Sorry We Missed You

Chapters

The Morning After
Gold and Marble
The Persistence of Memory
Further Up, Further In
A New Day
Chasing Ghosts

The Morning After

A slow, gentle breeze wafted through the air, caressing the face and blowing through the multicolored mane of a little blue pegasus mare. She smiled as she felt the wind beneath her lazily flapping wings, instinctively angling them back to propel herself further upwards. The cool kiss of the air was a welcome feeling on that warm spring evening, one of the last she was likely to feel before the imminent coming of summer. She reveled in it, committing that refreshing sensation to memory so that she could hold onto it long after it had gone.

Gazing upward, she saw the dark blanket of the night sky sprinkled with bright, shining stars so numerous that she lacked the patience to count them all. Nestled amongst them, a burning beacon surrounded by mere candles, was the moon, its pale light shining down to guide her way. An invisible line ran across its cratered surface, cleanly bisecting it; one half shone brightly, the other was enveloped in shadow.

Turning her gaze downward, she pored over the landscape that heavenly sphere illuminated. Not too far below her, she could see the thatched roofs and the smokey chimneys of Ponyville's homes, and the brightly lit windows that gave glimpses of the lives going on within those walls. She saw a cute little filly lying in bed, lovingly clutching a stuffed animal while she listened to her mother tell her a bedtime story. She saw a group of gruff stallions sitting around a table, each one staring a hole into the playing cards he held before his face. She also saw a little old mare in her nightcap blow out the candle by her bedside, plunging her home into darkness. She noticed several other homes follow suit, the warm lights gradually vanishing as she passed by them.

Boy, we were partying for longer than I thought. Guess I lost track of time after the third round of Pin the Tail on the Pony.

She chuckled softly, the memories of music and merriment still fresh on her mind, and the taste of cake still fresh on her lips. She could still hear the bubbly voice of the pink party pony who had spent a significant portion of the evening shoving sweets down her bottomless gullet. She could still see the timid, reserved prancing of the little yellow pegasus, as well as the wild flailing of the dorky unicorn who always seemed intent on pushing the boundaries of what constituted “dancing”. She could still smell the sweet scent of the perfume that had been worn by the town's resident dressmaker, accompanying the naturally fruity aroma of the farmfilly that she had spent hours sharing laughs with.

While every moment of that wonderful evening had been a precious treasure, the mare did not hold the experience in such high regard as that. After all, she and her friends saw each other so often, spent so much time together, and had held dozens of parties just like that one. As much as she had enjoyed herself, it was hard for her to put any special emphasis on that one occasion in particular. Still, she savored the lingering warmth of their company, before allowing the memories to slowly sink into her subconscious, locked safely away in that mental vault.

Her mouth reflexively opened as a mighty yawn made its way up and out of her, the gentle roar adding to the nighttime chorus of chirping crickets, hooting owls, and whistling wind. As much as she would have liked to have partied the night away with her friends, even an amazing athlete like her needed their sleep. As the boost of energy provided by sugary sodas and sweets slowly diminished, she felt her eyelids grow heavier and the flaps of her wings come slightly slower every time.

Luckily for her, she did not have much farther to go. Having reached the edge of town, her wings carrying her over the last few outlying buildings, she was able to look out and see a familiar patch of cloud hanging in the air not too far ahead of her. She smiled as she made out the tall, white pillars and the gentle streams of rainbow flowing through the puffy yard surrounding her lofty abode. It wouldn't be long now, she thought to herself; she could almost feel the incredible softness of her cloud-mattress beneath her tired body and feel the warm embrace of her blankets.

With one last burst of strength, she gave her wings a forceful flap, shooting her forward at a respectable speed. She quickly glided across the last bit of distance between her and her goal, the towering cloud-house soon looming over her head once again. With a reflexive grace honed over a lifetime of flying, she angled her wings and slowly descended, landing harmlessly on the cottony cloud before her front door. She breathed a sigh of relief as she made her way over to it and pushed it open, stepping into the comforting embrace of those familiar walls.

The soft moonlight streaming through the windows was the only thing that permeated the darkness that filled those lofty halls. Even so, she was able to make out the long, winding staircase that led up to her bedroom on the top floor. Shutting the front door quietly behind her, she folded her tired wings and made for the stairs, beginning the long journey upwards. Each of her gentle hooffalls echoed throughout the house, the sound highlighting the still quiet that she found herself in.

Another mare might have been too scared to walk through that dark house all alone like that. Of course, she wasn't another mare; she wasn't about to get scared of a few shadows. She was the fastest flier in all of Equestria, for Celestia's sake! She had faced down terrifying monsters and villains the likes of which would make lesser ponies quiver in fear. She and her friends had saved the world on multiple occasions and been home in time for a snack at Sugarcube Corner. The idea that she would be scared of walking through her own home at night was ridiculous!

A sudden breeze wafted through a nearby window, reaching out and stroking her hindquarters with its chill fingers. She froze, a shiver running up her spine from the cold, and definitely not from anything else. A few moments later, she gulped, then forced her legs to resume the climb. She found herself unconsciously scanning every corner of the house in her field of view, her eyes dashing from corner to corner and from shadow to shadow.

As she turned her attention to the wall beside her, however, she suddenly felt the totally nonexistent tension welling up within her dissipate. Hung along that wall, encased in neat little frames, were a myriad of memories bright and warm enough to stave off any darkness and any cold. Images of friends old and new, each one recalling in her mind a dozen other happy sights and sounds. The proud beaming of her parents was right beside, filling her heart with a profound sense of nostalgic comfort. With all of these familiar smiles guiding her way, she hardly noticed the darkness as she ascended the last length of steps and finally reached her bedroom door.

A gentle squeak pierced the quiet as she pushed it open, despite her best attempt at stealth. Within that room, snuggled under a pile of thick blankets on its little bed in the corner, a sleeping tortoise cracked its eyelids and slowly raised its head towards the noise. As the mare carefully shut the door again and made her way over to her big, fluffy bed, she noticed the stirring of the humble reptile. Stopping short, she swiftly changed course and stepped over to it, smiling warmly.

“Sorry, buddy,” she whispered as she leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on that wrinkled head. “Didn't mean to wake you.” The tortoise slowly blinked its eyes, then returned its head to its previous resting place, quickly slipping off to dreamland once again.

With the utmost care, the mare silently approached her bed and lowered herself down onto the plush, pillowy mattress. She almost let out a sigh of relief as she melted into its soft embrace, but managed to restrain herself. As she settled in, snuggling underneath the warm bedding messily draped over the mattress, she felt the lingering feelings of that night, both warm and cold, slowly recede, making way for the drowsiness that was quickly overtaking her. By the time her head came to rest on her plush pillow, she could already feel herself drifting away. She had just enough time to roll her head to the side and gaze out her bedroom window at the starry sky beyond before her heavy eyelids drooped closed. Mere moments later, the room was filled with the rhythmic sound of her slow, heavy breaths.

She woke slowly, the life returning to her limp body like a bonfire carefully coaxed to life from a spark. Her muscles flexed and stretched as strength returned to them, and she unconsciously rolled over onto her side. Unfortunately for her, it was the side that was facing her bedroom window. Gentle light streamed through the glass directly onto the face of the little angel of a mare still clinging to the warmth of sleep. While it was certainly no pea, and she no princess, even that minor stimulus proved enough to disturb her peaceful rest. The light filtered through her eyelids, signaling her brain to wake.

A soft groan escaped her lips as her eyes quivered, then cracked open just the tiniest bit, removing the only obstruction between her and the bright light of day. She reflexively clamped them shut again, but did not move quickly enough to trick her body into prolonging her rest. She grumbled as she lied there, waiting as she felt her mind and body stir to life once again. As her brain chugged along, slowly but surely building up to its usual impressive speed, a trickle of thoughts floated through it, starting off simply to begin with.

Bathroom.

As strong as her desire to remain comfortably, if not neatly, snuggled up in her bed was, she was soon compelled to obey her body and abandon her cottony paradise. With tremendous effort, she pressed her shaky limbs against the bed and slowly forced her body upwards into a sitting position. She stayed like that for a few moments, merely staring at the far wall as she felt her blood redistribute itself throughout her body. When her strength and willpower were in sufficient supply, she carefully rolled to the side and slid off of her bed, standing up on her hooves.

With her eyes half-lidded and her brain half-asleep, she lumbered her way across her bedroom to the door, then passed through it onto the landing beyond. She reflexively turned and made the familiar trek to the little filly's room a short distance away. After powdering her muzzle, she approached her large bathtub and turned the knobs to start a torrent of hot, cloud-pure water flowing down from the shower head above. It took her a few moments to get the temperature just right, but when she was satisfied, she carefully stepped under the stream.

She let out a long, drawn-out sigh and shivered in pleasure as she felt that steamy water flow over her sluggish body, melting her lingering drowsiness away. She smiled as she closed her eyes and put her head under the stream, letting the water run down her neck, along her back, over her hindquarters, and all the way down her legs. After eventually getting over the initial euphoria brought on by the hot, wet caress of the shower, she opened her eyes and set about actually doing what one is meant to do in the shower. With the aid of some nearby soap, the little mare was soon squeaky clean and ready to face the day.

Twisting the knobs to stifle the flow of water, she carefully stepped out of the bathtub and grabbed a thick, fluffy towel that was hanging nearby. She rubbed herself down, drying out her long mane and tail as best she could. Her morning flight would take care of any lingering dampness, just as it always did. Before leaving the room, she spent the bare minimum amount of time brushing her teeth with her treasured Wonderbolts brand toothbrush, flashing a confident smile at herself in the mirror when she had finished.

As she stepped out of the bathroom, she couldn't help but notice how unusually rested she felt. Despite her earlier drowsiness, which had mostly worn off, both her mind and body felt pumped up and ready to take on the world. Normally, she would have had to sleep until at least noon to feel that energetic upon waking, especially after a late night of intense partying. One quick look out the window, however, confirmed that it could not have been past ten o' clock, as the morning sun had not yet neared its zenith. Not wanting look a gift...well, you know...she quickly shrugged off the thought, as her rumbling tummy presented a much more pressing matter to attend to.

She turned to face the balcony that looked down over the spiral staircase of her home, and after a quick run-up, she launched herself into the air, spreading her wings and gracefully gliding down. An unnecessarily risky move to be sure, brought on by a deep-seated shortage of patience, but she didn't care. She had flown that gentle corkscrew a thousand times before, and had never gotten hurt doing so. Granted, she might have been a bit less bold had the vast majority of her home not been constructed out of soft, fluffy cloud, but even if it had been, she would never have backed down from such a trivial challenge.

Thankfully, her hooves hit solid cloud again a couple floor down without incident. Finding herself at her desired destination, she quickly turned and trotted into her kitchen. Ignoring the pile of dirty dishes in her sink still waiting to be scrubbed, she quickly zipped about the room preparing the breakfast of champions: a toaster pastry and an energy drink. As she took deep swigs of the drink and awaited the arrival of her pastry, she retrieved some leafy greens from her fridge and chopped them up into little pieces, filling a nearby bowl scrawled with the name “Tank”. When the toaster finally propelled the second half of her meal up into the air, she zipped over with lightning speed and grabbed it in midair. After scarfing down the sugary treat and chugging the remainder of her beverage, she carefully picked up the bowl of greens and flew it out of the kitchen and back up to her bedroom.

“Tank,” she sang out softly as she gently elbowed the door open. “Got your breakfast, buddy.”

She quickly flew over and landed before the small bed in the corner of the room, placing the bowl in its proper place before it. She smiled down at the bed, scanning the pile of small pillows and blankets that lay in a heap atop it, searching for the familiar sight of a wrinkled green head buried within. When she could not immediately find what she sought, she chuckled softly and stretched out a hoof towards the bedding.

“Come on, lazyshell,” she said. “Rise and shine.”

Her smile faltered as her hoof met an unexpected lack of resistance from the pile. She quickly followed up the initial contact with several more exploratory touches, none of which felt the distinctive firmness of a shell. Her smile now completely gone, she dispensed with the prods and began tearing away at the pile, tossing blankets left and right haphazardly. When she had finished, she stared down silently at the empty bed, struggling to comprehend what her eyes beheld.

“Tank?” she said, her voice devoid of its previous cheerfulness. She turned her head, quickly scanning the room from top to bottom, but did not see the little tortoise anywhere.

“Tank?” she said as she scurried about the room, poring over every nook and cranny there was to be pored over. She looked behind furniture, under her bed, in her closet, and even in her drawers, all to no avail. “Come on, Tank, this isn't funny!”

Panic began to seep into her rapidly accelerating heart as she made her second pass over the room, still finding nothing. “You better get out here right now, mister, or I'm gonna eat your breakfast!” she called out.

When the threat failed to produce results, she turned and bolted out of the room, heading for the nearby bathroom. The room did not offer nearly as many hiding places as the bedroom, but even so, she went over every inch of it, even staring down the drain of the bathtub in the vain hope that she might catch a glimpse of green. When her efforts proved fruitless once again, she quickly left the room and returned to the bedroom, the only other room on that floor.

She tried to calm herself enough to think clearly, but her brain was already flying a mile a minute, and her pounding heartbeat was not far behind. “Come on, think!” she grumbled to herself. She glanced over at a nearby shelf, seeing the magical propeller device that still sat upon it. “Okay, he couldn't have flown anywhere, so he must...”

He couldn't have flown.

“Oh no,” she said.

A fraction of a second later, she was hovering in the air above the balcony outside her bedroom, her dread palpable as she gazed down over it. She saw the spiral staircase, she saw the balconies of the lower floors, and she even saw all the way down to the floor way below, but she was unable to see any green...or red. However, that did not stop her from shooting down those stairs faster than she had ever done so before. Not a single step was spared her attention; not a single inch went untouched by her intense gaze. So focused was she on her task that she barely had time to stop herself from crashing into the floor way down at the bottom level.

As soon as she had come to a stop, she spun around in midair, quickly scanning the room, but found nothing out of the ordinary. She zipped back and forth through the air as fast as lightning, going over the entire floor in ten seconds flat. When she was completely confident that her quarry was nowhere to be found there, she zipped back to the stairs and flew to the next floor up. Her heart was pounding in her chest, threatening to burst right out of it, but she did not dare slow down for even a moment, searching that floor as quickly and as thoroughly as the last.

Up and up she went, searching every nook and cranny of every floor in her home. She rifled through drawers and cabinets, pushed heavy pieces of furniture aside as if they weighed nothing at all, and poked her head into every space in her home that could have even conceivably contained a shell, and even some that could not have. She unearthed a treasure trove's worth of items she had misplaced over the years, but she didn't care about that one bit so long as her most precious treasure remained missing.

Her once-beautiful home was in a sorry state by the time she had finished poring over every inch of it for the second time, but the mess was the last thing on her mind. She hovered in midair halfway up the stairs, paralyzed by frustration, fervor, and fear. In her frazzled mind, she ran through a checklist over and over and over again, desperately trying to think of some place that she hadn't searched yet. Try as she might, however, she was eventually forced to accept that her beloved pet was not in the house.

Perhaps it was because of all of the long hours she had spent in the company of a certain analytical egghead, subconsciously internalizing the process of deductive reasoning. Perhaps it was a moment of miraculous clarity that pierced the clouds in her mind like a burning beacon. Whatever the reason, she eventually realized that, if the one she sought was not in her home, then he must necessarily be outside of it. She zoomed back down to the entryway, gazing upon her front door, which was still shut tight, just as she had left it the night before.

“He couldn't have...” she murmured as she approached the door and verified that it was still a solid object. Putting her disbelief aside, she quickly threw the door open and flew out into the wide world beyond.

Her fluffy, white yard stretched out before her, the little cloud bank her home sat atop coming to an end a few dozen feet away. She reflexively scanned the area, both out of hope and desperation, but the only trace of green she saw was in the gently burbling fountain of rainbow that issued forth from the cloud-ground. She flew over and landed at its edge, her hooves depressing the squishy terrain only slightly. As she felt that cool, cottony touch, however, she was gifted with another moment of uncharacteristic mental clarity. She realized that, as so many other pegasi often did, she had forgotten that not every creature could walk on clouds.

Her heart skipped a beat. Without even thinking, she launched herself into the air, did a backflip, then plunged straight down through the cloud beneath her, slicing through it like a bullet through tissue paper. Faster than a blink, she passed through and out of the cloud, hurtling downwards towards the bright green hill far beneath. From her vantage point, she could see nothing of significance in the sea of grass that stretched out for a mile around her home, and she was not even sure whether she would have wanted to. She pulled up at the very last second, slowing her descent just enough to keep her from crashing into the earth.

She wasted no time in beginning her search anew, inspecting every single blade of grass within her field of view. She flew in a spiral, starting right beneath her house and slowly moving outwards away from it, her eyes glued to the ground the entire time. A lesser pegasus might have gotten dizzy from flying in such a pattern so quickly, but not her; she had no room in her at that moment for disorientation. When she finally raised her head again, she realized that she had flown at least a hundred feet from the edge of her cloud, and must have passed over every inch of land within that radius. Despite this, she had found nothing of note other than a few patches of clover and wildflowers.

For several moments, she merely hovered there, staring out over the vast empty landscape, the only sounds that reached her ears coming from her heaving breaths and her pounding heart. As the reality of the situation sunk in, her flapping wings gradually slowed, her body descending and coming to rest on the grass beneath her. She lowered her head, holding it in her shaky hooves for support. A thousand questions buzzed around her brain like hornets, each one with a harsh sting to match.

How did...? Where did...? When did...? Why did...?

For these questions, she had no answers, but as the question of “who” fluttered through her mind, she momentarily froze. She might not have had the answers she sought, a fact which even the prideful mare would have admitted to, so great was her desperation, but she knew who might. It was the pony she had known ever since she was a filly, her oldest, closest friend. It was the pony who could always be counted on to solve any animal-related problem that should arise, big or small. It was also the pony who, way out there on the outskirts of town, was the one she could reach the fastest for help.

A strange, focused calm came over her as she arrived at this conclusion. Her body reacted to her wishes even before her brain could command it to do so. With a surge of strength, she launched herself high into the air, oriented herself in the proper direction, then took off, cutting through the air so quickly that she could have been heard from a mile away. Within seconds, she could see the edge of the Everfree forest coming up beneath her, and just a short distance away, the pretty little cottage by the babbling brook covered in vegetation and surrounded by birdhouses.

She angled downward and came in for a landing, her hooves slamming into the ground with an audible thud. She leapt upon the front door, pounding her hooves on the wood with just enough restraint to not break it down. “Fluttershy!” she cried out, her voice trembling. “Fluttershy, I need you! It's an emergency!”

When a few seconds had passed and the call had not been answered, her anxiety spiked, and she pounded the door even harder. “Fluttershy, please!” she shouted.

The seconds continued to tick by, with the door remaining unmoved and the quiet unbroken by the soft voice of cottage's owner. Every moment of delay only added fuel to the fire burning within the mare's trembling body, increasing the already intense pressure built up inside of her. She anxiously trotted in place, biting her lip to keep herself from screaming. Before long, the pressure had surpassed the meager amount of patience she still had left in her, compelling her to take action.

“Oh, fine then!” she said as she leaped into the air.

She flapped backwards several yards, then with all her strength, propelled herself forwards towards the door, tackling it with all the might her little body could produce. The sound of cracking wood echoed through the air as the door was sent flying backwards into the house, with the mare not far behind. She sailed into the familiar living room and came to a stop in midair, scanning the area. There was a stinging pain in the shoulder that had slammed into the door, but it was trivial when compared to the pain and fear currently wracking her heart.

“Fluttershy!” she called out, forcing the pain from her mind. “Fluttershy, where are you?”

The living room was small and cozy, and so took very little time to inspect and confirm the lack of a certain yellow pegasus within it. Grunting in frustration, she flew back into the adjacent kitchen, finding it similarly empty. Back and forth, left and right, up and down she flew throughout the cottage, poking her head into every room within. Her frustration only grew with every empty room she inspected, and by the time she had searched the whole house, she was positively fuming.

She returned to the living room, hovering in place for a moment while she wracked her brain, trying to recall whether her friend had mentioned any planned outings for that morning. “Oh...pony feathers!” she cursed when her memory failed her. She was wasting time, she thought. Every moment she spent dawdling there was another moment that her precious pet could be out there somewhere, lost, afraid...or worse. As the unpleasant possibilities flashed past her mind's eye, her already rapid breathing quickened, her chest heaving like a forge bellows. Having already been pushed to her limit, it did not take long before the little mare's grief got the best of her.

Letting out a wail of grief, she spun in place and sent one of her hind hooves sailing through the air towards the closest convenient target with enough force to shatter bone. Blinded by rage and fear as she was, however, she did not recognize that that target happened to be one of the many adorable little birdhouses hanging from the ceiling. She realized at the very last possible instant what she was about to do, but even with her incredible reflexes, even she was not fast enough to stop her hoof from colliding with the miniature house, instantly destroying it...and anything that might have been within it.

She watched the splintered pieces of the house fall in slow motion towards the floor, frozen in shock at her own actions. As soon as the first piece collided with the hardwood beneath, however, the thunderous sound echoing throughout the cottage, her body recovered from its paralysis, and moved to intercept the debris. It took her mind a bit longer to react; from her perspective, she was in the air one moment, then the next, she was on the floor, cradling the wreckage in her hooves. With trembling lips and shaky limbs, she carefully sifted through the pieces of painted wood, afraid of what she might find within. To her, it felt like an hour, but in reality, it was only a few moments before the aftermath of her destructive outburst was laid on the floor before her: splintered wood, some twine, a few tufts of grass...but nothing else. She lowered her head, breathing a long, shaky sigh of relief as she felt the weight lifted from her shoulders.

Thank Celestia...empty.

In spite of everything, she found herself chuckling softly. Despite all the terror, all the anger, all the heartache that had flowed through her tenacious little heart that morning, she had one thing to be thankful for: the fact that she had struck the one birdhouse in that cottage that didn't have an innocent little creature inside of it. After all, it wouldn't do for both of them to lose...

She sniffled, forcing the thought from her mind. She raised a hoof and wiped away the tiny tear trailing down her cheek. Raising her head, she looked back to the ceiling and to the other birdhouses still hanging there undisturbed. A slight smile came to her lips as she saw the pretty little houses, each one lovingly hoof-painted by the cottage's owner. She had an apology ready on her lips for the birds that would no doubt be disturbed by the unexpected demolition in their neighborhood. Her smile quickly faded as she noticed the distinct absence of any feathered critters, disturbed or otherwise.

