Ringing Whickerby Toe-walkerChaptersVoices from afarA jolly jaunt journeyed in juxtapositionGone with the WindVoices from afarGolden rays tumbled lazily through the small window, hurling up mountains of dust as they cut through the thick, stuffy air that filled Twilight ́s study. She had never minded the suffocating viscosity which even now hung around her, as though the shortage of oxygen somehow helped her to learn, conserving the knowledge which she stockpiled in her head like marinated chanterelles in the airless interior of a glass jar. At the moment, Twilight stood serenely at her desk, her hungry gaze devouring the ink trail on one of many ancient scrolls stored in her library. The alicorn princess had the good fortune of one whose passion coincides with her cutie mark, and she could devote hours to the dissection, interpretation and evaluation of a written document without so much as shifting her hooves on the cool floor. At present, eyes dragged across the arid parchment, picking up sparse scraps of a lengthy biographical account of an obscure scholar who had left this world countless years ago. The mare ́s name had been Ringing Whicker; her poetry had long ago encoded the most dazzling achievements of her time ́s social theory - new ways of thinking which had helped hoist, over the course of decades, Canterlot ́s and Cloudsdale ́s starving masses out of abject poverty. Sadly, it seemed this peerless creative mind had eventually been blinded by the radiance of her own genius, had proclaimed herself a prophet, the destined defender of Equestria. A motley handful of madponies had followed her to the gates of Tartarus, and set up a pitiful log fort to fend off the monsters they thought would break out in a matter of months. They had finally deserted her when she had claimed that a monument they had erected in her honour was the real author of her literary works. For near a century now, Ringing Whicker had been swept under the rug of indifference by academics. But Twilight knew better than to inherit this her intellectual parents ́ blindness. Her all- encompassing expertise lent her a vantage point from which to view Equestria ́s history in its entirety. She knew what connected to what, she spotted vital nodes in the web of time, she understood which pillars supported the grand edifice of her country ́s past. Ringing Whicker was a decisive node. Ringing Whicker was vital. In her mind ́s eye, the studious princess placed a gentle hoof around the ancient prophet ́s neck, leaned in confidentially till her face was nearly touching the livid one which now looked back into her eyes incomprehendingly, and whispered:“Don ́t worry. It ́s all right. I ́ll bring you back.“ "Back from the dead,“ a snide little voice suddenly yelled out in Twilight ́s mind, snapping her out of her reverie. Not quite knowing what the interjection had meant, she scanned the room, unsure whether the voice had resounded inside her mind or whether it had been uttered by physical lips. She certainly seemed to be alone. Reassured, she was just about to return her attention to the manuscript when there was a quiet knock on the oak door. She spun around:“Come in!“. She had to remember, she thought, to move her desk so as not to have the door at her back when studying. It was very discomforting. Spike entered, matter-of-fact yet eager to please as always. As so often, Twilight was struck by the impression that for him, nothing currenly had substance outside of the two of them and their unequal relationship which always and necessarily implied a certain subservience in him. He never seemed interested in what she was doing, stayed long enough to eliminate yet another momentary order of business, then withdrew to leave her to her work. For all the glue of familiarity and goodwill that bound them together, there was, at times, a tinny taste of alienation in her mind when her stray glance met his face. The little dragon rapped his claws together above his slight paunch. "You asked me to remind you,“ he said, "to pack your bags. You know... for tomorrow.“ Good heavens! She had forgotten entirely. Forgotten that she was due to leave the next day. The next day! Having set out in the morning, she would be sitting in a shaking train wagon by the time the sun reached its present position directly overhead. En route to the provincial town of Treading, tucked away in the folds of the Equestrian coastline to the east. It was the fatigue. It had to be. Her personal health was the only thing which Twilight had consistently handled in a profoundly stupid way. Overworking just for the sake of it. Because Twilight Sparkle overworked. Because to drop the habit would have meant discarding a piece of herself. It was pathetic, and to her silent shame, she fully understood it. The smarts to recognise one´s problems and the motivation to change were two different things. These thoughts pranced by in single file for the umpteenth time. Not getting in the way, Spike stood by, knowing he had said what he had come to say, waiting only for some kind of response to ascertain that the reminder has indeed reached its destination. After a couple of seconds had passed, he received his confirmation in the form of an absent-minded nod and a few soundlessly