A Corpse in Equestria

Chapters

Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Twilight Interlude One
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Twilight Interlude Three
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Sam Interlude One
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter One
Twilight Interlude Two

Chapter Two

Jack stared at his corpse with a growing sense of worry. A worry that had in fact been growing steadily ever since he’d watched two of the strange ponies cart his concealed cadaver clear to the hospital in a gurney. It was becoming harder and harder to convince himself that this was all a dream. It didn’t seem likely given that he had overseen his own autopsy with rapt attention and what would’ve been a racing heart if he’d been alive for it to beat. Neither did it help that the whole event was a clear sterile memory that he could, at any moment and without any degree of effort, conjure as a perfect thought. Could recall every incision, every line of stale blood that crusted on the skin, every sound of splitting skin in perfect detail and in entirety. A talent he hoped would leave him at some point. Either way, absolute recall of preceding moments tended to mean it was not a dream.

But, he told himself, maybe it was just a very vivid dream. Maybe he was a protagonist in one of those stories that people tell their children where that person vividly imagines their own death, so that they might realize the value of their own life and how much they mean to their loved ones. This, though, didn’t seem likely either. He couldn’t imagine himself a protagonist of any story, let alone one for children. And the altogether other fact that only Sam would miss his absence and Sam wasn’t here to weep over his body.

The one thing he wasn’t worried about, at least, was that he was wrong on some existential level. He had thought that there wasn’t an afterlife, like a lot of other people, but he’d been wrong so many times before that it was easily acceptable that he had been wrong about that too. After all, it was the unknowable frontier, death. And people tended to simply assume the most comfortable or most believable theory, which wasn’t to say that that was a bad thing, just that if the result was ‘you turn into a weird spectral ghost of yourself and stick around after your death’ it wouldn’t really be something you could expect.

Existential and spiritual issues aside it was a decent moment, the doctor had done a rather good job of laying his corpse out and had shown utmost respect and care during the autopsy, despite the foreign biology of the cadaver. The doctor was present in the room now, occasionally checking a watch on one of their front legs as Jack, invisible to the doctor, remained still at his own bedside. Jack was forced to remove his gaze from the corpse more than once as memories of funerals fluttered into his mind, bringing the emotions that precede tears even if he was no longer capable of actually crying.

So intent was his gaze on himself, or the wall directly over himself at least, he failed to register that a new arrival had entered into the room until he felt their physical form consuming the space that he thought of as his. He stepped away hurriedly, drawing his spectral hand out of the strange creature’s form as it sidled into the space he’d been standing in for the past hour. He shivered, but paid the white horse no more mind as he turned back to look at himself. Vaguely, he began to listen the conversation they were starting with the doctor who had seen to the body of the deceased.

“And you are quite sure it has well and truly stopped animating?” Said the new arrival, the voice airy and slightly higher pitched than Jack would’ve expected. Surely a larger form should've caused a lower tone?

“Yes Princess.” Said the doctor simply. “According to Miss Dash’s account of the creature as it fell from the sky and from the information we gathered during the autopsy it appears that, whatever the creature was, it died when it collided with the stones. It’s not the usual fair ma’am but it has a heart all the same, and lungs, and a brain. And none of them are working on any perceptible level.”

“Was there any form of identification or... “ The princess seemed unsure what else to add. “Anything that would tell us who they are?” She settled on eventually.

“Strange you mention it your highness, but there was something we found. Princess Twilight took the original to examine but she did give us a copy to show you if you came by.” The doctor moved to a nearby table and retrieved a wad of faux leather from it. “She says the original was cattle skin, so we were happy to be rid of it, but this one is a clone she made with a spell of some sort, should have all the important details in it.”

“Thank you” the princess responded. She handed it to a smaller horse dressed in a strange facsimile of heavy plate armor. “See that this is handled with care, I’ll investigate it tonight before I rest and return it tomorrow.” She turned back to the corpse, but said nothing more.

Jack remembered 'Twilight Sparkle'. She was smaller than this new arrival but she had the wings and horn like her. Twilight Sparkle had been excited to see his corpse. She'd seemed absolutely ecstatic about his death. Jack did not like Twilight Sparkle.

Eventually, the doctor spoke up. “Princess Celestia, if I may ask.” They said cautiously, waiting for an answer before continuing.

“You may.”

“Well ma’am it’s just that. The papers and documents in that thing.” The doctor said, nodding to the wallet. “They’re in Equestrian, ma’am.”

“And?” Celestia said simply, her tone unidentifiable.

“Well ma’am…” The doctor swallowed. “I just don’t see how it is that that’s possible ma’am.”

“Neither do I.” she mumbled, her words only overheard by Jack due to his proximity, which drew his attention deeper into the conversation that was already consuming his thoughts.

“What was that ma’am? I didn’t catch it.”

“That’s an interesting deduction.” She said, louder and clearly. The doctor seemed certain that this wasn’t what she had said the first time, but didn’t seem to want to call her out on it. “Did it happen to have a name for the creature when you were looking through it?”

“Ah. uhm…” The doctor squinted, trying to remember. “It was something with a ‘J’ I think.” They began. Jack sighed, or went through the motions of it anyway. “Mmmm,” The doctor tapped a hoof to their jaw. “Oh! It was ‘Jack’ your majesty.”

“Strange name.” Celestia mused. Jack looked at her befuddled. She was named Celestia and she thought Jack was a strange name?

“I thought the same your majesty, I’ve got some ponies looking into the origin of the name and any ponies that might share it, but beyond loose ties to cards we’ve had no luck so far.” Jack turned his attention to the doctor, what was wrong with the name ‘Jack’. It was a good name, Jack thought, though he admitted he was probably biased. It certainly wasn’t a strange name though.

Jack could practically hear Sam’s voice in his head as he latched onto this. 'You’re in a weird world where you fell from the sky and died and everyone is ponies but you’re caught up on them thinking Jack is a weird name?' And then Sam would’ve laughed. And it would’ve been a nice sweet laugh and not one of derision and they would both go home laughing with each other...

Jack steeled himself, driving his memories back to the here and now. Celestia kept talking to the doctor, but Jack found he couldn’t really bring himself to care about it. He was dead, after all, what did it matter what they were talking about, he couldn’t really do anything with the information. Turning, Jack made his way to a wall that separated his room from another and placed his hand on the plaster.

Jack thought about the wall. He’d been dead for not very long but he’d already picked up some interesting talents. He knew that his body wouldn’t go through surfaces unless he convinced himself that he could. Jack imagined it in his head, imagined his hand going right through the plaster, and then the rest of him. ‘But not,’ he thought to himself ‘the floor. The floor is solid and I can’t go through it, but I can go through the wall, because the wall is something I can go through but the floor is not.’

This circular reasoning is what eventually let him through into the room beyond while also not dropping him through the foundation of the building. Celestia had continued talking about pointless things with the doctor for a dozen or so minutes before Jack managed it, but when he did he all but tumbled through into the next room.

There he saw a scene not all that different from the previous room. This one, however, didn’t have a doctor, or Celestia, but it did have a body lying motionless on a bed. The body was rather more equine, but that didn’t stop Jack from associating his own demise with the unconscious pony who’s every living moment was being counted down by the subtle beep beeping of the heart rate monitor that was beside the bed.

Jack didn’t know much about the pony, except that she’d been in this room since before he’d died, but not too long before. He knew that so far no other pony had come to visit her aside from the staff and he knew that whatever had almost killed her was something the ponies didn’t like to talk about. Jack didn’t know why he kept coming back to this room, with the overly moody lighting and dying mare. He didn’t know why he would sit in the chairs and listen to the rhythmic beep beeping of her heart rate monitor. He wasn’t sure why he did anything at all, really. But he supposed he had to do something.

Jack watched as the light that the curtains blocked from entering the room grew deeper and dimmer until only starlight was trying to enter. Jack sat, forgetting himself in the silent room. Staff would come and check in on the mare, to change her bedpan, to replace the bag on her I.V., but Jack merely sat, staring up at the ceiling. Forgetting, for a moment, that he was truly dead.

He tapped the chair idly, knowing no one could hear it. But he tapped out a melody anyhow. How did that song go? “I’ll come to guide you through the night, my dearest darling love. I’ll free you from your cage my dear, you beautiful shining dove.” That didn’t sound right. Was it darling dearest maybe? Jack couldn’t remember, and settled into humming the tune while he tried to force the words to his mind.

It wasn’t until an hour later that Jack felt a gaze on him. Startled, he looked at the pony who lay on the bed. Her head had fallen to the side, her eyes were half-lidded as she looked to him. In some fuss that had gone unheard it looked like she’d pulled the I.V. tube taut after kicking the stand that it hung from. But that wasn’t what bothered Jack. It was those eyes. Eyes that seemed to penetrate through the veil of death and Jack felt like his soul was being torn apart in her sight. Standing, if only to do something, he paused again as he saw her eyes following him. Carefully, he approached.

“You need to be careful,” he said as he turned towards the I.V. He gripped it in both hands and thought again. Thought about how he could obviously move a wheeled lightweight I.V. stand. He heard a mumble and looked to the mare who was still staring at him. She looked at the I.V. and slowly, raised a hoof to try and grip it herself. “No!” Jack practically shouted, stopping her hoof mid-movement. Jack breathed, out of habit even if he no longer needed to. “You can hear me?”

Slowly the mare gazed at him and, weakly, she nodded.

“Well…” Jack paused. He could be seen and heard by someone. That was… new. Granted they were almost dead, but it was something. He felt a desire to make sure she recovered. Maybe she could help him if she survived. ‘But what if,’ said a betraying thought ‘when she recovers she won’t be able to see you anymore?’

That didn’t matter though did it? If that was the case than he wasn’t any worse off now than he was before. The mare looked into his eyes and Jack realized he’d stopped himself mid sentence. “Well…” Jack said again, picking up where he left off. “You need to get better. So you rest there, and I’ll move the I.V. closer so you don’t almost knock it out again, alright?”

Jack waited a moment until, eventually, she nodded again. Alright so that was taken care of, now all he needed to do was… put a single pound of force into an object so that it would actually move. Jack closed his eyes, which was mostly useless since he could see through his eyelids anyway, but he focused on the I.V. and thought about how he should be able to move it. He thought about how easy it would be for him to move such a simple thing. He put all of his non-existent weight into it and, after five minutes, he finally managed to move it.

The movement caught the eye of the figure in the bed and together they both watched as it slowly rolled its way back to her bedside. She looked back to Jack, who had fallen to the ground when the I.V. had actually moved. And she nodded, then she closed her eyes once again and Jack waited until she was truly asleep before he stood from the linoleum.

‘Well at least there’s something I can do.’ Jack thought before slowly, hoping not to wake the sleeping mare, returning to his chair and went back to silently staring at the ceiling. His mind was spinning now with thoughts and plans and... something else. Something else that he hadn't been had much of even before he'd come to this strange world. Through the night Jack cared for the small fire of hope that had sparked in his soul.

Chapter Three

Jack waited. This took the form of him tapping his hand silently on the armrest of the chair that, though sheer force of will, supported his ethereal self. He’d spent more and more of his time in this room now, if he was ever asked to identify it by picking it out of a lineup by a picture of the ceiling alone he probably would’ve been able to. In fact, it was becoming harder for him to convince himself to ever leave. In all the world, to his knowledge, there was only the one pony who could see or hear him, and he was hesitant to isolate himself back into the complete loneliness he had known before.

But everyone deserved their privacy didn’t they? Jack knew that were he in her position he wouldn’t want to be watched twenty four hours of the day by some deceased alien who just sat at the edge of the room and watched him. So, Jack had taken to exploring the hospital. Partially to see if he could find anyone else who could see him but more so to let the mare have some peace and quiet.

It was on return from one of these little walks that he found the mare in unusual circumstances. She had a map of the town laid out in front of her, she’d probably asked it off one of the nurses, and when she saw Jack enter the room she signalled him over silently with a wave of her hoof. Jack approached obediently, curious as to what the purpose of the map was.

She waited until he was at her bedside before she spoke. Jack had heard her speak before, of course, but only to the nurses when she needed something. She had never spoken to Jack, perhaps out of worry for some adverse effect that might come from acknowledging his presence or perhaps simply because she had little to say to him. Jack couldn’t say either way, so he didn’t. Instead, he listened. It was, in his own opinion, his only positive personality trait compared to his laundry list of shortcomings.

“I want to-” Started the mare, her voice raspy from a throat that had yet to fully recover. She was interrupted by a cough, though it was more of a dry wheeze, and took a drink from the water that rested on a nearby table before trying again. “I want to ask you to do a favor for me.” She said, looking at Jack. She waited a half second and when he didn’t turn her down immediately, she continued with hope in her voice. “My younger sister, Colada, is being looked after by the town’s school teacher.” Here she tapped a house on the map and Jack did his best to memorize it. “She has a light-pink coat, a two-tone mane with two other shades of pink that she likes to wear pretty mussy, and no cutie mark. Well-” Here her voice grew worried. “Not the last time I saw her she didn’t anyway.” The mare looked off into the distance for a moment before turning back to her ghostly acquaintance. “Can you check up on her for me? Make sure she’s taking care of herself?”

Jack wanted to ask why this younger sister had not come to visit her older sibling in the hospital but suspected that the mare herself did not know, which was the unsaid reason as to why he was being asked to check up on her. Of course even if she did, Jack didn’t expect her to tell him anything either way. Still, he did not like the idea of leaving the hospital. In fact, he was surprised at himself for how horrible it sounded to him. It felt like he was being asked to jump off a cliff.

It was as Jack was considering his answer that a doctor entered the room with the easy smile of a eavesdropper who had caught someone breaking the rules. “Now Ms. Punch, I know that they say exercise is important but trust me when I say that it is best if you keep your talking to a minimum as to hasten the recovery of your throat.” He moved to collect her chart from the end of her bed and as his gaze left her she gave a pointed look to Jack, who knew well what it meant.

He did vaguely sort of owe her didn’t he? Or at least, he owed her her privacy. It wasn’t like he was busy doing other things either. And even if she was in full recovery what then? He didn’t know where to even begin with being a ghost and deep in some part of his soul he worried that the only ‘cure’ for being half-dead was becoming full-dead. And she probably wouldn’t be able to help him even then would she?

Truth be told Jack just wanted someone that he could talk to, even if he never actually did so. It was comforting simply to know there was somepony who could, hypothetically, interact with him even if, in practice, he mostly just sat silently in the corner of the room. Still, he suspected that if he didn’t do at least this one thing for her he wouldn’t be talking much to her in the future anyway, and she did seem worried about the safety of her sister. Worried enough, anyway, that she was willing to send the creepy ghost alien to check up on her to make sure she was okay.

Eventually Jack managed to convince himself to help her. He took another look of the map and tried his best to memorize it. He memorized the hospital and then memorized the neighboring structures. He looked at the route between the hospital and the home that the mare had pointed out, then looked for identifying landmarks to help him find his way around.

It looked like there were a couple. There was a tall white building named ‘Carousel Boutique’ which had much the same design as its namesake had in the world he had come from, he would walk right past that one on his chosen route. There was also a large purple crystalline looking structure that lurked on the edge of town, it marked the direction he would need to head off in. He memorized the color of the building he needed to enter, which was a light yellow.

Jack studied it until the doctor rolled it up, not thinking it was currently in use, and put it to the side so he could perform a check-up on the mare. Jack closed his eyes, looking at the ceiling through his eyelids, and did his best to lock the memory into his mind while it was still fresh. Eventually, he turned to the mare who was now having her heartbeat listened to. “Alright, I’ll check up on her.” Jack said with a nod, moving towards the wall that seperated the room from the outside. The mare waited until the doctor had his attention turned away before she returned the nod, a hesitant hopeful look on her face.

Jack thought very hard about how walls, really when you got right down to it, were actually not there. This took hardly longer than a handful of minutes, then he was through to the outside. He stumbled from the sudden change in altitude and took a moment to regain his footing and remind himself how absolutely impassable the ground was before looking around at his surroundings.

They were, more or less, how Jack remembered them being. It had been perhaps a week since he’d last been outside and he discovered that he still didn’t like looking at it very much. There were the houses that looked like they’d been ripped from a 1920’s “too cheery town” horror film setting. There were the ponies who looked like someone had stolen a bag of skittles and turned them into small horses. There was the giant gray semi-transparent wall that encircled the hospital.

Huh. Maybe it was less instead of more.

Jack approached the wall and squinted at the images that moved on the other side. They all seemed unperturbed and unchanged from their normal selves. Or what Jack assumed their normal selves to be. None of the ponies on either side of the barrier were reacting to it in the slightest. It definitely hadn’t been there when he’d first arrived, and given the apathy the ponies had toward it they either couldn’t see it, or this was normal. “Every second tuesday we slap an old-school cartoon filter on the town, nobody panic.” Jack said under his breath as he examined it. It sounded insane. But that Twilight Sparkle, she’d levitated objects. Not to mention there were pegasi and unicorns aplenty. Clearly this world didn’t play by the same rules as the one he’d come from.

Jack glanced around. All around him were ponies milling about in their normal everyday lives, unaware of the invisible set of eyes that gazed among them. Jack waited. Eventually one of the ponies approached the barrier and without so much as a hitch in their step, walked through it. Jack blinked in surprise then turned his own attention to the barrier once again. With a look first to his own spectral hand, then to the gray barrier, Jack tested the waters. He reached out slowly, cautiously, until he made contact.

Waves of what could only be described as aggressive apathy assaulted him on a level he didn’t know that emotions could attack him on. It was so strong that even without a physical body he felt like he was in mortal pain, it felt like ice water that had transcended the human idea of cold. Then there were the whispers. He recoiled in shock and pain, his legs giving out and leaving him prone on the ground, listening as ghostly echos whispered in his head.

“Just stay.”

“Nowhere to go.”

“Comfort here.”

“Nobody else.”

Jack clutched his wrist in pain, squeezing his eyelids in a vain attempt to get rid of the persuasive thoughts that echoed around in his head. He felt them prying at his soul, trying to change it. He felt strange ghostly grips on every fiber of his being, trying to bend him out of shape. Jack knew, on some deep instinctual level, that all he would have to do to make it stop was to never try and leave the hospital. To just linger there forever, make it his home.

‘So this is what ghosts have to put up with.’ Jack thought to himself, enjoying his moment of rest on the grass he couldn’t feel while enduring a pain that felt like it was being inscribed on some building block of who he was. ‘No wonder they’re always so moody.’

Jack was prone for a hour or so before the pain finally finished ebbing away. Cautiously, he stood and looked at the barrier again, only to find that the distance between him and it had shrunk. He looked around the plot of land the hospital sat on to confirm his suspicions that, yes, it was in fact closing in on it.

Terror struck some chord in Jack and he looked back to the hospital. He could just go back in, say he had tried to find her but couldn’t get around very well right? But then what? How much would this field enclose, and what about when the mare, Ms. Punch she’d been called right? What about when she left the hospital? Would he just linger in forgotten pharmaceuticals moving little bottles of pills around? No he had to do something about this.

Still rubbing his wrist Jack maneuvered his way to the edge of the barrier closest to the direction he needed to go in, then stepped back a fair way to give himself a running start. There were a few ways this could turn out. Either he would break the barrier and be able to move around freely again, which was the best option. Or he would not break the barrier and instead exist in an eternity of freezing pain for all of time, which was the bad option. Or he would truly die which, given the other extremes, was basically neutral territory.

Jack took a deep breath that he didn’t need and lined himself up. He hesitated for a half dozen minutes as he made sure, absolutely sure, that this was something he wanted to do. He decided that, yes, it was. Jack broke into a run before he had another chance to second guess himself. His steps were uneven and unprofessional but they all served the singular purpose of building up as much speed as he possibly could. Then, on the last step before he would run into the barrier, Jack leapt into the air.

He went sailing through empty space and enjoyed the sparse few moments of weightless momentum before the crashing cold pain locked around every part of his spectral form. It felt like hell. Every passing millisecond was stretched on and on approaching infinity as his body flew forward without any way to stop. Still, Jack was glad he’d decided to jump, if he hadn’t he probably would’ve ground to a halt as soon as he’d made contact. He felt the cold bite deeper and deeper as he fell like a stone farther and farther into the gray scale world until it seemed to latch onto his memories and begin to stab them as well.

In some last-ditch effort of self defense Jack's mind brought up his memories of Sam. He remembered their picnics and the time they’d gone swimming at the local pool. He remembered arguments that stung on some deeper level still than whatever level this barrier was attacking him on and he remembered nights in the dead of winter when they’d both been awake far too late into the night and had ended up lighting a small fire in a seldom-used fireplace.

Jack latched on to that memory of the fireplace. It had been a tacked on addition to the house. Sam had built it after running it past a couple construction friends they knew. On those nights where they had both gathered at the cobbles in too many blankets and had lit a fire that could barely warm a small room they’d felt a much deeper warmth. It was this warmth that roared now, screaming in anger at the shackles of pain that bound Jack.

And then, just as suddenly as it had come, it was all over. Jack let himself lay prone for the second time in so many hours on grass he could not feel. The pain left quicker this time, but he still gave himself a moment before he pressed on to complete the task he’d been given, just long enough to remember the crackle of dry wood and the smell of burning marshmallows.

Twilight Interlude One

Rainbow Dash hated the sound of her wingbeats. Specifically she hated the sound the castle gave them. She hated how they echoed at her from every direction. She hated the chilling distortion given to them by the acoustics. She hated how loud they were in the silent hallway. She hated how it gave away her location and identity at every moment, because who would fly in a castle except for Rainbow Dash.

