Making Wishes on the Furthest Stars

Chapters

Ch 1 - The Night Gets Caught in Her Mane (Solitude)
Ch 2 - The Stars in Low Fields
Ch 3 - Feelin' So Good, Feelin' So Fine
Ch 4 - Placebo Integrity

Ch 1 - The Night Gets Caught in Her Mane (Solitude)

Chapter One
The Night Gets Caught in her Mane (Solitude)

It was cold for an aging spring, echoes of a winter long since packed up and carried off like so much mail. Grape-colored clouds blemished the pomegranate sky like fading scars as the sun dug deep into the horizon, and Fizzlepop allowed herself a few moments to pretend that it was early morning and that she hadn’t spent the entirety of the day in her rickety bed.

She moved quickly, now that the excruciating cramp in her back legs and shoulders had finally let up to a mild ache, watching as jays and swallows passed lazily over the river, reflections following them. Watching the midges and mayflies and gnats swarming in low clouds in the circles of sunlight reflected up by the river. Watching ponies in the little town beyond the bridge milling about the marketplace in the town square, still making purchases in the few shops that were still open, or just spending time with each other as the day began to fall away into night.

Ponyville.

It happened every time, always triggered after she crossed some sort of threshold; the bridge, a mailbox, a tree shaped in a particular way. Her heart would begin to stomp against her ribcage, sweat leaching through her skin as though a fever were setting in. Her stomach would begin to twist and rise and she’d try to think up an excuse to get away from this town in as fast and inconspicuous a way as possible. A grey pegasus mare with a long mane the color of wheatgrass was heading out of town, coming her way; she saw Fizzlepop coming and quickly turned away, tossing a scowl over her shoulder. A pair of stallions seated under an awning watched her out of the corners of their eyes, crossing ugly whispers. She’d heard some of what they were saying, floating on the breeze like pathogens, but she paid them no mind. She’d heard all of the really awful ones already, and she wouldn’t have bothered anyway. She was in a hurry.

A brief glance at the sunset informed her that she needed to move. She told her heart to shut up and her hooves to keep going.

As she turned, she smacked dead-on into the body of a shorter mare, a head rebounding off of her chest and winding her for a second. She ran through the list of names Pinkie Pie had insisted she memorize, coming up with one and matching it with the face. Once she caught her breath, she straightened up and tried to untangle her tongue. “Oh, Mrs. Cake, I’m sorry—.”

“Get inside, kids. Get in, get in…” Mrs. Cake ushered her two foals (Pound Cake was the colt’s name, she remembered, though she couldn’t remember what the filly was called) into the nearest shop, a squat, cozy building shaped like a wholesome gingerbread house. A sign hung from a cast-iron crossbeam reminding her that this was Sugarcube Corner.

Mrs. Cake gave her a dark look, as though Fizzlepop had just tried to accost her children. “I’m sorry, I-I didn’t see you,” the unicorn muttered.

“I suppose not,” Mrs. Cake said, voice dribbling hate. She blew air out of her nose and went on. “That you’ve been allowed to walk freely among good, decent ponyfolk, that you’ve been allowed to live anywhere in Equestria, is no less a crime than what you did.”

The mare held Fizzlepop’s gaze for an uncomfortable instant longer before turning away and heading into her shop, leaving the unicorn staring wide-eyed at the pink shutter doors as they swayed open-shut-open-shut, like hooves waving her away from the premises.

“The natives grow restless,” Fizzlepop muttered to herself. It was by pure willpower alone that she kept her heart from breaking free and wreaking havoc on the rest of her insides. Swallowing this moment, burying it away with the rest, she turned away from Sugarcube Corner and continued on her way.

She needed to see it again. The safety of having the ability to question why and how she might accomplish this task flew right out the window the moment her hooves hit the bedroom floor. The dream was so discombobulating, so many sensations and each sense overloaded with what her dream depicted. Faceless silhouettes wreathed in argument and conflict. Familiar voices screaming at her, decrying and defying her and somewhere in the cacophony was her own voice among the accusers. But there were so many things she couldn’t be sure of, and as time slipped away and her memory of the dream slowly hemorrhaged, she felt a longing deep enough to drown in, a pull toward that dream. She needed to see and hear it all again. Just to be sure.

You don’t think that dreams, some dreams, are meant to be forgotten?

Fizzlepop paused at that, scowling at the grass. No, she couldn’t allow herself to think like that. Surely this dream meant something important, and she had to find out a way to get it to come back to her.

A half-moon was rising up through the distant stars, so bright and orange it might as well be a chipped off piece of some gigantic hunk of amber. The shadows that covered the ground didn’t flee from its light, but seemed to warm to it, soften and become comforting. Fizzlepop felt no comfort as she quickened her pace, the moon only exacerbating her urgency.

She asked the few ponies that were still out and about if they had seen Twilight Sparkle anywhere. Their responses were more or less identical to Mrs. Cake. Finally, her lungs threatening to break out of her chest and her heart threatening violent mutiny, she stopped on a hill just outside of town, hanging her head as she willed the dream to come back to her.

It’s going away, she thought, feeling a sadness cutting into her too deep for description. It’s going away and you’re never going to get it back.

A moment later, she noticed something odd about the low-hanging cloud above her. A tuft of something, some kind of hair sticking out from the bottom of it. She realized that it was a tail, and from the noises emanating from the cloud, its owner was already sleeping.

Fizzlepop grumbled to herself, prodding at the ground with the corner of her hoof. She recognized that tail, and she wasn’t interested in talking with that particular pony, but she knew her options were stretched to the faintest limit.

“Rainbow Dash?”

No answer outside of grinding snores.

She shouted Rainbow Dash’s name, shouted again. Her frustration and despair began to bleed together, alchemizing into anger; she didn’t notice the early warning flickers that flared from the cracked broken stump of her horn, bright blue sparks spitting like those thrown off the lit primer chord to a stick of dynamite.

“Rainbow Dash, wake up!” she screamed. As the last syllable rushed over her lips the world around her blazed apart in a blue-white light. She watched as a misshapen bolt of magical light arced up through the air, spiraling without trajectory, somehow righting itself and striking the cloud. The cloud in turn absorbed the light, soaking it up and radiating a brilliant sapphire glow that lit up the entire field. Fizzlepop held her breath as moment stretched on into anguished moment until it finally happened.

The cloud discharged, sending out pale smoke and veins of prismatic electricity in every direction. There was a tremendous shout and a rush of air as a blue pegasus shot up into the sky, trailing smoke. Fizzlepop watched the mare turning in the air to see what had happened, saw eyes lock onto hers and then dim into anger.

“Uh oh,” she said. She took one tentative step back—enough time for Rainbow Dash to arrow down close to the ground, hovering inches above her. The blue mare glowered down at her, an entry in the book of aggression. In the dim copal moonlight, Fizzlepop could still see the ugly scorch mark on her rump, her eyes jumping between it and Rainbow’s sour expression.

“What?” Rainbow Dash spat.

“Sorry about that, Rainbow…I just wanted to know if—.”

“Do you have any idea what time it is? Haven’t you got better things to do than blowing stuff up? I know that’s, like, your thing and all, but maybe you can do it away from anypony else! That would be the best thing you could do.”

Swallow it, bury it. “Rainbow Dash, I was hoping if you knew where Twilight would be.”

An eyebrow raised, a suspicious smirk she was becoming all too familiar with seeing on other ponies. “And why do you want to know where Twilight would be?”

“Please, it’s really important,” Fizzlepop said. She knew she’d put too much pleading in her words, the shame of it chilling her more than the soft breeze that whispered down from the north possibly could. She sounded like a filly, sounded weak and needing.

After a brief while, Rainbow Dash grimaced and rolled her eyes. She seemed tired and in no mood for conversation. It dawned on Fizzlepop that at any other time, Rainbow Dash wouldn’t have been quite as receptive to telling her the way. “I dunno,” the pegasus growled, “Why don’t you try the big castle over there?”

Fizzlepop turned to the direction Rainbow’s hoof was pointing. She saw the castle on the northern edge of the town, a structure comprised of violet crystal somehow shaped into the likeness of a massive tree. The gleaming surfaces of the building caught and captured the moonlight, turning it into a fragment of dream that didn’t want to fade away.

You idiot. Of course, that’s where she’d be. What other options were there?

“Oh. I thought that—.”

Fizzlepop gave a start when she realized she was speaking to the wind. Rainbow Dash was already little more than a blue shape in the night, winging off through the clouds. She swore at herself, finding no one else to curse, and started walking.

Time seemed to liquefy and run down as she stood on the top steps, waiting for something to happen. Everything around her seemed as though it were illustrated in pigments much too bright for her eyes. She tapped her hoof on the floor, looked up into the dark rooms hidden by thick balustrades, breathing through her mouth and licking her lips as she wished for something to happen, wished for something not to happen so she could let this night pass her by.

She wanted to see the dream again, but how much was it really worth? She wondered if she should just let it decay into the past, let it become another regret. The little home the Ponyville Zoning Committee had built for her was no castle, but it was a place she could sleep, and maybe the dream would come to her again tonight. Her impatience had probably cost her that chance.

The door opened. Fizzlepop clamped down on her bottom lip, looking into darkness.

A steady thumping noise drew her eyes downward, and she stared, dumbfounded at the small purple dragon with green back frills whisking eggs in a large mixing bowl. The apron he wore was stained with chocolate cake batter and what looked like powdered gemstones. He looked exhausted, taking a moment to scratch an itch underneath a blue polkadot bandana. “Hi, Tempest,” the dragon said. “I take it you’re here to join Twilight Sparkle’s Home for Errant Dejected Unicorns as well?”

“No,” she said slowly, not quite sure what she should say. Hearing her other name, the name she’d had fabricated in and for another life, had thrown her off track. Seeing a dragon wearing an apron didn’t really help the matter.

“I was hoping if I could talk to Twilight?”

“Oh, sure. Come on in.” The dragon motioned for her to follow him into the vestibule, fumbling with the bowl and whisk and spilling cake batter onto the floor as he stepped out of the way. She curled a back leg around the door and pulled it closed. There were torch sconces set into the walls all along the corridor, magically set so that no material was really consumed and allowing it to burn eternally. The flames spread a low topaz light all along the corridor that reminded her a bit too much of the moon.

“Twilight keeps weird hours, too. You’d think being a princess would give you some leeway when it comes to getting some sleep, but I guess not.”

“I didn’t think she lived here.”

The dragon turned, eyes and mouth hanging open in disbelief. More batter slipped over the rim, ran over his claws and slid down to the floor. “What’s that now? The giant crystal tree castle thing didn’t give it away?”

She pulled a humorless grin, Rainbow Dash’s words echoing in her ears, embarrassment filling her face. “It’s not uncommon in other lands for individual towns to have some extravagant building or watchtower that creatures can flock to in times of an emergency, gathering places that are usually empty most of the year and only function when the situation calls for it. I thought that this castle was one of them. Plus, all the books I’ve read are a little outdated. They don’t mention anything other than two princesses that live in Canterlot. After coming here, I just assumed Twilight lived up there, too.”

The dragon chuckled. “You sure you didn’t hit your head on anything when you woke up?”

Fizzlepop frowned, biting back the suppositions that started to form then. That couldn’t have been a slight, surely not. He was just being curious, friendly. It was just a joke.

You’re the joke, Berrytwist.

“In my defense, I’ve been living outside of Equestria for most of my life,” she said. The corridor widened out into a grand hall, columns towering high up into the dark reaches where the ceiling must somewhere be. They walked up a wide flight of stairs in silence, taking a right up into the second floor. Fizzlepop wondered how many tiers this building must have, feeling less like being in a massive crystal tree and more like she was in the cloistered shell of a titanic snail. They crossed through a foyer into yet another corridor, one pool of shadow, or one pool of firelight, bleeding into the next, and Fizzlepop could smell something baking, something burning.

The little dragon gave a sudden cry of alarm, jumping up into the air. “The strudel!” he shouted, running down the corridor. Fizzlepop managed to catch the mixing bowl with one hoof, feeling thoroughly confused. She sighed, exasperation reading in her muscles. Perhaps this was a bit too much trouble for one dream, one dream that she could barely remember anymore, save for vague and uncertain half-expressions: familiar voices, the warm light of a calendula sunset, a mountain striding on four pillar-like legs.

Laughter tore through the silence as fine as a razor cut, interrupting her attempt to reclaim what was already lost. Her ears perked up, swiveling toward the noise a little further along the hallway. She followed it for some distance to another tall door, a paper-thin sliver of light spilling out into the hallway. Quietly setting the bowl down on the floor, she put her eye to the space between the frame and the door.

It was a library, a colossal one, what all other libraries try to aspire to be but can only be meager comparisons. The vast walls of the circular room were comprised of bookcases, and each bookcase was filled to capacity. The floor had a number of fine tables and chairs. A pair of unicorn mares sat at one, leaning precariously back in their chairs and looking more than comfortable as they levitated different objects at each other. Books, tea cups, playing cards, a stuffed bear, floating back and forth in a lenticular pattern.

“You’re getting better at this,” one unicorn said. She had a coat that was a shade of pink much more subdued than Pinkie Pie’s, with a purple and teal mane that made Fizzlepop think, rather abstractly, of powerfully magical fungi. She thought the mare looked rather pretty, but there was a playfully cunning look in her eyes that she didn’t like very much.

“Trixie has always been better at this. A good magician never lets on how much she knows right from the beginning,” the blue unicorn intoned, immodestly flicking a lock of her bright blue mane out of her eyes. Her hat was extravagant, wide-brimmed and conical with a bent tip, made of shimmering violet fabric and stitched with faded blue and golden stars. A matching cloak hung over the back of her chair, bunched up at the legs and looking like it was well loved.

Fizzlepop stared, teeth showing through the thin space between her lips. Her eyes darted between the two unicorns, at the objects floating between them as smoothly as a river in summer. They laughed, good-natured playful laughter, and something knotted deep inside her. Her ears and cheeks began to burn as shame and longing poured into her, their laughter triggering memories she had never allowed herself to forget. She looked at the two unicorns, clearly seeing them, but the walls gave way and the shadows fled. She could see a small town now, tiny fillies and colts playing together, little foal’s games under a sky as pale as spidersilk. They stop and watch as a little filly with a vibrant fan-shaped mane and a coat as dark as the darkest orchids walks with her head hung down, trying to get her mane to move in a way that it could hide her injury, her earliest lesson in stupidity and regret. Her mane kept springing up, fan-shaped razor slice, hello scars, hello broken horn.

Children’s games change. They always change. Laughter evolves and switches direction as easily as a flock of gulls over a benighted ocean. And in those final days before she left, before she ran and buried her name and past in the ground she vowed to never see again, those foals she had once called her friends had filled her with enough laughter to make it sour in her ears.

Don’t laugh at me.

Don’t you dare laugh at me.

Tempest…

Pretty unicorns, just friends playing together, working magic and honing their abilities under the guise of fun. Pretty unicorns.

Don’t look at me…Don’t ignore me…

Make them stop. They won’t stop if you won’t give them a reason not to.

“Tempest!?”

She gasped, coming awake from some other awful wakefulness. She spun away from the door, back in the embrace of the castle’s shadows and the air of a spring colder than it ought to be. Twilight Sparkle was standing some feet away and giving her a worried, curious look. A look she didn’t want to see.

“It’s Fizzlepop…My name’s Fizzlepop.”

“Oh, right. Sorry, I keep forgetting.”

She sighed, breathing in the castle’s smells and cycling them out. The anger was draining away, washing out like a tide and leaving her feeling tired, drained. Even breathing felt like a chore.

“Spike said you wanted to see me?”

Spike, she thought, the dragon’s name is Spike. Gotta tell Pinkie Pie that her list has some gaps. “Yes, Princess. I was hoping you could help me with something important.” Then she added in a whisper, as though the shadows would snicker if they could hear, “Something about magic.”

“Sure thing! Just follow me, and we’ll see what we can do.” Twilight smiled, beamed. Fizzlepop tried to return it.

Another corridor, another foyer, another corridor. Fizzlepop counted herself as being proficient in placement and direction, but she hadn’t expected anything more than simple architecture in this town, where simplicity was the descriptive of its entire existence. It wouldn’t be too difficult to backtrack to a familiar point of reference and follow her way out again. Ahead of her, Twilight’s horn glowed with violet light, before a sudden flare of light sprouted to life, lighting up the entire hallway.

“Sorry it’s so dark in here. The torches came with the place, but they don’t really do much, unless you like grim, moody atmospheres.”

The easiest spells. The most basic of incantations, and you can’t do them.

She’s doing it on purpose. She’s putting your nose in what you cannot do.

“It’s alright, Princess. I don’t mind the dark.”

“Well, I do. And please just call me Twilight.”

The alicorn opened a door at the end of the hall and ushered her in, somehow still smiling. Fizzlepop stepped in and was struck by a wall of bay leaves and honeysuckle, undercut by vanilla bean. She made the mistake of breathing in a deep sigh, covering her coughs with a hoof. The scents were so strong and so contrasted that it was like she’d breathed in bonfire smoke, her eyes beginning to water. She felt Twilight’s wing brush against her side as the alicorn walked up to a big cast-iron brazier, on top of which was set a shallow dish the size of a wagon wheel. She levitated the dish up and away from the flames, setting it on a distant desk.

Fizzlepop wiped her eyes and cleared her throat of the strong herbal smell. Twilight had said something to her just then but she didn’t catch it. No point in asking what.

When she opened her eyes, she looked around, wondering just what kind of room this was. It was at once estranged from the rest of the castle and wholly representative of it. A desk was set all along the nearest wall on her right, curving along the corner to the furthest wall and covered in various pseudo-mechanical apparatus. A pair of shelves were set in the wall above it, piled with books and small tangles of mechanical bits and bobs. To her left, the floor fell away into a deeper room, guarded by a beautiful silver railing. Two elliptical staircases, each clinging to the furthest and the back wall, descended down into the lower depths.

Twilight was busy tossing what remained in the brazier dish into a sink, pouring water over the spitting metal, watching the shrunken burnt herbs tumble and swirl into the drain. She hummed as she spoke over her shoulder. “You like it? It’s my special science room—I used to have one just like it at the Golden Oaks Library, but not nearly as, well, big, or so well equipped. I used to dabble in all kinds of arcane sciences when I was younger, but now that I’m the princess of friendship, with all the responsibilities that come with the title, I don’t have much time for all those things.

“There are time spells, of course, but frankly, I’ve had it with those things. Way too much trouble.”

Fizzlepop put her forehooves up on the railing, looking down at the room below, nearly twice as big as the entry hall and just as tall. Half of what the princess had said went over her ears as she stared at the various contraptions and mind-bogglingly complex machinery. She was immediately reminded of the hangars that held the colossal transport vessels from the Storm King’s land, dark alcoves set into the mountains of frozen basalt packed with dreams of war. Vessels that had not so long ago hung onto her every command. But where those machines were meant for carrying destruction, the small tools and devices in Twilight’s science room seemed more mundane and practical.

Fizzlepop licked at her lips as she bottled her amazement. It became clear to her that there was a lot more to the ponies in this town than she had first presumed. She had plenty of questions clinging to her throat, but she drew them back down as she turned away from the railing.

“Prin…Twilight…”

“Sorry about the smell. I was trying to design a new parasprite repellant using only natural flora, but so far it only seems to work on ponies. Hmph. Waste of good materials.”

“Twilight?”

The purple alicorn paused as she levitated down a clipboard, dragging a quill along one line in what looked like a list. There was that same worried curiosity in her eyes, in the way her mouth was turned down at the corners, daring secrets, and Fizzlepop had to look back down at the floor. “Look, I’m sorry for interrupting whatever’s going on here, and I know it’s getting pretty late, but I need your help. You’re the only pony that I can think of that I can talk to about this, though I don’t even know if I should. I just—I want to know if there’s a spell that can help get dreams back.”

The sentence seemed to die away on her lips. Saying it out loud made her realize just how farfetched and silly this might seem to somepony else. She glanced at Twilight, saw the perplexed expression on her face and wished that she hadn’t, feeling stupid. “What do you mean?” Twilight said.

Fizzlepop scowled at her hooves. “I’m not saying it right. I mean, is there a way for somepony to see one of their dreams again, after they’ve seen it?”

Twilight raised an eyebrow, rubbed at her chin as though the act of looking like she was thinking was helping her to think. Fizzlepop watched her out of the corner of her eye, not sure what to expect, less sure she ought to expect anything.

It was becoming more and more difficult to look at anypony in the eyes. There was no method, none that she could think of that could be successful, that kept memories from being triggered, set off like fireworks. She ached to have a conversation with Twilight Sparkle where she couldn’t remember seeing the same mare locked behind a cage, those violet eyes flooded with hurt and hate while Fizzlepop laughed and gloated, finding all the right places to twist her barbed words. Half the ponies in this little town were at Canterlot when she came, the Storm King’s vanguard right behind her. They were all given a front-row seat to the pony she used to be; to expect them, any of them, to change now that she wanted a different life was another pipe dream.

Just like forgetting it was all a pipe dream. Fizzlepop waited, feeling very tired.

“Well,” Twilight said, “I suppose there are Cognitive Return spells, intensive recall spells…Oh!” She suddenly gave a start and ran for the stairs. No, not the stairs, the railing. Fizzlepop stared at the mare as she leapt over the silver bannister, extended her wings and elegantly glided down to the floor. Fizzlepop quickly ran down the nearest stairs, her heart jumping at the thought that there might be a chance.

Twilight had levitated down a small crate that had been set on a high shelf. She rummaged for a bit, muttering to herself or to Fizzlepop about organization, then let out a loud “Ah-ha!” that echoed across the walls.

She floated the object over to Fizzlepop, the mare taking it in one hoof. A circle of twined hay, shimmering threads like silk radiating outward from a central point within the circle. Dangling from the bottommost edge of the circle was a single phoenix feather, tied to a string beaded with glassy quartz stones.

She recognized it immediately for what it was, and she frowned. “This is a joke.”

“Nope, it’s a dream catcher. They’re so fascinating…I learned all about them from a book Princess Luna gave to me years ago, before I became an alicorn.”

Fizzlepop looked up from the dream catcher. “What?”

“The one you’re holding was my own first go at experimenting with REM sleep patterns and dream manipulation. I was actually trying to figure out a way to acquire the rest of a good long sleep while still being awake and active. No success, I’m afraid, but at least I tried.”

“Uh-huh,” Fizzlepop murmured.

“What I came up with was a little different. It’s a way to record your dreams, either during or after the dream in question. All you really have to do is think about the dream after having it, then you activate the dream catcher with just a little spark. The catcher will interpret your memory of it and copy it, transferring it into a bead. Each thread can hold up to one bead, but even one might be enough to help you through a bad day, especially if it was a really good dream.”

“A spark?” Fizzlepop’s mouth twitched a little, half amazed and half disbelieving that what she was holding could do that. It was just too perfect, too much of what she wanted.

