.   .

dot.

Faraway, barely visible, but there was no doubt. She had been wrong. She had thought she would never see again, but here it was.

It must be far, because after a day’s worth of flying, it didn’t seem to have come any closer. But what of it? Fluttershy had time. All the time in the world. Now that she had a goal, she would never give up on it. It didn’t matter whether it took a month, a year, a century, or a hundred centuries; she would fly towards it until she reached it, or until forever, whichever came first.

Soon, months were behind her, and throughout all this time, she hadn’t turned around to see whether it would still be there, not once. Only when she closed her eyes did it disappear, and that gave her hope. Hope that it was real.

And hadn’t it come closer by now? It was hard to tell, but hadn’t the dot become brighter, and hadn’t it grown?

Years must have passed, years of her flying towards the dot. The time it had been with her must already have exceeded the time that it hadn’t; and she was now certain that it had changed. It was almost white, and it was a small, solid circle, not merely a dot.

So much time had passed. Her memories without the circle seemed so distant, as if from a past life. Although it was hardly a circle now... she had known it for a while: there were lines which had merely resembled a circle from a distance. She wasn’t yet close enough to see what they represented, but soon she would.

Soon. It was really peaceful now. She hadn’t been panicking for months... and though the boredom was harder to overcome, there was always Rarity, and there were always those white lines in the distance. They drew a castle, she knew that now. She could see the entrance, guarded by a pair of towers. The rest was still too far, but soon she would see everything.

And still she hadn’t turned; hadn’t turned around even once; not once in all these years. She knew that she wouldn’t. Turning around just once might make everything disappear. There was only she and the tower, and with every passing moment, she was bridging some part of the remaining distance.

A castle of white lines. Not only could she see its walls, but they were getting closer more quickly. Every year made a visible difference now, and though she couldn’t be sure, she liked to imagine that she would soon be there, perhaps in thirty years time. Thirty years was not that much; it was far less than she had already spent flying towards it, flying towards the castle of white lines.

But it didn’t even take that much. It must have been just a couple of years, perhaps five, until she arrived. For the first time in eternity, Fluttershy slowed down. She had to. Otherwise, she would have crashed into the white lines outlining the castle's walls. As she got even closer, she rested a hoof on the hollow rectangle of a battlement, and she could feel it. Where its surface would have been, had it been drawn, there was resistance, smooth and firm. And where her hoof got in front of the lines, the lines disappeared from her sight. This was more than she had ever hoped for. Finally, she landed in between two battlements, leaning against one. It was just as smooth, and she could feel it pressing against her wings.