In fact, Rainbow had hated this experience for a very long time before this visit and for this reason avoided the castle whenever the situation presented itself. Twilight had asked her to come though, so she had. Granted, that request had been made four days ago, but Rainbow had been super busy at the time. Super busy avoiding talking to anypony, for instance. That little chore had taken up an awful lot of her time. Then there was the napping, the napping had been tedious lately. What else… Clouds! The clouds had needed to be tended to as well. Then it had been the weekend, and nopony wanted to do stuff on the weekend right? So she’d stayed at home and relaxed for a couple days. Then today had rolled around and… well you couldn’t stay busy forever could you? Rainbow Dash in particular was particularly bad at staying busy. She hadn’t had much practice.

Rainbow had been on autopilot with her mind wandering, which was common practice for her whenever she flew, and found herself at the library door sooner than she had expected. After realizing that this was her intended destination, she seemed content to hover idly in the air for several moments looking longingly in the direction of the entrance. It took a spur of loyalty to her friends to turn her back to face the library door. Eventually, carefully, guiltily, she lowered herself from out of the air and eased her hooves onto the crystal, making as little noise as she could.

As her full weight settled onto her legs she folded her wings to her side and turned to the door. After a moment to take a silent breath and calm her nerves, she eased it open and made her way inside. The sight that greeted her made that self same breath catch on it’s way out. A sudden worry assailed her that the library had been ransacked. There were more books on the floor than there were on the shelves and it looked as though somepony had tried to make a ball pit but they’d only had scraps of paper to work with. Then, as her eyes pieced together the chaos, her worry died away.

Twilight Sparkle trotted through the middle of an incredible mess like she was ground zero for some strange parchment bomb. Occasionally the sound of relentless note taking would break into frantic crinkling which would then lead to the throwing of a wadded ball still wet with ink which would, in turn, roll lazily away to join its cousins that lay scattered around like leaves. The complete domination of the floor by these scraps of discarded notes was prevented only by the occasional haphazard pile of books or impromptu inkwell of some shape or size, such as a repurposed vase or mason jar.

Those objects and, of course, Twilight Sparkle. Rainbow looked to the tall form that was pacing nervously back and forth across the room. Levitated around her like orbiting planets were books of all kinds, a parchment and quill that were busy writing the few solid thoughts that flitted through Twilight’s consciousness, and a large cup of coffee that had long since gone cold. Twilight’s pace remained measured and consistent as her eyes read the passages that her magic held up to them and Rainbow was perfectly content to not disturb her, an excuse for delay would not go unwelcome.

This had only gone on for a few minutes longer before Twilight’s attention finally broke from her studying. She made to take a sip from her coffee mug but instead manipulated ‘Bestiary of the Everfree and Other Forgotten Places’ and didn’t come to her senses until she felt her lips pressed firmly to one of her books and tasted paper. As she struggled to make sense of what she’d done a new sound joined the atmosphere of the room and Twilight turned to face the poorly stifled giggling that had started up near the door. “Oh, hey Rainbow Dash!” Twilight enthused, forgetting her bookish kiss and dropping a selection of her levitating books onto the pile nearest herself. “I was starting to worry you weren’t going to come! Pinkie wasn’t even able to get a hold of you during the weekend and that’s a feat in and of itself.”

What she didn’t say was ‘Wow Rainbow Dash you don’t look so good. You’ve got bags under your eyes and they kinda look a little bloodshot and droopy too. Are you doing alright? You should get some rest.’ She didn’t say this because she knew that all of those things could be applied to herself as well and didn’t want to sound hypocritical.

Nevertheless, Rainbow smiled at the compliment. It had been impossibly hard to avoid Pinkie during the weekend. Part of her suspected the only way she’d managed to succeed at all was because Pinkie hadn’t been trying all that hard to actually find her in the first place, probably wanting to give her some space after... what had happened. This minor fact failed to impact her growing pride in any way. “Well I AM pretty awesome,” she said, sliding into her usual persona with perfect ease. Still, she couldn’t quell the growing fear that this meeting wasn’t just going to be small talk, probably due to the collection of books about identifying creatures that still levitated nearby.

“Well I’m glad to see you.” Twilight smiled briefly before launching into the true purpose of her requested visit, confirming Rainbow Dash’s fears. “I wanted to ask you about the stranger that fell out of the sky the other day.” Twilight explained, gesturing to the diagram of the creature that had been drawn on her blackboard as if ‘the stranger that fell out of the sky’ needed any further clarification.

“Ah.” Rainbow’s pride suddenly felt like someone had dropped an anvil on it. She hadn’t wanted to talk about this. This was, in fact, the entire reason she’d been avoiding all her friends as much as she had. She didn’t want to talk about the thing that had died mere moments before she could save it. Seeking to take control of the conversation before Twilight steered it further on to the topic of her involvement in the strange thing’s death, Rainbow launched into her own line of inquiries. “It had a weird name right? I think I remember somebody saying something about it having a weird name.”

Twilight, who had opened her mouth to ask Dash a question, now backpedaled mentally to address this new question. “Yes!" She said somewhat cheerfully as she turned to face a pile of miscellaneous items on a nearby desk. "It is:” Twilight levitated a strange square of what looked like cow hide and opened it, retrieving a strange rectangular card from inside. “Jack D. Weber.” Twilight carefully put the card back into the strange square of leather before returning it to the desk and looking to Rainbow Dash again. “And it’s a he.”

“Oh.” Rainbow was already beginning to regret this tangent she’d started. She’d wanted to avoid talking about how bad she’d screwed up. It was hard enough to know that she’d caused someone’s death, even if inadvertently. Now she knew his name, now he was an actual person that she’d failed to saved. Twilight looked at her, worried. They’d known each other too long for Rainbow to hide her growing guilt. Still, she tried. “Yea that’s a weird name, any idea what it means?”

Twilight frowned, caught between wanting to talk to her friend about what was troubling her and not wanting to push if it made Rainbow uncomfortable. Instead she did what the researcher inside of her wanted to do, she answered the question. “Well if it was just ‘Jack’ I might’ve guessed something to do with a deck of cards. But as he has none on him and given the other two parts of his name I have no idea where to start. Still, I’ve asked some ponies to fill me in on any potential links.”

Now it was Rainbow’s turn to frown, this time in confusion. “Only cards?”

“Yea? Why?”

“Why not, you know, our friend named Apple’jack’.” Rainbow asked, curious about the course of action that Twilight had taken. “She’s a lot closer and you know her and you can go chat her up whenever you want.”

Twilight smiled knowingly and began to explain, like Cheerilee might explain to one of her students. “Well I thought about it, briefly, but the ‘jack’ in Applejack’s name doesn’t really have any meaning. It’s just sort of… there. It doesn’t further define her talents with apples. If we just started pursuing anyone with jack in their name we’d have to talk to every Wingjack or Hijack or Candleja-”

“Yea yea yea” Rainbow interrupted, starting to get upset with being spoken to like a child. “I get it.”

Twilight smiled, but then that smile slid into the pursed lips of thought. “Though…”

“Though?”

“Well we don’t know for certain that wherever this creature comes from uses the same naming system as us do we? So…” Twilight levitated several books on etymology from out of the assorted piles and onto the shelves. “It’s entirely possible that the ‘jack’ in his name doesn’t mean anything either.” Twilight’s words were beginning to gather speed and weight as the great locomotive of her train of thought began to power itself onward. “Combined with how estranged each part of the name is from the rest, it would make the most sense if none of the name actually meant anything! If the name was simply a means of identification and nothing else!”

Twilight began to reorganize her piles of books and properly dispose of all her discarded notes, cleansing her palette, as it were, for further research. She whirled books in a great tornado and teleported all her impromptu ink wells into the kitchen where she would deal with them later. Then she began to organize the next set of books she would need. As she did so, Rainbow saw an opportunity to escape. She slowly shifted herself along the wall until she was at the door, moving slow enough that the newly envigored Twilight didn’t realize she was moving at all. She had been halfway out the door, ready to breathe a sigh of relief, when Twilight called after her.

“Wait Rainbow! I wanted to ask you something!” Rainbow, mumbling mild curses under her breath so Twilight wouldn’t hear, reentered the library. Twilight saw the look of poorly-veiled anger and regathered her thoughts, hoping to prevent it from getting any worse. “I was just wondering… you were the only one who spent any time with the stranger. Did he… say anything or… give any signs or messages or anything?”

Rainbow frowned, closing her eyes. Seeing perfectly clearly the look of pure terror that she’d first seen a week ago. “No.” She said after a moment. “Just… screaming.”

“Screaming?”

“Yea it- he just… screamed the whole time. Screamed and screamed and screamed until… he didn’t anymore.” Rainbow said, struggling to phrase the image that haunted her sometimes when she slept. She looked to Twilight who looked back with genuine concern. Not for the stranger, but for Rainbow Dash. “Can I go now?”

“Yea.” Twilight managed in a half-tone, the fervor of her explanation already destroyed in the collision with the oncoming train of worry for Rainbow Dash. “Just… let me know if you need to talk or something okay Rainbow?” Rainbow nodded and began to leave once again. With the library door still slightly ajar she made to take to the air once again but was stopped one last time as Twilight opened the door the rest of the way and leaned out into the hall. “And Rainbow… You did your best, no one can ask more than that from you. Not anyone in town, not me, not even the stranger, if he was still able to talk.”

Rainbow nodded again, this one with much less certainty than the previous had had to it. Then she opened her wings and darted off down the castle corridor.

Twilight looked on at the retreating figure, worry sprouting in her thoughts.

Chapter Four

Jack was exhausted.

This surprised Jack given that, as a ghost, he didn’t think he would be capable of something so banal as exhaustion. It didn’t strike him as particularly fair that not only had he lost any chance of seeing Sam again by being pulled into a different world if not alternate universe, but on top of that had also died and now could barely interact with anything at all. Yet still, as if it were the cherry on top the situation, he had to deal with some heightened fatigue that prevented him from even walking a couple blocks without wearing him out.

Jack gazed towards the end of the road that he was walking next to and saw the towering white structure of Carousel Boutique, his weary eyes focusing so intently on it that the rest of his surroundings were hardly acknowledged. There, he decided, he would rest. He did not know if doing so would actually give him his energy back, he wasn’t sure how being a ghost worked in that regard, but he hoped that it would, he didn’t exactly have a lot of alternatives. How could he know what he needed to do to get rid of an affliction if he didn’t know what had brought it on in the first place?

“I’m worried about you, you spent the past couple days running away from the real problems that were bothering you.”

Jack whirled to face the voice that seemed to be responding to his thoughts, overcorrected, under corrected his overcorrection, and ended up falling on the ground where his hand and arm sunk a couple inches into the dirt before Jack pulled himself together and stopped his descent, thinking very strongly about how solid the dirt should be. He wasn’t too keen on finding out what would happen if he ever forgot that.

Breathing deep, if only because he felt it was what he was supposed to do in this situation, Jack pulled his hand out of the earth as he carefully imagined that only that part of his body should be able to move through dirt, while bracing himself to change his line of thinking if the rest of his body began to suddenly plummet. Moving fractions of inches at a time, Jack was eventually successful. Upon freeing his appendage from its earthy prison, he looked to the voice that had caused all the trouble to begin with.

He saw one of the strange ponies, naturally, but whereas most of the others usually sported a couple different colors across their manes and coats, this one seemed to have been dipped in pink paint. In fact, Jack might’ve believed she had been if it weren’t for that fact that it looked like her mane was the antithesis of soaked, frighteningly close to ‘violently dry’. To Jack’s relief as well as disappointment he found he was not the one being addressed. Instead, the strange pony was looking into a nearby tree paying him exactly zero attention, causing Jack to write off the interruption of his thoughts as a fluke. Exhausted as Jack was he neglected to check what she was looking at, opting instead to run through the checklist that Ms. Punch had given him for what Colada looked like.

Namely, of course, because the only color he’d been told as a reference for Colada was different shades of pink, which seemed to match this pony to a tee. The coat was, what had she said? Light pink? This pony had a light pink coat. She didn’t have a two-tone mane, but it was exceptionally mussy and, again, very pink. Could these ponies’ manes change color? Perhaps she’d had it dyed in the period of time since she’d met her older sister? Maybe the lighting was dulling down the difference in color, hiding it from Jack’s tired eyes? He didn’t have an answer to any of these questions that he posed to himself, so he delved into onto the rest of the description he’d been given to try and find an answer.

Of course this pony looked to be perhaps the same age as Ms. Punch, if not a little older judging by a slight difference in height, but Jack didn’t have a lot of experience with judging pony ages. For instance, he didn’t know if Celestia’s height and grandeur had simply come with age or if she were somehow different from the rest on some basic level. Even Twilight Sparkle, who had had both the horn and the wings just like Celestia, was still sized very similar to the rest of the ponies. So was Celestia an outlier then? But if so, then did that mean the oldest ponies all stayed almost the exact same height throughout their entire lives? How on earth was he supposed to tell a pony’s age then? Even if only a year separated them surely Ms. Punch still would’ve called her her younger sister.

Mind whirring in confusion, Jack leapt to cutie marks. Hoping perhaps he would be able to make some sense of something there instead, hoping that maybe he could latch onto some logic somewhere to halt his descent into madness. Cutie marks, Jack had determined, were definitely the strange tattoo-like marking that adorned the hindquarters of all but the youngest of the ponies. Jack was unsure of how these marks were gained, but he had heard of cultures where getting a tattoo was tradition to show reaching adulthood and assumed it was similar case here. Though instead of flowing artistic ink this one particular pony had… three balloons?

So, Ms. Punch’s younger sister wasn’t supposed to have a cutie mark yet, though she hadn’t sounded too sure of that come to think of it. Jack’s mind began to reel as he realized how little information he had actually had. Trying to focus through the weariness that hung to his soul like he’d swam the river styx with bags of sand around his ankles, Jack sat down. What else? She’d said something else. Jack frantically tried to piece it together in his head.

“Take your time.” Said the pony, her voice cheerful as she continued to look into the tree that she stood next to.

Jack blinked and looked to her again, and she continued to pay no mind to him. Taking her advice, even if it hadn’t been given to him specifically, Jack calmed himself. He did the breathing exercises that he’d learned, and though no air was moved due to it, it still calmed him down. After a moment, Jack reapproached the situation. At once, it all snapped into place.

Whether or not Colada had her cutie mark was irrelevant. If she had gained it recently than that meant that she was younger, like those small fillies and colts he’d seen occasionally on his walk who also had been missing their own. This information was further supported because Ms. Punch had said that Colada was being looked after by the town’s school teacher, which meant that this fully grown mare couldn’t be Colada. This fully grown mare was-

“Pinkie Pie?”

Jack blinked again and looked around, that voice hadn’t belonged to the pink pony, who he now assumed was named Pinkie Pie, but from some other source. After a full turn to try and spot the source of the voice, Jack saw that Pinkie Pie had her gaze still turned the top of a nearby tree and turned his gaze to the same. In the upper boughs, hidden almost completely by the lower branches, Jack spotted a rainbow. Confused, Jack leaned to look around the tree to get a view of the sky behind it and found no such rainbow in existence before leaning back to get another look. Then he focused on it. Eventually he realized that that rainbow tapered and ended at a light azure form which Jack had misinterpreted as the sky. For the second time, everything clicked together. He knew this pony.

“Hey Rainbow Dash! Twilight asked me to check up on you because she was worried. She wants to help you but she’s not that great with ponies so I’m supposed to keep you company until she can read all seven issues of her encyclopedia on mental unwellness, she said she’ll be done in an hour.”

Jack felt uncomfortable now. Eavesdropping on someone was bad enough for his social insecurity, eavesdropping on someone being talked to about their mental health topped out on his list of things he never wanted to be involved in. There was a moment of silence from both parties that Jack used as an opportunity to pry himself from the ground, his phantom body begging for rest. But before Jack could get any further on his plan to get out of earshot he heard the conversation turn, unexpectedly, to him.

“I just wish I’d been fast enough to save him, that’s all.” Rainbow said at last. She said it with all the words that meant it was a passing thought but with all the inflection that this was a genuine and deep regret. Said it like she were offering up a piece of her soul for inspection.

Jack stood in silent humble shock for a moment. Then, anger welled up inside him. He had every right to be angry at her for failing to save him, it roared. He had every reason to blame her for not being able to save him. Clenching his fists, Jack tamped down the anger that surged from the same instinctual part of himself that had told him to stay at the hospital. It screamed against his willpower, fighting to break free, but Jack refused to let it.

Instead, he found an outlet. He heard Pinkie Pie offering kind words but was unable to make them out as his own thoughts swirled in his head. Step after step he continued down the road, exhaustion burnt away by the fire of the strange anger. He was going to find Colada and then he was going to get back to Ms. Punch, who would hopefully be released from the hospital soon, and then he was going to call in a favor from her. Because he’d torn himself apart for far cheaper things than failing to save someone’s life and like hell he was going to let someone else tear themselves up over him. He would let her know that he forgave her for it even if he had to get someone else to actually tell her that.

Meanwhile, in another world, a doorbell rang.

“Oh hey Larry, what are you doing here so late?”

“Hey Sam. Uhm… Have you heard anything from Jack yet?”

“No. No not yet. I’ve been trying to get a hold of him but he isn’t answering his phone. Why do you ask?”

“Well uhm… It’s just that his disappearance… it matches up with… well you know how I’ve got that new job with the start-up?”

“Larry, what are you getting at?”

“You can’t tell anyone about this Sam, I signed an NDA but I think you derserve to know. I- uhm- I think the company I’m working for might have sent Jack to another world.”

“What.”

“Well he went missing around the time we ran a testrun and I went back to look at the coordinates and I think at the time of the test they may have uhm… coincided with your guys’s couch.”

“... How sure are you of this.”

“You know how bad I am at saying I’m 100% sure of anything?”

“Yea?”

“I’m like 99.99% sure that we sent him to another world. The teleporter says a complex living organism was definitely transported so unless you had someone else visiting who’s also gone missing it’s…. a certainty.”

“...”

“Sam wait! What are you doing!?”

“I’m getting a travelpack together and then you’re going to teleport me to this other world Larry, that’s what we’re doing.”

“Sam! You know Jack wouldn’t want you to do this! This is super risky! You could die!”

“Of course Jack wouldn’t want me to do this! He doesn’t want anybody to ever do anything remotely dangerous!”

“Then why?”

“Because you can’t tell me that if our spots were reversed he wouldn’t do everything in his power to get to me.”

“... alright Sam. I’ll sign you up as a volunteer for the project. Just… just don’t die alright?”

“I’ll do my best to avoid it Larry. And… thanks.”

Chapter Five

Jack slumped gratefully against the off-yellow wall that told him he’d at last reached his destination. It had turned out that the well of seemingly unending rage was a horrible source of energy as it had, in fact, ended. This had left him infinitely worse off than he had been before he’d used it at all, though he was lucky to be within a few feet of his destination when it hit him. The comparatively comfortable banality of exhaustion quickly became all but a distant memory in the face of the painful stabbing chill that had clamped onto his limbs like a vice in the instant after his ethereal indignation had vanished.

He had, through some small miracle, managed to close the remaining distance running on what felt like a bitter cocktail of fumes and borrowed time. Now he only had one remaining obstacle, phasing through the wall. This wall, though it was not so different from the ones that Jack had become adept at passing through back at the hospital, seemed like it was now an unconquerable task. He tried to bend his thoughts like he’d done so often before, but in the face of the constant, icy pain they became almost impossible to focus. Jack attempted to simply power through it and, after an hour of achieving nothing but a severe headache, he managed to convince himself of the wall’s solidity, or lack thereof. Unfortunately his success was short-lived as the combination of his excitement at finally having managed it and the shock of suddenly falling tore his line of thoughts asunder, resolidifying the wall in relation to himself as he was mid-fall, getting him stuck halfway through.

Jack’s exhausted mind stalled out as it tried to process what had just happened. His upper half, starting from about his belly button, was stuck inside the building. While his lower half, legs and all, had remained outside. As Jack began to comprehend the scene, panic started to flood his head. He saw himself, felt himself, cut in half. He could ‘feel’ both halves of his body, he could move his legs and arms with equal ease, but between them was a strange cold immovable weight that felt like he’d eaten a barbell made of antimatter. It was barely a moment longer before he began to scream, directionless and void of any meaning, just like when he’d fallen from the sky. Now, just like then, it did little to help him out of his predicament. Frantically, Jack placed both hands on the wall and tried with all his might to simply brute force his way through, to no avail. Then, he blacked out. Briefly in the failing of his consciousness he caught sight of a filly far in the corner of the room who was looking around the room with wide, scared, eyes.

Jack would later reflect that it seemed odd how he kept so many holdovers from when he was alive, things like exhaustion and being able to pass out, things which stemmed from having a physical body. He did not think about that now though, all he knew now was empty black space. Which, given how exhausted he was, he found some comfort in.

Jack came to consciousness some hours later. He was still stuck in a wall, still lost in an alien world, still an eternity from Sam, still unable to truly comprehend the extent of what his life had become, but at least he wasn’t tired anymore. When you can’t control anything about your life, you tend to be happy for what you get. Jack looked back to aforementioned wall and, even as panic began to spark it’s fervor within him, Jack fought to keep his head. He did this the way he always did, by overlooking the bad parts and focusing on what was good about the situation. He’d gotten a lot of practice with it recently.

