriedly. “Oh yes, ye need some help, lass.” He said, his tone suddenly grave. “Ye’d better come with me.” Twilight considered the rabbit again, checking his appearance and finding nothing had changed since she first looked upon him. This was a sign she was likely not dreaming nor hallucinating the being. She could still not rule out that possibility, but as she glanced about the forest once more, she remembered she did not have a clue where she was. If the rabbit lead her directly to a road or building, she could at least trust he was somehow real despite the fantastic nature of his appearance. Maybe the rabbit is some sort of golem or familiar, Twilight thought to herself. She had often heard of such fanciful forms being used by some of the more eccentric mages in Canterlot in the construction of magical servants. “Thank you, sir. Where to, though?” “Ah was jus’ headin’ to my friend’s place. His name is Bill and he might have somethin’ to help.” The rabbit added, “He’s no doctor, mind ye, but he knows a few things about makin’ one right from bein’ wrong.” Twilight’s feelings toward receiving help from this ‘Bill’ were dubious at best, but at the moment she knew her other options were limited. Limited, specifically, to wandering off into the forest blindly and becoming the victim of any predators that might come out once it got dark. “A-Alright. Lead the way, Mister…?” She paused to give him a chance to answer. “Ach! I seem to have lost my manners!” The rabbit said as he brought a paw to his forehead. For a moment, he patted his pockets as if looking for something and Twilight giggled at the joke until he continued to pat himself down, pawing at the insides of his blazer and reaching under his hat. She then gave him a quizzical look and he returned it with a sheepish smile. “Must have dropped them on the trail, somewhere. Anyway, the name’s Blake. Blake Rabbit, no relation.” “No relation to who…?” Twilight asked, doing her best to remember any famous ponies with the last name Rabbit. “We’d better hurry.” Blake said and turned from the clearing, gesturing over his shoulder for her to follow as he hopped along. Twilight rolled her eyes and began trotting to catch up. This day was already beginning to get more and more curious. Author's Note And we're off! I know this was a bit short, but chapters should come pretty frequently. EDIT: Added a little something to the beginning of this chapter to make things more interesting.
One of Those Days - Part 1Twilight trotted to catch up with Blake as he scurried through the brush. He turned every few seconds to ensure the unicorn was still behind him and continued, bounding over thick arches of root and darting through patches of tall grass. This annoyed Twilight as she frequently lost sight of him, causing her to panic for a brief moment before catching a glimpse of his dark fur among the green several yards ahead. She found herself galloping to keep him in sight and was just about to ask him to slow down when they burst through a thicket and onto a clear path. Twilight skidded to a halt, catching herself before she would have tumbled over a short, but steep, ledge and down a long slope. The ground here was thoroughly worn down, the light brown of the earth exposed in a shallow trough just wide enough for three ponies to walk side by side as it meandered through the great trees and stones. Here, Twilight could see deeper into the forest where the oaks grew in thinner groups and what she saw was stunning. She had never seen a place that looked so wild and magical. Pony-sized mushrooms grew on thick stalks among the shadowy tangle of roots. Ferns with striped, spiraling fronds burst from the earth. Every color and shape of flower Twilight recognized, and more, seemed to be represented among the foliage. Stranger still, the entire scene was alight with a prismatic array of bioluminescence and buzzing lights that danced along the ground, bounding from fungus caps to stones and tracing hypnotizing patterns through the air. A gently babbling stream ran parallel to the path, cutting a winding channel through shelves of stone and boulders streaked with lime-colored moss. “Ye goin’ to stand there all day ‘till a bread-and-butterfly lands on yer tongue or are ye comin’ with me?” Twilight snapped her jaw shut and felt her face grow warm beneath her fur. “Oh, sorry I’ve just...never seen such a wonderful place.” She sighed. Twilight turned back to the trees behind her. That unplaceable peculiarity was still present, but the scene there was largely mundane. Brown boughs crowded together, soaring into the lofty green above and the monotonous carpet of ordinary looking grass was broken only by small patches of thistle and a thick bush tucked away every few yards in any direction. Even the land was generally flat and featureless save for stones of modest bulk pushing up through the tan colored dirt. “One side is so dull and the other looks like a dream.” Twilight remarked and looked at Blake inquisitively. The rabbit glanced to either side of the path and shrugged. “Much like the day, nothin’ goes on forever.” he said with mild impatience then added, “Even Fractal