“Mm-hmm. Just a tiny magic trigger, and then there’s some whooshing noises and the feeling that you’re using a Q-tip a bit too intensely, and presto! Genuine dream bead, ready to be played back at your discretion.”

“And activating the bead just requires another spark?”

“Yep, simple as that.”

Fizzlepop smiled. It was too perfect, surely, but things like that have been known to happen. Throughout the endless onslaught of time, alignments might be rare, but rare was not by any means synonymous with impossible. How many ponies born at the exact same time throughout the ages? How many hearts beating at the same moment, with the exact same frequency? How many stars in the cosmos arrayed so perfectly, one to another in a neat row like a string of jewels, spanning light years? Every cosmic instant since that faraway point when reality exploded into existence, whole worlds—entire universes—blink into life and fade out in silence.

Surely in a world like this, a pony who had thrown away and reclaimed her birth name might make her own little wish come true.

She waited and watched as Twilight activated the spell. She then thanked Twilight and left, declining offers to stay and chat. She had successfully managed to hold back the tears until she was out of the castle and back out into the night too cold to be spring. The little amulet hung from her neck, bouncing against her chest. The moon and the stars and the agate glass porch lamps that remained on in Ponyville all blurred in her joy-moistened eyes into golden pools, and she felt they were good enough to wish on.

Eurythmy (noun): Harmony of proportion or movement.

Twilight hummed a nervous tune to herself as she cast a discerning eye over the ancient and majestic hall, taking in each and every detail, running down both a mental and an actual checklist to make sure everything was in its proper place for the impending summit meeting with delegates from Yakyakistan, Stalliongrad, and Griffonstone to discuss, for the most part, trade appeals, though there have been talks about discussions on the preservation of geographical landmarks, transcontinental transportation arrangements, and education. All of it was adding up to be a very long and stress-filled week, but so far as she could see, everything seemed to be in order; flowers hung from ornate ceramic pots, mostly found in those neighboring countries; tapestries adorned with images that all of the delegates would find peaceful; the mingling scents of cooked foods and spices grown in faraway lands meandering through the rooms and halls of the castle.

Twilight hoped that by now the delegates were aware that friendship, and by extension, national politics, was a give and take affair. Little sacrifices for, inevitably, greater rewards.

“Are you sure about all of this, Twilight?” The other alicorn stepped up alongside her, silent as a barnyard owl in winter, her coat as dark as the night sky. Her mane and tail like flowing patches of midnight that couldn’t be cleared away. Luna’s worried eyes took in all of the same changes that Twilight could see, undoubtedly seeing them as just that—changes. Twilight looked up and gave her a friendly smile, wondering just how low Princess Luna’s threshold for anxiety really was.

“I’m positive, Luna. Once the representatives arrive and see that we took the time to understand their ways and tried to make them feel comfortable, I’m sure that the tensions we’ve been having between our countries will finally smooth out. After this summit, things will be better.”

Luna nodded quietly, pursing her lips. She could agree with the changes, but she didn’t necessarily have to like them. As she stepped away, a flowery fragrance seemed to emanate from her body, silky lavender laced with the sharp tang of sandalwood, trailing in her wake.

Twilight paused in her checklist and called after her. “Wait, where are you going, princess? I thought you were going to help me decorate the upper floors.”

“That’s already been taken care of, Twilight.” Luna said, stopping long enough to glance over her shoulder. Twilight wasn’t sure just what kind of expression she was looking at. “As you can see, it’s evening, and I must be off to secure the dream world.”

What!? Twilight looked up to the windows, now seeing that the sky was already a single fading orange-purple bruise, the sharpest stars trawling after the sun like sharks following a wounded whale. “Wow. I didn’t think it was so late already. Time flies when you’re having fun, I guess!”

Luna made no response, none that Twilight could hear, leaving her to bask in her own use of old clichés. She watched the dark alicorn step quietly out onto the nearest parapet, the moon vast and gibbous rising above her and filling the world with silvery light.

The thought came to Twilight the very same moment Luna spread her long dark wings to their maximum length, primaries, secondaries, tertials, and all the coverts extended to their furthest length, as if to embrace the entire cosmos. She relaxed, eyes closed in the depths of concentration, and took a step over the parapet.

“Luna, wait!”

A frantic tumble forward then back, hooves scraping against tile-smooth concrete. Luna flapped her wings forward to push herself back and then braced them against the floor. She glared over her shoulder at Twilight as she trotted over, an oblivious smile on her face.

“I was wondering if, perhaps, I might ask for a small, very small, teeny-tiny, itty-bitty little favor from you.”

Luna stared, one eyebrow twisting upward. She gave a long and bitter sigh, somehow seeming both like the co-ruler of Equestria and an exasperated adolescent. “Twilight Sparkle, this Friendship summit of yours will be held in a few days. The vernal equinox will occur a week after that, and after that, there will have to be discussions with the governing bodies of the rural districts about the grain shortage. That will take up majority of the week at most. Surely this favor of yours can wait.”

“Actually, that’s the best thing. You can do it tonight, while you’re out visiting the dream world.”

Luna straightened up, suspicion dripping from her eyes and the twist of her bottom lip. “Tell me this isn’t like that other favor, when you asked me to visit the dreams of your friend Pinkie Pie to glean some secret as to what gift she would want for her birthday.”

“It’s…no, absolutely nothing like that—not really, not very much. Hardly identical…”

“Out with it, Twilight.”

The purple mare bit her cheek, one eye closed, as though recoiling from an explosion she knew would eventually come. “It’s about Tempest Shadow.”

One slight reaction, a darkening of the eyes, perhaps a tic she might or might not have imagined. Twilight waited, expecting Luna to interject, but she took the mare’s silence as a green light to continue. “She came by the castle last night, talking about dreams and recording dreams. She was acting a bit odd, out of sorts, really, but I managed to get her to relax. I told her about a few spells I knew and my experiments with the dream catchers, and she went away after that. She didn’t really talk much, but I have to wonder,” here Twilight paused a moment, only a moment’s lifetime to allow the seed to form, another to germinate. “…Just what kind of dreams does a pony like Tempest have that would make her want to be able to view them again and again? I mean, they’d have to be at least pleasant, right? She does seem to enjoy her new life in Equestria. I think.”

Pause. “No, no. I keep in touch with her as much as I possibly can, as much as I’m able. I know she appreciates her new life and what we’ve done for her.”

Twilight stood at the edge of the parapet, gazing out over the old, old city of Canterlot and breathing in those crisp smells of a spring night strong enough to break through the enchanted and enchanting cloud Luna cast around her. The breeze, much warmer than the night before, blew against her ear and she shivered, feeling fidgety. She always felt fidgety on warm spring nights. She heard Luna give another sigh, heard the shifting of elegant hooves over the concrete, and waited.

Luna’s voice was like cold satin in her ear. “You’ve been spending too much time in politics, Twilight. You’re clever, but you seem to ignore the concept that, just maybe, other ponies—your peers, for example—might have knowledge you wished they didn’t have.” Twilight looked up at Luna, now looking every inch like a princess of the night with the moonlight imprisoned in her blue eyes. Resisting the urge to step away seemed to supersede everything else now.

“I know for a fact that you have not been spending time with your new attempt at friendship immersion therapy, but rather you’ve either been here in Canterlot, helping my sister and I, or you’ve been holed up in your own castle, doing I’ve no idea what, though I can hazard several guesses. Being an alicorn doesn’t free you from the need to sleep, Twilight.”

“Are you saying my dreams may be secure from my nightmares, but not from you?”

Here Luna frowned, the curve of a dangerous glint beneath her eyelids. “Twilight…I’m reminding you that you’re the princess of Friendship. If there is a pony who requires friendship, then that is your territory, to deal with as you please. Even though I have reservations about that particular…individual, I trust you to act by your own heart. But please, Twilight, allow me to handle my territory in my own way.”

Luna gave her one long scathing look before leaping over the parapet, wings devouring the evening as she traveled up, up, into the small patch of smoky-grey clouds that hung about in the sky. Twilight’s smile finally broke when she turned away and walked back into the castle. That was all it took, really. Too much time in politics, indeed. She knew Luna, knew her right down to the littlest habits she was no longer aware of. Take, for example, her inability to leave the most minor of curiosities well enough alone. It didn’t even matter that Luna had shot down her idea, so long as the idea had been planted, the seed catching in fertile soil.

Still, Twilight found it difficult to ignore the feeling that that small patch of cloud beneath the moon was watching her right through the masonry.

Fluttershy was smiling. She was smiling because everything seemed to be pointing to a nice, calm day. She looked straight up at the pegasus city of Cloudsdale, passing lazily over her little cottage, rivers of rainbows spilling out over wide culverts as industrial excess, the cloud manufactories working at minimum production. The city was beautiful, especially underneath the golden light of a pleasant noon, but she knew she could never leave her real home. She couldn’t leave all of her little animal friends down here, not for a city that reveled in its own pride and love for speed. No, Fluttershy was happy where she was, especially right here, today.

Mostly, she smiled because she was happy to be able to smile.

The tea party was going along smoothly. The ginger wasn’t at all bitter, and the crushed bay leaves that Twilight offered added a nice, spicy touch that made her nose tickle. Princess Luna levitated up a small apple biscuit from the table and munched it quietly, smiling down at her. Out on the lawn, mice, squirrels, weasels, and raccoons playfully bantered and chattered, a large bear nearby offering small mutterings of his own. A small white rabbit leapt up onto the log table, hopping over to Fluttershy. She brushed the fur over Angel’s head, making sure to scratch the awkward spot between his ears. The little rabbit smiled, then darted to a basket to pilfer a carrot.

“This is really nice, Fluttershy,” Twilight said. “We don’t do this very often anymore, do we?”

“No,” the yellow pegasus said softly. She tried not to look sad, or anxious, but those qualities seemed to be permanently scored to the minutest degree in her face. “Not as much as we used to.”

A silence permeated the atmosphere, an uncomfortable quiet that dragged on, filled with presumptions that her statement had conjured. Fluttershy suddenly wished she’d just said “No” and left it at that.

Twilight glanced up from her cup. “Where’s Discord? I thought he never missed these things.”

Luna visibly grimaced, or perhaps she sneered. Fluttershy waved a hoof at Twilight as she reached for the teapot to refill her cup. “Oh, he won’t be attending for a couple of weeks. He said there was an emergency at home, and we shouldn’t really expect to see him for some time.”

“Oh. I hope he’s alright,” Twilight said.

Fluttershy saw the brief glare Luna tossed at Twilight, there for a moment, before closing her eyes and sipping at her tea, serene as the night. The pegasus drank as well, but the tea didn’t seem so calming anymore. Twilight and Luna had barely spoken to each other for the past hour, had even used her as a go-between for a moment. Was there something going on between the two princesses? Fluttershy worried over that as she felt the bay leaf-ginger concoction make her gums and throat tingle.

“I’m sure he has things well in hoof,” she murmured. “Or claw, I mean.”

Another silence, this one marginally more comforting. The furthest rim of Cloudsdale finally passed by overhead, its faint shadow flowing over the ground like a velvet curtain. The field echoed with the chattering of the woodland animals, happy in their ways, and Fluttershy found that it was hard to stay worried in the wake of their playing and the feeling of sunlight falling on her body.

“As long as we’re on the subject of criminal rehabilitation, I’ve some new information about your latest registrant, Twilight.”

Fluttershy and Twilight both looked up, staring at Luna. Fluttershy felt the day around her had become like winter.

Twilight exchanged a glance with Fluttershy before speaking. “You mean that favor I asked you for was—.”

“It was not a favor, Twilight. It was minor curiosity. I had some extra time available and satisfied that curiosity.”

“Of course…But have you found out anything?”

“What are you girls talking about?”

Fluttershy bit into an apple biscuit. She didn’t remember putting in any carrots, but it definitely added to the treat. Luna looked at her from the corner of her eye (like a hawk does, Fluttershy thought) and nodded toward the other alicorn. “Twilight is worried that her latest attempt at friendship repair might be regressing.”

“Ah-ha! So she is slipping back! So what’s the deal, princess, can we fix her problem before she turns into a spiteful, hate-filled maniac again?”

“Are you two talking about…Tempest?” Fluttershy whispered the name, as though saying it aloud would invoke its owner, to spread fire and ruination across her little picnic, and make black clouds fill the sky and bury the sun.

“Spill it, princess,” Twilight said. “What’s she dreaming about?”

Luna wiped crumbs from her lips with a napkin, levelling a cool stare at Twilight. “There are two things you need to know, princess. The first is that I’m not so loose in my principles that I would openly divulge the contents of somepony’s dreams to anyone who might ask for them…regardless of their standing. That would be going beyond a serious breach in ethics. Secondly, I did not visit Tempest’s dreams because they weren’t open to me.”

“What?”

Luna rolled her eyes, looking much more tired than Fluttershy had first believed. Yes, there were deep bags there just beneath the fur below her eyelids. “I didn’t see her dreams, Twilight, which means that she must not have slept.”

“Oh.” Twilight didn’t bother hiding her disappointment.

“Perhaps she had a long night,” Fluttershy offered, not quite sure what she ought to say. Some things were easy to discuss with her friends, but there were other things that she would rather keep close to her own person, hidden away from dubious promises of diaries and family, those things that frightened her and would go on to frighten her the more she thought about them. That scary unicorn that had hunted them across Equestria, had sacked the city of Canterlot, had caged and imprisoned so many ponies, had done so many terrible things…she became another thing that scared her.

“Well, she was acting a bit odd…Fluttershy, what would say to an impromptu visit?”

Fluttershy went cold. “Hmm? What—what do you mean?” she asked, knowing full well what Twilight meant.

“To Fizzlepop’s house. It’s possible she might be in trouble, and who better to assist her with her problems than the element of friendship and the element of kindness?” Twilight put a strange emphasis on the last word, stretching out the “S.” Or maybe she had imagined that.

Fluttershy had to keep her eyes down on her teacup, at what remained of her tea settling way down there at the bottom, the color of muddy snow. To know that the scariest pony was living so close was bad, not locked up, but that Twilight would suggest they actually go over there and visit, as though they could put away everything that had just happened to them, forget what she had done to them and the ones they loved, was awful.

It was, ultimately, impossible.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Fluttershy said. “I mean, I still have so much to do here, and I have to oversee the work at the animal preserve—we’re building a third wing to house wildlife with communicable diseases, which means getting approval from at least three different organizations—plus I’ve been meaning to talk to my parents again. I haven’t talked to them in so long. And besides, she does live on the other side of Ponyville…”

“She doesn’t live in Ponyville at all, Fluttershy! Remember? They wouldn’t allow her residency, but they agreed to build her a home thirty yards outside of the town limits. She doesn’t even have a functioning mailbox yet.”

“Oh.” Fluttershy couldn’t remember that because she didn’t even know that. Nopony had told her of those little facts. Not that it changed the matter in the slightest; she still had no intention of going. She was about to leave when Luna cleared her throat. She stood up, her hooves up on the table and a sad look shining in her eyes.

“Frankly, I can’t understand why you’re so adamant that she can change, Twilight.”

“Yes,” Fluttershy added, sounding explosive in her own ears, so she turned herself down a bit. “I mean, how do we know she even wants to change? Maybe it’s just part of a bigger scheme.”

Twilight became indignant, pointing an accusing hoof at the pegasus. “How can you even say that, Fluttershy? What about Discord? How is this situation any different than how it turned out with him?”

Fluttershy shrugged, playing with another apple biscuit. “Discord is the manifestation of Chaos. Not just chaos magic, Twilight, but Chaos. Chaos is change, constant and endless change—this means that part of him that hated, that was filled with nothing but contempt, was bound to change eventually. All he needed was somepony to offer him trust and friendship. He’s very temperamental, of course, and that’s just his way, and he might change back to the way he used to be, but I know that, eventually, his heart will tell him what’s good and what isn’t. But Tempest—.”

“Fizzlepop,” Twilight corrected.

“—Is different because she’s a pony, and ponies…it’s hard for some ponies to change.”

Twilight fidgeted with her tea before bringing it up to her lips. “That’s a very cynical thought coming from you, Fluttershy.”

The yellow mare shrugged her shoulders and stared at her tea. She wanted to say ‘You’re not able to know what other ponies are thinking, Twilight,’ but she was content to merely think it, keep it hidden away. She wasn’t sure where that thought would have led, anyway.

“Your friend is right, Twilight,” Luna said, sitting back down. Her voice had a maternal curve to it, and Fluttershy couldn’t help but smile just a little bit.

“And what if I’m right? What if something is wrong with her, and we, who have the chance to help her, just throw up our hooves and say ‘oh, it’s just the way she is, whatever happens will happen?’ Fluttershy, if you saw somepony lying in the ditch, crying in agony, hurting, and you knew you could save them, would you stop and try?”

Fluttershy looked up. Twilight was staring at her, daring her to say anything other than No, already knowing that she would never take that dare. “You know I would, Twilight.”

“Even if that pony was Nightmare Moon?”

At that Luna’s expression darkened. Her feathers rippled, shadows dancing along her body, and Fluttershy was amazed that Twilight didn’t leap away from the table and run straight to her castle, just as she wanted to at that moment. Perhaps because Luna was sitting there, perhaps because her friend had asked the question, perhaps because she knew in her heart that it was true, Fluttershy swallowed her worry and looked Twilight directly in the eye. “Yes,” she said.

“So you’ll come with me tomorrow and see if she’s okay?”

Angel Bunny was at her side at once, prodding her shoulder with one small paw. She looked down at him, saw his smile and the confident gleam in his eyes. She shared his smile and nuzzled his cheek with her nose. Turning back to the lavender mare, she shook her head. “Not tomorrow, Twilight. I’ll have more time during the weekend, so how does…” she felt Angel gently kick her shoulder, one, two, three. “…three days from now sound to you?”

“That’s great. It’s settled, then. I’ll just put that in my schedule when I get home.”

The rest of the picnic was spent in a disquieting silence. Luna left minutes after the conversation, and Twilight departed some time after that, leaving Fluttershy alone at the table. Once the other ponies had left, her little friends understood that it was now safe to raid the table, and did so with gusto. Fluttershy smiled and admonished all of them, offering her plate to a small family of field mice. Angel Bunny alone could feel the anxiety that wriggled inside of her, a torn and tangled worm that consumed her appetite and made her wrap her hooves around herself. Now, instead of fretting over twenty-four hours, she’d given herself three days to despair and fantasize.

“I did say I would. Didn’t I, Angel?” The little rabbit nodded solemnly. “Well, I guess I’m in this, aren’t I? Whatever happens…”

Fluttershy didn’t say anymore, letting that thought and all the ones that followed it, biting at its heels, speak for themselves.

Author's Note

My first shot at an MLP fanfic in six years, and the first one I’ll let others read. I enjoy tearing up my own material in front of others, so here we go. If anyone finds grammatical errors, do tell and I’ll see to fixing them as soon as I can. I might not be published yet, but I can at least fake being a professional.

--When I think of Tempest Shadow, I think of the Black Sabbath song “Solitude,” hence the second chapter title in parentheses.
--I’m not quite sure how “dark” I want this story to be, but I can tell you that it’s not going to be a Tempest Shadow reiteration of “Cupcakes/Rainbow Factory/Cheerilee’s Garden.” I’m a horror junkie and I don’t mind a trickle of red corn syrup now and again, but high-end explicit gore is weak horror.
--Apparently “every other story” begins with the weather, so it stands to reason that one should NEVER write a story that starts there for ANY reason, right?
--This is of course rather spoilery for readers who have not yet seen the film, but I just think Tempest would be trying to reclaim her old name after what happened.
--What makes me laugh is that Starlight and Trixie, both Twilight’s former nemeses, have total access to her home. Friendship aside, I think it would be funny if Twilight really was opening up a rehabilitation home for unicorns with behavior disorders on the side.
--I know the prose is somewhat purple (lilac, I’d argue), but I’m not going to say “well, that’s just my style” and leave it at that. My argument is that for any story, short or long, you’re writing about a life, and in any life, fictional or not, the most meaningless things can be important to the characters. The things that you dwell on can seem totally dull and pointless to others, but that they have meaning to you is all that matters.
--I do see Twilight trying to recapture the search for knowledge she had when she was younger, though perhaps not for the same reason. When you’re a child, you’d do anything to be an adult; when you realize you are an adult, you’d do anything to be that kid again (most of us, I think). Therefore, the big lab in the basement.
--The idea that Twilight’s put some points in Charisma and taken to the dark hemisphere of politics, and Luna’s awareness of it, were not entirely intended, but something I’m willing to accept for this story. I feel it could be good side conflict for future chapters…as long as I can remind myself who the primary character is.
--If you care about chronology, I began writing this before season 8, and I’ve only seen snippets of season 7 episodes, so if this story contradicts information set up in season 7, I apologize for that.

Ch 2 - The Stars in Low Fields

Chapter Two
The Stars in Low Fields

There was nothing sinister about the day. But then, there was nothing sinister about that day, was there?

Fluttershy followed close behind Twilight, feeling the gentle pull of her cottage behind her. Angel Bunny was with her, curled up into a little ball on her back, sleeping soundly in the sunlight. His presence was a comfort, as comforting as comfort came to her, but the closer she got to the little house on the hill, little boxspring home hardly big enough to be called a shack, with its walls painted a blue as dark as the deepest part of a lake, its roof shingles as purple as old bruises, the more she wanted to turn around and run back home, where things were familiar.

She’d told herself that she’d grown over the years, that she’d become braver and stronger since that little pegasus filly first fell from the clouds into her new life. She told herself that she’d been through so much with her friends, so much adventure and heartache that surely she ought to be numbed by it now, or at least willing to accept it. But there was a word for telling oneself something that isn’t true, and that word was delusion.

The silvery fairy mist that lay about the low fields and hills surrounding Ponyville was already being burned away by the sun, still hanging about in shallow patches. The air smelled of dew and the shadowed woods. Sparrows alighted on a rocky outcropping, calling to her or to each other. The shrill chicka-dee-dee-dee-dee of the smaller yellow birds came to her ears from the distant edge of the woods and the tall bushes that dotted the field. There was nothing sinister about any of this.

The sky was blue then, too, she thought to herself, staring at the ground passing between her hooves. The sky was blue and empty, everypony was happy, every animal was happy, We were so excited about the celebration. And then she came…

She knew exactly what would happen once she had that thought, thinking it anyway because she needed a reason to think it this time. Thinking about it in the daytime seemed nominally better than at night, when the shadows tried to weave her fantasies into truth. Memories of black ships lurching through black clouds, monsters in masks, running, running, trying to make sure the animals and her friends were safe, the princesses turned to crystal, a unicorn that held back no ounce of her hate. And more running.

“Do you really think that she might be hurt, Twilight?” she asked, and the delusion she told herself to believe was that she wanted to know that answer.

Twilight glanced at her over her shoulder. There was an odd expression on her face, one that Fluttershy couldn’t immediately place, but she knew she had seen before. “I don’t know. I hope not. She was acting a little odd that night…”

“How odd?”