mouthed, indistinguishable words. Shuffling out, he shut the door behind him. Twilight went and stood by the window, pointing a dull gaze outside while the back of her mind mechanically set itself into motion, putting together an inventory of everything she would need: quills, extra parchment, handkerchiefs, ink, personal documents, money, blotting-paper, and more. Another part of her was revising the research she had carried out in preparation for this new assignment. And a little pocket of her brain was reassuring herself. It had probably just slipped her mind because it seemed so absurd she still had trouble believing it. Why had Celestia sent her to report on a mental institution of all places? Far be it from her to question her mentor´s judgement, but even so... Oh, right, she told herself. Almost forgot. She would also be needing a present for the institution´s head, who was, after all, an old friend of hers. Propriety demanded that she go out immediately in search of something fitting. The princess let out a slow breath as she closed the book still on her desk. At the very least, the air would be better in Treading than in her study. Author's Note My first creation. A shorter version of this chapter has already been uploaded to my Deviantart. A jolly jaunt journeyed in juxtapositionTwilight stood at the crowded Ponyville train station, apprehensive and dizzy from the bustle on all sides. Her train was due to enter the station in ten minutes, but the state of the Equestrian railroad network was such that to believe it would be folly. So Twilight had dragged her valises onto the platform along with many of the other ponies there. The smell inside the station building was something she could never get used to, and this time she suspected some train-sick tod had contributed by vomiting into a corner not long ago. The peregrinating pony princess was camping out near a wall, buttressed behind her luggage. Luggage she was rooting through again, just to be surer than sure that she had brought everything. The Gift, frenetically searched for the day before, stood still in its linen bag. When Twilight had ascertained that her custom-made Psychoanalytical Extra-sensory Analysis Reverser was stored safely, she lifted her head and looked around. The other ponies were a forest of heads, upright and motionless in the immobile air. Packed closely, they were keeping politely quiet while staring out over the tracks, somewhere into the meadow beyond. Dotted with mole-hills and low shrubs, cleft by a trickling brook, the meadow had given rise to a few trees whose leaves were so still, one would have thought they were standing in honey. A cherry-tree (Prunus cerasus) had blossomed near the platform, and as a solitary petal detached itself and drifted downwards, a suddenly serene Twilight followed it with her eyes. Time stood still. The train thundered into the station, shaking the platform and the ponies out of their midday inertia. When it had put itself up as a barrier along the whole length of the platform, it drew to a halt, signalling ist contentment by spewing a great mass of hissing steam. Looking faintly put-out despite the train being punctual for once, Twilight waited for doors to open and ponies to pool out, then boarded. Her bags were harder to bring in. They caught in the narrow steel door-frame, and she had to force them, wincing as they strained. The interior of the train was unsurprising and generic, tasteful almost to the point of kitsch, composed of gentle yellows and sharper pinks. The ceiling in the passageway was low, which made claustrophobic Twilight uneasy as she inched ahead, sandwiched between a tense green posterior and whoever was behind her. She kept her gaze glued to the floor. She reached her assigned cabin with the relief of one crossing the finishing line in the Iron Pony competition. Entering, she was greeted by four sets of eyes, in four different hues, which all swivelled towards her so that for a moment she thought that they were grinding out the resounding squeaking sound which in actuality came from the hinges of the sliding door, starved as they were for oil. A set of green eyes belonged to the beige mare of unguessable age who sat on the left, near the window. She seemed to have been gazing out the window at some lofty object, possibly a cloud, and had moved only her pupils when Twilight had entered. The result was that they now pointed at the newcomer at an angle which bordered on contortion. Twilight also noted, and it was ridiculous that for some reason this stung her pride, that they managed to look down on her even though their heads were on the same level. A set of deep purple eyes measured her from their sunken perches in the washed-out face of the mare sitting nearest the door. They were little and beady, and the crow's feet around them made them look like mating spiders, something from the Pholcidae family. The mare had pivoted her whole body to face Twilight, and looked to have taken some spontaneous interest to her. A pair of thin, grey knitting-needles jutted out beneath the avalanche of folds of the crochet scarf which blanketed her steeply sloping shoulders. She held them close, in a cloud of levitation. A set of glazed, bold, glacial eyes greeted