She rose to her hooves, then gently flapped back up into the air, never taking her eyes from the birdhouses. She approached the one she had been looking at, straining her eyes to see within it, but try as she might, she could not make out any trace of life within it. She turned, making her way to one house after the other, finding each of them as empty as the first had been.

Weird. These things are never empty.

A thousand memories of a thousand visits to that cozy little cottage floated through her mind. Despite all of the many times and many circumstances under which she had stood in that room, she could not recall a single instance in which not one of those houses had had some manner of bird relaxing or sleeping under its roof. Never once to her memory had the air of that room not been filled with the gentle hum of twittering, fidgeting, and scurrying from the myriad of creatures that made their home there. As this reverie faded, it left behind the reality of that room, a room filled to the brim with a thick, oppressive silence.

She had arrived at that cottage with a single thought on her mind, determined not to rest until her mission had been seen to its end. Her little violent episode had forced her to do just that, however. For the first time since leaving her home, she found herself moving and thinking slowly enough to really hear and really see what was going on around her, or more accurately, what wasn't going on around her. As she drunk in her surroundings with both eye and ear, the disconnect between her many memories and the world around her truly began to sink in. The loud pounding of her heart only hammered home the fact that, as far as she could tell, she was the only living creature in that room.

“No way,” she muttered to herself.

She carefully lowered herself back down to the floor, the soft clack of her hooves on the wooden floor sounding eerily loud in that quiet. Treading as softly as she could, she made her way around the room, peering into the dozens of other little houses, enclosures, mouse holes, and various makeshift homes nearby. Despite her best efforts, she could not find a single twitching nose, furry paw, or fluffy tail anywhere.

Did she...take them all to the vet?

A questionable explanation, but one that could conceivably explain both that absence of animals and the absence of their caretaker. There was only one way to be sure, however. Springing back into the air, she quickly glided out of the room, beginning yet another lap around the house. This time, however, she took her time, forcing herself to calmly inspect every nook and cranny for even the slightest sign of life. She found a dozen or so food bowls on the kitchen floor, mysteriously half-full, but no trace of their owners. She found a tub of room temperature water, a bottle of pet shampoo and a brush floating lazily amidst the remnants of bubbles. Finally, after searching every room, she made her way to the backyard, where she found an empty chicken coop full of unharvested eggs.

Where in Equestria are they? Not even she would take them all at once.

The mare's imagination ran wild, searching for an explanation to the incredulous situation she found herself in. What in Equestria, she asked herself, could have caused every single one of the dozens upon dozens of critters that made their home in that cottage to disappear without a trace? As this question came to the forefront of her mind, she froze, realizing the implications of it. Whatever, or whoever, had been responsible for vanishing that boatload of animals probably would have had no difficulty in doing the same thing to a sleepy little green tortoise.

Her blood pressure rose as her earlier panic resurfaced, combining with the chilling unease brought on by her most recent discovery. Whatever had happened that morning to part her from her precious pet had evidently gone way beyond just the two of them. She didn't know what, and she didn't know how, but she did know one thing: if her friend loved her pets as much as she loved hers, which she knew without a doubt she did, then she would have done the exact same thing she had done upon seeing them gone, namely, run off looking for them immediately. It was no wonder she hadn't been able to find her there.

The mare didn't know where her friend had gone, but she had a pretty good idea. It was the same place she would have gone if she had felt that something strange and potentially dangerous was going on, which was beginning to feel like a surety at that point. Without further delay, she launched herself high into the air, then shot off in the direction of town, heading for the enormous oak tree nestled between those cozy houses. If anypony in the world could help her, it would have to be the nerdy unicorn who made her home beneath those branches.

Within seconds, she had reached the town proper, and in a few seconds more, she was bearing down on the leafy library before her. Her newfound determination, coupled with the sense of fear still gnawing at the back of her mind, propelled her forward at terrific speed. Rather than slow down, she carefully locked on to an open window in the side of the tree, intending to fly right through it. The tree's occupant often lectured her about the unnecessary danger of such a maneuver, but it was an emergency; she would deal with the lectures later. Thankfully, the mare pulled in her wings just at the right moment, and she sailed gracefully through the window and into the library.

“Twilight!” she called out as she unfurled her wings, skidding to a stop in midair.

She quickly scanned the main room of the library, trying to catch her breath as she pored over the shelves of books around her. Both the collection of tomes and the room itself were impressively large, but even so, it quickly became apparent that neither the pony she sought, nor even her scaly assistant, were present.

“Twilight!” she called out again. “Twilight, where are you?”

Flying out of the library proper and into the adjacent living area, she continued her search, with similar results.

“Twilight? Spike? Oh, come on! Where are you?”

Her previously smoldering rage rapidly flared up again, but before she could commit another act of property destruction, something distracted her. A harsh, unmistakable scent invaded her nostrils, the scent of something burning. Whipping her head around, she followed the scent out of the small study she was in and into the nearby kitchen. At first glance, the room appeared fairly normal, the only noteworthy detail being the various dirty mixing bowls and spoons scattered across the counter. However, her keen senses quickly honed in on the nearby oven, and on the wisps of dark smoke leaking out of the appliance.

Thinking quickly, she zipped over to the oven and promptly turned it off, then yanked open the oven door. A thick cloud of smoke emerged from inside the oven, hitting her squarely in the face. She recoiled, coughing and sputtering as she frantically used her wings to disperse the cloud. When the air had finally cleared, she opened her watery eyes once again and gazed into the oven. The source of the smoke was easy enough to identify: a small muffin pan, each cup filled with a dark, shriveled mass that resembled a lump of coal.

When has Spike ever burned muffins before?

Having ensured that the arboreal abode would not soon go the way of the once-muffins, she left the kitchen, making her way through the study and up the stairs to the bedroom beyond. Finding the bedroom door closed, she frantically rapped on the door.

“Twilight, are you in there?” she said. “I really need to talk to you! There's something weird going on and...”

She trailed off as the bedroom door was pushed ajar by the force of her hooves upon it. She hesitated for only a moment before carefully pushing it open a bit more, sticking her head through the crack.

“Twilight?” she said, her eager tone tempered by curiosity.

The bedroom beyond appeared just as it had every other time she had been in it, with the exception of the lack of a certain purple unicorn within it. Pushing the door the rest of the way open, she advanced into the room, confirming her initial assessment that it did not contain any unicorns, or even any dragons. She flew up to the raised level where the comfy bed covered in a starry bedspread sat, finding it as empty as the rest of the room. She did, however, notice a thick book of some kind laying on the bed, its pages open to some tiny text interspaced with complicated mathematical formulas. Sitting on the nearby nightstand was a cup of tea, half-drunk.

“How?” she said to no one in particular. “How is she not here?”

She was not the sort of mare to worry about her own schedules, much less the schedules of her friends, but she happened to know that the owner of that bedroom should have been somewhere within the woody walls of that library right then. The mare in question loved her schedules, to a fault, some might have said, and made no secret of her daily planner. Despite the lack of interest of the mare currently hovering in place in that empty tree, she could not have helped but remember every detail of her friend's daily schedule after hearing her talk about it so often.

“She can't be out already,” she said. “It's only...”

She turned to gaze upon the clock hanging on the wall nearby; her heart skipped a beat as she saw the time it displayed.

“Two...thirty-four?” she said, the words feeling foreign on her tongue.

It can't be.

She cautiously approached the clock, gently tapping it a few times to ensure that it had not somehow gotten stuck. As far as she could tell, however, the clock seemed to be in perfect working order, which did nothing to quell her increasing confusion.

It can't be that late already. I just saw the sun...

She crossed over to the bedroom window as she thought this, looking through it up at the sky high above. A sigh of relief escaped her lips as she saw the morning sun hanging serenely above the horizon, just where it had been when she had woken.

Wait.

A jolt of realization arced through her mind, and she immediately refocused on the bright, burning star above her. She studied it thoroughly, taking note of its relative position above the horizon and the buildings of the town. She racked her brain, desperately trying to come up with some simple explanation for what she saw, all in vain. As ominous as the implications might have been, she was soon forced to admit that that sun, which she had watched move across the sky with clock-like regularity every day of her life, had not budged an inch since she had risen that day.

She suddenly felt very cold...and very vulnerable. Just a few minutes prior, her thoughts had been fixed on one little reptile; now, she felt the weight of all of Equestria weighing down on her. Whatever was going on, whatever horrible nightmare she had wandered into, it went way beyond her and her little corner of the world there in that sleepy little town. It went way beyond a tortoise, it way way beyond a cottage of critters, and it went way beyond even her friends. Something big was happening, something enormous even, and in an extremely uncharacteristic moment, the mare suddenly felt very small indeed.

Sweat beaded on her brow, and her blood rushed through her veins at mach speed. She turned away from the window, staring back at the home behind her. That cozy little tree had always filled her heart with such warmth, such familiar comfort, but in that moment, as she stood there in that perfect stillness and unending silence, she felt only an inexplicable sense of dread. She dared not make her way back through those rooms, and so, that little bird did what she always did when she was afraid: she flew. Within seconds, she had thrown open the bedroom window and hurled herself out of it.

As soon as she felt the open sky above her head once again, her wings extended to their full length, propelling her upwards with a mighty flap. She instinctively flapped way up high, fleeing from whatever unknown threat her imagination had conjured up. When the boughs of the library were far beneath her, only then did she stop and hover in place, taking a moment to catch her breath. No matter how hard she huffed and puffed, however, the pounding of her heart did not slow even slightly.

“There's...there's no way,” she said between breaths.

Again, she stared up at the sun, her change in elevation only further enforcing her previous assessment.

“No!” she shouted, clamping her eyes shut and slamming her hooves against her head. “You're wrong! You're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong! You're just seeing things. You...you're just messed up 'cause of Tank. Yeah...that's it! You're just freaked out, so you're not thinking straight. There's nothing weird going on. It's just...Twilight just forgot to set her clock right is all. Yeah. Yeah! There's nothing wrong with the sun; it's just still morning! It's morning and...”

She opened her eyes and looked down at the streets below with a hopeful smile on her lips. Below her, she saw the same sights she had seen every morning she had soared over the rooftops of those friendly little houses and shops. She saw fillies and colts rushing off towards the little red schoolhouse, trying to get there before the bell rang. She saw the bustling stalls of the market, both buyers and sellers already busy exchanging hellos and bright, shiny bits. But best of all, right below her, she saw five very familiar mares standing side-by-side, waving up at her, and standing before them, a little green tortoise with a wide smile on his scaly lips.

At least, that's what she wanted to see.

She saw nothing. She saw no fillies or colts. She saw no mares or stallions. She saw no friends, and she saw no beloved pets. She saw nothing, heard nothing, smelled nothing...but was feeling quite a bit. That little mare was feeling quite a bit as she looked down upon the world, looked down upon Equestria, looked down upon her home...and saw not a single creature anywhere.

Gold and Marble

A far green countryside stretched out beneath her, a seemingly endless expanse of gentle grasslands and low, sloping hills bisected by a wide, slow-moving river. A bright blue sky hung over her head, lit with the warm light of midmorning. Behind her, home, that humble assemblage of houses and shops still sitting right where she had left it. Before her, at the end of the trail of shimmering water she followed, stood a mountain, a silent stone guardian maintaining its eternal vigil over the land. Nestled precariously, yet unshakably within the crags, grand ivory towers capped with golden spires reflected the light of the sun, a beacon visible even from miles away.

The mare followed that beacon, her eyes never parting from its radiance as she flew. Her tired wings flapped firmly and rhythmically, her burning determination proving stronger than her exhaustion. Her mind was no less drained by the experiences of the day than her body, yet it too focused on its task as if her life depended on it, because for all she knew, it did, as did the life of everypony she knew and loved.

She'll be there. She'll be there. She has to be. She'll know what's going on. She always does. She'll fix this. She'll make it right. She'll be there.

Long, broad avenues cobbled with the finest stone, arranged in patterns as elegant as those of the finest weavers, and as mathematically harmonious as the movements of the stars. Grand marble buildings constructed many centuries prior, their incredible longevity owed to long-forgotten magics of the unicorn wizards of old. Sprawling gardens that seamlessly wedded the raw beauty of nature with the masterful artistry of ponykind. Standing above it all, its protective presence felt in every humble corner and alley, a bright, shining castle fit for the most radiant of princesses.

Truly, Canterlot was deserving of its ancient moniker, “the city of kings”. On that fateful day, however, it would have been more appropriately called “the city of ghosts”.

The mare flew down those streets, her keen eyes spotting the detritus of the throngs that once walked them: dropped purses, foods, children's toys, and a hundred other things to numerous to list. She flew past those buildings, listening to the silence and watching the stillness of the their nonexistent inhabitants. She flew through those gardens, past the trees untouched by wind, the flowers untouched by bee or butterfly, and the grass untouched by the hooves of little ponies. Finally, she flew beneath the shadow of that castle, her passage through its outer gates unhindered by any guard.

It was just as she remembered it, the palatial home of the greatest and wisest of all ponies. The tall white walls reflected the morning light, bathing the castle grounds in a soft, warm glow. Bright green lawns and verdant gardens sprawled out before her, every perfectly sculpted leaf and petal the product of the finest of Earth pony horticulturists. Tall, white towers loomed over her, their gilded tips scraping the sky high above. All of this, and more, she remembered.

She did not remember the silence.

No golden-clad guards patrolled those walls, tall and proud, ready to face whatever threat might rear its ugly head. No richly dressed mares and stallions strolled through those gardens, enjoying the beauty of the day. No dignitaries passed through the doors of those towers, carrying news and pleas to the throne room deep within. Whether this was because there was simply no news to deliver, or because there was nopony to deliver it to, she could only wonder.

No!

She pushed the thought out of her mind as she advanced towards the main entrance, unconsciously flapping her wings more forcefully.

She'll be there. She'll be there. She will.

The grand doors of the castle proper were several times larger than the little mare who approached them, and as masterfully crafted as every other beam and brick within eyesight. While there were no guards standing by to open the way, a mare of her strength had little difficulty in forcing those heavy double-doors apart enough to squeeze through. Once inside, she found herself in a lavish entrance hall, taking in the long silk tapestries that hung from the walls, the plush, red carpets that covered the marble tiles beneath her, and the enormous staircase that led off to the rest of the castle.

“Hello!?!” she cried out, her voice echoing through the cavernous chamber. The sound quickly faded away, leaving her in silence once more.

She turned her attention to the large hallways leading off from the hall, each one identical to the last. “Oh...which one was it?” she muttered, racking her brain to remember the last time she had been beneath that roof. When her search, impaired by both mental and physical exhaustion, proved fruitless, she grunted in frustration, pounding her hooves against her head.

Twilight would know. She knows this place like the back of her hoof. If she were here...

She slowly lowered her hooves. She took slow, controlled breaths, forcing the sobs building up in her throat back down into her gut. She took in her surroundings once more, her gaze focused and intense. Unwilling to delay any further, she picked the most promising-looking of the hallways and took off down it.

The little mare worked her way through the long, high-ceilinged hallways of that great castle, each one a masterwork of architecture in and of itself. She spared herself no time to take in the visual spectacle, however, so focused was she on her task. Slowly, she worked her way through that labyrinth, flying back and forth past countless doors that all looked exactly the same to her. When she found a dead end, she swiftly doubled back, silently cursing herself. When she found herself flying in circles, she veered off in a new direction, increasing her pace to make up for lost time.

With every second that passed, her limited supply of patience was further worn down. With every moment she spent traversing those silent, empty halls, her heart beat a little bit faster, and her wings flapped a little bit harder. Her steadfast focus began to waver, allowing her mind to wander off to worrying places. She imagined herself wandering those hallways and chambers for the rest of her life, a frightened little bird trapped in a cage of marble and gold. She would be doomed to remain there, alone, without her friends, without her loved ones, without anypony...forever.

She'll be here. She'll be here. She'll...she'll be here.

It was as she was flying down one of these many hallways, one that looked no different to her eyes than any other, that she spotted something that made her take pause. She was flying so quickly that she had only a fraction of a second to notice it out of the corner of her eye. Her wings reflexively splayed out, bringing her to a grinding halt in midair. As soon as she had recovered her balance, she whipped around and flew right back the other direction. Now giving her full attention, she easily noticed the large hallway, even larger than the others, branching off a few dozen feet back the way she had come from.

She quickly arrived at the junction and came to a stop, turning to look down the other hallway. Her little heart skipped a beat as her eyes confirmed what they had seen in passing. Lining the walls of that hallway was a series of tall windows, every other of which was made of stained glass. Images of ponies were rendered on that colored glass, ponies with whom the mare was very familiar. At the end of this long hallway, just past the very farthest window, was a door...a huge, ornate door, and thankfully for her, a very familiar door as well. The instant she came to this realization, she took off, her wings propelling her to that long-sought portal in mere moments.

She stopped short just before it, lowering herself down to the polished floor below. As she stood there, catching her breath, she looked up at the antique wood, the shiny golden fittings, and the giant rings hanging from each half of the double-doors, each loop almost as big as she herself was. It was an impressive door, the sight of which immediately conveyed a sense of power, dominance, and control, but at the same time, beauty, elegance, and sophistication. The mare found herself thinking that it was just the sort of door she would put before her own throne room, if she ever had one.

“This is it,” she said softly. “This is it!”

She had an eye neither for art nor architecture, and yet adventure had always been a topic that easily stuck in her mind. It was for this reason that she had so easily remembered that hallway, and so easily remembered that door, her own adventures typically beginning with a crossing of that same threshold and a serious conversation with the one behind it. Such meetings had always brought clarity of purpose, understanding, and much-needed morale, both for her and her friends. She was in desperate need of all three of those things now.

Slowly, she raised a hoof, extending it towards the door before her. Despite their immense size, the door seemed relatively light; even the mere pressing of her hoof against it caused it to wiggle slightly. A strange feeling came over her upon realizing that the door would be so easy to open, upon realizing that there was nothing more standing between her and the answers she sought. She was happy, of course, ecstatic even, and yet, she couldn't help but feel a sense of trepidation as well, a feeling which only increased as the seconds ticked by. She turned her head, looking out one of the large windows set into the wall, gazing out at the sun, which had not budged an inch since she had woken that afternoon.

She'll be here. She'll be here. She has to be.

She turned back to face the door, her affirmation running through her mind like a mantra. She took a deep breath, summoned her strength, then gave the door a mighty push. The slab of polished wood slowly rotated inwards on its well-oiled hinges, the imperceptible noise not interrupting the silence.

She'll be here. She'll be here. She'll be here. She'll...

Her mind went blank as she stared through the gap between the two halves of the door, looking through to the tall, lengthy chamber beyond. For several long moments, she did nothing, absolutely, totally, completely nothing. She didn't breath, she didn't blink, and she could almost have sworn that her pounding heart stopped dead in its tracks. Then, when time resumed its normal course, when she could feel her hooves beneath her once more, she walked.

She walked between those tall, imposing doors into that immense room. She walked across that polished marble floor, the soft echoes of her hoofsteps ringing like thunder in her ears. She walked past the brilliant stained glass windows to her sides, paying no mind to the cosmological designs depicted by those colorful pieces of glass. She walked right up to the base of the golden, terraced throne decorated with flowers and soothing water features. She walked right up and gazed upon the plush velvet cushion of that magnificent seat, that royal seat.

That empty seat.

She could clearly see the absence of the powerful, beautiful mare sat on that throne. She could clearly hear the silence of the small fountains that once flowed from it, fountains that now sat still and lifeless. She could clearly feel the chill running across her skin, feel the weight the size of the mountain that castle clung to bearing down on her, and feel her heart filled with an intense, paralyzing sense of complete and utter isolation unlike any she had ever experienced.

Her tired legs, suddenly and wholly deprived of the burning fire that had fueled them, began to wobble, began to shake, and eventually buckled beneath her. She collapsed down onto the floor, and would have laid there on her belly, had she not lacked the will to do even that. Her fall continued, her limp body falling to the side and sprawling out on the ground. Her head stung slightly as it impacted the hard stone, but she did not flinch and she did not cry out. She merely lied there, still staring up at that empty throne in that empty room in that empty castle in that empty city.

She's...not here. She's not here. She's...she's...

“Gone,” her lips finished on her behalf.

The word hung on that still air, hovering around her like a thick, claustrophobic fog. It rattled around her brain, colliding with the dam of willpower and desperate optimism that she had been hiding behind all day. It did not stop, not until the cracks in that already crumbling dam had grown too great to bear, not until that last line of defense finally collapsed, freeing the torrent of bottled up feelings it had struggled to contain. In one single, climactic moment, the mare found herself confronted with the reality of her situation, and with all of the heartache that went with it.

They're gone. They're gone. All of them. Just...gone. Everyone. Everyone but...me.

She could see their faces before her moistening eyes, see them as clearly as if they were stood before her in that very room. She saw the little egghead, the unicorn eager to demonstrate the new spell she had spent all night reading about. She saw the farmer smile and wipe the sweat from her brow after a hard day's work in the orchard. She saw the poofy-haired party planner bounding off to deliver a balloon bouquet in honor of an occasion only she remembered. She saw the fashionista, her eyes shining as she put the final stitch on one of her beautiful gowns. She saw her childhood friend, the little pegasus lovingly holding a woodland critter to her chest. She could even see the little green turtle, her beloved pet smiling that wide smile of his as he slowly charged forward to meet her.

One by one, they vanished, their fragile forms blown away by an ethereal wind before her very eyes, leaving her alone, without even those memories to comfort her. She felt fat, heavy teardrops slowly roll down her cheeks, and felt her throat quake as deep sobs burbled up out of it.

I'm crying. Wonderbolts don't cry.

Try as she might, she could no longer hold back the flood of tears that obscured her vision or quell the tremors that ran through her aching limbs.

You're not a Wonderbolt. You're not anything. Not without them.

The mare's eyes clamped shut as she finally gave in and allowed herself to be carried away on a never-ending river of tears. Her pitiful wails and choking sobs echoed through the halls of that shining castle, before eventually fading away into silence.

The mare's eyes fluttered open, and through the cracks streamed the soft light of morning. Her head was groggy, her vision was blurry, and her body ached from lying on a surface much harder and colder than her warm, fluffy mattress.

Did I roll off the bed again?

She groaned, closing her eyes again and wetting the inside of her dry mouth. She rolled over slightly and raised a hoof, reaching out to grab the edge of her blanket and pull it down onto her. When she did not feel the soft fabric, she grew frustrated, and begrudgingly cracked her eyes again to see how far she had rolled from her bed. Her frustration gave way to confusion, however, as she looked up at the large vaulted ceiling high above her.