The wind blew in Fluttershy’s ear and filled in the silence as Twilight thought about the question. Fluttershy was about to assume Twilight had ignored it when she suddenly said “Like frenzied odd. The-end-is-nigh odd, I guess.”

Fluttershy waited for her friend to say more, but when it was clear that she wasn’t going to, she turned her eyes up to the little house on the hill instead, the little blood blister that brooded and stared out from the field toward the town. The road that led out of Ponyville bled into a smaller path on the right that curved around a shallow recess in the ground, then righted itself, going some distance in a straight line, up to the base of the hill. No mailbox, just as Twilight had said. There was a porch hanging out over the eastern side of the hill, the support beams looking like they were made by ponies who had no intention of doing an adequate job. Windows like blind eyes stared at them, dark curtains betraying no secret. A garden had been set up at the base of the hill, hemmed in by crooked picket-fence walls.

Fluttershy followed Twilight, keeping close, feeling as though danger would burst out of the door or the windows, or fall from the empty sapphire-skinned sky. They followed the path up to the garden, smelling vegetative decay.

“Wow,” Twilight said. “Those flowers didn’t even try to put up a fight.”

Fluttershy nudged at a bushel with her wingtip. By now Angel had woken up and was diligently inspecting the garden for any free treats, though the faces he was making was evidence that there was no hope for these plants. “The raspberries seem to be doing okay,” Fluttershy mumbled halfheartedly. The raspberries were not at all okay, but they were the only fruit in the garden that didn’t seem to be as spoiled as the rest.

Twilight was already stepping up to the porch, the sound of her hooves giving a hollow echo across the low fields, the kind you’d hear when you tap on a watermelon to know if it’s ripe or not. Fluttershy trotted up behind her, Angel seated comfortably on her back between her wings. It wasn’t as terrible as the visions her daydreams had painted, but there was some unseen quality that made her skin crawl. The world had become a Dada-esque painting and Fluttershy was trying to find that secondary image.

Twilight raised her hoof to knock on the front door but then paused, her head tilted to the side. Her ears swiveled around for a moment. “Do you hear that?”

It’s quiet, Fluttershy thought just then, knowing that that wasn’t true. At the top of the hill, the wind was blowing. Up here, the wind seemed like it was screaming.

Twilight’s horn glowed, and the doorknob rattled; the door wouldn’t open. She turned in place, her back to the door, then bucked it as hard as she could. The frame splintered, spraying them both with wood and plaster, but the lock held. She hit it again, and this time the door flew open, rocking on its one good hinge before the screw fell out and the whole piece clattered at an angle into the thin entryway.

“Twilight…” Fluttershy began then stopped, her eyes wide.

“Ow.” The alicorn limped into the hall, keeping off her rear right leg. She levitated the door out of their way, shoving it against the wall. The wind was louder in here than outside, a rhythmic undulating noise that rasped in her ears. Her chest tightened, and she realized that the wind she was hearing was her own frantic breath.

Twilight shouted as they stepped through the entryway and into the kitchen. “Fizzlepop!? It’s me and Fluttershy! Where are you!?”

Twilight had dodged through a hallway, leading presumably to the bathroom on the left and the bedroom on the right, so she wasn’t the first to see it. Fluttershy felt the rough tapping of Angel’s paw on the back of her neck, on the left side. She instinctively turned her eyes into what she would later understand to be the living room. A living room was not what she saw when she looked there.

Light, the same bloody color of tomato-skin, filled the entire room, making her think for the barest of moments that the house was burning down, even though there was no smoke and no smell of charring wood. The screaming was coming from here, and now she was certain that it was screaming, centered on a group of shadows, arranged in a semicircle around a crouched figure near the left wall, huddled beneath a thick blanket.

Something brushed against her hair, making her heart leap up into her throat. The thing buzzed noisily past her face, some twisted combination of crustacean and grasshopper, making a sound like rifling through a stack of paper. More buzzed and hummed through the room, lighting on the walls and the one curtained window. She was scared, horribly scared, and as much as she wanted to run, for all the desire she had to get out of this terrible place, her hooves couldn’t leave the ground.

“Fluttershy, what’s that…that noise…” From some distant realm Fluttershy could feel Twilight rub against her side, heard her voice, but both sensations were awfully muffled, drowned out, as though Fluttershy were experiencing it all from the black and scummy bottom of a lake.

One of the tall shadows stepped forward, away from the light, and when a pair of great blue wings shot up, the darkness cleared away, and Fluttershy saw that it was Rainbow Dash. She had to assume it was Rainbow Dash; it had the same body type, the same color mane and coat, the same voice, but there was no face.

“Look at you,” the voice screamed, laughed cockishly, coming from somewhere around that featureless blue bulb. “What are you dedicated to? What are you loyal to? A monster or a filly’s aspirations—they’re both dead! Deader than dead! What good are you, if you’d sell yourself out to the highest bidder, if you’re blind enough to take in any offer at the drop of a hat? Stupid mare, doing everything that she’s told just to fuel her own delusions! What do you think you’re dedicated to!?”

The faceless pegasus laughed as she stepped away, back into the orange-red light, laughter still coming from the shapeless blue thing that was its face. Then the body rippled as it deteriorated, dissolved into a swarm of those crustacean-like insects. They hung about the air for a while before alighting on the wall, their wings like laughter. Another spectre took the cue to step forward, one that looked far too much like Pinkie Pie. This Pinkie Pie didn’t speak very much, she only screamed. There were words fragmented into those screams, sentences cobbled loosely together by the intake of each strained breath, but Fluttershy couldn’t comprehend them.

When Pinkie Pie’s voice faltered and faded into coarse weeping she stepped back—Fluttershy saw that her hooves left red marks that gleamed in the light—and Applejack stepped forward. Something dark and blue fell out, spilling out over her lips. Her eyes had been sewn shut with thick catgut. “You’re a monster,” she—it—said, its voice like hooves dragging along corrugated steel. “You scared of me? You’re scared of what I got—honesty. You’re scared of taking a good looooong look inside yourself and seein’ what you already see. Huh…You give and you take and you try to make the world better, and that’s balance, girl, that’s harmony, but you been taking way too much. That ain’t balance. There’s got to be compensation, got to be a reckonin’. You got to pay for what you done, but you know that already, don’t you? You ain’t going to find anypony to help you, but you know that, too, don’t you?”

Every word that the nightmarish Applejack said made the dark bluish liquid spew onto the floor, where it spat and sizzled and smoked into the wood. It ate away at the mare’s flesh, liquefying it into an orange stew. By the time she had finished speaking, she was little more than a knobby substance seeping through the cracks in the floorboards. A unicorn then stepped out of the light, her coat dazzlingly white with a majestic purple mane. Fluttershy saw nothing wrong with her, nothing at all. It didn’t make her any less horrifying.

This new awful Rarity walked slowly to the huddled figure beneath the blanket, a skeleton’s grin on her face. Her eyes were normal, but then they went wrong, dilating into black pits and she laughed. “I don’t need to tell you about generosity, do I? Oh, yes, you know ALL about that! You know all about the charity of contempt, you little abomination. I hope you rot!”

Rarity’s horn fell out and thudded to the floor, as though it weren’t attached to her skull at all. A dozen segmented legs broke out of either side of the horn and the thing skittered away, into and out of the light. Lines appeared on Rarity’s face, and when it blossomed open like a malignant rose Fluttershy had shut her eyes tight, as greased as they were with her tears. She shook her head of the bad thoughts and the bad images but they still came at her, appearing behind the backs of her eyelids. The sounds of other things thumping down onto the ground made her crouch down and throw her hooves up over her ears.

Twilight’s voice sounded throughout the room. Not the Twilight beside her, as she’d hoped. “What friends do you have? Every creature you’ve met, you’ve used for your own profit. Your only friends are the crows and the worms that clean up your messes. You’re not my friend, you’re a problem. You need to be corrected. We need to fix you.”

Fluttershy opened her eyes against her better judgment, against everything that screamed at her to keep her eyes closed. Whatever Twilight might have been there, it was gone. There was a new scorch mark on the floor.

A twisting of shadow in the corner of the room, and the light of perpetual dusk washed over the phantom that had been sitting there, weeping. Fluttershy blanched, almost vomited, when she saw herself. The other Fluttershy sat up as she turned and walked slowly, almost drunkenly, toward the blanketed figure. Her eyes were bloodshot and her cheeks and chin were wet.

“How could you!? How could you!? How could you!?” The words echoed like knives scraped across a chalkboard, and Fluttershy, the one that was certain she was too scared to scream, began to breathe in ragged choking gasps.

The crouched figure was saying something, shook its head and mumbled something too quiet to be heard over the laughing and the weeping. The yellow mare, tears still spilling from her eyes like beads of glass in the light, spread her wings, and dust blew off of them in a sulfurous mist. The real Fluttershy brushed at her eyes, her voice coming from far away. “Twilight…”

The pegasus disappeared, blown away on some invisible wind. Another spectre materialized from the light, and from another world Fluttershy heard Twilight gasp. She wiped her eyes again and saw Princess Celestia standing there. Tall, beautiful, and regal, as she should be…but there was something wrong. Chains were dangling from the folds of her wings, beginning nowhere, twisted ends dragging on the floor. Things were writhing in her mane and tail.

The huddled figure shrank away from the princess, the blanket shifting enough that Fluttershy could see a muzzle, so dark it was almost black in the light. The not-Celestia walked like a knife dragging across warm bread, her head drawn downward in a threatening manner, the long helical horn glimmering like a silver-white spearhead. Her mouth moved, whispers too soft and too lethal to be carelessly thrown around, while grey-black smoke leaked from her blazing hateful eyes.

“I’m sorry,” came a noise below the blanket, trembling voice hardly more than a rasping in the wind. “I’m sorry…just stop it, please…”

“Twilight,” Fluttershy moaned.

The wind screamed with the voice of every ghost and demon conjured for Nightmare Night, rippling in their ears, but by some terrible stroke of ill fortune, an alignment of the wrong chances, Fluttershy had still managed to hear the last few words the not-princess had said.

“That’s enough!” Twilight shouted. There was the brief, deep sound of a massive pool of magical energy being ripped into reality, a brilliant flash of violet-white light, and the smoldering Celestia was gone. The red-orange light was gone. There was only the small living room, with barely any furniture to prove that there had been life here. There was only the dream catcher, hanging suspended in the air for a few moments before clattering to the floor.

The figure in the blanket jerked up into a standing position. Fizzlepop’s eyes were red and bulging, black circles sinking into her upper cheeks, as though she hadn’t slept for a long time. Something clattered to the middle of the floor, but Fluttershy didn’t see what it was. She could only look at the unicorn’s left front leg, at the latticework of weeping red marks from hoof to shoulder. “Get away from me!” she shrieked, and in a hobbling sottish manner she turned and ran through a backdoor.

“Fizzlepop, wait!” Twilight screamed, limping to catch up with her. She flapped her wings as well as she could in the small space to gain ground over her quarry.

Fluttershy listened to herself catching her breath back. She licked at her dry lips, feeling them become dry a second later, as dry as the rest of her mouth. She pushed herself up on wobbly legs, afraid to move more than an inch in case she, by some magical fault, had caused that horrible light to reappear and the screaming to return.

Something was shaking against the tip of her pink mane. Terrified that it was one of those repulsive insects, she turned her head, as slow as slow could be defined without meaning “to not move.” Angel Bunny was quivering in a tight ball in the small of her back, making little frightened noises. She nudged him with her nose until his eyes opened. “It’s okay, Angel,” she said, wondering if that was true or not. “I think it’s over now.”

She looked back into the living room, finally seeing what had clattered into the center of the floor. “I think…it’s over now,” she said again, trying to figure out a way to stand as tremors ran up her legs, trying to figure out a way she could ever get to sleep without hearing what she had heard here today. Wondering how she could ever close her eyes without seeing the ruby gleam of a little fruit knife, salivating on the cracked floorboards.

Fizzlepop tripped over the back porch when she dragged her hoof over the top step at an awkward angle. Twilight was steps behind her, and one poorly-timed flap from her wings sent her into the other mare. The two tumbled over the porch, down the hill, and into the tall grass in an agonized tangle of limbs. Twilight felt her elbow hit a rock on the way down, her entire leg filling with tingling fire.

Twilight didn’t know which way was which when their fall ended, whether the sky was up or down. She twisted about to untangle herself, even when equilibrium had already righted itself, trying to move her head slowly so her horn wouldn’t find a stomach or a flailing limb. Fizzlepop was thrashing her hooves and head like a madmare as she struggled to break out from under Twilight. The alicorn tried to force the mare down and into the grass. “Fizzlepop, stop it! Calm down!”

A lucky kick took the wind out of Twilight’s lungs. Surprised, her wings instinctively fanned out. She grabbed at Fizzlepop’s head, trying to force her to look up and see. “Snap out of it!” she managed to rasp.

Fizzlepop’s eyes rolled, saliva frothing at her mouth. She was crying. “Get away from me, Twilight! Get away from me, please!”

“No! Not until you…just calm down! Why are you acting like this!?” Twilight tried to focus, tried to think of a spell that would calm the unicorn down, but her mind was coming up blank. Her friend’s safety was above the name of any spell.

Fizzlepop snatched the opportunity and bit down on Twilight’s leg, an explosion of pain bursting into brilliant white and red flowers in her eyes. Twilight grimaced as she pulled back her hoof, the one that was still tingling, and struck Fizzlepop just above her eye. The mare’s head rocked against the ground and Twilight felt her body slacken beneath her, no more fight in her than the wheatgrass and foxtails that obliviously rippled under the breeze.

Twilight froze, stunned. She hadn’t just done that, had she? The pins and needles were fading from her leg, but the small jolt it took when she struck Fizzlepop still resonated through her body. Words formed and died in her mouth. The sound of hooves drew her eyes back, seeing Fluttershy trotting to the porch, her eyes wide and moist.

Fizzlepop wept tears and words, and all of it garbled in her despair. Twilight asked her what, what was she saying, receiving no answer other than those choked and choking sounds. Twilight bent down, brushing back Fizzlepop’s dirty hair, hair the color of raspberries or carved bloodstone. Tears were beginning to well in her own eyes now as she bent closer, straining to hear.

“What? What are you trying to say?”

The unicorn coughed, swallowed, gasped. Twilight could just barely make out the words “I infect everything…Everything near me…ruined.”

An idea came into Twilight’s head. She focused her magic, threads of silvery-yellow light weaving through the air between the two ponies. Twilight shushed her, continuing to brush her hair back. “It’s alright, everything’s alright. This will help you sleep, Fizzlepop.”

Her eyes immediately went wide and she began to twist beneath Twilight again. “No! No! No!”

“Twilight!”

The mare’s eyes fluttered for a second before closing, her body going slack again and her ragged breathing flattening out. She fell asleep with a deep grimace, as though pained. Fluttershy ran up beside them, sweat beading and running through the fur of her cheeks. “Twilight, what did you…”

“It was only an anesthetic spell, Fluttershy. She’ll be asleep for a while.”

“It sounded like she didn’t want it.”

Twilight rounded on the pegasus, trying to put all of her emotion into her eyes while being calm, wondering just how she could be calm at all. “I know that! I heard what she said! But there was no other way I could be certain that she wouldn’t get loose again and do more damage.”

The two mares stared at the sleeping unicorn, expecting something to happen, another scoop on the bizarre sundae this weekend had become, but the day spurned them. There was only the whispering wheatgrass, the wind blowing in their ears. Twilight let out a breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding. Forgetting, she pushed down on her sprained hoof and hissed through her teeth, jerking that leg back into the air.

“We have to get her to the hospital,” Twilight said.

“Do you think they’ll accept her, Twilight? I mean, considering who she is?”

Twilight stared at Fluttershy, not comprehending. Surely a health care facility wouldn’t have any predilections or biases against a pony, or any creature, in need of care. If any structure could be counted on to have a view that was unbiased if anything, it was a hospital. It was even in the name: from the word hospitium, meaning “guesthouse.” Her mind turned to images of ponies being turned down, ponies dying, and being turned down not because of some rubbish legal formality but because the staff just didn’t want to see them.

Twilight scowled. “They better. If they know what’s good for them, they just better.”

By noon, they managed to establish Fizzlepop a room up on the third floor of the hospital. A nurse stood by and monitored the unicorn’s heart rate at regular intervals, a dour expression on her face, as though she were checking the oven again to see how the bread was doing. Fizzlepop’s leg had been cleaned and bandaged all the way up to the shoulder, red staining through in some spots like malign calligraphy. Fluttershy had stayed with her while Twilight teleported away, to “see to things,” as she put it.

The yellow pegasus looked at the unicorn with the broken horn. The pony who had done so much damage and whom Twilight had expected everyone to befriend. She didn’t look as dangerous as she did then, not as she did in Fluttershy’s daydreams. She looked like something coughed up by an owl. Fluttershy stared, not feeling fear, not feeling sympathy. She only watched the rise and fall of the dark mare’s chest beneath the blanket, the subtle movements of her eyes beneath closed lids, wondering just what she should be feeling.

“Twilight said she’d be here soon,” Fluttershy said, not really caring if Fizzlepop could hear here or not. Her own voice was more comforting than the sterile white ceiling tiles, the grey-green wallpaper with the fake pink butterflies that looked too much like bats, the beeping and whirring of machinery, and the back-and-forth calls between doctors and nurses and patients in the halls outside. “She went to take care of a few things, I think. They shouldn’t take long, not really. I hope she gets here soon. I hope you…”

Fluttershy sighed, not knowing what else to say and letting the sentence falter. This place was making her thoughts come up like the featureless tiles above her, as scentless as the air or as dull as the fluorescent lights. She stepped closer to Fizzlepop, or Tempest, whatever name she was going by now. Fluttershy frowned at that, wondering why she hadn’t even bothered to ask about it. A name was just as important to a pony as a cutie mark, if not more so.

She glanced at Angel Bunny, snoozing on his side in the low cushioned chair. The chair stood next to the window, and the warm sunshine had lulled the rabbit into a peaceful sleep.

After they had come back from Canterlot, after the dust of the Storm King’s siege had settled back down and ponies began to return to their homes, Fluttershy had discovered that Angel Bunny was missing from her cottage. He never left the cottage if he didn’t know she would be back there soon enough. It had been ten days, ten long and excruciating days Fluttershy had spent flying around town or running through the Everfree forest, looking in the shadowed corners of the Whitetail Woods and the nearby fields, searching for her little friend. She had supposed, one day, that he had been alarmed by the black ships in the sky, the smoke coming from where she said she would be, and he had gone out to look for her.

She asked anyone who would listen, and some ponies had helped her, when they had the time to spare. Her mind ran through all the possible scenarios a young rabbit like Angel might have met his end, as much as she tried to force her mind to focus on other things it would always circle around to those awful thoughts. She would become so anxious that she would be sick, couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. She could only wonder what had happened, and a minute of wondering was worse than a whole day spent searching and not finding him.

On the tenth day, there was a storm. In response to the attack on Canterlot and the ultimate victory over the Storm King’s forces, Cloudsdale had allowed several weeks without rain, the longest it had gone without precipitation for that season in a long time. In the middle of the night, Fluttershy, unable to sleep with her stomach heaving up into her throat, heard the frantic scratching of a little claw on her door. She opened it as a blue claw of electricity cut through the sky and illuminated a little bunny on her doorstep. He hardly looked alive, this little rabbit that more closely resembled a foal’s toy that had been left out in the backyard for a year, half drowned with rain and mud. The moment his eyes met hers, a big smile broke out on his face and he leapt up into her hooves. She screamed his name, weeping and laughing, words like relief and happiness not strong enough to define the sensations that poured from her heart.

Fizzlepop reminded her of how her Angel Bunny looked then, coming in from the storm. Bedraggled and unkempt, and so very tired. Her eyes fell to the mare’s bandaged arm, drawn up in a sling, white and red and white.

“I don’t know how I should feel about you. When I think about you, you scare me, but sometimes you make me angry, too. What you did to my friends and my neighbors, what you managed to do in just a few days, it makes the idea of forgiving you almost laughable. But…I guess I pity you more than anything. Yes, I feel bad for you. Rarity says that’s a weakness of mine, but I’ve never seen it like that. I’ve never seen it as a weakness at all.” Fluttershy saw that there were blades of wheatgrass and dirt in Fizzlepop’s hair; she reached up and did her best to brush them away, instead getting them onto the pillow, where they slid down and below the blanket. Fluttershy stood back and sighed.

There was a brief flash of light and Twilight stood at the doorway. Fluttershy saw that her face was pale and her mouth was as thin a line as it could possibly be. Something was dangling from her hoof, a dream catcher. There was a beautiful phoenix feather hanging from a quartz-bead string. Near the central strands were three gleaming beads, all yellow-red.

“Twilight? What’s wrong?”

The alicorn limped into the room. Both of her injured legs had already been bandaged, even though the back one was only a mild sprain. She looked like she had no inclination to turn her eyes anywhere near Fizzlepop. “I made a mistake,” she said, horror filtering her voice into a whisper. “She…she wanted me to show her a way to record her dreams, so she could see them again. I initiated it before she left, but I…I must have mistaken the proper way to initiate it, or something. It was supposed to store the dreams she had wanted to see in these beads, and it did that just fine. She was supposed to be able to trigger them whenever she wanted, bringing her consciousness into the dream, but that’s where the magic must have gotten tangled. Instead, the dreams had become inverted, playing out in the real world instead of her mind. When they started doing that, there was no way for her to focus so she could stop it. They must have been going and bleeding into each other when she first triggered it, like separate veins of paint running together.”

“They were real?” Fluttershy said, her eyebrows shooting up into her scalp.

“No…technically no. Not any more than any dream can be. Of course, if the brain perceives the sensations to be real, and since the body is regulated by the brain, then, naturally, problems can arise…”

Fluttershy looked back at Fizzlepop, her mouth slack, a wet stain spreading along her pillow. “What was it she wanted to see again, Twilight? Didn’t she tell you what her dream was about?”

Twilight bared her teeth. “No, she didn’t. And I was stupid enough that I didn’t bother asking! She didn’t seem interested in staying, and I didn’t press her…I probably should have. Celestia…I didn’t think things would turn out like this. She must not have slept since I gave this stupid thing to her.”

Twilight let the dream catcher drop to the floor. She crushed it under her hoof, silvery threads and the power that ran through them snapping with the crackly sound of broken spider webs. The beads cracked and flared as they popped, little stars dying out. Fluttershy looked down sadly at the phoenix feather, not quite as big as the one she kept, the one given to her by Princess Celestia’s own pet. The memory made her heart ache for yesterdays she wanted to experience again. When things weren’t as they were now.

“When do you think she’ll wake up?” Fluttershy wiped at her eyes. She waited for Twilight to answer; feeling like the pause was reflective on what the alicorn was going to say.

“I really don’t know, Fluttershy. I could wake her up with a spell, that shouldn’t be more than a few—.”

“No.”