Forest.” Picking up on the subtle hint to get a move on, Twilight hurriedly trotted over to him. “Fractal Forest? Why is it called that?” She scanned the treeline as the pair began a brisk pace along the path, once more finding nothing particularly interesting about the place. “Take a look at that tree, there.” Blake gestured ahead and to the left at a stout tree with three thick branches reaching toward the canopy, falling just short of joining its leaves with the others around it. It reminded Twilight of a foal trying desperately to acquire a cookie jar sat inches from his grasp. “I’ll bet ye two good ideas ye cannae find the end of a twig on those limbs.” She smiled at the curious wager and began tracing her gaze along the crooked outline of a branch. The effect quickly became as disturbing as it was fascinating as Twilight found that, not only did the branch seem to split and grow new tendrils of wood as she studied its length, but as each new segment came into existence, Twilight sensed her own memory of the tree changing from the edge of her perception. Something small and hard collided with her cheek, striking the ground with a small thud shortly after, and Twilight looked down to see an acorn rolling to a stop in the dirt. Blake was standing farther down the path holding another seed in his paws and gazing back with a good natured smirk. “That was the third one I tossed at ye, lass. Told ye, didn’t I? Ye’ll go man starin’ like that.” “What was that?” Twilight breathed as she cantered back to her companion, continuing along slightly slower than before. “Jus’ a tree, only it keeps goin’ the more ye look, smaller and smaller ‘til ye cannae see it anymore, jus’ like everythin’ in there.” Twilight cautiously glanced back into the Fractal Forest, careful not to look at any one thing for too long this time. Understanding dawned on her as she finally grasped what had seemed so unusual about the forest earlier. Each new observation revealed more of the cracks in the stones, another set of ridges within the first on a section of bark, more and smaller blades of grass between the larger ones. It was as if everything was constantly changing, becoming more, yet never truly different than before she had looked. Something whizzed past her ear and she flinched, jerking her head back and causing the nerves in her still aching head to complain. Twilight glared, one-eyed at the rabbit who dropped the pebble he held and shrank behind a wedge-shaped chunk of blue stone etched with numerous spiral-shaped fossils. “Sorry.” Blake squeaked “I thought ye got caught up by the forest again.” “Thank you for your concern, but I’m fine. Next time, just call me or tap my shoulder, please.” Blake hopped on top of the stone, balancing unsteadily on the ridge as it rocked slightly from his sudden action, and bowed low. “Of course m’lady...um...” He paused and stood upright too quickly, almost tumbling backwards off his perch. “What did ye say yer name was?” “Oh, right.” Twilight chuckled sheepishly. Perhaps she had lost her own manners, she thought. She trotted to Blake with a polite smile and extended a hoof to the teetering rabbit. “My name is Twilight Sparkle. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Rabbit.” Blake looked at it for a moment as if deciding how best to return the greeting. After a moment, he reached out with both paws and took the hoof on either side, shaking it up and down twice. Twilight smiled wider at what, to her, was an odd way to return the gesture since she had expected him to bump his paw against her hoof. “The pleasure is mi—Oh! Ohhh! Oof!” Blake finally fell off the rock. Having unconsciously used Twilight’s hoof to support himself and suddenly lost that support as she withdrew it, he tottered precariously. His arms were twin windmills at his sides as he briefly attempted to balance on the leaning stone before landing on the path with a thud and a small puff of dust. Twilight giggled playfully at the display, having expected it to happen much earlier and taking a small, guilty pleasure in seeing the karmic justice wrought upon the seed-lobber. Blake himself chortled as he rose from the path, seemingly having half-expected the same. However, neither expected the stone to follow Blake’s downward path as gravity pulled it from the delicate balance in which it had been left. By degrees, the stone continued to lean, its motion too slow for either of the laughing pair to notice until it was too late. The ridge caught Blake fully on his ankle and he collapsed as a muffled crack sounded over the thud of stone violently meeting earth. His piercing scream cut through the placid forest air and Twilight looked down, horrified, at the sight of the rabbit’s limb bent too awkwardly at the ankle to be natural. Blake was trying futilely to pull his injured leg from beneath the stone, emitting pained gasps as each effort only served to jostle the crushed bones. Twilight rushed to hook her forelegs beneath the stone and lift it from Blake’s leg, but it was too heavy and she did not have enough leverage. She grunted and heaved at the stubborn rock, yet it refused to budge. Blake’s cries