OCT 17 Saturday.

I walk through the bookshelves of the Canterlot library looking for anything that might give me the answers I seek.

After the snake incident, I've been doing several things. First, I have a few new rules for my camp. One, if I feel its life magic again, leave. Two, don't leave the camp shield at night unless necessary. Three, don't leave any food out, something might come looking for it.

All of this is simple stuff but should help keep me safe, I really don't want to meet that snake again.

And another small thing, I've named the camp, Gaia's Eden, simple but I think it fits well and pays homage to my old home in a few ways. I pull my mind away from thoughts of my old home and focus on this internal rant.

Beyond Gaia's Eden, I've also spent some time trying to find out exactly what that snake was, and the answers I've found are complicated. Searching for these answers has led me down a rabbit hole of things that may or may not help me.

Magical creatures are classified in many ways, but one way to class them is uniqueness. A magical creature is either a member of a species that is magical, Phoenixes are a good example of this. Or part of a second group, this second group is harder to define.

As I've seen, sometimes magic and evolution combine in amazing and terrifying ways. It turns out that extends to creating things that are not just a slight difference in the species, but something new altogether. With enough magic and environmental pressures a magical or otherwise normal creature can change in truly massive ways.

The result is called a unique existence, something that is singular in this world with nothing else like it. Evolution for not a species but an individual, this is the uniqueness factor and it explains a lot of the odd things this world has. Any being in an environment with enough magic can change to better fit that environment.

That change is normally a slow thing, but magic can speed things up a lot. But all this begs the question, is this snake unique? Or a member of a magical species? Well, after a lot of research, I've found my answer, in this case it's both.

The species this snake is from is a Ruby Snake, they are a somewhat rare and large snake species. They live in large forests, have a slight venom that is mostly harmless but can cause infections, are known to be somewhat more intelligent than most snakes, and they have very tough scales. But after that it gets odd.

The Ruby Snake is magical, but only slightly. They can make their scales glow to attract smaller predators by attracting bugs, very similar to the Moon Glow. They also use this ability to communicate in several ways, if they want to mate, are hunting, or if they are trying to scare another of their kind from their territory.

But this species of snake normally only grows to ten or fifteen feet long, still large but nothing like the snake I saw. And that means this Ruby Snake is an aberrant member of its race, at some point some form of magic significantly changed this relatively normal snake into the monster I saw.

How? No idea. From what I've learned the change can happen from any number of sources. Large amounts of any affinity of magic, certain magical plants, even large magical events like a volcano eruption, this snake could have been unique in some other way before this happened, or hell even some pony messing with something they shouldn't. I don't think I will ever know for sure what it did to become what it is now.

But I did learn a few things that could help me with the situation. I've researched snake behavior and feeding habits, along with anything that could deter it from bothering me. I mainly focused this research on the Ruby Snake as they are the most similar to what I'm dealing with, and a very important thing I learned is the snake is most likely nocturnal.

The Ruby Snake hunts at night and sleeps in the day, they are also primarily ambush predators, although I'm not sure how much that applies to this snake. It was moving silently, but it wasn't exactly stealthy with how much it glowed, other Ruby Snake can turn that effect off so this snake may also be an ambush predator, I'm simply not sure.

The point stands though, as long as it's day I should be fine. After I finish my reading I leave the library and start to walk home, I have a meeting today and I would rather not be late. Over the past few weeks, my projects have been going very well so far.

Let's start with the Moon Glow Vine, it's done. The green vine has small leaves with large flowers that remind me of water lily flowers. Its entire body glows with the flowers glowing slightly brighter than the rest of the plant, and it's gained enough strength to grow tall under its own weight.

I've also used it to light my shack at Gaia's Eden and it works well. I've produced a good amount of seeds. I hope Celestia likes them.

The other project that has seen progress is the Emotional Magic Gathering project, shortened to E.M.G. Over the past few weeks I've gone through a few ideas before finally starting with a simple idea that in all honestly I should have thought of before.

The emotional shield I use is simple, it prevents most of the emotional magic I give off from leaving the shield. It basically captures all that emotional magic inside and releases it when I turn it off, so what if I just used that to gather emotional magic? An easy solution.

All I need is a way to store what is already being gathered, and that is easy by comparison. I've modified the emotional shield to change size while keeping the shield active, once you activate it the shield will compress into a small ball that holds all the gathered emotional magic, and then the shield will become solid to prevent anything from moving through it and disrupting the gathered emotional magic along with blocking out all emotional magic from leaving to prevent leakage.

But I'm not sure if this could have side effects. I'm no expert on magical affinities and how they interact with each other, so I have no idea if compressing them like this is bad in some way, and even with an expert they wouldn't be able to tell me if this gathered magic is edible for Changelings.