Huh? Where...

She rolled her head to one side, glancing over at a wall of tall stained glass windows. She rolled her head over to the other side, looking up at the huge, golden throne that sat just a few yards away.

Her memories came flooding back to her in an instant, slamming into her like a freight train. She gasped, her eyes flying open, but she did not move from where she lay, paralyzed as she was by her realization. Her drowsily beating heart rapidly accelerated, and her breaths came quicker and shallower. She almost cried again...almost. When the first sobs made their way up her throat, she quickly stifled them, forcing them back down again. She stayed like that for several minutes, her body slowly adjusting to the chill as if she were taking an ice bath after a long workout. When she had acclimated, when the pain had become constant and dull, rather than sharp and biting, only then did she stir.

She flexed her stiff muscles, forcing the life back into them. Slowly, with tremendous effort, she got her hooves underneath her again, then pushed herself up on her shaky legs. She stumbled, almost falling back down again, but managed to catch herself. Her eyes filled with stars as her body adjusted to her change in position. She forced herself to wait until her vision had cleared and her legs no longer felt like jelly before moving.

Raising her head, she looked up at the empty throne once again, holding herself together as best she could. She nodded her head jerkily.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay.”

She took several deep breaths.

“They're...” she began. “They're all...”

Gone.

“Gone,” she said. “Gone.”

The word felt strange and alien on her tongue, as if she were speaking some ancient, forgotten language. It felt no more mundane the longer it festered in her mind; in fact, as she rolled it around, examining it, prodding it, feeling out the sounds, the word soon lost all meaning to her, leaving her no better off. She grunted in frustration, whipping around to face away from the empty throne, which did nothing but mock her in her suffering.

How?

The question came easily; the answer did not.

“What...what in Equestria...” she said. “What in Equestria is going on here!?!” Her voice spiked in intensity as she spoke, swelling from a soft mumble to a powerful shout that echoed throughout the empty throne room, yet no voice answered her query.

As her voice faded, absorbed into that endless silence, her grief, her sadness, suddenly turned to rage. Her blood boiled hotter with every silent second that passed by, with every moment that the universe did not give her what she wanted.

“Well?” she shouted. “What is it? What's going on?”

Silence.

“Tell me!” she shouted, stamping her hooves on the floor.

Silence.

“Tell me!” she bellowed, long and loud.

Her body was trembling, her chest was heaving, and her heart felt as if it would burst at any moment. As the silence returned once again, something snapped within her. All of her anger, all of her fear, all of her grief, her anxiety, her loneliness, and everything else currently swirling around in her head was suddenly vented as she opened her mouth and let out a long, harrowing scream.

She screamed until every nook and cranny of that enormous room had been filled with the sound of her voice. She screamed until the sound spilled out beyond it, filling the sprawling halls of that castle. She screamed until the nonexistent guards by the castle gates could have heard her, or the ponies walking the streets of town, or even the mountain itself. She screamed until her voice had run down the slopes of the mountain, across the leagues and leagues of silent, empty countryside around it, all the way back to the little town with the little cloud-house with the little bedroom with the little empty turtle bed...and then kept screaming. She screamed until her throat ached and her lungs burned, and when at last her scream ran dry, she took a deep breath and screamed some more.

She stamped her hooves on the ground, the sharp echoes only adding to the cacophony. She thrashed about, wildly kicking at invisible foes around her. She launched herself into the air, her flailing wings sending her careering back and forth across the room at high speed. So quickly did she zip around the room that she might have easily whipped up a small tornado, had she not been flying as erratically as a filly on her first day of flight school. She was fortunate to not crash into one of the many windows that lined that grand chamber, but not so fortunate to keep her from slamming back down onto the hard floor in her stupor, the impact knocking the wind out of her.

Pain arced through her lithe body; she might have cried out, had she not been so thoroughly out of breath. As it was, she was forced to lie there helplessly, trembling in pain and anger, a fresh stream of tears flowing down her cheeks.

No.

She gritted her teeth, swallowing the sobs that dared try to eek their way out.

I'm not just gonna lie here.

She tried to force herself up on her aching legs, but the pain sent her collapsing back down onto the cold, hard marble.

Get up.

She tried again, managing to get all four hooves beneath her this time.

Get up!

Her limbs trembled as she stood, but she forced them to obey her, ignoring the sting of her bruised flesh.

They need you!

“They need me!” she said through gritted teeth.

She straightened her legs and held her head high, staring up at the empty throne with an unflinching gaze.

But for what?

She visibly deflated, closing her eyes and letting her head droop.

“What do I do?” she said. “What am I supposed to do?”

She managed to remain calm when her plea for answers was again ignored. She shot an angry glare at the throne, but in the end, merely turned and fluttered back into the air, flapping her aching wings slowly and carefully. There was much that she didn't know in that moment, but she did know one thing: she wasn't going to linger in that accursed room any longer.

Her wings quickly carried her back to the great door, which she easily slipped through. Once on the other side, she grabbed one of the huge rings and pulled the door shut once again, the two halves making only the slightest noise as they met. She looked up at the door before her, then sighed, lowering her head.

“What do I do?” she muttered.

Turning her head to the side, she glanced out one of the hallway's tall windows at the immobile sun.

How long was I asleep?

The sun, of course, provided no answer, it still being in the exact same spot it had been in when she had entered the room. The mare's biological clock was not significantly more helpful, it having been thrown out of whack by an abnormal amount of physical and mental stress. For all she knew, she could have been lying there on that cold, hard floor for an hour, or for a day. She swiftly turned away, not wanting to waste a single second more because of her own weakness.

As she flapped her way back down the hallway, her brain sputtered in confusion and frustration, trying to find anything, come up with anything, to aid her in her time of need. She needed answers, but more than that, she needed comfort, she needed assurance, she needed the sort of support that only a good friend could provide.

Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed one of the tall stained glass windows she was flying past, the sight of which made her take pause. She turned to face that glass, her heart quivering as she gazed upon the faces it depicted. Two unicorns, two Earth ponies, and two pegasi: six mares standing together as one. United, there was nothing they could not do, no challenge they could not overcome, not even facing down the nightmarish alicorn whose image that window also featured. She flew closer, extending a hoof and caressing the forms of each of those familiar mares, as if she hoped to feel their warmth.

If they were here...we could do it. If they were here...we'd have fixed this in under an hour. But...

“I can't,” she whispered. “I can't do this on my own.” She glanced back up at the figure of the alicorn above her. “I couldn't have even beaten Nightmare Moon on my own. This? This is just...just...”

Impossible.

She breathed a heavy sigh, pulling back from the window. She took one last look at the faces of her friends, then tore her misty eyes away.

Not even Nightmare Moon was this bad. Not even she could have done this.

She resumed her flight down the hallway, her wings beating without passion or will. While her mind was preoccupied, her ever-attentive eyes absentmindedly gazed at her surroundings, subconsciously taking in the marble floor tiles, the hanging planters filled with flowers, the other tall windows...

She froze. A feeling not unlike the shock of lightning, a feeling which she had been unfortunate enough to experience on many occasions in the past, passed through her as one of those little subconscious details wafted through to the front of her mind. She gulped, her mouth suddenly feeling very dry. Slowly, she turned to the side, raising her eyes to the colorful window beside her.

Two mares, one as brilliant as the sun, the other as dark as the night sky. The raw power suggested by those mighty figures was surpassed only by the incredible beauty and grace they displayed, beauty which still fell short of the reality. The long horns on their heads and the great wings sprouting from their backs marked them as alicorns, a fact known to even the youngest of foals. She doubted that there would have been many ponies, be they foal, mare, or stallion, that could have named the third creature on that window.

Lion's paw, eagle's claw, long dragon tail. Lizard's foot, goat's hoof, grotesque, mismatched wings. A warped mockery of an equine head, with two markedly unequine horns jutting from it. Worst of all, an immense eye the size of a dinner plate, staring unblinkingly back at her. It was rendered in the pure white of cold, dead stone, yet she could see the sickening yellow in her mind as clear as day, as well as that haunting, piercing red.

The dense storm clouds filling her mind suddenly dissipated, the vapor burned away by a fire as bright and hot as the sun itself. Gone was the confusion, gone was the fear, but not the anger. The anger remained, but it was no longer the mindless, directionless anger that had been simmering in the bowels of her heart for hours. This time, her anger had form, her anger had a face, and her anger had a name.

Nightmare Moon couldn't have done this. But...

Her muscles tensed, her jaw clenched, and her little heart filled with a furor passed down to her through long centuries by her ancient warrior ancestors, one which had lain dormant in her blood for her entire life...until that very moment.

Time slowed to a crawl as she turned to face the far end of that long hallway. In one smooth motion, her powerful wings, heedless of the dull ache that still clung to them, drew back, extending to their full, impressive breadth, each individual feather brimming with energy, then, when the moment had stretched on as long as it possibly could, those muscles flexed, and those wings gave a single, storm-whipping flap.

For a single moment, the entirety of the infinite, unending silence that held that world in its clutches was forgotten, banished by an ear-splitting crack as loud as thunder, and a rush of wind as powerful as a hurricane. The delicate panes of painted glass that lined that hallway wobbled under the force of that gale, then shook, then spasmed, and then, one by one, they shattered. A hail of colorful shards filled the air, tumbling down towards the floor below. Before the first scrap of glass could even touch that marble, however, the mare had already reached the end of that hallway and disappeared around the corner.

Left. Right. Right. Left. Down. Left. Left. Down. The mare didn't know what guided her through the halls of that grand castle; she didn't care. She didn't stop to question that strange mental clarity, the almost trance-like focus that led her onwards. She didn't bother worrying about the mess she left in her wake as painting were blown off of walls, statues were sent tumbling to the floor, shattering to pieces, and priceless tapestries were torn in two. None of it mattered to her. For the first time that day, she knew exactly where she was going, and she knew exactly what she was going to do when she go there, and she was not going to let anything in the world stand in her way.

It took her less than a minute to make her way back to the front door of the castle. It took her mere moments to pass right through it and angle up into the sky high above. It took her only a few seconds to look down at the castle grounds and locate the royal statue garden. It took her only a heartbeat to flap her powerful wings once again, sending her hurtling towards the ground.

A tremendous, booming thud echoed through the castle grounds as the soft soil of the garden was struck by a blue-and-rainbow meteorite, the sound reaching all the way out to the city streets beyond. A tidal wave of dirt was propelled into the air, crushed into a fine powder which gradually floated back down. When the dust had settled, there came into view a huge crater, with a little mare at its center.

The mare stood there, her chest heaving as she drew deep, heavy breaths. Her limbs shook from adrenaline, and from the shock of her high-velocity impact, the pain of which did not even register in her mind. Her wide eyes, burning with a white-hot intensity that could have melted stone, slowly panned around the garden, staring into the still, silent faces of its inhabitants.

She knew where to go. She knew what she was looking for. She knew who she was looking for. She had been there when he had been brought there. She had been there when that...miserable mistake of nature had been hauled back to his centuries-long resting place. She had been there when his stony form had been returned to its ancient pedestal in its secluded section of the garden. She had been there, right beside her friends. She would be with them again soon.

A quick half-turn, facing the mare in the right direction, a quicker flap of wings, and she was off once again, zooming along the ground so quickly the grass and flowers bent to follow her. Mere seconds after taking off, she flared her wings and dug her hooves into the dirt, bringing her to a grinding halt. A long set of skid marks lay on the ground behind her, leading up to the spot she now stood. Before her, standing as tall as she did and weighing many times more, was an immense pedestal of carved marble, it's ancient surface worn and weathered. A noticeable ring of hoofprints circled it, left by the guards who patrolled that spot night and day. The air around it tingled with the energy of magical defenses created by ponies much smarter than her.

But what was on that pedestal? What pathetic waste of space had been placed there? What wretched creature was about to wish that it had stayed in its stony prison until the end of time?

Nothing. Not a thing.

The mare stood there, burning a hole into the surface of that empty pedestal with her gaze. With every passing moment, her boiling blood grew hotter, so hot that the steam almost whistled out of her ears. For every second she spent staring at that pedestal, staring at the empty space left by the one she sought, she was pushed closer and closer to her breaking point. When the reality of what she was looking at finally finished seeping in, she had no choice but to raise her head and vent all of that anger with a long, frightening bellow.

“Discord!”

The word rang in her ears, just as it rang throughout the towers and high walls around her. The call that could have been heard for a mile around went unanswered, however, with silence soon returning to smother the world once again.

“Where are you!?!” she shouted to the heavens.

She would not take silence for an answer any longer. She would not be ignored, not when she had finally figured out what was going on. If she did not hear that whimsically devious voice in her ear within ten seconds, then she could not be held responsible for what she would do. If he wanted to disappear, act like he had just vanished from the world, then she would gladly make that happen. She would find him, and she would make him disappear for real.

“Get out here!” she shouted, her throat growing hoarse from the strain. “Get out here right now! Right now!” She punctuated these last words with a pair of powerful stamps that made her hooves sting.

She huffed and puffed as her words faded away into that infuriating silence. She frantically whipped her head back and forth, her eyes poring over her surroundings, taking in every little detail. She did not see the one she was looking for amongst those cold, dead statues, within the bushes or trees, or slithering along the rooftops, but she could picture him clearly in her mind's eye. She could just imagine that warped, serpentine form hidden just out of sight, watching her every move; she could almost hear that deep, mocking laugh.

“Discord!” she shouted once more.

The silence that followed was the last straw. Unable to contain it any longer, she opened her mouth wide and screamed a terrible, angry scream, pouring in every bit of strength she had left in her. At the same time, she whipped around and sent a mighty kick hurtling towards the marble pedestal. A loud, dull crack was heard as hoof met stone, and a huge chunk of marble was dislodged from the whole. Half a second later, an intense jolt of pain reached her brain, powerful enough even to distract her from her all-consuming rage. Her scream spiked, then cut off as her body spasmed, sending her sprawling down into the dirt.

She lied there for a while, lacking either the strength or the will to stand. She took quick, shuddering breaths as she waited for the pain to subside. She clutched her injured hoof, gently squeezing and rubbing it. She felt anger, and fear, and despair, and a dozen other feelings she couldn't even put a name to. She was tired, oh so tired, but neither rest nor calm came to her, only a long, harsh catharsis as her pain smothered the inferno of rage that had been burning in her heart.

As the agony gradually diminished, and her head slowly cleared, she looked back up at the pedestal. Aside from the large gash that she had made in its side, it appeared as she had always remembered seeing it, not counting the absence of its usual occupant, of course. The grass around it bore no unexpected marks, no signs of a struggle. Even the gentle warmth of the thick coating of magic surrounding it felt no different than it had the last time she had been there. It was as if that little corner of the world had had its sole inhabitant surgically plucked right out of it, with everything else being left perfectly intact.

Even with her mind clouded by the dull ache of her body and the embers of rage still smoldering in her heart, the mare couldn't help but feel that something was wrong with the picture she beheld.

That magic...

Memories came rushing back to her, memories of standing in that very spot many months earlier. She remembered watching as the guards had carefully positioned that pedestal's stony prisoner back on top of it. She remembered watching as the princess and her protege had raised their horns together, lighting up that statue with a power she could not begin to comprehend. She remembered feeling the air grow warm and tingly as the magic had settled in, forming its tight, unbreakable seal. She remembered the train ride home, and she distinctly remembered not paying attention as the eggheaded unicorn had gushed about her mentor's work of spellcraft, a fact which she was quickly regretting. All she did remember of that enthusiastic spiel was that the magic that had been placed on that statue was no trivial thing. She vaguely recalled a remark that, if it were to detect even a hair's worth of magic out of place, then that statue, as well as the terrain for several feet around, would not be causing a problem for anypony else anytime soon. And yet...there the magic was, still clinging to the air above that empty pedestal.

The spark of curiosity that had been kindled in her mind quickly grew, temporarily distracting her from her suffering. With great effort, the mare managed to get her hooves beneath her and force herself up on her shaky limbs, taking care to step lightly with her bad hoof. When she was confident that she would not suddenly collapse back down to the ground, she turned to face the pedestal, forcing herself to really pay attention to her surroundings.

Now, she knew next to nothing about magic, mystic lore and arcane theory being as incomprehensible to her as Old Ponish, but that didn't mean she couldn't feel the raw power the air around her was seeped in. It made her hairs stand on end like static electricity. It felt...charged, poised, prepared, as if there were some great flood being held back by a barrier as thin as paper, ready to burst forth at the slightest provocation. It was a familiar feeling; she had felt it herself in those tense moments right before the start of every race she had ever flown. That magic was waiting for something, some signal or trigger, one that had never come.

Whatever that magic had been put there for, whatever it had been intended to prevent...just hadn't happened. Whatever had happened...had been something else entirely.

It can't be.

The implications were unnerving, but she had no reason to doubt the magical aptitude of her friend, and certainly not that of the princess. There was no way in the world that their magic could have failed so completely. If it hadn't failed...

Even with the warmth of the sun shining down on her, she still felt a chill pass through her, snuffing out the remnants of her burning rage. The feeling of profound confusion, of being completely and totally lost, began to seep back into her mind, despite her best efforts to keep it at bay.

No way. It has to be him. It has to be.

Despite her self-assurances, the rational part of her mind started to take note of the flaws in her assumption. The sun, despite sitting as unnaturally still, did not sporadically switch places with the moon, plunging the world into the darkness of night. No confectionery clouds sailed overhead, sending down rains of chocolate milk and hails of candy. The castle still stood as tall and proud as ever, rather than floating upside-down in midair with its gleaming white walls painted with polka dots. That day, that horrible, unending day, seemed as still, as quiet, and as un-chaotic as she could imagine a day being.

There was only one thing to do. If she were right, which she was not entirely sure she even wanted to be at that point, there was only one thing in the world that could set things right...six things, actually. Acting quickly, the mare spread her wings and flapped her way back up into the air, smoothly sailing high above the castle. After a quick scan of the area to reorient herself, she angled down and began her descent towards a particular building set far apart from all the others on the castle grounds.

Compared to the castle itself, the building was small, plain, unassuming, not the sort to draw anypony's attention. An ignorant passerby might have thought it was some old servant's quarters, or perhaps an outlying storeroom of some kind. That latter assumption would have been technically correct; the building was intended for storage. Although, with the amount of security that it boasted, it might have more appropriately been called a vault.

The mare swooped down and landed before the little wooden door of that building. She approached it, quickly discovering, to her non-surprise, that it had been locked tight. A firm kick with her good hoof easily shattered the old rusty lock, sending the door swinging inward. Beyond was the true first line of defense: a small guard room that, under normal circumstances, would have been filled with a team of the princess's most highly trained and highly trusted guards. She slowly walked into that still, empty room, looking around at the fortifications and weaponry that could have easily held off a small army. She passed through it all as easily as anything, walking up to another door at the far end.

Beyond this door was a short hallway which, at first glance, did not appear any different from any of the many halls she had passed through earlier. Of course, even if she could not see anything abnormal, that didn't mean she couldn't feel the supernatural warmth and the tingle of electricity hanging in the air. She took a deep breath, then slowly advanced down the hallway towards the door at the other end. The door wasn't locked; it didn't need to be.

As she pulled that door open, she remembered the last time she had stood in that hallway, all those months ago. She remembered the other spell the princess had cast that day, a spell placed on the priceless objects that she and her friends had placed there. Again, she did not remember the details of that particular work of magic, but she did remember its purpose: to protect those objects from whatever evil forces might try to tamper with them.

Looking into that closet-sized space, gazing down at the strongbox resting at her hooves, she hesitated, a nagging feeling of doubt surfacing in her mind. What would she find in that box? Would the princess be proven right? Had her magic been enough to protect her only hope of restoring the world to normal? She saw the empty pedestal in her mind, saw its absent prisoner, and felt the untriggered magical defenses surrounding it.

“No,” she said, swiftly banishing those thoughts from her mind. “They'll be alright. They'll be okay. She's the princess for pony's sake. If anypony could keep him away, it's her. There's no way he could touch them.”

Fueled by newfound confidence, she reached out and grasped the lid of the box before her. She took one last deep breath, then lifted the lid.

Six pieces of fine, golden jewelry rested on a bed of velvet: five necklaces, and one tiara. Each piece in the set bore a large gemstone at its center, each carved into a distinctive shape. There was an apple, and a diamond, and a butterfly, and a balloon, and a huge six-pointed star. Finally, there was a lightning bolt, a familiar symbol rendered in a deep ruby-red. Sitting there on its necklace, that bolt gleamed as beautifully and as brightly as she could ever remember seeing it.

The others...did not.

Autumn orange; royal purple; bright, friendly blue; soft, gentle pink; and powerful magenta. Those vibrant colors that had once shone as brightly as the stars in the sky...were pale, their hues hardly able to be discerned within those dull, greyish gems.

The Persistence of Memory

The long, asymmetrical alcoves, carved directly into the wood of the oaken walls, held an impressive number of books of all colors and sizes, the collection so perfectly organized that even a foal could have found what they were looking for in mere moments. The large windows set into the bark were wide open, allowing the stagnant air outside to mix with the equally stagnant air within. The round wooden table at the center of the room was covered with empty cans of energy drink and empty snack food bags. Buried amongst this mess were a number of books pulled from the nearby shelves, some of which had been fortunate enough to be stacked in semi-neat stacks, while others had been hastily thrown into the pile wherever there was space. Just a short distance away, the mare floated round and round in midair, her brow furrowed and her lips squirming as she slowly paced the circumference of the room.

Soft, quiet grumbles rumbled up and out of her throat occasionally, typically accompanied by the flexing of her antsy legs. With every circuit she completed, her vocalizations grew more frequent and more intense, and the frustrated grimace on her face became even clearer to see, that is, if there had been anyone else there to see it.

Every time she passed a certain corner of the room, she hesitantly turned her head to the side, glancing over at the large blackboard that had been placed there. The dark surface of that board had been scrawled from top to bottom in chalk, with the crumbling remnants of those once-lengthy writing implements sitting in the little tray beneath. Amongst the crudely drawn diagrams, the barely legible writing, and the pitiful, if earnest attempts at arithmetic, there hung a collection of five beautiful pieces of jewelry, each one attached to the board with tape. While the polished gold of those four necklaces and one tiara gleamed prettily in the light, the effect was somewhat diminished by the dull, near-colorless gems affixed to them. The mare could only bring herself to gaze upon that board for half a moment before quickly looking away again, reflexively rubbing the ruby-red necklace that hung from her neck.

