Twilight 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.