It had allowed him to rest, that was a good thing. Rest that had, actually, revitalized him in some way. The wall had caught him mid-fall, meaning his entire body was suspended above the ground which, while initially difficult to acclimate to, was a rather restful position all in all. No part of him had really had to support his weight either since the section of his torso that would have had to had been replaced by a wall. As that thought once again threatened to send him into a spiral of panic, Jack sought for some other positive to focus on to distract himself. Instead of having to think up something, however, he was graciously provided with a distraction from an external source.

“I just worry about how this will affect Colada is all.” Came the worried sound of a mare’s voice from a couple feet away. As Jack moved his attention to the source of the words he realized for the first time that he had wound up in the kitchen of the building. Well… half way in the kitchen at least. Jack allowed himself a brief moment to appreciate the well-designed kitchen before he turned his full attention to the mare. With minimal surprise, Jack realized that this mare also fit the description of Colada.

Her coat was closer to Magenta, granted, but her mane was two tone pink just as had been described, this time clearly so. Once again, however, the mare in question had a cutie mark. It was… three smiling flowers? Did they always have three of something? Jack made a note to pay closer attention to the markings in the future. He couldn’t even remember what Ms. Punch’s was, though he vaguely remembered some kind of fruit or berry.

Perhaps this was the town’s teacher? This was supposed to be her house so it would make sense. Then again she was talking to some other pony that was, unfortunately, just out of Jack’s field of view. As Jack watched, taking in as much detail as he could, the mare who may or may not be Cheerilee continued to speak. “I appreciate all that Berry did for Colada, of course, certainly she suffered a lot for her. I just worry about how Colada will react when she finds out that her strong older sister tried to, you know,” here Maybe-Cheerilee’s volume dropped to a whisper for a moment, though not before she looked around conspiratorially, “kill herself.” Cheerilee, coughed and continued normally. “She looks up to her so much, I just don’t know what the effect would be.”

Jack blinked in surprise. Berry had tried to commit suicide? Jack was first struck by the idea that that was extremely unlikely, but the more he thought about it the more he had to admit to himself that it was, at least, a possibility. He hadn’t exactly asked her how she’d ended up in the hospital to begin with, it hadn’t seemed particularly important. And then the nurses had always seemed rather anxious when they spoke with her and then there was the fact that whenever those nurses, or come to think of it the doctors even, explained how she’d wound up there they would always do it in a hushed tone, not too unlike the one that Maybe-Cheerilee had just used.

“I don’t want Colada to… get any ideas... Is all. That’s why I haven’t taken her to see her sister yet. I’m bad at that sort of thing, I mean just look how often I ‘inspired’ Apple Bloom and her friends to go off and do something dangerous. I know Colada and Berry both deserve to see each other but I’m worried about what adverse consequences I might cause, I couldn’t-” Jack watched as a grey hoof rested on Cheerilee’s lips and silenced her abruptly.

“I could take Colada to see Berry.” Came a soft voice as a blonde, wall-eyed mare leaned in to grab a muffin from the center of the table. “I’ll make sure that nothing harmful sticks in her head.” Despite the extremely soft tone there was, within it, a kind of immovable iron. A kind of determined framework which the words were supported by. Even Jack, who had never so much as heard of this mare before, felt inclined to trust her. It seemed it had the same affect on Maybe-Cheerilee.

“Could you?” Maybe-Cheerilee asked, hopeful. “I’m busy for the next couple of days with the curriculum, so you’d have to go without me. Then again, you could just wait a week or two and I’d be able to tag along. Whichever works best for you.”

“We’ll be fine by ourselves. I can take Dinky, she’s been thinking about trying her hoof at medicine and she’d love to talk to some of the doctors if they have time.” Said the mare, her tone upbeat and optimistic.

“Oh thank you Derpy. I owe you big time for this.” Probably-Cheerilee-Now-That-Jack-Knew-The-Other-Mare-Was-Named-Derpy paused for a moment in thought before she continued. “I know! I’ll go down to Sugarcube corner and…”

Jack’s attention was pulled from the conversation as he realized he was not the only set of ears eavesdropping on the conversation. Twin shadows shuffled beyond the door nearest him, visible through the gap between the bottom of the door and the floor itself. Curiosity piqued and his attention with the conversation growing distant, Jack turned his attention once more on the wall that held him aloft. This time he easily accomplished the work that had stumped him before and it wasn’t long before he managed to convince himself that it was immaterial again.

Jack caught himself as he finished the fall he’d started more than a few hours ago and raised himself onto his feet. After a quick pat down to make sure he’d gotten the whole of his torso back, Jack moved on to the door itself, passing through it with ease as well. There, at last, he found Colada. No cutie mark, two tone messy mane, light-pink coat. It matched the description he’d been given to a T. This, Jack knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, was Colada.

As for the identity of the second foal who was also present right next to Colada? Jack assumed it was the previously mentioned Dinky, though he had no way to confirm this. Luckily when you’re a ghost you can get away with assuming a lot of things. Not that it was a baseless guess of course. Derpy had spoken of Dinky as if she were her daughter and the two did share a rather remarkable likeness. Of course, Jack wasn’t 100% sure how much a daughter and a mother would look alike in this world, apparently a third of the population was some shade of pink so what did he know, but it seemed as good a place to start as any.

“Did they find the monster that was howling?” Asked Dinky as she looked nervously to Colada who had her ear pressed flat against the threshold.

“I don’t think they’re looking.” Colada said idly, lightly biting her tongue in concentration. “I think they just wanted to have a conversation without either of us around. I don’t think they think there’s a monster at all!”

“What?! But we heard it! It was all “aaAAAaaaAAAAAAOOOAOAOAOOOOOOAAAA” Dinky said in disbelief, doing a rather good impression of Jack’s screaming, though more quietly as to avoid giving away their game. The impression was so good, in fact, that Jack backed away in worry, waiting to see if either of the filly’s would be able to spot him before interacting in any way. “Why would they think we made that up?”

“Adults.” Said Colada in explanation as she focused once more on the door.

“Adults.” Agreed Dinky. Dinky, who was eagerly awaiting more news from Colada by the door, took the opportunity to look once more around the room she was stood in. But, despite her raised perception while she waited to be caught eavesdropping, she looked at, through, and past Jack in the span of moment, quelling the ghost’s fears.

“I think your mom’s talking about taking us to the hospital tomorrow.” Colada said eventually, her face twisted in thought.

“Oh no!” Dinky said worriedly. “Are we sick?”

“No. Well…” Colada pulled her head away from the door for a minute while she gave the question her honest attention. “I don’t think I’m sick. Are you sick?”

“I don’t think so.”

“So then it’s probably to go see my sister.” Colada said, a bittersweet tinge to her words.

“Oh! Do you think she’ll have some juice for us like she always does?” Dinky asked, suddenly sounding very excited about going to the hospital if it meant some homemade berry punch.

“I don’t think they’ll let her make her drinks at the hospital.” Said Colada, her tone worldly and matter-of-fact. “But maybe?”

“Oh I hope so. She always makes the best.”

Jack tapped his fingers against the nearby wall as he thought. He could leave tomorrow with the entourage, maybe resting for the night in the kitchen. But if he did that there was every chance he would run out of energy mid trip again and he wouldn’t get to the hospital until long after Colada arrived. Yet, if he left now he risked running out of energy in the middle of the road since he’d had barely any time to recuperate except for his brief stint with being stuck in a wall and he might end up being even worse off. It was this latter point that eventually won him over and, after the rest of the household eventually found its way to sleep, the older mares none the wiser to their three listeners-in, Jack laid himself out on the linoleum of the kitchen.

With eyes glazing over, he began to count the dots.

Chapter Six

The air was nice, gentle, warm. Comforting even. It rested its reassuring weight on Jack’s skin, a weight that he hadn’t felt in what seemed like ages. But now here he was, back home in the serene neighborhood park where he and Sam would share their free afternoons together. It was perfect. Well… it was almost perfect. The only things that were wrong with the picturesque evening were the incessant feeling of being watched and the uneasy trepidation that something was wrong.

Actually, Jack corrected himself, it was far from perfect because where was Sam anyway? Why had he thought it was perfect when so much was missing? Certainly they both had their fair share of time apart, but this was a cut of both of their time that they would set aside specifically to spend together. Away from the dramas of life and the stress of work they could at least be with each other here, yet Sam was nowhere to be seen.

With mounting anxiety Jack eventually turned his searching gaze from the benches and gazebos to his furthest surroundings, looking past empty jogging paths and into the shadows of the great towering trees that framed the walkways, hoping for any sign of Sam. When that hope proved empty Jack instead transitioned into something much more broad, looking for anyone at all, realizing in his search for one individual the lack of any individual at all.

The park was routinely packed at this time of day, usually to the point that it made Jack hesitant about coming at all. Now though his introversion was cast aside as he became desperate for any company, unfamiliar though it might be, in what was feeling more and more like an empty world. Then, Jack’s eyes latched onto the only movement besides himself in the lonely park, yet the company he found only caused his worry to grow.

Jack caught sight of some strange quadruped, equine it seemed, though any finer details of it were lost to distance and to time as it darted through the gap between two trees, even still it left Jack with the very strong, almost supernatural, impression that it was a deep dark blue. As the world seemed to skew itself towards terror Jack tried in vain to tamp down on his fear by slipping into his breathing exercises, knowing his pills would work too slowly to be of any help, but was interrupted when he caught sight of the blue horse again though this time it was off in the distance. It looked toward him, at him, with almost human eyes. As it stared and he stared in return he was given time to discern more detail of the head of the creature, like the fact that it had… a horn? A unicorn then?

Frozen in shock as half remembered memories stirred in his mind, Jack kept his eyes locked onto the strange creature. It’s light blue eyes seemed to dig into his soul, and Jack’s instinct to flee tried desperately to fight through the paralysis that bound him. The equine seemed to be examining him, it looked confused and curious. Though that could simply be Jack trying to assign emotions to it out of hope. If the strange creature had emotions than it could be reasoned with, or at least there was a chance of it. If it was apathetic, then Jack felt like he was already dead.

Then came the sudden pain in his side, though with how wired Jack’s nerves were at that moment, any physical interaction would’ve felt like a sword being driven into his side. Turning, Jack saw Sam and his heart almost exploded with relief, he wanted nothing more than to hug Sam as tight as he possibly could. However, some part of his consciousness stopped him from doing so, his screaming mind reminding him of the ominous creature that he’d let out of his line of sight. His gaze snapped back to its previous position, only to find the woods empty once more.

Which, of course, was infinitely worse than the alternative. The creature did not stop existing simply because he’d lost sight of it, he just didn’t know where it was now. Looking around Jack tried to find the creature again, to no avail. Then there came another pain in his side, this time duller as Jack had half-expected it. Nonetheless it drew Jack’s attention back to Sam.

“Whatcha looking for?” Sam said with a simple grin.

“I just… I thought I saw a…” Jack looked into the deep understanding eyes that he hadn’t seen in far too long and allowed himself a modicum of relaxation, smiling at how stupid he was about to sound. “Thought I saw a unicorn.”

“Here?” Sam said, taking the words far more seriously than Jack had expected. Sam also took a moment to look around but seemed to come up just as empty handed. “Weird place for it, no trails or anything nearby that I can remember.”

“Yea I thought it was weird too and it looked-” Sam poked him again. Jack raised an eyebrow in confusion. “What?”

“What?” Echoed Sam.

“You poked me, did you want something or...?”

Sam shrugged noncommittally, waited a couple of moments, then poked Jack again.

“What? Why are you poking me?” Jack said, backing away. His terror not so easily assuaged, it now roared back to force screaming with some primitive part of his brain that something was wrong. The air that had felt comforting before now felt cloying, heavy, hot. Suffocating even. Sam looked at him with a blank face and began to close the distance again. Jack stepped back this time, but Sam lunged and landed the poke all the same.

“Hey!” Sam said in an unfamiliar voice, heavy with an almost southern accent. “You’re squirming up a storm! If you’re having a nightmare, just remember that it ain’t real.”

“Excuse me?” Jack asked Sam, trying to increase the distance between them and feeling more and more lost with each step. He just wanted one moment. He had just wanted this park and this moment with the Sam he knew and instead he was just getting more and more confusing events. He just wanted this one comforting moment in a sea of random exercises of his perseverance, but he couldn’t have it. Jack, feeling helpless in an uncaring world, looked into Sam’s eyes for any of his Sam. He found none.

Then, with one final poke from Sam, Jack woke up.

Jack looked up into a set of translucent eyes much like his own. Unlike his, however, these eyes seemed excited and animated.

“Howdy.” Said the new face. “Sorry about poking ya, just tryin’ ta get your attention is all.” The emotions Jack saw glittering in their eyes, while present in the voice of the speaker, were distant and restrained compared to the feeling of goodwill that seemed to permeate every word. “Don’t reckon we’ve met before. Name’s Bright Mac.” The pony then extended a shimmering translucent hoof to Jack who was still laying flat on the floor.

“I’m Jack.” Then, remembering his etiquette, Jack continued. “It’s a pleasure to meet you Mr. Mac.” Hesitantly he reached out a hand and grasped the proffered hoof.

“Nah, Mr. Mac is my son, just call me Bright.” Bright said as he pulled Jack to his feet. “Don’t reckon I’ve seen ya around before, or anyone like ya. New in town?”

“You could say that.” Jack said. Then, suddenly, something clicked. “How did you pull me up?”

“With the ole heave ho, you just held on and then I-”

“No I mean like, how can you interact with me? Can ghosts just interact with other ghosts, no thought required?”

“Ah so you do know that yer dead, had me worried what with how you were pretending to sleep an’ all, even imagined yourself havin’ a nightmare.” Bright smiled a sympathetic smile that Jack couldn’t help but feel was for someone else. “Now, I know it can be hard for some folks to come to grips with it, Butter’ll tell you all about how hard it was for me when you meet her I’m sure.”

Jack was tempted to explain that he had actually been sleeping, or close enough to that it was sleeping for all intents and purposes, but decided against it. Bright seemed like the kind of pony who would know more about this sort of thing or, at least, wouldn’t accept that he was wrong about something from someone who didn’t have as much experience as he did. Which, Jack decided, was a fair stance to have.

“So,” Said Bright to break the awkward silence that had settled in the wake of his previous statement, and apparently deciding that the conversation was already awkward, he pushed it further in that direction, “How’d you die? If you don’t mind me asking that is, I know it can be a touchy subject for some folks.”

“I uh…” Jack said, trying to figure out how to answer the question. He wasn’t one hundred percent sure of the whole of it himself. So, instead of getting vague about it, decided to just go for the simplest, most direct answer. “I fell.”

“Ah, so you are the alien from outer space that has the town all abuzz.” Jack nodded a yes and then Bright nodded in understanding. “I figured ya probably were, didn’t wanna open with it though, seemed wrong.” Then Bright walked through the wall that Jack had been stuck in the day before and right out of the building. Jack looked on in confusion until Bright leaned back into the room. “You comin?”

“No?” Jack said, trying not to sound rude but suspecting he did anyway. “I promised a mare in the hospital that I would check up on her sister for her and they’re headed back to hospital tomo- today I guess it is now.” Jack said, correcting himself. “So I’m going to be doing that in a bit and I don’t want to get tired from walking around in the meantime, not sure if I’ll even make it to the hospital if I’m honest.” Jack watched as Bright’s expression grew dour and tried to cut in to stop it. “Sorry though.”

“No it’s fine.” Said the stallion, his tone suddenly overwhelmingly solemn with only flecks of the goodwill that had been so present before. “You gotta do what you gotta do. Wouldn’t want to get in the way of that.” Bright paused for a moment, then continued. “If you’re-” then Bright seemed to reconsider his words again, “Nah forget it.”

“No, what were you going to say?” Jack said, feeling extremely guilty about the sudden negative mood shift and looking for some way to improve it.

“Just that, if you’re still… around after all that, you can come visit me and Butter up at the Apple family farm, you know where that is?” Remembering said location from the map he’d vaguely memorized, Jack nodded a yes. It would’ve been a difficult thing to miss truthfully, given how expansive it was. “Just in the loft of the barn is our usual location, there’s usually at least one of us there.” When Jack nodded his understanding again, Bright gave an affirmative nod of his own. “Alright, well I’ll let you get on with your business then.” And then Bright left the room and this time didn’t come back.

In the silence, Jack settled back onto the floor. It was too close to dawn for him to consider going back to sleep, but he could at least make sure he was as rested as he could be for when they inevitably left.

“Hello Butter honey.”

“Mornin’ Bright dear, find any new ghosts on your walkabout this time?”

“Funny you mention it actually, found the ghost of the alien from outer space that has Applebloom and her friends all in a tizz about space travel.”

“And you didn’t invite him over?”

“I did dear, but he said he had some unfinished business he needed to take care of, promise to keep.”

“Ah, shame.”

“Yea, but who am I to stop a ghost on their last binding duty? Told him to stop by afterwards of course, but I reckon he’ll probably move on after he finishes up this debt of his.”

“Mmm, wish I could have met him but I suppose I can’t fault either of you for it.”

“Yea, said there was a mare in the hospital that he promised he would check up on her kin for her.”

“...”

“Bright, dear.”

“Yes darling?”

“Didn’t the papers say that the alien died when he hit the pavestones?”

“Yes?”

“Then how, exactly, do you think he managed to make a promise with a mare in the hospital?”

Chapter Seven

Jack was aware he wasn’t exactly inspiring confidence in Berry Punch. She’d seemed excited when he’d told her the news that her sister should be arriving to visit her soon. This excitement had almost completely faded away in the hour that had passed since he’d said this. She’d sent him a few questioning glances in that period of time, glances that he’d done his utmost to completely ignore. What he couldn’t ignore, however, was the mounting dread in the pit of his stomach. He’d been with them right up until they were only a couple blocks away. Sure, there had been his little event back near the market square that he hadn’t told Berry about, but the fallout from that shouldn’t have delayed the ponies for this long. All this caused Jack, Berry’s sole informant about the imminent arrival of her sister, to twitch like a bundle of nerves under an electrical current.

Berry, for her part, was trying to guess as to the nature of Jack. She’d assumed when she first met him in the haze of a midnight waking that he was a figment of her imagination, that the way he was fussing over her IV meant that it was simply one of the nurses and that she was perceiving things incorrectly. When he was still there when she woke up again the next day the idea that he was a hallucination imbedded itself into her thoughts and lingered there. Even as day after day passed with his continuing presence she remained unsure of his existence mostly due to the fact that she remained the only one who could interact with him, who could see him even.

She’d had two reasons for sending him to check up on Colada, first and most obviously she had been worried about her. The doctors wouldn’t let her leave their care while she was still recovering and the letter she’d sent to Cheerilee had come back full of platitudes and non-committal statements. Berry had refrained from judging Cheerilee for this, she’d known her a long while and trusted the teacher’s judgement on matters relating to children. She’d proven almost essential in helping Berry raise Colada after their mother passed away. Still, despite this trust, her curiosity writhed within her and she had hoped that sending Jack would help alleviate some of the problem.

The second reason was to see if he’d actually go away, come back, and relate any useful information on his return. This, Berry had hoped, would help her figure out if the ghost was truly there or if some part of her mind had broken from her… from… what had put her in the hospital in the first place.

To her mild surprise he had returned a couple of days later, and had brought the information that not only had he been to see Colada but that she was coming to the hospital to visit her older sister that very day. This had hit the bed bound Berry Punch like a bolt from the blue and she found herself trying to temper her excitement about seeing her younger sister for the first time in weeks with the idea that she still didn’t know if Jack truly existed.

As time wore on and her sister failed to arrive she noticed that Jack had been getting more and more nervous, more and more fidgety, and Berry found her hopes about his existence beginning to swing from one extreme to the other. Where as before she’d hoped that he did exist, if only to confirm to herself that she wasn’t crazy, she now found herself wishing he was just a figment. That there was no reason for Jack to be twitching like he was. That there was nothing wrong with the fact that her sister hadn’t arrived. That her sister was fine back with Cheerilee. That nothing was going wrong while she remained stuck in a hospital bed.

Regardless of his existence or lack thereof, Berry Punch found herself talking to him to try and vent the worries that were building up in her mind.

“And you said nothing happened on the way over?”

Jack flinched as Berry’s voice suddenly filled the room, then he settled down, calmer than before she’d spoken at all, and focused on the door to the room. Staying quiet for far longer than Berry thought was right, then... “Yes.” He confirmed, eventually.

“Mmmm” Berry mused. She was about to launch into an interrogation of the pause he’d given when she heard hoofsteps approaching and silenced herself with a mixture of anticipation and worry.

The doctor walked in, all smiles, with three familiar faces trailing behind him, who didn’t seem to match his expression. Derpy seemed happy as always and entered the room with a light and easy step while the two fillies near her fetlocks all but shuffled into the room. Dinky looked rather downcast but it was Colada who seemed especially downtrodden as she entered and Berry could see a familiar bittersweet emotion dance in her sister’s eyes. The kind of emotion you only got by seeing a family member in a hospital bed.

“You have a couple of visitors Miss Punch.” Said the doctor with a smile. “Keep in mind that you only have an hour and a half of visiting hours, I’ll be back then.” And with that the doctor was out of the room and down the hall, leaving the mares and fillies to talk amongst themselves.