After a good many passes, the mare let out a much louder grumble, then allowed herself to fall back to the wooden floor beneath her. She stormed over to the table, where a thick, heavy book had been left open upon its surface. She lowered her gaze to its pages, poring over the tiny text and intricate diagrams that made the ones on the blackboard look like the scribbles of a foal by comparison. For the hundredth time, she attempted to force those unfamiliar words, some of which had more syllables than she had limbs, into her brain, and for the hundredth time found herself wishing that she had paid more attention to subjects other than gym during her schooling years. Despite her most sincere efforts, her academically unpracticed brain was quickly overwhelmed by the seemingly endless stream of squiggly lines on the page, which collided together and piled up in her mind like the cars of a derailed train.

Just before the intense pressure caused her little head to pop, however, she let out an angry growl and reflexively swiped the book off of the table and onto the floor, along with a number of empty cans, which clattered as they hit the wood. When her head had cooled slightly, she guiltily looked over at the floor where the book had landed, hearing in her head the lecturing voice of the tome's caretaker. She sighed, allowing her head to fall to the table before her, the thunk of her skull against the wood filling the otherwise silent room. She raised her head slightly, then let it fall once again, repeating this process until she had grown numb to the mild pain in her forehead.

Sighing, she let her head flop to one side, peering down at the book again. A few moments later, she lifted her heavy head from the table and walked over to it, carefully picking up the discarded book and closing it. She looked down at the embossed title that ran along the book's spine, The Complexities of Multiplanar Calculus with Respect to Homogeneous Vector Transducence, tearing her eyes away as her head started to swim again. She reverently placed the book back on the table, if not for her own sake, then for the sake of the one it belonged to.

She always makes it look so easy.

The mare looked down at the book, and at the old, worn bookmark decorated with a six-pointed star that sat roughly two-thirds of the way through its many hundreds of pages. She felt a burning shame as she glanced at a nearby clock and realized that she had been at it for hours, but hadn't even been able to make it through the introduction. If the book her friend had been reading that morning was of any importance, then she would never know, not even if she had a thousand years to find out.

Sighing, she glanced back over at the blackboard, studying the various scribbles and occasional doodles she had filled it with. Despite her being the one who had written it all there, even she had difficulty trying to make heads or tails of it, a fact which infuriated her even more. She didn't understand why it was all so confusing; she had done exactly what the little purple unicorn had done all of the many times she had explained one of her plans to her friends. For some reason, her friend's blackboard illustrations had always made whatever challenge they had faced seem so simple, so straightforward, so easy, but as the mare stared at the tangled web of arbitrarily drawn arrows and meaningless lists of promising-sounding words, she began to think that she would never be able to comprehend the situation she had been thrust into, much less remedy it.

The mare hung her head, closing her tired eyes. “I wish she was here,” she said. “I wish they were all here.”

It had all seemed so simple in her head: go to the library, read some books, draw some pictures on the blackboard, then take off to confront whatever magical baddie was threatening Equestria that week, a formula that had always proven effective before. A sickening feeling of nauseous shame came over her as she realized the flaw in her plan: in the past, whenever she and her friends had been called on to save the day, it had always been them reading those books; it had always been them coming up with those well-thought-out solutions. Meanwhile, she had sat on the sidelines, making a token effort of helping while she waited for her friends to come up with the answer. Of course, she had never had any problem rushing off to give the problem a taste of her hooves afterwards, all while acting like the brave hero she knew she was.

As she stood there, staring her own inadequacy in the face, her own incompetence, her own weakness, she felt anything but heroic. She felt that, if there was anybody deserving of a firm hoof to the face, it was her.

Looking back up at the board, she grunted in frustration, then advanced towards it. She reached up and swiftly yanked down the jewelry, then turned away again, pushing the senseless scribbles out of her mind. After all, they weren't what was important; it was those Elements that were important, those five beautiful jewels, and the five amazing mares they belonged to.

Walking back to the table, she carefully cleared a space amongst the garbage, then laid the Elements down upon it. She stared down at them, poring over every inch of their shining surfaces, as if she expected to find the answers all written there upon the gold. Unfortunately, those answers did not come to her, not even as the stared deeply into those dull, gray gems. Her frustration quickly resurfacing, she angrily pounded her hooves upon the table, sending a tremor through the wood that knocked over several cans and some of the precariously positioned books. After taking a few deep breaths to calm herself, she deflated, lowering her head to the wood before her.

“It's no use,” she whispered. “I'm never gonna figure this out. I'm never gonna fix this. Not without them.”

She felt the beginnings of tears in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall, clamping her eyes shut until the feeling had passed.

“If I could just...talk to them...any of them,” she said.

She sighed, looking around at the mess she had made of the once-immaculate library. Despite her dour mood, a slight smile came to her face as she imagined what the local librarian would have said upon seeing the room in that state.

“Rainbow Dash,” she said, doing her best impression of that persnickety little pony, “how many times have I told you not to leave your trash lying around the library?”

She chuckled softly, and her smile widened ever so slightly.

“Oh, lighten up, Twi,” she said in her usual tone, “Spike'll get it.”

She looked around the room, half-expecting to see the little purple dragon dutifully tidying up the mess, as was his wont. Of course, she saw no one, just the detritus of a long, fruitless session of brainstorming. Her smile fading, she stood and slowly made her way around, picking up fallen cans and empty snack containers and placing them back on the table.

While she did this, she noticed a book that she had left propped open on the table earlier. The stamp of her hooves must have knocked it over, however, as the book now lied awkwardly atop the short stack of books next to it, its open pages pressed against the one on top. She absentmindedly reached for the book, intending to close it and add it to the stack, but as she raised it up, something about it made her pause. She couldn't say what it was, but something about the clean, straight edge of its dark blue cover struck her as strangely familiar. She slowly lowered the open book back down onto the stack, positioning it neatly to form a sort of roof for the little book-house. As she pulled back her hooves, she realized where she had seen that perfect line of blue before. She chuckled softly as she reached over and grabbed the golden tiara sitting nearby, then carefully arranged it atop the book, completing the picture. She couldn't help but smile as she looked down at the stack, even such a crude representation managing to evoke the treasured memories buried deep in her heart.

“Sorry about the mess,” said the mare.

The books, of course, did not respond, and so the mare was forced to lend them her own voice.

“It's alright, Rainbow,” said the books. “Just remember to put all of those cans in the right bin. You know how important it is to properly sort your recyclables...or do you need a refresher?”

“No, no, no, I'm good,” said the mare, smiling and waving her hooves dismissively.

That little unicorn had already forced her to sit through a long, mind-numbingly boring lecture about Equestria's recycling system before, and the mare had no desire to relive that experience. Consequently, she quickly made her way around the room, collecting the cans and putting them in the appropriate bin, getting the other garbage into the trash, and even tidying up the books. In no time at all, the fastest mare in Equestria had returned the library to something resembling a respectable state. She smiled a proud smile as she surveyed her work, reveling in the feeling of having actually accomplished something, however minor. As she turned her head and looked back at the blackboard, however, that feeling of warm pride quickly vanished again.

Her confusion and frustration, temporarily forgotten, quickly returned to the forefront of her mind, accompanied by the sting of self-hatred as she realized how easily she had slipped into procrastination. Steeling herself, she forced her legs to carry her over to the board. She stared up at her scribbles, trying to follow the train of thought that had inspired them, but quickly realized that said thought did not exist, only a jumbled collection of desperate hopes and hollow imitations of ponies much smarter than her. She sighed, turning away from the depressing surface of that board.

Her mood lightened slightly as she looked back at the neat little stack of books on the table, a tiny island of familiarity amidst a sea of fear and uncertainty.

“You wouldn't happen to have any ideas of how to fix this, would you?” the mare asked.

A few silent moments later, the books spoke again, the mare giving them the same clear, confident voice she had earlier. “Well...not at the moment,” they said, “but I'm sure that if we put our heads together, work hard, and maybe do a little bit of research, we'll be able to come up with a solution in no time at all!”

The mare chuckled, grateful that at least one of them had confidence in their abilities.

“You know,” she said, “you're right. With your brains and my awesomeness, we'll have this whole mess figured out in ten seconds flat!”

Losing herself in the moment, the mare hopped back into the air and excitedly zipped about the room.

“So what do you think we're up against?” she said, shadowboxing with the imaginary foes that surrounded her. “Is it some kinda monster? Or maybe some freaky magic accident? Or do you think Discord managed to get out again? I was thinking it was him, but...I don't know anymore. I mean, look at the Elements! Even he couldn't do that to them...right?”

The mare paused, looking down at the books, which sat silently on the table nearby. Her brief flare of bravado quickly diminished, before being snuffed out entirely. She lowered to the floor once again, then approached the table.

“I...I don't know,” said the books.

The mare sighed. “What do you mean, you don't know?” she asked, her tone indicating that she already knew the answer.

“Rainbow...you know I'm not really here...right?” said the books, speaking in a soft, comforting tone. “I'm just...in your head. I don't know any more about what's going on than you do.”

The mare lowered her head to the table and closed her eyes.

“Yeah,” she said. “I know. I know.”

For several long moments, she stayed like that, listening to the sound of her breaths, the only sound that pierced that haunting silence.

“What am I doing?” the mare said softly.

After several more moments, she opened her eyes and looked across the table towards the books.

“Twilight?” she said.

“Yes, Rainbow?” said the books.

A pause.

“Don't leave,” said the mare, her voice trembling. “Please don't leave.”

Another pause.

“I won't,” said the books firmly. “I won't leave you. We'll get through this...together. I promise.”

The mare sniffled, her lips stretching into a small smile.

“Thank you,” she said.

For a brief moment, the mare forgot all about the silence.

“So...about the blackboard,” said the books.

The mare chuckled, looking back over at the board.

“Yeah...I, uh...yeah,” she said, scratching the back of her head.

“Why don't we go ahead and...start fresh?” said the books in a diplomatic tone.

“Good idea,” said the mare.

Approaching the blackboard, she grabbed an eraser and proceeded to wipe it clean of her misguided markings. With every long sweep of the eraser, a huge swath of the board was returned to its former, empty state. As she watched the clutter on the board slowly disappear, she could feel the clutter in her mind vanish as well, the swirling storm of confusion growing smaller and smaller. When the mare finally set the eraser down and looked up at the empty canvas before her, she sighed in relief, feeling that great weight lifted off of her shoulders.

She slowly turned and looked back at the books, giving them a smile.

“So...where do we start?” she said.

“Well, as much as I'd love to just dive into this hornfirst and start making some lists, I think you and I are going to need a few more hooves to help us,” said the books. “It might take us a while to start getting some ideas down and...you look like you could use a break.”

The mare scoffed confidently at this. “Are you kidding?” she said, flexing her powerful wings. “I'm fine, really! But...I guess...getting some more help wouldn't be a bad idea.”

“I know just the ponies for the job,” said the books.

The mare smiled. “Yeah,” she said, “me too.”

A series of sharp clacks pierced the air as the chalk was repeatedly pressed against the surface of the blackboard, each followed by a soft scraping noise as the chalk was drawn along, leaving a trail of bright white behind it. Those trails sloped and curved, gradually forming into letters, which in turn, came together to create words. Words joined together with one another, sometimes in sentences, other times in bullet point lists, but always forming some sort of coherent message, some idea to be gleaned by an attentive reader.

When the last letter had been carefully written onto that canvas, the sound of chalk was replaced with the sound of hoofsteps, the mare taking a step back to examine her work. She pored over the board from top to bottom, taking in the words, the numbers, and the images that had been rendered on its surface. While undeniably cluttered with all of that information, the board flowed like the waters of the river just outside of town: cleanly, deliberately, and easily enough for even a mare such as her to deal with. Her eyes passed over those words and figures as effortlessly as the ideas they conveyed passed into her head, those pieces coming together like bricks to construct a tall, strong tower, from the top of which she could see and understand everything going on around her.

Nodding her head in approval, she set down the chalk, then turned to look behind her. “Well, what do you guys think?” she said.

Before her, in the center of the room, sat the same old wooden table, with a few new cans, snack containers, and some scattered books sitting on it. A number of other objects sat amongst those study materials, however; it was these that the mare set her hopeful gaze on. A small stack of books, topped with an open book resting with its pages down, and a golden tiara atop that. An old wicker basket filled with ripe, juicy apples, the necklace nestled within them bearing a gemstone carved in those fruits' likeness. A tall, thick spool of silken thread, shining like the golden necklace with the four-pointed diamond wrapped around it. A bright pink party balloon that would have floated to the ceiling if its string had not been tied to a necklace decorated with its own balloon. Finally, an adorable little birdhouse painted in soft, pastel colors, as dainty and fragile as the butterfly on the necklace attached to it with twine.

The mare's mood sank as the room remained silent. She sighed, looking away. “You think it's a stupid idea, don't you?” she said.

“Rainbow,” said the books, “it's not a stupid idea. It's just...a bit impractical...don't you think?”

“Yeah,” said the apples, speaking in a thick rural drawl. “I mean, it ain't like I'm against a good bit of hard work, but...this seems like a bit much for us to handle...or, for you to handle.”

“You think I can't do it?” said the mare, her voice tinged with emotional exhaustion.

“Darling,” said the thread, speaking in a posh, elegant manner, “it's not that we don't think you can do it. It's just that...we don't want to make you go through all of that. There must be another way, surely.”

“Maybe it would be best if we took a break,” said the books. “We've been at this for hours, and we're all tired. We might be able to come up with a better plan after we've had some rest.”

“Great idea!” said the balloon, its tone as bubbly and perky as always. “I'll run over to Sugarcube Corner and get us some tea and cookies! What kind do you girls want? We got snickerdoodles, peanut butter, chocolate chip, double chocolate chip, triple chocolate chip...”

A frustrated grunt from the mare silenced the room. “No!” she said firmly. “We can't take a break now! We finally have a plan! We've got to get out there and do it!”

A moment of awkward silence passed, then the books sighed. “Rainbow...please,” they said, their voice dripping with sympathy. “Even if I were more confident about your plan, I wouldn't want you to get started right now, not in the state you're in. I mean, when's the last time you slept? And have you had anything to eat today besides chips and energy drinks?”

“Please get some rest,” said the thread. “We're...we're worried about you.”

“Well, you're not the only one whose worried!” the mare snapped in a much angrier tone than she had intended. After a moment, she realized this, and guiltily turned away. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just...”

The mare paused, taking a deep breath before continuing. “I can't sit around here any longer,” she said. “I just...can't. Every minute we spend here is another minute that...something could be happening to you...something could be...taking you further away. I just can't stand it. I want to...I want...” She fell silent as she tried to fight off the sobs that threatened to sneak up her throat.

A soft, gentle voice fluttered into her ear as she wrestled with herself. “Rainbow,” it said.

The mare sniffled, then turned to look at the birdhouse.

“We want to see you again too,” said the birdhouse, audibly holding back its own tears. “We want to be with you again...so, so much. That's why...that's why we worry about you. We don't want you to...push yourself too far. If something happened to you...I don't think I could bear it.”

Those words had a sobering effect on the mare, who instantly wrestled her emotions back under control. She approached the table, lowering her head and gently resting it against the roof of the birdhouse.

“I'm sorry,” the mare said softly. “I...I don't mean to worry you. That's the last thing I want.”

The mare stayed like that for a few moments, her shaky breaths gradually returning to normal.

“Rainbow?” said the books.

The mare looked over at the books.

“Do you...really think this is the right thing to do?” asked the books.

The mare sighed, moving over to stand before the books.

“I mean...what else can I do?” she said. “You said it yourself: I can't do magic. Even if I could find some spell in one one these books that could help...it wouldn't make a difference. We've got nothing...no clues, no leads...unless you want to reopen the Discord discussion...”

“No,” said the books. “It can't be him. The princess used some of the most advanced magic I've ever seen on that statue. Those spells couldn't have failed! If it's like you said, and they were still in place, then...it must have been something else that got him out...something...more powerful.”

The mare tried to ignore the chill that ran up her spine upon hearing those words.

“Then...there's nothing else to do,” she said. “I could waste more time trying to read all these books, or...I could just get out there and...do it the old-fashioned way. If nothing else...I might be able to find something that will help.”

“Do you really think you can do that?” asked the thread. “Just...search the entirety of Equestria?”

“Forget findin' a needle in a haystack,” said the apples. “This is more like...findin' a needle in a hay mountain!”

“I know, I know!” said the mare. “I know how much work it'll be. I know how long it'll take. But...I'm willing to do it. I'll do whatever it takes to...to find you.”

Her words hung on the air, her grave tone making it perfectly clear just how serious her pledge was.

“Rainbow?” said the balloon.

The mare turned to look at it.

“You better find us quick,” the balloon said, “'cause when you do...I'm gonna throw you the biggest 'Thank-You-For-Finding-Us-And-Saving-All-Of-Equestria' party ever!”

The mare chuckled as the lighthearted comment instantly released the tension in her weary heart.

“Thanks, Pinkie,” she said. “I will.”

“After you get some rest, of course,” said the books. “And don't tell me you can't sleep. I know how good you are at napping.”

“Twilight...” said the mare.

“C'mon now, sugarcube,” said the apples. “You know she's right. You ain't gonna be any good to anypony if you fall asleep and drop right outta the sky.”

“That only happened once!” said the mare.

“Please, Rainbow,” said the birdhouse. “For us?”

The mare looked over at the birdhouse, preparing to spout off another objection, but couldn't find the words to deny that sweet, caring soul.

She sighed in defeat. “Fine,” she said. “I'll take a powernap. But the second I wake up, I'm heading out, alright?”

“You mean we are heading out,” said the thread. “We're not about to let you go gallivanting all over Equestria on your own.”

“Yeah!” said the balloon. “We'll make a road trip out of it! Well, technically it'll be a sky trip, since you'll be flying, but same difference.”

“We're with you, Rainbow,” said the books. “I have my concerns, but if you really want to do this...we'll stay with you till the end.”

The mare stood in stunned silence, until at last a shaky smile appeared on her lips and a warm teardrop leaked from one of her misty eyes.

“Thank you,” she said, reaching up and wiping the tear away. “Thanks, you guys.”

“You're quite welcome,” said the thread. “Now, off to bed with you!”

The mare chuckled, turning towards the stairs that led to the upper levels of the library.

“Um...” she began, pausing and turning back to look at the books. “You don't mind if I...?”

“Not at all,” said the books.

“Thanks,” said the mare as she fluttered back into the air. “Well...see you later, I guess.”

“See you later,” the books replied as the mare turned and slowly flew up the stairs. “We'll be waiting for you.”

The mare felt the soft caress of wind on her cheeks and on the delicate feathers of her wings as she flew, soaring high above the rolling plains beneath her. Disappointingly, that wind was solely the product of her impressive speed as she cut through the air like a knife, and would have fallen still the instant that she did. What made said lack of atmospheric activity even more disappointing, and even worrying, was the matter of where she was headed.

She was so high above her beloved homeland that, were she to gaze down upon the little villages she passed over, she would have seen those humble homes as being no bigger than grains of rice. Her gaze, however, was directed upwards, high above those little houses, high above the hills, high above even the tall mountain to which clung the gleaming spires of Canterlot. High above her, a gradually expanding spot of cloudy white on a backdrop of blue, was the only city in the world that had ever looked down upon that illustrious seat of power from which ruled Equestria's royals, a fact which its proud residents had always been quick to remind their more grounded peers of.

Cloudsdale. The Flying City. The oldest city in Equestria, older even than Canterlot. The historic home of the noble pegasi, and the birthplace of the winds and rains themselves. A lofty citadel constructed by the finest of the ancient pegasus legion's engineers. A flying fortress so impregnable that it had once been said that it would outlast the fall of Equestria.

The mare hoped that the boasting of her ancestors would prove at least somewhat true, but not for the sake of her people's pride. That city was also her home, her birthplace, and that little mare would have gladly tossed aside every scrap of pride she had in her to see it again, just as she remembered it.

A mild feeling of nostalgic comfort came over her as she saw in her mind those grand, gleaming buildings that could just barely be made out nestled within the bank of clouds high above her. She saw the tall pillars, the ancient amphitheaters, the stadiums that echoed with the screams of fans as they watched their favorite fliers. She saw the thick waterfalls of rainbow that flowed from the city's clouds before dissipating into the air as they fell to earth. She saw the tall chimneys of the weather factory that puffed out beautiful, fluffy clouds to fill the skies. Most importantly of all, she saw the humble little house that had once been the home of a certain not-so-humble filly.

The slight smile on her face and the warmth in her heart soon vanished as she drew closer to the city. No streams of rainbow could be seen falling from those lofty heights. No stream of clouds or current of wind flowed from the factory, rushing off to the far ends of Equestria. No tiny pony-shaped specks could be seen soaring through the skies around it; no sight of her fellow fliers. The mare forced those thoughts from her mind as she flapped her powerful wings harder, lifting herself higher and higher into the heavens.

The journey had never been that difficult before, the mare thought to herself. Of course, she recognized why that was. The pegasi of Cloudsdale, being the clever ponies they were, had always kept a number of powerful air currents strategically positioned around the city, forming a series of invisible highways that out-of-towners like her could use to easily make the ascent. No matter where in Equestria the city floated, those currents were always moved along with it, and always operated twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, even on holidays. On that day, however, the skies around Cloudsdale were as still and stagnant as anywhere else, and so the mare was forced to haul every pound of her weight up to the clouds overhead all on her own.

And not just her own weight, she thought as she looked back over her shoulder. Secured tightly against her flanks were a set of large purple saddlebags, each decorated with a six-pointed star. Those bags had been made strong and sturdy enough to transport even that bulkiest of old tomes, and so had little difficulty holding their current cargo, despite its abnormal nature. While those bags did indeed contain books, they also contained a basket of apples, a spool of thread, a pink balloon, and a little wooden birdhouse. Their weight certainly did not make her gradual ascent any faster, but they undoubtedly made it more bearable.

“We're almost there,” the mare said.

She waited for a long moment, uncertain if she would receive a reply. She was just about to turn her head back around when she heard a familiar soft voice.

“Rainbow,” said the birdhouse.

The mare fixed her gaze on her saddlebags once again.

“Yeah?” she said.

“Please hurry,” said the birdhouse.

The mare slowly turned her head, looking back up at the city above her. Her features hardened, her muscles tensed, and her wings flapped hard, carrying that lost little mare back home.

The whisper-quiet sound of her own flapping wings was the only noise that reached the mare's ears as she slowly floated along the cloudy streets of that beautiful city. Where once there would have been the laughter of fillies and colts at play, the low hum of the crowds at the forum, or the rhythmic churning of machinery at the nearby weather factory, there was now nothing. She could hear those old, familiar sounds perfectly in her mind, just not in those sharp ears of hers, which strained to detect even the slightest trace of them.