of pain spurred her on, however, and Twilight drew from every ounce of strength she had. Still, the rock was as immoveable as it was solid. Blake moaned and panted on the ground. His eyelids were mashed fiercely together, his jaw set in a grimace of agony. Slowly, his head began to droop lower, coming to rest on the dirt and his paws, which had previously been clutching at his leg, seemed to rapidly lose tension. Twilight saw this and quickly moved to stand over him. “No,” she yelped, “Stay with me, Blake!”, but the rabbit had already faded from consciousness. He lay limp, his chest rapidly rising and falling for a few moments more then slowing to the steady cadence of a sleeper as Twilight fruitlessly continued calling his name and patting his cheeks with increasing fervor. When it became clear he was not going to respond, she fell to her haunches beside him, fear welling within her chest as a chill crept up her spine. Twilight’s thoughts raced as she tried desperately to find a solution to this sudden, terrible twist of fate. Ideas and knowledge, as surprising to her in its vastness as it was in breadth, passed through her mind like frames on a movie reel spinning in overdrive. It was nearly minute of this before a realization hit her with all the shock of ice water being thrown upon an unsuspecting napper. Twilight had no idea when or where she had learned any of the things that seemed to come as naturally from the depths of her memory as one might expect water to be drawn from a well. Furthermore, she was appalled that she had not come upon this fact much more quickly. No sooner had she awoken then she had been assaulted with nigh unbearable pain and then the pushy concern of a creature that, she felt certain at the time, should not exist. Not only that, but everything around her had seemed alien and unreal somehow. It was as if Twilight, even with the apparent amnesia she was slowly becoming aware of, did not recognize the reality in which she found herself. She could feel an awful new realization coming to her, one she knew would paralyze her where she sat, perhaps even cause her to faint with its gravity, and leave poor Blake at the mercy of the wilderness. She shoved the thoughts into a mental box marked for later and firmly put her mind back onto the task before her. Dozens of clever mechanical devices and techniques to lift heavy objects came to mind, but most were out of her reach due to a lack of resources, the angle at which the stone would need to be rolled or levered which would only serve to further injure Blake, or an acute lack of physical strength. She finally decided that the simplest design, a fulcrum and lever, would be her best bet at freeing her companion. Twilight darted her head back and forth searching for something—anything—that may help. She spied a dead, fallen branch within the Fractal Forest treeline that was thicker than both of her forehooves together although crooked and a poor shape for a lever. Beside it, having evidently been in the way of the larger and much heavier timber when it fell, was a long, reasonably straight stick. It was only half a hoof’s width in diameter, however, and still too fresh and flexible, she knew this from the ring of green where it had separated from the tree and the white fibers of wood showing there that look too much like cooked chicken meat she could remember seeing. Then something occurred to Twilight that sounded both foolish and madly logical, in a way. Blake had told her the forest had earned its name from the fact that it acted much as a fractal would. Twilight vaguely recalled a memory of being entranced by a moving image drawn from the results of numerous fractal equations. The ornate geometric designs in the vibrant lines and splashes of color twisted into eternally new forms, but at the largest scales, the image looked to be little more than a repeating pattern of spiraling swirls of blacks, red, and whites growing in diameter the further from the center of the image one looked. Twilight now hoped the forest would live up to its name and hold true to her own knowledge, even as she wondered at the validity of anything she thought she knew. Twilight leaned over Blake, checking to make sure his breathing was still regular and placid. He seemed fine, his face remained as calm as a child simply laying asleep in bed and may have seemed to be only napping to any other observer had his dire situation not been on full display. She looked over the leg that had been struck by the stone and noted the dark discoloration that was the start of a nasty bruise beginning from the area where the bone must have snapped. The flesh there rose in a gruesome knot where the flesh was straining to contain the fragmented skeleton beneath. The injury looked severe and it was possible there would be a significant amount of internal bleeding, Twilight mused. She sprang to her hooves with a jolt, heedless of the nerves still protesting within her skull, and dashed into the trees. She glanced back over her shoulder and whispered to the still form of Blake, “Just hang in there.” Author's Note Hmm, I suspect I may have escalated things a bit quickly, but this is the story as it came to me. I'll let you readers tell me how it grabbed you. Please be sure to share your opinions and any advice you may have. Keep in mind this story has no editor and only one proofreader who is also the author, but don't let that stop you from being as honest as a southern country apple farmer.