“Sorry we’re so late Berry.” Derpy said with a voice so sincere that it almost sounded like an exaggeration. “We meant to be here earlier but something happened on the way over and the Princess ended up getting involved.” Berry started at that info and seemed to have trouble processing it. “Why don’t you say what happened Colada?” Derpy looked back to Colada to give the queue for her to explain and, in doing so, missed Berry’s quick glance to the corner of the room where Jack was all but writhing in silence.

Colada took a moment and breathed, finally raising her gaze to look at her older sister, just a little too late to catch the tail end of said quick glance. “I tried to grab a fish tank off the top shelf of the glass shop and it fell.” Said Colada in a defeated tone, then took another breath and continued her obviously rehearsed confession. “Even though Missus Derpy told me not to, and you always told me not to. Sorry.”

“It fell?” Berry cut in, the sudden rush of worry for Colada drowning out the apology to her own ears. “Did you get cut or hurt?” The worry was expounded as she added silently in her head ‘So hurt that the princess ended up getting involved?’

“Nooo….” Colada dragged the word out as if hoping to eventually find some answer in it, then fell silent when she failed to stumble across one. She busied herself with running one of her front hooves across the other front leg, looking once more at the ground.

“Then what happened?”

“Uhm…” Colada threw a glance to Derpy, who nodded in encouragement, then turned back to face her sibling. “A uhm… a ghost caught it.” Then she braced herself for the disbelief, perhaps the claim that she was lying, perhaps the run around to confirm it with Derpy. What she didn’t expect was for her sister to simply ‘hmmm’ in thought, glance at the corner of the room, then look back to her.

Derpy, it seemed, was also unprepared for this reaction and silence held the room for a moment before Berry spoke up again. “And that’s why Princess Twilight showed up? To talk to you about the ghost that caught the fish tank?” Colada nodded once and Berry fell back into silence of thought for a moment before looking to the gray mare. “Can I have a couple moments alone with Colada please Derpy? I’d like to talk to her about what she did.”

Derpy’s thought process stuttered for a moment before she managed a nod and turned to Dinky and spoke with a voice that seemed to warble with excitement and, as it spoke, passed excitement on to her daughter. “Want to go talk to the doctors about how to help people when they get hurt, Dinky? I’m sure that Nurse Redheart would know someone we could talk to.” When her daughter offered her enthusiastic support of the idea the two left the room as well, leaving only Berry, Colada, and, in a sense, Jack.

Berry waited until Derpy was out of earshot with the door closed behind her before turning her gaze to the penitent Colada. “Big sis is gonna seem kinda crazy here for a second, alright? I’ll explain in a second okay?” Colada looked on in confusion before nodding with hesitant understanding. “Thanks.”

Then all the kindness she had just shown to her younger sibling seemed to evaporate as barely contained shouts were directed to the corner of the room. “Nothing important happened?!”

Then, Colada heard a rush of wind, almost like a response. The nature of its existence at all was strange given that all the windows were closed but the timing of it had been almost perfect. Berry had fallen silent and seemed to be listening to it so Colada tried to do the same. Focusing on the sound, she found she could almost hear a voice within it, it was saying. “... didn’t want to worry you.”

“Worry me?! Don’t worry about worrying me, I deserve to know if my sister got into trouble!” Berry replied, confirming to Colada that she wasn’t just imagining what she was hearing.

The wind, barely a whisper compared to the indignation of Berry Punch, spoke again. “I didn’t think it was going to be a big deal. I was gone right after everyone looked at me. If I’d known royalty was gonna show up I would’ve told you everything that happened.” The wind seemed to slack for a bit in a pause before it came back. “I was hoping everyone would just think that it was a weird visual effect. I didn’t want to upset you if no one even ended up remembering it.

There was a pause as Berry restrained her emotions, taking a breath to center herself. Judging by the lack of any gusts it seemed the invisible speaker was more than content to wait..

“How did anyone even see you? I thought only I could see you.” Berry said at last, changing the subject as she saw no use in pursuing the previous issue any further.

“I… I don’t know. I caught the fish tank and then everybody was looking right at me in shock. I don’t know how they knew it wasn’t like a unicorn’s magic or whatever.”

“You glowed.” Colada cut in, getting both the invisible voice and her sister to pause for a moment, the latter looking at her in surprise, though the former may have as well, Colada couldn’t tell. Colada tried to turn her head to where she’d heard the voice but wasn’t absolutely sure that she managed it. “When you caught it you’re um… outline?”

“Silhouette.” Said Berry and ‘the wind’ at the same time.

Colada nodded. “Yea that. It glowed. I could see you.” Colada took a moment to collect herself as Berry looked on in a mixture of confusion and worry. “Oh!” She said suddenly, remembering a lesson she’d been taught.. “Um. Thank you for catching the fish tank, uh, whatever your name is.”

“It… wasn’t a problem. And my name’s Jack.”

Berry glanced again to the corner, to Jack and, unseen by Colada, Jack glanced back to Berry. Each of their glances held the same unsaid question. ‘Is this a good thing or something I need to worry about?’ When they met each other’s gaze and saw the same question reflected back at them they both turned to look at Colada, though Colada only saw the movements of her sister of course she seemed to get the gist of what had just happened and, in the face of the curious worried glance that had been leveled at her, asked the only acceptable question for such a moment.

“What?”

“Alright that’s the preliminary paperwork in order, uh, Sam. We’re scheduling a test session as we speak which will happen sometime next week, we do need you to come back sometime tomorrow though to fill out a few more things including a more restrictive version of the NDA you signed today. Swing by whenever you have time and we should be able to fit you in.”

“Alright, sounds like a plan.”

“Good to hear. We’ll see you then Mister, uh, Missus, uhm… which-”

“Whichever.”

Author's Note

Sam is non-binary and doesn't much mind what words or pronouns are used to refer to him/her/them. This is a fictional character I made up though so please, just treat everybody with respect. Hopefully that's not a divisive statement.

I mean it is.

But hopefully...

Ah forget it.

Edit: 9/21/2018

I apparently took for granted the idea that not everyone knows what non-binary is. Non-binary, in its most simple definition, is an umbrella term to refer to someone who does not identify as either male or female. There is a lot of stretch within this definition for people to define themselves further (Gender queer, gender fluid, etc.) and is more of an overarching definition than a final say. I've presented Sam as just Non-binary here to keep things simple.

Unless I'm behind on the times. I'll confess that I'm not super up to date but that's what it meant last I checked, if it isn't that anymore please send me a PM to let me know. Thanks for reading!

Chapter Eight

Jack’s gaze wound its way slothfully back and forth between Berry and Colada, a small smile permanently resting on both of their faces as they took turns chatting with each other. Jack found himself with his own content grin as Colada told a story he had stopped trying to follow a while ago, names he couldn’t recognize and places he didn’t know had dissuaded him from investing too much into the tale but the moment persisted. Two sisters, thick as thieves, reunited. They were happy and Jack was happy for them, though something clung to the back of his mind, a wayward thought he couldn’t shake.

“- and then Scootaloo did a flip on her scooter like Wha!” Narrated the filly, jumping and twisting slightly in the air, noticeably short of performing a flip herself, but it got the idea across, which was the important thing. In her extremely accurate recreation of the events her sister had missed out on, she seemed to have failed to notice the doctor who had entered the room behind her and stood silently for the past couple moments, apparently not too excited to interrupt the visit.

The doctor, in turn, waited politely for the filly to finish her story, but as time stretched on and the end of the story appeared to continue being delayed, she instead opted to wait for a pause where the filly had to catch a breath before abruptly cutting in. Spotting her chance she quickly leapt into the monologue. “I’m afraid that we’ve reached the end of our visiting hours today.” She said, loudly enough to catch the filly’s attention before she continued into yet another run on sentence of her very important story.

“Awwww….” Colada’s head drooped at the announcement, “I didn’t even get to the bestest part yet.”

Jack looked to the doctor and saw a kind, if immovable, look on their face. “Unfortunately we’ve already let you stay for several moments longer than we ought to have done. Your sister needs her rest, dear, and Miss Derpy and Dinky are waiting to take you home.” Jack glanced to the door of the room and saw said duo lingering just outside the threshold. They’d swung back near the room a couple times over the course of the evening but they hadn’t actually stuck their heads in, apparently not wanting to interrupt this visit between sisters.

However, despite the mounting evidence that this was, in fact, the end of the visit. Colada still turned a hopeful gaze to Berry, only for that hope to be shot down with a shake of the head. “I’m afraid the doctor’s right Colada, you can’t spend the night here. It’s no place for a filly.”

Colada turned away, frowning, “No place for you either.” She mumbled under her breath as she began to leave the room. The doctor passed an understanding, half-hearted smile to Berry and began to escort the filly from the room. Colada managed to shake the doctor by pausing briefly at the doorway and then running back. She leapt onto the bed and wrapped her sister in a hug around the neck. “I miss you a lot.” She managed through renewed tears.

“I miss you a lot too, Sis.” Berry offered honestly, giving a reassuring pat on the back with one hoof and cradling with the other until Colada decided to pull herself away.

She spared one more glance to Berry and then, as if remembering something, a glance to the corner of the room where Jack was. “Bye.” She said finally, leaving the room shortly there after. Jack gave a wave, only remembering she couldn’t actually see him after she’d already left earshot.

“See ya later.” Was Berry’s choice for farewell and shortly thereafter the door closed on the room.

The doctor did a few minor check ups of their own to ensure Berry was in a stable condition and then left the room as well, turning the light off as they went.

In the silent half-light of the waning moon, Jack could practically hear Berry’s gaze as she turned to look at him. He ignored it, hoping that it would eventually go away and leave him be in the night. Instead, she decided to break the silence.

“What’s on your mind then?”

“What?”

“You’ve been thinking about something this whole time, what is it?”

“I just. I didn’t know if it was polite or…”

Berry gave an exaggerated sigh. “What is it, Jack.”

Pushing away his fear Jack turned to look back at Berry, and saw in her eyes a new friendliness. Drawing courage from the even gaze, he found the words that had been stuck on his mind. “You don’t treat her like a younger sister. You treat her like a daughter.” He managed eventually.

There was a pause, then she turned to look at the door of the room. Through it. Miles beyond it. “Do I?” She asked then, instantly robbing Jack of all the courage he’d managed to scrape together.

“I mean.” Jack quickly said, already stepping back from his assertion. “I don’t have a super large pool of experience with siblings, or parenting, or… anything at all really. It just… seemed that way I guess? Like, I don’t know how you do things here but you didn’t like, joke with her or prank her or tease her. You two just sort of interacted like how I’ve seen parents interact with their children, and not at all like the siblings I know.” Jack paused, but when Berry still wasn’t forthcoming he continued to hedge his words. “But like I said, I mean, I don’t know how things are done here. I’m just applying things that I noticed from my world and that might not match up right. And then on top of that even if you did act like that it’s really not place to poke at that stuff. I don’t really know anything about you or your family so I don’t want to step over any boundaries or-”

“You’re fine.” Berry said, stirring from her silent reverie to interrupt Jack before he fell even further into his self-doubt. “I was just thinking. About our mom. About how I’m probably more like a mother to Colada than a sister, like you said.”

“You don’t have to go into this.” Jack hurried to cut in, feeling a building momentum behind Berry’s words.

“No. I don’t. But it seems like we’re going to be interacting a lot more going forward, and you helped my sister when I wasn’t there to do it, so I should let you in on this stuff. And maybe in the future you can share something from your own life. Like maybe this ‘Sam’ person you keep talking about in your sleep.” Berry glanced to Jack, who blanched as much as a ghost was capable of blanching. “But I get that it’s something really close to you, so I’ll let you decide when you want to talk about that.”

Jack nodded in appreciation, and silence once again descended. This time it was thoughtful, plodding. Berry looked concerned as she gazed at the far wall, her internal monologue clear on her face even in the descending darkness of night.

“My mother.” Berry started, moving her gaze back to Jack and waiting a moment longer before continuing. “was a flawed mare. She did a lot of stupid stuff, but I don’t think any of it was malevolent. She was broken from a bad past she didn’t like to talk about. When she was pregnant with me… you know FASD?” Berry interrupted herself, looking back to Jack.

Jack nodded. “Fetal-” he started before realizing Berry was saying something different from his own answer.

“Foaling alcohol spectrum disorder.” Berry answered, pausing a moment as she collected herself again, allowing Jack a moment of his own to ponder on how similar the terms were. “She drank a lot.” Berry continued. “At first it was because she didn’t know that she was pregnant, but then after she did it was because she didn’t have the willpower to stop herself. She tried though. I’ve been told I have a lesser case than one might expect, so I think she did try and stop herself even if she didn’t ultimately succeed.”

Berry took a deep shuddering breath and Jack fought back his own urge to remind her she didn’t have to talk about this. Unsure of what else to say, however, Jack found himself merely mute as the mare pulled herself together.

“Anyway. As a result of that I’ve been dealing with my own issues my whole life. My growth was a little stunted, I've got a bit of an alcohol problem myself, I'm not that great at math, and my mind tends to drift to… uncomfortable places when I’m alone.” Here Jack and Berry both looked at the hospital room around them. “But after I was born I had a decade and change to realize what was going on with me, and why. Mom was always supportive of me during that time, and some nights I’d hear her crying herself to sleep over me and what she’d 'done to me' as she put it.” Berry breathed again, and Jack also found himself feeling short of breath, despite his inability to inhale air in the first place. “She wasn’t… an evil mother. She just… had flaws. More than most ponies. She tried but she didn’t usually succeed. She tried more than anypony had a right to ask her to try.”

“Then…” Berry looked back to the doorway again. “She got pregnant again.” She seemed more than happy to skip over the specifics in this regard, and moved on eagerly. “She asked me to help her this time. I was to make sure she didn’t drink any alcohol. No matter how much she asked, or begged. It was a lot to ask of a teen. She knew that. I knew that. She told me it a lot at the time. She didn’t trust herself. And I did have to step in a lot to stop her.” Berry paused again. “Sorry I’m…” Berry ran a hoof over her eyes to wipe away the tears that were starting to form there. “Thought I’d gotten over this.”

“Take your time.” Jack encouraged. “I don’t… we don’t have to do this all now.” He attempted, feeling very much out of his depth.

“No it’s… almost over.” Berry sniffed once and loudly. “She died in labor, giving birth to Colada. I was old enough to be an adult at this point and so I took her in and we ended up with mom’s house in the will. I wasn’t… very good at raising a child. I’m still not. I knew Cheerilee was looking to work with children so I asked her for help. She was… instrumental in raising Colada, almost as much as I was. I never could’ve done it without her.”

Berry rubbed her eyes again and looked at last to Jack who, despite not having tear ducts, was crying all the same. Ghostly lines traced themselves down his face as he looked back at Berry. “Well that’s my story.” She said simply, attempting a half-hearted shrug that was completely ruined by her own tears. “Sorry it got all touchy-feely at the end there. I didn’t mean to start crying I just… I wanted to tell someone about it. Get it off my chest. Cheerilee knew the whole thing by the time I wanted to tell someone about it so I never got to tell her. I never got the closure of saying it out loud, didn’t want to make anybody down with my sad story.” Berry said before scoffing. “Guess you were my captive audience instead of my trusted ear.”

Jack jumped up from his chair, barreling towards Berry. He reached out to hug her to give some comfort, and Berry reached out in return, but instead he phased clear through her and the bed she laid on. Berry felt a chill pass through her and then, after a pause, she heard a sob-soaked laugh echoing out from beneath her bed. After a pause of her own, she joined it.

Chapter Nine

Subtle stirrings beneath a hospital bed proved a prelude to louder scuffling as Jack awoke in his unintended sleeping spot. It was not the first time he had fallen asleep crying, but it was the first time in a long while that he didn’t have to worry about Sam asking about red, puffy eyes and tear-stained pillows, or floor in this case. Unfortunately this lack of worry was not comforting. Rather, it was like some object he’d carried to work everyday was missing now, and he felt like he was devoid a shard of himself, like he wouldn’t be whole without the weight he knew so well.

Careful, so as not to wake the still sleeping Berry he heard breathing on the bed above, Jack extracted himself from beneath the bed and found the room still cast in the familiar darkness that had been there when he’d gone to sleep. Curious, he went to the window and realized that even though he felt fully rejuvenated, like one might after a good night’s rest, the world outside seemed to have hardly aged a moment. The stars and moon shone plainly through the hospital room’s window, drizzling their light onto the ground beneath Jack.

Shaking himself from the multitude of musings that drifted through his head, Jack spared a glance back to the sleeping mare. She was peaceful in her dozing, more so than Jack had ever seen from her. It was not a great change from before, merely the absence of minor fitful episodes that would manifest occasionally while she slept, but it was still a change nonetheless. At the thought of it, some shard of pride began to form from the idea that he had helped her, and Jack turned his attention once more to gaze at the world beyond the hospital’s walls as he appreciated the feeling.

It was too late, or early, for Jack to do much of anything to occupy himself, which had the unfortunate effect of causing the weight of his thoughts to compound and compound in the silence of the hospital room with every passing second until they felt a mere moment away from smothering him. Jack tried to think of something to do to wait for morning lest he be forced to deal with that most frightening of passtimes: introspection. Even now the roots of his self-doubt stretched and reached for that fragile crystal of pride he now harbored, threatening with every moment to snatch it up in the jaws of unfortunate memories and dark thoughts and shatter it.

In the midst of this internal crisis his eyes alighted on a distant building that protruded like an obelisk from the distant tree line. It’s colors and minor details were unreadable in this moonlight, though the shape of a barn was still easily discerned. As his eyes lingered on it as he remembered his interaction with Bright Mac the previous night, though it felt much longer ago now. Jack had more or less promised to visit the ghost and his wife, and now seemed a perfect time for it, given the time of day and lack of anything else to do. So, happy to have found something to occupy his time and thoughts, Jack gave one more fleeting glance around the room, out of habit, before he placed a hand on the hospital wall and phased through it out into the night.

The soundscape shifted immediately from the relative quiet of a sleeping hospital to the nightlife of the wilderness. The well made walls of the formidable structure proving just how much noise they kept at bay. The sounds of crickets and owls and all their other nocturnal brethren proving loud enough that it forced Jack to pause for a minute to acclimate to the sudden cacophony. As he blinked a few slow times, Jack orientated himself towards the distant barn and took a deep breath. Then, when he was altogether again, he set out. Unsure, at the moment, if this was the normal volume for such night creatures or if something had them riled up.

It wasn’t a particularly long walk, but the mere action of motion was a welcome friend that helped put other thoughts away, delaying them for the moment. Despite the brevity of the walk, however, Jack still felt exhausted all the same by the time he reached the edge of the orchard, his earlier rejuvenation proving to be extremely short lived. He paused a moment to check his surroundings on the threshold of the orchard and took a few deep breaths before turning to look around the apple farm. Squinting, he managed to spot the towering building that seemed to loom over the surrounding acres. It was an imposing dark silhouette, back lit by a full moon. The trees around him creaked eerily in the night winds and distant howls echoed through the night. Yet, despite the ominous phenomenon, the barn still seemed a very homely welcoming house.

Picking up his pace slightly, eager to meet the only other ghost that Jack knew of, he managed to close the remaining distance at a reasonable speed. His alacrity was halted, however, when he came to the door of the structure. It proved to be quite an obstacle.

Not, as one might expect, because of its physical presence. No, Jack was fairly confident that he could simply phase through the door with little effort. Rather it was a societal obstacle. Did a ghost knock on another ghost’s door? He assumed yes, the purpose for knocking was to let the owners of the house know you were there, after all. To politely request entrance into another's home. Yet, interacting with the door at all, let alone producing an audible knock, would be significantly harder than simply walking through it.

Jack regretted that he had not been given a book on ghost etiquette, though if he had he wasn’t sure he would’ve been able to read it anyway unless the literature itself was also, itself, a ghost. Anxious, he glanced around the empty apple orchard, hoping that Bright or Butter might arrive with incredible convenience to let him in. Thereby sparing him from guessing as to what the function of a door was in ghost society.

When no such luck proved itself present, Jack turned back to the door and took a deep breath in a small attempt to calm himself. Steeling his mind, he placed a hand on the door, closed his eyes, and pushed his head through the wooden barrier.

Just as they had back at the hospital, the sounds changed again once his head was on the other side of the barrier, though less dramatically. With the world of noise he had been in before now merely muffled by the wooden walls, instead of muted. When Jack opened his eyes again to view the interior of the barn he was greeted by a heavy inky blackness. It was unremarkable in its darkness yet unique in some other way that Jack couldn’t place his finger on. After a moment of examination wherein nothing stuck out to him, Jack raised his voice.

“Hello?” He called into the void, flinching at the volume of his own voice. The quiet interior seemed to somehow hold its breath in response. “It’s… uhm… Jack? From the... house? Bright Mac said I should come by sometime?” Suddenly a cacophony of noise erupted from the loft and Jack fought the urge to pull his head back through the door and run in response to the sudden spark of fear that ignited in his chest. Then, just as suddenly, a glowing head phased through the wooden boards above and locked eyes with Jack and the terror died away.

“Jack?!” Came the shocked voice of Bright Mac. “I thought that- You were- Oh stars, Butter’ll never let me forget-” Then a welcoming smile blossomed across the stallion’s face before he turned his attention fully to Jack. “Forget it. We’re glad you could make it. Come on in. I’ll be down in a minute to show you the ladder up.” To punctuate the end of this greeting, Bright Mac’s face phased back up and through the wooden boards above, leaving Jack once again in the darkness.