One would think that the mare would have been used to the silence. One would think that, by that point, she would have grown numb to the horrible feeling of emptiness she felt, one which perfectly reflected the emptiness of those streets, those buildings, those homes. And yet, it took all of her strength, all of her willpower to harden her heart and press onward, slowly but surely making her way through the city.

As painful as the massive, rusty railroad spike being driven further into the last of her desperate hopes was, however, the mare's primary concerns were not with herself, nor even with the ponies who should have been happily making their way through those empty skies on that bright, sunny morning.

“Fluttershy?” said the mare softly. “You doin' alright?”

The birdhouse sniffled. “I'm...I'm alright,” it lied.

Ahead of her, off to the right of the main thoroughfare that ran the length of the city, stood the tall, circular form of the Cloudiseum, just where it had always been. The mare unconsciously veered towards it, passing under its long shadow a short time later. She continued onward, passing through the massive columns that supported the structure, quickly making her way through to the stands inside. As she emerged into the sunlight once more, she gazed out at the huge circular arena. While that masterwork of ancient pegasus architecture was capable of seating tens of thousands of spectators, the mare had seen it empty before, typically in the wee hours of the morning when she would go there to train, but as she looked out at those empty seats then, the sight struck her much differently than it ever had before. She closed her eyes tightly, choosing to look at the backs of her eyelids over those empty seats.

It hadn't even been that long since she had last been there; the memories were still fresh in her mind. She reached out for those memories, those feelings, and those sensations, happily losing herself in them. As her mind wandered further from reality, distancing itself from that horrible emptiness, the silence was gradually replaced with the raucous cheering of a small army of spectators, each one of them stomping their hooves, shouting the name of their favorite competitor, or merely screaming like madponies. She smelled the distinctive scent of stadium food, of popcorn, cotton candy, and hot, delicious hayburgers. She felt the intense heat of the midday sun on her skin, and the beads of nervous sweat trickling down her face. Her lips slowly stretched into a smile as she fell further and further into her reverie, growing wide indeed by the time she finally opened her eyes again.

Around her, filling those countless seats, sat an equally countless number of ponies, still cheering at the spectacle before them. She looked around at them, taking in the smiles on their own faces, the commemorative clothing that adorned their bodies, and the bright sparkles in their eyes. Her eyes wandered up and down the stands, slowly scanning the circumference of the stadium, until at last they came to the section she had been looking for. In a certain row of seats in a certain section of the stadium sat a certain quartet of very familiar mares, all of whom were enjoying the activities with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

Suddenly, the cheering of the crowd diminished, and the mare saw a lone pegasus leave the stadium and return to the locker room. The applause immediately surged once more, however, as the booming voice of the announcer heralded the entrance of two more ponies, who quickly emerged from the same locker room. The mare could see them as clear as day, despite them being so far away. She could see that little blue pegasus with the rainbow mane slink her way out, her near-crippling anxiety slathered all over her face. At the same time, she saw the lovely unicorn follow along just behind her, proudly flapping those colorful, dainty wings of hers.

She watched as the events played out before her, just as they had on that day. She watched the two mares perform for the assembled crowds, one elegantly, one pathetically. She watched the embarrassing failures of the pegasus, as well as the mesmerizing beauty of the unicorn. She then watched as that proud unicorn flew too close to the sun, and those pretty little wings of hers were burnt up in the heat. She heard her long, drawn-out scream as she plummeted down through the nonexistent floor of the stadium, down towards the ground miles below. She watched as first those heroic Wonderbolts sprung into action to save her, and then, that nervous little pegasus. She heard the boom as loud as thunder, then watched as the sky overhead was painted in all the colors of the rainbow.

The mare chuckled softly, feeling in her blood the adrenaline those memories evoked, and also the incredible sense of euphoria.

“You remember that, Rarity?” she said, looking back at her saddlebags.

The thread chuckled awkwardly. “Well, yes, I...erm...yes, I do,” it said, its blush audible in its voice.

The mare chuckled, the soothing warmth of that amazing moment having supplanted all else in her heart. She closed her eyes, reveling in the feeling, savoring every instant of that unforgettable experience. Then, after taking a deep breath, she opened her eyes again.

She looked out at the empty seats around her. She listened to the silence that hung in the air. She felt the unnerving chill in her heart as her memories faded away, leaving her alone in that big, empty world once more. She sighed, then unfurled her wings, quickly turning and flying away.

The mare looked up at the humble little two-story house before her, taking in the gleaming white columns, the cloudy embellishments, and the wavy, fluid edges typical of pegasus architecture. She peered through the many wide windows set into its outer walls, but could see no movement within. She looked down at the fluffy cloud-lawn beneath her hooves, which was as neatly trimmed as always. She gazed upwards at the arch of rainbow that sat above the front door, giving off a soft, multicolored light.

She lowered her head, closed her eyes, and let out a heavy sigh.

“Rainbow?” said the books. “You...don't need to do this.”

“Yes, I do,” said the mare. “I...I have to know.”

“Rainbow,” said the apples, “we're with you.”

The mare's lips stretched into a smile. “Thanks, AJ,” she said.

She opened her eyes, looking up at the front door and slowly advancing towards it. She walked up the front steps and stopped before the familiar old doorway. Instinctively, she reached out for the door handle, but stopped herself just before her hoof met the polished metal. She hesitated for a moment, then slowly raised her hoof to the center of the door, placing a few firm knocks upon its surface. The sound seemed as loud as thunder in that quiet, both to her, and as she hoped, to the ones within.

She waited for a moment. Then she waited for a minute. Then she waited for another. She might have waited there for an entire week had she not heard a familiar voice call out to her, although not the one she was hoping to hear.

“Rainbow...” said the thread.

The mare sighed, forcing herself to lift her hoof to the handle and slowly open the door. She waited for a moment as the door swung inward, looking in at the little suburban home beyond it. A few tentative steps later, she was inside, her gaze meandering over the familiar walls, the familiar cloud-furniture, and the familiar knickknacks. She couldn't help but smile as she looked at those old porcelain figurines of Equestria's most radiant princess that sat on the shelf in the living room. She had never been able to understand why the mare of that house had spent so much time collecting such tacky things.

Her smile faded as she remembered the face of that wonderful mare. Turning to look deeper into the house, she opened her mouth and took a breath, as if preparing to speak, but no words pierced that silence. She gulped, then tried again, willing her useless lips and tongue to form the sounds she desired. After another difficult moment had passed, she managed to summon forth her voice once again.

“Mom?” said the mare softly. She tried again, louder this time, realizing how quietly she had spoken. “Mom? D-Dad?”

Her words echoed throughout the house, running down those hallways, up the stairs, and into every room beneath that cloudy roof. She waited, her ears flickering back and forth, straining to hear anything, be it the step of a hoof, the flap of a wing, or even the falling of a single feather. After several long moments of disappointing silence, she closed her eyes, taking a deep breath before opening them again.

Adjacent to the living room was a quaint little kitchen, which the mare quickly made her way to. That room proved to be as empty as the last one, however, with no ponies either sitting at the comfy little breakfast nook or standing at the counter preparing food. Seeing it in that state, seeing it so utterly devoid of activity, or even the traces of activity, struck her in a way that few other things she had seen on that long, painful day had.

She had so many memories in that room, so many precious moments and unforgettable experiences, ones which she saw clearly as she closed her eyes. She heard the soft noise of the oven as it warmed a carrot-and-cauliflower casserole for the evening meal, and smelled the delicious aroma it gave off. She heard the sharp, rhythmic sound of a knife against a cutting board as it chopped up fresh vegetables. Then, she heard the gentle, feminine tones of a pony humming a half-remembered tune to themselves. The mare opened her eyes, and looked upon that kitchen again.

She looked at the mare who stood at that counter, happily chopping away without a care in the world. She looked at her short orange mane and tail, at those big, fluffy wings made for snuggling, and at the little freckles on her cheeks. She looked at the soft smile on her lips, and the loving warmth in her eyes, a warmth which she felt in her own heart as soon as she laid eyes upon her. She felt her lips tremble and her breaths grow shaky as she watched the other mare at her work, relishing every second of the sight. Part of her wanted to charge forward and embrace her, hold her tight and never let go, but somepony else beat her to it.

Behind her, she heard the sound of the front door opening, then quickly slamming shut again.

“Mom, I'm home!” came a familiar girlish voice.

She watched the mare at the counter quickly set down her knife and look over towards the door, her smile widening and a bright sparkle appearing in her eye. A moment later, she saw a little filly, no more than half her age, rush into the kitchen, her rainbow-colored mane and tail swishing behind her.

“And how was my little Dashie today?” said the mother as she stepped away from the counter.

In one smooth motion, the mother stretched out her hooves towards the filly, who eagerly leapt into her embrace.

“Great!” said the filly excitedly. “Oh, you shoulda been there, Mom! Today at recess, I...I finally did it! I finally did a double barrel roll! Oh, but Fluttershy was so scared. She kept telling me not to do it, but I did it! I did it! You should seen the looks on those colts' faces!”

As the filly eagerly recounted her accomplishments, the mother held her tighter and gently nuzzled her mane.

“That's my number one flier!” the mother chuckled. “I'm so proud of you.”

The mare watched the two ponies' embrace, feeling its softness and warmth against her own skin. Her lips trembled, and she felt the moisture welling up in her eyes. She wanted so much for that moment to continue, to stay there in that warm, cozy kitchen forever, but when she closed her eyes to stifle her tears, she snuffed out that beautiful moment as well. When she opened her eyes and looked out at that kitchen again, the filly was gone, the mother was gone, and that warmth was gone, leaving a chill in its wake.

The mare turned and left the kitchen while she still had the strength to do so. She passed through the living room, soon reaching the spiral staircase that led up to the second floor of the house. She placed her hoof down on the first step, then paused, taking a deep breath before continuing her journey upwards. The familiar creaks of the wooden steps kept her company on that long, lonely ascent, until at last she stepped onto the landing at the top and looked down the second-floor hallway. She stopped there, waiting, although she wasn't sure for what.

“Mom?” she called out. “Dad?”

Whatever it was that she was waiting for, it didn't come. The mare clenched her jaw, summoned her strength, then forced her stiff legs to carry her forwards.

She could have walked that path blindfolded, and had, in fact, done so on at least one misguided occasion, yet she chose to keep her eyes open. Because of this, she had no difficulty seeing the extensive collection of photographs that decorated the walls, each one positioned with as much love and care as the finest works of art in the most luxurious of galleries. The images she saw varied in size, composition, quality, and professionalism, but despite this, there was one element that every one of them shared, one theme that unified that impressive display.

The mare couldn't help but smile as she looked upon that familiar mane of rainbow hair, that familiar lightning-bolt-shaped cutie mark, and that familiar pair of big, bright eyes. Sometimes that mane was tangled and messy, sometimes it was as clean and coiffed as a doting mother could have gotten it. Sometimes that cutie mark was obscured by wisps of cloud, or covered by thick winter clothing so obnoxious that she cringed to look upon it. Those eyes, however, burned with the same passion, the same spirit, the same youthful energy in every one of those pictures, whether they were on the face of a newborn foal, or on a face that she had seen in her bathroom mirror that morning.

Those pictures led the mare around a corner, and eventually, to the doorway of the master bedroom. She stopped in front of it, turning to face it head-on. That door had once seemed so big to her, an obstacle so insurmountable that she could not have hoped to tackle it unaided. She had not felt that way in a long time; she hadn't felt so small, so weak, so powerless in many long years, but she did then. As she stood there, staring at that humble slab of wood, she found herself as incapable of reaching out and opening it as she would have been of lifting a mountain and hurling it into the sea. That intense sensation of paralysis was strange to the fully-grown mare, but one which she was not altogether unfamiliar with. She could remember another time she had stood before that door, feeling then just as she did now.

The mare closed her eyes and reached out for that memory, and soon, the silence was pierced by the sound of tiny sobs emanating from a tiny throat. She opened her eyes again and looked down at the little rainbow-maned filly who sat at her hooves. She saw the onesie pajamas decorated with little rainbows that she wore, and saw the old, worn stuffed animal she clutched tightly to her chest. She saw the trembling of the filly's lips and saw the moisture of fresh tears in her eyes as she stared up at the door.

Luckily for both mare and filly, they did not have to wait long for the aid they sought. The mare heard clearly the sound of somepony rolling out of a cloud-bed from beyond the door. She heard the sound of slow, heavy hoofsteps approaching, then heard the turning of the door handle. She saw the door slowly swing inwards, revealing the tall, muscled stallion with the rainbow mane and five-o-clock shadow who stood beyond it. She watched as the pajama-clad stallion raised a hoof to his groggy eyes to wipe the sleep from them, then confusedly looked down at the filly.

“Rainbow?” said the stallion. “Was that you knocking? It's the middle of the night. What's going—”

“Dad!” said the filly, her voice trembling. “I...I had a...I had a nightmare.”

The filly visibly strained to hold back her tears, although looked as if she would burst at any moment. The mare looked back up at the father, seeing his wide-awake eyes and his abnormally serious expression. She watched as he quickly stooped down, wrapped his forelegs around the filly, and scooped her up as easily as if she were made of cloud. She watched as the filly immediately buried her face in his neck, his soft flesh muffling the little sobs that flowed forth. She watched the father hold the filly tightly against himself for a moment, gently stroking her mane, then carefully stand and carry her towards the large bed behind him. The mare slipped into the room before a gentle kick from the father closed the door again.

The room was dark, the only light being the few beams of pale moonlight that managed to sneak their way through the window curtains, but the mare could still see the father carrying the filly over to the empty half of the bed. Lying on the other half, her head raised up off of the pillow and a sympathetic, if groggy smile on her lips, was the mother, who watched the two as they approached. As carefully as if he were handling a batch of Hearth's Warming snowflakes, the father slipped back into the bed, laying the filly down right in the middle. The mother grabbed the covers and pulled them up over the others as she and the father snuggled together, pulling the filly into a protective embrace.

The filly continued to sob quietly as the mother and the father softly shushed her, whispered calming words into her ears, and placed gentle kisses on her head. Eventually, the sobs became shuddering sniffles, then those became heavy breaths, then those grew softer and slower, until they fell into the peaceful rhythm of sleep. The filly's clenched-shut eyes relaxed, and her trembling lips grew still. The mother and the father nuzzled their faces against the filly's head, then closed their eyes as well, following her off into the realm of dreams. Last, but not least, the mare closed her eyes, listening as those three sets of peaceful breaths faded away into silence.

When she opened her eyes again, the mare was greeted with the bright light of midmorning streaming through the windows. In that light, she could see the bedroom clearly, see the dressers lined with even more framed photographs of a certain filly, see the partially-open closet filled with clothes that only parents would wear, and see the door of the adjacent master bathroom hanging ajar nearby. And then, sitting right in the center of the room, she saw the big, perfectly made bed, its covers stretched taut over the mattress and its pillows propped prettily against the headboard.

She stared at that bed intently, as if trying to peer straight through it to the wall beyond. She stared at those covers, those pillows, and that cloudy mattress, all of them empty. She stared at that empty bed, sitting in that empty room, at the top of that empty house.

She didn't notice the first tears until they had already ran down to her chin, didn't feel the first sobs until her body had begun to tremble. By then, it was too late to stop. Her tears swelled to a river, and her heavy sobs sent shivers running down to her hooves. She clamped her eyes shut, and that empty bedroom vanished from her world, but her tears continued to flow.

Slowly, her trembling legs carried her forward, right up to the foot of that bed. She carefully shrugged off her heavy saddlebags as she climbed up onto it, then carefully crawled upwards. She flopped down right in the middle of that bed, the soft, cool mattress cushioning her trembling body. She awkwardly grabbed at the covers, eventually managing to get them up and over herself. As she settled into that fluffy sanctuary, she pulled the two pillows up against herself, one on each side of her. She held them tightly against herself, staining them with her tears as she rubbed her face into them. Her sobs grew louder as she smelled those familiar scents, one feminine and one masculine, that clung to the fabric.

“Shhh...it's alright, Dashie,” whispered the mother into her ear. “It's okay.”

“We're here, Dashie,” whispered the father. “You're safe. There's nothing to be afraid of.”

She felt the mother's hoof stroke her mane, and felt her soft lips press against her forehead.

“Go to sleep now, Dashie,” said the mother. “Just relax...and go to sleep.”

“We'll be right here,” said the father.

Her heavy sobs gradually became shuddering sniffles, then those became heavy breaths, then those grew softer and slower, until they fell into the peaceful rhythm of sleep. Her clenched-shut eyes relaxed, her trembling lips grew still, and she floated off into the realm of dreams.

The mare's powerful wings were stretched wide, giving her a slow, controlled descent. Before her, stretching out for countless miles in every direction, were the rolling hills, the thick forests, and the bright grasslands of Equestria. Behind her and above her, the city of Cloudsdale slowly shrank into the distance, soon becoming no more than a tiny white speck on a field of blue.

The mare didn't watch her hometown gradually vanish, melting into the vast expanse of the sky, however. Her unflinching gaze was directed forwards, towards the far-off horizon, and whatever might lie beyond it.

Strapped to her flanks, her saddlebags gently swayed to and fro, following her body as it maneuvered back down to earth.

“Rainbow?” said the balloon.

The mare didn't reply, the hard line of her lips not budging even a bit.

“Rainbow Dash?” said the birdhouse. “Are you alright?”

After a moment, the mare finally spoke. “I'm fine,” she lied.

“Rainbow,” said the books, “maybe we should...talk about this.”

“There's nothing to talk about,” said the mare, her tone as serious as her expression. “I'm going to find you. I'm going to find all of you. I don't care how long it takes. I don't care how far I have to go. I'm going to find you...and we're gonna be together again. We will.”

A moment of silence passed.

“Alright, Rainbow,” said the books. “We'll be right here with you.”

Further Up, Further In

The old brass door handle clicked softly as it was turned, and the thick wooden door it was set into squeaked as it was slowly pushed open. Beyond that door was a familiar room with bookshelves carved directly into its wooden walls and wide windows that offered a glimpse of the bright, blue sky and the leafy boughs overhead. A round, wooden table sat in the center of the room, every inch of its surface covered by the messy pile of books, papers, empty cans, and other assorted items that lay upon it. The rest of that room was similarly cluttered; sheets of scribbled parchment hung from the walls wherever there was room, as well as a number of large maps that had been scrawled with various symbols and notes. The floor was carpeted with books, crumpled pieces of paper, broken writing implements, assorted pieces of clothing, and various pieces of garbage. A large pile of canned, dried, and otherwise preserved food sat in a corner next to a number of large water jugs. In another corner sat a large blackboard, its dark surface appearing almost white for the thick coating of scribbles that covered it.

Into this room walked a mare, her worn, dirty hooves stepping sluggishly, lifelessly even, over the threshold and across the floor. Books were carelessly brushed aside and cans were crushed by those hooves, which made no effort to avoid the obstacles. Four legs stretched upwards from those hooves; those powerful limbs had once boasted picturesque, well-sculpted muscles, but now, those twigs were nothing but hard, rugged sinew with rough, weather-worn skin stretched taut over them. A thin, bony body sat atop those legs, the distinctive ridges of ribs visible beneath its sky-blue coat. A set of purple saddlebags clung to that body, their fabric worn, scratched, and faded. Just above those bags were folded a set of battered wings, most of their once-fluffy feathers now matted, broken, or outright missing.

The mare's rainbow-colored tail swished as she lazily kicked the door closed behind her, its once-vibrant hairs now ratty and covered with a dozen different kinds of dirt. Her mane was in a similar state; what's more, those long, flowing locks had been cut short, their edges rough and uneven, as if cut by an untrained hoof. That choppy hair framed a face so hard and lifeless that its features might as well have been carved from stone. Bags the size of cloud banks hung beneath eyes that stared straight ahead for miles, seeing everything and nothing. Out of place on that disheveled form, the only thing of beauty it boasted, was the golden necklace that bore the ruby-red gem carved in the shape of a lightning bolt.

As she crossed the room, the soft sounds of her hoofsteps echoing throughout that dead quiet, the mare reflexively reached down and loosened the strap of her saddlebags. With a slight shrug of her shoulders, she sent those bags sliding down her body, carefully depositing them onto the floor behind her, then immediately resumed her stride.

“Home again, home again,” came the voice of a pink party balloon from within those bags. Despite her clear attempt at cheer, her awkward, unsure tone only had the opposite effect.

The mare approached a large map hanging on the wall nearby, standing before it and raising her heavy head to look up at it. Countless miles of land and sea were stretched across its surface, ranging from tall, snow-capped mountains in the north down to vast sandy deserts and thick jungles in the south. There were bright, green grasslands, as well as low, rolling hills. There were ancient forests, and even more ancient mountains. There were a thousand dots for a thousand towns, not a one overlooked, be it a tiny hamlet tucked away in the untamed wilderness, or the grandest of metropolises whose buildings scraped the heavens. The land rendered upon that map had been sectioned off by pen-drawn lines into a hundred smaller areas of roughly equal size. In each one of those sections, a large “X” had been drawn...all but one.

Reaching out, the mare took hold of a nearby pen, then raised it to the map, lifting it as slowly as if it were a lead weight. When the pen's tip finally reached its destination, she slowly dragged it across the paper, leaving the final “X” in its wake.

The pen fell from her shaky grasp as her head fell forward, colliding with the hard wall behind the map with a dull thud. The mare closed her eyes, standing as still and as silent as a statue.

“Rainbow?” came the voice of a basket of juicy, red apples. “Sugarcube? Why don't you...come and get some food in you.” When the mare made no sign that she had heard, the apples spoke again. “Please?”

“I'm fine,” came the rough, dusty voice of the mare, her stiff lips forcing the words out.

“Rainbow, please,” said a tall spool of luxurious silken thread. “You promised us you'd eat something when we got back. You...you've hardly been eating as it is.”

“I eat enough,” said the mare.

“Rainbow,” said a stack of books in a half-pitying, half-lecturing tone. “Come on. You need to eat, and you need to rest, and I mean really rest. Once you're in good shape again, once you're ready, then we can...then we can talk. We can talk about...where we go from here.”

The mare opened her eyes, then raised her head, looking back up at the map. Her eyes pored over the paper, taking in the glaring pen marks that covered every inch of land it depicted...almost every inch, that is.

A few moments later, the mare finally spoke again. “I'll eat,” she said, “and I'll sleep...but there's no need to talk. As soon as I'm ready...we're heading out again.”