Twilight flinched. Fluttershy had slammed her hoof down hard on the ceramic tile, thunderously loud. The pegasus stood glaring at her with so much contained rage and desperation that she had to take a wobbly step backward. “No more magic, Twilight. It seems to me that magic is the problem behind this, don’t you?”

The purple mare stood with her mouth hanging open, snapping it shut only when Fluttershy looked away. The pegasus turned and looked out of the window, staring down the three floors into the town below, a cold universe between her and Twilight.

Some time had passed—the doctor came in to see how Fizzlepop was doing, knowing full well that she was still asleep. Probably going through the movements in front of the princess to show that he could pretend to care about the patient, Fluttershy mused, frowning up into the big empty sky. The doctor left after some trivial chitchat with the princess of friendship.

Twilight was about to say something but Fluttershy cut her off. “Does Princess Luna know anything about this, Twilight? Can she do something for her?” Or did she do something to her, she wanted to ask, but didn’t. Another thought best kept hidden away.

There was a pause as Twilight thought out her response. A familiar mailmare flew by the window and waved at Fluttershy, but she flew off before the yellow pegasus could return it.

“I spoke to Luna the night after Fizzlepop came to me about the spell. I asked her if she knew anything about the dreams she wanted to see again, trying to be clever and sneaky about it, but I think I just made Luna angry. And we know she doesn’t know anything about this since Fizzlepop wasn’t awake. She doesn’t seem to care much for Fizzlepop…”

Fluttershy sniffed, looking over her shoulder at her friend. “Princess Luna was imprisoned for a thousand years, Twilight. I don’t think she much cared for being imprisoned again.”

“But we fixed it, Fluttershy! She helped fix it. Shouldn’t that count for something?”

There was yet another uncomfortable silence, broken by the constant hospital hum around them. Fluttershy opened her mouth, looked at the unicorn’s bandaged leg, roses on white lace, then shut her mouth again. She shook her head and turned back to the window, pleasant spring afternoon with the big sky and all its emptiness. It was then that Fluttershy had a terrible thought, one to push away all the rest with its bleating growls. That the sky is never blue, not really. The blue is just a kind of blindness caused by the sun, a veil to hide the earth from the nothingness and the stars inside of it, and it wasn’t really real. But the stars were always watching, veil or no veil, they were always there, unseen and silent.

Fluttershy sighed, and watched, and waited.

Eternity was condensed into a few precious moments, the entirety of the cosmos packed nice and tight into a little moonlit field.

She recognized this field with its rolling hills, and the little town nestled on the edge of the deep woodlands surrounding all of it. It was all so close to her, sights and smells buried so deep in her mind and so close to her chest that it began to hurt. Something deeper than cartilage or muscle or sinew snapping. She walked into the empty and silent town, her hooves brushing through the low fog that clung to the ground like the steam that hovered over a swamp. Lights were on in the windows, staring at her like the watchful golden eyes of owls.

Fizzlepop Berrytwist looked up into the night sky, expecting to see something up there—not really knowing what, just expecting something. Suddenly, laughter, small and pleasant laughter from a group of foals filled the night. It bounced off the walls of the houses and escaped down the deserted streets. Fizzlepop wanted to run and hide. Not being seen right now seemed like the most brilliant plan she’d ever had.

Two unicorn foals, not yet old enough to have their cutie marks, trotted up to the rear window of one of the houses, one that didn’t have a light on. They were trying not to laugh, trying to be serious and shushing each other. Fizzlepop watched them, her mouth hanging open, knowing exactly who those foals were. It’s not possible, she thought, her eyes refuting that possibility.

One knelt down so the other could hop up on their shoulders. The lower foal pushed himself up off the ground, the filly putting her hooves up on the windowsill. She squinted into the dark, cupping her hooves around her face.

“Berry!” she whispered as loud as she dared. She tapped on the windowsill; a rock would have made less noise. “Berry, are you asleep?”

“She wouldn’t answer you if she was asleep, dummy!”

“Don’t call me a dummy, dummy!”

Suddenly the window flew up and another small unicorn, a filly with a fan-shaped mane and a coat the color of raspberries leapt out of the dark. “Gotcha!” she whispered, sending all threw foals into a rollicking heap. They twisted through the low wet grass, laughing and shushing each other. Fizzlepop felt her heart jerk up, her throat closing shut and her mouth turning dry as a brick when she saw the filly.

The three managed to disentangle themselves, walking out into the street, keeping close to each other. “I thought you two would be here sooner. Didja get lost or something?”

Was that my voice? Did I used to sound like that?

“Sorry, Berry. My mom kept checking up on me. I’m not really good at faking being asleep.”

“That’s easy!” one of the colts said. “You just have to breathe normally with your eyes shut. Your parents have to see the blanket going up and down.”

“Oh. Hey! Who’s got the lamps?”

The filly gasped and ran back to her home, to the bushes under her window. She came back, levitating three big lamps with removable glass cases. She floated two toward the others. “Where should we go? I saw a bunch out in the field.”

“Nah, the biggest ones are down by the creek, behind the Bonnet’s place.”

The three foals laughed and shushed each other, practically twitching with the excitement of the night. Fizzlepop watched them walk past her, expecting them to stop, to look up at her and run away scared. The three foals didn’t seem to acknowledge her presence, even though they had been bare feet away. I was never that small, was I? she thought.

“There’s one!” one of the foals cried out, ignoring the others’ attempts to quiet him, and they all took off down a split in the path. Fizzlepop followed them, seeing them climb up and over a fence and run through somepony’s backyard. The large yard sloped down for a ways before coming to a small but noisy creek at the foot of the woods, silver blue in the moonlight. That’s right, Fizzlepop remembered, her breathing as shallow as a pond in summer. We were going to catch fireflies that night because…

“They’re supposed to be magic,” Fizzlepop murmured into the night. She watched the foals running along the bank of the creek where the water was constantly eating away at the land, jumping into the air and swiping at the flickering insects. Tears filled her eyes as an unbearable sadness filled her heart.

Something hit her nose, a water droplet. She looked up, and there was no sky.

Stalactites like the teeth of a colossal beast hung down from the location where, moments ago, she had seen a familiar constellation. Every sound took on a resonant quality, and the air felt like it was clutching her in a bitter embrace. There were no more stars, no moon, only the flickering lights in the windows, and those began to flicker. The plink-plink-plink sound of water tapping against limestone formations seemed to echo into forever.

She couldn’t see the foals anymore but she could still hear them, their laughter as sharp as nails scratching in her ears, the walls doing funny things to the sound as they traveled through the shapeless black cavern. Fizzlepop began to shake her head, small noises leaking over her lips; she knew exactly where this dream had taken her.

The foals’ laughter abruptly cut out, as though a cord had been unplugged. There was only the small mutterings of the unseen creek and the bubble-pop sounds of falling water. She wanted to run, not caring that she didn’t know where she was, or that a place that was effectively nowhere had no entrance and no exit. She was back in a part of the dream

Please, not again. Not this place again. If there is any power watching over me please please please get me out of here don’t let me see this again…

The lights faded out. Fizzlepop had the sense of being nowhere and being nothing, that she wasn’t even real. The world around her felt more real than her. She moved her head to look for a possibility out of this, her muscles feeling light years away from where they ought to be.

There were stars in the cave.

Fizzlepop froze as constellations wove and danced themselves into existence, astral parthenogenesis. Threads of a faint blue aura twirled between and around them, encircling them even as a galaxy, consolidated into the rough shape of something immense, pushed itself up into view. Two stars shined larger and brighter than the rest, two gardens of foxgloves or poisonous mushrooms gleaming with cold wetness, infinitely more beautiful and deadly beyond those feeble comparisons. Her eyes and her head began to hurt as her mind tried to translate the object into something mercilessly coherent.

The final few stars resolved into the muzzle of a huge mammal, a bear. She felt all the air ripped out of her lungs when its eyes glared down at her. Something rumbled deep inside the cavern, the sound of thunder churning, worlds cracking asunder. She tried to breathe normally, breathing too much as she tried to grab enough air, her vision blurring at the edges. Run run get out of here get away get away! She tried to move, but her hooves felt like they were made out of cement; strange shapes were forming in the steam made by her breath.

The ursa minor opened its jaws to roar, nose scraping the roof, mandible furrowing the cave floor, the doorway into oblivion staring right at her. Something loosened inside of her, and she finally found her voice. Her scream was a firecracker against a typhoon.

One of the stars between the creature’s eyes flared with a brilliant silvery light. It ripped itself out of the bear’s head and floated down, down, down to the cold cave floor. Fizzlepop watched as it hovered toward her, feeling something not as cold as the frigid womb of a cave, but more akin to a slow calm night. Waves of comfort fell over her, soothing the terror in her chest and her aching head.

Suddenly the light flared again, and Princess Luna stood tall and exalted between her and the star bear. Her wings stretched out and gave one great flap, kicking up a wave of dust and detritus.

“You have no power here,” the princess said. “Leave.” Her wings gave another monstrous flap and Fizzlepop watched the ursa minor vanish, the stars blown apart and the creature’s aura dissipating like so much smoke in a breeze. There was one fading rumble like distant thunder, becoming hardly more than the memory of an echo.

Luna’s horn glowed and flared, the cave around them disappearing in a flash of light. Around them, the field was awash in the glow of a full moon, low fog weaving through the muttering grass and the creek burbling incessantly in the distance. It was warm, like being in a blanket woven from shadow and starlight. Small fireflies flickered yellow-green in their little dances, and one landed on the tip of her nose. She brushed it away and watched it fly off towards the little hamlet, still sitting there in the hollow of the field. Somewhere, foals were laughing.

The flicker of violet-blue drew her eyes up and Princess Luna was standing at the top of the hill, watching her with an unreadable expression. In truth, it wasn’t half as unreadable as Fizzlepop pretended it was. She recognized that frown, the accusatory look in her eyes, the same look that made the expulsion of mirrors and the installment of curtains over the windows in her house a vital prerequisite. Thunder rumbled somewhere; she walked up to the princess, keeping her eyes down to the grass.

“Princess Luna?” she asked. The dream was taking a different turn now. She remembered hearing from Twilight that Luna visited ponies in their dreams for the purpose of driving away their nightmares; she herself had never had such a visitation, and considered the tales as hearsay.

“Walk with me.”

The alicorn turned and began walking down the hill, fireflies trailing in her wake like the tiny galaxies in her tail. Fizzlepop scowled, uncertain, then trotted to catch up to Luna.

They walked in silence for a while, listening to the quiet. An owl hooted somewhere, just once before quieting down. The three foals came running up from the creek dripping wet, their lamps held up high and glowing with fireflies. They were all smiling and laughing, forgetting they ought to be quiet tonight. The unicorn watched her past run away from her, carousing with her friends. Her heart ached.

“Who are you?”

Fizzlepop frowned, not sure she had heard that, even less sure that she wanted to answer that. “What?”

“You heard me correctly. Who are you?”

The unicorn bit the inside of her cheek, amused that even in this dream she could feel the sharp sting of a nerve being crushed between her molars. “I’m Fizzlepop Berrytwist.”

“Are you sure?”

She scowled, heat flooding her face. She didn’t like this. The nightmares she could accept because they were familiar, they were what she deserved. The route of questioning Luna was taking was unfamiliar and discomforting. “Yes.”

The alicorn let out a sigh that sounded pained in Fizzlepop’s ears, making wish she’d just kept her mouth shut. Instead, she pricked her ears up when Luna cleared her throat. “Long ago, in a distant place, there was a temple built for meditation and for discovery. A place of knowledge. Some ponies lived in that temple, forsaking everything they owned and everyone they knew because they could hear things others could not. They could feel things that others could not. Those ponies were called Oracles. Some of the knowledge they coveted and held in secret, but some secrets they carved all across the walls of their temple.”

Fizzlepop looked behind her. The town was fading away now, the woodlands rearing up before them like huge patches of black fur. She felt like a flea walking along the skin of a dog. Fizzlepop took in a deep breath as Luna continued.

“One night, something bad happened to that little temple and all the ponies inside. There are no records of what happened, none left alive to remember.” Here Luna paused, staring up at the sky. Something small and pretty blazed across the surface of that blue velvet sea. “There are ruins, shattered pieces of something that had once been grand. In the forecourt leading into nothing, there are words carved into the stone. Gnothi seauton. Do you know what these words mean?”

“No.”

“They mean ‘know thyself.’ You do not know yourself.”

Her face and ears burned. She didn’t like this, not at all. Worry and fear began eat at her. Suddenly Luna stopped, looking hard at a tree near the path. “How interesting,” she muttered. Fizzlepop looked around the alicorn and saw a galley wheel mounted into the trunk of the tree, one made of thick black iron. The kind used on the Storm King’s ships. Suddenly aware that the world around her had changed again, she gave a weak gasp as her throat closed up.

Rigging hung from the thin canopy in the trees, dangling like unused marionette strings; scraps of tattered black flags with a familiar light blue insignia blew in the breeze; the forest stopped smelling like the forest and more like winter, like ice and sea. It smelled of airship fuel and gear lubricant. As they continued to stroll through the forest, the forest began to eat itself up, replacing itself with pieces of elsewhere. On her right, the colossal blue-white wall of a glacier, grumbling as cracks formed from within. The burning bow of a fallen airship hung over the path, suspended in midair by the trees. It began to snow.

“What’s happening?” Fizzlepop gasped. She had to step over some indescribable dark thing in the path, daring herself to keep her eyes up, feeling them pull back anyway.

“Your dream is reacting to your emotional state. These images are the walls your dream is putting up.”

“W-Walls?”

“The walls that you wish to keep hiding behind so that you don’t have to see yourself as you are.”

The glacier split apart with a calamitous bang. One half fell over, the other slid down at an angle, tearing through the forest like a monstrous elephant toward them. Fizzlepop shrank away as the hunk of ice and snow consumed everything in front of it, sliding into a grinding halt over the path in front of them. Luna rolled her eyes, her horn glowing; white light arced through the air and bored a wide tunnel through the ice, large enough for several alicorns to pass through. Luna walked right on through undeterred. Fizzlepop followed in her wake, telling herself that because it was a dream she really shouldn’t be worried about the faces she was seeing in the ice.

Luna’s horn flared and light filled the tunnel, magnified and fractured into a million points of flame around them. “Everything that’s happening is in response to your fears, your worries. You have to calm down.”

“How?”

Here Luna laughed. It was a small chuckle that Fizzlepop might have thought of as cute if the circumstances were different.

“Who are you?”

“My name’s Fizzlepop Berrytwist.”

Luna glanced at her out of the corner of one eye. When Fizzlepop looked up at her she had turned away. “What if I told you that I didn’t believe you? What would you say if I told you that your name is Tempest Shadow?”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it? You seemed so confident, so in control of yourself, when you were Tempest. Why is it so different with Fizzlepop?”

“Because Tempest did things that Fizz…that I want to forget.”

“No, you don’t.”

Fizzlepop sneered, bit her lip, tried to find the right words so it wouldn’t make her anger seem so apparent. “What? How could you possibly presume to know what I want?”

Luna swept a foreleg along the walls of ice. “Because your dreams reflect who you are. You’ve been burying yourself in your past so deeply that you cannot think about your present or your future. You don’t want to forget because the idea of letting it all go would give you a reason to be happy, and that’s something, I think, you don’t want.”

Fizzlepop was silent. She kept her eyes on the ground. There were no faces there. “You’re telling me that in order for me to be okay with myself, I keep myself from being happy. You’re saying that I’m content when I’m miserable.”

“Is that not exactly what you’re doing?” Luna and Fizzlepop made it to the other side of the tunnel, where they were greeted by snow-sprinkled trees. They were silent again, and silence was the worst thing; it made the knot in Fizzlepop’s stomach turn in tighter coils. Finally, she blinked and allowed the first tear to fall, feeling the small course it ran down her cheek make her feel worse.

“It hurts, princess. Whenever I think about that town or the friends I used to have, it hurts. When I think about why I joined up with the Storm King, it hurts. When I remember the things I had to do under his command, it hurts. It’s all a confusing jumble full of hurt, and I want to stop hurting.”

“And how do you plan to do this?”

Like the other one, the question seemed to slap Fizzlepop across the brain. She hadn’t really thought of how to stop it, or that it even should be stopped. She didn’t speak, but Luna was waiting, expecting an answer, so she tried to think of one that would satisfy the princess. Before she could say it aloud, Luna interjected.

“Whose forgiveness is it that you’re seeking? Is it your foalhood friends’, all of Equestria, or your own?”

She read my mind, Fizzlepop thought with a tremor, and for a second that thought pushed aside all the others. Something darted across the path, something hugging the ground and keeping to the trees. Luna’s horn glowed, a beam of light scorching through the forest. Something gave a brief scream, and the forest was silent again.

“Unless you believe that you can’t be forgiven. Which would then mean that you’re setting yourself on a path without an end. No matter what you will try to do, you will always be two steps behind. You will always fail in your endeavors. You will always see yourself as somepony who doesn’t deserve anything she gets. But that’s not what others see.”

The two walked in silence together, and Fizzlepop walked alone. It had made her aching worse when she told Luna how she felt, unbolting that door for the words-- which weren’t even correct, but were close enough—to come out. What Luna had said, to have her emotions laid out so smoothly, felt sharper than any knife. She wiped at her eyes, ashamed and ashamed of being ashamed.

But that last sentence was the worst. ‘That’s not what others see.’ that didn’t feel right. It felt like a lie; it felt like a poor joke.

“And what do you see?”

Luna gave the mare a sad smile as she thought. Her wings rustled softly, the sound of velvet against silk. “When I look at you, I see a sad and lonely mare. I see a pony with perhaps too much in her heart. I see a unicorn who cannot seem to—.”

“No, I’m not!”

The world tore apart when she stomped her hoof, trees and ice melding and becoming black, like the walls of a sunless cave. The moon and stars vanished and became the toothy cavernous ceiling stretching up into and becoming nothingness. Luna recoiled, shocked at the other mare’s outburst and the sudden and rapid change in their environment. Fizzlepop wanted to feel bad and she did, but seeing that worried look on Luna’s face felt so good.

“I’m not a unicorn anymore! I don’t know what I am, I don’t know who I am! And none of this matters because it’s just a dream and it’s not going to change a thing!”

Sparks flew off the cracked base of her horn, scattering turquoise light across the floor. Chipped rock fell from the ceiling, and Luna had to leap out of the way to avoid a stalactite that had detached above her and landed with a resounded crash that the walls of the cavern transformed into a scream. She stared down at Fizzlepop, about to say something when something, some deep blue sheen captured in the mare’s tears, had forced her to turn around. The ursa minor had returned, its body as big as the cave, its mouth open and filled with destruction.

“I want to be the me I used to be, but I don’t know who that is anymore! I want to be Tempest because I had purpose and meaning in my life! I want ponies to stop seeing me like a monster. I want to stop being a monster but I can’t. You can’t forgive the things I had to do.”

The entire cave shook with the ursa minor’s movements, amplifying the noises that drove out of its throat. Fizzlepop sat down on the floor, wanting to see what was happening but she didn’t much care about the tears blurring her vision and homogenizing everything. She didn’t want to see Luna giving her that look, that look, the one that everypony gives her when she tries to talk to them. She would rather die than see Luna’s face at that moment.

“I spent years hating those ponies who I thought abandoned me, but it wasn’t their fault, it was mine. I’m responsible for being so weak and stupid. Every moment of every day.”

She would also have seen that Luna wasn’t looking at her at all. She was staring up at the ursa minor, at its mouth and the scraps of clothing hanging from its teeth. Light flashed from her horn again, and for one unsettling second, Luna noticed that the bear did not immediately vanish as it should have. She focused her magic and released it, the cave around them vanishing into a black fog. Threads of the nothingness swirled around them, black clouds whirling through an intangible wind. Only one object filled the space above them to give any perspective, a shattered, lightless, suppurating moon.

“You truly wished you’d never left that cave,” Luna said quietly.

Fizzlepop wept noisily, wiping at her eyes as though they had betrayed her. She felt feathers brush her cheek and she froze. Even as the alicorn’s wing gently pushed her head up, she wouldn’t dare take the chance to look into that face.

“Look at me.”

“No…”

A forehoof brushed her cheek, diverting her tears. She disobeyed the not-so-little voice in her head and opened her eyes. Luna looked down at her; Fizzlepop was transfixed by the little gleam of a tear running down Luna’s cheek. “I know how deeply guilt and regret can cut. I know what it’s like to question how you can live with yourself when the memories are always with you. I hurt for you.

“You’ve woven yourself into a puzzle, and no one can solve you except yourself. You may not think you have the power to do this, but you do. I know you do. You have friends—.”

“I don’t…”

“Yes, you do. You have friends who can help you, but you have to be the one to make the first step. I…I see so much of myself in you. I recognize that same sadness, the same contempt and the same aching longing—perhaps that’s why I loathed you. I’ve been afraid, so afraid, that you’d become that thing that I used to be, so I kept my distance and watched. I watched you to see if you’d do something terrible. I even wanted you to do something just to prove that I was correct. Perhaps, if I’d acted sooner…”

Fizzlepop hiccoughed. A humorless smile cracked open. “Do I really frighten you, princess? Can you really see that thing inside of me?”

Luna closed her eyes, and she kept them closed for a long time. She opened her mouth to speak when Fizzlepop cut her off. “Because you’d be right.”

The alicorn shook her head, starlight flickering in her mane. Fizzlepop thought of the ursa minor. “Do you truly believe that I’d still be here trying to help you, if I thought you were beyond help? Even if I thought you were, I would still try.”

The mare scowled. She sniffled and used her hoof to wipe away what ran down her nose. Luna brushed her tears away. A jolt ran up Fizzlepop’s back when she realized that this was the longest she’d ever looked at a pony in the eyes in a long time.

“Your dreams are about punishment. But you do not even know the pony you’re trying to punish. You have to discover who you are, and make peace with that pony, if you can.”

Fizzlepop shook her head. “But I don’t know how to do that. Where do I start?”

Luna shook her head, and that small sad smile had returned. Fizzlepop didn’t find it so awful now. “Regret is a terrible pain to bear, but we harm ourselves even more when we refuse to take that first step toward overcoming it. You know your destination; it’s up to you to find the path.”

“But…”

Luna’s wings enfolded Fizzlepop. It was a softness and a darkness she had never felt in a very long time, longer than her memory could reach before it entered vague and foggy regions. It was impossibly comforting, and simultaneously cool and warm. She felt embarrassed; if there was any sense in the universe, a pony like her didn’t deserve to be embraced like this, not by a pony like Princess Luna.

“I wish you well,” Luna whispered, cool breath running over her ears and making them burn. “You have to wake up now.”

Denials and repudiations filled Fizzlepop’s mind and she knew they were all equally foalish, thinking them anyway. She didn’t want to leave this, and the idea that she would have to was nonsense, ridiculous. When she felt Luna’s wings leave her as the alicorn took off into the air, she felt a biting emptiness inside, of having lost something vital. Luna’s voice filled the sky and echoes rippled across the clouds.

Wake up.

The nothingness unraveled.

