Alicorn Down

The bell rang, and the class rushed from the room. Only the stranger and the professor remained.
The professor collapsed her telescopic pointing stick placing it back within its gilded box, and she continued bussing herself, dusting off the chalkboard. She did not however look back at the kaki stallion as she spoke to him.
“So, what brings a government stallion such as yourself to my humble classroom?”
A startled expression crossed the stallion's face to quickly be replaced by one of abashment as the professor explained her reasoning.
“The poppy on your lapel, I saw you remove it when you came in, but it marked your station all the same, no other pony would dare.” She turned to face the interloper.
“Quite the perceptive one aren’t you professor.”
“I try,” she said, positioning herself wryly to place herself such that her desk was between herself and the stranger. But it wouldn’t be enough.”
“Then you know why it's in your best interests to come with me silently.”
The professor glanced around the seemingly empty room.
“ I suppose your friends are close.”
The stallion nodded.
“Very well then. Could you be a dear and grab my bag? If you're here for the reason I think you are the contents may very well be relevant.”

The professor gestured toward a heavily book-laden satchel that sat beside her desk.

Collems and collems of apple trees dead and bare loomed before us as we approached. Half buried in unbridled sand they loomed a stark grey against the sickened twilight, against the shimmeringly unreliable horizon of the desert.

Rainbow stopped beneath one of the trees sitting down. She looked up toward, perhaps through those desperate boughss. It looked the very picture of despair. It felt like something an artist would paint upon remembering all his loved ones had passed on, the Alicorn resting beneath the ghost of an apple tree, as beyond light heaved her final glimmering violet breath.
She didn’t speak.

Through some Alicorn magic (that was even a mystery to me and all I had seen) most of her scars had faded completely, as if they had never been. But that one gash, that one red line that ran jagged across her throat. A Scarlet stark against a sky-like blue remained unchanged.
I saw it in my flames, she will never speak again. Not until the end.
Alicorns are eternal, but all things must come to an end.

It became easier to remember, easier to understand the longer I remained away from the flames, but the trees looked very flammable, a fire, just a small one would be nice after all.
I shook myself, attempting to rid myself of the thought. I focused my attention back on Rainbow Dash.

She looked at me. There was a look of longing in her eyes. It was my special talent to know that look, and it became easier and easier as the poison of fire faded from my mind(always there, ever calling.). She looked up toward the tree and then again back at me.
“ Tell me she is ok…tell me you saw her in all that time you lost yourself in that flame.”
I had told her before, words of hope to help us in our endless trudge but at this look, I felt I must say it again.
“Apple Jack is alright, I'm sure of it, and the towns not far, I promise, we just need to go a little bit further."
I knew it was true, it had to be, the vision could mean nothing else, and now I could remember it clearer than ever. Apple Jack embracing a relieved Rainbow Dash. Tears of joy laced that vision not the sorrow of so many others.
The wind began to pick up again.

Log Entry 23.9
Twilight Sparkle
9/5
The field test confirmed it, with the device I can track and contain the bizarre energy emitting from Canterlot High!
Some odd frequency of electromagnetic waves… or perhaps something else interfering with them.
People don’t just appear out of nowhere and EM alone does not explain it, there has got to be something else.

The car ride to New Canter was by no means a comfortable affair, a silence fell between the passengers, the government Stallion who was quite cramped, his large frame dwarfed the interior of the vehicle, and the professor who was well aware of the danger of her position. Government interest was never a good sign.

Despite the bumps and jolts of the road, and the roar of traffic outside the passenger cabin was dead silent.
Between a lifetime in her line of work, and a minutia of other experiences
the professor had grown accustomed to reading long silences, the dead never spoke aloud after all, and yet said much, how much more for living ponies.

It was with this studiousness that she watched the government stallion that sat across from her.

He wasn’t accustomed to long silences, or perhaps rather he didn't associate them with anything good.
His ears radared left and right as if he expected the ethereal voice of the lady Tráthnóna calling him home at any moment.
He constantly checked the windows, left right, and center, wincing at every stray cardboard box and cringing at every underpass they passed beneath. His hooves never stopped moving, a continued incessant tap, tap, tap.
He might have been sweating had the cab not been so well cooled.
For a moment the prefer considered breaking the silence; but no let him sweat she thought

Log Entry 26.7

Twilight Sparkle

9/5
It's Gone! I can’t believe it!
It’s not gone, it’s still there but I can’t see it.
That’s not quite right. I think that is more like I can’t notice it.
I was playing around with some of the captured energies, seeing what happened when I passed different electric charges through the field, and somehow I managed to make Spike disappear. The worst of it was, I hate to admit it I didn’t even notice he was gone. It was almost as if I had forgotten he even existed. No, it was exactly like that!
For the forty-five minutes that the experiment was running, had anyone asked me I would have told them I had never had a dog.
I hate to think what might have happened had the canister not run out.
Pottintal catasterphy aside I think I can harness this!