A moment of stunned silence followed.

“Wha...you...heading out?” said the thread. “B-But...darling, you...”

“T-The map, Rainbow,” said a pretty little birdhouse. “It's...there's nowhere left to...”

“Rainbow,” said the books sternly, “you said we'd talk about this when the time came. You promised us. We've stuck by you all this time because we believe in you...and we wanted to give you your chance. You wanted to look, so...we helped you look...but we're done now. It's time for us to move on and...try something else.”

“No,” said the mare flatly.

“What? No?” said the books. “But...Rainbow, there's...there's nowhere left! There's nowhere left to look! See for yourself! You've been over every inch of Equestria! You've been to places I've never even heard of! Where could you possibly want to go now?”

The mare didn't answer, at least not with words. Instead, she tore a blank piece of paper from a nearby notebook, grabbed a piece of tape, then fluttered up into the air. She flew up to the very top of that tall map, up where the colorful lands of Equestria ended, and an endless expanse of snow, ice, and stormy mountains continued on, only cut off by the edge of the paper. The mare pressed the blank sheet against the wall above the map, then taped it in place, adding countless uncharted miles to the map and Celestia knows how many days of searching to her self-appointed task.

The thread gasped as soon as she realized what the mare was planning. “Rainbow, no!” she exclaimed. “You can't!”

“Why not?” said the mare as she floated back down to the floor.

“Do we really need to tell you why that's a horrible idea?” asked the books.

The mare shot an annoyed look at her friends, but did not reply. She crossed over to the table at the center of the room, then dug through the pile of books to find the one she sought. When she had found the book on Equestrian geography, she pulled it close and began rifling through its pages.

Seeing that the mare was not going to respond, the books continued. “The Frozen North is...is...a wasteland!” she said. “There's nothing up there except ice and snow!”

“You said there were creatures that lived up there,” the mare said, not taking her eyes from her book.

“Well, yeah,” the books admitted, “but only in a tiny sliver of the region just north of Equestria! Beyond that it's...uninhabitable. Nothing lives up there. Nothing could...survive up there.”

“The storms are gone,” said the mare, willfully ignoring the implications of the books' comment.

It wasn't a lie; the legendary snowstorms that had blanketed the region since the time of the founding of Equestria had all but disappeared, vanished as completely as every other breeze in that still, empty world. She had noticed it when she had searched the northernmost areas of Equestria, but she had not brought it up with her friends before then.

“Even if the storms are gone,” said the books, “it's still too cold up there for you to deal with! It's the coldest place in the world, for goodness sake! Every expedition that's ever tried to explore the region has confirmed it: it's just too cold for ponies to survive up there, even without taking the storms into account.”

“If they made it up there, then I could,” said the mare.

“Every one of those expeditions had at least a dozen ponies,” said the books. “They had the best explorers, the best survivalists, the best minds in Equestria behind them, and they just barely made it back...and some didn't make it back at all.”

Those words sent a chill up the mare's spine, despite her earlier bravado.

“You can't do this, Rainbow,” said the books. “You know you can't.”

“I have to,” said the mare.

“Do you want to freeze to death!?!” shouted the books.

“Maybe!” snapped the mare unthinkingly. “Er...no! I don't know!”

The mare angrily stomped away from the table, away from her friends. She stopped after a few paces, closing her eyes and breathing deeply.

“Twilight,” she said, “I have to do this. I have to do this because...what else is there? Where else can I go? What else can I do?”

A long silence filled the room, interrupted only by the pounding of the mare's heart and the rhythm of her increasingly shaky breaths.

“You could stop,” said the books, her tone gentle, without anger or judgment.

The mare's eyes flew open, and she swiftly turned, giving the books a confused look.

“Wha— ” the mare began.

“You could stop,” repeated the books. “You could stop this...all of this. Stop fighting. Stop trying to fix things. Stop forcing yourself to do things you know you can't do.”

The mare closed her mouth and hung her head. “I can't do that,” she said softly.

“Yes, you can,” said the books.

“How?” said the mare, looking back to her friends with desperation in her eyes. “How could I just...give up like that? Give up on Equestria, give up on everypony, give up on you! And how could you even think that I would?”

The mare stood there, her chest heaving, her limbs quivering, and her eyes boring a hole through her saddlebags.

Eventually, the books spoke again. “Because you already have,” she said.

The mare's eyes slowly widened. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but found her tongue as limp and useless as a sack of moldy hay.

“You're a smart mare, Rainbow,” said the books. “You know the truth. You knew it a long time ago. You just need to accept it.”

The mare's breaths quickened, and her mouth suddenly felt very dry. She turned around, and clamped her eyes shut.

“Accept what?” she asked, knowing full well what the answer would be.

“Accept...that we're gone,” said the books. “We're gone...and there's nothing you can do about it.”

The mare felt the sniffles work their way up her throat, leaking out of her nose. She felt the tears welling up behind her eyelids, threatening to break through. She felt her heart, that weary little heart worn down by a thousand sorrows, finally break, crumbling to a fine dust that fell at her hooves.

No.

The mare threw back her head, parted her lips, and let loose a bellow stronger and fiercer than any storm that had ever raged over that world.

“No!”

Her lungs burned by the time she had finished emptying them, yet she ignored the pain, immediately refilling them and continuing.

“No, no, no! No!”

The mare flew forward in a blind rage, throwing herself against the nearby wall and pounding her hooves against it.

“No, no, no, no, no, no!”

Books rattled in their places as the tremendous impacts of those hooves shook those heavy oaken walls.

“No, no!”

She tore herself from the wall and rushed towards the heavy table at the room's center. A powerful kick sent that heavy slab of wood flying towards the opposite wall, scattering the mess covering its surface. The table broke as it collided with the wall, then fell to the floor beneath.

“No!”

The blackboard was next. She cracked it in two, its lifeless halves clattering to the floor.

“No, no, no, no!”

She threw herself about, stamping and kicking her way through the clutter that covered the floor.

“No!”

Her hooves found the wall again, the same wall where the marked map hung, glaring down at her. She grasped its edge, and with a single motion, ripped the map in half from side to side. As she did, one of her hooves slipped on an unfortunately placed book, sending her toppling down towards the floor. She didn't realize what was happening until a split second before her head collided with the hard wood beneath her.

Pain arced through her body like a bolt of lightning, only slightly less painful than that which had already consumed her broken heart. She lay there, her body quivering and her exclamations finally stifled by shuddering breaths and grunts of pain. The half of the map still attached to the wall fell off, floating through the air before coming to land on top of her, covering her face.

The mare clamped her eyes shut in a fruitless attempt to hold back the tears that ran like a river down her cheeks. Her sobs flowed just as freely, mixing with her grunts and her whispered pleas to form a sound truly harrowing to listen to.

“No...no...no...”

She cried. She cried for her home. She cried for her family. She cried for her friends. Most of all, she cried for herself, the little lost mare who was well and truly alone in that big, empty world.

Above, the sky of that eternal morning, a plane of blue that expanded outwards in all directions for as far as the eye could see. Below, another plane of blue, almost as far-reaching, but of a much darker shade, its surface shining as the sun's rays kissed it. That plane stretched out to the horizon far in the distance, but as it came closer, it ended at the spot where it met a strip of white sand. The border between that blue and white was as solid and still as if it were carved from stone. It did not wax or wane, did not advance or recede, did not move even an inch. It was as lifeless as the rest of that vast expanse of blue water that had once been called the sea.

A short ways up, on a little grassy ledge in a rocky cliff face halfway between the sky above and the sea below, sat the mare. She stared out towards the horizon, at the exact spot where those two planes of blue met, as if trying to see the infinitesimal line separating them. As she sat there on her perch, she was as quiet and still as everything else in that chilling landscape, the only signs that life still flowed through her veins being the subtle rise and fall of her chest and the occasional blink of her heavy eyelids.

Behind her, off to the side a bit, lay a set of empty saddlebags. Carefully arranged on the grass before those bags were their former contents: a prettily painted birdhouse, a basket of apples, a spool of fine thread, a brightly colored balloon, and a stack of old books. Each item was adorned with the piece of golden jewelry it had been given long ago, the gems set into those pieces still as dull and greyish as they had been then. Those once-beautiful artifacts paled in comparison to their counterpart hanging from the mare's neck, that necklace's gem still as red as it had ever been.

“So...Rainbow Dash,” said the balloon, “you wanna...play twenty questions? I promise I'll choose something easy this time. Or...we could do charades. Or I spy. What do you say?”

The silence continued, the mare giving no sign that she had heard.

“Pinkie,” said the thread, her tone tinged with sorrowful resignation.

The balloon sighed. “I know,” she said, “but we have to try something. I can't stand seeing her like this.”

“What can we do though?” said the apples. “What's it gonna take to get through to her?”

“I don't know,” said the birdhouse, her voice trembling, “but I really wish I did. I don't know if I can take another day of this. I...I just want so badly to help her.”

“We all do,” said the books firmly. “Seeing her like this...it hurts me as much as it hurts you. I wish there were something we could do, but...I'm starting to think that...maybe we've already done too much.”

“What ever do you mean?” said the thread.

“You know what I mean,” said the books. “You know why we're here...why we're still here. We've done all we can to help her, but...now she needs to help herself...and I think we're getting in the way of that. I think...there's only one more thing we can do for her.”

A long pause followed.

“You're right,” said the thread softly. “You're absolutely right. It's...what she needs, I'm afraid.”

“Consarn it,” grumbled the apples. “I'd give my left hoof for another way, but...I reckon you're right.”

“Oh...if this is what it takes to put a smile on her face again,” said the balloon, “then...okay.”

A moment of expectant silence passed.

“Fluttershy?” said the books in a gentle tone.

The sound of soft sniffling filled the air. “I...I don't know if I can...” said the birdhouse.

“Fluttershy,” said the books. “Trust me. It's time.”

The sniffling continued for a moment more, then slowly faded away. “Alright,” said the birdhouse. “Alright.”

Another moment of silence passed, the dreaded calm before the storm.

“Rainbow Dash,” said the books.

The mare said nothing.

“I know you can hear me,” said the books, doing her best to keep her voice from trembling. “If you don't want to talk...fine...but listen to me.”

The mare said nothing.

The books took a deep breath to steady herself, then spoke again. “We're leaving,” she said.

The mare's ears, drooping low atop her head, suddenly perked up.

“We're leaving,” said the books, “and...we're not coming back. I hate to do this; we hate to do this...but it's what we have to do. We've stayed with you so long because...because we love you...and we love being with you...but not like this. It hurts me so much to see you like this, to just sit here and watch you waste away...and it's hurting you too. You might not believe it, but it is. I want you to be happy Rainbow; I want that more than anything...so do all of us. I wish you wanted it too. I wish you wanted something more than just sitting here, day after day. Maybe if you did...things would be different. If you did...maybe we could help you...but as it stands...we're just holding you back. That's why we're—”

“I want...” came the weak whisper of the only voice that had not yet spoken.

The books paused, unsure of what she had heard. “Rainbow?” she said.

As the mare's friends looked upon her, they noticed her statuesque form trembling almost imperceptibly.

“I want...to be happy,” said the mare.

Slowly, the mare turned her head, looking back over her shoulder at her friends. Her lips trembled, and her cheeks were wet with fresh tears.

“I want to be happy,” she said, her voice barely more than the whistle of warm air past her lips.

Her eyes clamped shut as the first sobs made their way up her throat. She bowed her head, allowing it to fall down and come to rest on the grass beside her.

“I just...” she began, speaking through her choking sobs. “I just...want things to be how they used to be. I want Equestria back. I want my family back. I want you back. I need you back.”

The mare sobbed to herself for a long while, shedding the last few tears she had in her worn body.

“No, you don't,” said the books softly. “Rainbow...look at me. Look at me.”

It took a few moments, but eventually, the mare was able to lift her heavy head and force her sopping eyes open to look back at her friend.

“You don't need us,” said the books. “You don't need us to be happy.”

“Yes, I do!” said the mare, her voice cracking from the force of the exclamation.

“No, you don't,” said the books. “You keep telling yourself that...but it's just not true.”

The mare's head fell again, and a new wave of tears flowed.

“Rainbow...do you really want to be happy again?” said the books.

The mare's mouth was full of sobs, so she merely nodded.

“Then you know what you have to do,” said the books. “You have to move on.”

The mare shook her head. “No!” she managed to force out.

“Yes,” said the books. “Do you really want to spend the rest of your life here...here in this big, empty world...alone?”

The mare gulped down cool air to soothe herself while shaking her head.

“Then you have to move on,” said the books. “Move on from this place. Move on from this world. Move on from us. That's the only way you'll ever be happy again.”

The mare managed to calm her trembling lips enough to speak once again. “I...I can't,” she said. “I just can't.”

A moment of silence passed.

“Rainbow,” said the books, “you are the most stubborn mare I've ever met...and I love you for that. We love you for that. You're such a fighter. You hate to lose...and you hate to give up. Even after all this time...you're still holding on...holding on to Equestria, holding on to everypony you love. You truly deserve that necklace...but...even the most loyal ponies need to take care of themselves.”

When the mare's sobs had diminished to shuddering breaths, she opened her eyes and looked back at her friend.

“Do you remember the day we met?” said the books.

The mare reached back into her memories, seeing that long-gone day as if it had happened just the day before. For the first time in a long time, the mare's lips stretched into a small smile.

“I remember how frustrated I was on that day,” said the books. “I remember how anxious I was...how afraid I was...and how happy I was. I didn't realize it at the time, but...that was the best day of my life. Getting to meet you...to meet all of you...that was the best thing that's ever happened to me. And every day since then...I've been happy...thanks to you...thanks to them...thanks to everypony I've met, everywhere I've gone, and every beautiful moment I've been fortunate enough to experience.

“That's what I want for you, Rainbow. I want every day of the rest of your life to be filled with happiness. I want you meet new people, meet new friends, and make each other as happy as we've made each other. I want you to see new places, do new things, and enjoy everything your life has to offer. I want you to find a new home...wherever that might be.”

“Twilight,” said the mare, slowly gathering her thoughts, “you...you want me to just...forget about it...all of it...forget about you?”

“No!” said the books immediately. “Don't forget. Never forget...because I'm not going to forget either. I'm going to remember every precious moment we ever spent together. I'm going to cherish every day I got to spend here in this world...with all of you. I'm going to remember...but I'm not going to let it hold me back...just like you shouldn't let it hold you back. You have a wonderful, beautiful life, and I'm so grateful that I got to be a part of it...if only for a little while. That life doesn't end here...not if you don't want it to.”

“I...I don't want it to,” said the mare. “I really don't...but...why? Why does it have to be this way? Why do I have to leave you...leave everything? Why can't things just...stay the same?”

“Rainbow...you know why,” said the books. “Things change. Every day brings something different. On some days, we get to meet our best friends. On other days...we have to say goodbye to those friends. I never used to think about that...think about the day I would have to say goodbye to you. I don't think you did either. Some ponies are lucky...they get to see those days coming...and do what they can to prepare for them. For other ponies...those days are as sudden as a knock on the door. Not everyone's ready for it when it happens...but it still has to happen.”

For a long while, no one spoke. The mare sat there, her head bowed, her face blank, her eyes staring unseeingly at the ground beside her.

“What do I do?” said the mare at last.

“Close your eyes,” said the books.

The mare obeyed.

“I want you to think about everything you love about this world,” said the books. “Think about your home. Think about your family. Think about your friends.”

The mare did as she was told, and her mind was suddenly filled with countless images, countless sensations, countless feelings both joyous and painful. She felt the wind on her face, she smelled the scent of grass, she saw the brilliant light of the sun. She felt the strong embrace of her father, as well as the tender warmth of her mother. She saw the smiles of her friends, heard their laughter, felt their hooves on hers. She brought it all before her, everything and everyone that she would never see, never experience again.

It hurt her so much.

“Now,” said the books, “gather it all up. Take all of it, every scrap, and take it deep within you.”

The mare gathered up that mountain of memories on her back, almost buckling under the sheer weight of them all.

“Take it into your heart,” said the books. “Take it to the deepest place inside of you, where you'll always be able to find it.”

The mare found that place deep inside of her, a tender spot at the center of her being, a spot as safe and secure as the strongest of vaults.

“Put it there...all of it,” said the books. “Close the door, and lock it with a key...so that you'll never lose a single bit of it.”

The mare's face contorted with strain as she forced a lifetime's worth of love, of hate, of happiness, of sorrow, and a thousand other things into that vault. She took hold of its great, heavy door, then slowly pushed against it. Her heart pounded in her chest and her breathing quickened as she struggled against its weight, throwing herself against it with all her might. Slowly but surely, the door swung closed, a single soft click sounding as it was finally shut.

The mare shuddered, releasing a breath she hadn't realized she had been holding. She sat there panting, feeling the absence of the weight that she had been carrying with her ever since she had woken up on that never-ending morning. In place of that weight, she felt, deep down inside of her, a gentle warmth that filled her chilled, empty heart, granting it a strength that it had not felt in a long time. With her heart full, and her mind empty of the countless sorrows that had been lingering there, the mare opened her eyes, and looked upon that world again.

“Well done,” said the books, a smile in her voice. “I knew you could do it.”

The mare marveled at the incredible feeling of freedom she felt. For so long, she had lived with the iron shackles of grief weighing her down; all of that was gone now. She could still recall it, of course, still feel the echoes of that pain lingering within her, but it was dull, muted, and masked by the love that had birthed that grief in the first place. She could feel those feelings deep within her, but they no longer filled her mind, clouding her thoughts and keeping her trapped in her past. Now, she was free to look beyond that, to her present, and to her future.

She smiled...and she laughed. It was only the faintest of chuckles, but it was a greater mirth than she had felt in a long time indeed. As she laughed, she brought her stiff limbs out from underneath her, planting her hooves on the ground and slowly standing. Her legs wobbled beneath her, but after a few tricky moments, she managed to get up on her hooves again, raising herself to her full height. She looked out at the horizon as her laughter faded away, its warmth melting back into her heart.

“Twilight,” she said, slowly turning around to face her friends. “Thank you.”

“Don't thank me,” said the books. “It was you. It was all you.”

The mare raised a hoof and placed it against her chest, feeling her heartbeat.

“Hold onto it,” said the books. “That way...it'll go with you wherever you go. You'll have it all with you...and you'll never lose it.”

The mare took a deep breath, then released it. “I will,” she said.

“Good,” said the books.

The mare looked down at her friends, realizing that she suddenly had all the freedom in the world, but had no idea what to do with it.

“So...what happens now?” she said.

“That depends,” said the books. “Are you ready to go?”

The mare raised her head, looking up at the big, blue sky above her. She looked at the sun, whose familiar warmth no longer made her feel uneasy. She looked down at the earth, the rocks, and the grass beneath her hooves. She looked out at the water, and looked out at the horizon, wondering what lay beyond it.

“Yeah,” she said. “I'm ready.”

“In that case,” said the books, “I think...it's time we wrapped things up.”

The mare turned back to her friends, a puzzled look on her face.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“Turn around,” said the books. “See for yourself.”

Hesitantly, the mare turned, staring confusedly out at the water she had just been looking at. She looked left, she looked right, and she looked up, but could not see whatever it was her friend was referring to. It was not until she looked down that she saw it.

Far below her, down at the bottom of the rocky cliff side, she could clearly see the white sand of the beach being slowly covered by the advancing edge of the water. Her heart skipped a beat, the mare thinking for a moment that the movement was the beginnings of a wave, but she quickly realized that that was not the case. The water advanced, it rose up the beach, but it did not recede again. It was no wave that was coming, but rather a single, continuous rising of the sea, only noticeable from the land it swallowed up.

“T-Twilight!” said the mare, glancing back at her friends. “T-The water...it's...”

“It's alright, Rainbow,” said the books calmly. “Fly further up. Fly further in.”

The mare looked back down at the water, which had already consumed the entirety of the beach. The water level rose steadily, but swiftly, making its way up the cliffs towards her. By her reckoning, it would reach her within a minute, but she didn't feel like sticking around to see for herself.

As quick as lightning, the mare went to her friends, gathered them all up in her saddlebags, then slung her bags across her back. As soon as they were securely fastened, the mare spread her wings and launched herself into the air with a powerful flap. She did as her friend said, flying further up and further inland, soon reaching the top of the sloping cliffs and coming down to rest on the edge. She didn't linger there long, however, as a quick look back down showed that the water was still rising at a worrying rate.

“Twilight?” she said.

“Further up,” said the books. “Further in.”

The mare tore her gaze away from the water, looking back at the light forest that began just a short distance away from the cliff. She took a deep breath, spread her wings, then took off into the air once again. Within seconds, she had reached the treeline, the mare soaring swiftly over the dark green foliage beneath her. She flew on for a few moments, then came to a stop in midair, hovering in place. For a second, she hesitated, then slowly turned to look behind her.

She saw the forest stretching out beneath her for a ways, and in the distance, she could just make out the edge of the cliffs. For a few long moments, that was all she saw. Soon enough, however, she heard the low, wet gurgle of water rushing over rock, and saw the sea rise up over the edge, spilling over it and onto the land beyond it.

“Further up,” said the books. “Further in.”

The mare's heart pounded against her chest, and her breaths came faster and heavier, but she did as she was told. She turned tail and flew as fast as lightning away from the coast, heading towards the heartland of Equestria. Miles and miles of forest swept by her, those ancient trees blending into a thick, green blanket as she rose higher and higher. No matter how high she flew, however, she could not escape the deep roaring sound behind her that grew steadily louder with every passing moment. She continued to fly, even as her anxious heart compelled her to glance back over her shoulder.

A great plane of blue swept over the land, led by a tremendous, rolling wave bigger than any she had ever seen or heard of. It towered over even the tallest of those enormous trees beneath her, swallowing them up as easily as one would swallow a sunflower seed. It stretched out left and right as far as her eyes could see, slowly filling up her entire field of view with blue as it approached. All the while, that great beast continued to sound its call, the horrible noise of crashing water, snapping trees, and cracking rock filling her ears like the boom of a hundred thunderclaps.

“Further up,” said the books, her voice sounding out as clear as day through the cacophony. “Further in.”

The mare forced herself to look away from the encroaching water, turning her gaze forward, but that did not prevent her from hearing it. She flapped her wings faster and faster, desperately fleeing from it, but that horrible sound never left her. To her sensitive ears, ears that had been trapped in a world of silence for what felt like an eternity, it was indisputably the loudest thing she had ever heard.