Author's Note

--The dream inquisition scene is about as dark as it’s going to get for a few chapters in this series. I felt the departure of the not-Applejack was a bit much, and the one with Rarity was clearly taken from John Carpenter's The Thing (1982). Just complainin'...
--Throughout the MLP series, I’ve always associated more with Fluttershy and Twilight. After first reading Fallout Equestria years ago, Fluttershy has taken up a higher position in my mind. Giving her an assertive role in this story felt right to me.
--It might be the first sentence, but I still hadn’t realized until posting it now that I began this chapter the same way as the previous one; with the weather. Bad form.
--I realize that there’s a lot of “glancing over shoulders” in this story so far. I’ll try to remedy that.
--During Tempest’s dream inquisition, I didn’t want to go through all the shades and their complaints against her; it just felt unprofessional and needless. I’d thought of most of the dialogue during that scene without a notebook close at hand, and I wished I did. What I’ve written here feels pale compared to those words, which were supposed to be a detailed discourse against Tempest’s character in regards to the Elements of Harmony.
--I really apologize for the size of that dream sequence. Once I realized that it was becoming double the intended two thousand words I fell into a bit of a fugue.
--There’s something about the stories that I write that come across as awfully amateurish to me. Thoughts aren’t communicated properly and everything seems black and white. I’ve been writing short fiction for nearly twenty years; what’s going on here? Is it just me or are my suspicions justified?

Ch 3 - Feelin' So Good, Feelin' So Fine

Chapter Three
Feelin’ So Good, Feelin’ So Fine

The first things the mare noticed that were out of place before she had even opened her eyes were that her mouth was incredibly dry, and that the whole right side of her face was wet.

Her tongue felt like some foreign piece of furniture that had invaded her mouth—she would have thought of it as an extension of the pillow if the pillow wasn’t soaked in saliva. She opened her eyes and instantly wished she hadn’t. Her head exploded with a jagged, sawing pain that reached down to scrape at her eyes and rattle her teeth like a pocket full of loose change. Loose filthy change.

Her eyes fluttered as she tried to limit the flood of pale fluorescent light. She knew she was in a bed and she wanted to move, but her body dissuaded her. Better to lie still and try to look at the walls painted the sort of green that resembled cat-sick, and the condolence card pink butterflies. Everything seemed to hurt.

She was at a loss to explain to herself why her entire leg had been bandaged and done up in a sling, until she did remember and everything seemed to ache even worse. A moan slipped out between her lips before she could trap it.

“Oh!”

The sound of a curtain being drawn back, a soothing shadow spread over her bed. A blurry yellow shape darted over to the side of her bed, yellow and pink, and from that direction she could hear Fluttershy’s panicky voice. “I’m so glad you’re awake! First I was worried that you weren’t going to wake up, and then I was worried when it looked like you weren’t breathing, so I did some chest compressions and that seemed to work for a while, but last night your heart gave off some odd palpitations, and I was really worried you wouldn’t wake up again…”

The words formed in the mare’s esophagus, dry vocal cords vibrating and tickling her throat. She coughed, and when she started she couldn’t stop. Tears filled her thirsty eyes and that helped a little bit, but it felt like there were nails and powdered glass in her throat.

She felt something pry her hoof away from her mouth and a glass tipped up to her lips. She sputtered as the water splashed her face, some of it spilling over and drenching her chest. She drank it in heaving gulping gasps, refusing to believe how anypony could hold fear for the seas or lakes. When Fluttershy tried to pull the glass away she snatched it from her with her teeth and gulped what was left.

“You really shouldn’t drink so much so fast, Tempest…”

The mare might have said something, she might have made some vocalizations that sounded like comprehensible words in her ears, but what she knew for certain was that she needed that water. When the glass was empty Fluttershy gently took it away, the mare still gasping for air.

“Thank you,” she managed to say, her voice sounding like it was filled with drywall dust.

Fluttershy didn’t say anything. She smiled, and the mare was grateful enough to accept that much. She used the blanket to wipe at her face and the soft green gown that she had been fitted with, wondering how long she’d been here, too scared to know the answer. Instead she looked around her room, noticing that she was the only resident; the curtains around the three other beds were all retracted, bed sheets prim and folded. Outside, the clouds were off-white and seemed angry.

She did a double-take when she saw her nightstand, wondering if she was having a particularly odd hallucination, or a symptom of a dream that never happened. A short pile of gifts covered the cheap grey veneer, small bouquets of flowers and little boxes with colored paper and ribbons stacked just higher than the lamp. Covering the bright pink box at the top was a paper plate with a slice of cake, frosting falling over the side like pink and green magma. The string of a balloon was stuck into the mess of melted wax and frosting, leading up to a gibbous pink face, a black marker smile big enough to pocket the sun.

Fluttershy saw her staring. “Pinkie Pie had those set up for you. She wanted to throw you a party in here, but Rarity told her that it wouldn’t have been practical, not while you were still asleep and, well, recuperating.”’

“Rarity was here?” The mare looked down at the pile of gifts, seeing one box near the top that was decorated with an ornate ribbon with gilded filigree, the paper the same cranberry-plum color of Fizzlepop’s coat. She didn’t think a pony like Rarity would care very much whether or not a pony like her was in the hospital. She looked at the gifts and the cake and the oversized balloon with the stupid giant smile and discovered that she was smiling, too.

“I didn’t tell Pinkie why you were here, though. The nurses had already changed the bandages on your leg when she came by, and I was too nervous to tell her.”

The happiness washed away, just like that. The mare looked at her leg, remembering the fruit knife, remembering those melded nightmares flickering in its edge. To a point, some of it was hazy and filled with a noxious red-orange light. She couldn’t recall half of what happened in her shack, but the knife she could remember as clear as glass. “How long was I…I mean how long have I been here?”

Fluttershy gave her a sad look. It was an expression that seemed to come so naturally to Fluttershy, and one that the mare disliked seeing in the pegasus’s eyes. “We brought you in here last Saturday. That was four days ago.”

Four days. The mare mused on that, shutting her eyes from that stabbing fluorescent light. A chill ran through her body as she rubbed at her forehead, hoping that massaging it would somehow ease the pain. There was a barbed wire fog in her head. Fluttershy was saying something to her but she wasn’t paying attention. I just lost four days of my life.

“Thank you, Fluttershy.”

Fluttershy was walking to the door, but she stopped and turned. “Hmm?”

“I said thanks. For saving me.”

The pegasus blinked and looked like she didn’t know what to say. Then she said “I’ll go get you some more water,” even though the dark mare knew that that probably wasn’t what she wanted to say, and walked out the door.

She coughed again. By now her throat was feeling somewhat better and her tongue didn’t feel so much like a shoe in her mouth. The headache was still jarring, though. She looked up at the grid lines between the ceiling tiles, seeing little grey squares that she knew weren’t really there. Her mind was over interpreting what it was looking at, deceiving the same sensations. But Luna, and the field and the cave, those weren’t hallucinations. She closed her eyes, seeing stars in a flowing blue mane.

Alright, you, she thought, you know what you have to do now. You’ve got your mission. You got yourself into such a knot that you’re not sure which direction you need to move. Not a problem, nothing you can’t handle. You just have to figure out who you are.

Uh-huh, not a problem.

Stars, blue night, the gleam of a tiny knife, tomato-skin light, Princess Celestia with smoking cinders for eyes, black clouds. She opened her eyes, frowning.

She looked at the balloon. Stupid big balloon with its stupid big grin silently telling her how stupid it was to be so unhappy. She wanted to cradle it and pop it at the same time.

Fizzlepop Berrytwist had been attacked because she was weak. She had been ostracized because something had been taken from her, the thing that made her what she was supposed to be—a unicorn. She was broken, weak and broken and scarred. She knew what was right and wrong, but no matter how much right she tried to accomplish, there was always somepony to look at her like she was wrong. Not merely wrong, but Wrong. As though some intrinsic part of her was, by nature, incorrect.

Tempest Shadow could take control. She knew how to disassociate in volatile situations. She could see the stepping stones of the plan and follow through with meticulous care. When there was extra baggage, she knew how to cut it away so it wouldn’t threaten the end objective. Sometimes she would imagine that she wasn’t even a pony, but some force that had taken equimorphic shape; something that held no stock in the concepts of Good or Evil, existing only to dispense justice in whatever manner that was required at the time.

Somewhere, those two ponies had ended up spending five days living with their nightmares, dragging a fruit knife across their leg. Whose leg? she thought. Whose blood was needed to stop the aching inside?

Who are you?

Who’s forgiveness are you seeking?

What are you trying to bury and what are you trying to embrace?

I don’t know.

The mare looked at the big stupid grinning balloon. She punched it with her good hoof, the big face rocking back and turning away from her. She smirked and shook her head. “You really are a mess, aren’t you?”

The hospital was becoming quiet, probably easing on into the evening. It was hard to tell from the big angry sky outside, clouds colored like hunks of shale or goose feathers and all but pushing down the cluster of spindly birch trees beyond her window. A hungry sky coiling before it pounces. A regular tempest.

Fluttershy came back after a while, catching her just as she was dozing back into an uneasy rest. She was carrying a pitcher of water in her teeth, a glass cradled in the crook of one wing. She set them both on the shelf on the other side of the room. Silently, she poured water into the glass and brought it to her. The mare took the glass and drank even though she wasn’t thirsty.

“I’m glad you’re awake.”

“You already said that.”

“Oh,” Fluttershy looked down at the floor, then back at the chair in the corner. The mare now saw that a little rabbit was sitting there, looking bored and irate. “Right.”

The mare set her glass down on the nightstand, on a spot atop the pile of gifts where it hopefully wouldn’t tip over. “Fluttershy? I wanted to say that I’m grateful to you, and to Twilight. The things I did, I wish I hadn’t done them. I wanted to be more than what I am, I wanted to be whole, and I thought that…” The mare paused as she tried to find the right words. She shook her head and looked out the window, hoping to find the words there. “I know ponies hate me. I know Canterlot hates me and it wouldn’t surprise me if all of Equestria hated me, but I’m trying, Fluttershy. I’m trying to be better. I just wanted to say thanks.”

The pegasus stared at her, her blue-green eyes narrowing into angry slits. “That’s it? Is that all you have to say?”

Vocabulary faltered and failed. When she heard the furious depth in Fluttershy’s voice her thoughts were replaced with question marks. “What?”

“You’re not going to talk about that?” Fluttershy pointed a hoof at the mare’s bandaged leg. “You’re just going to ignore everything that happened at your house!? You don’t think that that’s important at all? How can you possibly be so…”

“Fluttershy, I can barely remember what happened then.”

“You were killing yourself!” Fluttershy threw her hooves up on the bed and stared down at the mare. She shrank down into her pillow, stupefied with shock. “Twilight and I both saw you! You were talking to your own nightmares, and you were cutting yourself with a knife! How can you possibly sit there and pretend that everything is fine now? Things just don’t change like that overnight!” She placed her hoof over the mare’s bandaged arm, not so gentle anymore. “Those aren’t going to heal overnight. You did so much harm to yourself that even magic isn’t going to restore all of it. There was muscle and nerve damage. You were lucky enough that some of the infected cuts didn’t progress beyond treatable conditions, or you’d be in a different room right now. Some of those wounds are going to be with you for the rest of your life!”

The mare’s eyes were locked on Fluttershy’s, her mind trying to find a way to function after hearing the word infected. Her mouth hung open, unformed words expiring on the air.

“No life is so horrible that you should take it away. No pain is so terrible that you can hope to cut it away with the rest of yourself. And there is no wound so deep that you can’t at least try to make it better!”

The mare licked at the roof of her mouth. “I thought…” she began, not really knowing where the rest of that sentence was supposed to be. “I thought the best way to be merciful was to—.”

She didn’t see the hoof as it pulled back and darted forward; she did see a brief flash as her eyes fluttered up to the cast-iron clouds, the right side of her face bursting in pain.

The sounds of hooves galloping through the hall outside. A nurse came in and shouted something, another nurse behind him. They darted into the room and tried to pull Fluttershy away from the bed.

“What do you know about mercy!? What do you know about mercy!?”

As the nurses dragged Fluttershy out of the room, the little rabbit gave a squeal and scampered to the door. He actually tried to bite at one of the ponies until Fluttershy snatched him away with her wings. The door slammed shut, and the mare in the hospital bed heard Fluttershy screaming “How could you possibly know!? How could you!? How could you!?”

Later, a nurse, one of the three that had managed to detain Fluttershy, came in to check in on her. She wiped at her graying mane and asked the mare small questions with a dry-erase smile. She told her that a doctor would be in to ask a few questions and would she be up to seeing him? The mare said yes, she would, even though she didn’t really feel like talking to anypony right now. She rubbed at her jaw, feeling her teeth tingling. When the doctor came she answered his questions to the best of her ability, avoided the ones she didn’t like answering moderately enough. He took a look at her jaw and jotted something down on his clipboard. As he did so, her eyes turned up to his horn, the caramel-colored helical horn as long as a railroad spike.

That would be a job, she mused, trying not to look as anxious as she felt. Healing sick and hurt ponies. Administering help when needed. Giving back life whenever it was in danger of being lost. Must be nice having a horn.

“Would you mind if I also took a look at your leg, then, miss?”

“Um, no, I don’t think so.”

If the doctor had caught the uncertainty in her voice, he didn’t ponder over it. With his magic, he found the loose end of the bandage and began unrolling it. The mare had the strange sensation of watching the emergence of a pupa to a butterfly, the gentle shifting of the thing inside its cocoon as it found its way out, though she doubted that what would emerge would have any metaphoric connection to a butterfly.

She could smell the wounds before she saw them. Suppurating flesh has that distinct autumnal scent of vigor and decay, similar to tilled earth and rotting tree stumps. It didn’t seem to bother her as much as it did the doctor, who had to cover his nose with the lapel of his white coat. She squirmed in mingled wonder and horror at it, what her leg had become, the caricature of a cyclone encircling flesh, rivers of red and pale yellow diverting from and into each other like a typography map drawn by a madmare, all the fur down to her hoof matted down with dried encrustations that shined in the light like beetles. Some of the fur had been shaved off so that the medical staff could treat the wounds. It looked both alien and familiar to her.

The mare muttered something, suddenly feeling thirsty. The doctor glanced up as he inspected her leg, making notes on his clipboard. “What’s that?”

She cleared her throat. “Somepony told me there was nerve damage?”

He looked down at her, suddenly perplexed. “Who told you that? We weren’t supposed to inform you until we were certain you’d be emotionally prepared.” She was about to copy those last two words, mouthing them instead when he cut her off. “Well, it’s true, anyway. There will be some nerve compression near your elbow, and your hoof will also have some serious motor damage. This can be corrected, but it will take some time. Now, tell me if you can feel anything…”

The moment the doctor began to straighten her elbow, white hot fire exploded from the meat of that leg, shooting up into her head and returning back down in a molten loop. She could feel every mark on her leg, and every mark was howling. She screamed, and somewhere through the pain she heard him mutter “Okay, okay, I think you can feel that!”

She closed her eyes tight, tears leaking through anyway—it felt like that impossible fire was spreading up her shoulder to the rest of her body. She was about to beg the doctor to cut her arm off, tear it off at the socket, whatever it took to keep that horrible pain from leaching through to the rest of her, when she felt the fire begin to fade away. When it came down to manageable levels she opened her eyes, seeing threads of light weaving down to her leg from the doctor’s horn. The light rhythmically traveled up and down her leg until the pain faded away completely.

More than that, she began to feel…happy? Or perhaps just content. She glanced at the stupid balloon face—how can you be frowning in front of a balloon with a smile like that? She grinned, tried to break the grin, kept it anyway.

The doctor grabbed a new roll of gauze and wound it around her leg. He wrote something on the paper attached to his clipboard, looking quite pensive. In her tranquil state, she could see all the beads of sweat that dotted his brow. They all seemed so clear she could almost count them.

“Now,” the doctor began, and the mare knew immediately she wasn’t going to like the rest of this visit either. “Given the, uh, nature of your admission here, you have to understand that once your leg shows sufficient signs of repair, we’ll still have to keep you here for a week or two.”

“Two weeks.” she parroted.

“Under surveillance, yes. It’s for your own good, really. You understand, yes?”

She would have told him that he could have told her the world was a ball of yarn and everypony was really a cat trying to solve it, and she would have understood him just fine, thank you very much, but she was afraid of getting tongue-tied, so she just said yes. He smiled at her and made some remarks about Princess Twilight’s Friendship summit that she just barely heard, and he was trotting out the door. She sat there, the sky now so dark that she was certain it was getting around nighttime, and she looked down at the pile of gifts. The gifts made her think of Fluttershy, so she turned away from them.

Somewhere between thinking and not thinking about things, she fell back to sleep.

“Thanks again for the jacket, Rarity.”

The mare saw Rarity smile from the doorway as she curled her eyelashes with the patient tenacity of a surgeon. “Oh, you’re welcome, dear. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to effectively encapsulate the you that you are, but I asked my friend Zecora for assistance, and together, I think we’d managed to pull it off.” Rarity’s eyes darkened and turned to her, flashing suspicion. “We did, didn’t we?”

“Of course you did.”

“Oh, thank goodness!”

The mare watched the unicorn, watched her and nibbled at her bottom lip as a war was being fought in her head. There was only one thought on her mind and a dozen reasons why she should just keep her mouth shut and let Rarity get on with her day, and let herself get on with the slow grey grind of her own. Worried that she wouldn’t get the chance for a long while, she cleared her throat and opened her dry mouth.

“Can I ask you something?”

The white unicorn looked tired. She looked like she didn’t have any intention of answering questions, let alone hearing them. She ran a hoof through her elegant purple mane, using her magic to brush out several snags. It may have been morning, but it was rather late for the proprietor of an active business chain to be visiting a pony in the hospital. She was in the rest room, looking in the mirror with the door hanging open. After hearing her voice, the unicorn pocketed her brush in a small purse and trotted back into the room. “Yes, of course, dear. I was just making a few corrections. Is there something on your mind?”

There’s plenty of somethings on my mind, the mare thought. She would never have been so flippant as to say that out loud to the unicorn. She liked Rarity, liked the corkscrew turn of her mane and tail and the brightness that almost never seemed to leave her sapphire eyes. Her voice was an intricacy of sophistication, and she could make the ugliest object sound beautiful just by mentioning it.

The mare was grateful that Rarity didn’t treat her with the same vehemence as others did. She didn’t understand it, and she often suspected that it was Twilight’s doing, but she was obliged to the unicorn, whatever the case may be.

This isn’t right, said a little voice in the back of her head. She’s an important and well-admired businessmare. You’re a well-known traitor on suicide watch. How much is she risking just by being here? Would she be in the same position tomorrow if she were seen talking to you?

She looked at Rarity, looking back at her with tired sapphire eyes, and promptly told that little voice to go drown in a lake.

“You and your friends have been together for a while, haven’t you?”

The white unicorn beamed. Somehow, through the gloom of the morning and her exhaustion, she still managed to beam. “Oh, we certainly have. We’ve always been there to assist each other in any endeavor, even when some of us weren’t quite expecting it, or even needing it. Yes, we’ve had some…” She paused here to think and make a grimace that the mare didn’t quite understand, “adventures, and there are moments when one has to wonder if your friends really have the best intentions in mind, sometimes, but I’d have to say my life would not be where it is today if I didn’t have my girls to see me through it all.”

“Is it really like that?”

“Of course, Tempest.”

Don’t think about it, just follow through. Bury it and keep walking. “Then, can you tell if there’s something wrong with somepony? If there’s something about them that’s not quite right?”

There’s that look again. That anxious-perplexed I’m starting to wish I hadn’t bothered with you expression. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” Rarity said quietly, and that stung a bit.

“I mean...I mean, can you tell if there’s something deep inside of a pony that would make them bad? Is there some sign that’ll let you know if a pony isn’t worth any friendship?”

Rarity looked at the mare for a while. It looked like every time she was going to say something, a thought would force the words back. She made a show of worrying over the hyacinths and tulips in a vase by the window and then glanced up at the sky. “I’m afraid I’m not qualified to answer that. I really think Twilight should—.”

“Twilight doesn’t want to see me. I think she hates me.”

“What? Where did you get a notion like that?”

“I haven’t seen her in weeks. No letters.”

“She’s a princess, dear. She has a multitude of obligations on her plate, and besides, there are others you can talk to.” Then she added, “Surely,” as though she were unsure.

The mare rolled her pale eyes up to the ceiling. She punctuated each point with her hoof. “Rainbow Dash openly hates my guts; Applejack is on speaking terms with me, so long as I don’t know where she lives or what her plans are; Pinkie Pie is too difficult for me to talk to; and Fluttershy isn’t too fond of me, either. You’re the only one out of your little group that bothers talking to me.”

Rarity chuckled, a high twittering that sounded too nervous. It made the mare fidget in her bed. “Oh, really, Tempest! We’re not the only ponies in this town, you know. There’s an entire world of possibilities out there, dear.”

“A world I helped try to conquer. A world I turned my back on.”

The white unicorn scowled, good humor suddenly shattered and now the mare felt heat beginning to fill her face. “You’re beginning to behave like a child,” Rarity said.

“No, I’m not,” the mare muttered, crossing her legs over her chest.

“My little sister measures up to your knees if she stood on the tips of her hooves, and she still acts older than you are now.” Rarity walked up to the side of the mare’s bed, blocking out the dawn sunlight. She didn’t like being so close to the unicorn, didn’t like being reminded of the comparison in appearance. She turned her eyes away to the vase, malachite black and green like the depths of some ancient forgotten sea, where it was more forgiving than the seas in Rarity’s eyes.

“Being your own victim doesn’t give you an excuse to continue feeling like one. You are alive, Tempest. Life shouldn’t feel like a curse. We’re trying to help you, all of us.”

“And you’re all wasting your time.”

Rarity frowned down at her, strong enough that she could feel those eyes pressing down on her. “There’s no need to counter kindness with rudeness. Frankly, I think you enjoy feeling miserable.”

The mare was quiet, not responding. Rarity floated out a pocket watch, silver casing with a lovely amethyst cabochon in the center. The drowsiness instantly left her eyes and she grumbled. “Ah, wonderful. I’m late. The employer, late to her own business.” Rarity looked back over her shoulder and hissed “I hope you're happy” before walking over to the desk by the far wall. She grabbed a heavy raincoat, inconspicuous wide-brimmed hat and black sunglasses that screamed INCOGNITO. “Perhaps you’ll be in a better mood by the weekend,” she said, and stalked off in a huff.

The mare sighed loudly, forceful inhale/exhale of the sterile hospital air. She banged the back of her head against her pillow, not quite making a bang but more of a loud whumph sound as the ends of the pillow closed around her ears.

The truth was that she was happy, and she didn’t know how to feel about that. She’d tried to milk the conversation with Rarity for as long as she could, but she hadn’t expected the unicorn to suggest that she make friends elsewhere, someplace outside of that special group of friends. Inexplicably, she panicked, and then she started haranguing herself and making her friend angry in the process. You’re exactly right, Rarity, she thought, staring up at the white ceiling tiles and the grey squares that weren’t really there. I love being miserable because I love hearing somepony tell me I don’t have to be.

