Ringing Whicker

Twilight 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.