The beautiful Equestrian countryside stretched out beneath her, but she could not see it, so quickly did those fields, those mountains, and those cozy little villages zip past her. She didn't know how fast she was flying, she didn't know how much ground she had covered, she didn't know how long ago she had been perched on that little ledge on the cliff. That time passed to her like a dream, the mare aware only of the burning of her weary muscles, the throbbing of her heart, and the deafening roar of the water behind her. It wasn't until she saw that little collection of old wooden buildings nestled in its familiar grassy spot next to the river in the distance that she finally woke up again.

She rushed to meet it, and soon found herself floating in midair high above the little town that had given her so many wonderful memories over the years. Even with those houses and shops as small to her eyes as match heads, she had no trouble recognizing those familiar haunts: the bakery, the dress shop, the old, red barn, the cozy little cottage, and the tall oak tree at the center of it all. In spite of everything, she smiled, and had the sudden urge to fly down towards that town, to feel its earth beneath her hooves, to flutter down those familiar streets once again. She would not get that chance, as her brief moment of nostalgia was drowned out by the unending roar of water from behind.

Turning around, the mare gazed back at it, her heart skipping a beat as she beheld its sheer enormity. The wave had continued to grow as the sea had continued to rise, easily swelling to a hundred times its previous size. It was as tall as skyscraper, as tall as a mountain, as tall as the sky! Even far in the distance, the mare could sense its incredible power; she could feel it's crushing weight on her skin, feel its chill in her bones, and hear its terrible roar fill her ears. Such a climactic force, she realized, nothing could withstand.

She looked back down at her home far below, those little homes seeming like ants sitting in the path of a rampaging dragon. In her mind, she knew what was coming; she could see it as clear as day. Still, she couldn't help but frantically look around, as if hoping to find some miraculous solution lying there waiting for her. She did not find what she was looking for, but what she did see as she gazed out at the world around her made her forget all about any sort of hopeless rescue attempt.

Behind her, in the opposite direction of the great wave she had been fleeing, she saw a long, thick line of blue rising up over the horizon, a blue as awesome and powerful as the one in front of her. It too was still far in the distance, but she could see it rushing towards her, devouring the land just as greedily as its twin. As it raced to meet her, that wave cried out loudly, joining the other in a two-part harmony of destruction that battered her ears from both directions.

“Twilight!” said the mare, frantically looking back and forth between them. “Twilight!”

“Further up,” said the books calmly. “Further in.”

The mare looked around confusedly, first at the wave to her left, then the wave to her right, then at the little town far beneath her. It wasn't until she turned her gaze to the heavens that her confusion vanished. High overhead, higher even than the crests of those titanic walls of water, was a little tuft of cloud. It was far above her, yet she immediately recognized its familiar shape, not even stopping to wonder how it had managed to float so high up. With a flap of her wings, she was off, shooting straight up into the air, leaving the world below behind.

Higher and higher she climbed, using every last bit of strength she had left in her to reach that cloudy refuge. All the while, she heard the approach of the waves, their roars not diminishing even as she put distance between them and herself. The cloud overhead grew steadily larger as she drew closer to it, changing from a speck to a large, healthy swath strong enough to bear the burden it carried. No waterfalls of liquid rainbow poured over its edges, but she didn't care; she was just happy to see her home again, see it for the first time since she had left it in search of the little tortoise she loved so much.

It took what felt like forever to reach it, and the mare almost thought that her wings would give out before she did, but eventually, she managed to haul herself up and over the edge of the cloud. She threw herself down onto its plush, poofy surface, taking a moment to catch her breath before raising her head and looking up at the cozy little cloud-house before her. It was just as she remembered it, its swooping swirls, its tall columns, its wide windows, and that same old door all being right where they ought to be.

She did not give herself long to enjoy the familiar sight, the mare soon standing and walking to the edge of her little cloud. She gasped as she looked down over the edge and saw what remained of the world she had left behind. Far below, two vast planes of blue rushed to meet each other, one from the east, and one from the west, each one stretching out to the north and south as far as her eyes could see. Between them lay a single strip of green and brown, a strip that shrunk with every passing second. Right in the middle of that green, right under her hooves, sat her home, patiently awaiting its fate.

She didn't know what to do. She didn't know what she could do. Stupefied as she was, all she could manage was to watch helplessly as those roiling waves grew closer, and listen as their thunderous peal grew louder. They were only ten miles apart now. Five miles now. Four. Three. Two. One.

Zero.

The sky itself quaked as countless trillions of gallons of water slammed together, their immeasurable force enough to almost knock the mare off of her cloud. The world below exploded into a frothing sea of white foam as the two sides met, each one climbing higher and higher in an effort to outdo its rival. If the sight of that terrifying, awe-inspiring spectacle wasn't enough, the sound of it was enough to stagger the poor mare. She covered her ears and clamped her eyes shut as she was subjected to that horrible roaring, sloshing, sucking sound that filled every inch of air in that sky. It sounded as if the world were being torn apart.

She huddled there, clinging to herself and her cloud, riding out the waves of sound that slammed against her. Her ears were battered, those noises leaving an echo within them that continued to reverberate through her skull, even as they themselves slowly began to fade. The mare didn't know how long she lay like that, weathering that storm; all she knew is that, eventually, the ringing in her ears and the huffs and puffs of her own breaths were the only sounds that she could hear. She tentatively uncovered her ears and opened her eyes, looking around at her cloud for a moment. When she saw that everything was where it had been before, she summoned her courage, gulped, then lowered her gaze over the edge once again.

She stared unblinkingly at the plane of blue beneath her, a single endless sea that stretched out to the horizon in every direction. As she watched it, she saw its surface flex and flow, the aftershocks of the calamitous collision that had birthed it sending small waves rolling east and west. Seconds ticked by, then minutes, maybe even hours; she didn't know. The mare watched silently as those waves were slowly absorbed back into the greater mass and the surface of that sea calmed, eventually growing as still as stone.

The mare sat back on her haunches, looking out at the world of blue that surrounded her. Blue below, blue above, and her, sitting on her little perch halfway between them.

“It's gone,” she whispered. “It's all gone.”

“Is it?” came the voice of the books.

The mare lowered her head, and a moment later, raised a hoof to her chest. She closed her eyes, concentrating on the steady beat of her heart, and the warmth that still enveloped it. From that familiar warmth flowed feelings, sensations, even memories. She saw in her minds eye a whole rainbow of colors, not just blue. She saw bright green grass and the warm yellow of straw. She saw juicy, red apples and vibrant purple wildflowers. She saw all of this, just as she saw a thousand other things, saw them as clearly as if they were right before her face. She felt it all as if she were clasping it in her hooves. She knew it all as well as she knew herself.

“No,” the mare whispered. “It's not.”

The mare opened her eyes, staring out at the horizon for a long moment. Reaching behind her, she carefully removed her saddlebags, setting them down on the cloud beside her and opening them. A few moments later, she was looking upon the familiar forms of her friends, the five of them dutifully sitting beside her, watching over the mare they loved so much. She smiled down at them, and they smiled back.

“You've had a long day,” said the books, “but it's time for this day to end.”

The mare was about to ask what her friend meant, but before she could speak, she noticed something that stilled her tongue. The spool of thread, the basket of apples, the books, all of them, they all cast shadows down onto the fluffy white surface of the cloud beside them. She didn't notice it at first, but as she focused her gaze on those shadows, she saw clearly that they were moving, slowly shrinking, receding into the forms that cast them. Her own shadow had begun to vanish as well, sneaking back underneath her as she sat there. As realization seeped into her weary mind, the mare slowly turned her head and gazed up at the sky.

Hanging there above her head, higher than she ever could have flown, was the sun...and it was moving. It was strange that, of all the things she had seen that day, that bizarre, unending day, that the mere movement of the sun, something she had witnessed thousands of times before, would be the most shocking thing to her eyes. The mare sat there, her eyes wide and her mouth agape, watching as that light floated westward across the sky, moving swiftly, but steadily. In less than a minute, it had reached its midday zenith, banishing the shadows of the mare and her friends. It did not pause there, however, as it immediately began its descent towards the western horizon. She watched it as it neared its final destination, watched as the sky above her was painted red and orange, and the great sea beneath her shone. She watched it as it leaned down to kiss the sea, then slowly slipped beneath the horizon line. She watched as it shone down its warm, beautiful light onto that world one last time, before it too was swallowed up by the sea. She continued to watch, not budging until the last traces of red had faded, and the blackness of night had covered the sky.

Finally, she tore her gaze from the horizon, looking up at the darkness above. She saw the stars clearly, those familiar sparkles burning as brightly as ever, shining their pale light down on her. It took her a moment to realize what was missing from the picture: the moon. She combed that starry sky, but could detect no trace of it, not even the shadowy form of a new moon. The stars alone decorated the blanket of night, but that would not be so for long.

As the mare watched, a single star abandoned its post, slowly floating down towards the horizon. It rapidly gained speed as it fell, that shooting star hurtling out of the sky faster than anything she had ever seen. It quickly reached the edge of the sky, the mare expecting it to pass beyond that border without ceremony. She was surprised to see that, just a split second after it finally vanished, a flash of light appeared in the sky just above the horizon, looking like the spark of a distant firework. A few moments later, the mare's sensitive ears detected a faint sizzling sound echoing through the air, like the sound of a hot brand immersed in water.

The mare had no time to ponder this, as she quickly noticed another of the countless stars overhead falling as well. She saw one, then two, then five, then a dozen, then a hundred of them, each one of those shooting stars plummeting towards the horizon via the shortest route. As each one sank below the horizon, it too sent up a faint spark that lit up the sky for a brief moment, and sent out its sizzling, cracking cry that eventually made its way to the mare's ears. She sat there, gaping at the awe-inspiring spectacle before her, at the constant rain of stars from the sky, at the ring of flaring lights that circled the world, and the soft, gentle symphony of sizzles.

How long it lasted, she couldn't have said, only that it did not last forever. Those stars were many, but they were not infinite, and before long, the last of their number had abandoned its home in the sky and begun its descent. She watched it as it fell, rushing to join its fellows wherever they had gone. She watched it cross the horizon, and watched it add its light to the show. She watched as that light, and all of the other lingering sparkles that danced along the horizon, slowly faded away. She listened as the sizzles and crackles in her ear grew quieter, then stopped completely, leaving her in silence once more.

Darkness surrounded her. Above, below, left, right, north, south, east, and west, there was nothing but a single, unbroken, unending void. She peered out into that darkness, straining to see even the slightest trace of anything, but found nothing. Her world, for all intents and purposes, consisted solely of she herself, her friends, and a tiny area around her, an area which she quickly realized was still illuminated, albeit by a light no brighter than that of a candle. She looked around, searching for whatever could be casting that light, and traced it back to the golden necklace wrapped around her neck. The small red gem set into that necklace was shining with the faintest light she had ever seen, but in that world of unending blackness, it was as bright as the sun itself. The mare took in her surroundings in that feeble light, its radius extending only a few yards away from where she sat. She saw the cloud beneath her, saw her friends still sitting beside her, and a short ways away, at the very edge of the light, she could see the faint outline of her front door.

“Rainbow,” said the books. “It's time.”

The mare looked down at her friends, then back up at the door. She hesitated, then took a tentative step towards it. This step was followed by another, and another, and soon, she had made her way over to the familiar portal, poring over its surface as if for the first time. She looked down at her door handle, its polished surface shining in the light of her necklace. She slowly raised a hoof, placed it on the handle, and gave it a turn.

It was locked.

“Rainbow,” said the books.

The mare turned, looking back at her friends, their forms just visible at the far edge of the light. She stepped away from the door, walking back over to them.

“It's time for us to say goodbye,” said the books.

The mare looked around at them, at the balloon, at the thread, at the apples, at the birdhouse, and at the books, the ones who had been her companions throughout that whole painful ordeal.

“Can't you...can't you come with me?” said the mare.

“It's your door, Rainbow,” said the books. “You're the one who has to open it...you and only you.”

The mare glanced back at the door, then back at her friends. She took slow, steady breaths to stifle the sobs brewing in her throat.

“Will I ever see you again?” said the mare.

All was silent for a long moment.

“Yes,” said the books. “You'll see us every day...and every night.”

“You'll see us when you wake up in the mornin',” said the apples, “and when you go to bed in the evenin'.”

“You'll see us when you're happy,” said the balloon, “and when you're sad.”

“You'll see us when you love,” said the thread, “and when you hate.”

“You'll see us when you're with friends,” said the birdhouse, “and when you're all alone.”

Tears leaked from the mare's clenched-shut eyes, her lips trembled, and her breaths came in short sniffles and shaky sobs. She forced her eyes open again, looking down at her friends.

“I'm gonna miss you,” she said, her voice a shaky whisper. “I'm gonna miss you so much.”

“We're going to miss you too,” said the books, her tears audible in her voice.

The mare quickly reached down and pulled the five of them close to her, wrapping them in a tight embrace. She sobbed loudly as she nuzzled them, the sound traveling to the far edges of that empty world. That sound was soon joined by those of more trembling voices, each one whispering a myriad of parting words as they added their sobs and sniffles to hers. Pledges to love, to remember, and to cherish filled the mare's ears, and filled her aching heart.

When she had cried her final tear and choked out her final sob, the mare opened her misty eyes, looking down at her friends. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she slowly, carefully, reverently even, lowered them back down onto the cloud before her. She looked around at all of them, taking one last look at the most important mares in her life. She looked at the golden jewelry each of them wore, five pieces of one set, five parts of a single whole...only missing the sixth.

The mare lowered her gaze to the necklace she wore, then slowly reached back and unclasped it from her neck. She held it before her, staring long and hard into the glowing red gem it bore, before finally lowering it down to the cloud. She laid it there, right next to its fellows, and left it, ensuring that those six would never be parted.

“Goodbye,” said the mare.

“Goodbye,” said the balloon.

“Goodbye,” said the thread.

“Goodbye,” said the apples.

“Goodbye,” said the birdhouse.

“Goodbye,” said the books, and spoke no more.

The mare looked down at them, unwilling to tear her eyes away, even as she felt the chill of that silent, empty world close in around her. She couldn't feel that chill, she couldn't hear that silence, and she couldn't see that emptiness, for they were all drowned out by the feel of soft, warm bodies embracing her, the sound of laughter and loving words, and the sight of smiles on familiar faces.

She carried those sensations, those beautiful, priceless feelings with her in her heart, in her mind, and in every last fiber of her being. She carried them with her as she rose to her hooves, then forced her body to turn. She carried them with her as she slowly advanced towards her door, letting the faint light guide her to it. She carried them with her as she stood before it, then raised a hoof to the handle. She carried them with her as she grasped that handle, turned it, then pushed the door open.

The mare reflexively winced as the door opened and a flood of bright white light spilled out of it, momentarily blinding her. As her eyes slowly adjusted, she gazed into that light, her eyes and her mouth opening wide in awe at what she saw. A strange feeling of serenity came over her as she looked into that light and felt its warm caress on her skin. That feeling only increased as her hooves slowly moved, stepping over that threshold one at a time, carrying the mare through the door, and into the world beyond.

A few moments later, that door swung closed again, its light vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. Before it lay that tiny little world within a sea of nothingness, lit only by the faint light of a little red gem. As the seconds passed, however, even that light faded, the world shrinking around it as it grew smaller and weaker. That light shrunk until all that remained was that little red gem surrounded by a sea of black. As that red faded, turning dull and grayish, that light, the last light of that world, was finally snuffed out.

A New Day

A warm, gentle breeze wafted through the air, caressing her soft skin and making her long, beautiful hair sway serenely. She flexed her powerful, sculpted muscles and ruffled the beautiful feathered wings on her back as that warmth seeped into her flesh. The long, green grass beneath her danced under the touch of that wind, tickling her pretty little hooves. She breathed slowly and deeply, taking in the scents of grass, of sweet wildflowers, and of trees that were carried to her nose.

Those sharp eyes of hers slowly pored over her surroundings, taking in the sight of the little meadow she found herself in. She saw the thick, wild grass, and she saw the clusters of bright petals that dotted the landscape, painting it in reds, in blues, in yellows, and in every other color imaginable. Flying amongst those flowers, floating lazily and carefree, she saw little buzzing bees and elegant butterflies helping themselves to their sweet nectar. A short distance ahead of her, she could see the meadow end where a forest of small, friendly trees sprung up from the earth. As she listened, she heard the melodic twittering of birds within those branches, and the scampering of little furry creatures.

She leaned her head back and gazed up at the bright, blue sky above her, looking at the clusters of white, fluffy clouds that slowly drifted over her head. Hanging high above those clouds, shining its soft, soothing light down onto the world below, was a big, beautiful sun.

She had never seen a sun shine so brightly, never felt such a warmth from its kiss. She had never seen a sky so blue, or seen clouds so white. She had never heard such sweet notes, or seen such adorable little insects. She had never seen such colors, such reds, such blues, such yellows and greens. She had never smelled anything so satisfying, never felt anything so perfect, as that which she experienced in that moment.

She sighed a sigh of complete and utter contentment, and her lips came together, stretching into a warm smile. Her eyes slowly fell closed, and she stood there silently, listening to the sweet sound of life.

One of her hooves slowly lifted off of the ground, making its way to her chest. She pressed it firmly against her skin, feeling the steady rhythm of her heart beating deep within her. She felt the warmth that lay within that little heart, the warmth that lay at the core of her being. That warmth spread slowly throughout her entire body, from the crown of her head to the tip of her tail, filling her with its love and its hate, its joy and its sorrow, its grief and its hope. She could feel its sweet caress and its firm embrace as surely as a hoof resting on her shoulder.

She opened her eyes, turned her head to the side, and looked at the one that hoof belonged to.

There was Twilight Sparkle, that dorky little unicorn looking back at her with a smile on her face. Beside her stood Pinkie Pie, and Applejack, and Rarity, and more. There were dozens of them, hundreds of them, countless thousands of them standing there behind her, each one of those faces smiling back at her. She looked the other way and saw the same sight awaiting her there. There stood Fluttershy, and her mother, and her father, and a whole nother host of faces looking back at her. There was Apple Bloom, and Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo. There was Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. There was Lyra, and Bon Bon, and Derpy. There was Spike, and Big McIntosh, and Granny Smith.

And there, standing at her hooves, smiling his wrinkled smile back up at her, was the little green tortoise named Tank.

“Rainbow,” said Twilight. “Are you ready?”

She looked at Twilight, looked at them all, then looked ahead at the beautiful world that lay before her hooves.

“Yeah. It's a new day. Let's make it a good one,” said Rainbow Dash.

Chasing Ghosts

Silence hung over the world like a blanket...a blanket of lead...thick, heavy, and stifling. It hung over the fields of bright green grass dotted with wildflowers. It hung over the roofs of quaint little houses and shops. It hung over the streets, it hung over the trees, it hung over the air itself. Neither the drop of a pin nor the scurrying of a mouse disrupted that oppressive quiet. Not a single sound was there...save for the frantic flapping of wings, and the voice of a little blue pegasus.

“Hello!?!” shouted the mare as she dashed through the streets, her wings whipping up the dust from the ground as she passed. “Anypony!?!”

Her brow was caked in sweat, and her heart pounded against her chest, threatening to break free. A constant shiver ran through her, a sign of the adrenaline pumping through her body, brought on either from physical exertion, or from deep, existential dread. Still she pressed onward. Still she pushed her wings to the limit, flying up and down those empty streets, back and forth through those quiet neighborhoods, around and around that placid little town.

“Hello!” she bellowed, the word just as forceful the hundredth time as it had been the first time.

Her words fell on nonexistent ears, however, the only response she received being the soft echo of her own voice through the nearby alleyways. Her ears strained to hear anything through that deafening silence; her eyes ached trying to see through that endless still. Try as she might, even her impressive senses could not detect anything out of the ordinary...and it was just that extraordinary normality that sent a chill through her heart. No fillies or colts ran through the streets, causing childish mayhem in their play. No old geezers at the market stalls haggled with one another over a single bit's difference in price. No bubbly, pink mares led townponies in surprisingly well-choreographed musical numbers. Everything was perfect, preserved, unspoiled...every shop, every stall, every house...

The mare's eyes went wide. Half a second later, her wings splayed open, bringing her to a screeching, grinding halt in midair. When she had stopped, she whirled around, fixing her eyes on the ground before a nearby house, and on the small, bright spot of red she saw there. After several moments, she approached, cautiously floating down to land before that spot. As she drew nearer, the spot took on the familiar delicate shape of a flower, a rose, its bud awkwardly laying against the ground. Its long stem led down to a small clump of earth contained within a pot, partially cracked against the street.

The mare raised her head, looking up at the front door of the house just a couple feet away. The door stood slightly ajar, although the tiny crack did not give her much to look at. Stepping over the broken flowerpot, she approached the door, pressed a hoof against its cheerily painted surface, then gently pushed it open. The door slowly swung inward, giving her a view of the beautiful home within, its humble furniture bathed in the warm glow of the sun that flowed through the windows. She took one step forward, then another, her hooves carrying her across the threshold, thoughts of trespassing the last thing on her mind.

“Hello?” she called out, instinctively using her inside voice.

She made her way further into the house, crossing the adorable little living room decorated with beautiful flowers and doilies. On her way to the kitchen, she passed the fireplace, paying no heed to the mantelpiece decorated with framed photographs of a little redheaded mare named for the flower in the broken pot surrounded by her friends and family. As she entered the next room, her ears pricked up as they detected some barely perceptible noise nearby. She froze, instantly scanning her surrounding with her sharp eyes. A few moments later, the noise came again, her ears tracing the sound to the nearby sink. She approached, warily gazing into the kitchen sink and seeing the specks of potting soil scattered about it. After a few seconds, a fat, heavy drop of water collected on the faucet, then fell down into the sink below, sounding the mysterious noise for the third time.

She sighed, her body visibly relaxing as the source of the noise was made apparent. For several moments, she did nothing, merely standing there, staring at the faucet as it let loose a few more drops which splattered uneventfully in the sink. Finally, she raised a hoof, placed it on the nearby handle, then twisted it the last little bit to the “off” position. The drop swelling up on the faucet ceased growing and hung there...silently. As her ears were filled with that unnatural silence once more, she gulped, then turned to survey the house.

“Where...” she began. “Where are they?”

She made her way out of the empty kitchen, back through the living room, then on to the rest of the house, poking her head into each room in turn. Aside from the realization that the house was much more tidy than her own was, she made no other significant observations, especially not of the kind that she was hoping for. Disturbed, but not entirely surprised, she swiftly exited the house, reflexively pulling the front door closed behind her. She plopped down onto her rump, staring blankly at the lonely flower before her.