her from her right, where a strong-jawed stallion with a mouth a little like Pinkie's (in that it always wanted to be smiling even when it wasn't; his smile, however, exuded more a kind of approval than real happiness) straightened his back as he saw her enter. Now that she thought about it, he also reminded her in some way of her friend, the head of the mental institution she was on her way to visit. A set of dull brown eyes, finally, blinked at her from beneath the striped brow of a bored-looking Mane Coon which sat by the beige mare's side. Twilight gave a stiff, curt nod to the group, entered and began to stuff her luggage into the tiny overhead compartment while the other passengers resumed staring at whatever each of them had been staring at before she had come in. As soon as she had securely stowed away her bulky baggage and withdrawn a jewel-encrusted book with which to pass the time - a thick one, for she had a long trip ahead of her -, Twilight took her seat next to the young stallion with the icy eyes, and buried her muzzle in the pages. The book was titled: "Progression and Prognosis of Pony Psychosis" or something along those lines. Although written in a much more prosaic style than its title promised, it dragged Twilight in within moments, and it seemed like only seconds later that the whistle was heard and they were off. Twenty gripping pages describing in laborious detail the symptoms of various mental unhingements and derailments came and went. If the Princess of Friendship was to play the Insane Institution Inspector, the least she cloud do was to arrive well-prepared. But by and by, her right back hoof began twitching, and her eyes having trouble, when they had reached the end of a line, dragging themselves back to its beginning. She peeked over the top of the book. The others were sitting quietly. The old woman was knitting like it was a contest. The young stallion, an Earth Pony, was poised over a paper-back book of his own, his jaws clenched around a travel-quill (with the vanes removed for practicality) with which he must have been taking notes in a tiny black notebook he had lying at hoof. The cat had its eyes shut. The beige mare was apparently still cloud-gazing, motionless. So then what was distracting Twilight? Ordinarily, breaks in her concentration were less common than break-outs from Tartarus (and, by now, distressed her almost as much). She searched furiously for an explanation. Was it sleep deprivation? Impossible. Lesser mares might feel their minds go limp from losing a few hours of repose. It had never been a problem for Twilight, so she reassured herself. She was a fighter, a miracle of mental might. She had taken on the constraints of biology, and had overcome them by working her way up to alicorn status. The constraints of biology must have had enough then; it was inconceivable that they should have come back for more. She stuck her muzzle back into the voluptuous volume, but the letters swam and lolloped before her eyes, and it was no use. Something was preventing her from focussing. It was not a bright light. It was not a draft - even if there had been one, nightly cram sessions in the ancient library in Canterlot had allowed her to grow accustomed to them. It was not a sound, for the train rolled as smoothly as if it had been scating along on ice (maybe the railway system was not a complete embarrassment after all). What was it? Sss... Sss... Sss... Only now did she notice it. A strange, wheezing sound was disturbing the silence. It sounded like a dangerous leak in the world's smallest boiler. It sounded like a toothless, geriatric rat trying to blow out a candle. It sounded like a viper had been disturbed by a group of unfortunate hikers. And it was unbearable. Now that she had noticed it, it seemed to eat out her brain every time it sounded. Twilight stopped herself from thumping the book against her forehead. She scanned the room. Where was the dreadful noise coming from? It seemed untraceable, as though omnipresent. Just as she was on the verge of giving up, she suddenly understood. The sound was the beige mare breathing. Gone with the WindIt was the beige's breathing! Twilight's nostrils twitched, then flared in fury. Of course it was that wretched, pretentious bag who was at fault. One had only to look at her to see that she thought cloud-gazing put her above everyone else. Hiding her face in her book, Twilight rolled her eyes at the printed paragraphs. "Story of my life," she thought. "Strangers no smarter than me look down on me. Then, years later, I find out they've been holding me back the whole time." She tried to breathe in slow, deliberate lungfuls, but the hacksaw tune of wheezing air in her ears made it hard. "...And the worst thing is, there's nothing I can ever do about it!" By now, she was staring at the offender, who had reached over and was caressing her purring pet behind the ears, all the while keeping her eyes fixed on some distant vaporous formation. The other passengers hadn't noticed yet. Obviously, requesting that this stranger blow her nose was out of the question. Twilight could remember a time when she might have done just that, but she had since learned that to be so forthcoming could be hazardous. At the same