Wringing his hands, one of the few mannerisms that had the same feel to it as it had when he was alive, Jack stepped fully into the barn. In the dark and quiet room his mind whirred, grasping at strands of thought in a desperate attempt to occupy itself. He suspected that if Bright Mac were still alive this is the part where he would be loudly descending some nearby ladder that would help fill the atmosphere with the knowledge that there were people, or individuals, conscious beings existing in this barn. Instead, there was only the distant sounds of wild life, bleeding in through thick wooden walls.

Jack suspected that, given enough time, he might’ve been able to find this ladder that Bright Mac had spoken of. It wasn’t in clear view, at least not from where Jack stood by the door, but it was still a barn. Not a labyrinth or a shopping mall, just a barn. So it probably wouldn’t have taken all that long to find the way up. Jack also knew that Bright Mac was not the kind of soul who would ask that a stranger bumble their way around until they found what they needed if he knew the answer. No, Bright Mac was kind and seemed the sort who liked to help.

On the other hand, Jack would’ve liked to be the kind who liked to help. Instead he found himself too often afraid to lend aid. Not even afraid of anything, truthfully. He already didn’t get along socially with people so there was little reason for him to fear what others might think. Still, he feared all the same. Just as he feared now, in the dark and quiet of the barn at midnight. What had seemed homely from the outside now felt… wrong. No, it didn’t feel wrong, he realized. It was homely as always. It just felt wrong for him to be there.

He heard his breaths growing close and shallow but was unable to stop them from doing so. So they grew even shorter and even shallower. Being dead meant there was no physical limitation to stop his spiral as he felt like the world was collapsing on lungs he did not have. As if the darkness were trying to suffocate him, unaware he could not be smothered anymore but trying its hardest to do so all the same.

His breath grew tighter and tighter until it stopped altogether and the world seemed to shift suddenly. Everything looked the same, it just... wasn't. Jack didn’t feel anything in the moment, except that he should have felt something. It felt like his breath was gone like a memory, like the world was collapsing, as if the idea of words had been lost to some place he had lived in before and didn’t anymore. He could feel now, in the same place the anger had come from those couple of days before, some haunting depth within himself yawning open like a great maw. Some mass collusion of all his anxieties, hungry.

And then a familiar face stepped into the room.

Jack’s breath snapped back like a rubber band. The great maw faded from inside him. He stood paralyzed at the door, bent over with a hand latched onto a leg to keep himself upright, one hand clutching at his chest where he thought he felt some scar he did not have in life and could not see now. Jack breathed and breathed for a few seconds before he looked at Bright Mac, who stood beside him now. Jack realized the stallion must have run over in a panic.

“You alright?” Bright asked, worry plain as day on his face. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. No pun intended.”

Jack felt like he’d almost died a second time, except worse. More permanent. Still, he’d been asked all his life if he was alright so he did what he always did.

He lied.

“Yea, yea. I just… zoned out for a second.” He said, wearing a fake smile on his face. Not that anyone would’ve been able to tell, most didn’t have a real smile to compare it against. “You said there was… a ladder?”

Twilight Interlude Three

Twilight was upset.

No that wasn’t right, upset was an understatement. Angry wasn’t really the word either though, maybe something more akin to annoyed but taken to the extreme? Pissed off was close, but still wasn’t quite right.

The fact that she didn’t have the precise words she needed to describe her mood proved to make her mood even worse which, naturally, made it even harder to find the right word for it, a vicious cycle if there ever was one. Of course, that wasn’t even the worst of it, the rest of the reasons for her terrible mood were frustrating even by a normal pony’s standards.

She had not even a half day ago just moved the study and investigation of the alien creature to a side project in her mental folders, had come to a resolution to the Rainbow Dash situation, having looked around and found a semi-local but unfortunately out of town therapist, and joining the hold queue for Celestia’s book, The Fragility of the Mind, at the Canterlot Library for further research. Things had, simply, been on the upswing. The world had been about to settle back into a kind of normalcy.

Or would have been if it hadn't been for the event at the glass shop, setting the world haywire once again.

Twilight had seen Rainbow Dash’s reaction when they’d learned that, apparently, the ghost of the dead creature had caught a falling fish tank. She had seen the confusion, the disbelief. She had seen that the resurgence of the strange creature had rubbed salt into the wound that Rainbow was already suffering from, keeping the damage fresh and open to the elements. The look on her face had made Twilight wish, more than anything, that she could discount the eye witness accounts of all those ponies. That she could say something like “Ghosts aren’t real Rainbow Dash.” The only problem was, if it wasn’t a ghost, what was it? Twilight had learned, mostly because of Pinkie Pie, that blatant denial in the face of strange evidence was not scientific, it was just naive stubbornness. She didn’t actually believe it was a ghost, she was still Twilight Sparkle after all, but until she had something to point to for why it wasn’t a ghost she had to remain open to the possibility.

Twilight had set up Rainbow’s therapist appointment as soon as she’d gotten back to the castle.

Then, as she made her way to the library for further research, she reexamined her notes of the various accounts of the ponies who had been present for the event and once again ran through the timeline that those involved had given her.

Colada, who was at the time under the care of Derpy Hooves, had been attempting to lift one of the larger glass fish tanks down from a shelf. This was, according to Derpy Hooves, something the filly tried to do quite a lot, whether to test or prove herself nopony knew. Usually whoever was with her managed to stop her in time but when Derpy had looked away for the briefest moment to see to her own daughter, Dinky, Colada had seized her opportunity. Unfortunately, the filly’s prowess was not on the level she thought it was, and turned out to be far from up to the task. Her grip had broken shortly after she’d pulled it from the shelf. The glass tank had plummeted like a stone but, instead of crashing to the ground, it had been caught, then lowered slowly the rest of the way. The force that had caught it, all the ponies present said, was the ghost of the strange creature that had died in the town square.

Twilight had triple checked with all those who had been in the shop at the time to make sure that they were sticking with that story. Hoping that maybe, just maybe, she could get one of them to say ‘well actually, now that you mention it, maybe it was just unicorn magic.’ But all of them refused to budge an inch on their testimonies. Twilight had magically scanned the store and had come up with… something, but whatever it was that had been present was long gone at the time of the spell and had neglected to leave any helpful clues for the princess. Moving to back up checks, she used a simple detection spell to check the environment for any potentially hallucinogenic sources, but had come up empty on that front as well. This wasn’t absolute proof that it was a ghost, crowds were very good at tricking themselves into believing things that weren’t true even without external stimulus, but it was enough that Twilight had to admit that there was a chance. And while there was at least a chance that it was a ghost, she couldn’t bring herself to tell Rainbow otherwise. If she did, and that ended up being a lie, Twilight didn’t know what she’d do.

Thus, Twilight’s miserable mood when she’d returned to the castle. She had thought she was done with this, at least until she had some free time. How foalish she’d been, thinking of it as a fun side project, but this was no longer a brain teaser to pass the time. Now it was an Issue with a capital I. Every second that went by with this situation being unsolved was a second that Rainbow lived in confusion with no outlet. It was a second that Ponyville might be in danger. Sure, catching a fish tank wasn’t nefarious, but who knew what the intentions of this strange entity might be. So, until such a time as Twilight knew that Ponyville and her friends were safe, this had been upgraded to an official princess matter.

Unfortunately, her official princess business hit an obstacle almost immediately. The shape of this obstacle was small with purple scales and green fins. Were it not for this small dragon blocking her entrance into the library, Twilight would’ve already been halfway through the first book in her new search. Yet there he stood, arms crossed, looking disappointed, in the doorway. Twilight would’ve teleported past him if the mere thought of it didn’t start up a headache. Instead she tried a magical alicorn princess’s second resort: Diplomacy.

“What’s the problem, Spike?”

“You’re not going to start another research session.” Spike said, defiant.

“I’m not?” Twilight asked, surprised. She was pretty sure she was going to.

“You haven’t slept in two days Twilight!” Spike frowned and the worry in his voice managed to reach into her soul and prod her heart. She turned to look out the nearby window and noticed it was dark outside. When had that happened? Sometime during her onsite interviews, if she had to guess. Looking guilty, she glanced back at Spike. His frown deepened. “At least two days,” he corrected.

“This is an extremely important project Spike!” Twilight defended. “Nobody knows what the timeline we’re looking at will be like. Things could change at any moment!” Spike, however, seemed unconvinced. In response Twilight changed tact. “Spike, I’m fine. I promise.”

Spike looked at her, doubting, and then reached out one claw and gave her a light push. Twilight wobbled on her hooves and was forced to spread her wings for balance to stop from falling over. Spike seemed thoroughly unimpressed. “You don’t look fine.” He said at last.

“Alright I’ll admit I’ve certainly been better,” Twilight acquiesced. The shove from Spike seemed to have fully broken whatever illusion she’d been under about her own state of self. “But that doesn’t mean that this isn’t important!” she asserted again, undeterred.

“Well I’m not letting you into the library until you get some sleep, Twilight.” Spike said again, kind but firm.

“I could just teleport past you, you know.” Twilight half-teased.

“Then why haven’t you?” Spike asked, smug.

The headache pulsed in Twilight’s head again as if she needed another reminder. Now it was her turn to frown. Seeing no way forward without risking a migraine so bad she wouldn’t be able to read anyway, and admitting to herself that a little sleep would be nice, she caved. “Alright, fine. I’ll go take a nap,” Spike seemed about to object but Twilight cut him off. “Yes, just a nap, and in the meantime you have to start getting the books together.” She passed a list of relevant books that she’d made on her way back to the castle to her number one assistant. “This is top priority Spike. Top. Priority.”

Spike didn’t seem happy with ‘just a nap’ but he snapped a salute anyway recognizing this was probably the best he was going to get, “On it Twilight!” He responded dutifully before he headed into the library and closed the door behind him.

Twilight took a step away from the library, then stopped and turned around with a mischievous grin. Maybe while he was busy she could sneak in and take one book back to her room. Just one! Just to get a head start. She had been about to undo her step away from the door when she heard the squealing of a wooden table as Spike shoved a barricade in place. Twilight rolled her eyes, admitting defeat, and retreated to her bedroom.

Twilight would like to say that she entered her bedroom, climbed into her bed, pulled her blankets up, settled into a comfortable spot and then eventually fell asleep after feeling uneasy about the work she was leaving unfinished.

What actually happened was she swayed into her bedroom. Hauled herself up onto her bed and was asleep before she made it to her pillows.

There was a period of darkness for Twilight Sparkle before she stirred again, and when her eyes opened to discover that she was no longer in her bed she blinked in confusion. Instead of her nice cushioned mattress she found herself in a long smooth corridor. As her mind worked to figure out where she now found herself she pulled herself from her hooves and looked down the hallway, noticing the doors decorated with familiar cutiemarks stretching along either side of her.

It took her only a moment longer to realize where she was. She hadn’t been here often, it wasn’t her domain, and her mind tended to go out of sync with itself when going from the waking world to a lucid dream, which always threw her. With a mind that was finally starting to clear and knowing now what, or more accurately who, she needed to be looking for, it was all too easy to actually find her. Such was the nature of dreams.

Princess Luna stood a couple doorways down the hallway, her eyes locked onto a spot on the wall where it looked like a door should’ve been. It was between two similar doors, so it would make more sense for there to be a door there than not. Yet, the space on the wall was bare. Twilight walked up to look at it as well, trying to divine what Luna was looking at.

After a moment with both alicorns staring holes into a vacant wall, Luna spoke. “I apologize Princess Twilight. It seems I have put the cart in front of myself as they say.” Twilight decided she wasn’t the right pony to critique the princess’s use of idioms and remained silent as the midnight princess continued. “I had intended to bring you here to show you a strange dreamer I took notice of a few nights back, one that I suspect is currently located within your town of Ponyville. Yet, it seems that they have neglected to fall asleep this night, or simply awoke before I made it here on my rounds, either way succeeding at making me look quite the foal for bringing you here.”

Twilight hesitated, her mind already wondering, curious, a sick kind of despair and worry taking root in her stomach. “A… strange dreamer?”

“Indeed.” Luna confirmed, turning away from the empty wall to Twilight. “A strange biped creature, I have not seen its like in our lands in all my nights.” Twilight, frozen by some realization unknown to Luna, did not respond. “I suspect my intention to get a closer look on my last visit to its dreams may have given it warning of me. Though it is strange that one glimpse of me would drive it from sleep. Most ponies do not even remember me upon waking.”

Twilight finally found her voice enough for some of the questions spinning in her head. “Was it… a creature with hair covering its head but mostly hairless on its arms?” Luna nodded. “And you couldn’t see its legs or torso because of the clothes it wore?” Luna nodded again, slower this time. “With two close together, front facing eyes?”

“You know it?” Luna asked at last.

“Yes… I’ve been… studying its corpse for the past week or so.” Twilight’s eyes gazed out into an indeterminate middle distance as Luna’s eyes widened.

“Surely you jest?” Demanded Luna. “I know my sister is one for pranks but I had suspected that you at least would not try to deceive me like this.”

“I’m not- I’m not joking, Princess Luna.” Twilight’s eyes managed to focus once again. “You said you’ve been looking at its dreams for a while, why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?”

Luna’s voice gained a wrathful edge to it. “Every night since my study began I have looked for you in this dreamscape and every night you remain awake, Princess Twilight Sparkle. You do not enjoy my night, as you sit in your library with magical lights simulating my sister’s sun, nor do you enjoy my dreams, as you keep yourself awake with stimulants.” Luna said, some resentful part of herself forcing its way up. Twilight opened her mouth to apologize, having gained a quick and disquieting glimpse into how Nightmare Moon had taken hold those thousand years ago, but Luna held a hoof aloft and Twilight remained silent at the command. Luna closed her eyes, focusing internally for a long moment, then she opened them once again. “I apologize. I did not mean to lose myself like that. After the work you and your friends have done to help me I have been trying to be better in my avoidance of the grooves I have worn into my thoughts. I only meant to say that it is hard to get in contact with you through my traditional methods. Had I known it was so important, I would have sent a letter, of course.”

“I’m sorry too, you’re right.” Twilight admitted, feeling guilty. “I’ve just been trying to sort this all out and I lost track of... well... a lot now that I think about it,” then feeling even more guilty she admitted, “I wouldn’t even be asleep tonight if Spike hadn’t made me.” Then, with finality, Twilight let out an irritated sigh. “This situation just feels like it’s getting out of my hooves.”

Silence reigned for a long moment before either princess spoke again, each taking measure of the other. “I accept your apology, so long as you accept mine.” Luna said at last, a faint smile on her lips. When Twilight nodded, Luna pressed on. “As for your situation, it seems like some help might be in order.” Luna’s smile grew wider as her own words gave her strength. “I have so missed you and the other elements since we last met, perhaps it’s time I took another visit to Ponyville.”

Chapter Ten

The apple family ghosts made Jack sick.

The little impromptu get-together had started off well enough, splendid even if it came down to it. Pear Butter was as nice a pony as her husband was. They had made small talk to pass the time and the happy, understanding welcome that Jack had received as a stranger in a strange land meant that he would remember the kindness of Bright Mac and Pear Butter for a long time. Unfortunately, over the course of several hours a problem had made itself known: They were deeply in love.

This wasn’t normally a problem for Jack, generally speaking he loved love. He’d wished the world he’d come from had more of it, in fact. He would’ve supported this love with all his heart too if it weren’t for the unfortunate fact that, with every action of affection between the couple, the night was quickly deteriorating for Jack. Each time they so much as brushed hooves together Jack felt the pain of longing in his chest increase. Each time he felt his stomach twist. Each time he seemed further and further away as he was reminded of what he'd lost, what he’d never find again.

His gaze dropped away from his hosts more and more often over the course of the visit. He couldn’t bring himself to witness it anymore and turned his gaze instead to his hands. Watching as his fingers worriedly intertwined themselves, turning in strained combinations with little to no conscious input from Jack himself. A twisting cat’s cradle without the string.

The worst part, he mused, was that he couldn’t even be mad at them about it. How could you be mad at someone just because they’d found a kind of love they could pour their heart into, even if the longing in your own heart made it hurt. Even if it tore your heart out with jealousy every time they leaned into each other, knowing beyond knowing that their partner would lean back and support them.

“Are you alright, dear?” So precarious was Jack’s emotional state that the term of affection at the end of the sentence almost sent Jack over the edge into tears in spite of the fact that it had been tacked on casually and held no emotion of its own. Jack glanced up to see Pear Butter eyeing him with a kind of worry and felt that lingering darkness around his heart retreat back to where he couldn’t hear its echoes anymore.

Jack, who had subconsciously expected to be politely forgotten, took a moment to get his thoughts together as best he could. Not that there was a lot to think about, just the one thing that he thought about almost constantly. “Just… missing someone.” He managed lamely, not having any words that would do any better a job at explaining.

“Oh…” Pear Butter responded, clearly needing no further explanation, though it took Bright Mac a moment to catch up to the implication. They shared a glance.

“Well I’ll uh… I’ll tell you what!” Said Bright Mac enthusiastically. Apparently deciding that, even though he was a pony without any clothes to speak of, he was more than ready to try and fly by the seat of his pants. “Me and Pear know exactly what you’re going through and there ain’t nothin’ to worry about!” He said, self-assured.

Jack scoffed, though it was more like a sarcastic laugh that he didn’t quite have the drive to commit to. He immediately felt bad about his reaction. What had Bright Mac ever done to deserve that? Yet Jack found himself too emotionally worn out to try and apologize.

Pear Butter gave Bright Mac a look. Though anyone familiar with having a spouse would’ve called it The Look. Bright Mac wasn’t a stupid stallion, most of the time anyway, and looked for a more appropriate way to couch his words. “Well alright,” He said, beginning the slow linguistic slide into reverse, Jack was familiar with the maneuver as he’d done a lot of it himself. “We don't know exactly what you’re going through, I ‘spose. But we know the outline of it more or less.”

Pear Butter nodded a nod that said ‘good start’, Bright Mac took heart in that nod even as his wife’s expression made it clear that it was only a start.

Bright Mac would’ve tugged at a collar if he had one. “An’ I ‘spose that there ain’t nothin’ to worry about, there’s probably some stuff you need to keep an eye out for.” This got another more affirmative nod. Bright Mac inwardly breathed a sigh of relief, happy to have found some ground to stand on in the conversation. “What I meant was that after Pear passed away I thought my whole world had ended, didn’t see much worth livin' for. Loved the kids of course but they tore my heart out too, reminded me so much of their mom.” He nuzzled into Pear’s neck as he spoke. “Then, when I passed away, she was there, waiting for me.” He smiled and gave his wife a peck on the cheek. “She’d felt the same way as me and waited all that time so we could be together again. An’ now, together, we can watch the kids grow up, just like we always wanted.”

Bright Mac let out a sigh and leaned on his wife. Pear Butter allowed a moment of closeness before she nudged him hard enough in the ribs to remind him that he had been going somewhere with his story. “What I mean to say is, as long as you're still around, and this someone that you're missing is still around, there’s always a chance you might wind up together again. An’ sometimes they’re around even if you don’t think they are. An’ if you and them really put your heart and mind to it, that chance only goes up.”

Jack smiled slightly, untangling his fingers. It was a nice story, though he certainly held a bias for sappy romance. Still…

“I think I should go.” Jack said, standing from his seat. “Thank you both so much for the company and the reassuring words but I think I need to head out before it loops back around to jealousy again.” Jack gave them both a polite nod and a practiced faux smile. As the ponies bid farewells of their own Jack made his way over to the ladder.

He had made it about half-way before he heard the noise of Bright Mac pulling himself to his hooves. “I’ll see you out.” He said, smiling. It wasn’t an offer, it was a statement of fact. Jack made no attempt to disagree with it.

He did voice a complaint when Bright Mac began to follow him down the ladder, however. “You don’t-“

“Yup I do.” Bright Mac cut in immediately, brooking no argument.

Silently, they descended the ladder. Silently, they exited through the barn’s closed door. Silently, they stood outside in the early dawn light with Bright Mac clearly wanting to say something. Until, at last, he managed to get it out.

“Now, look,” Bright Mac started. “I know this might sound a little harsh so I just want to make it clear, all I’m doing here is just giving some friendly advice.”

Jack nodded an affirmative and found himself staring out into the nearby forest as he did so. Something in the tree line was catching his eye’s attention but he couldn’t quite see what it was.

Bright Mac, apparently not noticing Jack’s distracted demeanor, continued. “Pear Butter doesn’t much like telling folks how to live their lives but you look like you could use some help. So keep this in mind, alright?” Bright Mac waited for a sign he was being listened to before he continued. “Long as you don’t know what’s keeping you a ghost, you might be a ghost for a very long time. Now, if you don’t want to spend that time in the worst misery of your life, which I imagine you probably don't, then you should probably see about making some friends.”

Jack managed to tear his gaze away from the forest, though he found the tree line trying to draw it back. “Sorry if I was-“

“You were fine Jack,” Bright Mac cut in, unwilling to lose control on the conversation. “Pear likes you, I like you. You’re a nice alien creature thing and we’re happy to have you over whenever you want to come by.” Bright Mac gave a reassuring nod and as the tension released Jack found his gaze once more on the forest.

The stallion spared a curious look to the forest himself before turning his attention back to Jack. “But we aren’t friends, Jack. You didn’t talk about yourself, where you came from, anything about your life. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but it means we’re stuck at neighbors. You need to find someone to confide in, talk with. Someone to, not to put too fine a point on it, befriend.” Bright Mac’s words registered in Jack’s ears but got filed away for later revision. He had finally spotted the thing in the forest and it immediately took up all his mental processes.