Where could they be? Where in Equestria could they be? They couldn't have just...disappeared...not the whole town! If...if something happened...something bad, then...they probably would have just run away, or hid somewhere or...

A sharp intake of breath accompanied the widening of her eyes. Her head jerked up, and she took a few seconds to remind herself what part of town she was in before springing up off of the ground and into the air in one fluid motion. Her powerful wings flapped quickly and precisely, carrying her back above the rooftops in mere moments. She took off like a lighting bolt, hurtling towards the tip of the town's tallest building.

Idiot! You big, dumb...stupid idiot! Of course they'd be there! Of course they'd go there to hide if something bad happened!

Several seconds later, the mare touched down in the town square, doing her best to ignore how unnervingly empty it was. Before her stood the towering rotunda of the town hall, its long shadow bathing her in darkness. Without missing a beat, she immediately sprung forward, leaping the steps leading up to the building's grand doorway in a single bound. Her hooves met the creaky wood of the building's outer walkway, and she charged forward, barreling towards the doors.

“Hey!” she called out, her lips stretching into a smile. “Hey, I'm here!”

She ran up to the doors, firmly planting her hooves on the wood and pushing them open with a mighty heave.

“Don't worry, everypony!” she said as she barreled into the grand hall beyond. “Rainbow Dash is here to...”

She stopped, her smile slowly fading as she looked around at all of those familiar, friendly faces...that weren't there.

“Help,” she finished, the sound of her voice quickly fading away, leaving the cavernous hall as still and quiet as she had found it.

The mare sailed through the air at a moderate pace, the speed of eagerness tempered by the slowness of trepidation. Above her stretched out the clear blue sky of morning, despite the actual time quickly approaching late afternoon. Below her, stretching out just as far, was a sea of bright green foliage splattered with the light pink of a million flowers. Even a tough mare such as her would have acknowledged the beauty of that sight on a normal day. Of course, that day was anything but normal. On that day, she had eyes only for the little red farmhouse nestled within the green just ahead of her.

She wouldn't leave. She'd never leave. None of them would. Not in a thousand moons. They'd rather...

She chose not to finish that thought.

A few seconds later, she began her descent, gliding down towards the wide-open doors of the old barn. She sailed straight in, slowing down prematurely to ensure a safe entry. While she knew most of the barn to be filled with nice, soft bales of hay, a few near-misses with rusty farm equipment in the past had forced her to adopt a more cautious approach.

“Hello!” she called out, quickly scanning the barn. “Applejack? Are you in here?”

She quickly, but carefully made her way around the barn, checking behind stacks of hay bales, behind crates, and any other place that could have concealed a little pony.

“Big Mac? Apple Bloom? Granny Smith? Come on, where are you guys!?!”

When her search proved fruitless, she grunted in frustration, then swiftly exited the barn. She flew around to the residential part of the building, right up to the back door that led to the kitchen. Finding the door unlocked, she pushed it open and flew inside.

“Hello?” she called out. “Anypony?”

Looking around the room, she saw apples sitting in baskets, apples painted on dishes, apples embroidered onto napkins, but she did not see any of the Apples she had hoped to find there.

“It's me, Rainbow Dash!” she said as she flew through the kitchen and out into the living room. “Where are you?”

The same old couch she had always seen there sat prettily in the middle of the room. The same old apple-themed knickknacks sat on the mantelpiece alongside family photos. The same old rug, the same old rocking chair, the same old...

She did a double-take, looking down at the floor before the rocking chair. Laying there unceremoniously was a pair of wooden knitting needles, still wrapped through the threads of a half-finished sock. She approached, looking down at the sock to ensure her eyes were not deceiving her.

She gulped. “Applejack?” she called out, slowly looking away.

She flew up the nearby stairs, arriving at a hallway lined with bedrooms on either side. One by one, she poked her head into these rooms.

The first was a small room sparsely decorated with antique furniture, old, faded photographs hanging on the walls. “Granny Smith?” she said.

A larger room next, with a larger bed and little decoration. “Big Mac?” she said.

An even larger room, the bed big enough for two, the window shutters closed and a thin layer of dust coating the furniture. She closed the door again silently.

A cute little room with a cute little bed, the walls covered in cute little pictures drawn in crayon. “Apple Bloom?” she said.

A plain, sensible room with a framed photo on the bedside table depicting some very familiar faces. “Applejack?” she said.

She lowered herself to the floor and walked inside this room, approaching the photo. She stood there for a few moments, a small smile appearing on her lips as she stared down at the faces before her.

Why in Equestria was I making that face?

A soft chuckle bubbled up from within her and quickly leaked out. She sniffled as her lips trembled. Before she could do more than that, she looked away, glancing through the nearby bedroom window. Outside, she could see the barnyard, see the empty pig sty, see the silent chicken coop, and not too far away, a sea of green and light pink. She approached the window, staring wistfully out at the world beyond. She lowered her head and sighed.

“Where are you?” she whispered.

Looking back up, she took one last look at the barnyard, casting her gaze over all of the...

Wait! What's that?

She zeroed in on a spot a few yards away from the pig pen, where an unknown object lay on the ground. Without taking her eyes from the spot, she quickly opened the window and hopped out. Spreading her wings, she angled down into a gentle glide that delivered her right to the spot she had been looking at.

The rank odor confirmed her suspicions before her hooves had even touched the ground. Within the old bucket laying on its side on the dirt was a varied mixture of table scraps, apple cores, rotten vegetables, and a dozen other things she could not identify. The bucket's contents had spilled out onto the ground, clearly by accident. While she knew as little about farming as she did about dressmaking or magical theory, she had spent enough time around that particular operation to recognize the distinctive characteristics of pig slop. Stepping backwards out of range of the smell, she approached the pig pen, looking in at the long food troughs. As she had suspected, the troughs were dry and empty, evidently not having seen even a scrap of food recently.

With the wheels in her head slowly turning, she peered over at the chicken coop a short distance away. She gave her wings a few quick flaps, fluttering over into the small fenced-off area. A quick look at the dirt revealed a light scattering of chicken feed, certainly not enough for all of the hens that lived there, but not so little as to be overlooked either.

As she glanced about, she noticed something laying on the ground next to the old wooden coop itself. A worn wicker basket sat there on its side, its cargo of eggs spilling out onto the dirt. Several of the eggs were broken, their gooey yolks leaking out onto the ground. Above the basket, in the side of the coop, a little panel had been slid open, presumably to get at the nest just inside. Taking a quick peek inside, she saw that about half of the nests' eggs had been collected, about the amount she estimated now lay in the dirt at her hooves.

The mare looked back at the basket for a few moments, then back at the smelly bucket. She shivered, feeling the weight of the farm's emptiness pressing down on her. She had never spent much time considering the soft clucking of those chickens, or the rude snorting of those pigs, or even the gentle rustle of those trees in the wind; now, she was forced to. She was forced to listen to the unearthly silence of every one of those motionless leaves, untouched by the wind.

Such a little thing, the wind, so little in fact that she herself had not realized before that very moment that she had not felt its touch since she had woken, not even once. A chill came over her, and she found herself scanning the barnyard, poring over that bright, sunny spot with an unfitting sense of dread. Her wings moved on their own, propelling her high into the air with a single flap, then sending her hurtling away from that fearful place.

A low, burbling growl filled the empty air as she sailed above the rooftops. Without upsetting the rhythmic beat of her wings, she reached down and caressed her aching belly. While the sun could not be counted upon as a means of telling time, the rumble of her hungry tummy was as sure a sign as any that suppertime was not far off. It was for this reason that the sight of the building she was fast approaching filled her with carnal desire, in addition to fear.

A large sloping roof, shingled with massive chocolate cookies and accented with thick, creamy icing. A flamboyantly pink cupcake the size of a small house, three tremendous birthday candles jutting from its frosting. A familiar, friendly door framed by candy canes bigger than she herself was. A solitary horseshoe that hung above the entrance, granting good fortune to those that passed under it. She knew the sweets were fake, of course, even if her belly didn't; she just hoped the luck might be real.

She came in for a landing, expertly touching down on the purple doorstep. The top half of the door before her was wide open, letting the nonexistent breeze waft inside. Unfortunately, it was also allowing a distinctive burning smell to travel out in the other direction. Realizing the implications of such a smell emanating from a bakery, the mare immediately barged through the door, leaped over the counter of the storefront, and burst into the large kitchen beyond. Several panicked minutes and several large, smoke-filled ovens later, she was reasonably confident that she had averted the sort of catastrophe that had almost befallen the library.

When she finally had a moment to stop and catch her breath, the reality of her situation sank in once again. Glancing about the kitchen, she saw a huge collection of bowls, trays, cups, and other containers filled with goodies in various stages of preparation, be it ingredient, batter, baked, or frosted. Part of her desperately wanted to dive right into one of the delicious cakes that sat on the counter before her or scarf down a mouthwatering cupcake or ten; another part of her gagged at the thought.

“Mister and Missus Cake?” she called out, her voice trembling. “Are...are you here?”

Silence answered her.

“Please be here,” she whispered.

She walked back out to the storefront, appearing behind the counter where a display filled with treats beckoned to her. Crossing the room, she came to the adjacent dining area, looking out at all of the tables where she and her friends had sat and eaten snacks over the years. The snacks were there, half-eaten slices of cake and gnawed muffins still sitting on plates, but the friends were not, neither was anypony else.

She made her way back to the kitchen, crossing through it to the stairwell that led up to the second floor living area. A few moments later, she was standing in the hallway that led to the rest of the building.

“Hello?” she said. “Mister and Missus Cake? Pinkie Pie?”

Walking down the hallway, she passed several rooms, including a master bedroom, a cozy sitting room, a bathroom, and a nursery. The sight of this last room gave her pause; she couldn't help but approach the large crib that sat against the far wall. Her steps were slow, hesitant, shaky, but they eventually carried her to her destination. Within the crib, amongst the baby toys and blankets decorated with adorable animals, lay two baby bottles, each half-full of milk. She left the room quickly.

Having searching every room, there was only one place to go: up. She stood at the base of the spiral staircase in the center of the floor, gazing upwards.

“P-Pinkie Pie?” she called out. “Y-You're up there, right?”

She had ascended those stairs a hundred times, but on that occasion, it took all of her strength just to take the first step. The second was only marginally less difficult, as was the third, and so on, until eventually, she reached the top, stepping out into the loft bedroom. She was always surprised to see how neat and tidy that room was, given the pony that it belonged to. On that occasion, however, she would have much rather seen it a bit messier.

“Pinkie Pie?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

She saw the comfy little bed, she saw the dressers, no doubt stuffed full of party supplies, but she did not see the little pink mare she sought. That left only one last place to look.

One last set of stairs hugged the rounded wall, leading up to the cupcake at the top of the building. As she approached these, beginning yet another ascent, she looked up at the wall to her side, only to see the smiling face of her friend looking back at her. A chronicle of the little pink mare's life was laid out before her in photograph form, ranging from fillyhood all the way up to what looked like just a few weeks prior. Throughout it all through, the mare in the pictures wore the same brilliant, beautiful smile that she had seen on her face just the day before. How she wished she could see it one more time.

The happy memories that came flooding back to her as she ascended those steps kept her distracted from her rising fear, the fear of what she would find at the top. When she felt her hoof meet level ground and gazed upon the last photo in the line, she stopped dead in her tracks, all of her fear rushing back to her at once. She gulped, took a deep breath, then slowly turned her head away from the wall.

The little attic room had once been used for storage, and there were still a few crates of old housewares, winter clothing, and other miscellaneous items shoved into the corners. Of course, when a certain party pony had moved into the room downstairs, she had convinced the owners to let her use the room for much merrier purposes. A little bit of cleaning, some careful redistribution of most of the clutter throughout the rest of the building, and the space had become the hippest hang out spot for six little mares and one abnormally docile alligator. Looking around the room, the memories came rushing back to her, memories of peppy music, of delicious treats, and of a thousand and one unforgettable moments shared with her most favorite ponies in the whole wide world.

Of course, memories are a poor substitute for the real thing. No music flowed from the record player, only silence. The sight of the nonexistent cupcakes on the table made her empty belly ache. No warmth came from the invisible smiles of the ghosts that danced and pranced around her, only a chilling hole in her heart as they slowly faded away. Not even a single streamer or scrap of confetti remained from the night before to grant her solace. She cursed her friend for being as good at cleaning up after her parties as she was at setting them up.

The old wooden floorboards creaked beneath her hooves as she crossed the room. She had mixed feelings about the sound which, one one hoof, filled the dreadful auditory void she had been stuck in all day, while on the other hoof, served to highlight that very same silence.

Soon enough, she stood before the large, round window that allowed the bright light of day to stream in. She gazed out of it, looking out across the rooftops and streets of the town, some desperately hopeful part of her expecting to see a smiling face way down below. Instead, the only face she saw was her own, her familiar visage reflected in the glass, albeit tinged with an unfamiliar graveness. She spent an oddly long time standing there, examining the features that she had seen countless times before. She didn't know why she was hesitant to look away from the only face she had seen that day, and potentially, the only face she would see for a while yet. Before too long, however, the comfort granted by the illusion of companionship was beaten out by the unnerving sadness in her eyes and the trembling of her lips. She tore herself away from the window, swiftly leaping back into the air and sailing down the stairs.

She had never known how many buildings there were in that pretty little town nestled in the heartland of Equestria. She still didn't, even after visiting almost every single one; she had been too preoccupied with other things to keep count.

She had fallen into a sort of rhythm eventually: enter the building by any means necessary, search the place from top to bottom, sound out her usual call, and when that call was not answered, force her crushed hopes out of her mind and move on to the next one. As she went from house to house, from shop to shop, she found herself flicking off lamps, turning off running faucets, cleaning up the messes of various dropped items, in addition to securing any potentially combustible home appliances she came across. Given the circumstances, it might seem strange that she would concern herself with something so trivial as wasted water, and yet she persisted. After all, she thought to herself, it was the sort of thing one did for their friends and neighbors when they went away somewhere. She wouldn't want them to be met with flooded homes if they came back.

When they come back. When.

The hours continued to drag on as she searched, evidenced by the occasional glances she took at clocks hanging on walls and sitting on bedside tables, the trustworthiness of which she no longer doubted. As the afternoon rolled into evening, her hunger pains only continued to grow, and the near-constant anxiety numbed her brain; and yet, she did not eat, she did not rest, she did not take any diversion from her mission. Even the powerful wings and hooves of one of Ponyville's finest athletes were feeling the exhaustion of her efforts by the time she stood before the door of the final building.

Her head was bowed, her eyes closed. Her overworked heart, which had been beating at an elevated, yet steady pace for hours, slowly accelerated, each beat pounding against her chest more firmly than the last. She took deep, calming breaths, forcing herself to continue until they no longer shook coming out. The fear of what she might find behind that door kept her paralyzed, but the fear of never finding out proved even stronger. Steeling her substantial will, she slowly raised her head and opened her eyes.

She gazed upwards at the picturesque place, poring over the intricate purple and blue designs that covered its circular walls and sloped roofs. She looked up at the second floor, where carved images of beautiful mares eternally pranced round and round the outside of the building, proudly displaying their rich garments for the world to see. Of course, the real spectacle sat behind the large, circular windows to either side of her. Peering through the polished glass at those expertly arranged displays, she could see a treasure trove of fine silks and satin stretched across the bodies of the mannequins that stood there. Her own mane paled in comparison to the dazzling spectrum of colors her eyes were treated to, deep reds, elegant blues, sharp greens, and everything in between finding a place there somewhere. Even a rough-and-tumble mare such as her could recognize the beauty of those fabulous garments, even if she could never have put into words why she felt that way.

For just a moment, she heard the eloquent voice of the mare who had created them, saw those alabaster hooves as they sewed and stitched, and felt the tremendous weight on her shoulders lift just a little bit. The moment was fleeting, however, and she soon found herself looking back at the door before her, that weight returned and greater than ever. She had been putting it off all day, searching that building, the last of hundreds, and the last of five, but she could delay no longer. It took a fool's hope and all the courage she had left in her little body to raise her trembling hoof to the door handle.

The door swung open smoothly, just as it always did. The little bell hanging above it sounded its cheerful ring, just as it always did. Her hoofsteps echoed softly on the hard floor as she stepped inside, just as they always did.

The only thing missing was the warm greeting of the lovely proprietress of that establishment.

She stood there in the middle of the showroom, awkwardly waiting for something she wasn't even sure would come. The seconds dragged on, each one grinding that excruciating silence into her head even further, until at last she could stand it no longer.

“R...Rarity?” she said, forcing the word out of her tired throat. “Rarity?”

Her eyes wandered about the showroom, taking in racks of beautiful clothes and staring at the pale mannequins that stared right back at her. The tall mirrors that lined the wall nearby reflected back the stark emptiness of the room, as well as her own grim visage. The proud mare who was always the first to put on a brave face was forced to look upon her own fears, her own desperate hopes etched into those features. She didn't like what she saw.

No.

She turned away, seeking comfort in her familiar surroundings.

She'll be here. She has to be.

“Rarity?” she called out as she fluttered into the air.

She checked every dressing room, finding nothing but stray garments lying on the floor. She checked the little storeroom nearby, peering over boxes of last season's fashions. She flew back into the kitchen, ignoring her gnawing hunger. Finally, she made her way up the stairs to the living area, making her way down the second floor hallway.

She looked into the bathroom, gazing upon the vast array of makeups, creams, tonics, perfumes, and grooming implements that occupied the counter. She looked into the guest bedroom, noticing the small red cape lined with gold silk casually draped across the bed. She even looked into the hall closet, finding nothing but some old cleaning supplies.

As she stepped up to the door of the master bedroom, however, she paused, staring intently at the painted wood. It was the final door, the final room, the final hope she had left. Having been inside that room dozens of times before, she had no trouble picturing it in her mind. It was a large room to be sure, but not anywhere near big enough to contain an entire town's worth of ponies. Her brain considered that mental image, rejecting the notion as being ridiculous; and yet, deep down in her thumping heart, there still clung the last in a long line of hopes, which told her that her search would not be in vain.

Slowly, she raised a shaky hoof, extending it towards the door handle. It sat there against that cool metal for a long time, neither withdrawing nor pressing onward. She stared down at the useless appendage, fruitlessly willing her muscles to move as the seconds dragged on. All the while, that same continuous, unbroken, unbearable silence pressed down on her.

Come on. Come on...you coward.

Shame welled up inside of her, shame at her inability to act, to decide...shame at her own weakness. She had come so far, and yet she couldn't take the final step.

And you want to be a Wonderbolt?

Now they were heroes; they wouldn't be afraid of a mere door. Not the Wonderbolts. Not Princess Celestia. Not Daring Do. Not her friends.

My friends.

She thought of those friends, those amazing, wonderful mares that she loved so much. Each one of them was a hero; each one of them had proven themselves time and time again. Each one of them had done so much for others, been willing to sacrifice so much for others...and for her. They had always been there to save the day when they were needed, and more importantly, they had always been there for her when she needed them.

“I need them,” she whispered, her words so quiet that not even she heard them.

Her head lowered and her eyes closed as her nose filled with sniffles and her lips trembled.

They need you too.

Her eyes opened, and she looked back up at the door.

They need me.

Wherever in that wide, wide world they were, they needed her; they needed her strength, they needed her courage, they needed her loyalty. Even if she had reached the end of her strength, even if her courage hung by the thinnest thread imaginable, she would never deny them her unshakable devotion. She would never give them up; she would never abandon them. She would not rest until she saw their beautiful faces once again, saw them standing before her, just as she saw them in her head. Nothing would stand in her way, especially not something as trivial as a simple door.

The handle turned easily, and the door swung open with hardly a push. The bedroom opened up before her, the floor strewn with bolts of cloth, scraps of fabric, and a light dusting of fine, white cat hair. The large, four-poster bed was perfectly made, its ornate comforter stretched taut over its plush mattress. A mountain of decorative pillows sat atop it, so many that she reckoned they could have doubled as a second mattress all on their own. The walls were lined with shelves holding various materials and tools, and had hoof-drawn designs of the most gorgeous gowns hanging from them. There was a large, rounded window, filling the room with soft, warm light.

Standing before that window...was the distinctive figure of a mare, her coat as pure white as the finest snow.

Time seemed to slow as her eyes fell on the figure, the churning of her brain and the pounding of her heart grinding to a halt. She couldn't think; she couldn't speak. She couldn't do anything but stand there like a statue, staring at the happiest sight she had ever beheld. Her breathing quickened, undulating, morphing into the beginnings of what could either have been a laugh or a sob. The corners of her gaping mouth slowly rose. The tears that she had not allowed herself to shed finally made themselves known, welling up in her widening eyes before trailing down her cheek.

“Rar...Rarity?” she breathed, the loving warmth spreading from her heart thawing her frozen tongue. “Rarity?”

It couldn't be, yet there she was, standing before her, just as she had done countless times before. Such a mundane sight, and yet the intense euphoria flooding the mind of the mare was anything but. She didn't know what to do, whether to laugh, to cry, to scream, or all three. Her body, on the other hoof, knew exactly what to do. Her powerful wings and deft hooves sent her shooting forward towards that wonderful, beautiful mare.

“Rarity!” she shouted, her voice ringing with pure joy.

She pulled the figure into a bone-crushing hug as they collided, sweeping them off their hooves and twirling them around in circles.

“Rarity!” the mare cried as she buried her face in their neck. “I...I can't believe it! I can't believe it's you! It's really you! You're here! I...I'm sorry it took me so long to find you, I just...”

Her voice withered as she turned her head and looked into the blank face of the mannequin she held.

In an instant, the silence returned. In an instant, the joy vanished, replaced by familiar fear. In an instant, the warmth was supplanted by a deep, harrowing chill.

She stood there, as still and lifeless as the simulacrum she clung to. She stood there as her muscles shook, her grip gradually loosening. She stood there as the mannequin slipped from her grasp, falling at her hooves. She stood there as the heavy metal stand attached to it clattered against the wooden floor, tolling out as loudly as any bell. She stood there as the mannequin stared back up at her with its silent, still, empty face.

She took a step backwards, then another, and then...she flew. She flew out of that room, the wind she whipped up pulling the door closed with a loud slam. She flew down the stairs and through the showroom, passing through the gazes of the mannequins that maintained their vigil there. She flew through the front door and out onto the street. She flew up, up over the rooftops, up over the streets, up over that silent town in that still, lifeless countryside. She flew away, the rushing air drying the tears streaming down her face.