If the magic does change in some way that makes it unusable for Changelings I need to know before I start investing more time into this potential solution. And there is a simple way to do that, ask the two changelings I know, which I'll be doing after my meeting with Celestia today.

When I get home I clean myself up and make sure to look professional, I want to look like an employee of Celestia. I normally wouldn't care how others see me, but I don't really trust those two Changelings that much, at least not yet, so for now I will keep it professional.

Once I look proper I find a small gem with a seemingly empty shield floating above it, this is some of my own emotional magic I gathered yesterday. Once I have everything I need I have Entropy take me to the mailroom, I appear inside the room and open the door like normal.

A guard is standing there just as I expected, what I don't expect is who the guard is. I stare forward as me and Shining Armor share a look of mild surprise. There is a long moment of silence, but I speak first. "Hello again Shining, it's nice to see you again. Seems you'll be my escort today then?" I greet him with a degree of fake calmness.

I haven't spoken to him in a long while, and a lot has changed since then. He nods after a moment before looking into the room behind me, only to see nothing but a single table in a windowless room with only one entrance. "Yes I am... and it's good to see you Shade." I can tell he wants to ask but doesn't, he keeps a professional and on-duty tone as he starts leading me through the palace.

There is once again a few moments of silence before I speak up. "So, how have you been? It's been a long time since we last talked." I try to relax and remind myself it's fine to interact with important ponies, the future is fucked as it is no point hiding from it now.

He seems a little off, not that I blame him, I just appeared from an empty room and now he has to walk me to the princess without asking the burning questions he no doubt has. "I've been fine, thank you for asking. It seems you are doing well." He says while looking me over, his tone is still all guard-like, he is both blunt and polite.

I'm only an inch or so shorter than him now and I'm probably in better shape, by magic I love earth pony strength. "Yes, I am." It's not a long conversation, but he's on duty so probably can't say much without getting in some form of stupid trouble.

When we were near Celestia's office I turned to him. "How about we catch up sometime soon?" I suggest staying professional in front of the other guards. We may not have talked much but I wouldn't mind getting to know him more.

He gives me a very small smile and a short nod. "Sure, how about the park? Seems we always end up there anyway." He seems a little standoffish as we don't really know each other and I'm asking while he's at work, but he still agrees and that's enough for me.

I chuckle slightly at that, we do seem to find each other there. "Sounds good. Does tomorrow at five work for you?" he nods a moment later and starts to walk off silently as we reach the door to Celestia's office. I hope to talk with him more later, but for now I get to hang out with a friend.

When I enter I see Celestia working on some paperwork while drinking tea. I glance around her desk and see much less paperwork than the last time I was here, it seems things have calmed down some. After a moment Entropy leaves my shadow and joins Philomena on her perch while I lay down on the couch.

"Hello Celestia, anything interesting?" I ask half-jokingly. She looks up from her work and gives me a slightly annoyed and happy look, but before I can ask about the look something catches my interest, what catches my interest is the pair of simple reading glasses she has hanging on top of her muzzle.

"Hello to you to Sha-" That's as far as she gets before my shock wears off and I interrupt her.

"WAIT! Wait wait wait... YOU, have glasses?" I ask while pointing a hoof at her face, I never thought I'd see a pair of glasses on Celestia, she looks like a librarian.

She raises a brow and smiles. "Surely you've seen me use them before? And yes I do, all this paperwork is hard on the eyes." She says with some amusement at my reaction.

I'm silent for a moment as she takes off the glasses, and a small part of me notices that they look rather good on her, I push that part away quickly. I speak again as she joins me on the couch, "I suppose that makes sense, it's just.. that's not something I'd ever thought I'd see you wearing. Can I see them?"

She keeps her half smile, I feel like I'm forgetting something here but ignore it for the current situation. "Here, satisfy your curiosity. And yes I presume many would think the same, but like I said they help with all this work." Something in her tone yet again seems off, but I continue to ignore it.

She passes the simple pair of metal-rimmed glasses to me, they are normal and surprisingly plain-looking. After I'm done I pass them back and look up at Celestia, and I see a wide smile as she looks slightly above me. My brain finally decides that something is in fact wrong and I look up.

I quickly close my eyes as I see something rushing at my face and after shutting my eyes I feel myself get covered in some form of dust. I have to hold my breath to not breathe anything in and after it settles I open my eyes again. Glitter, glitter fucking everywhere.

I look up at Celestia again while she breaks down laughing at my shocked and dumbfounded expression. "Your- hahahaha, Your riddles need work, these were just terrible." She says while placing an empty box next to her, the same box I sent her as a prank. :It seems I've been pranked, humiliated, and quite possibly bamboozled. Well.. shit:

After a few more moments she calms down and stops laughing. "Although, I will admit you had me confused for a while, it took me longer than it should have for me to notice." She admits with a large smile.