time, to continue her last-minute research with THAT sound, all the more deafening for its softness, was not feasible. She had forgotten to bring ear-plugs. The erudite equine kneaded the skin of her forehead, grown thin over the last few tiring weeks, with a purple hoof. Scrunching up her gooey eyes, she begrudgingly acknowledged that if she wanted to get any reading done, she would have to do it outside. Since the train was too small for its own dining car or anything of the sort, that meant standing in the corridor for the next two hours. Effervescent loathing boiled up in Twilight's ribcage at the thought. She hated the wheezing dreamer with nothing better to do with her life-time than to lose herself in sky-mist. She hated herself too, for having brought a portable portal detector, Volume V of the Guide to Old Ponish Toponyms, and a custom-made pocket cloud chamber from Cloudsdale but forgotten her ear-plugs. "Twilight, stop," she chided herself. "Impotent rage, condemnation of others, self-loathing... You're starting to remind me of Case Study No. 33," the thought articulated itself further as she glanced at the golden words "Pony Psychosis" on the cover of the closed tome which floated before her in a levitation field. She tried to hold all four of her hooves still for a moment, tried to pace her breathing, tried to drown out THAT sound by flooding her mind with silence. She told herself that resignation was better than resentment, and was about to get up and walk out quietly when the train entered a tunnel. In an instant, darkness had filled every crack and crevice. All around Twilight was a heavy quiet, though the beige mare's wheezing breath managed to slice through that, too. Twilight decided to wait it out, and make her exit as soon as she could see something again. After a few blinks, she began to grow accustomed to the lack of light. Still, she saw nothing, which allowed her to pretend that she was all alone and thereby relax a little. Then she saw something. It was roughly opposite her. It looked like two coins which someone had covered in phosphorus. She had no idea what it was. That was unsettling. Ponykind has had a fear of the dark Since time immemorial, since the first equines, tiny and hoofless, huddled together in terror of the stealthy foes that slunk through the shadows with teeth like gleaming scimitars. Even a child of modernity such as Twilight could not escape the uncompromising programming chiseled into her genome numberless moons ago. Reason came to her rescue. The cat! These were its eyes. She relaxed a little, without removing her attention from the creature. Her heart rate settled down little by little, and she managed the spunk to be snarky with herself about it: "Twilight, my dear, at this rate you'll be aged and grey before your children finish school..." With blood in her ears no longer deafening her, she began picking up little sounds all around. The stallion, as far as she could tell, was screwing on the lid of his ink bottle. The old mare was - somehow - still knitting, though she seemed to have slowed. As for the wheezing nuisance opposite her - she was gone. She was gone, or seemed to be. The hideous breathing sound had stopped. Silence was now where she had been before. In the moment when Twilight became aware of her acoustic disappearance, the two glowing coals opposite her rose into the air, rose higher than they should have, left Twilight looking up at them in an enchanted impression, at last making out even their black pupils, where the darkness had infiltrated the light; pausing briefly as a crash was heard and cold tunnel air coursed around Twilight's body, they leapt into the darkness and vanished. Twilight jumped up and rushed over to the window, narrowly circumnavigating the young stallion, who had sprung up as well. They stared into the blackness rushing past outside as Twilight asked, intensely: "Did you see what happened?" "The cat jumped out..." said he, wavering. The tunnel came to its end. Abruptly, sunlight flooded the wagon, blinding the two of them. Pressing her eyelids together, the Princess of Friendship noticed the absence of another sound. The knitting needles had stopped. She jerked her head around, and the stallion did the same, though he likely hadn't taken note of the change. The old mare held her long ivory needles as one, pointing towards the window seat to her left. Their two heads swivelled round and they saw, with a sinking feeling, that the beige mare was gone. "She must have left -" Twilight intoned with an uncertain gesture to the door. " You think so?" asked the stallion. He looked as though he wanted to believe it, but didn't. Now the crone spoke, her words difficult to distinguish from the wind which whipped past outside: "She didn't." She left it at that. Twilight gulped, swallowing the ugly truth, but the frog in her throat remained. "Of course not," she acknowledged, "If she had, how could the window have been torn off its hinges like this?" The stallion put on a serious face to say:"We should notify..." but Twilight was already at the door. "I'm on it," she declared with a reassuring look back which made the stallion raise an eyebrow but had no effect on the wagon's other remaining occupant, who had gone back to knitting. She tore open the door and stormed out.