Sounds so stupid when you think about it.

The mare groaned and tried to sink deeper into her pillow. A nurse came in later and they chatted for a short while as he went through the usual movements. The mare tried to keep the conversation going but her efforts were thwarted when the doctor came in for another round of tests. She glared at his cinnamon mane and his railway nail horn as she flexed her elbow out, and inch, two inches, managing six inches before her arm began to tingle and the pain started to flare up again. “You’ve lost some muscle tone,” the doctor said, and then persuaded her to take a round of grey pills that left a bitter chalky taste in her mouth.

He told her that the atrophying wasn’t yet such that she’d have to worry about exercise programs or severe dietary changes, but she caught the worry in his voice. After making her give another blood test he left her feeling tired, worried, and cranky. When the nurse from before came back, she readily snapped at him, spreading her ill humor. He didn’t stay long enough for her to voice her concerns.

Not for a lack of trying, she thought. Her headache was coming back, so she closed her eyes and waited for it to pass. Her dreams brought her back to the cave again.

“How much longer do I have, doctor?”

He had been staring at the clock as he timed her pulse. He had been humming some tuneless rhythm and now he stared down at her as if she were an imaginary figment come to life. “Sorry, what was that?”

“How much longer do I have to be here?”

He pulled off the cuff around her leg and wrote something down. His lips were pursed tight as a lock, and for a second she thought he resembled a colt that was trying to practice kissing. “Let me just ask you a few questions first. Leg feeling alright? No aches or muscle twinges?”

The mare flexed her leg, in and out. She rotated her hoof and swung her leg clockwise. A joint popped like a firework and her arm was a little warm, a little tingly around each scar. She had the grey pills to thank for that. “Nope, no problems,” she said.

“And there are no issues otherwise that you’d like to talk about? Nothing you think Miss Goodwill ought to add to her report?”

The mare forced a smile as she told the doctor no, she wouldn’t like to add anything. She’d never had a session with a psychotherapist before, but after the past week she’d had enough headshrinking to last her decades. Miss Goodwill had been a callous and condescending mare with the face of a potato left out in the sun too long, who tried to pry at her head as if it were an onion. First with kind words and smiles, then with jabs of increasing size to goad her into talking about herself. She wanted too much too fast. She wanted to know about her parents, how they treated her and how she treated them. She enjoyed asking her if she liked mares, or if she had had a terrible childhood before coming to Ponyville, relishing each time she asked them, gleaning pride from being in the presence of her discomfort.

The mare felt proud of herself as she fabricated an existence for Miss Goodwill. She knew the doctor didn’t believe a word of it, but she didn’t care, and she hoped that Miss Goodwill cared even less. It certainly seemed that way from the sessions. No, she had nothing more to say to Miss Goodwill.

“Well, I’d recommend keeping you here for another couple of days or so, but I can see that you seem to have everything under control.”

The mare wanted to laugh at that, but she kept her lip buttoned up, fearing it would mean another pleasant looping conversation with Miss Goodwill. The doctor extended his hoof and she shook it. “I’m going to give you a prescription—actually two prescriptions. One is an antibiotic for infection, and an anti-inflammatory for your arm. I’d also recommend you keep seeing a therapist, once a week at the very least. You’ve been through…”

The mare nodded and made assuages that she would do what the doctor told her, half of it going right over her head. She was getting out of here! She was going to be rid of this awful sterile-sick hospital air, the colorless ceiling and the catsick wall paint with the crude pink butterflies. Away from the tests and this awful stiff bed and the compounding of night and day into a single grey continuum of fluorescent dawn.

“So, if there isn’t anything more I can help you with, I think we’re done here.”

The mare told him no, there wasn’t anything further, but as the doctor shook her hoof again and told her to have a nice day, as he walked away, already out in the hall, the idea hit her hard enough to make adrenaline race behind her eyes. She shouted for the doctor and he came galloping back in.

“I was wondering if you could tell me something about a spell, an anesthetic spell?”

His eyebrows darted up before settling back down. “Yes?”

“Well, it just seems like a really useful spell for somepony to know. I mean, in case there was more pain.”

The doctor actually seemed a bit miffed, straightening up and adjusting his coat over his shoulders. Was there an anxious look in his eye? The mare wasn’t sure, and she wasn’t interested. “You’re not really suggesting I try to teach it to you, are you?” he said. “I will not, miss, for two reasons. The first: I don’t know how the magic would react, or if it would even be possible, given your particular circumstance, but from what we know, it would probably be too dangerous to even try. Second: that spell is only taught to medical students who have studied for four years and complete a two-year residency. It’s considered a Blue-Priority spell.”

“Oh.” The mare didn’t understand what blue-priority was, but she felt the weight behind the tone in the doctor’s voice. She resigned herself to mere nodding.

“Besides, the medication should help control whatever pain that might pop up. It’ll just take time.”

And that’s how you kill joy, the mare thought. There were papers to sign, papers that mentioned payment, and she was told to talk to the receptionist in the lobby about that. That seemed a little fishy, but she didn’t worry about talking to the receptionist quite as much as wondering how she might pay. She’d taken on various odd jobs since coming to Ponyville; road maintenance during the winter and construction during the spring and summer. The pay was, though inconsistent, sufficient enough to live on for a time. Life had trained her to survive on bare need alone. To adapt and improve.

She looked at the patchwork scar tissue on her leg, the misshapen places where the fur had been shaved and where it hadn’t. Haven’t been adapting and improving lately.

She could manage walking without cramping up. She went down to the lobby on the ground floor and mentioned to the receptionist about the bill.

“Oh, yeah,” the young pegasus muttered as she browsed through a sheaf of paper. “It looks like the princess took care of that.”

The mare froze. She felt her stomach and throat tighten. “What? She paid my hospital bill?”

At this, the receptionist smirked and scratched at her ear with her pen. “Oh, no, she didn’t pay. It says here that she ‘would consult with the patient on the matter, with assurance that the hospital WILL get the money.’ And that’s ‘WILL’ underlined and capitalized. She was insistent on that feature. It must be nice having the princess for a friend.”

The mare scowled down at the pegasus, hoping to elicit a fearful twitch of her cocky eyes, tear down that confidence and snide attitude, but the receptionist, her business concluded, turned her attention back to her papers. Suddenly, the mare felt very small. She walked out the front door on shaky and uncertain legs as she told herself to calm down.

What’s to calm down about? You don’t even know what’s going on!

Twilight hadn’t bothered to see her in the hospital, didn’t set up any communication with her. Why would she want to confer with her about the hospital bill? It was possible she had been getting information about her condition from Fluttershy, Rarity, or Pinkie Pie. In fact, the more she thought about the more acceptable it seemed. The princess would have used her friends to check up on her because she was so busy with her daily responsibilities. Yes, that made sense. Though it made less sense than actually coming to see her in person so they could have a conversation. The mare wanted to talk, why didn’t Twilight? Did Twilight really dislike her now? But what about the bill?

Maybe I am being childish.

The mare walked into Ponyville, feeling like she was stepping into the belly of some great animal and at a loss to explain why. Her eyes darted around, not sure what she was looking for or what she thought she should be seeing. Nothing had changed, nothing was magically transfigured or transpired in the past few weeks. The day was pleasantly warm with a satin breeze coming down from the north, cloudless and empty.

She didn’t want to go home. The thought of walking up the porch and into that moaning house with the wind howling around the window panes and the timbers trying to settle over the hill made her want to vomit. It didn’t even seem like it could belong to her anymore. She envisioned herself stepping into the kitchen and seeing somepony in a corner, somepony she might call a friend, twisted and deformed in some incomprehensible manner. There would be rats in the bathroom, great black ones with ruby eyes and slick pink claws, scratching and snapping at each other in a constantly shifting mat of black. If she allowed herself to sleep in her bed she knew, and she knew in her heart it was true, that she would wake up to see Celestia staring down at her, eyes burning with fire that didn’t come from anyplace nice and sweet, chains ratcheting when her wings shook.

Would you get a hold of yourself? They’re not real. They never existed. It was just a dream. Like the grey squares in the ceiling tiles; they’re just little tricks, sensory dishonesty, pure hokum, and nothing more than that. The scars on your leg, the scars that everypony is staring at right this very moment, those are real. You made the knot, now untie it.

It was a nice day, and it felt like it was pressing down on her. She felt confused, angry, abashed, all of it mixing together in her head until she ordered it to stop. She pushed it all down into the soil of her subconscious and kept walking. Purpose found, she tilted her chin up and expanded her chest, marching like the soldier of a nonexistent army. She headed past the town square, avoiding the looks everypony was giving her as the smooth-as-spider-silk breeze ran through her coat.

“Tempest.”

The mare ignored the sound of her name, one facsimile of her. She didn’t recognize the voice anyway, and at this time of day she doubted if it was for anything other than to goad a reaction from her. She watched a group of three colts tinkering with their skateboards, and she wondered.

Bad time for foals with short legs to be playing pranks, she thought.

The castle rose up before her like the claw of some titanic crystalline dragon, holding up the sky. She did not pause or bat an eye when she marched up the front steps, blue sparks flickering off her horn like stringed shards of turquoise, them and her face reflected back at her from the floor and the walls as she threw open the tall doors.

“Twilight Sparkle!”

Judgment had once been purpose for the mare. Now, with purpose superseding judgment, it had become difficult for her to anticipate that hidden danger around the corner. She stopped, all of her muscles coiling as they froze, while the blades of six long lances kissed her throat.

Author's Note

I don't understand why everything I write comes out as less than half of what I want it to be. It seems so amateurish.

--I’m worried that this is the point where I’m beginning to confuse myself as to what the point of the scenes are about, what Fizzlepop’s goals are. I have a set list of scene goals written down, but I’m worried that they’re blending together so early on. If there’s confusion, do tell.
--I’m sorry that the timeline for this chapter is a bit silly; about two or three weeks. It’s become static; she’s been given the story goal, now she has to get up and move, and a bed isn’t a great setting for adventure. Stephen King barely gets away with it in “Misery.” I had to get her out of the hospital.
--Is it too confusing having the protagonist referred to as “the mare” in this chapter? Her goal has turned from dream seeking to rediscovering her identity.
--Should the term be “equimorphic” or “equiform?” I’m starting to think the latter should be more appropriate.
--I realized around here that I’m having quite a difficult time trying to come up with metaphors for Tempest’s eyes. That color is so befuddling to me that I can’t come up with anything outside gemstone clichés. Oh, there’s sea foam, and…
--I did a shameful thing here by coming up with a stereotype character (Miss Potato Face. I mean, Miss Goodwill). Psychotherapists don’t act like this [I hope]. I just needed to show timeline progression, cramming a bit more of Tempest’s time in the hospital before sending her off on the actual quest.
--I’m going to try and be a little less flowery in following chapters, emphasis on ‘try’ and even more emphasis on ‘no promises.’ I’m so used to writing in this manner that it doesn’t feel like anything outside of a messy, ugly mashup of my favorite writers.

Ch 4 - Placebo Integrity

Chapter Four
Placebo Integrity

“Stop! You don’t have permission to be here!”

The mare felt a familiar coldness forming in her stomach, soothing her limbs and nulling the adrenaline that was pulsing behind her eyes. She glared at the guard pony that had spoken, looking him directly in the eyes as she drew herself up to her full height. “I want to talk to Twilight Sparkle,” she said.

Some of the lances pressed a little bit harder against her neck. One of the guards said “If you won’t get out peacefully, you’ll be forcing us to toss you out, and I don’t think any of us will like that.”

One of his compatriots scoffed loudly. The mare looked down at him as he gave an unpleasant grin; he was a full head shorter than her. “I would,” he said.

The mare was silent, and she allowed the silence to stretch on, knowing that even though they had the weapons, she was still the problem—she controlled the conversation. There were worse things than six angry guard ponies, worse things than the threatening blades of six lances. “I’m glad to hear that,” she said.

The pony snarled, hefting the lance and making it bite into the side of her neck. The cold steel reminded her of the Storm King’s land, now just a faraway dream that would mutter to her when the wind blew and the temperature fell. “You think we don’t remember what you did?” the guard said, and the mare braced herself for another variation of the same old words. “You think we’re just going to forget all of the things that happened a year ago? You led an attack on this nation, with foreign interests in mind. You attacked and imprisoned the princesses and led an assault on Canterlot. If it were up to me, the law would be a little less lenient to traitors like you.”

The mare rolled her eyes. She sighed; this whole day was dragging on, and she was getting nowhere. The stallion’s eyes darted to his compatriots, not wanting to leave her, as though she might pull a knife on him and start cackling like a madmare. “Why’d she come here anyway? Who’s to say that she didn’t come here to try it again? Maybe she’s been tricking Princess Twilight into being a goody four-shoes this whole time, and she’s just been waiting for the right moment.”

Another guard, with a gaudier and more formidable look to his armor, stomped his hoof. “Shut up, Flint. Stirring up trouble isn’t going to help anything.”

This Flint looked like he wasn’t about to listen to a superior officer. He looked like he wasn’t even seeing her anymore, and the mare was fairly certain that was the truth; she could recognize that look a mile away. He was looking back a year ago. Maybe he’d been there in Canterlot when it happened. She opened her mouth to speak when she felt the blade push harder against her neck. Flint’s head lowered, looking like he was about to pounce. “Are you telling me we’re not going to do anything about this?”

She was getting tired of this rigmarole; a pony can only take so much. The mare jerked her neck down, feeling the sharp tickle as the blade nicked her skin—a brief flash of cold, a hot wetness that ran a loose path down her magenta fur. “Why don’t you try something, boy?” she said. The guards shuffled their hooves and made disgusted noises, a clearing of a throat or a disbelieving scoff. She stared down the stallion Flint.

“You’re crazy. This mare’s crazy!”

She almost started laughing, almost chuckled and would have agreed if she hadn’t realized it would have invalidated her whole reason for being here. She allowed a smirk and stared down at them. “Gentlecolts, I came here to see the princess. I didn’t come here to break heads. But if you have to insist, I’m up for it if you are.”

For one whip-smack moment, it looked as if some of them were going to oblige her. She knew she couldn’t get very far in a fight against six lances, herself unarmed, but she knew she could at least do some damage. In the expectant silence, she heard the sound of hooves echoing across the atrium. She looked up towards that stairs and saw Twilight walking across the second floor, a number of well-dressed dignitaries in her wake. Whatever she was telling them, they were enraptured by it, not looking anywhere else. Spike took up the rear, throwing a bored glance over the railing. He took another few steps before he blanched. He ran down the stairs at a speed that would have been deemed unsafe by any rational being, leaping two or three of the steps at a time.

The little dragon ran up to the guards, his arms flailing. “What’s going on here, guys!? You’re just supposed to—.” He stopped when he looked at the mare, his eyes wide and drawing down to follow the red path her blood made in her neck and chest, already making lightning marks on her foreleg.

“Spike, I have to talk to Twilight, right now,” the mare said.

The dragon looked at her, then back at the stairs. Twilight and the dignitaries were standing at the top of the stairs, pausing to hear some slice of wit Twilight was conjuring. Spike waved his arms and whispered as loudly as he dared. “Back off, back off! You, get over here!” He grabbed the mare’s hoof and led her away from the guards, running down a hall diagonal to the staircase. “In the library, quick!” he whispered, letting her go so he could run.

She followed close behind him, darting into the library as he flung the door open, twitching when he slammed it shut. “That was close,” he said. “Sorry about all this, Tempest, but Twilight’s having an important meeting right now, and the last she needs right now is…um, well, more distractions.”

She saw the apologetic expression on his face and she knew that that last word wasn’t the one he meant. It was clear he meant to say problems instead of distractions. Spike looked her up and down, looking like he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to keep staring or look away in horror. She didn’t blame him; one foreleg partly shaven with badly healed-over scars, the other foreleg and her chest tattooed with her blood, already dried in clumpy ridges into the fur. And then, of course, the old ones, the hairless gash across her eye, and the horn, the place where a horn ought to be.

“Geez, did they do that? They were just supposed to watch the door. They weren’t meant to actually do anything.”

“Spike, I have to talk to Twilight about my medical bill. She told the receptionist she was going to consult with me about it.”

The dragon frowned. “That’s right! You were in—well, you’re out of the hospital now. That’s good! It’s good to see you…healthy again?”

The mare narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips into a scowl. The effect was immediate; Spike cleared his throat and looked away. “Look, Twilight’s going to be busy for a few hours, so just hang tight right here, okay? I know what Twilight wants is kinda weird, but it’s a good plan. You have to trust her on this. Okay?”

This time it was her turn to look away. She sighed, breathing in the scent of books as she fought for a reason to argue, coming up blank. She felt like she was wasting time, that there should be a direct route to the answer she was seeking, rather than this waiting rubbish. But she understood the value of taking the best offer available. She nodded, feeling like she’d just lost a fight. Spike showed her a shortcut to the bathroom so she could wash off the blood, and then left before she could thank him. He left her with herself, with her smoldering impatience, confusion, and anger that didn’t have anywhere to go.

She took a wet cloth and dabbed the blood off her body, starting with her hoof. You idiot, she thought to herself, angling her body so that she couldn’t see her face in the mirror, only the small cut in her neck. You had to push them, didn’t you? You couldn’t just explain, or leave a message even? What was the purpose of getting yourself cut? Showing off in front of the stallions? Showing off to yourself, that you can still bleed for something? Or did you just want to bleed again? Stupidity isn’t integrity, and it can’t be a substitute.

The mare paused then, holding the wet cloth over the tiny wound. No, stupidity wasn’t integrity, and it wasn’t an excuse, either. Her sea foam eyes slowly went up from the cloth to—don’t look there don’t look there don’t—her face. She looked at herself for what felt like the first time in a long time. The sharpness of her chin to the curve of her cheekbones, the distrusting look in her eyes she was giving the mirror, and she was certain this time that it was the mirror she was looking at and not herself. Then she looked there, she had to look there, at the cracked stump of her horn, the ragged scars around one eye. Ugly and defective broken mare.

So own it.

The mare felt a knot form in her stomach—not because of what she thought, but because it had Rainbow Dash’s voice. Three little words; so own it, and it felt like something had stirred inside her, had just eaten up some of her aggravation. She looked at herself again, at the same scars and the same jagged stump of a horn, her reflection meeting her gaze, and she felt that something had changed. Whoever she was, the scars were hers, and they belonged to her. She didn’t belong to them.

Yeah, right. She shook her head and broke eye contact with the mare in the mirror.

A flicker of something dark caught her eye, and she noticed the spider as it began crawling down her scarred foreleg and onto the pale blue sink. The mare had a deep respect for spiders, but that respect only went as far as her own body. She smacked it, the sound explosive in the little room, but when she inspected her hoof there was no little twitching body, either on her hoof or on the sink.

It was the one thing she found unsettling about them. Their uncanny ability to vanish regardless of how certain you were that you’d just killed them. The mare finished up and made her way back to the library. There were a number of tables, but one caught her eye, one facing the door to the hallway.

That’s where they sat, she thought to herself, remembering the two unicorn mares, one with the witch’s hat and the other with a clever look in her eyes. She remembered the way they laughed, gentle and genuine, while they transfigured objects they passed to each other in a lenticular pattern. She sighed—why did she have to keep remembering things like that, when she knew plain well what she was doing to herself? The mare grabbed a book off the nearest shelf, taking to a different table.

She didn’t know how long she’d been there, how many books she grabbed with the intention of losing herself in them, how many passages she’d read and reread before she starting asking herself questions. She could hear the ticking of a clock, but she couldn’t see one anywhere in the room. Is it Fizzlepop now, or is it Tempest? Whatever you were trying to do at home with the dreams, you didn’t do a good job of it, did you? And then Luna came and tried to show you the way, but that just seemed to make things worse, didn’t it? The strong one, the one by which everypony already refers to you, or the weak one, the one you were born with and the one you want to be again…Tempest or Fizzlepop…

I don’t know. I answer to both of them. Maybe I can have both of them.

That’s stupid and dangerous and you know that. It’s a simple thing, you stupid filly! Just pick one and stick with it. Is it really that hard to pick something as simple as a name?

I guess…Tempest, since nopony will call me by anything else. But that’s not really a valid reason to choose, is it? Do I want to be what other ponies want me to be, or don’t I still want to be me…whoever that is? Do I take the hard road or the, well, less hard road? The road of nails, or the road of thorns? Tempest doesn’t have to be the bad one, does she?

“What would it change if she wasn’t?” she asked herself aloud, and that seemed both comforting and disheartening.

Looking back down at her book, some unmemorable old tome on ancient architecture, she saw a spider hobbling across the pages, black star on a yellow sky. Two of its legs were broken, and she remembered the bathroom. She angrily slapped the spider away for the second time. Whatever name the spider had, it had only one, and it didn’t take so much time out of its life to ask itself who it was. She looked back at the book, barely seeing the words before her mind began to wander again.

She didn’t know how much time had passed before Spike returned, waving at her from the doorway. A stack of partially read books lay to one side was a good enough marker of its passage, anyway, and she supposed it had been a few hours. She trotted over to him, following him as he led the way to a grand-looking door, silently watching as he knocked several times. He stepped aside and motioned for her to enter the room. She pretended that the meager thumbs-up he gave her was encouraging, and she walked through the door.

She remembered Twilight always referred to it as the Map Room, though every time she met the alicorn in here, she didn’t see any map. There was a broad circular table encompassed by high-backed chairs made of thick, sharply angled stone. Each chair had a cutie mark set in a bas relief on the back and front, cutie marks from that unique group of ponies. Sitting in those chairs now were those same ponies, their heads turning to see her entering. She saw in their eyes an amalgam of expressions, all tied by an intense interest. As she walked toward the table she felt their attention burning her.

Above, the roots of a colossal tree hung down from the ceiling. Crystalline lights dangling from the tip of each root, giving the impression that they were in a cavern beneath a fantasy. This alone continued to amaze her.

Pinkie Pie smiled and threw a subdued wave at her, and she gave a small nod. The others also gave her variations of a smile, except for Rainbow Dash. The pegasus was staring down at the table, one elbow propped up on the side of her chair, head in hoof. The mare frowned, seeing now that the table itself was a map, eliciting a soft blue-white glow. She saw the ragged outline of mountain ranges and the low sweep of fields, lakes bleeding through the land into the seas. There were even strings of clouds, floating lazily through the space above the map like trapped smoke.

Twilight was walking around the back of her chair, walking toward her. She had her eyes down to the floor, and the mare recognized that exhausted look. The alicorn gave a sparrow’s look at her, eyes darting away as if the mare’s presence made her eyes hurt. As if the shame was burning her. They met at the edge of the table, each shuffling nervously on their hooves. The others seemed to both want to watch and seem as though they weren’t interested.

“I met your guards at the door,” the mare said. “Nice guys.”