I feel my muzzle heat up some and know I have a blush, I look away to not show it and see I'm completely covered in glitter, by magic am I thankful I learned to instantly cast the cleaning spell I made. Instead of answering Celestia I spend a minute cleaning myself off and hoping my blush goes away with my embarrassment, that process was made more difficult by Entropy's love for the devil dust.

Celestia starts laughing again at my reaction and Entropy trying her best to cover herself in this hellish stuff, and I decide to get some petty revenge by not cleaning her off. Celestia stops laughing when Entropy flies over to Philomena to show off the shiny glitter and in the process spreads it all over Celestia's office.

I chuckle a little as her face pinches. "I did warn you she loves this stuff, for some reason." Once I've cleaned off the couch and myself, I turn to her fully. "What gave it away? That was supposed to blast everywhere when you opened it." I ask to try and distract myself from further embarrassment.

She doesn't laugh but keeps her smile. "The last riddle, it was just too terrible, even for you. Looking back I should have realized so much sooner, but it seems you played your cards well." Only Celestia can find a way to insult and compliment me while sounding neutral all at the same time.

I sigh, she's right that the last one was just the worst and probably overdid it. I chuckle at the way she turned my prank back on me, "Well I tried. Now I don't even want to give you this, but here." I try to move on and change the subject by passing her several pages of notes on the M.G.P project and my progress so far, along with the need to test it on the Changelings.

I see her face shift from playful to serious as she starts reading through the documents, I let her fully finish them as they are important. Once she's done I speak up, "The only thing I'm not sure about is what happens to the magic when it is held like this." I take out the gem with its small shield as an example.

Celestia is now in full business mode and starts looking at the shield, although I have no idea what she's looking at as nothing is there for me. "I'm also not sure, I know they are probably interacting in some way as the magic looks thoroughly mixed together, but I have no idea what that would do."

I note that tidbit down, at least it confirms something. "That's why I wanted to ask the Cricket and Cicada, especially Cicada as she seems to know more about things like this." While thinking about it an idea strikes me. "Also, I'd like a doctor or medic there just in case."

She looks away from the shield and back to me, she gives me an approving nod and smiles. "That is probably best, I'll be joining you then." I raise a brow and look at the still considerable amount of paperwork on her desk. She sees that and waves a hoof, "It can wait, this is more important."

She starts to stand up but I stop her. "Hold on a moment." She stops getting up and lays down again, it's her turn to raise a brow as I start looking through my saddlebags, a moment later I pass her a small bag full of seed. "Seeds, I call it the Moon Glow Vine," I explained while opening the bag to show her.

I once again see her face shift, this time it's a soft sad smile that breaks my heart a little. She gently takes the bag from me and stares at the seeds. It's almost a full minute before she speaks with a very soft voice, "Thank you, this... it means a lot to me."

I nod and return her small smile. "It's no trouble at all, and I've found my own use for them. Here are some instructions." I offer a few more papers to her. She takes them but moves them to the side immediately, she's silent again for a while.

"Are you doing anything on Nightmare Night?" The question is almost a little hesitant, I have no idea what she's thinking but shake my head. "Would.... would you mind helping me with something again?" I'm honestly shocked at how melancholy her tone is.

"Consider it done." I agree immediately.

She looks up from the seeds with that same small smile. "You don't even know what you're agreeing to help with?" I can see that same small sad smile.

I show a larger smile at that. "And I don't need to. I don't also know what this is about, but that's not important, you need my help, that's what is important." I keep a sincere and firm tone while keeping my smile.

I'm surprised by a very fluffy hug a moment later, "Thank you Shade." I sit in stunned silence as she hugs me for several moments, and my damned hormone-stricken mind can't help but notice the lavender scent she has, some type of soap, it is nice smelling though.

After a minute or so she lets go and backs up. "I'm sorry if that was a bit... much." She seems a little embarrassed at the hug, but not the least bit regretful.

I keep my smile and wave it off. "It's fine, I don't mind." I keep silent and after a moment I try to change the subject and cheer her up a little. "How about we go and find out how badly my crazy idea works?" I joke slightly.

She doesn't laugh or chuckle, but she shows a slightly renewed smile. "Yes, this is not the time for this. Come, we have things to test." I smiled happily as that seemed to help her out of that funk.

"Sounds amazing, I just hope nothing explodes." I joke again.

And she tilts her head. "It can't do that.. right?" I can tell she's joking, so I don't answer as I walk out of the room ahead of her. "Right?" She asks again, I just smile and continue walking.

Author's Note

Thank for reading. :D

I've personally seen what happens when a toddler gets their hands on glitter, and I feel like Entropy would be the same.