It was no wonder it had been so hard to see, it wasn’t moving. Wasn’t even blinking. If it weren’t for the accentuating light of the dawn sun it would’ve been almost completely invisible. It was a tall creature, like Celestia and Twilight had been. Alicorns? Is that what he’d heard them called? Yet it didn’t look quite right, something was off. Its coat was darkest black, inky and deep, and a mane filled with the suggestion of stars swirled out from underneath a light blue helmet. It reminded him, vaguely, of something in his recent nightmares that he’d half forgotten.

It stood perfectly still, staring directly at Jack, he could feel it. As he locked eyes with it he felt waves of emotion radiating from the strange creature. Rage, jealousy, hatred, loneliness, betrayal. They hit him like a blast of arctic air, cutting a cold wound clean to bone he no longer had. Jack had barely recovered from the feelings that buffeted against him when the eyes of the creature turned to vertical slits. Immediately, Jack was stunned still as he felt that same deep unending maw inside him open up again. He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t need to breathe, some suffocating part of him knew, but right now it felt like he needed a sudden influx of air more than he ever had in his life. He wanted to look away, more than anything, yet some apparently suicidal part inside him forced him to match the glare that had been leveled his way. Drawing him in like a moth to a flame. Pulling him along an exotic gravity he could only begin to guess at.

“Whatcha lookin’ at?”

Again the rubberband, snapping Jack back out of whatever freezing hell he’d fallen into. He glanced instinctively to Bright Mac, who was looking at him with a worried expression. Jack’s thoughts rolled around and folded into themselves in the confusion. “You didn’t… see?”

Bright Mac looked to the forest with a kind of practiced movement that implied he’d done it several times over the past couple seconds, then turned his attention back to Jack. A frown. A shake of the head.

Jack took a deep breath, not sure why he did so, and summoned enough courage to look back into the forest. Those terrifying eyes were gone now, though where they had been he did see a retreating cloud of black smoke that moved its way deeper into the tree line until it had disappeared from view.

Some part of Jack knew he would follow it. Not now, he could resist for now, but the draw on his mind only increased in the absence of the thing.

“I…” Jack managed, eventually, still gazing into a now empty tree line. “I need to go talk to Berry.”

“Alright Sam, let’s go over your equipment one more time before the big day.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Okay here we go. Let’s see… parachute?”

“Check.”

“Rations?”

“You can call it jerky, Larry.”

“Fine, jerky?”

“Check.”

“Water canteen?”

“Check.”

“Wh- I don’t suppose I can convince you against any of the items you chose to bring can I?”

“Nope.”

“Okay… whiskey canteen?”

“Check.”

“Wooden baseball bat?”

“Check”

“Butterfly knife?”

“Check.”

“...Second butterfly knife?”

“In case the first one breaks.”

“A… box of nails?”

“In case the baseball bat needs an upgrade.”

“Land sakes Sam.”

Chapter Eleven

Jack’s trek back to the hospital had been exhausting. It was strange, the trip out to the farm hadn’t been much of an effort at all but the return trip had nuked any reserve of energy he thought he’d had. With questions, answers, and everything in between buzzing through his mind, Jack made the last few trudging steps to the hospital wall and, at last, rested a hand against the heating stone. The trick now was old hat and, with barely a thought, he phased through it.

Well, saying he phased through it is a bit of an exaggeration. Truthfully, it was more of a collapse. As Jack gracelessly faceplanted onto the floor it took all of Berry Punch’s not inconsiderable self-restraint to prevent herself from jumping a foot into the air. This is good as it would’ve caused a lot of questions, questions likely delivered from the nurse who was also currently in the room, and as far as answers went it seemed like those ones might be a little on the complicated side.

As Jack lifted his head from the cool floor to look at his surroundings he found a somewhat odd sight waiting for him. Berry was out of the bed. Not only that, a nurse was currently helping her walk the perimeter of the room. Jack watched, confused. He was unable to ask a question, or rather, knew that any question he did ask wouldn’t get answered until the nurse had left. So, in silence, Jack turned the questions over in his head while he waited until Berry could talk to him privately.

He hadn’t really thought about Berry eventually leaving the hospital. Maybe it was because that’s where he’d met her and some part of his brain had decided that’s where she would always be. Seemingly, that little part of his brain had made the decision with so little aplomb that the rest of his brain hadn’t thought to look into the judgement. It was stupid, obviously, Jack knew that now that he was watching her careful steps around the room. One day she would leave the hospital, go back home. Would she want him in her house? Would she even want him to visit? Would she still want to see him at all? These questions spun in Jack’s head, floating on top of all the older ones that had hit him not too long ago, and Jack found he had no answer for any of them.

In a brief window of time where the nurse turned her face away from Berry, the latter pony made direct eye contact with Jack, silently acknowledging his presence. This brief moment instantly relieved a quiet dread that Jack hadn’t realized was building within him, but that Berry seemed to have intuited the presence of. Silently, Jack watched the strange show. Knowing all the while that this was not something that was supposed to be viewed by an outside party, but also knowing it was far too late to leave. He watched and listened as, with the care and patience that was expected of a medical professional, the nurse led a slightly unsteady Berry through a number of walking exercises. She had started rather unsteady, yet in spite of the weeks that Jack knew Berry had been laid up for she seemed to be improving with miraculous ease.

Then again, Jack supposed, horses did learn to walk much faster than humans. Perhaps they also excelled at regaining the ability to walk in adulthood. Or, if not the horses he was familiar with, maybe the magical candy colored ponies that occupied this world at least.

Eventually, with a plethora of supporting words from the nurse, the walk came to an end. She gave a short farewell, helped Berry back into her bed, gave a promise of quick updates, and exited the room. In her absence, a hesitant silence lingered in the air until Jack eventually worked up the courage to break it.

“So what was that about?”

Berry turned to Jack with a cautious, but hopeful, smile. “They say I might be able to go home today.”

“What?!” Jack almost shouted, confusion and shock solidifying into a linguistic harpoon of a word. It was one thing to know that something would happen eventually but it was another to know that it was happening, effectively, now. Seeing the flitting shadow of worry on Berry’s face as she feared the worst from his outburst, Jack quickly recovered his thoughts. “I mean, that’s wonderful! I just had no idea that was even something that was on the horizon, let alone…” Jack let his words begin to bleed away, realizing he was blathering. “Today…” He murmured, completing the thought.

Berry paused a moment to try and get a read on Jack before she continued the conversation. “I wasn’t really expecting it either, but from what they told me it makes sense. Most of the damage from… what happened… was internal. Organ damage mostly, I was told. So, after a few minor tests, and some walking exercises to recover my movement from the time I spent in bed, they said that I’ll be good to go.” Her eyes rested on Jack, at first trying to read something from his face, but as Berry seemed to realize what she was doing she relaxed into a more patient look as she tried not to pry.

“That’s great!” Jack said, tamping down on talking about his more complicated feelings. He’d wanted to have a long chat about his upcoming trip into the forest, about Sam, about friends, about if Berry thought of him as a friend. To have that talk now though, in the face of this exciting news for Berry, it felt wrong. Like he was taking her moment to talk about himself. So, instead, he asked. “Does Colada know?”

“Not yet,” Berry said, the hesitant grin blooming into a comfortable smile. “Assuming my tests come back good, the hospital will get in touch with Cheerilee to sign my release. Colada will probably hear about it then.”

Berry gave an affirmative nod and the two fell into a silence. For Berry, it was a comfortable moment. Her thoughts dwelling on happy moments that she’d been looking forward to since she’d regained consciousness and now they seemed closer than she could have ever hoped. In this happiness, she didn’t notice that for Jack the silence was of a completely different kind. Not that you could blame her, he was doing his best to hide it from her after all. Hide his apprehension, fear, dread, worry. His thoughts were steeped in the murky darkness of an overgrown forest that called to him. The ominous dread it summoned up causing a pit to twist into Jack’s stomach or, now that he lacked a stomach, perhaps the pit rested within his soul itself.

Eventually, though, even dread comes to an end. Even worry must take a reprieve. The queue for that eventuality, in this case, was the return of the nurse who was accompanied by the pony Jack had briefly internally referred to as ‘Probably-Cheerilee’ and now was one hundred percent certainly absolutely Cheerilee.

Probably.

“Well” said the nurse, smiling with a genuine kindness that could not be faked, “I was going to tell you that Cheerilee was on her way over to sign your release papers. However, since she tailed the pony who told her about the good news all the way back to the hospital, now I am instead telling you that Cheerilee has already signed your release papers. So, whenever you are ready, feel free to head out. However we do ask that you avoid spending another night, for the sake of keeping the paperwork uncomplicated. Other than that, I’ll leave you two to it.” The nurse gave one more happy smile to both mares, and then exited the room, closing the door behind her.

WIth her exit, the temperature of the room seemed to plummet.

Now-guaranteed-to-be-Cheerilee turned to fully look at Berry. Berry held the gaze. The silence stretched on. Then, Berry seemed to lose whatever silent battle was being fought and turned her gaze to the wall.

“I told you-” Cheerilee started.

“I know.” Berry interrupted, as if the completion of the sentence would wound her.

“I don’t know what I need to do to prove to you that I’ll be there, you just have to ask.” Cheerilee said, her words heavy. Full of confused anger that didn’t have a target, not really. Anger at the situation, maybe.

“I’m sorry. I know I always say I’m sorry but I’ve meant it everytime. I don’t know why I can’t bring it up with you when things get bad. Some part of my dumb brain stops me. It’s not a problem with you. I swear it isn’t.”

Currently two for two on ‘moments I shouldn’t be a part of but I am anyway’, Jack waited as still as he could manage in the corner of the room.

Cheerilee let the silence hang for a moment, then took a deep breath. “Colada’s excited to see you, do you want to go see her? She’s just out in the lobby.”

“I’d like that a lot.” Berry moved to pull herself out of the bed, and Cheerilee was quick to assist. “And thank you for watching her. She loves hanging out with you, you know?”

“Maybe, but she loves hanging out with me even more when her sister isn’t in the hospital.”

And then, in a blur, everything was moving. Colada was met, happy greetings were exchanged, and Jack felt himself tailing behind the ponies who were in the middle of a cascade of joy and excitement. It wasn’t until he felt the fatigue of the walk start to settle in again that Jack realized he was walking. Shaking himself, as if from a dream, he managed to reassert his attention on the world around him. Berry was going home. Colada was going home. Cheerilee was going home-ish. Though from what Jack could tell of Cheerilee, even her own home had only ever been ‘home-ish’ with Berry in this hospital.

Berry and Colada and Cheerilee were all involved on a hectic session of catch-up. Berry had missed a lot, even with Colada’s earlier visit to try and fill in some gaps, and she was eager to hear about everything that had happened in the lives of her friends and family since her hospitalization. Because of this eager discussion, Jack was the first one to notice that they were being approached.

Well, as they were walking home in the middle of the day, they’d been approached a handful of times before truth be told. Ponies who noticed Berry out of the hospital and wanting to give well-wishes. This approach, though, was different.

Firstly, because it was being led by Princess Twilight Sparkle, who seemed to have another pony with her that Jack didn’t recognize. Secondly, this was not a ‘oh hey is that Berry let’s go say hi’ approach. This was a ‘we need to talk to Berry have you seen her’ approach. It reminded Jack of a time him and Sam had had to lose a police detail in a crowd. This approach was more like being hunted. Unable to really do much given the circumstances, Jack had little choice but to wait for the approach to turn into a conversation. Which, with the presence of a princess to get the crowd to part in front of her, wasn’t that long after.

“Hello Berry Punch!” Greeted Princess Twilight Sparkle, all smiles. Her voice stirred up the old hatred Jack had forgotten he’d held toward her, though it had grown rusty from disuse. “I’m so happy to see you out of the hospital!”

“Uh, thanks?” Berry offered, suddenly under a spotlight and unsure as to why.

“Hello Colada!” Said the princess with the same cheery tone. “Happy to see you’re doing well.”

“Uh, thanks?” said Colada, echoing her sister.

“Me and my friend here,” Twilight nodded to the other pony who had stayed by her side through the crowd, a pegasus with a light blue coat and baby blue mane. “We were just wondering if we could get your story from the glass shop one more time. She’s from Canterlot and she’s helping me figure out what happened.”

Colada glanced briefly to Twilight’s associate and then looked to Berry. Berry seemed to be sizing up the two ponies, seeming to see something more than the familiar face and a stranger as she did so. In light of this sudden careful gaze from Berry, Jack turned another look to Twilight’s ‘friend’ and his previous assessment that he didn’t recognize her suddenly began to fall apart. Something tickled the back of his memory, telling him that some part of him did know her.

“Go ahead Colada,” Berry said, her voice holding onto a careful neutral tone. “Tell the princess everything you remember.”

Chapter Twelve

Berry Punch’s house was cozy. Though perhaps it would be more accurate to say that at one point the house had been cozy. Weeks of neglect, however, had taken its toll and left every inch of furniture covered in a thin layer of dust, thus replacing the coziness with something more ominous. Adding to this feeling, any food that had been left out on the counter had fallen victim to the passage of time. This food was, thankfully, not present when the group arrived at the house, someone had been gracious enough to remove it. Unfortunately, not before it had started to rot. The smell of decay, faint and light though it was, still lingered. It swirled in a strange kind of dance macabre with the musty scent of a home that had been empty for a long while. Jack was happy to see it though, he felt as tired as the dead ought to be and, as they say, any old port in a storm.

As Berry, Colada, and Cheerilee made their way into the kitchen along with the conversation they’d been carrying for the past block or two. Jack, as usual, hadn’t felt any desire to interrupt. On top of his usual anxious restraint was his knowledge that Cheerilee was still unable to hear or see him, thus even attempting to enter the conversation would’ve been an ordeal.

Instead of subjecting himself to such a terrible fate Jack broke from the group and opted for the living room, more specifically the couch. A piece of furniture which, to Jack’s aching spirit, looked as comfortable as one could dream of. Given that Jack’s interactions with the physical world were largely based on his perception of it, this meant that to Jack it was the most relaxing couch he had ever encountered.

He reclined in the seat, more at ease than he’d been since his death. Swaddled in the relief of the couch, the pull of the forest on his mind shrunk and diminished until all that was left was barely a trifle. It would be so easy to relax like this forever. To become little more than a fixture of the building, resting for eternity within the walls and ceiling until it all came tumbling down under the slow forces of erosion and entropy. To finally, after the daily wear and tear of simply existing in the world of the living, truly live. A luxury which, ironically, would be granted to him by his death. There was no need for food, or air, or other people. Nothing that had to be done, nothing that would force him out of sleep in the morning. To never move from this place, to haunt it forever, in peace. It would be wonderful. And he did feel so absolutely tired.

The thump of a door closing jolted Jack suddenly to attention, his eyes naturally snapping towards the window on the wall opposite the couch, through which he could see the mango colored sky fading into a violet night. He turned then to the direction of the door, conscious thought once again beginning to piece itself together in his head. There he saw Colada and Berry Punch lingering near the door, both clearly having just bade goodbyes.

Jack took a moment to gather his thoughts before he started to speak. “Did Cheerilee leave?” Jack asked, his mind trying to catch up with the world around him.

“Ah, look who’s awake.” Berry said, turning to him with a teasing smile. “Yes, she just headed out. She kept saying she had a busy day at school tomorrow, but then she would think of a reason to stick around. Had to almost force her to go home.”

Jack stood from the couch and glanced to Colada, who looked like she was trying to pinpoint his location. “Sorry for checking out as soon as we got here, I felt like I was just about ready to collapse. Did a lot of walking yesterday. When Twilight and her associate stopped you on the street I thought I might just fall asleep right there on the road.”

The smile faded from Berry’s face at the mention of the ponies who had waylaid the group on the way home. “Yes, her associate.” Berry chewed her lip for a moment, looking at Colada deep in thought.

“I’d never met her before! But she seemed really nice.” Said Colada.

“You’re just saying that because she gave you a reason to talk and didn’t try and stop you.” Jack said, deciding to try and engage with Colada while Berry seemed to be mulling over thoughts he could only begin to guess at.

“Nuh-uh!” Colada said, defiant. Her stance facing Jack as she seemed to have pieced together his general direction.

“Yuh-uh” Jack retorted, falling easily into the pattern.

“Nuh-uh!”

“Yuh-”

“Did you notice anything odd about her?” Berry interrupted, seemingly not noticing that she was cutting into the conversation. Or perhaps recognizing that she wasn’t interrupting anything important.

“Nuh-uh” Colada said, then blinked once in a small self-induced confusion. “Err, I mean, no I didn’t think she was odd or anything.”

“I felt like I’d seen her before but other than that, no. I didn’t see anything specific that would suggest anything weird.” Jack supplied.

Berry hummed to herself for a moment, looking into the distance. “Felt like you’d seen her before…” She said idly, the words not really directed at anyone.

“Why do you ask?” Jack queried, curiosity overpowering his anxiety at starting a conversation.

“Huh? Oh. Nothing, just… she looked… I dunno. Weird I guess. Thought I saw…” Berry shook her head, clearing the thought. “It was nothing I guess, don’t worry about it.” Her attention now back on her current surroundings Berry lowered her head to Colada’s level and smiled. “Happy to be home kiddo?”

“Happy you’re home Sis.” Colada corrected, hugging her sister’s snout. Then, after a properly tight hug, she pulled away. “And now we’ve got a ghost in the house too! Oh! Does that mean our house is haunted!?”

“I think the ghost has to be around for a while before you can call the house haunted.” Berry said with a smile, then turned to look at Jack. “Whaddya say? Want to live here so that little sis can say she lives in a haunted house? I imagine getting a new home would probably be pretty difficult for a ghost and as long as you don’t mind sleeping on the couch we’re happy to have you.”

“I would love that.” Jack said with a smile, thinking about waking up every day to the same gorgeous view. True, sleeping on a couch wasn’t exactly luxury but it sure as hell beat sleeping in hospital visitor chairs and was assuredly several tiers higher than sleeping stuck halfway in a wall. Then, reality caught up. “Oh, but. I have some other stuff I need to do first.”

“Oh? Like what?” Berry said.

“Well for starters I think it would be best if I lay low for a while. As long as Twilight is looking for me I think I’d rather avoid leaving her any clues.”

“What? You’re trying to avoid Miss Twilight?” Colada said, suddenly confused. “But she’s SO COOL! She’s saved the WHOLE WORLD a bunch of times! She’s like… the best at magic!”

Jack looked to Berry for confirmation, knowing that children could be prone to exaggeration. When she nodded and gave said confirmation, however, Jack found that despite now knowing Twilight was a hero, his opinion on the extremely powerful royal Alicorn had not changed that much. Still, it wasn’t like you could just tell a child that you didn’t like someone because they were excited about your death. That was a whole can of worms, especially since Colada seemed to idolize the princess to some extent. Jack was trying to find the words to try and explain when Berry came to his rescue.

“I think laying low sounds like a good plan.” She turned to Coldada. “Just until Princess Twilight calms down a little, you know how she can get when she’s excited.”

Colada nodded in what she probably thought was a wise elderly way. “She can get almost as in your face as Pinkie Pie is when-” Colada’s jaw opened and she turned to the spot where she knew Jack was. “When someone new comes to town…”

“I don’t like that sound of that either.” Jack said, vaguely remembering his encounter with Pinkie Pie what felt like a life time ago. Luckily, she didn’t seem able to perceive him. Though the words she had said had been oddly perfect for both him and the pony she’d been talking to. Regardless, he wasn’t sure he was ready for a second predator to begin hunting him down.

“She can be pretty extreme, it’s probably a good idea not to draw too much attention from anyone in that friend group if you can avoid it,” Berry confirmed. “But from the sound of it you had something a little more in mind than hiding in our attic.”

Jack nodded slowly. “Yeah, the thing is I was also planning on taking a trip out into the forest.”

“The Everfree Forest?” Berry asked in a tone that told him she would like very much for his answer to be no. Reinforcing this was Colada, who stood with mouth wide open in surprise at his statement.

“Is that the one by the apple farm, kind of gloomy?”

“Yes.” Berry said tersely.

“You can’t go in the Everfree Forest!” Colada said, getting her voice back. “It’s super dangerous in there! There’s probably even stuff that’s bad for ghosts!”

Berry pressed a verbal attack, denying Jack a moment to defend himself until she’d said her piece. “Why, exactly, are you planning on going into the very obviously evil forest? I am dying to know what could possibly have convinced you that is a good idea.”

“I- it’s- I don’t know how to explain it.” Jack struggled with the words, how exactly did one go about explaining a dark void at the center of your being that was even now pulling you towards the dark scary forest. Or, better question, how did you explain that in a way that alleviated the worry of the people who cared about you. Since, if he just told her about what exactly was going on, she would probably only grow more worried about him.

“Jack.” Berry said, her voice tired.

“You can’t go into the Everfree!” Colada reiterated once again, hurrying over to the door as if to block his passage. “I won’t let you.”

Jack didn’t have the heart to tell her he could always walk out through a wall. It seemed like an act of cruelty to do so given the circumstances.

Berry, however, was under no such delusions. She knew that if Jack wanted to leave she couldn’t stop him. “Is there anything you can tell us that would make me feel better about you going into the forest?”