Voices from afarGolden rays tumbled lazily through the small window, hurling up mountains of dust as they cut through the thick, stuffy air that filled Twilight ́s study. She had never minded the suffocating viscosity which even now hung around her, as though the shortage of oxygen somehow helped her to learn, conserving the knowledge which she stockpiled in her head like marinated chanterelles in the airless interior of a glass jar. At the moment, Twilight stood serenely at her desk, her hungry gaze devouring the ink trail on one of many ancient scrolls stored in her library. The alicorn princess had the good fortune of one whose passion coincides with her cutie mark, and she could devote hours to the dissection, interpretation and evaluation of a written document without so much as shifting her hooves on the cool floor. At present, eyes dragged across the arid parchment, picking up sparse scraps of a lengthy biographical account of an obscure scholar who had left this world countless years ago. The mare ́s name had been Ringing Whicker; her poetry had long ago encoded the most dazzling achievements of her time ́s social theory - new ways of thinking which had helped hoist, over the course of decades, Canterlot ́s and Cloudsdale ́s starving masses out of abject poverty. Sadly, it seemed this peerless creative mind had eventually been blinded by the radiance of her own genius, had proclaimed herself a prophet, the destined defender of Equestria. A motley handful of madponies had followed her to the gates of Tartarus, and set up a pitiful log fort to fend off the monsters they thought would break out in a matter of months. They had finally deserted her when she had claimed that a monument they had erected in her honour was the real author of her literary works. For near a century now, Ringing Whicker had been swept under the rug of indifference by academics. But Twilight knew better than to inherit this her intellectual parents ́ blindness. Her all- encompassing expertise lent her a vantage point from which to view Equestria ́s history in its entirety. She knew what connected to what, she spotted vital nodes in the web of time, she understood which pillars supported the grand edifice of her country ́s past. Ringing Whicker was a decisive node. Ringing Whicker was vital. In her mind ́s eye, the studious princess placed a gentle hoof around the ancient prophet ́s neck, leaned in confidentially till her face was nearly touching the livid one which now looked back into her eyes incomprehendingly, and whispered:“Don ́t worry. It ́s all right. I ́ll bring you back.“ "Back from the dead,“ a snide little voice suddenly yelled out in Twilight ́s mind, snapping her out of her reverie. Not quite knowing what the interjection had meant, she scanned the room, unsure whether the voice had resounded inside her mind or whether it had been uttered by physical lips. She certainly seemed to be alone. Reassured, she was just about to return her attention to the manuscript when there was a quiet knock on the oak door. She spun around:“Come in!“. She had to remember, she thought, to move her desk so as not to have the door at her back when studying. It was very discomforting. Spike entered, matter-of-fact yet eager to please as always. As so often, Twilight was struck by the impression that for him, nothing currenly had substance outside of the two of them and their unequal relationship which always and necessarily implied a certain subservience in him. He never seemed interested in what she was doing, stayed long enough to eliminate yet another momentary order of business, then withdrew to leave her to her work. For all the glue of familiarity and goodwill that bound them together, there was, at times, a tinny taste of alienation in her mind when her stray glance met his face. The little dragon rapped his claws together above his slight paunch. "You asked me to remind you,“ he said, "to pack your bags. You know... for tomorrow.“ Good heavens! She had forgotten entirely. Forgotten that she was due to leave the next day. The next day! Having set out in the morning, she would be sitting in a shaking train wagon by the time the sun reached its present position directly overhead. En route to the provincial town of Treading, tucked away in the folds of the Equestrian coastline to the east. It was the fatigue. It had to be. Her personal health was the only thing which Twilight had consistently handled in a profoundly stupid way. Overworking just for the sake of it. Because Twilight Sparkle overworked. Because to drop the habit would have meant discarding a piece of herself. It was pathetic, and to her silent shame, she fully understood it. The smarts to recognise one´s problems and the motivation to change were two different things. These thoughts pranced by in single file for the umpteenth time. Not getting in the way, Spike stood by, knowing he had said what he had come to say, waiting only for some kind of response to ascertain that the reminder has indeed reached its destination. After a couple of seconds had passed, he received his confirmation in the form of an absent-minded nod and a few soundlessly mouthed, indistinguishable words. Shuffling out, he shut