One of Those Days - Part 2Twilight was elated to find she was becoming quite small. Rather, as she ran, everything around her grew in size. At least, she hoped that was the case. The change was gradual at first, entirely unnoticeable, but the longer her hooves propelled her into the ever-darkening woodland, the larger the difference between one tree or stone and the next. She stopped every dozen yards, backed toward a tree and bucked the bark, leaving clear twin craters that exposed sappy, reddish wood beneath the deep furrows covering each trunk. These marks would serve as guides when she needed to return to the path through the unfamiliar terrain. Soon, she could no longer reach the trunks and found herself leaving her marks upon the massive roots that were now taller than she stood. She stopped to rest for a moment, her breath heaving. Her back legs throbbed from the double duty of carrying her and the constant impacts against the unyielding wood. Looking around hurriedly, she studied the environment. Twilight searched for something familiar and was rewarded. Farther along, in a direction only a few degrees off from the line she had made to get here, she spotted a familiar figure. Had the world around her remained at the scale it was before, the stout tree would have still reminded her of the greedy foal grasping for treats, but her theory of the forest was confirmed by a towering version of that previous sight. Its branches now seemed more like the thick arms of a colossal beast, outstretched toward the skies, preparing to thrust them down upon the earth and crush anyone below it. Suddenly, Twilight was very conscious of herself. She had galloped, headlong, into strange territory in a land she knew nothing about. What was more, she had left Blake exposed and quite vulnerable. Any predator that happened upon the injured and unconscious rabbit would find an easy meal. Twilight shuddered at the thought of waking to find one’s innards spilled on the ground beside them with some bleary-eyed creature hungrily grinding the soft flesh between its teeth. She cursed herself for being so foolhardy and rose to her sore legs, ignoring the burning fatigue. All she could do was push forward and make the best of her mistake. Twilight charged onward to the stout colossus. As she rounded another massive arch of root, she caught sight of something behind it that nearly stole her balance and cause her to trip as she stumbled to a halt. At this, she looked once more at the tree now towering above. Her memory of the other tree was clear and as precisely detailed as she had allowed herself to see while avoiding the hypnotic draw of the fractals. The picture in her mind’s eye was the twin of the specimen before her, yet there was one distinct difference. From the center of a yawning, black puncture in the earth, a thin, desiccated tendril of something that looked both fleshy and fibrous curved into the air, ending in a ragged, counterclockwise spiral. The dirt around the hole it rose from was crumbling and irregular as if eroded by many seasons of rain and snow, but it was not quite an ancient feature. Twilight looked back at the greying, worm-like arm and immediately pictured a grotesque segment of something pulsating and blood-colored thrusting up from the earth as it clung to the tree’s roots. Something within her told Twilight she had satisfied her own curiosity about the thing and she gladly tore her eyes from the sight. She continued around the tree, now keeping her eyes wide open for any potential predators as she marked her progress from what she remembered. Doing this, she noticed more of the holes with meaty roots protruding from them throughout the forest floor. The things looked unnatural and malign, as if they did not belong, as if they had once sprouted from some nightmarish teratoma long since excised from the heart of the world. She could not imagine what awful environment to which things like these must have been native, for they stood out among the lush environs much the same way gnarled scar tissue leaped from a beautiful face. Soon, the fallen branch she had been looking for came into view through the grass now brushing her ears where it had elsewhere only tickled her knees. Even having come to the conclusion on her own that the branch would be there, Twilight could not help feeling some hint of incredulity at what lay before her. The thicker, crooked length of wood lay next to a thinner, fresh segment. The larger was more akin to a log here, but the smaller was exactly what she had hoped to find. This one was not a stick, but a sturdy-looking rod thicker and twice as long as one of her forelegs. Wasting no more time, Twilight galloped to it and took a small segment jutting from the rod between her teeth and pulled. The makeshift lever was weighty, but