"Love you, Bon Bon," Lyra said, smiling sweetly at her beloved marefriend.
"Awww, you dork. I love you too," Bon Bon replied.
They were sitting together in their home, enjoying a lovely candlelit dinner.
Bon Bon reached her light cream foreleg across the table to hold her lover's hoof. Unfortunately, as the wine had been flowing, she clumsily reached right over a lit candle. The flame licked her fetlock, and the hair there quickly caught fire. It took more than a full second for the scene to register to her. She blinked. Her entire hoof was engulfed in flame. She screamed and waved it around, and Lyra screamed too.
As panic took over, Bon Bon fell back and away from the table, out of her chair, and in her flailing, her hoof contacted her chest and mane, spreading the fire to those areas as well. She landed on her back, shrieking, then rolled over and instinctually ran outside, plowing through the solid wooden door, leaving a Bon Bon-shaped hole, and fled into the streets of Ponyville.
Lyra was still in shock, screaming and unmoving as she'd watched her marefriend run away, leaving small spots of fire on the wooden floor where she had stepped.
In the street, where Bon Bon had fallen and begun rolling in the dirt, ponies were gasping and pointing, but not a whole lot of helping was going on. The burning mare was presently entirely surrounded by bright orange flames and multicolored smoke that rose up into the sky along with her shrieks of horror.
Rarity, who happened to be passing by, looked at Bon Bon and scoffed.
"Some ponies are just so rude. I mean, really. What kind of pony lights herself on fire in the middle of town?" she said. She paused and listened to the inequine cries of agony coming from the burning pony. "Then again, she doesn't seem too pleased about it. Perhaps I should tell Twilight."
Rarity grimaced at the sight and sound, then walked off toward the Friendship Castle.
Lyra, having finally come outside, looked at her blazing beloved.
"Bon Bon!" she cried. "Help! Somepony, help!"
She sobbed helplessly as she watched the love of her life suffer. A hoof tap on her shoulder made her jump, and she turned her tearful eyes to see a blurry blob of gray and faded purple. She blinked away her tears, and her clearer vision revealed the pony beside her. It was Maud Pie.
"Hey," Maud said. "I can help."
Lyra reached her forelegs out and grabbed the pony's beryl smock. "Please! Pleheheheeease!" she sobbed.
Maud slowly lifted a hoof and brushed Lyra's away, nodding. With surprising speed, the gray earth pony dashed off and immediately returned carrying several boulders. Like lightning, she placed the rocks in a neat circle around the squirming and shrieking Bon Bon. She returned to Lyra.
"There," Maud deadpanned, "now the fire won't spread."
Lyra, jaw slack and eyes wide and wet, let out a confused sound of disbelief. "What?! Put the fire out!" she said once she found her voice.
"Can't," Maud replied, then paused to blink slowly. "That would require dirt. I only work with rocks. Rocks small enough to put her out that aren't technically dirt would take hours to gather."
Lyra screamed in frustration and turned away. "Somepony! Anypony! Please help!"
Bon Bon flailed about inside the ring of large rocks which, admittedly, did keep her and the fire contained.
"Don't worry, Bon Bon!" came a voice from above. It was Derpy Hooves, one of Ponyville's mailmares.
Derpy soared down and landed on a boulder. Lyra's eyes lit up with hope as Derpy searched her mailbag. The gray pegasus pulled out a letter and dropped it onto the shrieking, rolling ball of fire, and it immediately burned up.
"There ya go! Have a nice day!" Derpy said, then flew off.
Lyra sobbed as her marefriend continued to suffer an agonizing fate. "Why... why won't anypony... help?" she lamented.
"Worry not! The Great and Powerful Tr-r-r-rixie is here to help!" Trixie trilled.
The blue showmare leaped up onto a boulder and threw something into the makeshift fire pit. A cloud of purple smoke appeared with a poof, and Lyra watched, waiting tensely for it to clear. Trixie's visage was a mask of pure smugness. That quickly soured into a grimace as bright orange became visible through the fading smoke.
"She's still there? Ugh. Guess I need to practice that one a little more. Uh... good luck!" she shouted, then galloped off.
Lyra wanted to give up all hope. Bon Bon's screams were becoming quieter as she lost her voice, and her flailing less intense as she grew tired.
Suddenly, Twilight Sparkle appeared from around a corner at a full run.
"Bon Bon!" she cried.
"Twilight!" Lyra shouted. "Heeelp!"
Twilight nodded with a confident smirk. "Don't worry, I'll save her. Unfortunately, all I have with me is this Necronomicon, but I'm sure there's a useful spell somewhere in here." She levitated up a thick, black book with strange red scribbles on its cover that seemed to glow with power.
