Ambiguity walked through the field. The grass parted under her three hooves while the last dragged along.
It was quite a nice day. The rain was falling gently, and the breeze was only slightly chilly. This was not most ponies' take on a good day, but hey, she was ambiguous by nature.
As she walked, she thought. The first few thoughts were normal: the sun is bright, the leaves underhoof were crunchy. Wait- What?
The grey-coated, grey-maned, stubby-horned unicorn looked up. The sun beamed down on her face, drying the rain off. It felt quite nice. Maybe she ought to more frequently go out in the su- I swear to Celestia that there was no aurora a mere five seconds prior.
The aurora was in this case not pleasant, because it was mixed with the bright sun and receding cumulonimbus, not a pretty thing.
I better be dreaming again. If another thing in this failure of a sky appears I swea-
As if on cue, six brightly colored balls of light flew past the sun. They circled around the aurora a bit before vanishing into it.
Suddenly, the rain shot back into existence, like no ugly-ass sky had ever been there. This time, it was a storm, which caused Ambiguous to tumble down the slight slope, her bad "leg" lending no support.
When she finally got back up, she had to climb back up what had appeared to be a slight slope, but eventually turned into a downward slide not unlike her recent luck. Looking up at the sky, she noticed something else. There, fading in the dark shade of a cloud, was a translucent phosphorescent image of a blue spiral accompanied with four grey stars.
"Curse it, Starswirl! Not another mistake..." The unicorn thought back to the time when he had created a tiny waterfall on top of the castle. She was going to have to start wearing plastics.
+++
In Canterlot, the ponies she saw everyday before were now gone. The buildings had barely any sign of activity, and there were many ponies milling around the castle.
When she walked into the throne room, the very first thing that she noticed was Celestia's substitution. In her place, there were several formal-looking trussed-up ponies addressing the citizens. They looked quite distressed. The business owners and land keepers were going at them like bloatsprites, pestering them with questions and requests.
As she walked up to the hall to the students' areas, one of them, an orange pegasus mare with a very annoyed expression called out to her.
"Hey there! Where are you off to? If-"
Mid-sentence, she cut off, and looked at her leg. Her expression went to one of shock to amusement to blankness and back to formality.
"If... if you wish to see The Princess, she is currently busy with a session."
"Um, okay... Could you tell me what exactly is going on?"
"With The Princess?" The pegasus whispered something to another, slightly darker-faced orange pegasus. "Well, she is currently in a lesson with a student." Both of them looked nervous.
"Okay, but why do you need a whole group if she's just teaching?"
"It's been seventeen days," both of them said simultaneously.
"What? No, that can't be. I've been outside for a while now, and the moon hasn't come out once."
"Yes, because the sun is. Princess Luna can't lower the sun, so she's been trying to get Princess Celestia out for a long time. We haven't seen her for a fortnight. We were only assigned here very recently. As the supporting ambassadors, cartographers, and watchers of Equestria, the royal guard asked us for your assistance."
"We were kind of 'missing' for much of this period, so that might be why you've seen some strange occurrences recently," said a navy blue-colored stallion... bat-pony? Ambiguous had no idea what he was. He was dressed in a torso-piece with streaks of purple on it and similarly styled dress barding.* "... And if you saw a dragonequus with a very strange sense of humor, that is very bad."
"Huh? Oh, no I haven't seen that. I've been walking for a long time in the fields. I did see some very strange weather patterns earlier, though. There was an aurora, heavy rain, sunlight, and rainbow balls all at once."
"Rainbow balls... Wait, six of them? Ambig* nodded. "Uh, that was four days ago. Are you okay? 'Cause you're pretty dirty right now."
"I'm fine. And I'm sure that I saw that stuff only several hours ago."
The bat-pony thought for a bit.
" Well, we don't have too much time here, as more citizens are coming. Anyway, what was you business here, originally?"
"Oh, yeah, I came to check on an acquaintance. We're both students of The Princess."
The pegasus who had originally noticed her said, "Well, then, I guess that I can escort you. Where are you headed, exactly?
"The living quarters of the Gifted Unicorns students. I was going to talk to someone about what I saw. His cutie mark was in the sky when it happened."
The other mare seemed more surprised than would be expected at this, but didn't let Ambig ask about it.
"Well, I saw you looking at Stakes over there. The bat-pony. (So she was right!) You can meet us completely another time. Now let's investigate your friend's involvement in these events."
Ambiguous was going to make a comment about her never saying the word 'friend' and how her words sounded a bit too informed when she stopped. Where the student's quarters were was gone, and instead there was a hallway of several doors. Each had a symbol on it, and leaking out of them was colored smoke.
"Uh. This isn't what I remember," said the pegasus.
No, it certainly was not. Because instead of normal, painted walls, a ceiling, and flat floors, the walls were like distorted images of events, the floor was twisted and stellar, the ceiling led to outer space, and most intriguingly for Ambiguous, in the windows on each door, there were what looked to be trapped spirits or souls, surrounded by memories of somepony's life.