the door behind him. Twilight went and stood by the window, pointing a dull gaze outside while the back of her mind mechanically set itself into motion, putting together an inventory of everything she would need: quills, extra parchment, handkerchiefs, ink, personal documents, money, blotting-paper, and more. Another part of her was revising the research she had carried out in preparation for this new assignment. And a little pocket of her brain was reassuring herself. It had probably just slipped her mind because it seemed so absurd she still had trouble believing it. Why had Celestia sent her to report on a mental institution of all places? Far be it from her to question her mentor´s judgement, but even so... Oh, right, she told herself. Almost forgot. She would also be needing a present for the institution´s head, who was, after all, an old friend of hers. Propriety demanded that she go out immediately in search of something fitting. The princess let out a slow breath as she closed the book still on her desk. At the very least, the air would be better in Treading than in her study. Author's Note My first creation. A shorter version of this chapter has already been uploaded to my Deviantart.
A jolly jaunt journeyed in juxtapositionTwilight stood at the crowded Ponyville train station, apprehensive and dizzy from the bustle on all sides. Her train was due to enter the station in ten minutes, but the state of the Equestrian railroad network was such that to believe it would be folly. So Twilight had dragged her valises onto the platform along with many of the other ponies there. The smell inside the station building was something she could never get used to, and this time she suspected some train-sick tod had contributed by vomiting into a corner not long ago. The peregrinating pony princess was camping out near a wall, buttressed behind her luggage. Luggage she was rooting through again, just to be surer than sure that she had brought everything. The Gift, frenetically searched for the day before, stood still in its linen bag. When Twilight had ascertained that her custom-made Psychoanalytical Extra-sensory Analysis Reverser was stored safely, she lifted her head and looked around. The other ponies were a forest of heads, upright and motionless in the immobile air. Packed closely, they were keeping politely quiet while staring out over the tracks, somewhere into the meadow beyond. Dotted with mole-hills and low shrubs, cleft by a trickling brook, the meadow had given rise to a few trees whose leaves were so still, one would have thought they were standing in honey. A cherry-tree (Prunus cerasus) had blossomed near the platform, and as a solitary petal detached itself and drifted downwards, a suddenly serene Twilight followed it with her eyes. Time stood still. The train thundered into the station, shaking the platform and the ponies out of their midday inertia. When it had put itself up as a barrier along the whole length of the platform, it drew to a halt, signalling ist contentment by spewing a great mass of hissing steam. Looking faintly put-out despite the train being punctual for once, Twilight waited for doors to open and ponies to pool out, then boarded. Her bags were harder to bring in. They caught in the narrow steel door-frame, and she had to force them, wincing as they strained. The interior of the train was unsurprising and generic, tasteful almost to the point of kitsch, composed of gentle yellows and sharper pinks. The ceiling in the passageway was low, which made claustrophobic Twilight uneasy as she inched ahead, sandwiched between a tense green posterior and whoever was behind her. She kept her gaze glued to the floor. She reached her assigned cabin with the relief of one crossing the finishing line in the Iron Pony competition. Entering, she was greeted by four sets of eyes, in four different hues, which all swivelled towards her so that for a moment she thought that they were grinding out the resounding squeaking sound which in actuality came from the hinges of the sliding door, starved as they were for oil. A set of green eyes belonged to the beige mare of unguessable age who sat on the left, near the window. She seemed to have been gazing out the window at some lofty object, possibly a cloud, and had moved only her pupils when Twilight had entered. The result was that they now pointed at the newcomer at an angle which bordered on contortion. Twilight also noted, and it was ridiculous that for some reason this stung her pride, that they managed to look down on her even though their heads were on the same level. A set of deep purple eyes measured her from their sunken perches in the washed-out face of the mare sitting nearest the door. They were little and beady, and the crow's feet around them made them look like mating spiders, something from the Pholcidae family. The mare had pivoted her whole body to face Twilight, and looked to have taken some spontaneous interest to her. A pair of thin, grey knitting-needles jutted out beneath the avalanche of folds of the crochet scarf which blanketed her steeply sloping shoulders. She held them close, in a cloud of levitation. A set of glazed, bold, glacial eyes greeted her from her right, where a strong-jawed stallion with