Twilight shrugged. “Yeah, sorry about them. They were a necessary decoration for the meeting today. They ought to be gone by now.”

“That’s alright, I had them surrounded.”

The alicorn smiled at her and nodded, her eyes not straying too close to the scars on her leg. There was an uncomfortable quiet, so the mare decided to take the initiative.

“Twilight, we have to talk.”

“I know, I know, Fizzlepop, but we have to—.”

“It’s Tempest, Twilight. My name is Tempest.”

The alicorn stared at her for an disomforting while, but she wouldn’t allow herself to look away. Twilight’s mouth opened and closed, opened again and she said “Okay, fair enough, I guess. Look, I know we have things to do, but I think we need to clear up a few things. I just want you to know how sorry I am for what I did to you.”

“Twilight, it wasn’t your—.”

“No, it was! It was my fault what happened to you in your home, and it was my fault that you were in the hospital. If I had bothered asking you if there was anything wrong, if I could have done something else to help you, then you wouldn’t have done that!” Twilight pointed her hoof at Tempest’s foreleg, her eyes seeming to accuse it of being some terrible mistake she had made.

Tempest was amazed; she actually felt jaded that another pony would want to take the blame for what she had done to herself. They say misery loves company, but it wasn’t something that should be shared. She looked at Twilight, seeing long sleepless nights in her eyes, nightmares of her own conjuring swirling in her pupils, and Tempest felt a pang of sadness. She trotted up to Twilight and placed her hoof on her chest. She said “Twilight, if you remember correctly, and I’m sure that you do, I came here to ask you for a way to see my dreams. I didn’t tell you what or why, and I wouldn’t have even if you had asked me. I would have begged you to shut up and let me have the spell. I don’t blame you for anything, and you shouldn’t blame yourself.”

“But I did the spell wrong!”

“You made a mistake, Twilight. It’s a thing most ponies do, and they usually happen when we don’t want them to happen. The whole thing was my fault.”

Twilight looked at her with pleading eyes, pleading to give her back the blame, but she wasn’t going to. Tempest smiled down at her and held it until Twilight smiled back, shaking her head. She gave Tempest a small worried look. “We’re gonna have to talk about this some other time, Fizz…Tempest.”

“Alright, but you know what I’m going to say about that.”

“Yeah, and you should—.”

Rainbow smacked the table with her hoof, hard, and everypony jumped. “Maybe you two can play this dumb blame game some other time? You know, when only your own job schedules are involved?”

Rarity made a loud indignant noise in her throat. “Rainbow Dash! Really!”

The blue pegasus had the audacity to roll her eyes, letting them rest back on the glowing map. “There isn’t any overtime pay in the Wonderbolts, you know.”

In the intervening silence, Twilight cleared her throat and motioned for Tempest to stand beside her. The mare did, and together they looked down at the map. It struck her that she was looking at the edges of Equestria and well beyond. She’d been in briefing rooms before, had seen maps of distant lands she once expected to see and claim under some useless king’s name, but what she was seeing here was an impressive sight. It was difficult to say if the scale was correct, but the detail was impeccable. She tried to find Ponyville, but it was a big world.

“A lot has happened since you were in the hospital, Tempest,” Twilight said. “A lot of…stuff. I know you want to talk about your medical bill first, but just wait a minute. It actually ties in with what I…well, what we have to say.”

“Okay,” Tempest said. The feeling that she was becoming everypony’s problem started to worm itself into the flesh of her confidence again, and she tried to push it back down.

Twilight went on. “Now, I’ve told you about the map, haven’t I? Whenever a serious friendship problem occurs in Equestria, the map calls us, in one or another permutation, to go to a pre-selected location and solve the problem. There have been times when the map has chosen ponies other than us. I’ve been trying to determine the pattern, if any, by which the map chooses the location, or how it standardizes the seriousness of a friendship problem, but so far I haven’t made much leeway. It’s like there’s some…spirit, I suppose, or an objective power just as natural as fire, water, air, or the earth, that’s controlling it. Or maybe it’s possessed by it? I’m not entirely sure. It’s all about Harmony, that much we know. On one side of the coin, it’s the most useful thing that ever happened, and at the same time, there’s nothing I’ve seen that’s more mysterious.”

Tempest grinned. “You have told me that before, but the recap is appreciated.”

Twilight ruffled her wings and grinned apologetically, fading to a pensive frown like it was melting butter. “Look at the map, Tempest. Right over there is this castle, that big crystal tree. But, if you look over there…”

Twilight floated out a telescopic pointer, the kind that seemed especially made for stuffy professors. She
extended it and made it hover above a spot quite some distance away from Ponyville. “Do you see it?” Twilight asked. Tempest squinted, not sure what it was Twilight wanted her to see. Then—a flicker of light, concentric symbols converging onto one point, forming one symbol and then vanishing. It happened so fast that Tempest wasn’t sure she had even seen it. But then it happened again, and then again a moment later, flickering on and off. But she recognized the symbol as soon as she saw it; the ornate glass with dark bubbling soda inside it, tiny stars above the rim acting as flecks of carbonation.

The symbol was her own cutie mark.

“You’re saying the map is calling…me?”

“Well, we’re not really sure on that.” The tip of the pointer spun in circles above the space where her cutie mark was busy disappearing again. “It’s never done this before, Tempest. This weird flickering here, it’s not normal. It certainly shouldn’t look like this, and it’s been doing this for the past eight days. We can only assume that the map is calling you because, well, I really can’t think of any other reason why it would be doing this.”

“Maybe it’s a mistake.” Tempest ventured.

“No, I don’t think so, Tempest. This is weird behavior, certainly, but I don’t think Harmony makes mistakes. It’s just not possible. Tempest…” Here Twilight turned and looked up at her, a pleading seriousness in her eyes that made Tempest uncomfortable. The alicorn paused for a moment, one moment that seemed to stretch on and on until she finally continued. “Tempest, we’ve all trusted this thing, this power, and it led to us all being here. It connected my friends and I before we even knew each other, and it’s still leading us down roads we’re not even aware we’re following. The Elements of Harmony, the Tree of Harmony, the map…it’s all just facets of something immense and powerful. And when something like this happens, Tempest, when a problem happens, we do anything and everything we can to fix the problem. I just wanted you to be aware of how things are done with the map before you go.”

Tempest tore her eyes away from Twilight long enough to look at the map, at the spot where her cutie mark continued to reappear. She felt her mouth had gone as dry as burnt toast. “Go? You mean I’m really…I’m really doing this then?”

“Yep!”

She looked at the other ponies staring back at her around the table, half hoping one of them would fess up and claim it was all a joke, a prank just to get her out of the hospital. With the abstention of one, the six all seemed relatively happy, if blatantly nervous. Were they worried that she’d have a relapse and become Tempest the Conqueror again? Or were they concerned that she would have another breakdown, dream-free psychotic episode in some other town in Equestria where they couldn’t reach her?

Suddenly, she felt rather queasy. Somewhere far away, Twilight was telling her something; she shook her head awake and asked her what she had said.

“I said that every one of us here knows that you’ve come a long way already, Tempest. We know that you can do this, even if you’re not sure. I mean, you nearly dethroned two empires and conquered an entire nation—what can’t you do, right?”

The general response to that statement was one of mortified anxiousness. The brim of Applejack’s hat snuck down over her eyes as she groaned; Fluttershy herself sank below the table until both ears and the upper half of her head were visible; both Pinkie Pie and Rarity suddenly found something peculiar on their hooves or on the table to invest their interest. Twilight seemed lost in her bliss, or else she was completely ignoring the looks. Tempest frowned, her ears angled down in her embarrassment. “I don’t know, Twilight. Are you really sure about this? Do you really think I can take care of something as important as this?”

“Absolutely. And considering where you’d be going, I can’t think of anypony else to handle the job.”

“What’re you talking about?”

The smile on Twilight’s face was somehow both restrained and manic. “Tempest, that’s your old village.”

The sensation of falling, of having forgotten about the final step in a staircase, the feeling of plunging toward something terrible welled up inside of her. Although she turned her head toward Twilight, her eyes were locked on the map. She tried to see that little village, the tiny hamlet, but she couldn’t. It couldn’t be a real location anymore, just a place reserved for her and her memories; her loss, her pain, her hate.

No...

“Twilight, I don’t know about this,” she managed to say, wondering why her voice sounded so faint.

“We believe you can do this, Tempest. We know you can. And we trust you to accomplish your missions in quick succession.”

Tempest frowned. She was starting to sweat. “Missions? There’s more?”

The princess turned away from the map, walking back to her chair. “Yes—two, actually. The map started calling you while you were still in the hospital. I waited as long as I dared before putting in a word for you and tried to get you out sooner. There’s an old law that makes it difficult for anypony, even royalty, to forcibly extricate a patient from a designated medical care facility, and I wasn’t about to play that card anyway. I’d kept in touch with your doctor until I was certain you were well enough that I could send for you without much red tape. Those guys do not like being told what to do!

“Your bill is pretty steep, Tempest. I mean, really steep. Sheer cliff-face steep, but I made an agreement with the hospital as for how you’re going to pay it. It’s a long ways from here to your village, and you’re bound to come across some dusty old ruins along the way. So, any treasure you might come across—coins or gems, any modern tradable currency, really—you can send back here, and either Spike or I will make the payment on your behalf.”

Tempest chewed on the inside of her cheek. By now, it was starting to feel the same way a leech looked after it’s been set on a hook and hauled up out of a lake. “Is that a good idea, Twilight?”

“I wanted to pay your bill on the spot, Tempest. Believe me, I did. But I can’t use government money for personal uses, like breaking a friend out of the hospital. That’s unethical, and it would be setting a bad precedent. Trust me, this plan is the best I could come up with.”

Tempest mulled it over in her mind, wondering how she was going to be able to send the cash here; you don’t send great lumps of money through the mail without it being noticed. She voiced this concern aloud, and Twilight smiled as her horn glowed a bright violet color. There was a sudden flash, and a box appeared in the space in front of Tempest. It was a small and ornate thing, no bigger than a common jewelry box, made of a dark wood with silver and gold filigree on the sides and a number of small turquoise and topaz gems set into the lid. She heard Rarity make bird-like cooing sounds.

“This jewelry box is enchanted with a doorway charm, so that anything you put into it will magically teleport to its opposing end—a point here in this castle. Just put the currency in and let Spike and me worry about it. You’re going to be using it a lot.”

Pinkie Pie suddenly appeared beside Tempest, giving the box the evil eye. She tapped it with her hoof and—to Tempest’s puzzlement—licked the metal sides. She sat down on her haunches, rolling the taste in her mouth, and then frowned. “Hmm…Don’t you think it’s a little conspicuous, Twilight? I mean, ponies are going to notice a box like this, and who knows who she’s going to meet on the road? Like burglars and charlatans and other mean old meanies.”

Tempest agreed with that, though she felt Pinkie could have reached that conclusion without running her tongue over the object. Twilight rolled her eyes and set off another little flash. Now the box looked heavily weather-worn, no inlaid gems on the lid, and no precious metal filigree. It looked like something that would be placed in the dimmest corner of a yard sale. The box floated down and landed onto the edge of the table.

Pinkie threw her foreleg around Tempest and tapped her on the shoulder. “I got your back, sis,” she said, and then bounced back to her chair.

After a moment, Applejack called out from her seat across the map. “Don’t ya’ll have any insurance or something, Tempest? Something to cushion the blow?”

The mare smirked. “I’m not even a legal resident of Ponyville. As far as Equestria is concerned, I’m just a transient with a house to live in.”

She didn’t notice the looks the six ponies exchanged, not until Rarity cleared her throat and tried to hide behind the curve of her purple mane. Tempest looked at them, feeling another squirming sensation in her stomach. Here’s another step, she thought. Another hole you had to fall into. “What is it?” she asked. “What did I say?”

She heard Twilight sigh, saw her place her hoof over her temple and massage it. She’d had her eyes closed for a while, too long for Tempest to feel it was any good news.

It’s about me, isn’t it? Why would it be good news?

Twilight looked at her, and the way the map glinted in her eyes, the incline of her eyebrows, it all told Tempest that whatever it was, she didn’t want to hear it. “Tempest, that was the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to wait until you were out of there first, and there were so many things going on that…um…”

Rarity picked up the torch when Twilight faltered. “There was a storm, dear. I’m sure you had seen it from the window of your room. From what we understand, the storm clouds got out of control and the pegasi couldn’t reclaim it. It floated outside of Ponyville, right above your home, actually, and…well, lightning will do what lightning does best, I’m afraid.”

Tempest felt cold. “What? My house is…”

“Yep, burnt to a crisp,” Applejack said. “Darndest thing, too. It weren’t just one bolt of lightning, but a whole bunch of ‘em. It was like the storm really had it in for just your property.”

“I could see it from Sugarcube Corner. It was pretty scary…”

“Only this made it out unscathed, Tempest.” Rarity’s horn glowed and she floated up a jacket, the birthday present she and Zecora had made for her. There were no scuffs or scorch marks, its black and beige tailoring unmarred, the belts around the waist just fine, its tall collar and multiple lapels and pockets intact. It looked no different than how it was when she first opened the box it had lain in. The jacket, neatly folded, hovered above the map like an exotic cloud and rested on the table’s edge, beside the jewelry box. “I don’t mean to make light of your loss, but I think Zecora and I made quite a jacket for you.”

Tempest smiled at her as the others groaned, smiled in spite of the awful tightening in her stomach and the lump forming in her throat. But there was something not quite right about this. Storms could be hazardous when not handled properly, and she knew that measures would have been employed by weather factory’s staff to prevent slipups like this. Her eyes almost instinctively turned to Rainbow Dash. The pegasus was staring at her, her heavy eyes devoid of any expression. It was like she was looking at a disinteresting book. Before she could say anything, the blue mare shrugged her shoulders and said “The trainees that were on the job never handled clouds like that before. The storm got out of control, and it slipped out of their grasp. It happens.”

Tempest watched Rainbow watching her, feeling a fire begin to burn away the sickening feeling inside her, begin to fill her limbs with a longing to feel something break beneath them. Suspicion bubbled up in her mind, and anger right beside it. In a moment, those concepts of friendship and harmony she’d been trying to learn had slipped away, swept under a mental rug as she envisioned Rainbow Dash’s arrogant face after she’d finished with her. She imagined all of the apologies she could pummel out of the pegasus, remembering anatomy charts. She wanted to leap across the table, scatter the insignificant mountains and valleys below as her rage swept over the other mare.

Then the fire died out. “That’s a shame,” Tempest said, and looked away.

In the resultant quiet that filled the room, silence so vast it felt unsettling, Twilight said “We’re all really sorry, Tempest. I know how you feel, what it feels like to lose a home…”

Tempest scoffed. She hadn’t meant to, wanted to bottle it back up and keep it hidden, but she did it anyway. To her credit, Twilight ignored it. “We’re going to do whatever we can to help you here, while you’re away. Things will get better, Tempest. I’m sure of that.”

I wish I could share your enthusiasm. Tempest thought about the money she had stashed away in that house, wondering if the lightning had melted it into a liquid mess, coiling through the ashes. “Is there anything I need to take with me? I mean, how should I prepare for this?” Preferably on the cheap, she thought.

“Oh, nothin’ you wouldn’t expect to need on a trip,” Applejack said. “Some rope, extra pair of boots, raincoat, matches, some extra cloth so’s you can make a poultice should you need it—.”

“And emergency thread! Yes, you don’t know when you’ll be invited to some extravagant situation and you find your best number has a tear in it.”

“And snacks! Emergency tummy situations take priority!”

“I think she’s got this, girls,” Twilight said, giving Tempest a look that almost made her want to cry. There was so much confidence in those eyes, in that smile; she wanted to feel it, too. Chained up in the rear of her mind was that little voice, the one that knew exactly where to bite and spit, rattling its cage. Twilight stepped down from her chair and walked up to her, holding out the jewelry box to her. Tempest took it, feeling like she was walking onto gangplank of some titanic airship with nothing, not even the clouds below her.

“You have our total confidence and trust, Tempest. You can do this. Besides, this should be more than enough for one pony.”

“Two, Twilight.”

All heads turned towards Fluttershy, sitting tall in her chair. She gave Twilight an odd, grim look before she stepped out of her chair, the sound of her hooves echoing in the silence. She walked up to the mares, and Tempest had a fleeting moment where she wanted to tuck tail and flee. After a moment’s hesitation, the whole assembly began to chatter.

“I’m sure that’s not necessary, Fluttershy…”

“Sugarcube, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Are you insane!?”

Twilight put her hoof on yellow pegasus’s chest. “Fluttershy, I think she has this well in hoof. And the map did call for just her…”

“After what had happened? Do you really think that’s a good idea, Twilight? It’s clear that she needs somepony to help her on her task, so nothing happens.”

Tempest recoiled, blush spreading across her face like rosacea. You are a problem! They all think it! They’re all afraid you’re going to do something stupid; only Fluttershy has the guts to come clean! You really do need a supervisor! She said “Fluttershy, I don’t think you should.”

Fluttershy gave her a look that made her clam up quick smart. “Well, I think I should. I mean, this is your first mission with the map, isn’t it? Shouldn’t you take somepony along with you who can help offer a different perspective on things? Wouldn’t that be a good idea, Twilight?”

The alicorn’s eyes darted from Fluttershy to Tempest. This was in no way part of her plan. She stammered for a moment before she unstuck her tongue and said “I guess I don’t see any problem with it. Tempest?”

She wouldn’t look at Fluttershy, keeping her eyes on the ground as she nodded her head.

“Alright, then. I’m going to go and get some supplies. I’ll be waiting for you at Applejack’s farm, Tempest.”

The orange mare cocked her head, one eyebrow darting up into her hat. “What’s that now?”

Fluttershy was already walking toward the door, pausing just long enough to say “You have some things that we’ll be needing, some things that we can’t buy in the market. We’ll be there in a little while.”

They watched her walk away, out the door, not another word spoken. Applejack tilted her hat back, thoroughly perplexed. “Well, alright, then,” she said numbly. Tempest managed to find her tongue, daring a glance at the door.

“I’m sorry, Twilight. I didn’t want to cause this kind of trouble.”

The princess patted her shoulder with her wing. The feeling was strangely exotic to her, simultaneously silky and coarse. “No, no, it’s not you at all, Tempest. She’s still really worked up over what happened at your home. To tell the truth, so am I.”

Tempest sighed, looking away at the map. She tried again to see the little spot where that village was supposed to be. Why was her cutie mark flickering on and off in the air like that? She tried to think about that, think about something else so she wouldn’t have to think about what happened in her home, the screaming dreams, and the fruit knife—or Twilight’s shame, or Fluttershy’s contempt.

She wanted to bury it all and forget about it. What she did to herself was patched up and healing—healing as well as it could. Nothing happened in there that she couldn’t get a grip on. Nothing…

Tempest thanked Twilight and the others, wished them luck, and they gave variations of the same wish. She grabbed the inauspicious jewelry box with her mouth and threw the jacket over her back, heading for the door. She glanced at Rainbow Dash as she passed, seeing a mare that looked like she was going to explode.

Swallow it. Bury it. Tempest continued walking. She shut the door behind her, heaving out another sigh. She remembered her soft bed with the black linens back at home, and then she remembered what had happened to her home. She hung her head and continued walking.

There was no lock; the door shut with a hollow thud. The five ponies looked around at each other, wondering exactly what to make of the past events, this whole day that already seemed far too long as the clock struck noon.

“Can you believe that?” Rainbow growled, throwing her hooves down on the edge of the table.

Applejack gave a low whistle. “I know. Where did Fluttershy learn to talk like that? She got so...loud, all of a sudden.”

“I think it’s a good thing,” Rarity proclaimed. “It’s high time Fluttershy began to speak her opinions. Perhaps it will do them both some good.”

Rainbow slammed her hoof down on the table. “I’m not talking about her! I’m talking about Tempest! She’s caused enough trouble here, and now we’re sending her off to terrorize some other corner of Equestria? Who’s in charge of this nonsense? And another thing, where does she get off poaching Fluttershy like that?”

“Poaching Fluttershy?” Rarity stared at the pegasus. “What on earth are you talking about, Rainbow?”

“Weren’t you listening? She just manipulated Fluttershy into coming with her!”

Twilight quietly ruffled her wings and began walking slowly around the chairs. Pinkie Pie cleared her throat and waved her foreleg in the air. “Um, I don’t think that’s what happened, Dashie. I was listening, and it sounded like Fluttershy made up her own mind when she said she wanted to go.”

Rainbow shook her head. To look at her, one would think she was the only intelligent mare trying to make sense in a world full of morons. “Yeah, that’s how clever Tempest is. Why can’t you guys see that!? Look, ponies like her don’t change. They. Do. Not. Change! Ever since she came here she’s been causing trouble, and nopony here wants to do anything about because she’s blinded all of you with that victim act garbage. This thing with the map—who’s to say that she isn’t the reason why it’s so messed up right now? And now she’s got to Fluttershy…”

In the throes of her fury, she didn’t notice Twilight walking up to stand beside her chair until she was right there, inches away. She didn’t blink, didn’t pause. “And you!” she said. “You just excuse everything she does, don’t you?”

“Shut up, Rainbow.”

Pinkie Pie gasped; it was the only sound that dared to exist in the vacuum that followed. Every eye stared in uncertain, horrified anticipation. Twilight and Rainbow were glaring at each other, connected and separated by their own rage. Neither Applejack nor Rarity dared so much as breathe; Pinkie Pie looked like she wanted to be anywhere but here.

When she spoke, Twilight’s voice was low and lethally calm, like a muddy lake that holds something sinister and unseen. “If anypony can prove that it was under your direction that the storm clouds went rogue, if they can prove that you intentionally allowed to happen what had happened, there’s going to be repercussions. No amount of your righteous bravado can protect you from that. The law, the princesses, even me. We will all know if you did it, and I give you my word, Rainbow, I’ll put the chains on you myself.”

Rainbow Dash glared in silence, and she kept her silence in a field of contained rage. When Twilight began walking away, heading past her chair to the staircase, Rainbow hopped off in a huff and began trotting to the door.

Pinkie Pie walked up and put her hoof around Rainbow’s shoulders—the pegasus slapped it away and gave her a hateful look, snarling, continuing to the door undeterred. Pinkie shrank down to the floor, holding her stinging hoof as tears began to homogenize her vision. She began sobbing as Rarity walked over and held her, shouting ineffectual chidings at Rainbow Dash.

Applejack stared, stricken in her bewilderment. Twilight caught her eye and the two shared a look, one that she didn’t like very much, and then Twilight turned back to the stairs. “Twi?” Applejack asked before she could get any further, and the alicorn stopped, not looking at her, not looking at anything. “Twi, what’s going on here?”