Jack stood in silence for a moment before a thought came to mind. “I can tell you about Sam.”

Berry blinked, once, in confusion. “Why would that make me feel better?”

“Because that would mean we’re friends.” Jack said. “And you’ve got to trust in your friends, right? So, when I say its something that I have to do, you would know that I mean it.”

Berry offered a half-hearted smile. It wasn’t a perfect solution, it was barely even a workable solution when it came down to brass tacks, but it was something. Given the alternatives, she could work with something.

She walked over to the kitchen table and motioned for Jack to sit down. “Alright then.” Berry said, glancing to Colada as she also took a seat. “Tell us about Sam.”

Sam Interlude One

In times of stress and tribulation we tend to learn a lot about ourselves and the world around around us. For instance, Sam was learning to hate things that they had previously held barely any thoughts about at all. Currently, Sam was becoming aware of a growing hatred for air.

As a helpful chaser to that learning experience was this one, Sam was also learning to hate the concept of hating air. As someone who had something of an anger issue, they realized that beginning to hate air was something of a bad omen. Sam was quick to rationalize this hatred, as it barely seemed like air at all after whatever processes it had been run through before being pumped into the facility that they found themself in. There was no smell in it, not even a memory of a smell. Too perfect, too bland. Additionally, any negative feelings Sam was feeling towards this environment were being filtered and amplified by their spectacularly terrible mood that had haunted them ever since Jack’s disappearance.

As the thought of Jack grazed across Sam’s mind they found themself about to slip into the familiar rut of depressive thoughts that had haunted them as of late. Luckily, their attention was pulled from that trap as the door to the room clicked open, swiftly followed by the arrival of Larry. Sam shot to their feet like a spring uncoiling, fast enough their former seat skipped back a couple inches over a smooth white floor. “Well?” Sam asked, not keen on waiting for Larry to start the conversation.

“The Boss says we’re good to go.” Larry said, the capital 'b' clearly implied.

Sam, who knew Larry well enough to spot the obvious missing statement, pushed for clarification. “Are you?”

Larry looked askance for a moment, eyes resting on a far wall. Time seemed to stretch on in the silence, unraveling out into the empty air. Sam did not find any tranquility there however, and in that silence the spring was put under pressure once again. Then, Larry looked to Sam. Eyes red, sleep deprived, running on coffee and not much else. Sam hadn’t seen him look this bad since college. “No.”

Sam stood in silence for a second, sliding hands into jeans pockets. “But-“

“But you have to go, I know.” Larry rubbed his eyes for a moment before collecting himself. “Look, the Boss wants you to take this with you.” Larry said, back to his normal neutral. Carefully, he produced a stainless steel cube from his lab coat pocket. It shined under the perfect white lights above it, the only definition on its smooth surfaces being the grain of the metal.

Sam took it carefully, feeling the heft of the thing as they turned it in their fingers, looking for an imperfection in the metal and finding nothing. Not even a seam to grip to rip it apart. There was something inside it though, they could tell by the imbalance of weight in their hand. “What is it?” Sam asked after a moment in silent inspection.

“Transdimensional Survey Beacon.” Larry said simply, putting hands back into pockets. “It’s technically already running, but right now we’re only getting junk data from it. Basically, when you get to the other dimension it’ll start sending back data to our end so we can properly calibrate our machines. With that data we should be able to create a way to bring you and Jack back. If he's not- If you can find him." Larry quickly course corrected. "Should make it easier to send people over in the future too."

Sam’s gaze grew clouded, staring past the cube now. “You’re going to send more people?” They asked, voice distant.

“That’s the implication I get from the Boss, yeah. They won’t tell me for sure what we’re supposed to be sending people over there for, just that that’s the end goal. A stable transportation of an individual or individuals to this new world.”

Sam didn’t speak, still holding the cube, mind whirring in an unreadable silence.

Eventually, Larry managed to bring himself to break the silence. “We should get going Sam. We’re running behind schedule as is.”

“Yeah.” Sam said, coming to their senses. They gave the cube a small toss, catching it easily as it fell back into their hand. “Sorry, you’re right. We’ve got places to be.”

Larry turned to lead Sam out of the room but stopped with his hand on the door handle. “I’ve done what I can to make the trip as smooth as possible, but you’ll be out of my hands once it actually happens. We can’t contact you on the other side, you’ll have to be careful.”

“Oh please Larry, you know me, I’m the pinnacle of care.”

This managed to coax a smile from the usually implacable scientist. “Sure Sam.”

Sam was screaming.

It was the kind of scream that could only be found somewhere between an adrenaline high and absolute soul crushing terror.

The aftermath of the teleportation had left their eyes overexposed to the harsh white light of the facility. A fact that was proving extremely unfortunate as they had arrived in this new world in the middle of the night. Their eyes were not quite able to divine the subtleties of a world cast in shadow and instead left them looking out into a vast inscrutable land, deep and dark as death.

They were in freefall, with their survival instincts screaming to pull the parachute cord or they would die RIGHT NOW. Sam, however, was familiar with this grip of terror on their heart. What they actually needed to do right now was orient themselves before pulling the cord or things could go pear shaped fast.

This was complicated as, looking into the pitch of darkness that surrounded them, they thought they could see stars in more than the one direction that you might hope they were in. Sam closed their eyes instead of facing the confusing tableau. The point in this was twofold, first to hopefully accelerate the dilation of their eyes to better see in the pitch darkness surrounding them, second to focus on the air rushing past their ears.

In the absolute darkness of their mind they could feel the movement of the air on their skin, the way it pulled at their hair. It was not the perfect way to identify the direction to the ground, but it would have to do. Carefully, they oriented their body parallel to the world they assumed must be below them and then pulled the cord on the parachute.

There was a gut wrenching moment as their descent drastically slowed, then settled into a much less terrifying speed. With a deep breath, Sam opened their eyes. The night vision still wasn’t all there but Sam could see now what they had assumed was a patch of stars mere moments ago were instead the lights of a civilization.

The lights were a warm orange, like old fire lights, like aged tungsten wires humming so hot they would combust, like the sodium lights of a small town. Inviting in a familiar way that the pure white of the facility had not been.

The air here too was familiar, like camping. So far from civilization that you could smell the age of the world. It was imperfect and old. Sam had missed it in their city apartment.

Almost subconsciously they found themself steering the parachute into the town, caught in some exotic gravity. They snapped to awareness shortly, but even in conscious thought the town still seemed like an ideal place to land. Both because of the terrain and because it seemed an ideal first step to finding Jack, so they let the strange pull take them closer and closer, drawing them in like a moth, perhaps, but moths still managed to live and thrive didn’t they? They didn’t all die from fires and bug zappers.

Just as Sam had started making plans for where to start the search for Jack a sudden chaotic wind caught the parachute. It dragged them far off course, into a treeline that Sam could now see with the help of acclimated pupils. Before they collided with the canopy they braced themselves for collision, expecting to meet a tree branch that did not like their sudden arrival.

Instead, however, they glided cleanly through the slimmest branches, barely receiving much more than a couple scratches. The chute, however, was less than lucky. It tangled in the treeline, fully arresting Sam’s descent.

Sam gave a tug on the suspension lines to confirm that, yes, it was absolutely stuck, then, with a sigh, looked down to ground below. Judging it to be not much more than five feet, they retrieved one of their butterfly knives from their pants. They should hopefully be able to get a grip on a tree branch, but even if they fell it wasn’t entirely lethal. Perhaps it would’ve been easier to simply unbuckle the chute and deal with the fall on their own terms, but there were supplies in the pack that Sam was not keen on leaving up in the canopy of an unfamiliar forest and, in Sam’s mind, any excuse to use a butterfly knife was a good one.

They had cut through three or so lines when they heard a sound like clapping. Twisting suddenly, knife in hand, they faced a figure emerging from the cover of the trees that was, indeed, applauding. Sam looked, face unmoving, at a frankenstein-like creature that was currently approaching them, and tightened their grip on the butterfly knife.

“My my my!” Said the creature with exaggerated surprise. “You do work fast! Why, I only just pulled you into the forest and you’re already almost onto the ground!”

Sam’s grip on the knife was likely causing their knuckles to go white, though it would’ve been hard to see under their gloves. Sam offered no words to the creature, instead taking stock of what they could. A lion’s paw? A chicken talon contorted like a hand? Antlers? No, just one antler. A pair of mismatched wings as well, clearly too small for any kind of actual flight. It was almost grotesque, all those animal parts contorted into the facsimile of a biped. Perhaps in bright light Sam wouldn't have minded it too much, but in the dingy light of the forest it looked like nightmare made manifest.

The creature gave a performative cough and gave a pointed look to the butterfly knife that seemed now like a weapon far too small for this particular opponent. “I understand things must be absolutely… chaotic… for you right now.” Said the thing, clearly giving some kind of dramatic pause that Sam did not understand. “But I would appreciate it if you would lower the weapon.” Then, the face contorted into a sly smile, like a mask was falling away. “I promise it wouldn’t do you any good anyway.”

Sam kept the blade leveled for a breath of time longer before being forced to agree with whatever this thing was. They went back to cutting the parachute lines. The silence kept at bay by only the sound of blade on nylon before the creature spoke again. “Not much of a talker are you.”

“Not much to talk to you about.” Sam retorted, focusing on the movement of their knife.

“Oh that’s where you’re wrong!” Said the creature, gleeful to have gotten any response at all it seemed. “I have a lot of helpful things you should know. After all, you don’t know anything about this world you’ve found yourself in. Why, you’re all alone here. How will you ever find Jack if you don’t talk to people?”

Sam’s blade slipped and jumped suddenly in their grip as their attention did much the same and they cursed themself for it. Knowing that whatever this thing was had been looking to get a rise out of them and had gotten something for its trouble. Deciding playing aloof was looking more and more pointless by the second, they caved to conversation.

“And what would you know about Jack?” Sam asked, focusing harder on the nylon now.

“Oh not much.” Said the creature, plainly feigning some kind of aloofness of its own. “But I understand you’ll want to seek him out. And I have it on good authority that the princesses in the town there will have all sorts of questions for you before they let you anywhere near him.”

“Good friend of the princesses then are you?” Said Sam with the intonation of someone who had ‘guillotine a member of nobility’ somewhere on their bucket list.

“Oh those dusty old maids? Haaaardly. They despise me. Trapped me in stone, you know.” Said the creature, nodding.

“Oh? How’d you get out?”

“Well you know, one thousand years in a prison teaches one how to pick locks.”

Sam paused then, only a few more cords away from freeing themselves. They glanced to the creature but found themself looking into a face absolutely impossible to read. Slowly, they turned back to their work. “And then what?”

“Well what do you think?” The creature gestured grandly. “I’ve been hiding out in this forest all this time since my escape just waiting to inflict my revenge upon my previous jailors!”

Sam scoffed, managing to take the creature slightly off guard with the reaction, but they were unable to elaborate as they gripped a nearby branch and carefully pulled themselves into a stable position as they severed the last collection of suspension lines. Sam took a moment to double check that they were completely untethered before sliding along the branch to the tree trunk. “You definitely didn’t do that.” They said. “You strike me as more of an immediate bitter revenge type.”

“Oh, and what gives you that impression?” Said the creature, looking at Sam as it batted long cartoonish eyelashes in a display of innocence.

Sam glanced once more at the creature, at its morphed distorted figure and unfriendly silhouette. “Takes one to know one I guess.” They said simply before turning their attention to descending the tree.

There were no more words, the creature proving uncharacteristically silent even to Sam, who had only known it for a handful of minutes. Then, at last, Sam finally touched down at the base of the tree. They turned a gaze to the creature who appeared lost in thought. “So what actually happened?”

The creature seemed to become suddenly revitalized at the question. “Why immediate bitter revenge of course! I imprisoned the two princesses who had inflicted their punishment on me and then began to toy with the last remaining hope! Toying with the eldest of the two's beloved protege as I manipulated her friends into hating her! And manipulating her into hating her friends! Driving them further and further apart, fracturing them like a stained glass window!”

“So how’d you lose?” Sam asked pointedly, rummaging in the remains of their parachute pack.

“Well I-” The creature began, then something seemed to click. “Hey wait a minute this isn’t how this was supposed to go at all!” It whirled on Sam but was stopped mid turn a fraction of an inch from a wooden baseball bat that had swung into it's peripheral vision moments before.

“You are a clever little weasel aren’t you?” Said the creature, clearly intending the statement as praise and smiling widely with the grin of something that recognized it had been outsmarted, though not to the point of defeat. After all, even Sam could sense that if the bat had connected it would've been nothing more than a minor inconvenience at best for this creature.

“Takes one to know one,” Sam repeated, then smiled. “My name’s Sam. Yours?”

The creature rested a claw on the baseball bat and gently forced it away from its face. It grinned so wide that Sam paid no attention to the flash of gold that darted along the length of the bat as the claw departed from its surface. “Discord.”

“Nice to meet you Discord, what can I help you with?” Sam said, all pleasantries now.

“I was going to say I’d like you to cause a little chaos in town since they get mad at me if I do it, but now that I’ve gotten to know you a little better, I think you’ll do plenty of that without my guidance.”

Author's Note

Sorry for the delay, it's been a hectic past couple of weeks. I will endeavor to get the next chapter out closer to the start of the month.

Chapter Thirteen

Jack stood on the precipice of the Everfree Forest.

Forests, traditionally speaking, did not have precipices. Usually the trees would simply become thicker and thicker until, before you knew it, you were in the forest. Sometimes a forest could have something approaching a clear boundary due to the involvement of other forces, like a logging company, that would clear out the farther apart trees around the edges and leave a more defined line between forest and not-forest. That was not what had happened here, this forest had a precipice like a cliff.

Jack knew he was on the precipice, he could see clearly the dividing line that separated the Everfree forest from the town of Ponyville. From the whole of Equestria even. It looked like a skin graft on the fabric of this world. Like it had been applied to the environment without the environment’s approval and was being rejected by the world around it.

Every fiber of Jack’s being was screaming that this was a bad idea, it was obviously a bad idea, there was nothing in the Everfree Forest he was even after. It would be monumentally stupid to go into the forest that not only looked dangerous but that every single individual who lived near it also said was dangerous and to do so for no reason was certainly a cut above stupid. Moronic, perhaps.

Why then was he still there? Still lingering at the edge of it, eyes unfocused but staring all the same. Staring into that impenetrable black gloom that pulled at him, pulled at some unknowable part of his soul.

He knew why. It was because the pull of the vast ominous forest was a constant. The screaming to avoid the place kicked and sputtered to life from time to time with bursts of incredible drive but when they eventually died away the pull was still there, reeling him in. The pull was not entirely mental either, it was not simply the draw of curiosity. It had some… physical or spiritual pull as well.

He knew why it had been so hard to walk from the hospital to Cheerilee’s house but the return trip had been a breeze. Why the trip to the Apple farm was a cake walk but returning the scant distance to the hospital had wiped him out completely. Walking toward the forest was the easiest thing that Jack had ever known. Walking away was like scaling Everest. It increased with distance too. Leaving the apple farm that was so close to the tree line had been a struggle for sure but this close to the tree line the pull was strong that Jack felt like if he jumped straight up into the air the strange pull would yank him deep into that unplumbed darkness. It was enough to give him vertigo on flat solid ground.

Jack’s eyes danced away from that darkness as a shadow passed quickly overhead. By the time Jack had moved to spot whatever it had been, however, it was too late. If he’d caught it while it had been silhouetted by the moon or stars he might’ve been able to track it in the darkness but now he had no hope of that. No hope of knowing what brief intrusion had been visited upon him. It had felt important though. A feeling flittered upon him and left the clear impression of mourning before it just as swiftly left him altogether.

With this distraction came a brief respite as his mind was now released from the paralysis that his indecision had inflicted upon him. In this free moment his thoughts turned to Berry Punch. She would be furious when she found out he had left before the proper goodbye he had promised in the morning. Especially since he hadn’t left a note about what he’d done, so she would never know for sure, but she seemed smart enough to piece it together. Jack hoped so anyway, as he wasn't sure he'd be coming back from the Everfree.

With his train of thought refreshed by his short distraction Jack looked once more to the treeline. The nerves screaming in his soul to avoid it had died down in the interim, there was only the pull now. So, with a single deep breath to calm his nerves, Jack stepped into it and did not look back.

The world became hazy then. Not like a drug induced high, not quite. Something closer to a dream. The moment verging on sleep where dreams are real and you can get stuck with a mind whirring at impossible speeds trying to perceive things that don’t exist. Jack lost himself in that haze, it took his mind fully before he could even process it’s presence at all.

After some length of time Jack seemed to snap to consciousness. He wasn’t sure how long it had been, the heavy canopy obscured the sky and he could not even go off his weariness for a guess. He did not feel fatigued at all. He barely remembered all the walking he had done when his mind had been... elsewhere. He felt nothing in this empty place. He felt like he had suspected a ghost should feel back when he had first become one. A void of unfeeling consciousness.

No tactile feeling at all, no fatigue from walking, even his emotions were just subtle waves on the shore of his mind. He had just walked. Fear at this concept of nothingness spiked inside Jack and in that manic moment he was able to use that fear to push away the suffocating absence for a moment. Even then he could still feel it pressing in around him, like air pressure. The pull he had felt outside the forest had become a push inside of it and was pushing in on him from all directions.

No, not exactly, Jack realized. There was still a pull. Fainter now as it was drowned out by the pressure that surrounded Jack on all sides. But he could still feel it, and it was a lifeline now. He latched onto it, focused on this thin cord that went deeper into the forest. By force of will, keeping the pressure at bay by maintaining concentration on this singular thing.

“It won’t help.”

Jack started, his eyes that he had not realized he had squeezed shut were now wide open, staring directly into the face of the thing that had spoken. It was the alicorn he had seen at the apple family farm, but now she was much closer. He could see the dying starlight in her mane. The absolute void black of her coat. In contrast to his sudden and violent reaction however, she seemed placid. No, not placid, depressed.

“You can fight it for a while, but it’ll lay into you eventually. Noone can fight forever, it erodes every creature down in the end.” She said, staring past him.

Jack paused a moment to try and recoup. “Who-?”

“-Am I?” She finished, half-heartedly. Then, she took a deep breath, her stance became stalwart and proud, her voice boomed the answer. “I AM NIGHTMARE MOON! FROM THIS MOMENT ON THE NIGHT. WILL LAST. FOREVER!” The booming ring of her voice seemed to dissipate the constant pressure that Jack felt but in the absence of it he felt it begin to settle in slowly once again. He watched as the stalwart pose deflated back into the slouch she had carried at the start. “Though I suppose that’s ancient history now.” Then her gaze turned back to Jack, her pupils turned to slits. “And who are you?”

“I’m Jack.” This was the easiest question Jack had been presented with in a long time and he was more than happy to have an answer to anything at this point. “No fancy titles or anything though I’m afraid.”

She scoffed at this. “It doesn’t matter, I assure you, we all end up in the same place at the end.”

“Dead?” Jack queried, as this was his usual answer to this assertion but there had been new evidence provided to him that this might not be the end all be all that many expected of it.

“If we’re lucky. Though I think there’s worse for us when our time in this forest is done.”

Jack let the ominous sentence hang for a moment, but, due to being a thinking being capable of speech, decided to try and iron it out. “What do you mean?”

“You’ll have to see it to understand.” She said, dismissively. A voice worn down from explanations that Jack had never heard.

“Well can you show it to me?”

She glanced at him. Then, seemed to change her mind about her earlier dismissal. Her voice seemed to find that rut that it had traveled so many times before. “There is a pit at the center of the Everfree. It goes down into an endless black void from which there can be no return.” She built momentum as she spoke, words like an avalanche gaining force and mass. “None who have entered have ever returned. We can only hope that all they found there was death.” She paused, took a step closer, standing taller, and looking down her muzzle at him. “If I take you to it, you won’t be able to leave, the pull is so strong there you won’t be able to step away. Believe me, being trapped in the Everfree is nothing compared to that. Some linger at the edge of the pit for years, unable to move, and then one day when they’ve given up… they just roll in.”

Jack gave the speech the appropriate amount of silence. It was imposing and dark. Macabre even, souls trapped at the verge of death. People, real people, who were worn down day by day until they gave up and fell into endless nothingness. He should have been properly scared of this. Gave the concept it’s proper respect. But something she had said had snagged on his mind as it flew past and he was unable to focus on the full force of the doomsaying that had been delivered to him. “I’m trapped in the Everfree?”

Nightmare Moon looked at him, stoic, imposing. Then, she broke. She laughed. It was as full of mirth as it was full of maliciousness. “You are the most foolish ghost I’ve met in these woods!” She exclaimed. “You have not tried to leave?” The disbelief was almost palpable in the air.

“It never really came to mind, no.”

“Ah!” She said suddenly, the laugh immediately dying away but her face remained jovial. “Then you are after something in the forest! Some lost kernel of knowledge abandoned in the castle!” Nightmare Moon said, confident.

Jack’s internal voice that had developed in high school to try and avoid conflict with bullies told him to say yes to this. To try and save SOME face in the presence of this clearly powerful and important figure. Instead, he pressed on. “No. I just couldn’t ignore the pull any longer.” Jack had expected a renewed laugh at this admission of stupidity. Instead, however, Nightmare Moon seemed to grow somber. Jack wanted to continue to say something, to try and defuse whatever mood had taken the alicorn, but without the first clue to what had caused it he decided it best to remain silent.