a mouth a little like Pinkie's (in that it always wanted to be smiling even when it wasn't; his smile, however, exuded more a kind of approval than real happiness) straightened his back as he saw her enter. Now that she thought about it, he also reminded her in some way of her friend, the head of the mental institution she was on her way to visit. A set of dull brown eyes, finally, blinked at her from beneath the striped brow of a bored-looking Mane Coon which sat by the beige mare's side. Twilight gave a stiff, curt nod to the group, entered and began to stuff her luggage into the tiny overhead compartment while the other passengers resumed staring at whatever each of them had been staring at before she had come in. As soon as she had securely stowed away her bulky baggage and withdrawn a jewel-encrusted book with which to pass the time - a thick one, for she had a long trip ahead of her -, Twilight took her seat next to the young stallion with the icy eyes, and buried her muzzle in the pages. The book was titled: "Progression and Prognosis of Pony Psychosis" or something along those lines. Although written in a much more prosaic style than its title promised, it dragged Twilight in within moments, and it seemed like only seconds later that the whistle was heard and they were off. Twenty gripping pages describing in laborious detail the symptoms of various mental unhingements and derailments came and went. If the Princess of Friendship was to play the Insane Institution Inspector, the least she cloud do was to arrive well-prepared. But by and by, her right back hoof began twitching, and her eyes having trouble, when they had reached the end of a line, dragging themselves back to its beginning. She peeked over the top of the book. The others were sitting quietly. The old woman was knitting like it was a contest. The young stallion, an Earth Pony, was poised over a paper-back book of his own, his jaws clenched around a travel-quill (with the vanes removed for practicality) with which he must have been taking notes in a tiny black notebook he had lying at hoof. The cat had its eyes shut. The beige mare was apparently still cloud-gazing, motionless. So then what was distracting Twilight? Ordinarily, breaks in her concentration were less common than break-outs from Tartarus (and, by now, distressed her almost as much). She searched furiously for an explanation. Was it sleep deprivation? Impossible. Lesser mares might feel their minds go limp from losing a few hours of repose. It had never been a problem for Twilight, so she reassured herself. She was a fighter, a miracle of mental might. She had taken on the constraints of biology, and had overcome them by working her way up to alicorn status. The constraints of biology must have had enough then; it was inconceivable that they should have come back for more. She stuck her muzzle back into the voluptuous volume, but the letters swam and lolloped before her eyes, and it was no use. Something was preventing her from focussing. It was not a bright light. It was not a draft - even if there had been one, nightly cram sessions in the ancient library in Canterlot had allowed her to grow accustomed to them. It was not a sound, for the train rolled as smoothly as if it had been scating along on ice (maybe the railway system was not a complete embarrassment after all). What was it? Sss... Sss... Sss... Only now did she notice it. A strange, wheezing sound was disturbing the silence. It sounded like a dangerous leak in the world's smallest boiler. It sounded like a toothless, geriatric rat trying to blow out a candle. It sounded like a viper had been disturbed by a group of unfortunate hikers. And it was unbearable. Now that she had noticed it, it seemed to eat out her brain every time it sounded. Twilight stopped herself from thumping the book against her forehead. She scanned the room. Where was the dreadful noise coming from? It seemed untraceable, as though omnipresent. Just as she was on the verge of giving up, she suddenly understood. The sound was the beige mare breathing.
Gone with the WindIt was the beige's breathing! Twilight's nostrils twitched, then flared in fury. Of course it was that wretched, pretentious bag who was at fault. One had only to look at her to see that she thought cloud-gazing put her above everyone else. Hiding her face in her book, Twilight rolled her eyes at the printed paragraphs. "Story of my life," she thought. "Strangers no smarter than me look down on me. Then, years later, I find out they've been holding me back the whole time." She tried to breathe in slow, deliberate lungfuls, but the hacksaw tune of wheezing air in her ears made it hard. "...And the worst thing is, there's nothing I can ever do about it!" By now, she was staring at the offender, who had reached over and was caressing her purring pet behind the ears, all the while keeping her eyes fixed on some distant vaporous formation. The other passengers hadn't noticed yet. Obviously, requesting that this stranger blow her nose was out of the question. Twilight could remember a time when she might have done just that, but she had since learned that to be so forthcoming could be hazardous. At the same time, to continue her last-minute research with THAT