not too heavy, though she would need to find a more comfortable way to transport it, lest she lacerate her gums to bloody mush dragging the unwieldy thing along the bumpy forest floor. The grass, while longer and considerably thicker would not hold well, nor did it lend itself to knotting, as Twilight found upon tearing a lengthy blade from the earth with her teeth and attempting to fashion a simple harness from it. The fibers simply frayed and split like confetti as she bent and twisted them into otherwise secure tangles. Frustrated and increasingly anxious to return to the path, Twilight swept her gaze over the surroundings finding little more than a single spear thistle poking jauntily upward from a patch of crabgrass a short gallop away. Even in the deepening shadows of the forest canopy, the blossom at the top of the thistle was a violent shade of purple, rich and saturated. It nearly glowed in its vividness. The shock of its thin, curved petals rising from the stalk in a miniature explosion of color were all Twilight could see before she knew what was happening. In her mad rush to help Blake, Twilight had been thoroughly exhausting herself and was functioning on little more than adrenaline. As her empty stomach made its need apparent, her eyes had fallen on the petals of the thistle and lingered longer than she had intended to look. For a protracted moment, she considered the flower hungrily. Each purple blade drew her gaze over it and on to the next new petal, then the next, until they were too small to see from where she stood. She drew closer, unaware of her own movements while thoughts of nourishment faded. Soon, she was clambering over the broad shoots of crabgrass and staring fixedly at the weedy flower, all thoughts of rescuing Blake swept away as the fractals sprouted into being within her mind. Twilight’s world became a series of tiny journeys into other worlds of dusky purple blades rising over a mottled horizon. When the petals held no further frontiers, she would move on the jagged leaves and be lost among the rivers and canyons that played across their surfaces. The wind rose behind her from the direction of the wild forest, carrying with it the faint chirping of the earliest rising nocturnal insects. Something landed on a branch high above Twilight with a soft flutter. A bone white feather shook loose and gently glided down through the crisp air, passing across her vision, unnoticed. Had she not remained mesmerized, she might have looked up to see a handsome, chestnut colored hawk owl perched regally within a slanted golden ray of late afternoon light. The owl cocked her head, listening intently for prey with ears sharpened by eye sockets emptied of their organs long ago and far away. The duel she had fought with the mewling, repulsive things that had once been her own hatchlings had left her with two puckered craters set among a raised, crisscross of scars. Far below, she could hear the beating of a heart. She gave a high, echoing hoo and listened. The returning sound waves summoned a stark image of the forest to her mind’s eye with senses her stubborn will to live had forced into development. Locating a new perch nearer the ground, she silently swooped down and settled on a thin, drooping branch. From here, the heartbeat was louder, giving shape to the owner in the form of an equine sitting unnaturally still among a tangle of grass and thorny thistle leaves. The equine was far larger than her usual prey, but there was a subtle rustling among the grass and fallen leaves that was auspicious of the presence of nocturnal rodents and blind snakes. She heard the soft hiss of hard scales sliding over stones and arboreal debris as the critter drew nearer to the equine. Her dark, glossy talons flexed and she tensed her body in preparation for the dive that would end the snake’s life. She leaned forward and dove, her wings slicing through the air as she brought the scythes of bone on the ends of her legs forward. The attack ended in a flash of maroon and a bright ribbon of blood arced through the air, spilling from both ragged ends of the owl’s torn neck. Each piece tumbled in opposite directions, landing several yards apart. The snake continued along the floor, tittering eerily with each flick of the blindingly white tongue that danced in and out of its mouth. Twilight remained unaware of anything but the fractals as the creature that had so casually snuffed the life of the owl slid over a back hoof and up the mound of her thigh. Still tittering, it slithered along the valley of her lower back, between her shoulders, finally winding its way around her stiff neck and resting its own head atop the neatly cut mane. It waited, tasting the air and watching with eyes a rotted yellow that cast a dim, greasy glow in the fading light. The snake would not have blinked, even if it could, as glowing cat’s eyes materialized in the outstretched palm of a branch that looked remarkably like an arm. It met the lofty gaze bearing down on it from between the curled, gnarly fingers, matching every bit of the feline disdain with the mischievous humor twinkling within the bright gems of its