Twilight opened the book.
"Hmm, let's see here..." she said. After turning the pages several times, eyes quickly scanning them, she brightened up. "Ah ha! Found something. Ahem... Khlem fh'tng och-th'mygh, dr'klosk pethnu'ul shnaghl. Strymmghor kha-zhuikk ma'pozn Ch'gyrr zom!"
There was a sound that wasn't quite a sound, like an extremely loud silence that drowned out the shrieks, the whispers of rubbernecking ponies, the cheerful birds, the wind itself. A point of bright blackness that seemed to suck in the light around it appeared at the edge of the fire pit. It grew steadily, a tear in the air itself that widened as some... thing pushed its way through. The thing was many things. Writhing things, a mass of horror itself, hungry wormlike tendrils given sentience. The hole widened. Lyra felt a gravelike chill run over her, as if her body was made of the flesh of the dead, doomed to never again feel the warmth of a heartbeat. The whiplike things searched, found, clung, held, pulled, hungered. Greedy and terrifying. The hole widened. Black as the void of death, the edge of some kind of... body was visible. Its form was twisted, unnatural, and it screeched in a deafening yet still silent howl, a sound that bypassed her ears and pierced her very mind. She couldn't look away. It didn't let her. Not that looking helped her to understand just what it was. Words that described it were insufficient, like trying to describe the smell of purple using only a dog's barks. It was senseless, yet real. Another kind of real, a real that only other such creatures should ever experience. Her mind began to twist with it, with its impossible angles that curved inward and outward and toward and away and up and down all at the same time. Her brain was stretched impossibly, threatening to break. Some word came to her, almost feeling otherworldly. The very concept of speech was distant, but she still recognized the word for what it was, and her mazelike mind made connections, connections that seemed impossible in this new reality, but they were old, seemingly ancient as time itself, and her mouth, a long-forgotten and useless relic from another life, worked itself into a shape her old mind knew would produce this word. Breath came, then voice, and the word was given life.
"Twilight!"
An uncountable number of universes were born, burned brightly for eternities, then winked out of existence. The hole was gone.
Lyra shook her head, the memory of the past few seconds a confusing and foggy tangle of impressions that seemed to leave some kind of permanent imprint on her, a scar of the mind. Her spine tingled.
"Yes, Lyra?" Twilight said with a cheery smile. Bon Bon's agonized screams of pain were once again audible, so she had to speak quite loud to be heard.
"That... don't do that again," Lyra said.
"Yeah, you're right. That spell didn't seem to work. Here, let me try another. Let's see..."
"No! No, no, Twilight. Don't you have a spell that can just... put the fire out?"
"Ha! Spell that can put out fire," Twilight said, laughing. "That's a good one, Lyra. You know, humor during times of hardship can be very helpful. I'm proud of you. Even though your one true love is burning right here in the street, and you're just standing there helpless to stop it, you still found the time to make light of the situation."
Lyra narrowed her eyes at the alicorn.
"I'll kill you!" she said, charging at Twilight, whose head was tilted in confusion. Lyra tackled her to the ground, grunting muffled obscenities as she struggled to pin her down.
"Lyra! What are you- oof!" Twilight said as she caught a hoof to the belly. She coughed and struggled to keep the mint unicorn at bay.
"Hey!" a voice above said. "Knock it off, you two."
Lyra was lifted up in a purple aura as Twilight finally used her magic. Rainbow Dash hovered above both of them.
"What's going on here?" Rainbow asked.
"Bon Bon's on fire," Twilight said calmly. Lyra struggled in silence.
"Oh. Here, let me handle that," Rainbow said.
The pegasus zipped off briefly, and returned with a dark gray cloud. She positioned it over Bon Bon and kicked it. A heavy downpour of rain fell onto the writhing and whimpering fireball. There was a loud hiss as water turned to vapor and the fire died, leaving a panting Bon Bon lying in a puddle, mane weighed down by water. The rain stopped.
"Bon Bon!" Lyra shouted, and Twilight let her drop to the ground. She leaped over the ring of stones and hugged her marefriend.
Bon Bon hugged her back and coughed, a small plume of black smoke coming from her mouth. Her coat had a couple dark scorch marks on it, but she was otherwise no worse for wear. After her coughing fit, she finally spoke, raspy and quiet from having spent nearly twenty minutes screaming.
"Lyra... it's... good to see you..." she managed, then coughed again.
Lyra just hugged her wordlessly, crying tears of joy.
"Well," said Rainbow Dash, looking at Twilight, "what now?"
"Let's put out that house fire over there," Twilight said, pointing a hoof at Bon Bon and Lyra's burning cottage. "I wanna try some of the other spells in this book."