Eventually, she spoke again. “You felt the pull outside the forest?”

“Yes, is that… weird?”

“Only one other ghost has felt the pull that far out. I suspected it was because she never really had a body to begin with. No anchor outside the forest to help her stay away.”

Jack liked the sound of someone else who had experienced his troubles, it usually meant there was hope for getting help with said troubles. “Oh I’d love to meet her, do you know where she is?”

Nightmare Moon locked eyes with Jack, eyes that seemed to have lived centuries in the span of weeks. “It shall be easy for you two to meet, for I am her.”

Author's Note

I lied, this chapter came out later in the month again.

I'm gonna be taking a break from the story for a while, expect chapters to start up again in January or February.

Chapter One

It all began with a qoq. That is to say... a pop in reverse. An anti-pop as it’s known in some corners of Equestria. A bunch of air rushing to get out of a space. This was because something that didn’t belong in this plane of reality had come into being about 40,000 feet in the air above Ponyville. This layer of the atmosphere, higher even than most blimps flew, was reserved for well-trained weather pegasi. The kind who didn’t have the time to deal with things like low-hanging clouds or turbulence. Or breathing.

The being, named Jack, having no knowledge as to why he had suddenly gone from reclining on a couch and then to several tens of thousand feet in the air in the span of an instant, assumed it was a dream. This, of course, meant he was screaming at the top of his lungs as he began to enter freefall. A normal practice among all races. Bar, of course, those that have wings, or are simply too small to have to worry about any kind of damage from a fall like this. Two things that Jack, unfortunately, did not have working for him.

As the wind rushing past his head distorted his own scream into a muffled shout, he began to understand why they had chosen the word ‘terminal’ for terminal velocity instead of some other word like ‘maximum’. It was because when you saw something falling at that kind of speed towards unforgiving stone it seemed like it was, indeed, terminal, in the medical sense of the word.

Jack, not much one for carefully examining situations even in the best times, continued to scream in a constant, nonlinguistic spray of pure terror that funneled easily from out between his lips. It was a sound that you would either have to be deaf to miss, or tens of thousands of feet away. Surprisingly, however, there was one inhabitant of Equestria who didn’t fall into either category.

Her name was Rainbow Dash. She was a self-assured, loyal, prideful, exceedingly fast flier who seemed the sort to save falling creatures. Unfortunately, she was also the kind of pony who was easily confused by things she wasn’t familiar with, and she also preferred not to exert herself unless absolutely necessary. Because of this, she was going to be late. Though it is difficult to pin down a start to things, it is arguable that the death of Jack was defined by the fact that when Rainbow Dash saw a falling biped that she didn’t recognize 40,000 feet above her home town of Ponyville, she waited for a couple seconds as she reflected on how strange that was. Jack, for his part, screamed bloody murder. Both responses are fully reasonable, if a bit unfortunate given the circumstances.

As Jack fell helplessly through the whistling air, his mind ripping his thoughts to pieces in favor of it’s current plan of attack, he caught a glimpse of an electric blue equine shape with rainbow colored hair flying towards him at breakneck speed with a look of determined strain on its face. He began to scream louder. Rainbow Dash, ignoring the crazy monkey creature, was straining to go as fast as she could, even as she felt the barrier of the sonic rainboom begin to collapse around her like a vice, which was to her equal parts familiarity and thrill.

She made to push through the barrier, as she had so many times before, when she realized that Ponyville had gotten very close very quick. Very, very quick. She knew from… past experiences that if she broke the barrier this close to town, there would be worse things to worry about than a falling simian. Namely, destruction of about half the town which would be shortly followed by Rainbow Dash and the strange biped colliding with the cobbles at impossible speeds, unable to correct herself with the added weight of the very thing she was trying to save. She knew, as all pegasi do somewhere in the back of their mind, that it is very easy to stop. Indeed flying directly into a thick enough wall was all you needed to stop. It was living through it that was the hard part.

Her gaze moved and focused on Jack, she was gaining on him, very quickly, but he was still a hundred feet away. There was about as much distance between Rainbow Dash and Jack as there was between Jack and the ground. Or that’s what Rainbow told herself anyway, knowing full well that the ground was significantly closer than she was letting herself believe. Her eyes shifted between Jack and the cobbles below and the few ponies who had begun to look around for the source of the screaming. And why, she thought to herself, was it that she felt like she’d seen something like him before? He just looked… off color and… wrong, but the shape of him, she could’ve swore it put her in mind of something.

She increased her speed slightly more, the air wrapping itself around her like tar, her eyes watering with effort as she sidled as close to the edge as she dared. She could see his face clearly now, insanity danced across it the way an untrained elephant might. That is to say, wildly and with no direction. He was only feet away, inches, even. She saw the cobbles and she knew, in the exact same moment that she tore away, that she couldn’t save whatever it was. Her wings bit into the air, trying to almost swim through the thick soup of air that had tied itself around her like lengths of cable.

She felt her descent cut away, as fast as lightning, her wings trembling from the incredible forces that such a maneuver imparted on them. It was, she reflected later, the fastest recovery she’d ever made from a complete dive. However it was spoiled as, at the bottom-most arc of the display, she heard a sound like a lobster shell being cracked underneath a heavy mattress. It had a certain sickening wetness to it that drove itself into her mind, telling her exactly what the source had been.

There was a moment, just a moment, where it froze her to the core, and in that moment she felt her wings buckle under the stress. She’d managed to get herself horizontal before then and, with some luck, caught herself with her hooves as she landed onto the cobbles. Her hooves slid across them like ice as her wings fought for balance. She’d managed to disperse most of the force when one of her hooves caught a cobble at a bad angle and sent her skidding uncontrollably a couple feet along the pathway, her chest and cheek getting scratched raw by the rock.

She was surrounded almost instantly by ponies, many of them fans or friends of hers. Rarity, a member of the latter group, was the first by her side. She was shouting something but Rainbow Dash wasn't sure what it was. When she arrived she lifted Rainbow's face, and gasped at the multitude of shallow cuts that let loose small rivulets of blood from where it was being pumped just under the surface. However as Rarity did this, unbeknownst to her, she turned Rainbow’s gaze directly to the corpse of the creature she had failed to save. Or rather, at the grotesque pile on the cobbles that had been said creature only scant seconds before.

The best you could say was that the skin had done its job, even in death, and kept all the important bits inside. Yet, while none of the ponies present were familiar with the anatomy of the creature, they were all pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to bend there, or like that, or in that direction. Rainbow fainted, equal parts strain and overwhelming nausea. Rarity followed a moment later when, unwisely, she looked to see what had got everypony’s attention.

Jack woke up with a jolt, though noticeably without the familiar feeling of cold sweat that normally greeted him after waking up from one of his frequent nightmares. He stared into the bright blue sky above him and felt a sudden wash of relief that tore the lingering horror from his bones and brain. It’d been a dream after all, thank the stars for that.

Yet, despite the welcome weightlessness that had settled on him, he couldn’t seem to ditch the feeling that it had been real. More worryingly though was that he didn’t remember falling asleep outside. Nor, on second thought, could he remember any time that he had so much as thought about doing so. In fact, the longer he looked at the sky, the less it looked like anything he’d been familiar with. Desperate to get his view off of the strange blue void above him he began to move. Carefully, and with some hesitancy to find out the truth, he sat up and looked around.

It was… an odd tableau, to say the least. Strange candy colored horses surrounded him on all sides and, if that wasn’t enough, they all seemed to be displaying one of three emotions; First were those that were staring with wide-eyed intensity at him with a mixture of disbelief and horror, then were the ones running away with a look nausea clear on their faces, and lastly were those laying passed out on the cobblestones who were the only ones that seemed to be remotely okay with the whole situation.

“Hello?” Jack asked cautiously, seeing the looks of absolute fear and disbelief gathering around him. One of the equines suddenly shifted from one of those in the first group to one of those in second. Shortly after that one turned a corner Jack could hear the sound of something losing both its appetite and the thing it had eaten to quell it in the first place.

Then he realized they were staring at his legs, which was strange, but Jack continued his attempt to communicate. “Hello?” he offered again, looking at each of the creatures eye to eye. Well, almost all of them, some of the larger ones had covered the eyes of the littler ones, but he did his best all things considered. None of them seemed to want to answer him or even recognize that he had spoken.

Then he realized they weren’t staring at his legs, they were staring through them. Carefully, Jack stood from the ground and turned slowly around to the thing that held all their attention so much. Jack made to vomit at the sight, but found that though he was familiar enough with it, his stomach didn’t seem to have anything to throw up. Which was a shame, because if there was one sight that deserved to be vomited over, it was Jack looking at the contorted corpse that had been his body only moments before.

“Well?” Said a strange man in a strange place with a painfully plain lab coat from inside the kind of bunker that could make a nuke insecure about its destructive force “Did it work?” The voice was hopeful even as it looked at the overloaded machinery around it, most of it would need replacing, just like it always did after an actual test.

“Uh…” Responded the man who wouldn’t have been able to respond if things had gone properly.

There was a drawn out sigh. “Oh damn.” Came the reply. “I was sure we had it that time. We’re getting so close. They want this done by the end of the year you know? There’s a lot of money riding on this. Transportation to another realm, it seemed so basic in class. Where did I go wrong?”

“You plugged all the cords in?” Began the checklist from the test subject.

“Oh yes.”

“Turned on the harmonization engine?”

“Naturally.”

“Attuned the trans-dimensional drifting mechanism?”

“Oh please Larry, I know what I’m doing! I built most of this machine on my own you know! From the most basic stuff I could find with a dirt cheap budget from an organization that barely exists! I’m not some forgetful assistant, or uncaring unpaid intern who would skip over something, like someone else I know huh? There’s a reason one of us is on the unstable transporter pad as the first human experiment and the other is inside the unbreakable glass room with enough food to last two years, Larry. No I’m sure there’s just an error somewhere in the theorem, I’ll iron it out.”

“Oh okay, so you properly calibrated the departure and arrival destinations then? I mean that one's pretty basic but it’s always the simple stuff you know Doctor?” There was silence as an uncomfortable silence as a reply, the kind that says more than words tend to. “Doctor?”

“Leave the room Larry.”

“Wha-?”

The next words were an unholy combination of screech and shout that would’ve cut lesser glass into neat little shapes. “LEAVE. THE. ROOM.”

Twilight Interlude Two

Twilight Sparkle was worried.

This was not new. Worry had been a constant companion throughout her life, more than even Spike could claim to be. Yet, over the past several years, Twilight had found it easier and easier to temper her anxieties about a situation and had eventually gotten to the point that she was not shaken to the core by every unforeseen event. It had required a lot of time and work and, perhaps most importantly, it had required a strong network of friends.

The friends that had fought beside her against increasingly more powerful opponents including, in no particular order: A god-like incarnation of chaos, an alicorn corrupted by the darkness within her heart, a warlord and his army that had managed to blitzkrieg the whole of Canterlot, and many others. In addition her and her friends had also managed to convince or redeem various creatures from that list.

She had been friends with some of the most caring most trustworthy ponies in the whole history of Equestria. She worried, still, but that worry no longer consumed her. She had, in short, managed to trust the fact that all bad things could be, if not beaten, at least endured to its end.

This was what she had assumed it would be like for Rainbow Dash.

Twilight Sparkle had finished reading through her ‘encyclopedias of mental unwellness’ as Pinkie had called them, hoping that within the small selection of tomes she would find some means of fixing Rainbow’s problem, that those collections of written insights might give her the means to help the friend that had helped her so many times before. Instead, she received an unfortunate declaration, the book simply telling her that there was very little that she could actually do to help Rainbow Dash.

She could not fix Rainbow’s trauma and it was not hers to endure, it had explained, nor was there any promise that it would end. It even went so far as to say that there was little she could do to help her friend at all, aside from remaining her friend and being supportive. Which seemed too little a deed to Twilight. Of course she was going to remain Rainbow’s friend, but surely there was more she could do for her. Surely she could do something beyond merely what she would’ve done anyway.

At the realization that this collection of books did not have any way to truly help Rainbow, Twilight had done the only logical thing. Well, the only logical thing to Twilight anyway. She delayed her meeting with Rainbow and Pinkie, that had only been minutes away, until the same time the day after. With this time freed up, Twilight delved fully into a complete understanding of the pony psyche. She did have an incredibly expansive library at her command after all, if there was ever a time to use it, it was now. Surely, somewhere within that vast collection of literature, there must be something that would tell her how she could help Rainbow.

Unfortunately this broad approach was quickly ended, Psychology as a whole proved to be simply too large a field of study even for her, and to learn it within the period of a single day was impossible. Because of this, Twilight decided to immediately narrow it down to something more manageable, choosing to focus specifically on mental trauma and any possible cures for it, though she did make herself a note to return to the field of study later for something to read in her free time.

As Twilight fished for the answers she wanted to hear, she instead only managed to net frustration. No matter how many books Twilight blazed through she could not find one that fought against what the first one had said. The best, or most actionable rather, role she found she could take in assisting Rainbow with her trauma would be to become a therapist, or at least to become trained in therapy. This was not an idea Twilight considered for long, she knew it wasn’t the field for her. Therapy relied heavily on patience and Twilight tended to… not. Not to mention that even if she did become trained in therapy Twilight knew that it would still likely be far better for Rainbow to go see someone with experience in the field, and not simply someone with book learning who was just starting out.

This of course, was not the absolute end of Twilight’s research. As an alicorn she had access to a vast well of magic that she could command. So she turned her attention to what applications she might find for such a skill, only to find that, once again, she was going to be useless on that front. Some of the books that had been written with unicorns in mind had very strictly worded warning of how dangerous attempting to use magic to fix the problem could be. Space and time, some said, were flexible and could be bent by magic, but a pony’s mind was like glass and could shatter at the slightest magical touch. Unsatisfied with that answer, Twilight delved into the older books that her newer ones had cited as sources, only to find that they told a similar story. These books, however, all cited one book in particular as a source. A book that Twilight didn’t so much as have passing familiarity with, though she knew the author’s work.

The book in question was ‘The Fragility of the Mind’ by Princess Celestia. Twilight, of course, knew that Celestia had written a, not insignificant, number of books in her long lifetime, Twilight herself had read a great deal of them while under her tutelage. Yet she couldn’t recall this one, not even in passing, and made a note to ask her mentor about it when the opportunity presented itself. Unfortunately, it was this final snippet of information that proved to be the unsatisfying end to her study session.

As Twilight abandoned her final book she sighed and stretched, working the tension out of her joints as she stood. She drew her eyes away from the words she had been reading and closed the covers that held them lightly with her magic. Her head was heavy with the weight of all she’d read, the ideas they’d presented still flitting through her mind, most of them saying the same thing in different ways. She felt tired, as she usually did after a particularly exhaustive study session, though having such a vast array of literature result in a dead end certainly carried its own added fatigue.

With her mind heavy with thoughts for the future Twilight turned her head to look out the nearby window, releasing a series of pops from her stiff neck as she did so, and tried to gauge the time of day. The sunlight streamed in lightly from almost directly above the castle and for a very brief moment Twilight believed that not that much time had passed from the start of her study session. After a moment of thought however she realized the horrible truth of it, that being that she’d once again stayed up all night.

Glancing around Twilight noted the scattered plates, still stained from various meals that she had eaten her way through while lost in her usual study-induced haze. She also noticed the slumbering form of the small dragon who had brought them for her. Smiling, Twilight levitated Spike from the haphazard pile of books he had collapsed on and placed him carefully onto the bed that rested near the door to try and avoid waking him. He did not sleep in the library very often, but it was often enough that Twilight had bought a second bed for him to use. Though, unfortunately, he looked to have been too tired to have found it the previous night.

As her gaze drifted from Spike and back to the large piles of books that lay scattered around the floor, so too did her mind drift from her number one assistant to a close friend. Twilight sighed, an exhale that carried the weight of everything that rested on her heart, a sigh of defeat. In resignation, Twilight set to work. Beginning to clean the mess that she’d caused or that, more accurately, had formed around her as messes so often did. As she set to work on what had become a simple, lengthy task her mind began work all its own.

Rainbow Dash would be here soon, Pinkie in tow, and Twilight was no closer to an answer. What she’d hoped would be a happy meeting now seemed to be a gathering storm. As she shelved the books, she practiced the unfortunate message she would have to deliver. On a better day she might’ve been able to simply mass reshelf all of these books at once, but she was running on a second day without sleep, not to mention the weight of the topic at hand, so the work went slowly. Which was fine enough for her purposes. She’d wanted to tell Rainbow the truth, it was just that now she knew the truth was not a happy announcement. So, she believed, it needed to be couched in optimism and delivered carefully.

“Greetings Rainbow Dash,” Twilight began before shaking her head, slightly annoyed at how formal it sounded even when she was just talking to the empty air as she replaced the books.

“Hi Rainbow,” Twilight tried again. “I just got done reading my books and it looks like I can’t do anything.” No, that wouldn’t work, it seemed too pessimistic. Too hopeless.

“Hey Rainbow. It turns out that it's a lot more complicated than I thought it would be, if you just give me another delay-” Another delay? That wasn’t right. Another day is what she’d meant to say, not that there was too big a difference between the two. It didn’t seem any more likely that Twilight would find some new answer to the problem in the span of a day, she hadn’t had any luck so far after all. There was Celestia’s book but it was cited by the books she’d already read and so it seemed more likely to support what she’d already read than to oppose it. Not to mention that the title didn’t seem to encourage a cure for Rainbow’s trauma. ‘The Fragility of the Mind’ indeed.

So Twilight tried once more to come up with an appropriate starting statement. And she failed, again. And again. And again. With each new attempt hoping that this one might be better, that through this trial and error she might find some vague approach that sounded right. Yet, each time she realized she couldn’t even decide on a greeting to start with. Words and phrases were picked up, put together, and then dismantled as Twilight ran her way through all manner of words, trying to find something, anything, that sounded right from her lexicon of words.

The sun had passed its zenith and slid partway down the sky unnoticed as Twilight tried to think of what to say. Until, at last, she reached the end of her chore. With her last unsorted book held aloft in her magic, Twilight sighed. She slid the book into its place on the shelf and abandoned all her couching of bad news, all her sweet words and kind build-ups and said, simply, “Sorry, Rainbow.”

“It’s okay.”

Twilight spun to view the speaker and saw Rainbow, sheepish almost, with Pinkie standing a few steps behind. “How long have you been there?” Twilight breathed, trying to remember if she’d heard someone come in or some other disturbance that should’ve clued her in to her company, but failed to remember any.

“For about fifteen ‘Hi Rainbows’” Said Pinkie with a half-hearted grin.

Twilight turned a questioning gaze to Rainbow Dash, who shrugged noncommittally with a guilty look on her face. Twilight shook her head and stared at the floor for a few moments before she spoke. “So how much did you hear?”

“Umm, well that you didn’t actually find a way to cure Rainbow flat out.” Offered Pinkie Pie, sitting on her hindquarters to think.

“Yea, we were there for a couple of those. Uh, we learned that I should probably get a therapist?” Rainbow said, looking to Pinkie who nodded in confirmation.

“That you read a lot of books that didn’t really help much at all.” Twilight nodded once in response to Pinkie's statement, eyes still gazing emptily at the soft purple floor.

“That you were sorry.” Twilight raised her gaze to Rainbow who was trying to look nonchalant and failing. “Not that you did anything wrong, though, so you shouldn’t be sorry.” Rainbow’s eyes went wide as she continued to speak. “Not that I- I mean- I know that’s what you said to me about... me... but I wasn’t trying to- you know, like, get back at you or anything. I just, uh, accidentally-.” As Twilight offered a small smile Rainbow took the cue to clam up.

Then, after a short stretch of sudden silence for all parties to gather their thoughts, Twilight and Rainbow Dash spoke in unison.

"Are you going to be okay?"

This was followed again by a pause and that pause was followed by a short game of charades where both mares tried to indicate that the other one should speak first. PInkie, an expert on charades, officiated the game and decided that Twilight was the winner, though she decided not the bring this up at the time.

“Yea. I think I’ll be okay.” Rainbow said at last.

“Me too.” Twilight offered.

“Do you think you can find me a, uh, therapist in Ponyville? Just, I don’t want anyone to think that I- you know- NEED a therapist. I just-”

Twilight had been nodding along to this explanation when the door to the library was opened so violently that Spike went from deep sleep to wide awake in the span of a few sparse seconds. Applejack burst into the room, already starting into her announcement before the other ponies had a chance to react beyond their initial flinching at the noise. “Twilight!” About to continue, Applejack paused, taking the span of a split second to process the presence of her other friends, then she continued. “Girls! You need to get on down to the center a' town, there’s some sorta hootenanny goin’ on! I don’t have all the details, but Rarity sent me to getcha, said it was important.”

Twilight’s mind stalled as it tried to shift gears from ‘Deep emotional conversation about mental health’ mode to ‘Catastrophe!’ mode. By the time she got her wits back Rainbow had already bolted to a nearby window and thrown it open. “Come on Twilight!” Rainbow shouted. “Let’s get a move on!”

Twilight was about to follow, her wings flaring wide, when she realized there was a faster way to travel. Instead of bolting into the air she instead began to gather her magic, focusing tightly on her surrounding friends, and simply teleported there.

In the breath of emptiness, a dragon stirred. “Well then.” Said Spike, disappointed at his exclusion from the trip. “Guess I’ll just-” Then, before he could finish the thought, was whisked away by Twilight's magic as she realized that she’d left him behind.