eyes. Several moments of pregnant silence later, a white crescent split the air under the eyes, forming the beginnings of a crudely grinning face. A smooth, baritone voice emanated from the grin. “Pray tell, serpent, what do you plan on doing with that Stranger?” the face spoke, primly clipping consonants and drawing out vowels in a manner of speech that alleged to give its owner an irreproachable air of knowing, command, and dangerous cunning. The snake replied in a croaking voice that seemed constantly on the edge of laughter, “Come out from that no-where and we’ll talk, cat.” “Or what, morsel?” the cat replied, sternly, still smiling. “Or I’ll kill her right this second.” The snake tittered. “The unicorn interests you, I know.” With a grating sound like harshly chiming glass, ringing metal and a rush of air, the eyes and smile were suddenly framed by a wicked mockery of a widely grinning cat’s face. The crescent dimmed and was filled with large, blood-spattered blunt teeth. The canines, however, were fangs ending in deeply stained red points. His dark grey fur was marked in all quarters by swirling tendrils and bands of black. The eyes were accented in simple patterns reminiscent of flames licking up from the corners. Another slash of black pointed down from the bottom of each eye and a spiked curve followed the lower lip of the cat’s smile, completing the appearance of a grim, feline jester. “The unicorn means nothing to me. It's what she might know, that I'm after. I will ask her how she came to Wonderland, but what becomes of her after is not my concern.” The snake laughed its high, tittering laugh though this time there was real humor in it. “I’m afraid that’s not going to happen, just yet.” “Do you say so?” the cat purred. “I do. You see, this one has come here broken.” The snake reared the tail that had been trailing down Twilight’s back and patted her head, despite its inadequate length to do so earlier. “Her memory is not quite what it used to be. At least, she remembers her name, but she will need time to gather the pieces of herself together again. She's had such a great fall.” “Time does not wait on the plights of lost fools and he is getting away from Wonderland once again.” The cat remarked. “Lost she is, indeed, but this Stranger is far from foolish. Although,” the snake paused, lifting the dark strands that fell over her forehead with its tail and lightly flicking the tip of her horn, “she’s not herself, at the moment.” “Whoever she was is not who she will be again. For her own sake, she had better find a useful person to become.” The cat’s head faded with another discordant chime, the wide grin disappearing last. He reappeared in his entirety before the oversized thistle, grin first. The head sat upon a boney neck attached to a body that could have belonged to the starved remains of a dead stray. The right shoulder possessed a blade-like protrusion thrusting upward into the air and each limb ended in hefty paws with four cruelly molded claws, perpetually extended. The cat leaned forward, studying Twilight’s blank expression. Her eyes moved, ever so slightly, and she turned her neck the barest fraction as he watched. He hummed thoughtfully as he took note of the six-pointed magenta starburst on her flanks and the pointed spiral horn. “This Stranger is most definitely not from Alice’s world, but she may be of some use in the coming days, after all.” The cat turned his eyes to the snake again. They glowed with their own yellow light, but his shone like the incandescence of a searing forge. “Guide her to the Vorpal Blade, serpent.” He said as the chime sounded and he became translucent, then nearly invisible. “And pray she has the will to wield it or she may be wielded by it.” The snake watched as the last of the cat’s deathly visage dissipated in a vaporous swirl. When it was sure the he would not return, it slithered from Twilight’s shoulders and encircled the thistle plant. In a blur of maroon scales, the cleanly severed violet bloom rose a short way into the air as the leaves and stalk of the plant were brutally torn from the earth. The stalk was cut and shorn of its leaves, the thorny greens tossed into the breeze. The snake’s tail darted forward to catch the flower by the short stem still attached, leaving the rest of the stalk to fall dully to the ground. All of this happened in a few small fractions of a second, before Twilight snapped out of her hypnosis. She gagged as vertigo batted her sense of direction around in a cyclone of nausea and confusion. Morphing geometries swam before her eyes, clouding the world in a turmoil of writhing, swirling colors. As her vision soon began to clear and she managed to maintain her unsteady posture, she squinted at two points of light before her. A scream of terror caught in her throat as the form came into sudden focus. “For you, Twilight.” The snake cooed as it extended the thistle blossom to her. The scream came anyway. Author's Note I always loved the dialogue written for the Cheshire Cat in the American Mcgee's Alice games. Everything he said was so eloquent and poetically worded. I hope I captured just a little of that.