sound, all the more deafening for its softness, was not feasible. She had forgotten to bring ear-plugs. The erudite equine kneaded the skin of her forehead, grown thin over the last few tiring weeks, with a purple hoof. Scrunching up her gooey eyes, she begrudgingly acknowledged that if she wanted to get any reading done, she would have to do it outside. Since the train was too small for its own dining car or anything of the sort, that meant standing in the corridor for the next two hours. Effervescent loathing boiled up in Twilight's ribcage at the thought. She hated the wheezing dreamer with nothing better to do with her life-time than to lose herself in sky-mist. She hated herself too, for having brought a portable portal detector, Volume V of the Guide to Old Ponish Toponyms, and a custom-made pocket cloud chamber from Cloudsdale but forgotten her ear-plugs. "Twilight, stop," she chided herself. "Impotent rage, condemnation of others, self-loathing... You're starting to remind me of Case Study No. 33," the thought articulated itself further as she glanced at the golden words "Pony Psychosis" on the cover of the closed tome which floated before her in a levitation field. She tried to hold all four of her hooves still for a moment, tried to pace her breathing, tried to drown out THAT sound by flooding her mind with silence. She told herself that resignation was better than resentment, and was about to get up and walk out quietly when the train entered a tunnel. In an instant, darkness had filled every crack and crevice. All around Twilight was a heavy quiet, though the beige mare's wheezing breath managed to slice through that, too. Twilight decided to wait it out, and make her exit as soon as she could see something again. After a few blinks, she began to grow accustomed to the lack of light. Still, she saw nothing, which allowed her to pretend that she was all alone and thereby relax a little. Then she saw something. It was roughly opposite her. It looked like two coins which someone had covered in phosphorus. She had no idea what it was. That was unsettling. Ponykind has had a fear of the dark Since time immemorial, since the first equines, tiny and hoofless, huddled together in terror of the stealthy foes that slunk through the shadows with teeth like gleaming scimitars. Even a child of modernity such as Twilight could not escape the uncompromising programming chiseled into her genome numberless moons ago. Reason came to her rescue. The cat! These were its eyes. She relaxed a little, without removing her attention from the creature. Her heart rate settled down little by little, and she managed the spunk to be snarky with herself about it: "Twilight, my dear, at this rate you'll be aged and grey before your children finish school..." With blood in her ears no longer deafening her, she began picking up little sounds all around. The stallion, as far as she could tell, was screwing on the lid of his ink bottle. The old mare was - somehow - still knitting, though she seemed to have slowed. As for the wheezing nuisance opposite her - she was gone. She was gone, or seemed to be. The hideous breathing sound had stopped. Silence was now where she had been before. In the moment when Twilight became aware of her acoustic disappearance, the two glowing coals opposite her rose into the air, rose higher than they should have, left Twilight looking up at them in an enchanted impression, at last making out even their black pupils, where the darkness had infiltrated the light; pausing briefly as a crash was heard and cold tunnel air coursed around Twilight's body, they leapt into the darkness and vanished. Twilight jumped up and rushed over to the window, narrowly circumnavigating the young stallion, who had sprung up as well. They stared into the blackness rushing past outside as Twilight asked, intensely: "Did you see what happened?" "The cat jumped out..." said he, wavering. The tunnel came to its end. Abruptly, sunlight flooded the wagon, blinding the two of them. Pressing her eyelids together, the Princess of Friendship noticed the absence of another sound. The knitting needles had stopped. She jerked her head around, and the stallion did the same, though he likely hadn't taken note of the change. The old mare held her long ivory needles as one, pointing towards the window seat to her left. Their two heads swivelled round and they saw, with a sinking feeling, that the beige mare was gone. "She must have left -" Twilight intoned with an uncertain gesture to the door. " You think so?" asked the stallion. He looked as though he wanted to believe it, but didn't. Now the crone spoke, her words difficult to distinguish from the wind which whipped past outside: "She didn't." She left it at that. Twilight gulped, swallowing the ugly truth, but the frog in her throat remained. "Of course not," she acknowledged, "If she had, how could the window have been torn off its hinges like this?" The stallion put on a serious face to say:"We should notify..." but Twilight was already at the door. "I'm on it," she declared with a reassuring look back which made the stallion raise an eyebrow but had no effect on the wagon's other remaining occupant, who had gone back to knitting. She tore open the door and stormed out.