And the look that Twilight gave just then told her that she knew what Applejack meant, even if she didn’t specify it aloud. She knew exactly what Applejack meant. “I don’t know,” she whispered, and then louder, “I have to go check on something…”

The orange mare watched her go until she was out of eyesight. She supposed she had to leave as well, if Fluttershy and Tempest would be expecting her at her farm, but she didn’t want to go. She looked at Pinkie Pie, crying quietly on the floor, and a powerful sadness began to swell and gestate deep inside her. Something’s broken, she thought, and her ingrained reaction to something being broken, the sudden need, the urgency to fix that something washed through her and broke against the crest of her sorrow. But she began to doubt if this was something that could be fixed at all. Not by one pony.

What a mess, she thought, wondering if she’d spoken it aloud or just thought it, not caring either which way.

Equestria was not a land of perfection. Its histories were riddled with periods of isolation, of want and need, desperation, and turmoil. Because of its strong magical associations and its openness in expressing and expanding social mores and philosophies, it was generally assumed that Equestrians felt they were superior to others, that they were immune to the cruelty of natural disasters or social unrest. Most families living during the brighter times would infrequently feel the same way. Occasionally, the onset of these periods was rapid and violent, though more often they crept up as the result of numerous factors, adding to a whole that spelled disaster.

Although most of Equestria was unaware of it for the moment, it was now slowly becoming a victim of itself again. Somewhere in the country was a little patch of land where wheat grew tall and strong. This little patch was part of a vast network of finely tended wheat fields that stretched on for many miles, the heart and arteries of Equestria’s grain economy. But this one patch was especially significant, in that it was the location where a bull Ugallu chose to die. The creature, with its large and uniformly leonine body, was covered in thick black hair, which it used to traverse through the air, pushing off of it as though each strand were a feather, and its cavernous mouth was always open to catch some scrap of food as it flew by, carrying threatening weather patterns behind it.

Animals that live violent lives are known to die violent deaths. This creature, however, was a victim of its own body. The Ugallu was a creature that carried the weather across its body, and often airborne pathogens would become captured in its coarse fur. Old and frail in its old age, its system could not effectively combat the armies of microbes that it carried. As it decayed beneath the hot spring sun, the pathogens and bacteria were released into the air, jumping ship. Most of the bacteria died on the air, and the pathogens withered away as well, except for one particular strain of Claviceps Purpurea.

Ergot was known far and wide among generational farms; any farmer who grew rye on their property acknowledged it for what it was, an infestation. A fungus that was parasitic in nature, it grew along the stalk in bunches of darkly colored knobby encrustations shaped like talons or claws, rendering the stalk useless. When subject to high heat—as in the temperatures used to bake bread—ergot would release a faint psychotropic chemical. Because of this, older generations were known to refer to ergot as Nightmare’s Horn, or Nightmare’s Teeth, because of the intense and terrifying dreams or hallucinations that would come about eating contaminated bread.

This was the monster that was spreading across the fields and prairies of Equestria like a black fire, chewing at the veins of the grain economy. By now, even distant small towns would be feeling the effects of the famine, seeking other forms of food that didn’t require wheat.

“So, how many pies did you say you wanted?”

“Oh, I didn’t ask for any pies.” Fluttershy tilted her head and gave the orange mare a questioning look. Applejack smiled and shook her head as she smacked her hoof on her cart, making the apples and apple-made foods wobble and tap against each other. A breeze murmured through the immense apple orchard, filling Tempest’s lungs with the crisp and sweet scent of apples. Her mouth watered just because of the scent, but her stomach rumbled agreeably at the sight of such good looking comestibles.

“Shoot, Fluttershy, you know you don’t have to ask for one of these here pies. It’s gonna be a long road, ain’t it? And you’re gonna need something to fill your stomachs and taste like it came from a place of beauty and wonder. Ergo, the pies. Now you can take a few, or you can let me give you a few. No other options.”

The pegasus smiled and thanked Applejack as she took a pair of pies and gently placed them into easy-carry boxes, then set them into her knapsack. Tempest hefted her own pack, a large messenger bag the same color as coffee, no milk, feeling the several pounds of apples that Applejack had already forced them to accept. The bag had been a gift from a grey mail mare she’d always seen flying around Ponyville but had never taken the moment to learn her name, the strap draped across her chest and the bag bouncing against her side as she followed Fluttershy and Applejack around the farm.

Fluttershy was being very money-conscious, not daring to purchase too many things that they couldn’t find on the road. They hadn’t purchased much food, and she was unwilling to give up the resources in her pantry, those that were reserved for her animals. Tempest realized that it was lucky Applejack was at least amiable enough to offer them something. She tried to think more and more about Applejack and her family’s farm and its almost storybook grandiosity, but the thoughts kept being superseded by the past couple of hours.

It’s because of me, she felt, as she switched her weight from her left hooves to her right, turning away from the other mares to look at the apple trees dancing in the wind. It’s because of me that they were arguing. You’re just a walking, breathing ball of conflict, aren’t you, Tempest?

“Tempest?”

She felt a hoof press against her shoulder, and she twitched out of her mind. Fluttershy was looking at her, the worry in her eyes either a perpetual default expression or something she’d come up with just for her. “We’ll just be inside the barn to gather a few things, okay? We won’t be more than a few minutes.”

“Alright,” Tempest, wondering why they weren’t including her, pretending it wasn’t for the reason she was thinking. She watched the two walk to the barn, chatting like old friends, like the close friends they were. Twilight had told her about the six of them, connected long before they had ever met by Rainbow Dash’s sonic rainboom, a feat no filly her age had ever accomplished. Twilight was adamant that there was an unseen force behind Rainbow Dash’s act, but Tempest doubted that. She had already been witness to what the six ponies could do, had been told what they had all done long before Tempest had attacked. She could almost feel the power around those ponies, the strength of their bond so powerful it was almost a tangible, visible thing, and it made her ache with longing.

But that bond seemed to be chipping away recently. She couldn’t feel it very much anymore.

Because of me.

Her discomfort with herself and with her friends bled into a route she was more familiar and comfortable with, her frustration. Her patience depleted, she walked away from the apple cart with its cornucopia of apple products and walked around the side of the barn. Featureless washed white and fire engine red walls. She turned away from it and began walking through the orchard. She looked up at the sturdy, graceful boughs, strong knotty trunks and leaves as green as summer grass covering every limb.

This could be nice, she thought. I could do this—it would be better than menial odd jobs that dried up once you left. She imagined herself with her own farm, something more substantial than a paltry garden that didn’t even want to survive to see the next week. Perhaps not apples, no, something else.

Nah, who was she kidding? Running a farm, and running it well, took time, care, planning, and motivation, all things that she had in short supply. She doubted a weed would want to grow where she put her hooves.

“Tempest.”

She turned her head toward the sound. There was nopony there. She turned in the other direction, seeing no one.

“Over here.”

She looked around, trying to place the voice or a body to put the voice to, trying and failing. A squirrel ran across her path and circled up the trunk of a nearby tree, scolding her loudly and reporting her presence to the rest of the orchard.

“Tempest.” She turned again, certain that she now knew which direction the voice had come from, and began walking down that way. The day was getting along now, the bright gold of the day deepening to a caramelized hue, the sun reflected back by most of the apples in captured flares. Tempest could see them up there from where she was in the shadows, beneath the canopy, where apples were just apples. She heard the voice again, whispery little voice that she was now dead-certain was not the wind.

You’re getting lost, you stupid filly. You’re getting lost in an apple orchard. The barn was now no longer in sight. She couldn’t even see the silo. There were just the trees, the sweet-sick smell of earth and apples all over.

“Hey.”

She stopped at the base of a low hill, where the roots stuck up from the ground like cairns of broken bones. The voice was very near now, so close she ought to be seeing the speaker. She turned about, growling low in her voice. “Who’s there?”

“Me.”

“Who’s me?”

“Geez, and how am I supposed to know that? You ask stupid questions.”

Tempest squinted, trying to see between the trees. Turquoise sparks began to flare out from the stump of her horn, bouncing off her cheeks and making her eyes glimmer with a dangerous light. “Show yourself now!” she shouted.

A short sharp whistle lanced her ears. “Up here, sharp stuff.”

Tempest glanced up, seeing nothing but apples hanging from branches. Leaves swaying and murmuring in the breeze. Suddenly, she heard “So how do I look, sweetheart?” and her eyes followed the voice, and she felt like her stomach had done a backflip.

The apple was talking to her.

“So, how you doing, toots? I ask you not to use adjectives that pertain to fruits other than apples. That’s, like, a felony around here.”

For a long moment, Tempest was silent. She looked at the apple, large and bright red, its otherwise featureless skin glinting in the shadows as it hung from a bough right beside a knot in the tree. The knot looked like an eye. She shook her head and spat “You’re not real.” She looked away, wondering which way the barn was.

“That was rude. You’re rude. I think you hurt my feelings. Look at me, my skin is bruising.”

The mare rolled her eyes. Not only was it talkative, it knew how to be sarcastic. “Go away.”

“Hey, sister, you went looking for me! I don’t mean to be snippy here, but if anyone’s bound to ‘go away’ from where they are, shouldn’t it be you? I’m just saying, here.”

“Am I really lowering myself to talk to an apple, or is it maybe the worm inside the apple? I don’t know you in either case. And I’m not talking to apples! That’s what crazy ponies do.”

“Very true. That’s smart. You’re a smart little pony. You don’t seem crazy to me at all.”

“How comforting!”

She heard a sigh. The apple sighed, a lofty and tired sound that she pretended she didn’t hear, but she knew she had. This isn’t happening, she thought, screamed in her head. Apples don’t talk, and she was fairly certain that any apple-eating worms couldn’t speak, either. She shook her head, hoping to shake the voice out of her head.

“Look, I know you got a lot on your mind…I guess I’m proof of that, aren’t I? But listen to me—hey, hey, don’t you give me that look! Just listen! You know you can’t take her with you, right?”

Tempest paused, glaring at the fruit. Would it be easier to pretend that she was dreaming, or that she was merely sleepwalking? Would it lessen this silliness by any degree? She thought no, and she said “What? What’re you talking about?”

Although the surface of the apple was featureless, she had the feeling that it had somehow rolled whatever might have passed for its eyes. “’Who,’ she says, like she doesn’t know. Fluttershy, of course! She’s a good pony, Tempest, so kind and loving and brave, in her own little way, and trusting. My word, is she trusting! She trusts you right down the line, I think. Right down the line.”

“Yeah, I know. But I didn’t ask her to come along.”

“No, no, you didn’t. But it’s just as bad, yes? She expects to keep you in line, to keep your eyes on that straight and narrow road that all naïve and innocent ponies try to walk. She doesn’t know about the real world, does she?”

“I’m sure she does. They’ve told me about their adventures.”

The apple, or perhaps the worm inside the apple, seemed to snicker at that, sounding like the rustling of leaves. “Oh, sure. They told you about those, obviously! But nopony tells you exactly what they’re thinking at a given moment, do they? They don’t tell you their belief systems all in one go, do they? Seems to me that Fluttershy doesn’t know how bleak the world really is outside her tiny cottage, and she won’t know until it comes knock-knock-knocking on her front door. And how long do you think that will be while she’s walking the road with you?”

Tempest gritted her teeth as she stared the apple down, convinced that it was doing the same. “I wouldn’t hurt her,” she said.

“No, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to. But look at the facts, sweetheart; bad things happen when you’re around. Remember when you went to ask Twilight for that spell, the one she wonderfully screwed up? When you tried to get Rainbow Dash’s attention, you blew up the cloud she was sleeping on. You could have really hurt her. What if your magic had burned off her feathers? She’d have plummeted right down to the ground—Bam, crick! Don’t send for the ambulance, better get this horse a hearse!”

An ache began to beat in her heart. “That…that wouldn’t have happened.”

The insufferable apple laughed again. “Are you sure? Can you look around corners now? Can you witness a thing happening before it happens? I don’t think so. You’re not that talented, or lucky enough. Face it, kid; ponies get hurt when you’re around them. You best let Fluttershy go, for her sake.”

“She won’t want to go, no matter what I’d say.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. Are you telling me you can’t see how agitated you make her, just by being around her? I’m sure you can do something stupid that will get her to leave. Then you can be on your own, back on your own path, which is the way it should be. This way, nopony will get hurt because of you. Am I right, or am I right?”

The mare sat down on her haunches as she contemplated this. She hated the strange apple, hated it because it was making her day even more bizarre than it ought to be and because it was right. The longer Fluttershy stayed with her on this journey, her journey, the greater the chances of her getting injured or worse. She didn’t want another pony to become another regret, another shame lurking in her head. The idea made her want to shrivel up and cry. She waited for the apple to say something else, something that would be easier to refute or contradict, but it was silent. It was silent because it knew that it was correct.

How could you!? How could you!?

Tempest growled, sparks flickering from her forehead. “I don’t care! She’s staying with me for as long as she wants; I’ll take full responsibility for whatever happens. I know I can keep her safe. So you can just shut up and leave your thoughts to yourself.”

“Um…excuse me?”

“I said shut up!”

The voice was different, and it came from a different direction. “Whoa, t-take it easy!” it said, and Tempest jumped to her hooves when she saw a filly standing nearby atop the mound of roots. She brushed her purple hair out of her eyes, purple eyes the color of Jacob’s ladder petals and tired winter evenings. Eyes that were swollen with caution and fear as they stared at her.

Tempest opened her mouth and then shut it, unsure what she was going to say, realizing that her mouth had become very dry. How long had she been standing there? How much had she heard? Was the filly even real? Tempest hoped she was.

“Were you, uh, talking to an apple?”

Tempest began rubbing at her foreleg. There was an itch there that needed to go away. She looked away from the filly and her orange coat, rudimentary wings, and those eyes she might get lost in, looking instead at a squirrel running from the base of one apple tree to another.

“Look, it’s okay if you were,” the filly said, and she hopped off the mound of twisting roots. Tempest tried not to jump, tried to keep the sweat from seeping through her skin. “I mean, I’ve done weird things when I’m alone, too. I think everypony does.”

The filly walked up to her. Tempest forced herself to stop rubbing at her leg, at the itch she pretended was there. What’s wrong with me, she wondered as she started tapping at the ground. Stop it! There’s nothing wrong here! Just calm down!

Tempest found her voice when the filly held out her hoof for her to shake. She leaned backward, keeping her hooves on the ground. “How much did you hear?” she said as she narrowed her eyes. There was a rustling in the bushes some distance away, probably more squirrels or some other diminutive animal.

The filly’s wings rustled. “Well, you caught my attention when you said you ‘wouldn’t hurt her.’ Who were you talking about, by the way? Was it Fluttershy?”

“That’s my business,” Tempest said, her lips barely moving. The filly just nodded and kicked at a stick. There was a bandage on her cheek, the center stained maroon. Her cutie mark looked like a shield.

“Yeah, that’s okay. I’m sure you meant it, whatever you were talking about.”

“What?”

The filly looked up at her, and this time there wasn’t any fear there. It was gone, just like that, replaced by something like a fiery curiosity. She remembered seeing that look years ago, when she was whole, when she was so small she couldn’t look over a kitchen table unless she’d stood on her rear legs. She’d had it and her friends had it, but then the world made her grow up and doused that fire. The filly gave her a tiny humorless smile and said “Rainbow Dash tells me that you’re still bad. She says that you’re still trying to undermine or destroy Equestria, only now you’re doing it from the inside. She says that you’re trying to tear us all apart…”

Tempest sighed. She wanted to feel angry, but there was no anger anymore, just a faded-out feeling of having woken up to a terribly grey day. She didn’t know what to say, if anything could be said, and she doubted she wanted to talk to the filly anyway. She just wanted her to go away.

“I don’t believe any of that, though. I don’t think you’re evil anymore.”

“How can you be sure? Maybe I am.”

The bushes rustled again, and she was certain that whatever was in there, it was bigger than a squirrel. Bigger than a rabbit. The filly kept staring at her, eyes boring into her and seeming to draw the sweat right out of her body, making her head throb with a slowly growing ache. She looked perplexed, trying to read something that Tempest wouldn’t give her.

“I told you, I don’t believe that. You can change, Tempest. No matter what a pony used to be, they always have the capacity to change. That’s, like, common wisdom.”

“Maybe fillies that eavesdrop on other ponies talking to apples ought to invest a bit more in what they think wisdom is.”

The bushes rustled again and two more fillies broke away from its branches. One was an earth pony, bright yellow coat with a brilliant red mane. Tempest immediately recognized her as Applejack’s sister, having seen the two together enough times in the street. The other was a pretty white unicorn, obviously Rarity’s sister. They grabbed their pegasus friend and smiled up at Tempest, hiding their fear behind feigned bashfulness.

The earth pony said “Scootaloo, there you are! Come on, we got, um, Crusader business to attend to. Oh-hi-Tempest-good-to-see-you-have-a-good-one-see-ya-later!”

They ushered the little pegasus away, pushing her back to the bushes. The filly, Scootaloo, looked like she was about to say something else, was about to resist her friends so she could walk back to her, but she gave up and allowed her friends (her friends, Tempest thought) to move her. The unicorn gave a smile as brief as it was polite, and said nothing.

The three young mares all had near-identical cutie marks. Tempest watched them go, receding out of sight and through the apple trees like little ghosts that never were. Finally, her pounding lungs found a reason to work and she gasped for air, her body going cold.

What’s happening? Why couldn’t I breathe just then? They were just foals, that’s all they were, no reason to be afraid. Why was I afraid of them? What’s going on?

She wiped the sudden sweat from her forehead, too late and it got into her eyes, tired salt-to-wound sting. She looked at the apple, feeling it was looking at her with a smirk, if apples were capable of such things. She angrily, quietly, asked if it had anything else to say. The apple was silent, and Tempest walked back the way she had come, back toward the barn.

When she finally found her way back to the apple cart in front of the barn, Fluttershy and Applejack were there waiting for her. When they saw her, they gave her odd lingering looks but didn’t say anything. She tried to avoid their gazes, seeing the suspicion in their eyes for the bare instant she looked at them.

Before they could ask where she was, she told them she’d been admiring the apple orchard. Applejack gave a proud smile and thanked her, yes, they were mighty proud of their land. Tempest could see Fluttershy was willing to finish their business but she started asking Applejack questions about farm life, just to make the pegasus wait just as she had to.

“Sun’s goin’ down,” Applejack said after a while, tilting her hat up. Tempest looked up into the depths of the sky and saw that it was all gold and garnet, the horizon a slash of purple, and all the trees had become shadowed silhouettes. The wind already smelled of night. Applejack pointed toward the old farmhouse and said “Ya’ll want to stay inside for the night? You could do worse than to get a good night’s rest before headin’ out in the morning.”

“Thank you, but no, Applejack. I really should be getting back to my animals. They’re going to be on their own for a while, and I need to make sure everything is just right for them.”

“Ain’t no need to fuss, Fluttershy. I can take care of your animals while you’re gone, and if I can’t, I know Apple Bloom would love to.”

Fluttershy thanked Applejack again, declined again, and started walking for home. She didn’t say anything to Tempest, just passed by, eyes forward. Tempest stood there, watching her go and wanting to go home, as well, knowing it was now a charred cinder but wanting to go there anyway. Because it was something to go back to. Before the pegasus got too far to hear, she called after her. “Hey, Fluttershy! Where and when did you want to get started?”

Fluttershy said nothing. Tempest waited, vainly holding to the belief that Fluttershy was just thinking it out, but she passed by the Apple’s mailbox and, eventually, out of sight entirely.

She grumbled to herself, her head hanging low as she tried to figure out what to do. Fluttershy wanted to be her companion on this journey of hers, and here she was ignoring any sort of collaboration or communication. Tempest wanted to run after the pegasus and scream at her, tell her to stop making her feel ashamed and worthless, to just forget what she and Twilight had caught her doing to herself. It was easier to breathe in the night and let it out in a sigh.

Every night is a latent sigh, and each new day is a tear in a tired eye. She didn’t know where she’d heard that before, but it came to her just then, some scrap of tattered, shattered pseudo-poetry that she might have read some time ago or had just conjured out of nothing. More nonsense, more apple-speech.

“Don’t you worry about her,” Applejack said, and Tempest turned around, content to keep her eyes down on the table instead of on the earth pony’s face. “She said she wanted to get started early tomorrow, with the sunrise. You know ‘bout a place you can spend the night, Tempest?”

“No. I mean, I know about the Broken Paddle Apartments in town, but I don’t have any money. Everything I saved up was in the house.”

“Oh, well…” and Applejack paused, as if allowing a pause would smooth over the discomfort, the social equivalent of taking off an old bandage to allow a wound to breathe. Neither case worked very well. “If you want, we got a couple spare bedrooms inside. Ain’t been much good, ‘cept for storage and dust collectin’.”

The mare looked at her, wanting to see a lie in those summer-green eyes. “I don’t know, Applejack…I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“Why not? Buildings don’t suddenly fall down when you’re around, do they? You don’t have skunks following you all over the place, do ya?”

“No, but…”

Applejack smacked the table with her hoof. “But nothin’. You need a place to stay for the night, and we got rooms that need stayin’ in. You can try and say no, but I’m gonna keep insistin’ on it.”

Tempest was silent, frowning as she searched for an entry wound to rip open. Applejack only smiled at her, and it made her uncomfortable. “Why?” she asked, ignoring the other things she wanted to say.

The smile widened. Tempest couldn’t look at it any longer, feeling her throat start to cinch up. “You really think you don’t have any friends, don’t you, Tempest? I’ll bet you think that this whole town hates you so much, that we’re all just near dancing at the thought we’re gonna be rid of you. I’m going to be real honest with you, Tempest, and I think you know me well enough to know that honesty means honesty with me. You did bad by Equestria, that’s true—ain’t no way of getting around that. But, you’ve been making up for that every single day, and not all the ponies here have ignored that fact, even if they don’t want to see it.

“It takes time, Tempest. Like everything else, it just takes time. Pain becomes old pain, and then it isn’t pain no more. Twilight tried to tell us what happened at your house that day, though I reckon what happens in a mare’s house is her own business, and what happened that day is definitely your business. But that too is gonna heal over. It’s going to hurt for a long time, and the ponies here ain’t going to trust you for a long time. You just…you have to keep working at it, no matter how hard it gets. We Apples have been here for a long time—when bad things come our way, we hunker down and get to working our way through it. It’s just what we Apples do.”

Bright green eyes looked at her, displaying all the truth in her words. That’s not right, she’s lying, Tempest thought, frown turning into a pout as shadows became pregnant with the coming night. She can’t be right, she just can’t. I don’t deserve any of it.

“Hey, Applejack?”

“Uh-huh?”

“What does an Apple do when they feel that not even a mountain could push them any further into the dirt?”

The orange mare looked at her for a short while before her face softened, eyes filling with something Tempest perceived as recognition, maybe something like sympathy, cracked by a thin smile. She said “I reckon an Apple would grab the nearest mug, fill it right to the brim with some cider, and spend the rest of the evening mulling. You wanna do some mulling with me, Tempest?”

Tempest swallowed. No falsehood, no deceit in those eyes, in that smile. The last piece of disdainful mistrust faded away, screaming and scuttling back into the soil of her subconscious and she allowed herself to smile back.